The transformation of America’s environmental movement began, as ex-United Steelworkers board member David Foster recalls, in late 2004 in a borrowed conference room at a table surrounded by union officials, top aides and the always-present group of Washington assistants.

“We’re in this together,” Foster remembered Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope and Frances Beinecke, head of the Natural Resources Defense Council, telling USW President Leo Gerard.

About the same time, another group of environmentalists began networking with equally unlikely partners.

Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute, asked General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt to help lobby for a national climate policy. The dialogue they launched eventually became the basis of legislation now in Congress to cap greenhouse gas emissions.

“We had been lobbying for what we felt was right but not seeing the interconnectedness,” Foster said of the different efforts and their unusual coalitions.

Today, alliances between Big Business, labor and environmental groups — once nearly impossible to imagine — are not only restructuring political advocacy but also shaping policy in President Barack Obama’s Washington.

Labor unions, Fortune 500 corporations, utility companies and other corporate interests have joined forces with environmentalists in at least five different lobbying coalitions. The labor-environmentalist pact eventually became the Blue-Green Alliance, a strategic partnership of six unions, NRDC and the Sierra Club. And the meetings between Immelt and Lash grew into the United States Climate Action Partnership, an association of 26 utilities, manufacturers and technology companies and five environmental organizations.

All of the groups are focused on a very big goal: a cap-and-trade system that will curb greenhouse gas emissions across the economy.

“We are talking about transforming the energy economy of the country and the world,” said Beinecke. “Our aim is to have the biggest tent possible, taking into account what the concerns are — from business to labor to the environmental community — and crafting something that can get the broader support.” 

The alliances are particularly remarkable because in the past, environmentalists had frequently battled with both labor and business over conservation efforts, new environmental standards and cleanups.

“It was a fairly ‘out there’ decision,” Beinecke said of forging the alliances, “because you were going in not knowing what you were going to come out with.”

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The Tax Revolters burst onto the national scene amid an inflation-battered economy. They blamed “big government” for what ailed America, and they offered a simple remedy: cut taxes. Lower taxes, they promised, would get average Americans back on track.

The Tea Party zealots have, like the Tax Revolters, also coalesced in tough economic times. They attack “big government,” too. They even make the same promises about taxes.

But the Tea Party types, so far at least, haven’t scored any early political success. The Tax Revolters did. In 1978, in a ballot-box stunner, they passed a statewide initiative in California known as Prop 13, an unprecedented cap on property taxes.

Within a few short years, almost half America’s states had followed suit with tax cuts and caps of their own. In 1980, at the national level, this Tax Revolt surge would carry Ronald Reagan into the White House. One year later, a pliant Congress would give President Reagan the biggest across-the-board federal tax cut in U.S. history.

Tax relief had become, in the wink of an eye, America’s most potent political creed. Tax cutting and capping would go on to dominate the nation’s political discourse for the next three decades, an entire generation.

And what do we have to show for all this cutting and capping? Last week, researchers offered up two new studies that offer up a useful assessment.

The first, funded by the Social Security Administration, looks at the wealth of American families. That wealth, the Tax Revolters assured us,would start amassing again once taxpayers yanked “big government” out of our pockets.

The second new study zeroes in on state and local taxes. After years of tax revolting, this Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy report asks, who exactly is paying taxes at the state and local level? Who has benefited the most, in tax terms, from the Tax Revolt the Tea Party zealots are now so fervently seeking to extend?

The answer: The rich have benefited the most. The Tax Revolt that began back in the late 1970s has, in state after state, let the affluent off the tax hook.

In fact, notes the new Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy analysis, “nearly every state and local tax system takes a much greater share of income from middle- and low-income families than from the wealthy.”

In the entire United States, the analysis adds, “only two states require their best-off citizens to pay as much of their incomes in taxes as their very poorest taxpayers must pay, and only one state taxes its wealthiest individuals at a higher effective rate than middle-income families have to pay.”

America’s most affluent 1 percent now pay, on average, just 6.4 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes. But they actually pay even less than that, since they can deduct their state and local taxes from their federal tax bill. The state and local tax burden on America’s rich, after taking this offset into account, drops to 5.2 percent.

Middle-income families — to be precise, those families who make up the middle fifth of America’s income distribution — pay, after the federal offset, 9.4 percent of their incomes in total state and local taxes.

