Washington, D.C.  -  It didn’t take many of us in East Alabama by surprise to hear our country has been in a recession for quite a while now.

After a year of falling real estate values, crushing gas prices – which hiked the price of necessities like food and clothing – and job losses, most folks probably met the news with a “I told you so” shrug.

Across the country and locally, times are tough. Here in East Alabama both Honda and Hyundai, two of our largest employers, have cut back on their production and reduced hours for their workforce.

According to the United States Department of Labor, the national unemployment rate was 6.5 percent in October with our state at 5.6 percent.  In October a year ago, Alabama’s unemployment rate was at 3.5 percent.

These figures are a reality of some of the pain we’ve felt at home and see on the news – for all our businesses, our families, and even our local and state governments.

As a sign of the difficult times, this week, leaders from the Big Three automobile makers – Chrysler, Ford and General Motors – were back in Washington looking for billions in Federal funding to keep their struggling companies alive.

This time, they have a more detailed plan and they’re asking for a loan. But this proposal still raises the serious question as to why Congress should bail out these companies while not helping others.

When our nation is in recession and facing economic crisis, Congress should help and try to make things better. Congress should to do something to help everyone, not just a few companies. Congressional action needs to be for working folks being hard pressed by the recession, for those who have lost their jobs, and to promote long term economic growth.

Looking forward to next month the new 111th Congress will most likely quickly ready an economic stimulus package for the incoming Obama Administration.

After President-Elect Obama met with 48 of our governors this week, the stimulus will most likely include a massive infrastructure building program. The goal of this proposal is to create immediate jobs by building infrastructure projects that will add to the long term economic vitality of our communities.

It remains to be seen what else will be contained in the stimulus.

Hopefully there will be help for working and middle class families and extra funding for programs like Medicaid. When crafting this legislation Congress must be mindful of potentially wasteful, short term spending that may have little impact on our economy over the long term.

Congress should also resist the urge to play politics with this important legislation by adding unnecessary items to it, making it a bill that I may not be able to support.  I hope Congress is ready to get to work to help our economy get back on track.

As always, please write me at www.house.gov/mike-rogers.