Obama Unveils Budget for America’s Working Families

by Mike Hall, Feb 26, 2009

President Obama’s first budget proposal is a 180-degree turn from the past eight years. It’s aimed at rebuilding the middle class, reforming the nation’s health care system and helping working families educate their children, while asking the nation’s wealthiest to begin paying more of their fair share and ending tax breaks for corporations that ship U.S. jobs overseas.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says the fiscal year 2010 budget shows Obama is “serious” about repairing the economic damage of the past eight years and correcting the incredible imbalance between those very few at the top and the rest of us.

President Obama’s proposed budget takes us in the right direction toward creating an economy that works for everyone. The budget sets out ambitious—but achievable—proposals for bold new reforms in energy, health care, education and infrastructure, while also laying out a concrete plan to fund these programs over the next decade.

In unveiling his outline this morning—the detailed, line-by-line budget is due in April—Obama said the current economic crisis that’s destroying jobs and battering working families is

unlike anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes….This crisis is neither the result of a normal turn of the business cycle or an accident of history. We arrived at this point as a result of an era of profound irresponsibility that engulfed both private and public institutions from some of our largest companies’ executive suites to the seats of power in Washington, D.C.

The time has come to usher in a new era—a new era of responsibility in which we act not only to save and create new jobs, but also to lay the foundation of growth upon which we can renew the promise of America. This budget is the first step in that journey.

Obama’s budget sets aside more than $630 billion over the next 10 years as a reserve fund to help finance reforms to the nation’s health care system. To help pay for it, Obama will allow the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent to expire in 2010 and also eliminate other tax breaks for those making more than $250,000 a year.

The budget document calls the set aside “a crucial first step” in funding comprehensive health care reform and says the Obama administration will work with Congress to

achieve the common goals of constraining costs, expanding access and improving quality.

For working families, Obama proposes to make the income tax cuts and child care tax credit in the recently passed economic recovery package permanent. That will give 95 percent of the nation’s families a tax break.

The budget will make reforms in the nation’s unemployment insurance system, including the extended benefits program for long-term jobless workers. It also will include new funding for worker training, including new training programs for “green jobs.”

The Obama budget provides a significant increase for workplace safety and wage protections. It notes that for the past eight years, both the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Wage and Hour Division have suffered from cuts in staff while facing increased workloads. Those increased resources will allow the two worker protection agencies to

vigorously enforce workplace safety laws and whistleblower protections, and ensure the safety and health of American workers…[and] ensure that workers are paid the wages due them.

The budget also calls for new infrastructure and clean energy/green job investments to go along with those in the recovery package. The new jobs-creating investments include high-speed rail projects, modernizing the nation’s air traffic control system, enhancing port security, expanding access to broadband and rebuilding the electrical gird.

In education, the budget calls for increased aid for early childhood education, college Pell Grants and reform of the student loan program. It also makes permanent the $2,500 new American Opportunity Tax Credit that helps students pay for college and was part of the economic recovery package.

Says Sweeney:

President Obama said from day one that he’s going to tackle the tough issues quickly and decisively, yet people in Washington seem shocked that the president is doing exactly what he promised to do….Working families wholeheartedly applaud President Obama for leading the way towards a better and secure future for everyone.

Click here for a detailed look at the budget from the Office of Management and Budget.

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