McCain: Corporate Repat Tax Means More Yachts, Jets
Now we find out why many Republicans in Congress are pushing so hard for a law allowing U.S. corporations to bring overseas profits back into the United States at an extremely low tax rate: The very wealthy could buy yachts and jets. This from Reuters, quoting Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), sponsor of such a bill:
“If you brought $1.5 trillion back to the United States of America, it’s bound to have some positive effect somewhere,” he said at the Reuters Washington Summit. “I don’t see how it would not. Even if they buy more yachts and…corporate jets and all that, it’s bound to have some effect.”
The estimated $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion in corporate profits stashed overseas are untaxed as long as they stay abroad.
The ”repatriation tax” backed by McCain and other Wall Street-funded lawmakers has been tried previously—and a study found it did nothing to create jobs, as its backers had claimed it would.
So it’s good to know who really would benefit from it. The next time a bus route is canceled because cities can’t afford to pay for public services, we can all console ourselves with the thought that more millionaires have access to private jets.
DREAM Activists Energize Union Movement
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AFL-CIO Media Outreach Fellow Jennifer Angarita reports that DREAM Act activists are bringing new enthusiam and energy to the union movement.
Over the past month, thousands of undocumented student activists have escalated their advocacy efforts for the DREAM Act. Brought to the United States as children, DREAM Act-eligible youth, or DREAMers, are American in every way except in official paperwork.
The Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which is supported by 66 percent of Americans, would allow undocumented students who have lived in the United States for at least five years and have graduated from high school or received a graduate equivalency diploma (GED) to legalize their immigration status by pursuing a college education or serving in the U.S. military. Congress is expected to take up the DREAM Act as soon as Friday.
Now Is Time to Pass DREAM Act
In the highly competitive global economy, it doesn’t make sense to throw away the talents of our nation’s brightest and best high school graduates. But that’s exactly what we do every day by denying nearly 65,000 undocumented high school graduates a path to decent jobs and shutting the doors of higher education and the military to them.
The AFL-CIO Executive Council at its August meeting pointed out that these children—who were brought to this country by their parents—have grown up in the United States, attended local schools, and have demonstrated a sustained commitment to succeed in the educational system,. But immigration laws provide no avenue for these students to become legal residents.
Rather than being allowed to continue to excel in college as they have in high school, the Council statement said
These promising children will be forced into a job where they will have to either lie about their status, or work off the books. Neither outcome is just, nor is it good for our society.
The Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, would remedy this situation by allowing undocumented students who have lived in the United States for at least five years and have graduated from high school or received a graduate equivalency diploma (GED) to legalize their immigration status by pursuing a college education or serving in the U.S. military.
Labor Caucus at Netroots Nation
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Elana Levin, communications director for the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), joined us at the recent Labor Caucus during the Netroots Nation 2010 conference of bloggers and online activists.
We had a lot to cover at this year’s Labor Caucus at the Netroots Nation conference in Las Vegas last week. Some 70 participants took part—the largest-ever since we met five years ago at the first such national blogger conference. Participants included union staff, union members, political activists, labor bloggers, community organizations and candidates both past and present. The moderators were the AFL-CIO’s own Tula Connell and Matt Browner Hamlin of SEIU. We focused our discussion on young workers/young people in labor and how to improve public perception of labor unions.
Browner Hamlin brought up how the enemies of the netroots are the same pro-greed forces who are enemies of working people and the union movement. We have a lot of experience fighting against the corporate lobbies who sponsor astro-turf campaigns against the public interest and it would be good for the labor movement and the netroots to work together to stand up to the usual suspects that vex us all. Read the rest of this entry »
Attacks on Jones Act, Gulf Clean Up, Attack Unions and Our Allies
Right-wing radio gabbers, anti-worker Republican politicians and conservative think tanks are at it again. This time they charge that the Jones Act, a U.S. maritime law, is the culprit standing in the way of Gulf clean-up efforts. The Jones Act says that ships operating between U.S. domestic ports—for example from New York to Miami—be crewed, built, owned and flagged American. Most if not all other major maritime nations have laws that basically require the same thing.
Those behind the campaign attacking the Jones Act have two aims: To discredit the federal response to the disaster and to attack unions. They falsely state that the Jones Act is keeping ships that fly foreign flags from the Gulf operations and that the Obama administration has turned away offers of aid from many nations because the maritime unions want to skim up all the disaster-related profits.
Not true. In fact, the Obama administration has not turned down any offers of assistance because of the Jones Act. According to FactCheck.Org: Read the rest of this entry »
Hey, Democrats, Remember Us?
