The White House handed Wall Street fat cats $30 billion one week in March, but barely two weeks later, when it found out that payrolls were down by 80,000 that month, when it discovered 434,000 people lost their jobs in those 31 days, well, suddenly, then the White House had nothing left to hand out but patience.

“Be patient,” President Bush urged jobless Americans on Friday. “Be patient,” the White House told Americans who had just dished out $30 billion of their tax dollars to help one Wall Street investment bank, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., buy another, Bear Stearns Cos. — after Bear failed to keep enough money on reserve.

Bear Stearns didn’t have to wait. When it got in trouble, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke ran right up to Wall Street with $30 billion of your tax dollars to salvage it.

And they did it over a weekend. The Bush administration found $30 billion of your dollars within 24 hours. Bear was just too, well, as Bernanke put it, intertwined in the investment system, to wait.

Apparently, in the laissez-faire, free-market Bush White House, when a big investment bank takes risks that get it in deep trouble, everyone in America should share the pain and bail it out with their tax dollars. Though that may sound like socialism for bankers, Bernanke assured us all in hearings last week that it isn’t.

Nothing is ever what it seems in the Bush administration.

Bush promised his stimulus package would stimulate the economy, and yet, here the country is with unemployment at 5.1 percent, the highest rate since September 2005 and payrolls contracting for the third month in the row.

Of course, no one has received a tax rebate check — the key to Bush’s stimulus package — yet. Even when they arrive, however, they’ll be too little, too late.

Isn’t it time Congress and the administration came up with something for individual Americans who are suffering because they are among the 7.8 million unemployed and looking for work or the 4.9 million who are employed part time but seeking full-time work?

It’s time also because wages aren’t keeping up with inflation, so even the employed are losing out with the rising prices of eggs and bread and gasoline. Hourly wages rose 3.6 percent over the past year, the slowest growth rate in two years, lower than recent inflationary readings, which have been around 4 percent.

America needs a real stimulus package that will include extended unemployment insurance to help those who have been searching and cannot find work. This country also needs a real works program that will provide employment and build needed infrastructure. Everywhere, roads, bridges and sewers and other public structures are crumbling and require immediate attention. Such a program would not only improve public structures, but employ people to do it.

What about America establishing, in addition, a green works program to encourage and produce as much alternative energy as possible? Solar and wind investments produce jobs as well as moving the country towards energy independence.

No program to deal with the recession would be serious if it does not address the continuously rising trade deficit and runaway health care costs in a nation with 47 million uninsured people. Otherwise, it’s just tinkering, just messing around, saying it’s fixed, but leaving the mess for another day, for someone else to actually try to repair.

Months ago, the United Steelworkers urged the administration to initiate a real stimulus program with extended unemployment insurance, a jobs program and other serious economic benefits such as movement on health insurance. By refusing to do anything but hand out a few rebate checks, Bush wasted time, further damaged the economy and devastated lives. More than ever, it’s time to get to work.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 7:30 am and is filed under Politics, Economy/Budget, The Administration .