Dozens of Mainers who are frustrated by the failure of Congress to deliver on health care, jobs and immigration reform converged at the State House today as part of a week-long national awareness effort led by Health Care for America Now. The activists are urging Maine's two U.S. senators to support a jobs bill that passed in the House in December.

Ali Vander Zanden, a health care organizer for the Maine People's Alliance, says that without federal help, conditions for most Mainers are bound to get worse before they get better. "We are mired in a recession, and a crisis in the state budget -- our future now depends on Congress' action, or inaction."

Vander Zanden and other activists from across the state staged a rally at the State House as part of a national effort to press Congress to act on key issues such as health care reform and job creation.

April Thibodeau, coordinator for the Maine Small Business Coalition, says business people are losing the battle in trying to provide health care for their workers. "Much work has been put into the health care reform effort by small business owners who care deeply about this issue, and it's very important to them to see something passed that at least begins to address these important needs."

Blanca Santiago, the executive director of El Centro Latino, says that in addition to health care and job creation, the need for immigration reform must also be a priority for Congress because current policies just aren't working. She says that, too often, immigrants become a scapegoat for national conditions. "We can't blame them for America's financial troubles," Santiago says. "Those troubles, really, are about corporate greed and about a war that we shouldn't be in."

And some at the Augusta rally argued that Maine's sitiation today would be far worse if not for for the stimulus money provided under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Christopher St. John, of the Maine Center for Economic Policy explains.

"Many of us are not aware of the tremendous help that the federal AARA provided to the state budget, and prevented layoffs in health care providers, prevented layoffs in schools last year," St. John says. "Now we're facing again the running out of those monies and the continuing threat of further layoffs in municipaliites, in schools, in health care providers, if we do not get federal help."

The rally at the State House on the need for more federal assistance was one of 40 events held in more than 30 states.