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Harold Meyerson

By Harold Meyerson
Editor-at-Large of The American Prospect

“You campaign in poetry and govern in prose” is a pretty fair adage for delineating the poles of political life, and it most surely delineates the poles of Barack Obama’s presidency. Few presidents have been able to evoke visions of a decent society as well as he, and particularly as well as he did in his speech yesterday afternoon at George Washington University. The America that Obama argued for is a socially cohesive America, a land where we rise and fall together as beneficiaries not only of our own labors but of the labors of others and the collective labors of the nation, fostered, funded and in some cases performed by its government.

“There are some things we can only do together as a nation,” Obama said. “We are a better country because of these commitments” — to seniors, children, the sick and the poor, through Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid. “I’ll go further,” he added, “we would not be a great country without these commitments.”

Obama’s vision was compelling not only in itself but in contrast to Paul Ryan’s punching bag of a budget proposal, which, by slashing taxes on the rich and transferring the burden of rising medical costs to seniors and the poor, could not have been better calibrated to discredit the plutocratic libertarianism that dominates current Republican thinking. “This is a vision,” Obama said of Ryan’s folly, “that says even though Americans can’t afford to invest in education or clean energy, even though we can’t afford to care for seniors or poor children, we can somehow afford more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks for the wealthy. … They want to give people like me a $200,000 tax cut that’s paid for by asking 33 seniors to each pay $6,000 more in health costs? That’s not right, and it’s not going to happen as long as I’m president.” (more…)

Leo Jennings

By Leo Jennings
Political consultant with Rubenstein Associates

Sometimes clichés become old clichés because they have enduring value.  Here’s one that puts the consequences of the 2010 election in perspective: “Timing is everything.”  That is because the Democrats didn’t just lose hundreds of important elections here in Ohio and across the nation, they lost the future as well.

Of course some may argue that I’m being far too pessimistic.  After all, we have elections every two years, and candidates always say that the next election is the most important one that’s ever been held.  Often such rhetoric is pure hyperbole.  But the truth is that there are elections and then there are ELECTIONS—like the one in 2010.

2010 was one of those elections because people around the country not only voted for candidates, they also decided who would control the process of drawing new state legislative and Congressional district lines based on the results of the just-concluded Census. And, as any student of American history will acknowledge, the party that draws the lines—that “holds the pencil” to use the vernacular–employing a combination of gerrymandering, state-of-the-art technology, and the exercise of raw political power almost always dominates public policy formation for the next decade, if not longer.

In case you haven’t noticed, the GOP won the pencil and the nearly limitless power that goes with it. (more…)

Bill Scher

By Bill Scher
Executive editor of LiberalOasis.com

Last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce released a joint statement with the AFL-CIO supporting President Obama’s call for increased public investment in infrastructure, which read:

Whether it is building roads, bridges, high-speed broadband, energy systems and schools, these projects not only create jobs and demand for businesses, they are an investment in building the modern infrastructure our country needs to compete in a global economy.

That’s great. Now it’s time for the Chamber to tell it to all those Tea Partiers it helped get elected to Congress.

No outside group spent more to help Republicans take over than Congress than the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, dropping $31 million funneled from undisclosed donors on ads that attacked supporters of economic stimulus for spending recklessly and failing to create jobs.

Funny thing about that is: a major supporter of President Obama’s stimulus law was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. But instead of backing lawmakers who helped the member companies of the Chamber from suffering a full-blown Great Depression, the Chamber decided to punish them because many also backed reform of health care and Wall Street. (more…)

George Lakoff

By George Lakoff
Author, “The Political Mind,” “Moral Politics,” “Don’t Think of an Elephant!”

For the first two years of his administration, President Obama had no overriding narrative, no frame to define his policymaking, no way to make sense of what he was trying to do. As of his 2011 State of the Union Address, he has one: Competitiveness.

The competitiveness narrative is intended to serve a number of purposes at once:

Split the Republican business community off from the hard right , especially the Tea Party. Most business leaders want real economics not ideological economics. And it is hard to pin the “socialist” label on a business-oriented president. He may succeed.

Attract bi-conceptuals — those who are conservative on some issues and progressive on other issues. They are sometimes mistakenly called “moderates” or “independents,” though there is no one ideology of the moderate or the independent. They make up 15 to 20 percent of the electorate, and many are conservative on economic issues and progressive on social issues. He attracted them in 2008, but not in 2010. He needs less than half to win in 2012. He may well succeed. (more…)

Gilbert B. Kaplan

By Gilbert B. Kaplan
Former Deputy Assistant and Acting Assistant Secretary of the U. S. Department of Commerce

As President Obama prepares his State of the Union message, focusing on jobs, he should squarely face up to the problem of U. S. companies moving manufacturing jobs to China. All of the friendly handshakes with President Hu have not changed that.

Just a week ago, Evergreen Solar, a leading U. S. solar panel producer, announced that it was closing its Massachusetts plant, laying off at least 800 workers, and moving its manufacturing to China.

