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House Fulfills Promise to Move Working Family Legislation in First 100 Hours |
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| In its first 100 hours beginning Jan. 3 and ending late yesterday, the House passed key working family legislation. | |
Ending a dozen years of Republican control and agenda-setting power that slavishly favored corporate cronies, the new Democratic-led Congress made good on its promise to quickly pass legislation supporting core working family issues.
While the start of most new congressional sessions are postponed until after the president’s State of the Union address in the third week of January, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi convened the House on Jan. 3, and within the first 100 working hours, which ended late yesterday, the House voted to boost the minimum wage, lower interest rates on college loan legislation and rein in big tax giveaways to Big Oil. As Pelosi says:
House Democrats promised to take our country in a new direction, to change the way Congress does business, and to get to work addressing the real challenges facing the American people. All within the first 100 hours…the House passed measures restoring honesty and openness in government, re-establishing fiscal responsibility, strengthening our national security, and giving more Americans a realistic shot at the American Dream. The new Democratic Majority is committed to real and lasting results for all Americans.
The Senate now must follow up with votes of its own and Senate leaders promise to move on these issues. But the Senate is traditionally slower to act and Senate rules give the minority more of an opportunity to block or force changes in legislation.
We’ll keep you posted on Senate action and meanwhile here’s a brief recap of what the House has handed off to their Senate colleagues.
Minimum Wage
After more than a decade of Republican obstruction and Bush administration opposition, working families finally got a raise. In one of its first acts of business, the House voted to increase the federal minimum wage. The bill calls for a $2.10-an-hour increase in the minimum wage, from $5.15 an hour to $7.25.
There were no poison pills this time, as during the previous Republican-controlled Congress, which sought to attack the Fair Labor Standards Act, the 40-hour workweek and cut wages for tipped workers by attaching those measures to bills that would raise the minimum wage.
In the decade since the minimum wage last was raised, it fell to its lowest buying power in more than 50 years. During the House debate, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chief sponsor of the House minimum wage bill, said:
What so many of my colleagues made clear today in the debate is that after you have stalled this vote for 10 years, this goes way beyond the dollars and cents of the minimum wage. It goes to the core values of America and economic justice and social justice and fairness and whether or not every American is going to get to participate in the American economic system and also be able to provide for their children and their families.
Click here for more coverage.
Medicare Prescription Drugs
Turning aside a Bush administration veto threat, the House, on Jan. 12, voted to require Medicare to negotiate with the pharmaceutical industry for lower drug prices for the millions of seniors in Medicare’s prescription drug plan. It was a Bush-backed provision in the 2003 law that expressly forbids Medicare from negotiating.
Last fall, a report from House Democrats showed drug manufacturers’ profits increased by more than $8 billion in the first six months after the Medicare drug plan went into effect. Purchases under the benefit, offered through the Medicare health program for the elderly for the first time last year, accounted for one-sixth of the growth in sales, according to the research firm IMS Health Inc.
The drug industry has launched a multimillion-dollar ad and lobbying campaign to derail the drug negotiation bill, a bill Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) says will utilize:
The purchasing power of 40 million Medicare beneficiaries [to] allow the secretary to achieve lower prescription drug prices.
Edward J. Coyle, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, says the bill:
…is the first step to making prescription drugs more affordable for our nation’s seniors.
Click here for more.
Student Loans
Last year, the Bush administration and the Republican-led Congress allowed the interest rate on federal college student loans to double—from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. This week, the House voted to cut the new high interest rate in half, back to 3.4 percent in five steps.
The average college student graduates with a $17,500 loan debt to pay off and the rate cut passed by the House could save the average student $4,400 over the life of the loan and help an estimated 5.5 million students. Says Miller:
This will be an important first step towards making college more affordable and accessible for millions of low- and middle-income students.
Click here for more.
Big Oil
Last year, there was probably nothing more galling to workers and their families than watching gas prices soar to record $3-plus a gallon levels and seeing the oil giants’ profits rise to previously unseen heights.
On top of the profits fueled by the nation’s motorists, the corporate coffers of Exxon Mobils of the world also were fattened by the massive subsidies and tax breaks handed out by the Bush administration and Congress during the past half a dozen years.
Yesterday, the House voted to repeal those subsidies and reinvest the money into renewable and job-creating alternative energy resources. Says Pelosi:
By rolling back $14 billion in subsidies for Big Oil at time when they have recorded record profits, and investing that money in clean renewable energy, energy efficiency and alternative fuels, we will reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
By investing in American ingenuity, Democrats will accelerate the implementation of existing clean, energy-efficient technologies. We will promote homegrown alternatives, creating good paying jobs while bolstering our national security, sending our energy dollars to the Midwest, not the Middle East.
Click here for more.
In other 100-hour action, the House voted to implement the recommendations of the 9-11 Commission, back stem cell research and toughen its lobbying and ethics rules.
It looks like the new Democratic Congress is on the right path as far as the public is concerned. According to a new Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll, not only does the vast majority of those surveyed support the bills passed in the 100 hours, but numbers measuring positive views of Pelosi have climbed over the past month much higher than the marks given to one of her highly publicized predessors, Republican Newt Gingrich, in the first weeks at the post as speaker in 1995.
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