Last night’s State of the Union address revolved around themes of fairness and rebuilding America’s middle class. As in any speech of this size, there was a lot to absorb. What we found most interesting was President Barack Obama’s emphasis on not repeating the mistakes that led us to the economic catastrophe of the past few years.
It’s encouraging that President Obama paid special attention to the issue of housing and financial-sector fraud. Tens of thousands of Working America members and union members called for a real investigation into banks and their role in causing the housing crisis, and the President announced the creation of a new task force to investigate fraud in his speech last night.
We will have to watch this task force closely. We can’t have an investigation just for show, one that doesn’t take a comprehensive look at wrongdoing and impose real penalties. What powers will the investigators have, and who are they? The co-chair of the panel is Eric Schneiderman, the New York state Attorney General who has led opposition to a bad deal, which is encouraging. But David Dayen, a close observer, is skeptical of the panel and thinks it may be a way to ease us into an insufficient settlement. As we’ve said before, we can’t accept a deal that lets big banks break the law and abuse consumers without being held responsible.
We’ll also be looking closely at the President’s pledge to help homeowners refinance, which could provide some much-needed assistance to struggling families.
The State of the Union message showed that, in many ways, President Obama is attuned to the economic crisis that’s still ongoing in our country. His insistence on extending the payroll tax cut for working families is important, as is his attention to investing in infrastructure jobs and schools, which creates jobs now and builds economic strength for the future. His proposals on job training and support for companies that “insource” good jobs to America’s communities are encouraging as well.
Our members understand that politics is about priorities. With limited resources, we have to choose whether to keep tax breaks for the very wealthiest and for corporations that outsource jobs, or whether to use those revenues to support programs that seniors, students and families depend on. President Obama showed that, like most Americans, he’d choose the latter. Now it’s up to Congress to decide where they stand.
Republican presidential campaign pyrotechnics can’t hide the record of a party that has turned its back on ordinary Americans. It’s worth remembering how, a year ago, the Republican-majority House of Representatives tried to repeal the 2010 Affordable Care Act.
What would have happened if they had succeeded?
2.5 million young adults would have no health insurance.
2.65 million seniors would have paid $1.5 billion more for prescription drugs.
24.2 million seniors would pay for preventative services they are getting for free.
And that’s just the beginning. A short report from the White House highlights how the Affordable Care Act is making insurance more available and affordable for millions of Americans.
It’s good reading at a time when the Affordable Care Act repeal is still a GOP battle cry, with all the presidential hopefuls and most Republicans in Congress vowing to overthrow the law—and trying to scare voters in the process.
Check out the Center for American Progress’ animated video (above) explaining the benefits of reform. The video was developed by MIT economist Jon Gruber, an adviser on both the Affordable Care Act and the Massachusetts health care reform program.
Update 3:55 p.m.: It looks like the House Republicans have bowed to overwhelming public pressure and agreed to the short-term extension.
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“Have we become so dysfunctional that even when we agree on things we can’t do it?” President Barack Obama asked today. It’s a good question.
We’re still not really close to an agreement on an extension of unemployment insurance and the payroll tax cut that will expire in ten days. The easy answer is for the House to pass the short-term extension passed by an overwhelming bipartisan margin in the Senate—but the Tea Party radicals who keep Speaker John Boehner on a short leash are preventing that. The President is pushing hard to try and break the deadlock this week.
The consequences of failing to pass an extension? Millions of people cut off from the lifeline of unemployment insurance, and 160 million people facing a payroll tax hike. “”So many of these debates get reduced to which party is winning and which party is losing,” Obama said in a statement today, “but we should remind ourselves this is about the American people.”
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Obama said that more than 30,000 people have written in to explain what the end of the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits would means to them. For working-class and middle-class families, those dollars represent heating oil, food, gas for your car to get you to and from work, or school supplies. For the economy as a whole, it’s fewer dollars that van flow to local businesses.
“This is exactly why people get so frustrated with Washington,” Obama said. He’s right. It’s time for Boehner to get it together and pass the Senate’s bipartisan compromise, and then get to work on an extension for the rest of 2012.