America’s poorest families pay even more. Tax collectors take 10.9 percent of the incomes of households in the nation’s bottom 20 percent, more than double the share they take from the incomes of the nation’s top 1 percent.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy paper, Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States, covers non-elderly households. Incredibly, the study details, some states “ask their poorest residents — those in the bottom 20 percent of the income scale — to pay up to six times as much of their income in taxes as they ask the wealthy to pay.”

Now you could argue that none of this matters. The Tax Revolters, after all, didn’t claim that their tax cutting and capping would have low- and middle-income people paying taxes at a lower rate than the rich. They claimed, instead, that massive tax cuts, taken as an amorphous whole, would help just about everybody get considerably richer.

That hasn’t happened, as Brookings Institution researchers Barry Bosworth and Rosanna Smart document in a paper just published by the Boston College Center for Retirement Research, with funding support from Social Security.

Bosworth and Smart “explore the consequences of the housing price bubble and its collapse for the wealth of older households.”

Along the way, the two investigators dive into the overall family wealth data the Federal Reserve has been collecting since the early 1980s. Tapping into another federal data set, they bring the family net worth picture up-to-date for 2009.

For low- and middle-income families, their numbers tell a depressing story.

All American households — poor, middle, and rich — have lost wealth since the subprime mortgage collapse and last fall’s financial meltdown. On average, since 2007, Americans have lost 26 percent of their total net worth.

But low- and middle-income households under age 50 haven’t just lost a big chunk of the wealth they held in 2007. These households have actually lost all the wealth they had gained since 1983, the first year with Federal Reserve family wealth data available.

Back then in 1983, the bottom third — by income — of U.S. families under age 50 had an average $24,000 in net worth to their names, as measured in year 2000 dollars. The housing bubble helped boost this bottom-third average net worth to $27,000 in 2007.

Today, in the wake of that bubble’s collapse, researchers Bosworth and Smart put average bottom-third net worth at just $17,000, in those same year 2000 dollars.

Middle-income households under age 50, meanwhile, held an average net worth of $50,000 in 1983. The current net worth of this middle third, after adjusting for inflation: $45,000.

Older households in the bottom and middle income thirds — those over age 50 — have, to be sure, seen their after-inflation net worths increase between 1983 and 2009. But these households have lost at least 22 percent of the wealth they held in 2007. As older families, Bosworth and Smart note, they now “have less time to recover.”

That recovery may take some time.

Back in the middle of the 20th century, governments in the United States routinely taxed the rich to pay for the programs that built a vibrant middle class. The Tax Revolt that began three decades ago, by demonizing taxes, gave the rich a free ride and gutted those programs.

That demonization today continues, with politicos beholden to that rich cynically fanning the Tea Party flames. They don’t care who gets burned. The rest of us should.

Sam Pizzigati edits Too Much, the online weekly on excess and inequality.

The reasons for both collapses were very much the same: people who believed that a totally free market, with no interference from government, is the way — the only way — to achieve prosperity pursued policies in the years preceding both crashes that allowed greed to rule and income to become heavily concentrated at the highest levels, leaving too little in the hands of most people to consume all that was being produced.

In both cases, credit was used to allow people with insufficient income to continue to buy. The economy kept rising — but in the end, this credit burst just made the collapse more dramatic.

The economic and political arguments after both crashes have also been remarkably similar, with conservatives calling for spending freezes and tax cuts, condemning proposals for government action to deal with the problems as "socialism."

What Franklin D. Roosevelt understood during the Great Depression and what we must see now is that this is a false debate. Capitalism and government intervention are not an either/or choice. We have to find ways to get the obvious benefits of the market system while minimizing that system's risks. And those ways necessarily involve government action.

"No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise," Winston Churchill once noted. "Indeed," he continued, "it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government — except all the others that have been tried." The same could accurately be said of capitalism: No one should pretend that capitalism is perfect or all-wise. Yet those who worship the market as God pretend just that. Capitalism is the worst economic system — except for all the others that have been tried.

The Founding Fathers of the United States well recognized the flaws in democracy. As Churchill would nearly two centuries later, they believed that democracy is the best — or 'least bad' — political system, but that it contains within it many inherent dangers.

