Richard Trumka: Nation’s Future ‘Begins and Ends’ with Jobs  By Mike Hall AFLCIO.org The debate about America’s future “begins and ends concretely with the question of jobs,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said Wednesday morning (January 19) in a speech outlining a working families’ vision for the nation. In the address at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Trumka urged President Obama to make next week’s State of the Union address a “call to action, a call to invest in our future, to create jobs, to be the country we can and must be.” "We have just been through one lost decade—when America’s standard of living fell, when our wealth shrank, when millions lost their homes, when young people could not find work America cannot afford another lost decade. Click here for the full video from the address. Joined by a New York City firefighter veteran of the 9/11 World Trade Center bombing and an Ohio child care worker who will lose her freedom to have a union if Gov. John Kasich (R) has his way, Trumka said Stan Trojanowski and Ella Hopkins are examples of “American heroes”– "The hard-working everyday champions who make America great, and their lives illuminate the choices facing our nation as we enter a fourth year of economic crisis. The choice between coming together as a nation or turning on each other….Working people know we can build that future only if we act together to put America back to work—to educate our children, to build a clean energy future, to build a 21st century America." Trumka slammed the “conventional wisdom in Washington and in statehouses around the nation that we cannot afford to be the country we want to be. That could not be more wrong.” Click here for the full written speech. Click here for the full story from AFLCIO.org.