The Promoting American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act would do several things, as Mitchell wrote yesterday.
Its provisions for extending unemployment insurance would directly benefit 5.4 million peoples. And their families. And their communities, since every dollar of unemployment aid would produce $1.63 in local economic activity.
That’s not the only important part of this jobs bill, though. This bill also helps cash-strapped states pay for Medicaid, preventing layoffs and cuts in services, and producing $1.41 in economic stimulus for every dollar spent.
It finances summer jobs and local infrastructure projects.
It closes a tax loophole that allows Wall Street hedge fund managers to pay lower taxes on their income than ordinary wage earners.
That’s a good bill. It directly helps millions of families. It directly helps states facing budget crises. In doing both those things, it creates huge additional economic stimulus. It puts people to work and fixes needed infrastructure (so we have fewer bridges crumbling underneath us). And it pays for a good part of that by making very wealthy people pay the same taxes as the rest of us.
So naturally, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor and his Republican caucus are vowing to fight big parts of that. They’re even claiming this is a popular idea. Which big parts is it so popular to cut? That would be the summer jobs part that Cantor is going after with his “YouCut” program.
Last week, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) announced a new Republican effort to eliminate wasteful spending called “YouCut.” The program allows Americans to vote online for spending cuts they want to see enacted, although critics have dismissed it as another “gimmick” that won’t actually lead to significant savings.
Given the wildly inaccurate description of the TANF Emergency Fund on the “YouCut” website, the vote to eliminate the program is meaningless. Far from a “backdoor way to undo” welfare reform, the fund has enabled states to expand work-focused programs within TANF despite high unemployment and a weak economy.
CBPP adds a couple key facts. Like that people who get this assistance for jobs have 12 weeks to find a job. (And you just have to look at the statistics for how many people have been out of work for six months or more to know that that’s not a piece of cake.) And that:
The Emergency Fund will enable states to place 186,000 unemployed individuals in subsidized jobs by the end of the summer. It’s the largest subsidized employment effort states have ever taken under TANF, the national block grant created by the 1996 welfare reform law. (More details here and here). A large share of the jobs are in the private sector.
Eric Cantor might have tricked some people into thinking this is a scary scary program, but this is the reality: Jobs for people who want them and are willing to work, and help to businesses that want to hire people but otherwise would have to wait to be able to afford to do so.
The fishing ban in the Gulf of Mexico has been expanded:
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration greatly expanded the fishing ban in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday in response to spreading oil from the BP well blowout. The prohibited area now covers 19 percent of the gulf, nearly double what it was, according to the agency.
the impact of the spill is beginning to kick in:
Officials are already seeing some impact on fish and wildlife in the region. Rowan W. Gould, the acting director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, said 156 sea turtle fatalities had been recorded in the gulf since April 30, about 100 more than usual at this time of year.
Mr. Gould also said that a small number of oily birds, 35, had been recovered, including 23 dead birds directly linked to the spill.
“It’s important to note that the visibly oiled birds are a small part” of the effects of the oil spill, Dr. Gould said in a teleconference on Tuesday.
“What concerns us most is what we can’t see,” he said, adding, “We are preparing for the likelihood that it will exist in the gulf ecosystem in years to come.”
The economic impact is already being felt along the coast. In Pensacola, FL:
The spill has scared off charter fishing customers at the marina here, even though the water they’d normally trawl is still open. The 30 boats were almost all tied to their slips Tuesday and Jerry Andrews, the captain of the Entertainer, had the dock to himself.
“Usually you’d see 15 or 20 people walking up and down out here asking about the fishing. Three-fourths of these slips would be empty,” said Andrews, a Pensacola native who has been fishing here for 34 years.
and
Andrews said before the spill he was getting between 30 and 40 calls and e-mails a day asking about chartering his boat and his customers were catching their full quotas of vermilion snapper, triggerfish, amberjack and grouper.
But in the month since the spill, he gets hired for one or two trips a week, tops. Most of his customers, who come from Alabama and Georgia, are now going to the Carolinas.
