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Fighting for Real Reform on Capitol Hill and Across the Country
Today and tomorrow, more than 100 union leaders and activists from around the nation are visiting their senators and representatives to let them know they urgently need to pass health care reform—the right way.
The exact shape of the Senate’s bill is in flux right now, and the union leaders are pressing members of Congress on three key issues:
• Inclusion of a public health insurance option;
• Making sure employers do their part in providing health care for employees; and
• Stopping a new tax on working family health benefits.
Union activists are also bringing thousands of handwritten letters to members of Congress to let them know their constituents want reform and are worried about a tax on benefits.
Last night on MSNBC’s The Ed Show, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker told host Ed Schultz that millions of union members have been fighting for—and expect—real reform:
We always know we have to fight for what’s right for not only workers in this country but for all Americans. And we are geared up and ready for this fight. We’ve made it very, very clear that we believe the strongest health care bill is one that has a public option, one that makes sure employers pay their fair share, and one that doesn’t tax workers.
We’re doing everything we can to impress upon Congress and the president this is what constituents and members are saying in our organization—strong public option. Make no doubt about it, we’re very clear on this, and we’re going to fight for what we think is right and for the strongest points in that bill.
A tax on health benefits could have a tough impact on millions of workers. As an example, federal employees who are part of the largest federal health care plan could see a benefits tax of more than $1,500 a year over the next ten years, a new report shows.
William Burris, president of the Postal Workers (APWU), says a benefits tax is the wrong way to pay for health care:
The excise tax will in fact raise costs and reduce coverage. We need health care reform now more than ever, but federal and postal employees and middle class Americans across the country should not be asked to shoulder the burden of paying for it. The Senate should find other solutions—such as those offered in the House version of the health reform bill—to pay for the reform that Americans deserve.
Here’s more news from the fight for health care reform:
- In the Billings Gazette, Jim McGarvey, executive secretary of the Montana AFL-CIO, looks at ways to improve the Senate’s health care bill.
- The Alliance for Retired Americans is launching a new TV ad in Maine on the ways health care reform will benefit seniors.
- An amendment that would have severely limited women’s access to reproductive health care was defeated yesterday in the Senate.
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3 Comments
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Incremental Change was not good enough almost 20 year ago when I wrote to the US House of Lords, Kennedy and Kassebaum, and was told by Mick Moran that my five basic pillars, er, principles were “too radical” and ny Dean Rosen, who would later go to work for a British Pharmeceutical Company, that the Senator said, “We have to do things incrementally”.
Here it is tweny years later, and I have gone far beyond just stating the basic principles.
Yet, all we get is BS out of DC. Of course, DC can not do it by themselves. I believe that is the first thing we must recognize.
I have been trying to get my health plan clear and communicated to everyone, but that is a very difficult charge (even worse than Anthony Mason
) given a limited stage and the frustration of non-response to my efforts.
Oui? Si?
See? We? d
Kelp!
I need somebuddy
Kelp!
Everybuddy!
– with the greatest respect to John Lennon
In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation. and Solidarity,
Mike Morin
Peoples Equity Union
Eugene, OR
(541)343-3808
Alas, next election cycle I am going to asked to trot out the old folks of my Soar/Ara group. Many democrats will be on the AFL good list to support.
Unfortunately, all the cards are in the dems hands and they are not playing them for working folks and average Americans. Many seem to care to represent big business and big healthcare rather than the general public.
In my state, selling the idea that the gutless and pro-big business dems is going to be a hard sell. This flop of a healthcare bill will add fuel to the flame for some in my group to suggest our members sit home and do not vote next election cycle.
This would mean GOP will win big in this state.
How do I sell “audacity of hope” to their smiling faces when appearently we have been short shifted once again? Healthcare is only one, how about Employee Free Choice Act, the “cap and trade” –more and more
With the election of Obama ( “the greatest con-man in recent history” – James Petras) and the Democratic Party control of Congress, the murderous class war against working people in the U.S. and the world has reached new depths of barbaric hypocrisy. George Orwell, author of 1984, should be “rolling over” in his grave.
Today Obama, now escalating the unending wars for vital resources and profit in Afghanistan and Pakistan, gives his Nobel peace prize speech.
After this Obama heads for Copenhagen to work against any serious attempts to combat Global Warming. The maximization of profit for polluting corporations, massive contributors to the Obama election campaign, far outrides the survival of humanity.
And now there is the murderous hypocrisy of the AFL-CIO and labor union “leaders” who have fearfully supported Obama and the Democrats in the corporate sponsored “health care reform” proposals, no matter how toxic it’s provisions to working people.
No matter how criminally corrupt the revised “health care reform” legislation has become, no matter the unanimous vote of the AFL-CIO convention delegates for “single-payer” Medicare-for-All, the “leaders” continue to support this massive attack upon the health of the nation only to profit and expand the greed of parasitic “health care” corporations.
The Democrats, in supporting Obama’s “health care reform”, propose to slash Medicare by 10 trillion dollars in 10 years. The Republicans, in a moment of magnificent hypocrisy, have decided to oppose this cut to Medicare. The Democrats have become such slaves to corporate money interests, that now the Republicans are hypocritically trying to appear the “friends” of working people.
This insanity must end if working people are to survive. The organized labor movement and especially it’s “leaders” must stand for the survival needs of working people.
* Renounce support of Obama and his “health care” reform. Inform the corrupt politicans that the AFL-CIO supports “single-payer” Medicare-for-all proposed legislation.
* Dump the Democrats! Call for the founding convention for a new socialist political party in support of the economic needs of working people. End the corporate looting of the economy and people of the United States by ending the corporate profit wars, by cutting the defense budget by 50 percent, by restoring the tax-cuts on corporations and wealthy individuals. All of these things are essential to restoring the funding needed to restore public health, public education, and a sustainable environmentally friendly economy.
The survival of millions of working people and ultimately the survival of humanity is now at the “tipping point”.
What side is the AFL-CIO and organized labor movement going to support?