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Tell Your Senators to Support State Aid to Save Essential Jobs
The Senate on Monday will make one more attempt to overcome a Republican filibuster of aid to state and local governments that would save or create nearly a million jobs for teachers, public employees, police officers, firefighters and others.
Without such funding, the states that are facing huge budget shortfalls will be forced to begin massive layoffs that could cost nearly a million workers their jobs.
An amendment to the Federal Aviation authorization bill (H.R. 1586) would provide $16 billion for a Medicaid funding assistance program known as FMAP and $10 billion for teachers’ jobs. The vote is expected to occur late Monday afternoon.
On Monday, please call your senators at 877-442-6801 and tell them to pass H.R. 1586 with essential aid to states and school districts.
A recent study by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) shows that at least 25 states assumed an extension of the enhanced FMAP funding for their 2011 budgets. Without it, according to the report, budget gaps could grow by more than $12 billion in the current fiscal year and as much as $72 billion next fiscal year, forcing cuts in vital services and jobs to make up for the shortfalls.
Says AFSCME President Gerald McEntee:
Republicans continue to block emergency aid for state and local governments, funding that the majority of U.S. governors have specifically requested, and almost half have factored into their state budgets. Without this funding, nearly a million more jobs will be lost in the private and public sectors.
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5 Comments
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Re: Saving jobs.
What happened to the stimulus money that was supposed to save jobs?
Will they have to print more money to save the jobs? Over 13 trillion in debt now.
The 2003 tax cut cost about three trillion dollars, extending it would cost about three trillion dollars more. The “we all knew it was about oil Iraq war” Greenspan quote. Cost is $1.05 trillion dollars have been allocated to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Reagan created the first trillion dollar debt with Voodoo economics and now you still believe in Republicans transfer of wealth to the rich, I’m guessing!
I share your concern about the threat of government devaluation of our currency, so I propose the following steps to attack the problem head on:
1) Immediately and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, sending half of the trillion dollars saved to the states, and half to a jobs program to fix bridges, roads, schools, levees, sanitation systems, water systems, etc.
2) Abolish all sales taxes through a constitutional amendment. This will have the effect of eliminating most taxes for many millions of working people. The money could be made up either from the peace dividend or by a special tax on the very wealthy. (Don’t worry – it would not really hurt – they would still be real rich.)
3) Gradually eliminate all taxes – that is ALL TAXES – paid by the 90% of the population that works for a living (or tries to), through gradually increasing taxes on the superrich until the wealthiest in our society are only 100 times better off than the poorest, like back in the thirties, rather than 10,000 times better off, like today.
4) Legalize marijuana and tax it heavily. This will help the deficit in two ways, because hundreds of thousands of pot smokers would become disentagled from the legal system and released from prison, saving public money.
5) Allow every other drug offender the option of avoiding prosecution if they agree to train for work helping the public in some capacity, then provide them with training and a job if they do well and stay out of trouble.
The sales tax alone would immediately raise many working class families’ disposable income by 10-20%, and provide a tremendous boost to small businesses in every community in the country, while at the same time freeing them up from time-consuming paperwork and records. These ‘antitax’ groups are just mostly pawns of or fronts for the superrich, because they only decry taxes that the rich and big corporations pay, not the taxes you and I get weaseled out of, day in – day out.
The rich love sales taxes and lotteries – the taxes we workers pay, and they hate the little bit of taxes they pay – corporate, dividends, etc. They love the flat tax, which would mean even less taxes for them than anything, and would drastically increase taxes for workers.
If anyone really wants a significant and powerful reduction in taxes, focused on the folks who need the help most, then lets make a push to END ALL SALES TAXES NOW.
The Republicans, intent upon making Obama appear to be a failure by blocking all that he committed to doing, are hurting the people, the economy and the chances for real recovery. They aren’t just cutting off their noses to spite their faces, they are cutting their throats to spite their brains (assuming they have any). “Trickle down” economics didn’t. The rich are not funding new businesses, infrastructure repair, or educational costs (or the war, incidentally). They’re hanging onto their obscene wealth in the hope of garnering even more or spending it on luxuries that are made abroad or that are so seldom purchased the sales do nothing to stimulate our economy across the board. By implying falsely that Obama wants to raise taxes on everybody instead of only those making over $200,000 a year individually or $250,000 jointly, they have frightened the ignorant, ill-informed and gullible into backing their lies to the detriment of their own welfare. Like a bunch of lemmings, the rank and file seem willing to rush after these amoral, pig-headed false prophets not only to their own doom but the ultimate downfall of the country they pretend to love. It is cold comfort to know that if their efforts are successful, they’ll be standing in bread lines along with the rest of us.