Jobs bill a top priority for Franken

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said Friday he will pressure his colleagues in the upper chamber to get behind a jobs bill when they return for session.
 
“Our first priority, our second priority and our third priority this year will be creating jobs,” Franken said. “I am going to make sure 2010 is the year of job creation.”
 

The Minnesota Democrat was speaking during a tele-town hall being hosted by Working America, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO. The AFL has begun gathering signatures for a petition to the Senate to pass a jobs bill, which the House did in December. They and other labor unions are pushing for a new jobs bill in order to boost employment during the recession.
 
Franken would like to see increased infrastructure spending and incentives for “green jobs” — jobs in the fields of renewable energy and weatherization — in legislation to be considered by the Senate. Senate aides have already been working through recommendations for their jobs bill this month and hope to bring it to the floor once healthcare reform is finished.
 
The senator said the idea of a jobless recovery is “absurd” and Washington needs to work hard to reverse the unemployment rate. “My biggest fear is we don’t go far enough,” he said.
 
Franken also said another key plank of the Democrats’ job-creation agenda is reform of regulations governing the financial sector. He said the Senate needs to approve a consumer financial protection agency like the House did in its own financial regulatory reform package.
 
Unions are also behind such an agency but it is being heavily lobbied against by the banking industry. In turn, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said he was worried that reform could be watered down and Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, might not include the agency in the Senate version of the bill.
 
“I am worried Sen. Dodd is wavering a little bit. What we need to make sure he follows through,” Trumka said.

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