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Davis talks about stimulus bill
Published Monday, February 16, 2009
Photo by George L. Jones
Rep. Artur Davis at a meeting of Weyerhauser employees and mangers Monday at the Alabama-Tombigbee Regional Commission building in Camden.
CAMDEN — Rep. Artur Davis said people need look no further than laid off Weyerhaueser workers to see how the economic stimulus package helps Alabama.
Davis addressed Wilcox County officials Monday and said the $787 million bill would extend unemployment benefits and could potentially erase the deficit in Alabama’s General Fund. President Barack Obama is scheduled to sign the bill into law today.
The stimulus package will extend benefits provided by the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA), which insures the unemployed. Displaced workers will receive a 65 percent federal subsidy instead of paying for all their coverage out of pocket, and they will receive benefits for nine months.
“Obviously that still leaves all of them needing to come up with their share,” Davis said. “Some of them won’t be able to, but some of them will find jobs that don’t provide health insurance that will enable them to meet their share.”
Davis met earlier in the day privately with more than 100 of the 330 workers laid off by the Weyerhaueser plant that shut down in Pine Hill last week.
The layoffs took place in a county that already had the highest unemployment rate in the state at 15.1 percent. Statewide the unemployment rate is almost 7 percent.
Earlier this year Sam Addy, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Alabama, predicted the state's unemployment would peak at 8 to 8.4 percent in the last half of 2009.
About 52,000 new jobs are expected in Alabama in next two years with the passage of the stimulus package. Davis believes state officials should make a special effort to aid Wilcox and similar counties to attract some of those.
“I happen to believe that the State of Alabama needs to make a specialized effort to incentivize industries to come to low-income places like Wilcox County,” Davis said. “Wilcox County does not have the same resources to recruit industry as some of our friends in the suburban counties. Sometimes to be fair you have to give someone an extra hand.”
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Comments
Posted by sinkingship (anonymous) on February 16, 2009 at 8:13 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Fair? Wilcox County is a welfare county run by Democrats that would rather look to government for help than teaching its children to stay in school and stop dropping babies in the tenth grade. Companies don't open in areas where the first question is do you have daycare. Uneducated single highschool aged parents are not going to make $25/hour at Hyundai and our eleted officials like Davis are doing them a disservice by ingnoring the probelm in rural Alabama.
Posted by WilcoxJags (anonymous) on February 16, 2009 at 10:41 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Everyone in Wilcox is not broke hunny, & if children want to become mothers hey thats their problem,..by the you're typing you don't have the ability to call anyone uneducated
Posted by soulshine (anonymous) on February 17, 2009 at 6:49 a.m. (Suggest removal)
If under age girls cannot "afford" to have babies, that's
where it becomes our (tax payers) problem. "by the you're typing you don't have the ability to call anyone uneducated"
Did you mean , by the way you are typing.....?
Let's pray for all counties in AL .
Posted by Bg (anonymous) on February 17, 2009 at 11:26 a.m. (Suggest removal)
"if children want to become mothers hey thats their problem"
Are you kidding me?
Posted by eyeonyou (anonymous) on February 17, 2009 at 2:02 p.m. (Suggest removal)
These unemployed generational welfare cases are taxpayers problems. If they were working, paying their bills, paying for food and medical bills out of their pocket, then no one would care. When taxpayers are picking up the bill, then it DOES matter. Do you wonder why Wilcox is one of the TOP counties for unemployment. Doesn't take Einstein to figure that out. This goes for Dallas County too. One of the highest unemployment rates...and one of the highest obesity rates. Now that's a strange combination.
Posted by bamafan (anonymous) on February 17, 2009 at 5:12 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Hey eyeonyou, look at ALL the Selma Housing/ section 8 complexes located in the city of Selma, that tells you alot too!!!!
Instead of working on a pork filled stimulus package his butt needs to be working on a major WELFARE REFORM/ OVERHAUL, for this country!!!
Place a limit on the number of babies you can draw a check for, and some of these people spitting out these babies, would think twice...maybe???
Posted by wisdom (anonymous) on February 17, 2009 at 7:13 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Don't get it twisted!
The overwhelming majority of welfare recipients live in trailer parks in red states.
But for the life of me I can't understand why some people are so opposed to helping the "least of these" in our society but those same people will try and tell you that they're guided by christian principles.
What you've done unto the least of these you've done unto me.
Posted by bamafan (anonymous) on February 17, 2009 at 9:38 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I don't mind helping anyone , but you cannot help those that WILL NOT help themselves.
The Lord is the only one that knows who we truly are in our heart, no-one can hide that from him.
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