Rick Perry is still Governor of Texas. Rick Perry is still running for President of the United States. He is still making money as the author of the bestselling book Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America From Washington, which decries the role of government in our lives.
And yet, Rick Perry is retired. According to the Texas Tribune, Governor Perry officially retired in January so he could start collecting pension benefits.
Perry makes a $150,000 annual gross salary as Texas governor. Now, thanks to his early retirement, Perry, 61, gets a monthly retirement annuity of $7,698 before taxes, or $6,588 net. That raises his gross annual salary to more than $240,000.
Not only is he getting a bump in his take-home pay now, but he can expect another one when he leaves the governor’s office. Perry is in two public pension systems: the “employee class” and the “elected class.” He only retired from the former.
While public workers see their pensions slashed across the country, small government champion Rick Perry gets to retire not once, but twice with pension benefits courtesy of Texas taxpayers.
Most people who spent their careers railing against government spending would think twice before simultaneously drawing salary and pension from the public dole.
But this is Rick Perry, a politician who has always exceled in manipulating public institutions for personal gain.
As Governor, Perry has made little effort to hide the way he rewards his wealthy campaign donors with government contracts. Matt Taibbi, the formerly Moscow-based journalist who did a feature about Perry for Rolling Stone in October, even compared Perry’s Texas to a Soviet protectorate. With a confusing track record that swings back and forth between open hostility with the federal government (suggesting that Texas secede from the United States) and what some would call government intrusion (mandating HPV vaccines), all of Perry’s actions can be explained by who was giving him money at the time, and what business they were in. Perry’s chief of staff, for instance, got a lucrative lobbying job for the pharmaceutical giant Merck right before the HPV vaccination order provided Merck a windfall of public money.
Is your stomach flipping? It should be. This is exactly the kind of cronyism, nepotism, and back-door dealing that makes the other 99 percent of us sick.
But now that Perry is so openly cashing in on Texans’ tax dollars, why not play the game with him?
Here’s how it will go, Rick. You’re bringing home an annual $240,000 worth of hard-earned taxpayer cash, so it’s time to do us a few favors:
Raise the Texas minimum wage –The so-called economic “Texas miracle” was built on extremely low-wage jobs. Let’s raise the state minimum wage above $7.25 per hour and put some real spending power in the pockets of working families who need it most.
Rebuild crumbling infrastructure – In his piece, Taibbi details how Perry granted a huge contract to a big donor for a nuclear waste depository. Now that it’s our dollars in Perry’s pockets, it’s time for him to use some lucrative bridge and road repair funds to put thousands of unemployed Texas construction workers and engineers back to work.
Get teachers back in the classroom and rescue Texas education – The Texas education system is in trouble. By 2040, 30 percent of Texas workers don’t have a high school diploma. You turn these trends around by getting laid off teachers back in the classroom now.
We the taxpayers don’t usually demand much. But with Perry taking home such a big check from us while talking trash about public employees, I think doing us a few solids is the least he could do.
The Obama Administration has proposed some new regulations to protect home care workers. From the New York Times:
Labor unions and advocates for low-wage workers have pushed for the changes, contending that the 37-year-old exemption improperly swept these workers, who care for many elderly and disabled Americans, into the same “companion” category as baby sitters. The administration’s move calls for home care aides to be protected under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the nation’s main wage and hour law.
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These workers, according to industry figures, generally earn $8.50 to $12 an hour, compared with the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. The White House said 92 percent of these workers were women, nearly 30 percent were African-American and 12 percent Hispanic. Nearly 40 percent rely on public benefits like Medicaid and food stamps.
While industry experts say an overwhelming majority are paid at least the minimum wage, many do not receive a time-and-a-half premium when they work more than 40 hours a week. Twenty-two states do not include home health care workers under their wage and hour laws.
Home care workers assist elderly people with all aspects of their lives, including bathing, exercise, and remembering to take medications. They may also prepare meals, and do housework. They may be dealing with clients in varying stages of dementia. There’s a great deal of skill required to do this kind of work.
These are also workers who don’t get sick days, any sort of benefits, and if their client dies – well, that’s just too bad. No more paychecks for them.
