A Middle Class Mandate
Posted by on December 7, 2006 at 02:49 PM
AFSCME President on the Democrats plan for the first 100 hours:
It has been a month since the Democrats enjoyed an Election Day victory far more sweeping in scope than Bush's 2004 win. But you don't see House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi and incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pounding their chests or making partisan proclamations about their newly acquired political capital.
Instead, they're championing a consensus legislative agenda geared toward helping families that have been left behind by the GOP. They're standing up for America's shrinking middle class. Pelosi has pledged to spend her first 100 hours on key bread-and-butter economic issues long neglected under Republican rule.
This is a leader who understands her mandate.
Pelosi's priorities for the first 100 hours include increasing the minimum wage, lifting the prohibition on Medicare negotiating with pharmaceutical companies for lower prescription drug prices, halving the interest rate on student loans and ending tax breaks for big oil companies in order to invest in alternative energy.
Pelosi calls her 100-hour plan a "down payment on the American dream." I'll take that deal any day over the Bush administration's "zero percent interest" in the middle class. The Speaker-designate's ambitious pro-working families agenda is worthy of our support.
This morning, Pelosi and Reid paid a visit to a national board meeting of my union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), AFL-CIO, at our headquarters in Washington, D.C., where both showcased a collaborative governing philosophy that has been sorely missing in Washington for years. Their "style" is inclusive and determined.
"The Republicans want to reward the wealthy; the Democrats want to reward work. That's our biggest difference," Speaker-elect Pelosi told AFSCME leaders. "What [Republicans] need to understand is that they wouldn't have their wealth without the people doing the work.
"When I accept the Speaker's gavel, I will be taking it out of the hands of the special interests and put it into the hands of America's working families and children for a better future. There will be civility, integrity and bipartisanship. We'll conduct ourselves in the manner the American people expect."
...
"So here we are. We have won," Pelosi declared to AFSCME's leaders. "We have removed from power those who were there for one reason--to concentrate wealth in the hands of the top 1 percent. I know that expectations are high that we do better for the American people, and they should be."
Concluded Reid: "Thomas Jefferson once said, 'If you stand on principle and you are patient, you will succeed.' That's what we have done. We got our Election Day miracle. Now, it's time to change this country."
Working families have always been a priority for Democrats, in stark contrast to the GOP whose priorities seem to be to cater to a narrow group of wealthy individuals and special interests.
McEntee also details the newly created campaign, "Change America Now" - a coalition of progressive partners whose goal is to provide grassroots support for the middle-class agenda Democrats plan to champion:
The founding purpose of the CAN campaign is to marshal public support for the economic reforms envisioned under Pelosi's 100-hour legislative agenda. The CAN campaign has united 41 progressive groups from across the country to advance a broader agenda of economic prosperity for American families in the areas of job creation, wages, health care, education and the environment.
CAN will use the campaign model developed during the successful effort to defeat Social Security privatization last year. Led by Americans United, a national coalition AFSCME helped create, outraged citizens across the country held hundreds of rallies, town halls and district meetings. An aggressive rapid response unit was set up in Washington, D.C., to counter Republican misinformation and articulate Congress' duty to protect the most successful social program in American history.
CAN will employ the same grassroots model to brand a progressive agenda and to answer the question of what we and our allies are for--and why the agenda we support is important to Americans from all walks of life.
Comments (12) «
Cannot we invest our own retirements in America’s future welfare, rather than colossal Enron benefits, and the selling off America’s core industries overseas for a profit, for those secret power brokers benefits. We are already bankrupting the Middle Class, what do they want economic slaves on minimum wages to serve them as Rockefellers, Carnegie, and Bush’s.
The Middle Class is the patriotism of America's future, so why not are Corporations investing in it, for our children's sake?
Please pass to Ms Pelosi, the middle class now earns $40,000+ per year, none of us get minimum wage, few qualify for medicare. If you want to help the middle class, give us the tax cut Mr. Clinton got elected on but then never got around to. At least adjust the AMT so only rich folks like Congress people have to pay it. I voted for change, not just more welfare.
Few of us qualify for medicare?
Everyone qualifies for medicare if they "worked" and earned a paycheck instead of just lived off grandpa's trust fund.
If you want any more tax cuts, move to Mars. The Republicans have racked up huge deficits and committed us to a Long War. We are going to be asked to sacrifce for their stupid decisions not get a break.
Your taxes are only going to go up at the federal, state and local level. The Bush administration and the Republican Congress outsourced its responsibilities and costs to the states which can't support them. Somebody has to pick up the slack. The rich don't pay taxes; they use loopholes to evade them.
So you're living in the past, buddy. Services are already stretched to the bone and the cost of living is only going to go up along with the tax burden of the middle class.
Read it and weep:
The Housing Crash Recession of 2007
By Dean Baker
t r u t h o u t | Columnist
Tuesday 05 December 2006
As we approach the end of 2006, the economy's prospects for next year appear more gloomy with each new piece of economic data. And, just like President Bush in his assessment of the situation in Iraq, the economic forecasters are gradually revising their forecasts downward, as it no longer appears credible to present the rosy pictures that they had been trying to sell.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120506S.shtml
The warmonger's gun money is about to dry up and maybe faster than I expected. By 2008, the economy will so be so bad that americans may be out in streets in large numbers protesting this foolish expenditure of money that we will need for unemployment benefits, medicaid and job re-training.
There would be no need for a minimum wage, if this country had control of its immigration policy. The entire worker wage base in this country would move up. Wal-Mart workers would be earning twice what they are now if US workers were allowed to benefit from US citizen labor supply and demand.
