"DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER" - Mayor Bloomberg predicts riots in the streets if economy doesn't create more jobs
September 22, 2011 Friday, September 16th 2011, 12:15 PM
Are you worried that American cities could face riots by jobless youth on the level of Madrid and Cairo if the economy doesn't pick up?
Mayor Bloomberg warned Friday there would be riots in the streets if Washington doesn't get serious about generating jobs.
"We have a lot of kids graduating college, can't find jobs," Bloomberg said on his weekly WOR radio show.
"That's what happened in Cairo. That's what happened in Madrid. You don't want those kinds of riots here."
In Cairo, angry Egyptians took out their frustrations by toppling presidential strongman Hosni Mubarak - and more recently attacking the Israeli embassy.
As for Madrid, the most recent street protests were sparked by widespread unhappiness that the Spanish government was spending millions on the visit of Pope Benedict instead of dealing with widespread unemployment.
Bloomberg's unusually alarmist pronouncement came as President Obama has been pressuring reluctant Republicans to pass his proposed job creation plan.
"The damage to a generation that can't find jobs will go on for many, many years," the normally-measured mayor said.
Bloomberg gave Obama kudos for coming up with a jobs plan.
"At least he's got some ideas on the table, whether you like those or not," he said. "Now everybody's got to sit down and say we're actually gonna do something and you have to do something on both the revenue and the expense side."
And everybody's got to share in the pain.
"When you start picking and choosing which groups do and do not, that's when it becomes unfair in a lot of people's minds," the mayor said. "But we're all in this together."
Obama didn't create this economic mess, it developed "over long periods of time," Bloomberg said.
Obama's approval rating has sunk along with the economy, but the ratings of the Republicans who have stymied his attempts repair the damage are even worse, most polls show.
Already, House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, has drawn a line on raising taxes on the rich to pay for Obama's proposed $447 billion jobs plan, which aims to help the middle class.