Tag Archives: John Boehner

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AFL-CIO


Can we trust Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives to fix our long-term deficit problems in a responsible way?

Obviously not. On April 15, they passed an all-out assault on vital programs, including Medicare, to pay for massive giveaways to millionaires and billionaires—while doing almost nothing to balance the budget. The bill was passed without even a single Democratic vote.

This “budget” bill is a fraud on the American people—not a starting point for debate or negotiations. It is no more of a deficit reduction plan than Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s taking away rights from workers was a budget plan.1

A budget that’s only passed the U.S. House of Representatives isn’t law. But the big danger is that the Senate will try to cut a deal that meets House Republicans halfway and worsens the imbalance in our economy. We can’t let that happen.

Tell your senators and President Obama to reject the House Republican budget fraud—and create a responsible 2012 budget that funds the America we believe in.

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Congressional Republicans have hidden the motivations behind their policies again and again. Here are the facts:

They told us it was about reducing the deficit. But the budget House Republicans passed does virtually nothing about the long-term deficit problem. It cuts $4.3 billion in spending while handing out $4.2 trillion in tax giveaways that disproportionately favor corporations and the rich. The net deficit reduction? A pathetic $155 billion.1

They told us it was about reining in out-of-control health care costs for seniors. But the budget House Republicans passed forces seniors to pay dramatically more for less health care—it does nothing to control health care costs, but destroys Medicare as we know it, replacing it with underfunded vouchers. Under the House-passed 2012 budget, out-of-pocket health care costs for a typical 65-year-old will more than double in the first year alone, increasing by more than $6,000.2

They told us it was about addressing the jobs crisis. But the budget House Republicans passed will eliminate an estimated 1.7 million to 2.2 million jobs over two years.3

They told us it was about creating a better future for our children. But the budget House Republicans passed literally takes food out of the mouths of hungry children by cutting food assistance for low-income families. It kicks 200,000 kids out of Head Start, cuts funding for elementary and secondary schools by 25 percent and slashes college aid for 8 million students.4

No matter what House Republicans say, the bill they passed—which does almost nothing to reduce the deficit, demolishes Medicare and gives $4.2 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthy—shows they’re squarely siding with corporate America and against working families.

Sign our petition: Demand that your senators and President Obama reject this complete budget fraud that devastates working families, children and seniors.

President Obama recognizes we can’t follow the path of radical House Republicans who are willing to kill millions of jobs, destroy Medicare, give away $4.2 billion in tax breaks disproportionately to corporations and the rich and do almost nothing about the deficit. He’s made clear he understands why Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are so important to working people.

But even the president does not have the balance right yet between spending cuts and the need to raise revenue from Wall Street, corporations and the millionaires and billionaires who have benefited for years from our broken economy, which has failed working people miserably.

Corporate CEOs have seen explosive income growth and declining tax burdens for years. And they caused our economic crisis. It’s time for them to pay their fair share to create jobs and fix our crumbling infrastructure. Once that happens, working people can do our part to fix our long-term budget problems. But it’s got to be done in a fair way.

Sign our petition: Urge President Obama and your senators to reject the outrageous House Republican budget bill.

Whether you’re a Republican, an Independent or a Democrat, I hope you recognize today’s corporate Republican politicians—from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to U.S. House Speaker John Boehner—have swung too far toward favoring corporate America at the expense of the rest of us. And I hope you’ll join us in opposing the House Republican budget.

Thanks for joining our fight for sanity in the federal budget.

In Solidarity,

Manny Herrmann

Online Mobilization Coordinator, AFL-CIO

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Energy:The High Costs Of Oil