We need to realize now that capitalism is the 'least bad' economic system, and likewise, contains within it many problem areas. Therefore, we need an economy that is basically capitalist, but with a system of economic checks and balances to make it work properly and lessen those dangers.

One of the most prominent of those dangers is that income will become too concentrated at the top, undermining the functioning of a consumer-based economy. When Barack Obama said during the campaign, "When you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody," opponents cried, "Socialism!" In fact, it is the only way to make modern capitalism work well.

Just a spoonful of socialism helps the capitalism go up.

Robert S. McElvaine teaches history at Millsaps College. A 25th anniversary edition of his book The Great Depression is being published this week by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group.

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Published: September 4, 2009

WASHINGTON — The A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s president has signaled a significant shift to try to move a long-stalled pro-union bill, saying he would support a change that calls for speedy unionization elections, a provision that would replace the much-attacked card-check provision.

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Times Topics: American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations

In an interview, John J. Sweeney, the federation’s president, said he would accept a fast election campaign instead of card check because it would meet his goal of minimizing management interference during organizing drives.

Mr. Sweeney said he “could live with” fast or snap elections “as long as there is a fair process that protects workers against anti-union intimidation by employers and eliminates the threats to workers.”

The move away from card check would be a victory for the business community. Randel Johnson, senior vice president for labor, immigration and employee benefits at the United States Chamber of Commerce, nonetheless criticized the proposal for elections after a short campaign.

“That has the effect as a practical matter of eliminating the ability of the employer to educate its employees about the potential adverse effects of unionization,” Mr. Johnson said. “It still begs the question, what is wrong with the existing secret ballot process?”

In recent months, several crucial Democratic senators have told organized labor that they could not round up the 60 votes needed to assure passage of any bill containing card check.

Despite such warnings, labor leaders continued to cling publicly to the idea; Mr. Sweeney’s comments were a major departure from that position.

“If modifying that in some way or another is going to bring some more votes for the bill, I think that’s worth it,” Mr. Sweeney said.

Under Mr. Sweeney’s idea, a secret ballot would be held probably within five or 10 days of a substantial number of workers petitioning for a union. Such a brief length of time would be far different from the current practice when campaigns often last two months, giving companies time to persuade workers to vote against a union.

Even before President Obama took office, labor made it clear that its No. 1 legislative goal was a law that would make organizing easier, including a so-called card-check provision that required employers to recognize a union as soon as a majority of workers signed cards favoring a union.

But card check faced huge opposition from Republicans and corporations, which complained that it would largely replace secret ballots. Under current law, companies that face organizing drives can insist on secret-ballot elections, which unions say they often lose because of management’s lengthy and intense anti-union campaigns.

In an interview Thursday evening, Richard Trumka, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s secretary-treasurer, who will become the federation’s president on Sept. 16, stopped short of endorsing fast elections.

He said the A.F.L.-C.I.O. wanted to make sure that any legislation contained three components: a process in which workers were free of intimidation; greater penalties against employers that break the law during organizing drives, for instance by firing outspoken union supporters; and binding arbitration to prevent employers from indefinitely dragging out negotiations without ever reaching a contract.

Business groups denounce the binding arbitration provision, saying it would be wrong to have federally appointed officials issuing rulings that determine a company’s wages, hours, pensions and working conditions.

Echoing Mr. Trumka, Mr. Sweeney said he would accept snap elections only as part of a bill that also called for binding arbitration and stiffer penalties against management.

Mr. Sweeney said President Obama had assured labor that as soon as health care legislation was passed — if it was passed — he would work with labor and the Democrats to pass the pro-union legislation, known as the Employee Free Choice Act.

Mr. Sweeney voiced optimism that the bill would pass.

“It’s going to be this year,” he said.

Mr. Sweeney said that corporate lobbyists would find it harder to attack fast elections than card check because business could no longer contend that labor wanted to eliminate “sacrosanct secret-ballot elections.” But some corporate lobbyists are already attacking snap elections as “ambush elections.”

David Bonior, a former House Democratic Whip who heads a group, America Rights at Work, that has campaigned for the pro-union bill, said he still hoped card check could be salvaged.

