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By Ethan Rome
Executive Director, Health Care for America Now!

While Americans clamor for jobs, House Republican Leadership has instead opted to hold its umpteenth vote to deny families and small businesses access to quality, affordable health care. Despite the GOP’s relentless opposition, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has already improved the lives of more than 100 million people.

The ACA is raising the quality of care, halting skyrocketing health costs, saving seniors money on prescription drugs, providing preventive care without co-pays, and eliminating the worst insurance company abuses. When fully implemented in the next few years, the law will provide affordable health benefits to 25 million uninsured Americans.

Instead of improving health care, the Republican repeal plan would take it away. Specifically, it would:

• Stop new consumer protections against insurance company abuses. Beginning on Jan. 1, 2014, the ACA makes it illegal for insurers to discriminate against adults with pre-existing conditions. Without this protection, 129 million people with chronic conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure and asthma would be vulnerable to being price-gouged or denied coverage, as they were for so many years before the law.
• Revive the loathsome practice of allowing insurers to deny coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. Soon after it was enacted, the ACA required insurance companies to cover children with pre-existing conditions. The insurers fought this before and after the law passed. Repeal would permit insurance companies to push sick children back into the uninsured population to spruce up their profit reports.
• End prescription drug savings for seniors. In only three years, the ACA has saved 6.3 million seniors $6.1 billion on their prescription drugs. Repeal would force elderly Americans to give that money back to overpaid drug company executives. The ACA also strengthens and protects Medicare and eliminates waste, fraud and abuse.
• Kick young adults off their parents’ health plans. About 3.1 million young adults are now covered on their parents’ insurance plans because of the ACA. Repeal would dump them into a broken marketplace that doesn’t offer them affordable, quality coverage. (more…)

A century ago, workers were a lot more “flexible” than they are now. Veritable Gumbies in the mills and mines and factories they were, distorting their lives to slog 10 or 12 hours a day, six – even seven – days a week.

Then came the 40-hour week. And weekends. And eventually sick days. And paid vacation days. Now, bosses at mills and mines and factories regard these rules as coddling and consider the workers accustomed to them as unyielding to corporate demands.

The GOP has an app for that. It’s called the Working Families Flexibility Act. This legislation that the Republican majority in the U.S. House is expected to pass this week would force some old-time flexibility into 21^st century workers. The forced flexibility act would award bosses the power to “offer” compensatory time off instead of overtime pay. Bosses, not workers, would determine when the comp time could be taken. The proposal puts control in corporate hands, obliging wage earners to bend over backward for bosses exactly like their Gumby ancestors were compelled to.

Trade unionists and labor rights activists died to achieve the goal of eight-hour days and 40-hour weeks. They were shot and beaten in the streets during demonstrations organized by the eight-hour movement. Their slogan was: “Eight hours for work; eight hours for rest; eight hours for what we will.”

Finally, in 1938, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) as part of the New Deal, which gave workers and families rights and security that previously had been exclusive to the wealthy.

FLSA enforces the 40-hour week with a simple measure. It requires employers to pay time and a half to wage earners for each hour worked beyond 40 in a week. That creates a financial disincentive for bosses to order work beyond 40 hours. That also creates a financial incentive for companies to avoid overtime pay by hiring more workers. That was a significant bonus during the Great Depression. (more…)

Sanjay Sanghoee
Author,"The Merger"

I won’t waste space in this blog discussing the harmful effects of the sequester. If the recent FAA debacle doesn’t give you an idea of how bad this is, or how bad it will get, nothing will.

Instead, I want to highlight just how crazy the Republican position is on this issue.

For the past four years, the party has made it its mission to obstruct President Obama’s agenda, and to whittle away at the power of the federal government so that the country can safely be run by special interests without the pesky intervention of the law. On the economy, the GOP has tried everything they can to drain the public sector of much-needed tax revenues and to channel even more money into the hands of their wealthy donors. After all, who needs public roads, subways, housing, hospitals, schools, and the police department when the rich can buy all those services privately?

But even knowing the Republican mindset, the party’s stance on the sequester has left me scratching my head. Granted, the Democrats are as much to blame for the sequester as their opponents, and the political calculation behind it has clearly backfired since our Congress is so dysfunctional that it cannot reach a deal even when confronted with a crisis. But whether you look backwards or forwards, it is the Republican obsession with austerity that led to this, and which is continuing to make it impossible to find a solution.

While the Republicans say they would cooperate with Democrats to repeal the sequester, what they want in return makes the whole exercise pointless. More precisely, they are willing to stop the spending cuts triggered by the sequester only if the Democrats agree to even bigger spending cuts and for even more public services! (more…)

By Jim Hightower
Author, Commentator, America’s Number One Populist

What fun! The latest political game sweeping the nation is called “Pee on the Poor.” Republican lawmakers in some 30 states – including Florida, Georgia, Indiana, and (of course) Texas – are competing to be national champions of this X-treme right-wing sport.