In Louisiana many of the fishermen hired by BP to help try to contain the spill are getting frustrated:
Louisiana fishermen, thrown out of work by the massive oil spill that has closed coastal waters, are jockeying for jobs to contain the mess. But just who gets those jobs is a source of mounting tension. Some workers are getting paid to go out on the water multiple days in a row, while others aren’t allowed to go out at all, according to some fishermen.
They said that BP, which had promised to pay each fisherman $5,000 a month for compensation, is dallying on handing out checks. And they said that men who haven’t fished in years are getting paid to work on prevention teams, even though they’re not affected by the oil spill.
“It’s all about who you know,” said fisherman Oliver Rudesill, who was sitting in the shade beside the St. Bernard Parish home of a friend on Sunday. He has not earned a cent since the spill started, he said, while others are making hundreds of dollars a day.
His friend, David Palmer, a 33-year old fisherman with three kids, has been told his turn won’t come until June. “It’s so messed up it’s not even funny,” said Palmer, whose home sits on pylons to avoid the swampy grasses. “A person can’t wait 30 to 40 days to go work.”
No one can say with any certainty how this disaster will impact the gulf coast. The long term impact could be devastating:
If the oil penetrates deep within the estuaries around the Mississippi delta, it could devastate the salt marshes and bays that support as much as 90 percent of commercially fished species in the Gulf. That would spell long-term disaster for Louisiana’s $1.8 billion fishing industry, not to mention the other Gulf Coast states.
“You have to question what is going to come from this,” said David Wyld, a professor of management at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond. “Not just during the next few months, but also during the next few years and even a decade out.”
On top of it all, there’s the economic ripple effect. No fishing means fewer people chartering boats, and closed beaches lead to abandoned vacation plans and cancelled hotel bookings. All of that may only deepen the future economic misery for Gulf Coast residents to the tune of billions of dollars in lost revenue.
All the more reason to push for more job creation and more economic stimulus money to help states that have been hard hit, and aid the unemployed.
Folksingers have occupied a noble place in our history, singing about economic hard times, mining disasters, exploitation of workers, and of course, the Great Depression. In the great tradition of folk singers like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, NH musicians Beverly Woods and Seth Austin have written a song called Deepwater Horizon Disaster:
A new jobs bill that the House expects to take up shortly includes a year-end extension of eligibility and continued future funding for all of the expanded federal unemployment insurance and COBRA programs.
Urgent action is needed to pass this legislation quickly, as eligibility for these critical programs is set to expire June 2 unless Congress acts.
More than 10 million Americans currently depend on unemployment insurance while they look for work, including 5.4 million who rely on the federal programs that extend jobless aid to those out of work longer than 26 weeks.
Nearly 46% of unemployed workers have been jobless for at least six months, representing the highest long-term unemployment rate in at least six decades. Those workers face dim employment prospects with well over five unemployed workers competing for every available job.
The bill being prepared in the House, H.R. 4213, is now called the Promoting American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010, and it includes not only the year-end unemployment and COBRA extensions, but a host of other major provisions designed to bolster jobs and recovery while making wealthy Wall Street traders and corporations finally pay their fair share in taxes. I’ll summarize shortly what’s reported to be in the bill.
But first, you need to pick up the phone, call toll-free 888-254-5087 and tell your Representative to vote for H.R. 4213 — the Promoting American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act.
And tell them they must get this done before the Memorial Day recess.
Go ahead — I’ll wait….
OK, so let’s take a look at what we expect to see in this new House jobs bill in addition to the year-end eligibility extensions for the federal unemployment insurance and COBRA subsidy programs.
The bill reportedly will include an extension of FMAP, the federal assistance to states for support of Medicaid, through mid-2011, as well as a one-year extension of the TANF Emergency Fund, which provides funds to states for employment programs and support for needy families.
It includes funding to support more than 350,000 summer jobs for young people ages 16 to 21, an age group that currently faces a 25 percent unemployment rate.
