Economy

The economy produced only an additional 115,000 jobs in April, with the unemployment rate going down to 8.1 percent only because some 342,000 people dropped out of the labor force.

The path to creating millions of jobs is so easy and obvious. Hire people to modernize the infrastructure and to retrofit buildings to be energy efficient. Millions would be paying income taxes instead of receiving unemployment or food stamps. The companies that supply the materials and steel would also be hiring and paying taxes, and the companies that supply them ...

President Obama spoke today at the AFL-CIO's Building and Construction Trades Department Legislative Conference in Washington, asking Republicans to stop blocking infrastructure and transportation projects.

I'm in Michigan to cover the GE shareholder meeting tomorrow. I grew up in Michigan and have to say that Mitt Romney was exactly right that the trees here really are the right size. The look of the houses, the layout of the roads, the birds, everything feels right. Of course, my wife grew up in England, and she says that the trees in England are the right size.

Congressman Raul Grijalva has introduced The Border Infrastructure and Jobs Act of 2011.

Just as public works projects launched by FDR put millions of unemployed people to work during the Great Depression, the Obama administration has pushed to invest billions in public works projects to create jobs for millions of today’s unemployed. But many of the dollars that are intended to create those jobs are instead creating jobs overseas.

Now we know: The jobs situation is bleak, and it will continue to be bleak until we face up to the fact that we need more stimulus spending - lots more - and we have to relieve millions of homeowners from their indentured servitude to Wall Street so that they can help restore the economy too.

In other words spend, spend, spend - and provide some principal reduction for underwater homeowners.

Today's jobs report—120,000 new jobs created in March—underscores what we have been arguing for months: We must have a dramatic increase in the investments we need to make in infrastructure, education and other fundamenta