Being poor used to be considered its own punishment, but in a rush to pander to their fringiest anti-government constituencies, GOP governors and legislators are trying to add state harassment and humiliation to the burden of people in poverty. Bellowing such bellicose words as “moochers” and “takers” at their targets, these politicians want to force welfare recipients to submit to drug tests before getting any financial aid.

Curiously, corporations – which enjoy millions more in welfare payments than the poor – are not included in any of the Republican pee-in-the-cup proposals. Curious-er yet, the Republican pushers of this overbearing state intrusion piously pose as “small government” conservatives.

It turns out, though, that they’re not very skilled gamers. Florida took an early lead in the right-wing competition, but its drug-test mandate cost taxpayers more than it saved, because so few welfare recipients tested positive. A federal appeals court recently suspended the Sunshine State’s dark law, pointedly noting that there’s no evidence that “simply because an applicant for [welfare] benefits is having financial problems, he is also drug-addicted.” (more…)

Bill Scher -- Online Editor, Campaign for America's Future

Two-and-a-half months ago, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal addressed the Republican National Committee and said the following:

“We must stop being the stupid party.”

“We must stop insulting the intelligence of voters.”

“It’s time for a new Republican Party that talks like adults.”

Two weeks prior to those comments, Jindal proposed to “eliminate all personal income tax and all corporate income tax in a revenue neutral manner. We want to keep the sales tax as low and flat as possible.”

Such a plan, of course, is stupid.

Pretending that everyone can have a free tax lunch insults the intelligence of voters.

Mouthing numbers that don’t add up is not talking like an adult.

As it turns out, voters are not stupid. They vehemently rejected Jindal’s plan. Despite winning re-election with 66% of the vote in Nov. 2011, his job approval ratings have plummeted to 38%. (more…)

By Jared Bernstein
Senior Fellow, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

This morning’s events included a surprising announcement from GOP leaders who’d met over the weekend to discuss budget strategy.

According to an aide present at the weekend retreat, Rep. Paul Ryan, the powerful chairman of the House Budget Committee, brought a version of John Maynard Keynes treatise, The General Theory… as a joke. “He thought he’d crack Eric and John up, but a funny thing happened when they started flipping through the book,” the aide said.

Rep. Eric Cantor confirmed the account. “Paul brought Keynes in there as a goof, of course, but when he started reading passages, we were all inexplicably spellbound. Mitch [McConnell, R, KY -- GOP minority leader in the Senate] came in, saw us all listening intently and asked me if Paul was reading from the Bible. ‘He just might be,’ I heard myself reply.”

Reached for comment last night, Rep. John Boehner confirmed that the weekend turned into a seminar on Keynes. The party leaders even got economics Nobelist and Keynes’ defender Paul Krugman to join the retreat on Sunday, for an extended lecture on the macroeconomics of Keynesian stimulus.

“I thought it was probably a trap,” said Krugman, who nevertheless quickly flew down to DC and was clearly surprised by his reception. “By the end of the day, they were falling all over themselves to apologize to me for getting this wrong for so long. I really didn’t know what to say. I’m still pinching myself.”

Rep. Ryan began the day on Capitol Hill by surprising everyone in his caucus by denouncing his own budget, endorsed by the Republican-led House just weeks ago, as “a horribly misguided example of austerity economics” and “a roadmap back to recession.” (more…)

Robert Borosage
Co-Director Campaign for America's Future

Washington has been fascinated by Republican self-laceration since the 2012 election. Karl Rove triggered a circular firing squad by vowing to take out unwashed challengers in GOP primaries. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal begged Republicans to stop being the “stupid party.” Strategists say the party can’t survive as stale, pale and male. Tea Party legislators knee-cap GOP congressional “leaders” and well-funded political PACs strafe any who dare deviate from the party’s unpopular gospel. Republicans are even talking about changing “Grand Old Party” to something more fashionable.

Representative Paul Ryan’s newest budget will put every Republican on record voting to turn Medicare into a voucher, gut Medicaid, repeal Obamacare, savage investment in education and leave some 50 million Americans without health insurance. Not surprisingly, polls suggest Congress is less popular than colonoscopies, and Republicans poll at the lowest levels on record.

The reengaged president is pressing reforms on immigration, gun violence, gay marriage and climate change. These issues help consolidate his majority – the “rising American electorate” of young voters, minorities and single women.

All this has Democrats thinking wistfully about taking back the House of Representatives, holding the Senate, ending gridlock and driving a new surge of progressive reform.

Well, sober up.

