Pacific Progressive

Three Questions for Speaker Boehner - The Speech Today by the Leader of the House of Requires Answers

This material was created by the Center for American Progress Action Fund

By Michael Ettlinger, Michael Linden, Seth Hanlon 

Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner (R-OH) plans to address the Economic Club of Washington today to present his economic plan. Press reports indicate he is expected to offer familiar conservative proposals—cutting tax rates for high-income individuals and corporations. The address promises to bring conservative economic proposals in sharper contrast with those of President Barack Obama, who last week presented a plan focused on creating jobs and boosting demand, which economists estimate will create up to 2 million jobs over the next year.

Here are some questions Americans should expect Speaker Boehner to address in his speech:

Question No. 1: If the supply-side tax policies in effect now aren’t working, why will doubling down on them be any more effective?

Speaker Boehner should answer the question of why, if supply-side tax cuts are effective in creating economic growth, our economy isn’t booming right now. Not only have supply-side tax cuts not worked in the past but they aren’t working right now. Speaker Boehner’s speech probably won’t emphasize that while President Obama is in the White House, every one of President Bush’s supply-side tax policies is still in effect. Last December President Obama signed legislation extending the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 through 2012 in addition to other, even bigger tax cuts.

The Progress Report - Wed Sept 14 - Survey Says: Americans Want A Jobs Plan

This material was created for the Progress Report, the daily e-mail publication of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Click here to subscribe.

More Reviews Are In: The American People Want a Jobs Plan

Last week, we showcased some positive reviews of the president’s jobs plan from independent economists. Today, we look at the positive reviews of the plan from the American people.

Here’s the rundown.

What do people care about? J-O-B-S

• 65 percent told CNN that they’d rather see the president and Congress pay attention to jobs rather than “reducing the budget deficit” (29 percent).
• 46 percenttold Bloomberg that “unemployment and jobs” are the most important issue facing the country right now, compared to 12 percent who cited the federal deficit and 18 percent who said government spending.

Who do people trust more to deliver on jobs? (Hint: It’s not the Republicans)

• By a 46 percent to 37 percent margin, Americans trust President Obama over Republicans on the economy.
• Americans also favor the president’s jobs plan by a 43 percent to 35 percent margin.
• A second poll found that the public favors the president’s jobs plan by a 45 percent to 32 percent margin.

Congress Can Up Infrastructure Investment Now - This Part of President Obama’s Jobs Plan Could Draw Bipartisan Consensus

This material  was published by the Center for American Progress

By Donna Cooper

President Barack Obama repeatedly says he came to Washington to build consensus and work in a bipartisan way to get things done. His push for federal investments in infrastructure is his best example of living up to that goal. Congressional leaders in the House of Representatives and the Senate agree that we need to invest in repairs and improvements to our roads, bridges, mass transit, rail, and airports. Given the acrid political climate these days, bipartisan accord on a problem and a sense of how to solve it is refreshing.

The seventh temporary extension of the federal highway authorization bill known as SAFETEA-LU will expire September 30. The president’s speech certainly increased the pressure for the House and Senate to reach agreement on a highway bill extension before it expires. In doing so Congress should ensure the short-term highway bill extension includes the president’s proposed $50 billion advance on transportation spending above current levels. This can be done without increasing the federal budget deficit by pledging future gas tax revenues over the next three or four years to cover this cost or adopting one of the president’s proposals to close tax loopholes.

Conservative Health and Safety Bull’s Eyes by the Numbers - The Truth About the House Leadership’s Nonjobs Agenda

This material was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Kristina Costa 

Republican House leadership this week plans to begin holding hearings and scheduling votes attacking public health and safety rules and workers’ rights—masking their assault as a way to address our very real jobs crisis. Don’t let yourself be fooled by their rhetoric. Eighty percent of the regulations the GOP propose “repealing” haven’t even been enacted yet. Claiming that preventing these rules from being enacted will create jobs is nothing more than Kabuki theatre—at a time when the economy needs real action.

You should expect to hear a lot about “regulatory uncertainty” preventing businesses from hiring new workers. But the proposed rules being attacked by the House GOP aren’t new and unexpected—some have been in the works since long before the Great Recession. Evenbusiness owners say that these regulations are not standing between them and hiring new workers, no matter how often politicians claim otherwise. And they’re certainly not standing in the way of enormous corporate profits.

