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‘Restore America’s Place in the World and Restore the Middle Class’ |
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The Fire Fighters (IAFF) union is hosting the nation’s first bipartisan presidential debate of the 2008 election season, and Mike Hall is live-blogging today from the meeting in Washington, D.C. Each candidate will speak for 15 minutes.
Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D)and Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) wound up the Fire Fighters’ bipartisan presidential forum this afternoon at the Hyatt Regency in Washington, D.C.
Brownback brought a message to the more than 900 delegates that he says centers on hope, growth and family.
He touched on the war on terror, border security, energy independence, a cure for cancer in the next 10 years and family values. The highpoint of his time on stage came when he wheeled a cart stacked four-feet high with big binders—the Internal Revenue Service Tax code, and suggested
We take this behind the barn and kill it with a dull axe.
Living up to his reputation as an extreme conservative, Brownback suggested implementing a federal flat tax that, unlike the current progressive tax rate, would chew up a far larger parentage of income for those barely making ends meet than for the very wealthy.
Up next, Richardson says he was told he had 10 minutes to tell nearly 1,000 Fire Fighters how to save Social Security, build a universal health care system, restore collective bargaining rights and end the war in Iraq.
I can tell you how to do that in four words—elect a Democrat.
He cited his track record on union issues:
Two weeks after I took office, I signed and enacted collective bargaining for all public employees—and I will do so as president. We need a national law that allows you to organize. I made our prevailing wage a union wage—we passed “fair share” that says if you benefit from union representation, you ought to share some of the cost…and I hope in my desk when I get home tonight there will be legislation to increase the minimum wage to $7.50 an hour.
As did nearly every candidate who took to the podium, Richardson cited his support for full funding of vital firefighter and first-responder programs, including putting some 75,000 new firefighters on the job.
He also touched on job creation, saying he supports tax credits for companies that create rural jobs and keep jobs in America. Richardson also called for penalties for corporations that export manufacturing jobs and called for trade agreements that guarantee workers’ rights and address wage disparity.
Biden closed out the day telling the Fire Fighters that without them, his narrow 4,000 vote election in 1972 to the U.S. House wouldn’t have happened.
There are three political parties in Delaware, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party and the Fire Fighters. You’re why I am here.
Biden spent about 10 minutes quietly and very emotionally talking about the three personal life-saving experiences he and his family have had over the years with firefighters. The first involved a horrific car wreck in which his wife and daughter were killed but firefighters saved his two sons by using the jaws of life. Years later, when an aneurism nearly struck him down, his local fire ambulance rushed him from Delaware to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Recently, lightening struck his Maryland home and seven fire companies responded to the massive blaze.
He says that, while his personal experiences with firefighters will always make them heroes in his eyes, Bush administration promises in the wake of Sept. 11 have evaporated as firefighter and first-responder funding have been cut and vital communications equipment has not been delivered.
All sudden you guys and women, men are not so special anymore….All the indebtedness, all the pledges, all that were promised, somehow got caught up.
He also spoke passionately about restoring collective bargaining rights for both public and private employees and says the Bush administration
is waging war on labor’s house…this administration is standing 10 deep to strip away 100 years of labor progress….
…There is a two-line job description for the next president: Looking for someone to restore America’s place in the world and restore the middle class to give them a fighting chance.
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How can you support this and illigal immigration these are in direct opation of one another. The middle class was distroyed by NAFTA and other such agreements of the government both Democratic and Republican. Solve the Illigan Immigration problem and the Middle Class will start to return.
Illegal immigration and NAFTA aren’t the causes of the shrinking middle class phenomenon. Illegal immigration and NAFTA are just tools used to drive down wages. The real causes are our economic and social systems. As long as we have a social system with a small group of people who own the factories and the machinery, and whose goal is to accumulate money and power, they are going to squeeze value out of the labor done by the weaker middle and working classes by paying us less for the work we do and charging us more for the products we make. I suggest you stop blaming desperate workers trying to feed their families - which is what illegal immigrants are - and start taking a look those fellow Americans who are screwing the hell out of you.