The Democratic Party has a mandate for the middle class, but it will only continue as long as the Party is 100% consistent in supporting policies that actually favor the US middle class.
It is a well publicized economic reality that only senior management and corporate investors are reaping the benefits of improved corporate profits due to lower wages and increased productivity. Everyone else gets screwed.
"The Republicans want to reward the wealthy; the Democrats want to reward work. That's our biggest difference. What [Republicans] need to understand is that they wouldn't have their wealth without the people doing the work.
Pretty good. I think it would be better though to say
"The GOP leadership wants to reward wealth, we want to reward work. That's our biggest difference. What GOP leaders need to understand is that there wouldn't be any wealth in the country without the people doing the work.
In my state at least, over 10% rank and file Republicans voted Democratic this time around in some of the state wide races. I see little good in painting with such a broad brush.
When it comes to winning hearts and minds, party loyalty dies hard - and while declaring a class war and calling on people to choose sides might seem like a powerful way to recruit, it didn't really work all that well for the last 15 years or so.
And an unpersonalized economic argument would be more effective and less devisive it seems to me.
Posted by bigbobdonan on December 7, 2006 at 04:22 PM
It sounds like you are a Republican who finally got fed up with his party, rather than a Democrat, because you don't seem to have a clue about social programs, the scam of "tax cuts," or the fact that helping those who can't help themselves helps all of us except those whose greed is boundless. I imagine you'll get so used to the good times ahead that you'll forget all about how they ended in the first place and go back to your old habit of voting for Pugs.
Posted by Robson on December 7, 2006 at 09:01 PM
No need for a minimum wage? The minimum wage was a necessity many decades before undocumented workers became a major problem. Get your facts straight, and think about who is responsible for the various causes of illegal immigration, such as:
the readiness of cheapskate employers to hire illegally;
the economic imbalance between the U.S. and its neighbors in our own hemisphere and throughout the world;
the global banking scams whose purpose is to steal public assets for private gain and concentrate all the world's money in fewer and fewer hands;
etc.
I have heard nothing about reforming, or preferably repealing the Bankruptcy law that went into effect September, 2005.
If you are going to poster for the middle-class, then your first agenda should be to attack the new bankruptcy law.
For a middle-class family, barely paying their bills, a medical or career catastrophy will financially ruin a family for many decades.
I grew up with my dad working for the mines in central Florida, and I can remember the very tense days of waiting for my dad to come home, fearful he found a pink slip in his work locker just from downsizing. It tore my family apart and made for a rough childhood.
To think that if one of us kids became seriously ill, or something worse, I cannot imagine how my family would have survived.
Bankruptcy would have been our only option, then. But now there are families in this area facing the same childhood I faced, but not with the security blanket my generation had in bankruptcy.
This law was only passed with legislation pushed through by big-business who do not care about the working class.
Its ironic that they built their company fortunes on the backs of the poor, but then want to turn around and go after the same people who simply become poorer.
BIG BUSINESS WANTS TO HAVE THEIR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO, AND THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY GET TO DO WITH THIS LAW!
The responsibility of lending should be on the lender, not the borrower. This bill just removes all responisibility a company has to strategically loan their customer's deposits out to borrowers for a reasonable ROI.
I work for a company that lobbied this bill, which I found out today and it sickens me because for over 100 years they have targeted these same people and claimed they were their customer base, then to turn around and stab them in the back!!! It just makes me sick!
Repeal this law at most.
At least reform it so that it only applies to 2nd time bankruptcy filers, afterall, that is how big-business advertised the bill to go after, abusers not first time users.
In reponse to post by 60srad on December 8, 2006 at 06:33 PM
I know exactly who benefits and who loses due to illegal immigration. American workers lose, greedy American business men and the capitalist elite benefit, and the conservative Mexican government gets to export those who would politically oppose their regime. If not for the illegals in the USA Calderon never would have won in Mexico.
What we need is a Congress and President that will enforce our laws instead of winking at them to the benefit of their campaign contributors.
All that said, if illegal immigration was minimized, workers at the lowest rungs of employment ladder would see their wages jump far higher than the proposed $7.25 minimum wage. The wages would be closer to $15/hr.
It is too late to be able to decide what to do before the 100 days, but something more will certainly be needed than will be proposed then. We need to correct an 800 billion dollar per year trade deficit within a very few years, or the American economy will collapse, defaulting on a foreign debt of about 15 trillion dollars, which will also cause economic havoc in the rest of the world. We are borrowing to fund both the trade deficit and the interest payments on our foreign debt. That means that if the approximately 8% of Gross National Product debt will produce a foreign debt well above one year's Gross National Product within about ten years. A huge foreign debt is what caused the collapse of the former USSR, Brazil, etc. and that serious a collapse of the American economy is likely to leave us with a standard of living similar to that of Brazil or Indonesia. We don't have long before the foreign debt rises so high the process becomes irreversible. James F. Newell
Actually Mexicans in the US can vote absentee ballot in Mexican election the same way US citizens in Mexico get to vote in US elections. The Mexican election was stolen using the very Republican method of election fraud.
Tax cuts? What tax cuts? We didn't see any tax cuts? Nobody around here was rich enough. Maybe some of the rich and snotty out of staters who have those big trophy homes blotting the landscapes in the Galletin Canyon, Bitterroot Valley and up around Kalispell, but no real people that I know of.
Repeal the tax cuts for the rich, maybe they'll sell out and move back where they came from!
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