AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka issued the following statement on President Obama’s jobs and the economy proposal that he presented to a joint session of Congress tonight.

The President took an important and necessary step tonight: he started a serious national conversation about how to solve our jobs crisis. He showed working people that he is willing to go to the mat to create new jobs on a substantial scale. Tonight’s speech should energize the nation to come together, work hard and get serious about jobs.

In a letter to President Obama, 70 progressive groups urge the president to use tonight’s address to the nation on jobs and the economy to present a plan that is “big, bold and creates jobs directly.”

Join progressive activists from around the nation to map out strategy to Take Back the American Dream and rebuild America’s struggling middle class. The annual conference (formerly known as the America’s Future Now conference) is set for Oct. 3-5 in Washington, D.C. Click here to register.

The Republican budget approach of “cut,  cut, cut” has jeopardized our economic recovery and Democrats are poised to turn the debate back to what’s most on American’s minds: creating and maintaining good jobs, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said today.

There are 44 members of the United States Senate who don’t want consumer and working family advocate Elizabeth Warren to run the new federal agency designed to protect consumers and working families from the kind of Wall Street and Big Bank abuses last year’s landmark Wall Street reform legislation outlawed.

It’s the 10th anniversary of the Bush tax cut for millionaires, and some millionaires say enough is enough. They’ve bought enough boats, added enough wings to their mansions and put enough of their extra millions in the bank. It’s time to “Tax me” they say.

Today is the 10-year  anniversary of President Bush’s tax cuts that went mostly to very rich individuals and big corporations. According to the rosy economic scenario Bush and the Republicans painted, the nation today should be figuring out to what to do with a $5.6 trillion budget surplus and just how to fill the tens of millions of new jobs that were supposed to generate new wealth for all of us.

Congress is back in town next week and the budget battle will take top billing. Republicans are standing solidly behind their Paul Ryan-crafted House plan that forces seniors to pay more for health care by replacing Medicare with underfunded vouchers, cuts taxes for corporations and the wealthy, cuts Medicaid funding, repeals health care reform and slashes up to 2 million jobs.

Tomorrow, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will detail the choices elected leaders across the country are facing and outline working people’s vision for the future of the American economy when he delivers a major speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Rather than helping working people to save their homes, banks foreclosed on more than 1 million properties last year, which will slow the economic recovery and obstruct job growth, especially in construction.