At Roundtables, Workers Demand Health Care Reform
This week, the grassroots movement for health care reform centered on working family roundtables where dozens of participants in key states testified about the need to fix the nation’s broken health care system.
In Gary, Ind., more than 50 attendees, including union members, faith leaders and civil right activists, came together last night to discuss the changes we need to make health care accessible and affordable.
Roundtables also took place in Wisconsin and Nebraska this week, with many more scheduled in the days ahead.
Working families say their big concern about the current Senate health care reform bill is that it would tax health benefits. The Senate bill includes a tax on health plans that cost more than $8,500 a year for individuals or $23,000 a year for families—but that’s not the right way to fund reform.
Time Running Out to Rebuild the U.S Economy
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The unwillingness of political leaders to act boldly for the nation’s economic future has put our prosperity in danger, and it’s past time to do something about it, union leaders and lawmakers said today.
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) told the closing session of the Building the New Economy conference in Washington, D.C., that other nations, especially India and China, have made a huge commitment to rev up development of efficient energy sources and threaten to leave the United States in the dust. Said Rendell:
Time is running out. The science and technology are there, but do we have the will? The time of American economic dominance is fast disappearing. If we have an America that doesn’t make anything, then we become a second- or third-rate power.
Rendell, United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) made up the final panel for the conference.
