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Bush Slaps Working Families with Another Veto. TAKE ACTION
Falling even further out of step with the American public—only 24 percent approve of his job performance—President Bush yesterday vetoed a bill to fund vital children’s and veteran’s health care, education, worker training, Medicare, Medicaid and other important family programs.
The bill was approved by bipartisan—but not veto-proof—majorities in both the U.S. House (274-141) and the Senate (56-37). It’s time for Congress to reverse Bush’s misplaced priorities and override this veto. The House will vote on the override tomorrow. Click here to urge your representative to vote to override it.
Bush’s veto came the same day a new report showed that the total price tag for the war in Iraq could reach $3.5 trillion. The war price tag for a family of four is $20,900 for costs incurred between 2002 and 2008.
Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) says Bush’s veto of the fiscal year 2008 appropriations bill for Labor, Health and Human Services and Education shows:
Once again how out of touch and out of step he is with the values of America’s families. Cancer research, investments in our schools, job training, protecting workers and many other urgent priorities have all fallen victim to a president who squanders billions of dollars in Iraq, but won’t invest in America’s future.
Bush claims the spending projects in the bill are “wasteful” and “bloated. Here are some of the so-called “waste” and “bloat”:
- $37 billion for school districts across America,
- $16.4 billion to lower the costs of student loans,
- $2 billion for affordable, high-quality child care for low-income families,
- $7 billion for Head Start programs,
- $3.4 billion for state unemployment insurance and employment services,
- $2.2 billion for community health centers,
- $340 million to strengthen mine safety protections and
- $183 million to enforce wage and hour laws.
Rep. Dave Obey (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, says Bush’s claims about the bill are neither “responsible” or credible.”
This is a bipartisan bill supported by over 50 Republicans. There has been virtually no criticism of its contents. It is clear the only reason the president vetoed this bill is pure politics.
Bush says he would sign a bill that is more in line with his original proposal. That proposal included:
- Cutting $291 million in special education funds,
- Eliminating Head Start services for 13,500 children,
- Reducing funds for vocational education by nearly half,
- Cutting $142 million in rural health care services,
- Slashing funds for worker training and safety by $722 million and
- Cutting $379 million from the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program.
Congressional leaders have offered to work with Bush on finding common ground. But Bush’s stubborn rejection of the original State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and of a compromise bill crafted to meet his objections shows how unlikely he is to agree to any compromise.
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3 Comments
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If you want to get any progressive legislation past the vetoing pResident and the filibustering Republican senators read this below:
I have started a new political party called the Liberal Democratic Party of the United States. You can read the web page at http://www.dmocrats.org and you will find that this party works differently from other political parties. Take a look and help enact progressive legislation and end the war where you work as a legislator and you vote on legislation.
Pres. Bush is just the other side of Pres. Clinton. They are one when it comes to Globalization and Free Trade. It was President Clinton and a Democrat controlled Congress that passed both NAFTA and GATT Free Trade Agreements. They joined with Senator Dole and Rep Gingrich with Rush Limbaugh in the background shouting go go go.
Nothing will be resolved for labor until we get to the bottom of this real story.
Who said we had to compete in a global economic arena as gladiators?
Did Globalization and Free Trade evolved in any natural economic way or was it driven by elite Dysfunctional Globalist Free Traders?
Who will tell the story to the people about the US Government sponsoring the moving of factories outside the USA starting in 1956. It was supposed to be a temporary program to last only a year or two but it never ended evolving into the impoverished worker Maquiladora factories in Mexico and then into so called Free Trade which really is not trade. Free Trade is about moving production from place to place for the sake of the cheapest labor markets of the world. Actually, workers are the commodities being traded. Workers are put on world trading block to compete for the same jobs down to the lowest levels of wage slave and even child labor.
This is history- where was all the political leaders over the years when this was all happening. For that matter where was the AFL/CIO?
As Adam Smith held labor as something “sacred” and the core of all societies. Neither party has honored this for a long time now.
See http://www.bizarrepolitics.com/new-world-order-or-disorder
http://www.orble.com/feds-moved-factories-outside-usa/7/
http://tapsearch.com/flatworld/
It’s time to put all the cards on the table and tell it like it is.
I’ve already taken action, but what do you expect from this admin? Now if the AFLCIO could just get behind a cmprehensive corprate protection agenda we’d get somewhere!! Look who he targets, special needs parents, children and their service providers are too busy to fight back. Head Start familesw are often to poor to even make to state capitols, real kids go to univerisities not trade school (heck SODEXHO and KBR can import plumbers and electricans). The only rurla people that matter are rich anyway. If you are not smart enough not to maim or kill yourself don’t work (and if it’s the bosses erro don’t sue the marketplace will take care of that). Lastly the frim of Marley & Scrooge had it right all along and it was just illicit drugs in London that messed up the system.