A bill by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) would expand the entire trade-adjustment program to include service-sector workers whose jobs are lost to trade and would lower the age minimum for wage insurance to 40. McDermott and Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, are working to adapt a proposal by Brainard and others that would cover almost any displaced worker of any age who loses a job for almost any reason and takes a new one for lower pay. Workers who make less than $97,500 would be eligible, according to a Schumer aide, and benefits could be increased to a maximum of $20,000.…Such an expansion would cause the cost of the program to increase to roughly $3.5 billion annually from about $20 million. Brainard said the cost could be covered by adding $25 to every worker's annual unemployment tax, an idea Schumer said he is considering. - Making Up for Lower Pay/Lawmakers Seek to Expand Insurance For Wage Drop-Offs Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, March 6, 2007

As part of their campaign to soothe an anxious middle class, congressional Democrats are preparing legislation that would significantly expand federal aid to the most obvious victims of the global economy: workers whose jobs move offshore or are lost to foreign imports. Under a Senate bill to be introduced today, computer programmers, call-center staffers and other service-sector workers who make up the vast majority of the nation's workforce would for the first time be eligible for a generous package of income, health and retraining benefits currently reserved for manufacturing workers who lose their jobs to international trade. Aid May Grow for Laid-Off Workers Service Jobs Lost To Global Trade Are Focus of Bills Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, July 23, 2007

This is another example of the displaced worker paying for his/her own “benefits” instead of the CEO Classes and Wall Street bankers that benefit from their displacement. What’s even worse is that the extension of short-term “aid to displaced workers” is being considered as a trade-off to giving the President back the unconstitutional power of “fast track” trade authority.

The fact is that the US economy is not creating jobs that pay a living wage at a rate fast enough to absorb the workers that are being laid off. The “new” economy, despite the protests of the Corporate Media and the Establishment economists, is undermining America's middle class, and pushing working folks into poverty.

A solution to the problem of the displaced worker would include the following: 1) clamping down on unrestrained immigration, including H1B Visa workers;  2) removing the government subsidies toward exporting jobs via the Export-Import Bank;  3) imposing tariffs on imports from nations like China that provide state subsidies to it export industries; 4) replacing NAFTA and other so-called “free trade” agreements with “fair trade” agreements that prevent this sort of labor arbitrage that benefit multi-national corporations and Wall Street investment bankers at the expense of working folks.