After Nelson Mandela’s historic victory in abolishing Apartheid, the South African nation and world are in a euphoric state, high on the realization that yes we can prevail over the entrenched racism and colonialism that had been oppressing the aboriginal peoples of the African continent for half a millennia.

However, in the re-building of the South African nation’s socio-economic infrastructure, something went awry. While finally the majority population of black South Africans could now vote and enjoy for the first time many of the rights of citizenry – a policy shift led by Mandela’s election sweep in 1994 and lauded in the press the world over – the economic plan for the country remained in the same hands of the powerful white elite that had ruled the country for decades. And in crushing irony, a decade after Apartheid’s end, by 2005 “economically, South Africa has surpassed Brazil as the most unequal society in the world.” (1) 

Yes, I am still thankful for Obama’s historic victory, and yes, I recognize that one cannot undue decades of financial deregulation and labor losses in just one year. I know there is no magic wand to fix the system, that Obama did not cause the financial meltdown. I recall that Obama did sign the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act as his first piece of legislation. He appointed Hilda Solis Doyle as his very labor-friendly Secretary of Labor. And he reversed many of Bush’s anti-labor policies with Executive Orders signed almost immediately after taking office. (5) Yes, there is much to be thankful for.

I also appreciate what must be Obama’s frustration at dealing with a speak – softly Democratic caucus but a carry a big stick Republican caucus in Congress.

Yet I must express my astonishment at comments made by Obama at the December 3rd Jobs Summit which included 130 leaders from both the business community and labor, including AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

The AFL-CIO and liberal think tanks like the Economic Policy Institute have suggested that, among other things, what we need to do to provide direct relief to the nation’s millions of unemployed workers is a government jobs program similar to the Works Progress Administration from the 1930’s. That is, if the private sector cannot guarantee jobs, the government must.

This is no foreign concept after all. President Roosevelt’s New Deal of 1935 created 21 million jobs over seven years in the aftermath of the Great Depression. Many of our nation’s roads, bridges, schools, parks and post offices were created by this venture. We did this at a total cost of $160 billion in today’s dollars. (2) 

Obama listened to the concerns of Labor and said that while he appreciates the need for federal investment to fight the nation's high unemployment, private business, not government, must lead future job growth. “Ultimately, true economic recovery is only going to come from the private sector.” (3) 

While I agree that it is the private sector which has historically driven job creation, I find Obama’s use of the word “only” in that statement extremely problematic.

In the course of the past year we have witnessed a government ready, willing and able to do all it can to bail out its banks despite their eponymous failures and bonus blunders. Citibank alone has been guaranteed protection of upwards of $277 billion in losses from its toxic assets. Lots of money to you and me but chump change compared to the $23.7 trillion that Neil Barofsky, the inspector general charged with overseeing TARP, estimates the total cost of Wall Street bailouts to eventually reach. (4)

Obama agreed in theory with point five of the AFL-CIO’s five-point program for job creation, that “we should put some of the billions of dollars in leftover Troubled Asset Relief Program funds to work creating jobs by enabling community banks to lend money to small- and medium-size businesses. If small businesses can get credit, they will create jobs.” (6)

But the administration has been firm in saying it will not spend TARP money – nor for that matter any other funding mechanism – directly on the job-creation, “”Let me be clear, I am open to every demonstrably good idea. And I want to take every responsible step to accelerate job creation. We also though have to face the fact that our resources are limited,” Obama said (7)

That Obama suggests our government no longer has the funds to directly create jobs may appease fiscally-conservative critics, but it’s an insult to workers who are already on the hook for a bank bailout that New York University Nouriel Roubini famously characterized as “socializing risk and privatizing gain.” (8)

According to the Economic Policy Institute, to fill in the gap of job loss over the next two years, the private sector would have to create 583,000 new jobs every month over the next two years. (9) This number is far greater than the 127,000 that Obama’s own Department of Labor predicts will be created each month over the next ten years. (10)