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| IUE-CWA Local 201 member Alex Reynoso protests a health benefit tax. |
“Jeff, you guys at the Union Hall aren’t listening to us! You’re talking out of both sides of your mouth. We’re fighting the benefits tax, and now you’re telling us to vote for someone who will tax our benefits! The guys here are voting for Scotty Brown.”
That was just one of the calls and e-mails that I received during the week before the Senate vote in Massachusetts. An AFSCME delegate to our labor council calculated the impact of the Obama tax on union plans and e-mailed us all to “Vote Brown!”
For a year and a half, we campaigned against the tax on our health care benefits. We trudged through neighboring New Hampshire with fliers explaining that Sen. John McCain wanted to fund health care expansion by a benefits tax.
Conservative members of my local Executive Board were adamant in saying the outcome of our health care campaign would be a tax on working people to extend coverage to poor people. Recognizing a classic Republican “wedge issue,” we argued that those without insurance include our own children. We could win a plan to tax the wealthiest and cut into the blood money of the health care profiteers.
Ultimately, we were wrong. In the last week of the Coakley campaign, the papers were full of the story: “Obama Supports “Cadillac Tax.” Sen. John Kerry cited an MIT economist who said the tax would increase wages for grateful working stiffs. I can usually figure out which chalkboard equation the classical economists are fondling: Absent merely life itself, they present a circular logic that proves itself. But the MIT argument escaped me.
House Health Reform Bill Debate Begins, and Other Health Care News
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The U.S. House’s historic health care reform legislation—which would dramatically improve health coverage in this country while cutting the U.S. budget deficit in the long term—is headed to the House floor today for debate. The vote on H.R. 3962 will happen later this week or early next week.
This comprehensive, fairly funded bill will provide millions of uninsured people with affordable coverage and put tough new rules in place on insurers to protect consumers who already have insurance. The bill includes real responsibility for employers, subsidies for low- and middle-income families to help pay for insurance and a public health insurance plan to compete with insurance companies.
Taxing Benefits: The Wrong Way to Pay for Health Care
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One of the principles that must be at the heart of health care reform is making sure it’s paid for fairly. Unfortunately, some members of Congress are trying to fund it in the wrong way—by taxing working families’ health benefits.
The Senate Finance Committee’s bill, unlike the bills passed by committees in the U.S. House, relies on an excise tax on health coverage, starting in 2013, to fund health reform. That’s a short-sighted policy that could hurt millions of people that health care reform is supposed to help.
A new report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows that, under the current Senate Finance Committee proposal, the excise tax would hit about one-third of health insurance plans within the next decade. This could cause millions of middle-class families to suffer a tax increase or to get their benefits pared back, the report says.
To the extent that workers choose less expensive health plans for themselves and their families to avoid the excise tax, they will be faced with higher out-of-pocket costs. All else equal, lower premiums translate into less comprehensive coverage. Less comprehensive coverage often takes the form of higher deductibles, increased co-pays, higher out-of-pocket maximums, or other increased cost-sharing.
State Fed Leaders: Air Tanker Contract Should Go to Boeing
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Awarding the $35 billion contract for the Air Force’s refueling tankers to Boeing Co. is the clear choice for “investing in American workers, American knowledge, American security, and America’s future,” the presidents of 10 AFL-CIO state federations say in a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
The letter, sent last week, urges the Pentagon to consider the impact on the U.S. economy and national security in deciding which company should receive the lucrative Air Force refueling tanker contract.
In September 2008, Gates, who also was George W. Bush’s defense chief, announced he was canceling the competition for the refueling tankers and leaving it to the next administration to decide. Gates said the competition between Boeing Co. and European-based EADS/Northrop Grumman was “too controversial” to be settled during the last four months of the Bush administration.
Beware of the Big Lie Bill
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Opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act in Congress made their Big Lie into a bill Wednesday, when Republican Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.) and Mike Enzi (Wyo.) introduced the so-called Secret Ballot Protection Act.
Before we go further, let’s clear up the bill’s false implication right now:
The Employee Free Choice Act would not—repeat after me—would not, take away the secret ballot National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election process if workers seeking to form a union wanted to use it. The Employee Free Choice would ensure workers made the decision of whether to select a union via majority sign-up (card-check) or via ballot process. Choice is good. That’s one reason why we called it Employee Free Choice—because it would enable employees, not management, to make the decision of how to form a union.
The alleged goal of S. 478 is to:
amend the National Labor Relations Act to ensure the right of employees to a secret-ballot election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board.
