The state of America’s union is stark. Nearly one in five American workers is unemployed or underemployed. That means wages are losing ground. One in three homes with a mortgage is underwater. Millions of Americans are headed to losing their homes.

The desperate effort to keep the financial system from failing has succeeded. It has saved the big banks – leaving them more concentrated than ever – but not succeeded in removing the clot in financing. Small businesses can’t get loans; homeowners can’t get mortgages adjusted. Finance is like the blood of the economy. When there is a clot, the economy can’t work and people suffer.

Same poison

Republicans argue that the president’s recovery plan has failed, then they prescribe the same poison that created the breakdown in the first place. They want more top-end tax cuts, more breaks for business, more deregulation. We tried tax cuts under Bush; it leads nowhere.

The reality is that the recovery plan created or saved millions of jobs. Aid to states and localities kept teachers and police from being laid off in large numbers. Spending on infrastructure helped put some to work. Investment in new energy created new jobs. Aid to the unemployed – extending unemployment benefits, subsidizing health care COBRA payments, and providing food stamps – put money into the pockets of those who need it most.

The problem with the president’s plan is that it wasn’t big enough. The collapse was far deeper than the president’s economists predicted.

Go large

We need another big jobs program. Aid should go to states and localities that now face brutal cuts that will lay off teachers, police and professors. Public jobs programs should target hard-hit areas like the Midwest and urban centers. We should invest in infrastructure by repairing schools, weatherizing public buildings and creating the projects that will hire construction workers.?Without these commitments, there will be no recovery.

Consumers have taken a $10 trillion hit on assets, and are tightening their belts. States and localities are facing brutal cuts. People are confused and angry. They see high deficits and think the money is going to Wall Street. There is a crisis of confidence as well as a grinding fear of what comes next.

We need the president to lead and take on the naysayers and the false leaders. He must lay out what needs to be done, and rally the country to act.

Deficits are secondary

The pollsters say independents are angry about deficits, so Washington is talking about deficit reduction. "If we expect families to balance their budgets in hard times, shouldn’t the government do so also?" goes the mantra.

That is the big lie because, in reality, when everyone else is cutting back, government must step in and put people to work. This will require deficits because tax revenues are down and expenditures on unemployment and food stamps are up.

You can’t balance the budget without generating economic growth. Any attempt to do so now will deepen the downturn. Once people go back to work and the economy gets going, tax revenues will go up, emergency spending will decline and steps can be taken to bring the deficit down. But it is utter foolishness to do so before people are at work.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. is president and CEO of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.