Predictably, the opposition is gearing up:
“The president’s goal is commendable, but the likely result of this new rule is reduced hours for home care workers and higher costs for taxpayers,” said John Kline, a Minnesota Republican who is chairman of the House Education and the Work Force Committee, and Tim Walberg, a Minnesota Republican who heads the panel’s subcommittee on work force protections. “Moreover, our nation’s elderly may pay the greatest price in the form of more costly services and fewer opportunities to obtain the care they need in the comfort of their own homes.”
In other words: Caregivers are good enough to take care of the elderly, but what they do isn’t real work, therefore they don’t deserve the sort of protections that other workers are entitled to.
This week Wisconsin’s Rep. Paul Ryan is at it again, once more offering a proposal that would replace Medicare. This time he’s joined by Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat. To say this proposal is better than the initial Ryancare plan—which would have totally privatized Medicare—is something akin to saying replacing your birthday cake with dirt is better than replacing your birthday cake with rocks.
Even policy observers inclined to be sympathetic to Wyden’s intentions are critical of this new plan. Ezra Klein says it’s “not a compromise proposal” and doesn’t advance cost control or coverage. Jonathan Cohn says that the Ryan-Wyden plan doesn’t actually improve upon Medicare at all and indeed could jeopardize the guarantee of health care coverage for future retirees. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says the plan would shift more costs to seniors and potentially undermine Medicare in the long term.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka was blunter, calling Ryan-Wyden “a fundamental misdiagnosis” and a proposal that would “cripple Medicare.”
Just as we shouldn’t privatize Social Security and push our seniors’ retirement security into the stock market, we shouldn’t privatize Medicare and push seniors’ health security into the hands of the insurance industry. In fact, Medicare already has some features of an exchange, through the Medicare Advantage program. And the evidence shows that traditional Medicare saves money compared to Medicare Advantage and to the private insurance market in general. Ryan-Wyden is a fictional solution.
What’s grating is not that Ryan is looking for another way to dismantle Medicare—after all, he’s repeatedly shown that it’s his top priority. No, the trouble is that Sen. Wyden—who represents more than 150,000 Working America members in Oregon—is so enthusiastically signing on.
Wyden usually votes the right way on issues that matter to working families, but being an elected leader is about more than votes. It’s about actual leadership. By legitimizing Ryan’s crusade to undermine the guarantee of Medicare, Wyden is doing damage to the priorities he ostensibly votes for.
Wyden should take a tip from his home-state colleague Jeff Merkley, a Working America member and a consistent leader on the issues that matter to his fellow members. Instead of pursuing attention by allying with right-wing politicians like Ryan, Merkley has chosen to stand out by acting as a voice for his working-class and middle class constituents: demanding real solutions to the housing crisis, insisting on accounting for the jobs impact of “Super Committee” proposals and trying to strengthen financial reform. His leadership may not get the kind of breathless praise from self-styled “centrist” pundits like Wyden does, but he’s clearly more interested in having a positive impact on working people’s lives.
If Wyden wants to boost our health care system in a way that cuts costs and actually increases access to care, how about adding a public option to health care reform?
1.) While campaigning, make sure to promise to take action on the most pressing issue on the minds of Americans: jobs. Declare unequivocally and repeatedly that you will create 700,000 jobs in 7 years, and make “Let’s get to work” your campaign slogan. That way, voters can feel a sense of betrayal and disappointment when you do nothing to follow through.
2.) Start breaking promises right off the bat – voters love initiative! Despite a historic high level of unemployment in construction, reject federal money for a high speed rail project that would employ thousands of construction workers and engineers. Don’t give a good reason for your actions. That way, voters can assume you’re killing jobs for political reasons.
3.) Has your state experienced a huge economic hit because of a man-made, preventable disaster recently, perhaps an oil spill? By all means, do not make any effort to hold the corporations behind that disaster accountable. Even if other governors of your own party are making such an effort, continue to have more sympathy for those corporations then your constituents.