The bill would also support infrastructure investment to create jobs by extending Build America Bonds and other tax credit bonds to spur investment in economic recovery zones.
A five year extension of the so-called “doctor fix” to prevent reductions in Medicare payments, thus ensuring access to physician choice for seniors, is also expected in the bill.
Other provisions would extend the National Flood Insurance Program through the end of 2010; extend affordable small business lending programs and research and development tax credits for businesses supporting American jobs; extend tax relief to middle-class families and individuals; distribute funding for surface transportation projects; and support the National Housing Trust Fund to help build and maintain affordable rental housing.
So, what about the closing tax loopholes part? This is good. Really good.
Significant parts of the bill would be paid for by eliminating the tax incentives that encourage companies to ship American jobs overseas. The bill would prevent corporations from using current U.S. foreign tax credit rules to subsidize their foreign activities, and close a host of corporate tax loopholes that allow companies to avoid paying U.S. taxes through a variety of foreign tax credit schemes.
But here’s the best part. You know how working folks are required to pay regular income and employment taxes? Even if you are unemployed you likely have to pay the regular income tax on your unemployment insurance payments. But wealthy investment fund managers don’t. No siree. The fees they “earn” are taxed as so-called “carried interest”, a tax loophole that allows their income to be taxed at only 15 percent, as if it were capital gains.
Super-rich hedge fund managers, private equity fund managers and other high-flying Wall Street traders pay a much lower tax rate than working people do — even if you’re on unemployment! And taxpayers are left holding the bag for an estimated $2 billion a year in lost revenues due to this one loophole.
Well, they helped bring down the economy while making out like bandits — and now it’s high time they paid their fair share. This jobs bill would close their “carried interest” tax loophole.
The Center for American Progress has a good overview of the expected legislation posted today.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has an excellent report on why the legislation is needed, and why budgetary objections to it are misplaced and economically wrong-headed.
A reminder: The AFL-CIO is holding its first-ever Young Workers Summit on June 10-13, in Washington DC.
The Young Worker Summit provides you the opportunity to:
Meet other young workers who are fighting for economic and social justice in this nation and in the workplace.
Share your ideas about how all of us can reach out to other young workers in order to strengthen and grow our movement.
Hear from policy experts, labor leaders, student activists, community allies, political comedians, professional athletes and others committed to the same progressive causes you are—and find how you can effectively integrate their ideas into your work.
Talk with the AFL-CIO officers about your concerns and thoughts on the future of the labor movement.
Attend workshops that focus on topics identified by young workers across the country such as communications, organizing and mobilizing, issues facing this generation and integrating young workers into our programs.
Learn about the exciting work already happening to engage young workers and how you can build on it for your own community.
Gather knowledge and tools to share with your co-workers and peers.
Network with peers, other young activists and leaders from the broader progressive movement.
You don’t have to be a union member to attend, and registration is free, but the registration deadline is May 21 — that’s this Friday.
‘“Work-ing Am-er-i-ca, we are all he-roes,” Willie Holmes, Arkansas Director of Working America chants. “Gonna bring Blanche Lincoln down to ze-ro.”’ So reports a recent Nation story on what Working America is doing in Arkansas.
Over a year ago, Working America community organizers in Arkansas kicked off a major effort to organize working people around core economic issues and let Arkansas leaders like Sen. Blanche Lincoln know that Arkansans were looking for representatives who would fight for working class issues, not corporate interests.
Working America called for good jobs in the form of passing the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that will help people form unions and get better-paying jobs, and for true health care reform, which became law with little support from Sen. Lincoln.
Sherrie from Little Rock wrote a letter to Sen. Lincoln saying: “I have a lung disease and need to be under a doctor’s care, but can’t afford insurance. When I get sick, I have to go to the ER which I really can’t afford. It’s difficult to work and make a living when you can’t seek medical help, and many people live this way. I hope we have true reform for health care.” She went on to ask Sen. Lincoln to support reform that would help people like her.
