While the health care battle and soon the Afghanistan battle will wage in, the biggest battle is this economy. No battle with scars and skid marks left on you is more apparent than not being able to find a job.
Health care Obama's Waterloo? It never was, it has always been the economy and lack of jobs.
I continue to state this because nothing is easier for the American Public to understand than losing your job, losing your health insurance, losing your savings, which affects you and your family directly.
I have a niece that is finishing college in the spring, only to STAY IN SCHOOL because of her fear on not being able to find a job. This reality is real and if it does not start to turn in 2010 and looking upward in 2012, this is the issue that can bring the Democrats and Obama down.
The public has a short memory, remember that.
The unemployment rate for young Americans has exploded to 52.2 percent -- a post-World War II high, according to the Labor Dept. -- meaning millions of Americans are staring at the likelihood that their lifetime earning potential will be diminished and, combined with the predicted slow economic recovery, their transition into productive members of society could be put on hold for an extended period of time.
And worse, without a clear economic recovery plan aimed at creating entry-level jobs, the odds of many of these young adults -- aged 16 to 24, excluding students -- getting a job and moving out of their parents' houses are long. Young workers have been among the hardest hit during the current recession -- in which a total of 9.5 million jobs have been lost.
"It's an extremely dire situation in the short run," said Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute. "This group won't do as well as their parents unless the jobs situation changes."
Al Angrisani, the former assistant Labor Department secretary under President Reagan, doesn't see a turnaround in the jobs picture for entry-level workers and places the blame squarely on the Obama administration and the construction of its stimulus bill.
"There is no assistance provided for the development of job growth through small businesses, which create 70 percent of the jobs in the country," Angrisani said in an interview last week. "All those [unemployed young people] should be getting hired by small businesses." read more here....
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