by Mark Gruenberg

            One year ago, in an historic moment, Barack Obama was inaugurated as president.  While it is too early to fully judge the ultimate outcome of his initiatives, notably health care revision, it is useful to look back, one-fourth of the way through his first term, and recall the mess he stepped into, then evaluate what he’s done.

            AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka provided a pretty fair summation of the economic chaos that confronted Obama on Jan. 20, 2009:

            “If you were laid off because of what Wall Street did to our economy, it’s not your fault.  A dead-end job with no benefits is not the best our country can do for its citizens,” Trumka told the National Press Club.

            “What went wrong with our economy?  You could say it is as simple as we built a low-wage high-consumption economy and tried to bridge the contradiction with debt,” he continued.  But Obama stepped into something even worse, Trumka pointed out.

            “Radical deregulation…corporate empowerment…trade policies that rewarded and accelerated outsourcing, financial deregulation designed to promote speculation, and dismantling of our pension and health care systems.

            “These policies culminated in the worst economic decade in living memory.  We suffered a net loss of jobs, the housing market collapsed, real wages fell and more children fell into poverty.  And the enormous growth in inequality yielded mediocre growth overall,” Trumka summarized.

            We’re reminded of another summary from another era: “We have always known

that heedless self-interest was bad morals.  We now know that it is bad economics,” FDR said in 1937.   Seven years later, in his “little dog Fala” speech to the Teamsters, Roosevelt recalled “cleaning up the mess we inherited in 1933” from Republican rule.

            So how has Obama “cleaned up the mess” he inherited in 2009 -- the biggest such mess since 1933?  And a mess created by years of Republican rule, aided by eight years from a pro-business Democrat named Bill Clinton?  Here’s a partial list:

            * Extending unemployment benefits, COBRA coverage and food stamps for workers who lost their jobs, along with expanding children’s health coverage.  Obama’s predecessor, Republican George W. Bush, refused to even consider such moves.

            * Rescuing Chrysler and GM, through loans and loan guarantees.  The price: Pay cuts for workers, bankruptcy, fired executives, downsizing, sale of Chrysler to Fiat and transfer of workers’ and retirees’ health care costs to the United Auto Workers. 

            Rescuing the car companies was deeply unpopular -- especially among the anti-worker GOP and its business acolytes, who want to smash the UAW and reduce all U.S. workers to serfs.  But automakers, dealers, gas stations, repair shops, tire makers, and suppliers of steel, plastic, rubber, etc., account directly or indirectly for about one of every 10 U.S. jobs.  So rescuing the auto firms, and workers, was the right thing to do.

            * The bank bailout, including millions for the American International Group.  Obama inherited from this rescue from Bush.  It’s even more unpopular than rescuing the car companies -- and for better reasons.        

            The so-called wizards of Wall Street, aided and abetted by those 30 years of

deregulation from D.C.’s politicians, got us into this mess.   The bank bailout was mishandled from the start, with the money going to the institutions that failed us, not to the depositors -- notably those with defaulting mortgages -- who are their victims. 

            And the banks, now profitable after their infusions of our cash, are fighting tooth and nail against re-regulation designed to prevent a rerun of their abusive greed.

            * Starting to rebuild manufacturing, principally by encouraging, via the stimulus law, factories in the U.S. that will build “green” products -- hybrid cars, solar panels, electricity-generating windmills and their turbines, etc. -- to both put people to work and lessen U.S. dependence on imported oil.  

            That’s a start.  So is the industrial policy task force Obama unveiled in mid-December.  But there will be far fewer jobs in the new “green” factories than there are older and displaced factory workers able to take them.  Obama has yet to propose a plan to help put all those excess ex-employees back to work.

            * The stimulus law, which labor said then -- and Trumka repeated this month -- was too small.  It was $787 billion, and included the green jobs, saving state and local jobs in helping professions -- teachers, Fire Fighters, nurses, etc. -- and infrastructure spending, aimed at creating construction jobs, in a sector with 22% unemployment.

            Labor argued then and now that the stimulus should have been at least double and focused on job creation, not including billions in business tax breaks three Senate “swing vote” Republicans forced in as one price for their support.  The administration says the stimulus “created or saved” more than 1.7 million jobs, so far.  We’ll see.

            Put this all together, and it’s quite a lot.  Some measures worked; others didn’t.  But we have a message for the president, which is also a summation of his first year: Don’t rest on your laurels.  Don’t yield to deficit fears or give in to GOP obstructionism.

            Or, as FDR also said: “The country demands bold, persistent experimentation.  It is common sense to take a method and try it.  If it fails, admit it frankly and try another.  But above all, try something.”