It’s a disheartening phenomenon, and by no means an isolated development. Even before the Evergreen Solar move, I heard the story of another U.S. solar company that was offered a low interest loan of well over $40 million by the U.S. government to build a plant here. The company was told it would take more than a year for the Department of Commerce to process the paperwork and provide the funds. By way of competition, the Chinese government offered hundreds of millions of dollars of interest-free funding, as well as free land, to build the plant in China, both to be delivered immediately. Where do you think the company will build its new plant? (more…)

David Sirota

By David Sirota
Political journalist, best-selling author and syndicated newspaper columnist

A sovereign nation investing its wealth in its domestic economy seems like a no-brainer, especially during a global recession. But in this crazy age of American politics, even that has become a controversial notion.

This is the subtext of a dispute that simmered beneath the pomp and circumstance of this week’s U.S.-China summit. As The New York Times previously reported, the Obama administration is calling on the World Trade Organization to use its power to halt the Chinese government’s wind-energy fund specifically because the money is “contingent on … manufacturers using parts made in China rather than foreign-made components.” The program, along with the Chinese regime’s broader domestic procurement requirements for wind farms, have helped the Chinese wind industry capture almost half of the global market for turbines.

Setting aside the bilateral wrangling over WTO arcana, China’s industrial policy success carries a basic lesson: When a nation couples public spending with incentives that encourage domestic corporate investment, an economy tends to grow its own wealth-building industries. That’s simple enough to understand, right?

Evidently, not within our own government. As “Buy China” policies now economically supercharge the world’s most populous nation, the White House and congressional Republicans have opposed many of the very “Buy America” proposals that might help us keep up—and that obstruction has come at a steep price. (more…)

Richard Trumka

By Richard Trumka
President, AFL-CIO

What kind of country are we? A country of isolated individuals fending for themselves or a country with shared values and a shared vision? A country with scant resources, fading glory and no choices? Or a blessed nation with the potential to do right by its people and be a leader in the world?

Those are the questions that confront our nation’s leaders, whether they acknowledge it or not. And while they wrestle with the questions, America’s working people already know the answer. We are a nation that still has choices. We don’t need to settle for stagnation and ever-spiraling inequality. We don’t need to hunker down, dial back our expectations and surrender our children’s hope for a great education, our parents’ right to a comfortable retirement, our own health and economic security, our nation’s aspiration to make things again — or our human right to advance our situation by forming a union if we want one. All these things are within the reach of the great country we live in.

But here in Washington, we live in an Alice-in-Wonderland political climate. We have a jobs crisis that after three years is still raging — squeezing families, devastating our poorest communities and stunting the futures of young adults. Yet politicians of both parties tell us that we can — and should — do nothing. And the Republican leaders in the House are instead using their first days in office to take away health care gains from 30 million families. (more…)

Ethan Rome

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

During the health care debate in 2009 and 2010, a serious issue emerged — the number of pages in congressional bills. I’m not kidding. The Republicans wanted short bills, and the health care reform bill was way, way too long (proving that it did too much and would end civilization as we know it). There was outrage across the country. Angry opponents of reform went to congressional town hall meetings brandishing huge stacks of paper. Then Minority Leader Boehner, foreshadowing his leadership priorities today, used a nationally televised address to condemn the length of the health care bill three times in as many minutes.

The extremists went wild. Rumors swept across the land. Some Tea Party types claimed the bill was 10,000 pages. Slate called the explosive stack-of-paper obsession “peculiar.” Ultimately, the New York Times set the record straight: “In the original version,” the Times said, “H.R. 3590 as passed by the Senate on Dec. 24, 2009, ran to some 2,400 pages, although with a very large font, triple spacing and huge left and right margins.” The newspaper went on to explain that, “With normal margins the document probably would shrink to about 500 pages or so.” Which meant the bill was not really that long when compared to other major bills, such as the financial reform law and past budget deals.

In the November mid-term elections, the Republicans ran on a platform of change, and change is what we got. Not only will the House Republicans vote to repeal the new health care law this week, they’re going to do so with a bill that’s only two pages long.

This is a triumph of conciseness, a 247-word beacon of brevity. The low word-count works especially well for the GOP, given the party’s unfinished “repeal and replace” campaign pledge. The Republicans addressed repeal, but they haven’t quite gotten to the “replace” part. That, we’re told, is a work in progress, and the question is being referred to various House committees to kick around for months.

In Sunday’s Washington Post, reporter Amy Goldstein noted that the Republican repeal vote is “the prelude to a two-pronged strategy that is likely to last throughout the year, or longer.” Great. Just what we need — another interminable debate on health care when the Republicans ought to be focusing on bipartisan solutions to create jobs. Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the new House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, said it “may take time” for the GOP to develop a health care plan. Upton, who has been in Congress since 1987, has had only 24 years to come up with some health care ideas of his own. Instead, he hired Julie Goon, the former top lobbyist for the health insurance industry’s biggest trade group, as his special adviser.

I’m not sure what the Republican “replace” plan is (or how many pages it will be), but I know their two-page repeal bill is a bad deal for America’s families, seniors and small businesses.