“The first preference for everybody in labor is the original bill,” he said. “And if we preserve the principles of the original bill and there are some changes — and if we can get 80 to 90 percent of what we started with — I think people would move forward on that.”

Meanwhile, a Gallup Poll released on Thursday found that while 66 percent of Americans continued to believe unions were beneficial to their own members, fewer than half of Americans — 48 percent, a record low — approved of unions. That was down from 59 percent a year ago.

Sign in to RecommendMore Articles in Business » A version of this article appeared in print on September 5, 2009, on page B3 of the New York edition.

Judy Barnett
Assistant to the President

801-972-2771

Richard Trumka admits that unions were outmaneuvered on a key element of the Employee Free Choice Act — a bill making it easier for workers to organize.

But the all-but-certain incoming president of the AFL-CIO says that legislative black eye will also carry a price — and warns that the business community and both parties ought to prepare for a more aggressive brand of labor politics once he’s in charge.

“[We] could have done a lot of things,” Trumka said in an interview with POLITICO, acknowledging that unions did not do enough to combat the business community’s portrayal of organized labor’s top legislative priority as merely an attempt to strip workers of the right to a private ballot in union elections.

“But we didn’t, and we are where we are.”

Beefy, blunt and with an accent that bears more than a trace of his western Pennsylvania roots, Trumka’s philosophical assessment about the bill known as EFCA could have just as easily been applied to the broader labor movement.

With domestic manufacturing a shadow of what it was, union membership has plummeted. And as if a decline in dues wasn’t enough of a threat, labor has been beset by high-level feuding and turf warfare in recent with years, when a significant group of unions broke from the national AFL-CIO and created their own federation, Change to Win.

It’s against this depressing backdrop that the unopposed Trumka is expected to take over the federation in September.

Now the AFL-CIO’s Secretary-Treasurer, the No. 2 slot, Trumka is unapologetically old-school labor in his view of corporate America. Like his father — whose picture dominates an office full of photographs — he worked in a coal mine. He rode to the presidency of the United Mine Workers as a reformer who wanted to democratize a fractured union and made a name for himself as a hardball player not afraid to do battle with equally tough coal companies.

He has served in his current post since 1995, when he ran on the same ticket with current AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who is retiring, and was widely seen as being groomed to take over the federation.

Now 59 and poised to finally be organized labor’s de facto leader, Trumka says unions ceded too much to the political parties, and he intends to bolster labor’s voice.

“We’ll stake out a clear position when it comes to the economy ... and we’ll stick to that position,” he said. “We’ll support those people that do support it, and we’ll oppose those people that don’t ... whether they’re Democrat or Republican.”

In a sign that he won’t be afraid to anger some elements of the liberal coalition, Trumka doesn’t hesitate when asked about backing one recent Democratic convert, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter.

Trumka, who keeps a farm and still votes in his native state, said confidently that Specter will “be there” with labor on the union organizing bill and will likely have the support of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO in a potential Democratic primary next year.

“I think he’ll probably be endorsed and win the primary,” Trumka said.

The labor leader offered high praise tempered with some concern about the advisers President Barack Obama has surrounded himself with.

Asked if Obama is a labor president, Trumka said: “I think he’s been very sensitive and been good to workers, absolutely. He comes from a workers’ point of view. His background is that way.”

But what of the president’s retreat from the tough-on-trade policies he espoused during the heated Democratic primary? Where did that candidate go?

“I think he’s still over there,” Trumka said. “I think some people around him probably would like to see him move.”

And who would that be? “Some of his economic advisers,” Trumka said, acknowledging that he’s referring to National Economic Council Director and free-trader Lawrence Summers along with unnamed others.

April 9, 2009

WASHINGTON – Today, President Barack Obama announced that the General Services Administration (GSA) will accelerate its purchase of new cars for the government fleet by investing funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to buy about 17,600 new, fuel efficient vehicles produced by American auto companies by June 1, 2009.

On March 30, President Obama directed his administration to speed up the purchase of these vehicles to increase demand for American auto companies during these difficult economic times.  The GSA moved faster than any time in its history to launch this aggressive fleet purchase strategy.  By purchasing fuel efficient vehicles from American automakers over the next two months, this move will help stimulate the economy, support the auto industry, and achieve energy-efficiency goals.