The 2014 midterm election is more likely to be a debacle for Democrats than Republicans. It will take a true political miracle for Democrats to take back the House. Republicans need to win a net of six Senate seats to take the Senate – with six Democratic seats up in red states, and seven in swing states. Four sitting Democratic senators are retiring compared to only two Republicans, both from safe red states.

The Bi-election Blues

The party of a sitting president generally loses seats in a sixth-year bi-election in normal times – from voter fatigue if nothing else. Democrats face an additional obstacle because their base – that rising American electorate – tends to stay home in large numbers in non-presidential years.

As 2010 demonstrated, the 2014 electorate may be older, whiter and more male than the 2012 voters who re-elected President Barack Obama. House Republicans have exacted every edge possible in reapportionment, leaving only about 74 competitive seats in play in 2014. It would take a wave election to unseat their majority.

Worse, these are not normal times. For all the offensive extremism of the Tea Party-dominated GOP, there will be one overriding issue in 2014, just as in 2010: the economy. There the Democrats are likely to be in big trouble.

Voters tend to blame the party in power – the president’s party – for the economy. And the 2014 economy is likely to be lousy. Americans are struggling with falling wages and growing insecurity. More than 20 million people are still in need of full-time work. Most of the jobs now being created have lower pay and benefits than those that were lost.

The economy slowed at the end of 2012 even before Americans were hit with the end of the payroll tax holiday, which will cut an estimated $1,000 out of the typical family’s annual paycheck, and the sequester cuts that are likely to be more disruptive than expected. Growth is expected to slow to 1.5 percent this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. (CBO predicts a rebound in 2014 – but CBO always assumes the economy will rebound in the out years).  The richest 1 percent captured a stunning 121 percent of the income growth in 2009 and 2010, while 99 percent actually lost ground. That is only likely to get worse, not better, as growth slows.

The Democratic base is likely to be demoralized and disenchanted. Obama’s emerging coalition – the rising American electorate – is sinking together.

Blacks, Latinos, the young and the single and divorced have all lost ground over the last decade, compared to the country as a whole. Young people carry more debt. Blacks have double the unemployment rate as whites. Women have 36 percent of the wealth of men. African-American women have lost more jobs since the recovery began than they lost in the recovery. Meanwhile, Republican governors across the country continue their relentless assault on labor.

Democrats risk replaying the 2010 midterm debacle. When the Democrats gained control of the White House and Congress after 2008, they inherited an economy in free-fall. The recovery act, emergency action by the Federal Reserve and heavy lifting to prop up the financial sector staunched the collapse.

Obama, seeking to rise above partisan bickering, chose not to pound on the failure of conservative ideology. Worse, by the fall of 2009, he turned to deficit reduction, espousing what became the Bowles-Simpson Commission and calling for a freeze in government salaries in his 2010 State of the Union Address. His campaign team geared up to sell “recovery summer.” With mass unemployment, falling wages and millions of homeowners underwater, Democrats went into the election of 2010 seeking to tout what recovery we had. They were decimated. (more…)

By Robert Reich
Former U.S. Secretary of Labor, Professor at Berkeley

Prominent Democrats — including the President and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — are openly suggesting that Medicare be means-tested and Social Security payments be reduced by applying a lower adjustment for inflation.

This is even before they’ve started budget negotiations with Republicans — who still refuse to raise taxes on the rich, close tax loopholes the rich depend on (such as hedge-fund and private-equity managers’ “carried interest”), increase capital gains taxes on the wealthy, cap their tax deductions, or tax financial transactions.

It’s not the first time Democrats have led with a compromise, but these particular pre-concessions are especially unwise.

For over thirty years Republicans have pitted the middle class against the poor, preying on the frustrations and racial biases of average working people who can’t get ahead no matter how hard they try. In the Republican narrative, government takes from the hard-working middle and gives to the undeserving and dependent needy.

In reality, average working people have been stymied because almost all the economic gains of the last three decades have gone to the very top. The middle has lost bargaining power as unions have shriveled. American politics has been flooded with campaign contributions from corporations and the wealthy, which have used their clout to reduce marginal tax rates, widen loopholes, loosen regulations, gain subsidies, and obtain government bailouts when their bets turn sour.

Now five years after the worst downturn since the Great Depression and the biggest bailout in history, the stock market has recouped its losses and corporate profits constitute the largest share of the economy since 1929. Yet the real median wage continues to fall — wages now claim the lowest share of the economy on record — and inequality is still widening. All the economic gains since the trough of the recession have gone to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans; the bottom 90 percent continue to lose ground.

What looks like the start of a more buoyant recovery is a sham because the vast majority of Americans have neither the pay nor access to credit that allows them to buy enough to boost the economy. Housing prices and starts are being fueled by investors with easy money rather than would-be home buyers with mortgages. The Fed’s low interest rates have pushed other investors into stocks by default, creating an artificial bull market.

