By Doug Cunningham

As working people, can we count on the Obama economic recovery plan actually working for us? Christian Dorcy with Economic Policy Institute says the amount of government spending in the plan is “in the ballpark” to create the stimulus needed. Dorcy says essentially the economic crisis comes down to people not having the buying power they need to sustain the consumption required for economic growth.

[Dorcy]: “Consumers are not able to consume what the economy is capable of producing. That’s due to their declining income, their declining wealth – all statistic that we know very well. So when you have that gap, you have a huge reduction in aggregate demand. So there has to be something to fill that void, unless you want to go deeper and deeper into recession. So with no consumers out there – who account for 70 percent of all economic activity in this country, government is left as the spender of last resort.”

Dorcy says it’s very important in the coming economic recovery that we make sure productivity gains are put into worker’s pockets instead of just being siphoned off by the wealthy as they were during the Bush presidency.