The Republican repeal bill will take away dozens of benefits and important consumer protections that are making a real difference in peoples’ lives right now. When the Republicans vote for repeal, they’ll be taking away people’s newly won freedom from fear of insurers denying their care, dropping them when their sick and imposing double-digit premium hikes with impunity. They’ll be booting young adults off their parents’ health plans. They’ll be telling seniors they have to pay back the $250 donut hole checks they received to help buy prescription medications and give up their new 50% discount on brand-name drugs. The Republican repeal plan will force nearly 900,000 American families a year into bankruptcy because of huge medical bills. And it will take job-creating tax credits away from small businesses.
Speaker John Boehner and the Republicans don’t want the public to know the truth about the Affordable Care Act and what their repeal plan will take away from America’s consumers. And you can bet the debate about repeal will be filled with misleading information from Boehner and the new Republican majority. To help folks see beyond the rhetoric, Health Care for America Now made a chart that tells the truth. You can read and download a printable, high-resolution version with citations here and below.

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Ethan Rome served as deputy campaign manager in HCAN’s 2009 successful campaign to win comprehensive health care reform. He has been a grassroots organizer, political activist, and strategic communicator for progressive issue and electoral campaigns for more than 20 years. From 2002until 2009, Mr. Rome directed public affairs for the 1.6 million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). He managed national communications and media relations for International President Gerald W. McEntee and the union’s priority organizing, legislative and political campaigns. Prior to joining AFSCME in 1999, Rome was chief policy and political adviser to the speaker of the Connecticut House.

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Follow Ethan Rome on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@HCAN

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This piece was first published on The Huffington Post

Dave Johnson

By Dave Johnson
Fellow with Campaign for America’s Future

The country’s huge debt was caused by tax cuts for the rich and increases in military spending. But debt-cutting recommendations from the D.C. Elite never suggest restoring taxes on the rich and cutting military spending. Go figure. Instead they suggest cutting the things government does for We, the People. The D.C. Elite is not We, the People. Let’s stop this in its tracks.

Just a week after the Senate voted to give a big tax cut to the rich, increasing the deficit by more than $800 billion, a few senators have gotten together to push the deficit-cutting recommendations of … two guys.

According to The Washington Post, Senators Mark Warner and Saxby Chambliss are leading a group of senators gearing up to push deficit-cutting recommendations made by Senator “Milk cow with 300 million tits” Alan Simpson and Senator “On the Board of Morgan Stanley” Erskine Bowles. They will push this as the recommendations of the full deficit commission, even though the deficit commission specifically did not recommend this. This is just a plan that two guys came up with. Or, as they described themselves, “just two clowns from Wyoming and North Carolina.”

From Reuters, Warner, misrepresenting the source of the deficit plan,

“Taking the commission’s report … we’ll be introducing that as legislation, a legislative vehicle, next year, recognizing in the process that a lot of that would be subject to change,” Democratic Senator Mark Warner said.

Wrong! Not the deficit commission, just two guys. (more…)

Richard Trumka

By Richard Trumka
President, AFL-CIO

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka today issued a statement opposing the Korea–U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS). See the entire statement below. Also, read statements issued today from the United Steelworkers (USW) and Communications Workers of America CWA.

AFL-CIO President Trumka:

For more than a decade, the labor movement, environmental groups, development advocates and others have advocated for a new trade policy that is part of a more coordinated and coherent national economic strategy. The proposed U.S.-Korea trade deal does not live up to that model and does not contribute to a sustainable global future.  We believe we must move towards a more democratic, sustainable and fair global economy with broadly shared prosperity for working people around the world.  Reaching that goal will require deep-seated reforms in current trade policy, as well as in our own domestic labor laws and other policies.

We welcome the tremendous efforts by the Obama administration and particularly Ambassador Ron Kirk and his team to address the urgent concerns of autoworkers and auto companies with respect to market access, safeguard provisions and some non-tariff barriers.  Ways and Means Chairman Sander Levin and Ranking Member Dave Camp also pressed hard for key improvements in the auto provisions, and we appreciate their strong efforts. These newly negotiated provisions will give some much needed breathing room to the auto industry, and we appreciate the hard bargaining that was necessary to win these important changes.

However, the labor movement’s concerns about the Korea trade deal go beyond the auto assembly sector to a more fundamental question about what a fairer and more balanced trade policy should look like. In particular, the labor movement has consistently and for many years argued that the investment and government procurement provisions in the Korea deal will encourage offshoring.  And despite the progress made in improving the labor chapter in 2007, it is clear that in both the United States and South Korea, workers continue to face repeated challenges to their exercise of fundamental human rights on the job – especially freedom of association and the right to organize and bargain collectively. This deal does nothing to improve or strengthen the provisions negotiated by former President George W. Bush in these crucial areas.  It is essential that both countries bring their labor laws and practice fully into compliance with international standards prior to implementation of the agreement.  And for American workers to benefit from trade deals, we must strengthen U.S. labor law to harmonize social activity.   Going forward, we hope to work closely with the Obama administration to address all of these concerns in any future deals, particularly the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. (more…)