There will be a lot of numbers thrown around about “costly” and “burdensome” regulations in the weeks to come. Here are some other important numbers to know in the House Republican leadership’s war on regulation.

4: The number of regulations targeted by House Republicans that were proposed or revised by the George W. Bush administration

Farmworkers Take to the Streets for New Gains

by: Yana Kunichoff, t r u t h o u t | Report

On March 5, 2011, supporters marched and protested in Tampa, Florida in support of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers “Do the Right Thing” campaign. (Photo: National Farm Worker Ministry)

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), an organization fighting for the rights of farmworkers in the large agricultural community of Southern Florida, has launched its first major mobilization in the Northeast to pressure the food retailers Ahold and Publix to address human rights violations in their production supply chain.

The Impact of City-Specific Minimum Wage Standards

From the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

City minimum wages don't hurt the employment prospects of low-wage workers, according to a new report released today by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) that analyzes the wage and employment effects of the first three city-specific minimum wages in the U.S.

“The experience of the first three cities to implement city-wide minimum wages demonstrates that these laws can raise the earnings of low-wage workers with no negative impact on employment,” said John Schmitt, a senior economist at CEPR and an author of the study.

The report, "The Wage and Employment Impact of Minimum-Wage Laws in Three Cities," evaluates the effects of city-specific minimum wage standards in San Francisco, Santa Fe, and Washington DC. The authors used data from a virtual census of establishments in these cities, their surrounding suburbs and nearby metropolitan areas and found these policies did not have significant negative effects on the employment of low-wage workers.

The authors compared wages and employment before and after the city minimum wage with changes over the same period in wages and employment in comparable establishments in nearby areas that did not see an increase in the minimum wage.

The Wisconsin Retirement System is One of the Healthiest in the Country

By Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Analysis

Wisconsin's pension system is on excellent financial footing and among the healthiest in the nation, according to multiple independent reports and an analysis by the Center on Wisconsion Strategy and the Center for Economic and Policy Research. These reports show that the fund has consistently contributed 100 percent of the amount of money that actuaries calculate is needed each year. As a result, while the fund's holdings dipped in 2008 due to stock market losses, it remains one of the most solid in the country and has enough funds to cover the promieses made not only to current retirees but to those in the future.

Report - PDF

 

Infrastructure Matters: New Bill Invests in Our Safety and Our Economy

This article was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Donna Cooper 

It may be unseemly to start gleaning lessons from Japan’s tragedy. But the American political elite has a short attention span. The faster we focus on what we can learn from the tragedy, the more likely it is that elected officials will act. The resilience of this extraordinary island nation in the face of three simultaneous catastrophes—an epic earthquake, massive tidal wave, and the prospect of a nuclear meltdown—is admirable. But we should also note their wisdom in ensuring they have infrastructure capable of resisting horrific natural disasters.

Consider that the Japanese earthquake was 100 times stronger than the 7.0 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 Haitians in January 2010. Far fewer Japanese citizens will perish from the natural disaster directly, not simply because it hit a rural area. Tens of thousands of lives were spared because the Japanese invest heavily in their nation’s infrastructure.

This contrast between Japan and Haiti serves as a poignant backdrop for a national debate on the merits of Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Kay Bailey Hutchinson’s (R-TX) BUILD Act. This bill, introduced yesterday, establishes a national infrastructure bank to independently evaluate and issue federal loans and loan guarantees for the most essential large-scale infrastructure projects across the nation.

The True Power Behind the Wisconsin Protests

by: David D. Leeper, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

Protesters continue their weeks-long stand against an unprecedented attack on workers' rights. (Photo: drwMrk / Flickr)

The protests in Wisconsin have focused on whether the state of Wisconsin will take away the right of government workers to bargain collectively. However, government does not "give" workers the right to strike, nor the right to bargain collectively. That right is inherent in every human being's right to decide what he or she will, or will not, do. No power short of death can take away this inherent right. Gov. Scott Walker and his Republican Legislature may be able to rescind the rules that govern strikes and collective bargaining, but they cannot take away the right to strike or bargain collectively.

