Working Families Need Jobs; Senate Republicans Want Tax Cuts for Wealthy
With the nation’s economy sinking deeper and deeper into recession and more and more workers losing their jobs, Senate Republicans are playing a partisan game of ideological chicken over President Obama’s economic recovery package. They appear to be saying, “Give us even greater tax cuts for big business and millionaires, or we will do all we can to kill this bill.”
Says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney in a statement this afternoon:
Hardworking families across America are losing their jobs, their health care, their homes and their pensions. They desperately need an economic recovery plan that directly and quickly stimulates the economy—not a continuation of the failed policies of the past that gave tax cuts to millionaires. The future of our nation’s middle class isn’t a blue issue or red issue—it’s a jobs issue, plain and simple, and we need more of them fast.
It is time for those who are attempting to obstruct real change to step beyond ideology and partisanship and to think about the families and communities that need help now.
Will House Republicans Show Bipartisanship in Vote on Recovery Package?
Tomorrow we will find out if Republican House leaders will answer President Barack Obama’s call to show some bipartisan spirit. That’s when the U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote on an $825 billion economic recovery package that could create and save as many as 4 million jobs and move states back from the brink of deficit disaster.
This morning at a Capitol Hill press conference with union and business leaders, organized by the advocacy group Americans United for Change, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said:
It would be impossible to overstate the trouble our economy is in. We are losing jobs at a rate of half a million a month, real wages have been stagnant for far too long, and our housing and financial markets are in crisis….We cannot afford to let ideological differences kill or gut this economic recovery package. There is too much at stake.
After Eight Years, We’re Burning BushWatch
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| Up in flames: 8 years of Bush debacles. |
Today, we bid farewell to BushWatch. That special section on our website where you could always go if you were in need of a little outrage or indignation over—repeat after me—”former” President Bush’s most recent slap at workers, gift to corporate cronies or bow down to extremist ideologues.
Click here, here, here, here and here for our five-part look back at BushWatch.
When we first started BushWatch eight years ago, we were sometimes genuinely shocked at the actions of this so-called “compassionate conservative” who had spent the entire campaign convincing voters he really wasn’t that extreme.
For example, he picked a Labor Secretary nominee (she later withdrew) who said the Labor Department staffers who disagreed with her opposition to basic worker protections like the minimum wage were “Marxists.” Now, that caught us off guard.
BushWatch: First MBA President Leaves Behind an Economic Wasteland
Eight years of President Bush’s economic tax cuts for the rich and job-killing actions have devastated working families. Just look at the smoking crater of the economy he’s leaving behind—7.2 percent unemployment, 2.6 million jobs lost last year alone, home foreclosures up by 81 percent in 2008, a plunging stock market, failing banks. Heck of a job, Bushie!
Our BushWatch retrospective today looks at a few of his more notable moves—mostly aimed at helping the wealthy and corporate world, with little regard for the rest us. For a complete listing, go to BushWatch and click on “Jobs and the Economy” and “Tax Cuts for the Wealthy” in the top box.
In early 2001, the man who molded Bush’s economic brain set the tone for the next eight years. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill said U.S. corporations should pay no income tax. Further, he said the capital gains taxes for businesses should be abolished and “able-bodied” adults should take care of their own retirement needs and medical expenses.
