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Obama’s First 100 Days Mark Major Wins for Working Families |
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It’s worth repeating—again and again: What a difference an election makes, especially an election in which working family voters pool their strength and efforts to put an end to the most anti-worker, corporate-beholden administration in modern times and elect a president who shares our values and dreams.
Today is the 100th day of Barack Obama’s presidency. In the past three months, Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and the Democratic Congress—operating with a Republican axe hanging over it—have made major strides to rebuild America for working families.
As AFL-CIO President John Sweeney stated:
Over their first 100 days in office, President Obama and Vice President Biden have laid down a foundation of change for America’s working families. They have taken big, concrete steps on the economy, health care and the protection of workers’ rights that will build a more prosperous and fair future for working people and America. We look forward to working with the administration to pass the Employee Free Choice Act and comprehensive national health care reform in the near future.
The Obama budget that Congress is set to pass this week lays a solid foundation to restore the economy, makes a major down payment on comprehensive health care reform and signals significant investment in education, clean energy and green jobs. The budget also moves away from the failed economic polices of the past and includes tax cuts for middle-class working families, rather than for the wealthy and Big Business.
Obama shaped and signed into law an economic recovery package that could create and save as many as 3.5 million jobs; invests in roads, bridges, mass transit, energy-efficient buildings, flood control, clean water projects and other infrastructure projects; provides state fiscal relief to protect vital services and prevent layoffs; contains strong Buy American provisions; and extends and increases unemployment benefits. He opened up the White House to new transparency, including launching a website, www.recovery.gov, where taxpayers can track how the economic stimulus money is being spent.
Within days of taking office, Obama signed two major bills that had been killed by Bush vetoes or veto threats. On Jan. 29 he signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, overturning a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision that made it virtually impossible for workers to challenge pay discrimination based on gender.
Just days later, Obama signed the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) reauthorization that provides health coverage for 11 million low-income children. Bush vetoed the bill twice in 2007.
Rather than engaging in secret meetings with corporate executives, the Obama administration is turning to working families for policy advice. The White House Task Force on Middle Class Working Families, a Cabinet-level task force chaired by Biden, is charged with developing and coordinating policies to rebuild the nation’s middle class and lift the poor out of poverty. It already has held several meetings and town hall gatherings to get input from working families and policy experts. Workers and others can share their stories and comment at the task force website, Strong Middle Class.
The same day the task force was unveiled, Obama issued three new executive orders reversing Bush-era, anti-worker orders. The Obama orders:
- Require federal service contractors to offer jobs to current workers when contracts change.
- Reverse a Bush order requiring federal contractors to post notice that workers can limit financial support of unions serving as their exclusive bargaining representatives.
- Prevent federal contractors from being reimbursed for expenses meant to influence workers deciding whether to form a union and engage in collective bargaining.
As AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said:
The Task Force on Middle Class Working Families and the executive orders are the first step in a long road to restore balance between workers and corporations
A week later, Obama signed an executive order overturning the Bush administration’s ban on project labor agreements (PLAs) on federal and federally funded construction.
The Department of Labor is living up to its name again in the Obama administration. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis—the daughter of union members—is a long-time supporter of the Employee Free Choice Act and other key working family issues.
Just yesterday, she announced that the Labor Department was moving to establish new safety standards for combustible dust and exposure to a chemical that causes a serious and sometimes fatal lung disease. The Bush administration delayed action for years on both.
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From a critical socialist perspective in defense of working class needs, for a reality check on Obama”s “Major Wins for Working Families”, please consider the article below.
There is no change from the Bush agendas of unending wars, global economic collapse, looting of the public treasury, massive destruction of the living standards of working people in the U.S.
Obama’s 100 days
29 April 2009
Tom Eley
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/apr2009/pers-a29.shtml
“…
But Obama’s first 100 days have made clear the right-wing character of his administration and the class interests it serves.
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In foreign policy, Obama has continued the militarist and aggressive thrust of the Bush administration’s policies.
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Obama has done nothing to curtail the anti-democratic policies, programs and institutions built up during the Bush years in the name of the “war on terror.”
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In the name of “moving on,” Obama has sought to block any investigation, much less criminal prosecution, of those in the Bush administration and the spy agencies and military who ordered and carried out torture against detainees.”
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The Obama administration’s class orientation has been established by its response to the economic crisis.”
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Yet Obama has had no compunction in demanding that the contracts of auto workers be ripped up and massive job cuts and reductions in wages and benefits be imposed. Obama’s intervention in the auto industry demonstrates his ferocious prosecution of class warfare in the interests of the financial oligarchy.
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After only 100 days of the new administration, workers and youth are coming face to face with the fact that Obama represents no change from the anti-working class, anti-democratic and militaristic polices of his predecessor. His presidency has already established the impossibility of effecting real change in government policy by means of elections within the framework of the existing two-party system, or through appeals to the Democratic Party.