President Obama said, “The problems that caused this economic crisis weren’t created in a day, and it will take time and hard work to get our economy back on track. But I am 100 percent committed to a strong American auto industry, and we will stand with America’s auto workers and their families during these difficult times.  As a part of our commitment to the American auto industry, I charged my administration with using Recovery Act funds to purchase a new fleet of fuel efficient government vehicles to increase demand for our American auto companies and stimulate the economy.  I am pleased to announce today that my team has moved swiftly to accelerate this purchase and give our American auto industry and our economy a boost.  This is only a first step, but I will continue to ensure that we are working to support the American auto industry during this difficult period of restructuring.”

Also today, President Obama’s Director of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers, Dr. Edward Montgomery, visited Cleveland, Ohio to discuss the administration’s commitment to a strong American auto industry.  At a meeting with Governor Ted Strickland, members of the Ohio delegation and local officials, Dr. Montgomery discussed the accelerated fleet purchase and the administration’s efforts to stand behind American auto companies and their workers.

Details about the GSA accelerated fleet purchase are below: 

• The GSA will spend $285 million of Recovery Act Funds to purchase about 17,600 commercially available fuel efficient vehicles for the government fleet before June 1, 2009. All purchases will be made from manufacturers with an existing contract with the GSA, which are General Motors, Chrysler and Ford.

   

• This includes the purchase of 2,500 hybrid sedans that will be ordered by April 15. This is the largest one-time purchase of hybrid vehicles for the federal government fleet in history.
  

• By swapping out less efficient federal vehicles for new hybrid and fuel efficient ones, this strategy will reduce gasoline consumption by 1.3 million gallons per year and prevent 26 million pounds of CO² from entering the atmosphere.
  

• GSA will also dedicate $15 million to pilot advanced technology vehicles in the GSA Fleet. Pilot programs will focus on commercially available compressed natural gas and hybrid buses, and all-electric vehicles. These orders will be placed by September 30, 2009.

   

• Each vehicle purchased under the GSA’s accelerated strategy must have a higher miles-per-gallon rating than the vehicle it replaces with the overall goal of at least a 10 percent increase in fuel-efficiency for the entire procurement.
  

This accelerated GSA purchasing strategy is one component of the President’s overall commitment to supporting auto demand during this period of restructuring in the industry. Moving forward, the Administration will continue to work on several fronts to increase the flow of credit to auto consumers and dealers, and will work with Congress to pass an incentive program for people who turn in older, more fuel inefficient cars for cleaner cars. 

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And things are going to get a lot worse because the totals don't take into account the erosion of coverage in Utah and nationwide due to the recession.

"These numbers were very high even before the economic downturn," said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, author of the report. "The key motivating factor is the cost of care, which as eaten away at working family budgets, and at the same time, their dollar is buying less care and costing more in co-payments and higher premiums, both for the families and the businesses that provide a medical insurance benefit."

There were 784,000 Utahns — 32.2 percent of residents under age 65 — uninsured at some point in the two past calendar years. Utah was at the national average — 33.1 percent.

In addition, 557,000 of those uninsured Utahns or 71 percent were uninsured for six months or more during that time.

An estimated 86.7 million Americans were uninsured at some point during 2007-08, Pollack said.

"The huge number of people without health coverage in Utah is worse than an epidemic. At this point, almost everyone in the country has had a family member, neighbor, or friend who was uninsured, and that's why meaningful health care reform can no longer be kept on the back burner," he said.

The Families USA report reveals additional important demographic information about uninsured Utahns:

More than four out of five, or 84 percent, were in working families, working full or part time.

More than half, or 53.9 percent, of those individuals and families with incomes below twice the poverty line — $42,400 of annual income for a family of four in 2008 — went without health insurance at some point in 2007-2008.

In addition, almost one quarter, or 23.2 percent, of those individuals and families with incomes at or above twice the poverty line went without health insurance at some point in 2007-2008.

While whites accounted for the largest number of uninsured, Hispanics/Latinos were much more likely to be uninsured than whites: 57.2 percent of Hispanics/Latinos went without health insurance in 2007-2008, compared to 27.7 percent of whites.

Interior boss Ken Salazar issued his first secretarial order Wednesday, a "moonshot for energy independence" that propels solar, wind, geothermal and biomass projects ahead of oil and gas development.