Workers have used strikes, walkouts, boycotts and even sabotage successfully to exert this inherent power. Our social contract is based on the consent of the governed and it does not take many to deny either an employer or the government that consent. The collective bargaining rules of the last century were developed by the government as a way to control, regulate and mitigate the power of organized working people. The rules have served us well and Wisconsin has benefited by avoiding crippling public and private strikes.

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Governor Walker destroys these collective bargaining rules at his peril, and, unfortunately, at ours. He may destroy decades of hard-earned rules, but he cannot take away the power of each individual to decide whether he or she will show up for work. North Africa has shown us even the most oppressive and brutal regimes can not take away the inherent power of individuals to take collective action that can easily paralyze any society. Social chaos will be result if Governor Walker fails to understand the lessons of the past.

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States Licens

 

The Last Hurdle for Corporate Capitalism: Deunionizing America

by: Basel Saleh, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

(Photo: Fibonacci Blue / Flickr)

The campaign to control private-sector union membership has been mostly successful as corporate US capitalism shifted its attention to the last hurdle to a union-free country: public-sector unions. Critical examination of the connection between money and politics is helpful to understand the explosive and sudden attacks on public-sector unions, especially teachers' unions. Public-sector workers and their unions put to shame private-sector compensation and benefits. They represent the last hurdle for the free rein of corporate capitalism over US politics. Workers in the public sector (both federal and state workers) are five times more likely to be unionized than private-sector workers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about one-third of public-sector workers are represented by unions (36.2 percent). The collective bargaining agreements in the public sector are not a threat per se to the private sector, but they are a threat to the power of corporate lobbying money. What is at stake is the total control by the corporate sector over the US legislative process, especially in the general election of 2012 and afterward. Labor groups are a major funding source in federal and state elections that offset the power of corporate lobbying money. Labor campaign contributions raise the cost of doing business for corporate lobby groups since they need to overbid labor groups' donations. Therefore, if collective bargaining rights, and with that over a 100 years of socioeconomic progress by the labor movement is undone, then the US capitol will be firmly in the pockets of corporate America. The money-politics nexus explains why politicians are in a rush to rein in public-sector unions.

Refocus, Re-Energize, Recall: Wisconsin's Mass Movement Considers Next Steps

by: Ryan Harvey, t r u t h o u t | Report

A young protester in Madison, Wisconsin, on March 12, 2011. (Photo: TopritzBuchananHofer)

I went back to Wisconsin this weekend to participate in and document what is being considered the largest demonstration in the state's history. On Saturday, March 12, up to 100,000 people marched in Madison against the passing of Gov. Scott Walker's anti-union "budget repair" bill.

After almost a month of deadlock, Republican senators introduced an edited version of the controversial bill last week, removing economic language from the original to maneuver around a Democrat strategy to block it.

Fourteen Democratic state senators had been camped in Illinois for three weeks, depriving the Senate of the basic majority, called a quorum, required for decisions involving budgetary issues. Their absence had blocked the bill from moving forward.

Indiana state Democrats are using the same strategy now to stall a copycat bill in that state.

Totalitarian Democracy

by: Richard Lichtman, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

What follows is clearly not a thoroughly articulated perspective, but a call to others to present their own understanding of the situation we face. 

Those of us who have wondered how fascism would come, if and when it came, did not sufficiently credit the possibility that it would arrive through the process of law and "freely chosen" representatives of the people. We were too much given to dramatic, filmic versions of the occasion, influenced perhaps by images of "body snatchers" from another galaxy, or aliens as they were depicted in "Independence Day." There is often the exogamous tendency to imagine that catastrophe must come from beyond our shores, whether defined geographically, culturally or psychologically. It is always "them," not "us," that is the source of our disaster. Even when the foreign intrusion took a mortal form, we were more likely to view our antagonists in ways that denied their actual humanity.

We have now come face-to-face with the fact that the agents of contemporary totalitarianism are people who, in many respects, are remarkably like ourselves and who - while they differ in their political perspectives - do, in the course of routine, daily life, rise up and lie down very much as we do, engaging the rounds of normalcy very much as we might ourselves. And yet, these are the same people who would, quite casually it seems, terminate democracy as we understand it, all the while insisting that they are actually fulfilling the requirement of a democratic system as it has been defined by law. In Wisconsin, for example, the Republican Party maintains that it was fairly elected by the citizenry and is now carrying out the mandate that has been imposed on to care for the general welfare as it understands that concept. And is this not a valid account of the events that have brought it to its place of power?