…”
Just what this country needs is huge government control of private industry. Fuel the fires of wealth envy. Increase taxes on the poor and middle class with the cigarette tax (i am not a smoker and never have been).
It will only get worse for all working families when the Democrats get all the tax increases they want, cap and trade, taxing cars and trucks for the miles they drive along with the federal gas tax. I just don’t understand why labor wants to embrace socialism. The government needs to get out of our lives, stop spending money and reduce taxes for everyone.
The Republicans are just as bad when they passed the prescription drug bill. Our Constitution provides us the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, there is no guaranty of equal results.
Labor should have been front and center supporting the Tea Parties and helping to reduce the size of government.
to: visionary
The problem we face is not the SIZE of government per se (Big Government) or that all governments do in fact tax. (unless you’re and anarchist?)
The questions to ask are:
WHO is controlling the government?
To what purpose is “big government” being used?
WHO is being taxed?
WHO is NOT BEING TAXED?
Who is escaping taxes by moving taxes offshore?
etc.etc.
Government taxation policies inevitably REDISTRIBUTE WEALTH.
Conservatives inevitably scream about “socialist” governments supposedly re-distributing the accumulated wealth to “unsucessful” and “lazy people”.
The FACT of the matter is that under Bush and now OBAMA! there is a MASSIVE REDISTRIBUTION OF NATIONAL WEALTH FROM THE NEEDS OF THE PEOPLE TO THE A TINY CORRUPT MINORITY OF WALL STREET GANGSTERS, CORRUPT BANKERS, AND TO THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX FOREVER WAGING WAR FOR PROFIT, OIL AND PROFIT.
The wealthy do not want to pay taxes for public schools, public health, etc. and want PRIVATIZE and make a profit out of the essential public utilities and institutions.
There is no discussion on your television, radio or newspapers about this because these same wealthy elites OWN ALL THE MASS MEDIA! Thus every day working people are hearing Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, or getting the Wall Street Journal spin on PBS television and NPR radio.
You don’t know the economic facts of life because there is no
mass media easily accessible that tells you what is going on!
Labor should NOT support PHONY “Tea” bag parties that are staged for purely right-wing propaganda purposes.
The organized labor movement must sponsor more mass media, demand access to PBS and NPR, to communicate the now desperate economic needs of working people. Until this ideological assault on working people is repelled, change is not possible. Instead, the needs of working people to survive are considered “subversive” and “immoral” and “un-American”.
One small place to start is the World Socialist Web Site,
http://www.wsws.org
which daily provides a critical socialist perspective on current affairs.
The Tea Parties were not phony because it was a grassroots movement started long before any major news organization picked up on it. The whole idea is about government spending. Our government wants total control of our lives. I don’t want to pay taxes for public education or public health either. The individual should be able to spend the fruits of their labor not the government.
Labor should not support Tea Parties but does support rallies for illegal aliens THAT is un-American!
HMMM…What ‘visionary’ planet are you from? The Tea Parties were NOT phony ONLY in the sense that the people participating in them actually believed what the purpose for them was, no matter how erroneous their logic. They really believed they were being ‘taxed’ to death; however, the only ones who would be seeing a small, and I mean very small, tax increase are the ones earning more than $250K a year. Do you fit into that category?
So, you do not want to pay any taxes at all. Well, I do not believe there is any place on this earth where you can earn a living and not pay taxes. What do you think taxes are for? I personally do not want to see my taxes spent on waging wars and increasing our arsenal. What I do want to see is my taxes guaranteeing me a better quality of life, by being spent wisely and responsibly, so I can have a safe place to live (yes, our taxes support our public services - like law enforcement, fire departments, infectious disease centers, national health and safety concerns…), with good roads, good public transportation, and yes, good public schools. No everyone can afford a private education. Good public schools, offering an excellent education for all our citizens is the very best way for our society to improve. Without a good education, one cannot even do a job, much less get hired. Then there’s the matter of health care. When you have a society that has 50% of its population without health care, do you honestly think that is NOT going to be a burden on the rest of the population.
Well, I think you get my point. You have to look at the big picture. Everything has a cause and effect. The biggest problem with the Bush administration was that President Bush and his administration looked at the world and the needs of our country with blinders on, a very narrow focus, as you are now doing. President Obama does not have blinders on, but he has inherited a huge, monstrous set of problems. He is definitely looking at the bigger picture, but in order to effect serious change, one can only set the course for a new direction, as he had said in his “100 day” press conference. Maybe what has happened so far does not look like progress to you, and you want things to be suddenly, instantly better, but those who can understand and appreciate Obama’s plans for our future would agree, as I do, that he will get things done. Those who are hindering his progress have only themselves to blame, and, honestly, it is those who have participated in the “tea parties”, who have no clue what they were there for, are part of the blame.