"For the last administration, renewable energy just was not a priority," Salazar said during a telephone news conference.

Not so for the Obama administration. With Salazar's declaration, the production, development and delivery of large-scale alternative-energy projects vault to the top of Interior's to-do list.

It was unclear Wednesday whether the federal order would complement -- or clash with -- similar efforts under way in Utah.

Through an initiative of Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., the state has mapped its renewable zones and estimated the costs and benefits of development that appear beneficial for Utah. The state expects to funnel about $34 million from the federal stimulus package toward clean-energy projects.

A bill before the Legislature, sponsored by House Majority Leader Kevin Garn, R-Layton, would provide financial incentives for alternative-energy-equipment manufacturers and developers who want to work in the state.

And another measure, pushed by Sen. Curtis Bramble, R-Provo, would set up a mechanism to fund transmission lines to connect renewable-energy projects already producing electricity to the main grid.

That's the kind of planning that is necessary but has been lacking, said Marc Smith, executive director of the Denver-based Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States.

"We support moving in a sustainable direction in regards to energy policy, and we support wind and solar," Smith said. "At the same time, we feel it's important for the administration to plan in a comprehensive manner" to determine the economic feasibility of transmission.

And with renewables accounting for less than 2 percent of the nation's energy, "double and double them again and you're still in the single digits," Smith said. "The irony is that natural gas both complements and enables renewable energy."

The Wilderness Society -- which has lobbied the White House for significant reform on how electrical grids are planned, built and managed -- applauded Salazar for "taking seriously the challenges global warming poses to our nation's health and well-being."

Salazar said that even if the Southwest's renewable zones excluded sensitive lands, enough area would remain to produce 88 percent of the West's energy needs with solar alone.

"There's huge potential here," he said.

Utah Clean Energy, a Salt Lake City-based nonprofit organization, in a report commissioned by Huntsman adviser Dianne Nielson, estimated that energy savings and renewables could meet all of the state's projected energy-demand growth through 2020.

Interior's first task will be to map -- as Utah has done -- the nation's renewable-energy zones in a way that doesn't harm the environment, Salazar said.

Another goal: Put people to work by clearing the backlog of alternative-energy-permit requests that lagged under the Bush administration.

Hundreds of applications for solar- and wind-energy permits piled up under the previous policy of speeding oil and gas development, putting the new energy economy's engineering and production employment on hold.

"With no permits," Salazar said, "there can be no jobs."

The quest for energy security will require working with other federal agencies, states and tribes to develop a way to deliver renewable energy to customers.

"We have to connect the sun of the deserts and the wind of the Plains," Salazar said, "to places where people live."

One Interior agency, the Bureau of Land Management, already has estimated that Western wind-project developers could build on 20.6 million acres. More than 25 million acres could go to solar development and geothermal potential covers more than 40 million acres. Wind- and wave-energy projects are possible on both coasts and in the Gulf of Mexico.

Salazar said the broad environmental impact studies the Bush administration completed for geothermal and wind development may undergo revisions to reflect the new renewable-energy focus.

But oil and gas development still is under way. "In the last six weeks we have had five major oil- and gas-lease sales onshore, netting more than $32 million in revenue for taxpayers," Salazar said. "And next week, I will be traveling to New Orleans to participate in a lease sale for the central Gulf of Mexico."

Interior has set up an energy and climate-change task force to measure renewable potential on public lands across the nation. The panel has been working since Jan. 21.

This morning (February 25, 2009) Senator Karen Mayne discussed anticipated increases in road constrcution in Utah and announced the launch of the work Zone Safety Campaign to improve safety among motorists and road construction crews.

The Work Zone Safety Campaign is a cooperative effort of the Workers Compensation Fund of Utah, Local #3 Operating Engineers, Granite Construction, and the Utah Department of Transportation. 

Senator Mayne expressed appreciation to the State Legislature for its support of transportation in the state of Utah and for its continued effort to make our highways safe.

Why is this recession so deep, and what can be done to reverse it?

Hint: Go back about 50 years, when America's middle class was expanding and the economy was soaring. Paychecks were big enough to allow us to buy all the goods and services we produced. It was a virtuous circle. Good pay meant more purchases, and more purchases meant more jobs.

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