"When the World Is Turned Upside Down and Protest Is Privatized"

by: Joseph Natoli, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

"How funny it'll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downward!" -Lewis Carroll, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."

"It was like science didn't matter." -Carla Greathouse, Environmental Protection Agency researcher, quoted in The New York Times, March 4, 2011.

"The truth will out." -Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice."

Poll results right now regarding collective bargaining for public employees are a whole lot clearer than usual: 60 percent are behind the protesters. But those results have already been flattened to a wash: Americans are evenly divided, as Judy Woodruff of the PBS "NewsHour" remarked as a lead to her questioning of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. She also throws in the "fact" that public employees are paid more than private employees, even though a Berkeley professor on the previous night's "NewsHour" had stated and restated statistics proving the opposite. Fox News is solidly behind Gov. Chris Christie in proclaiming that what's going on in his state and elsewhere is class warfare: tax payers against public employees. Christie is on the side of tax payers and, thus, etches his populist credentials as he preps for the presidency. You have to assume then that "populist" and "class warfare" are what postmodernists would call floating signifiers," meaning that what they mean is determined by dispute, by a clash of power, by words in fact. Humpty Dumpty put it best: "When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."

Attacks on Public-Employee Unions Undermine the Middle Class

by: Dmitri Iglitzin and Carson Glickman-Flora, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

It's not like we didn't see it coming.

At the very start of this year, January 2, The New York Times warned us of the coming battle with a front-page story, "Public Workers Facing Outrage in Budget Crisis." The Economist, in its January 8 issue, gave us, "The battle ahead: confronting the public-sector unions." And the January Time Magazine, "Public Employees Become Public Enemy No. 1."

So, nobody should have been surprised when public employees became enemy No. 1 in Wisconsin, whose governor and Republican-dominated Legislature are pressing a bill that would eviscerate most of the unions representing that state's employees. 

Oklahoma, Tennessee and Ohio are likewise all considering legislation to ban various types of collective bargaining, and in Indiana, almost every Democratic member of the state's House of Representative recently boycotted a legislative session to stop a bill that would weaken collective bargaining.

What has not been clearly noted, however, despite the thousands of barrels of ink that have been spilled about this topic, is the underlying motive behind these attacks. Why, exactly, has the governor of the Badger State made destroying public-sector unions his No. 1 goal? Why are similar efforts being made in numerous other states? Why target public-sector workers and their unions? What put this on the top of the hard right's agenda? Especially because, as The New York Times noted, "A raft of recent studies found that public salaries, even with benefits included, are equivalent to or lag slightly behind those of private sector workers with a similar education."

Attacks on Public-Employee Unions Undermine the Middle Class

by: Dmitri Iglitzin and Carson Glickman-Flora, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

It's not like we didn't see it coming.

At the very start of this year, January 2, The New York Times warned us of the coming battle with a front-page story, "Public Workers Facing Outrage in Budget Crisis." The Economist, in its January 8 issue, gave us, "The battle ahead: confronting the public-sector unions." And the January Time Magazine, "Public Employees Become Public Enemy No. 1."

So, nobody should have been surprised when public employees became enemy No. 1 in Wisconsin, whose governor and Republican-dominated Legislature are pressing a bill that would eviscerate most of the unions representing that state's employees. 

Oklahoma, Tennessee and Ohio are likewise all considering legislation to ban various types of collective bargaining, and in Indiana, almost every Democratic member of the state's House of Representative recently boycotted a legislative session to stop a bill that would weaken collective bargaining.

What has not been clearly noted, however, despite the thousands of barrels of ink that have been spilled about this topic, is the underlying motive behind these attacks. Why, exactly, has the governor of the Badger State made destroying public-sector unions his No. 1 goal? Why are similar efforts being made in numerous other states? Why target public-sector workers and their unions? What put this on the top of the hard right's agenda? Especially because, as The New York Times noted, "A raft of recent studies found that public salaries, even with benefits included, are equivalent to or lag slightly behind those of private sector workers with a similar education."