But Sen. Lincoln didn’t listen. So Working America decided to go back to the thousands of people who wrote letters to Sen. Lincoln and their friends and neighbors to let them know that despite working people’s best efforts, she didn’t deliver.
For two months, we’ve been talking to folks across Arkansas about Sen. Lincoln’s record and why Bill Halter will be a better Senator for Arkansans. And people are telling us that they want a leader like Bill Halter who will listen to them and fight for kitchen table issues.
In total, Working America spoke to 90,000 people, knocked on 82,000 doors, and made 200,000 calls. Working America organizers canvassed 27 towns across Arkansas, hitting working class voters’ doors everywhere. Working America also sent 1.75 million pieces of mail to Arkansans letting them know about the records of Blanche Lincoln and Bill Halter.
And how are the Working America members in Arkansas feeling as the final hours tick away till election night?
Holmes says: “We were in Arkansas a year ago to ask politicians like Sen. Lincoln to help create jobs and support health care reform… now after all that work, it feels like Christmas morning. We expected Sen. Lincoln to listen, but instead, we’re electing someone who will. So today we get to give a gift… positive change for all of us here in Arkansas.
“I’m ready to go ahead and win and create the shot heard round the country today,” he concludes.
Update: Wow, huge night for working people in Arkansas! Working America already has our eyes towards the run-off and here’s a statement from Karen Nussbaum, Working America Executive Director:
“After a year of Sen. Lincoln ignoring the voices of the thousands of Working America members who wrote and called her to ask for her support, she certainly couldn’t ignore their voices today. This election is about one thing: electing a leader who will stand with working families. For too long, Arkansans watched as Sen. Lincoln said one thing to working people and then voted with the big bankers.”
Willie Holmes, Arkansas Working America Director continues:
“As families across Arkansas struggle to make ends meet, we’re looking to people like Bill Halter who will stand with working people and fight to create an economy that works for everyone. For the last year in Arkansas, working people asked politicians like Sen. Lincoln to help create jobs and support health care reform and she never listened. Today, we’re on the path to electing someone who will.
Congress is expected to again take up a year-end extension of the expanded federal unemployment insurance and COBRA subsidy programs as part of a larger measure that includes fiscal aid to states and other key safety net provisions.
More than 10 million jobless Americans currently receive unemployment insurance, including 5.4 million in the extended federal programs.
An extension of eligibility and funding for these programs through the end of 2010 had already passed the House and Senate earlier this year. But differences between the House and Senate versions had been holding up a final bill.
In April, meanwhile, another two-month emergency stopgap measure was approved by Congress and signed by President Obama, despite continuous obstructions from Senate Republicans. Those extensions, though, will expire on June 2.
The New York Times is now reporting that Congressional Democrats have negotiated a new version, which they intend to bring up in the House as early as Wednesday of this week.
The House, which in December narrowly passed a $154 billion stimulus package that hit a wall in the Senate, plans to debate a substitute of at least that size that Democratic Congressional leaders have negotiated; it would extend myriad popular business tax breaks and aid for the unemployed and hard-hit states.
Call on Congress to Extend Filing Deadline Through 2010.
Measure needed to provide for federal extensions, COBRA subsidies, and $25 weekly benefit supplement through the end of 2010
The latest stop-gap measure of federal extensions (including both the Emergency Unemployment Compensation and Extended Benefits programs), the additional $25 per week in everyone’s benefits check, and COBRA subsidies for jobless workers are set to expire on June 2, 2010. The House and Senate have been sitting on legislation that could extend these programs through the end of 2010 since March of this year. Time is running out, and the House is set to consider a compromise version of this bill this week. If passed, it will finally extend these programs through the end of the year. We are urging the House of Representatives take immediate action this week and make sure that federal UI and COBRA supplements are not allowed to expire.
Action is needed right now. Tell Congress to pass the year-end extensions of unemployment insurance and COBRA programs immediately!