If there was ever a time for the Democratic Party to champion working Americans and reverse these troubling trends, it is now — forging an alliance between the frustrated middle and the working poor. This need not be “class warfare” because a healthy economy is in everyone’s interest. The rich would do far better with a smaller share of a rapidly-growing economy than a ballooning share of one that’s growing at a snail’s pace and a stock market that’s turning into a bubble.

But the modern Democratic Party can’t bring itself to do this. It’s too dependent on the short-term, insular demands of Wall Street, corporate executives, and the wealthy. (more…)

By Robert Creamer
Political organizer, strategist and author

There is a real, looming danger for the Republican Party — and it goes well beyond the Party’s failure to use the latest digital or analytic tools.

The dilemma facing the Republican Party today can be traced to the massive social changes that erupted in the 1960′s. The civil rights movement, women’s rights, and ultimately the gay rights struggle all spawned a backlash among many traditional elements of society. Sometimes it was called the “culture war.”

The GOP used the “Southern Strategy” to harness the fears of many white southern voters and to transform the Democratic “solid South” into a sea of red.

The “Moral Majority,” anti-abortion movement and religious right all tapped into that backlash. Anti-immigrant groups were born and some pastors railed against homosexuals. Even groups like the NRA used the sense that traditional values were under attack as a means of mobilizing voters to oppose efforts to curb gun violence. Appeals for “smaller government” often had their real roots in attacks on the Federal Government’s enforcement of civil rights laws, and “welfare” for African Americans.

For a number of decades the GOP establishment successfully used these social issues to attract voters whose economic interests were really aligned with the progressive policies of Democrats. Social issues became “wedge issues” that split apart the potential Democratic base.

Author Tom Frank, in his classic book What’s the Matter with Kansas, explored in detail how that process worked in one Midwestern state.

In fact, back in the 1980′s someone said that the Democratic Party was a coalition of rich people who hated the Moral Majority and poor people who hated Mutual of Omaha, and the Republican Party was a coalition of rich people who hated the AFL-CIO and poor people who hated the ACLU.

Here’s the problem for the Republican Party — from the standpoint of national public opinion the culture war is over — and they lost, particularly among young people.

Now I realize that there are still major active rear guard actions being fought in states across the nation aimed at limiting contraception and abortion rights, restricting the rights of African Americans to vote, forcing immigrants to “self deport”, and restricting gay marriage. But these struggles are, in fact, “rear guard” actions.

According to the Washington Post poll, in 2006 opponents of gay marriage outnumbered supporters almost two to one — 58 percent to 36 percent. Now the numbers are reversed, 58 percent for and 36 percent against. Among voters 18 to 29 years of age support soars to 81 percent. (more…)

Edwin D. Hill
International President, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers

Speaker of the House John Boehner and his party’s followers claim that if the Senate and the nation-at-large supported their policies, businesses would flourish and unemployed Americans would be headed back to work.

But over the past few weeks, those same policies have been strongly rebuked by a highly-respected lifelong Republican and a businessman celebrated for his profitable entrepreneurship.

Meet Sheila Bair, who served for five years as chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and Craig Jelinek, the CEO of Costco Wholesaler, one of the country’s top warehouse retailers, boasting a bigger market share than Sam’s Club.

Bair describes herself as “a capitalist and a lifelong Republican.” In an op-ed published in The New York Times, she slams Republican leaders for supporting policies that “[skew] income toward the upper, upper class.” That “hurts our economy,” she says, “because the rich tend to sit on their money — unlike lower-and middle-income people, who spend a large share of their paychecks, and hence stimulate economic activity.”

But Bair doesn’t just take shots at her fellow party members. She proposes solutions to rebuild the U.S. economy that make common sense. She dares to talk about taxes. But she doesn’t just mindlessly mimic the Tea Party’s call to cut all taxes, leaving worthwhile programs starving.

“It’s time to end the practice of taxing income made by wealthy investors in the stock market at a lower rate than income generated by work,” Bair says. “Republicans should put fundamental tax reform on the table and make it our priority to end preferential treatment of investment income, which lets managers of hedge funds pay half the tax rate of managers of shoe stores.”

Wouldn’t it be better, Bair asks, for the Federal Reserve, instead of putting more “cheap money” into banks and the financial sector, to finance construction projects to rebuild the nation’s transportation and energy infrastructure? “From Lincoln’s transcontinental railroad to Eisenhower’s highway system, Republicans have understood that investing in critical infrastructure projects creates jobs and expands commerce,” she says.

In 2009, Sheila Bair was named by Forbes magazine as the second most powerful woman in the world after Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. (more…)