Kucinich calls for renewed focus on U.S. development

“We have created hundreds of thousands of jobs for military contractors all over the world, while we have just learned that we created zero jobs here in the United States in the month of August as unemployment continues to stay above nine percent,” he added.

Kucinich, a longstanding opponent of wars in the Middle East, said fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq has done nothing but lead to death and debt.

{mosads}”The muscle-bound ‘with us or against us’ mindset, which passes for statecraft, has placed us on a march of folly that in the past decade has left America with thousands of dead young soldiers, over a million dead innocents in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakkstan and the surrounding region, a new generation of terrorists, and trillions upon trillions of dollars of debt,” he said. “As poverty and war are twins, so are peace and prosperity.”

While the U.S. sought to dismantle weapons of mass destruction abroad, he said that underfunded U.S. domestic priorities are also a type of weapon of mass destruction.

To kickstart U.S. job creation, Kucinich said he would reintroduce legislation this month called the National Emergency Employment Defense (NEED) Act. He said the bill, similar to those he has introduced in prior Congress’s, is needed because the Federal Reserve’s response to the economic crisis has yet to help create jobs.

Specifically, his bill would place the Fed under the supervision of the Treasury Department, and seek to eliminate the structure that allows banks to control the amount of money in the economy.

The bill would also give the government the authority to create money directly, rather than have it be created through the financial markets. This is an attempt to make it easier for new money to be used for purposes that help the economy directly, as opposed to leaving it to banks to decide when to make loans.