Congress Passes Obama’s ‘Transformational’ Budget
On the 100th day of the Obama administration, the U.S. House (233-193) and Senate (53-43) approved President Obama’s budget blueprint that rejects the failed economic policies of the Bush administration, makes a major down payment on comprehensive health care reform and signals significant investment in education, clean energy and green jobs.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney called the budget resolution a
transformational blueprint for growing the middle class and making the economy work for everyone again. Now, more than ever, it is crucial that we build an economy that works for working Americans.
The Truth About Taxes
Have you heard about the so-called “tea parties” happening today? Honchos of the extremist right are orchestrating top-down events to protest paying taxes for a proposed federal budget that’s designed to stimulate the nation’s flattened economy and support basic infrastructure and public services. Ironies abound in these protests: In some areas, protestors are urged to take public transportation to the events. Key word here is “public,” as in paid for by taxpayers.
The media talking heads pushing these events are spewing a lot of venom toward a presidential administration they can’t control, one not beholden to special corporate interests. In doing so, their rhetoric is bordering on the treasonous: Fox’s Glenn Beck, who’s holding a $500-plate fundraiser for the San Antonio tea party, has begun advocating secession. (Hat tip to Media Matters for this and all its great work.)
Obama Unveils Budget for America’s Working Families
President Obama’s first budget proposal is a 180-degree turn from the past eight years. It’s aimed at rebuilding the middle class, reforming the nation’s health care system and helping working families educate their children, while asking the nation’s wealthiest to begin paying more of their fair share and ending tax breaks for corporations that ship U.S. jobs overseas.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says the fiscal year 2010 budget shows Obama is “serious” about repairing the economic damage of the past eight years and correcting the incredible imbalance between those very few at the top and the rest of us.
President Obama’s proposed budget takes us in the right direction toward creating an economy that works for everyone. The budget sets out ambitious—but achievable—proposals for bold new reforms in energy, health care, education and infrastructure, while also laying out a concrete plan to fund these programs over the next decade.
Obama’s Economic Plans Would Benefit America’s Workers
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The last time we faced a Bush recession, presidential candidate Bill—”It’s the economy stupid!”—Clinton offered voters an economic alternative to the failed Bush I policies and went on to create eight years of national prosperity.
Today, as the Bush II recession explodes, littering the nation’s economy with failed banks, Wall Street bailouts and disappearing jobs, Sen. Barack Obama offers an economic plan to steady the economy and bail out Main Street. (Click here to view Obama’s new two-minute campaign ad in which he details his economic plans.)
Speaking at the Machinists (IAM) convention last week, Obama said that for nearly eight years, the Bush administration—with the backing of Sen. John McCain, who has a 90 percent Bush voting record—sat back and watched as
corporate lobbyists wrote our laws and put their clients’ interest ahead of what’s fair for the American people.