Or you can call Congress toll-free at 888-254-5087.
Tell Congress that one-month or two-month stopgap measures will not do. They need to pass the year-end federal unemployment eligibility extension this week.
Congress is poised to vote on Wall Street reform—the most important to our financial system in decades. We are taking our message “Good Jobs Now! Make Wall Street Pay” to K Street, the power corridor in Washington, D.C., where Big Bank lobbyists plot to kill real financial reform and peddle corporate influence on Capitol Hill.
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler will lead a large contingent of working families and union staff today, May 17, as we join with our partners from National People’s Action, Move On, SEIU and others to rally and call out the lobbyists for the Big Banks.
Sometimes the junk in my Inbox is enough to make me want to pull what’s left of my hair out. Such was the case with the article I just opened from my online subscription to Education Week. Check this out:
Teacher Layoffs May Be Linked to Hiring Spree
By Stephen Sawchuk
An increase in teacher hiring in recent years is leading some observers to posit a link to the waves of pink slips that districts are sending across the country.
So let me get this straight: the tens of thousands of teacher layoffs, which could well become hundreds of thousands shortly, are happening because more teachers were hired to improve our schools when the economy was in better shape before the Great Recession.
Teachers must be fired because they were hired. I would say ‘that’s rich’ if it weren’t so freaking stupid. Has the author entered some bizarre contest with the JPMorgan Chase economist whose report we exposed in Blaming Unemployment Insurance for Unemployment?
But back to the Education Week piece and the potential mass wave of teacher layoffs. Nowhere in the article is there even a hint that the gaping budget shortfalls faced by states, municipalities and local school districts are the direct result of the huge decline in revenues caused by the Great Recession.
And who are the “observers” mentioned in the opening sentence who are said to “posit a link” between teacher layoffs and previous hiring? There aren’t any! Or, if there are, the author seems to have forgotten to include them in the article. Several educators and others are quoted, but none “posit” the “link” that the author asserts.
Way down in the article, though, Andy Smarick — a former Bush White House adviser and education official — is quoted attacking the Recovery Act’s support for education and teachers’ jobs:
Some experts contend that the up-to $100 billion in education dollars in the federal economic-stimulus legislation, most of it pushed out through formula to states and districts, has only exacerbated the problem.
Andy Smarick, an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who has studied the economic-stimulus bill, contends that it absolved districts from having to make such decisions until now.
“They could have taken the last year to figure out how to resolve these long-term structural issues, to say, ‘Let’s look at all of our contracts, let’s consider online learning,’” Mr. Smarick said. “But instead, what they mostly did was preserve existing jobs and programs.”
So, let’s review:
Preserving teachers’ jobs in our schools is a bad thing.
Teacher layoffs are caused by teachers having been hired.
Teachers wouldn’t be losing their jobs if they didn’t have them in the first place.
And we wouldn’t have to lay teachers off if we didn’t have any schools.
Why do we have ongoing problems with mines, oil spills, and problems with nuclear power plants? The sad, simple truth is that US regulatory agencies are failing us. From the NY Times:
Federal regulators warned offshore rig operators more than a decade ago that they needed to install backup systems to control the giant undersea valves known as blowout preventers, used to cut off the flow of oil from a well in an emergency.
The warnings were repeated in 2004 and 2009. Yet the Minerals Management Service, the Interior Department agency charged both with regulating the oil industry and collecting royalties from it, never took steps to address the issue comprehensively, relying instead on industry assurances that it was on top of the problem, a review of documents shows.
Relying on the oil industry to police itself is akin to relying on your five year old to voluntarily keep his hand out of the cookie jar.
Far from being reliable BP fought safety measures at every opportunity:
In a letter sent last year to the Department of the Interior, BP objected to what it called “extensive, prescriptive regulations” proposed in new rules to toughen safety standards. “We believe industry’s current safety and environmental statistics demonstrate that the voluntary programs…continue to be very successful.”