4.) One of the keys to being an unpopular governor is to demonize huge segments of your state’s population, and then watch it backfire. Here’s a good list to start from:
12.) At all times, lack compassion and understanding about the basic needs and priorities of your state. The majority of your constituents just want to find a decent job, put food on the table, afford health care when they get sick, pay bills on time, vote on Election Day, and make sure their children get an adequate education. Your job is to wake up every morning in your mansion, drive to work, and make sure all those things are as difficult as possible.
Got more to add to Rick Scott’s Guide to Popularity? Leave your suggestions in the comments, or tweet at us with the hashtag #RickScottFail.
Florida’s Rick Scott has retaken the title of least popular governor in the country among the 36 on which PPP has polled this year. His job performance mark has tanked from 36% approving and 52% disapproving when PPP last polled the state in September to 26-58 now, a decline of 16 points on the margin. His greatest fall has been with his own party, which stands at 46-31, down 22 points. Independents disapprove by a 30-55 margin.
More key numbers:
66 percent of those who identify as political “moderates” disapprove of Scott. 34 percent of those who identify as “somewhat conservative” also disapprove.
55 percent of Independents disapprove, and so do 31 percent of Republicans.
African-Americans, a sizable population in Florida, have truly soured on Rick Scott – only 5 percent approve versus 80 percent disapproving. 66 percent of Hispanics also disapprove.
In a hypothetical rematch with 2010 Democratic opponent Alex Sink, Scott would only receive 37 percent of the vote. Sink would net 48 percent of the crucial Independent vote, and 21 percent of Republicanswould cross party lines instead of voting for Scott.
This level of poor job performance is even more impressive when you consider Scott’s competition:
Michigan’s Gov. Rick Snyder, who despite calling himself in favor of “small government” is wresting away local the power of local governments in his state;
Maine’s Gov. Paul LePage, who indicated he would punish certain cities for not agreeing with him politically;
So how did Scott do it? How did he manage to get nearly 3 out of every 4 Floridians to think he is bad at his job? We’ve prepared a little cheat sheet, in case you want to be a terrible governor at home. Stay tuned for Rick Scott’s Guide to Unpopularity!
This week in the House, we get to see it in all its disingenuous glory. Here’s how congressional Republicans plan to create jobs—by attacking workers’ rights and gutting workplace and environmental safety and health laws. They really claim this is their jobs package.
The first bill (H.R. 3094) is scheduled to be voted on tomorrow. It would deny workers the right to fair union elections by blocking the modest changes proposed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) earlier this year in the way union elections are conducted.
It gives employers new tools to block workplace elections by establishing several new waiting periods before an election can go forward and giving employers more grounds to appeal pre-election decisions by the NLRB. It also allows employers—not workers and the union they wish to join—a larger role in determining who is part of a bargaining unit.
On Thursday and Friday, House Republicans will set their sights on crippling the government’s ability to enforce current rules and develop new health, safety and environmental laws. The two main bills are the so-called Regulatory Accountability Act (H.R. 3010) and the REINS Act (H.R. 10).
In a letter to House lawmakers, AFL-CIO Government Affairs Director William Samuel says the RAA would “upend more than 40 years of labor, health, safety and environmental laws and threaten new needed protections.”
In effect, the bill acts as “a super mandate” overriding requirements of current safety health and environmental laws by making costs to businesses, not protection of workers or the public, the primary concern. Click here for the full letter and here for more from the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards.
The REINS Act would basically take away the right of federal safety and health agencies to implement new rules by requiring Congress to approve all individual major rules, without Congressional approval the new rule would die.
Knowing just how well Congress currently works, imagine what would happen when it becomes the gatekeeper on the regulatory process. Politics, not scientific judgments or expertise of the agencies, would dictate action while corporate opposition and influence would swamp the public’s interest and block needed protections.
There are also Republicans bills that would put a moratorium on any new safety, health, environmental and other rules and even rollback current major safety laws that have been in place since 1991.
BTW, Republicans say all these attacks on workers’ rights and safety and health and environmental rules would free up businesses, especially small businesses from a supposed onerous burden and send them into a frenzy of hiring. Wrong.
As we noted last month, a survey of small business owners shows that only 13.9 percent say the reason they are not hiring workers is because of government regulations. Why aren’t businesses hiring? To dust off an old chestnut— “It’s the Economy stupid!”