Before every shift worked in an underground coal mine, coal operators are supposed to check for safety problems. Violations are to be marked with a “danger” sign. No one is supposed to go to work until the violations are fixed.
At least that’s what federal mine safety law has said since 1969, when Congress passed the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act.
But since 1992, that’s not what the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration has required. That year, the first Bush administration weakened MSHA regulations, requiring mine safety checks to look for violations only if they posed an immediate hazard to miners.
A Congressional hearing on the April 5 explosion at the Upper Big Branch coal mine will be held later this month:
The U.S. House Education and Labor Committee will hold a hearing this month in Beckley, W.Va., to examine the April 5 explosion at Upper Big Branch coal mine that killed 29.
The committee, led by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., will hear testimony from family members of the miners who died in the blast, the worst U.S. coal mining disaster in 40 years. The hearing is scheduled for May 24 at 9 a.m. at the Robert C. Byrd federal courthouse in Beckley, which is about an hour east of the mine in Montcoal.
The Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee held a hearing on the explosion last month in Washington, focusing on possible changes to mine safety laws and enforcement by the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) is charged with enforcing regulations. Here’s a particularly grim commentary:
A top federal mine safety official said Tuesday that existing laws and regulations have not been properly enforced but pledged that his agency will now use all its powers after the West Virginia mine disaster that killed 29 people.
Joe Main, the assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health, told a Senate committee that the Mine Safety and Health Administration will start using its power to immediately shut down mines engaging in unsafe behavior.
Main said the powers have existed for decades but were never used.
How many workers have died as a result?
The aging Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon, VT has been in the news over the last few months because of a radioactive tritium leak. Entergy, the owner of the plant first denied there were underground pipes at the plant. From the Times Argus:
House Speaker Shap Smith, D-Morristown, told reporters at the Statehouse Friday that this week’s revelation that the facility does indeed have underground pipes containing radioactive tritium – a fact Yankee officials earlier denied – “threatens the level of trust that Vermonters have in Entergy to provide accurate information about anything.”
“The representations made by Entergy were clearly wrong,” Smith said. “They told us that there was no radioactive material flowing through those pipes … that was untrue.”
Officials from Entergy Nuclear Vermont, the company that owns Vermont Yankee, told state and legislative officials on a number of occasions that those pipes did not carry irradiated water. That includes statements made by Entergy officials under oath to the Vermont Public Service Board.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) planned a private meeting with VT Yankee/Entergy officials, regarding NRC oversight of the plant. The private meeting didn’t sit well with folks in VT and NH. NH has 5 communities in the 10 mile evacuation zone of the plant.
Thanks to the intervention of VT and NH legislators a public meeting was held:
Residents and local officials told the NRC during the evening session that the NRC was ineffective because there were few — if any — regulations to hold nuclear companies accountable.
Paul Blanch of West Hartford, Conn., a nuclear consultant and former industry whistleblower, said nuclear companies were taking advantage of the situation.
“Regulations are nonexistent or never enforced,” said Blanch, who said that Vermont Yankee could have discharged “10,000 times” the tritium that it did and still not violate any NRC regulations.
People weren’t impressed with the NRC as a regulatory agency, and they have every reason to feel that way. From Beyond Nuclear:
A new report released today by Beyond Nuclear – Leak First, Fix Later: Uncontrolled and Unmonitored Radioactive Releases from Nuclear Power Plants – looks at the epidemic of reactors leaking tritium into groundwater. The report finds that the federal regulator – the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission – is ignoring its oversight and enforcement responsibilities at the nation’s increasingly leaky, uninspected and unmaintained nuclear power plants. The report shows that despite agency efforts initiated in 1979 to prevent uncontrolled radioactive releases to groundwater, the NRC is capitulating to an industry decision to take almost three more years before announcing an action plan.
Regulatory agencies must be forced to do their jobs. Paying for the ounce of prevention is cheaper, better for the environment, and it saves lives. We must also pass the The Protecting America’s Workers Act.