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Although Wall Street traders and oil company executives are enjoying record returns, most Americans aren’t seeing the benefit of that economic success. Working families are still struggling to find steady employment while Tea Party officials cut taxes for corporations and services for everyone else. As the Progress Report warned a month ago, gas and food prices, inflated by international speculators, hammer the middle class. Rising gas prices are expected to inflate ExxonMobil‘s profits by more than fifty percent. Meanwhile, catastrophic weather fueled by decades of oil pollution is uprooting lives and adding to the uncertainty of the much-needed economic recovery. Rep. Paul Ryan‘s (R-WI) 2012 budget passed by the House Republicans compounds the threats by keeping billions of dollars in subsidies for oil companies while slashing investment in clean energy by 70 percent. While the GOP maintains a single-minded focus on subsidizing new oil drilling, even Goldman Sachs has admitted that “the price of oil has grown out of control due to excessive speculation.” President Obama has taken notice, laying out his “plans to address rising gas prices over the short and the long term” in his weekly Saturday address. “Instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy sources, we need to invest in tomorrow’s,” Obama said. “We need to invest in clean, renewable energy. In the long term, that’s the answer.”

CURBING SPECULATORS: “Speculators today have about 70 percent of the open interest in the commodity markets,” explains hedge fund manager Michael Masters, who has founded the financial reform group Better Markets. “Ten years ago – they controlled roughly 30 percent of the market.” Commodities “index funds,” “which allow investors to bet on the price of several commodities at once,” have exploded in value from “about $15 billion in 2003 to $200 billion in 2008, and are currently valued at over $250 billion.” What the administration and others should do, which they have the power to do quickly, is impose position limits, which would stop excessive speculation now,” says Better Markets’ Dennis Kelleher. The Dodd-Frank legislation signed into law by Obama last year requires the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to set “position limits” on speculation, but the agency is planning to implement its proposed limits only by “early 2012, a year after the deadline set by lawmakers.” The CFTC has found that there are only about ten energy traders who are large enough to be affected by these position limits. “On CBS’s Face The Nation, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) “called for an aggressive federal probe — including a possible grand jury — into whether rising gasoline prices stem from illegal manipulation of energy markets.” On Thursday, Obama “unveiled a new working group to combat any fraud or manipulation in the oil and energy markets” led by the CFTC and the Department of Justice. “If we can work more closely with the DOJ folks, we may be able to put more people in jail,” CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton told The Huffington Post. By swamping the market, even without any deliberate fraud, these oceans of money swamp the traders who actually need to buy and sell the underlying commodities, such as oil producers and gasoline distributors. “A ban of both commodity index funds and exchange-traded funds that use commodity futures, removing much of this investment, would be an important and instantly measurable first step,” believes former oil trader Daniel Dicker. At a minimum, a transaction fee on speculators would keep the oil markets more reliable.

ENDING DIRTY SUBSIDIES: In his weekly address, Obama reiterated his call to “end the $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies we give to the oil and gas companies each year.” Americans of all stripes recognize that tax breaks and giveaways to oil companies need to be eliminated, despite the industry propaganda that these subsidies are needed to prevent high energy prices. When asked about massive subsidies given to the oil industry, even Tea Party activists have agreed with progressives that there is a structural imbalance in the political system towards corporate power. Many of the oil-industry subsidies come in the form of passing corporate risks onto American families: there have been no laws passed to protect our nation from oil disasters like BP’s, and companies like Koch Industries enjoy the multi-billion dollar subsidy of being able to emit millions of tons of carbon pollution for free — while communities foot the bill for our increasingly dangerous climate. Far from raising prices at the pump, eliminating these subsidies would instead reduce oil companies’ outsized profits and corporate paydays. If this Congress wants to take on the pain at the pump, it will support legislation to build a national infrastructure of electric charging stations for electric vehicles, deploy 21st-century high-speed rail, and curb oil profiteering by Wall Street.

GOP CARRIES WATER FOR BIG OIL: The GOP answer to Wall Street and Big Oil taking over our economic future is to give them even more power. The Ryan budget slashes the CFTC budget by nearly two-thirds, and would “slash investments in the research, development, and deployment of the clean energy technologies of the future.” As they work to lose the future, they also plan to roll out a new iteration of the “drill baby drill” marketing campaign in May. “House Republicans are planning bill introductions, hearings, markups and floor votes on legislation aimed at expanding domestic oil production in response to high gasoline prices.” “Now, the GOP controls the floor agenda and plans to use it when they get back from the two-week spring recess.” According to House Speaker John Boehner’s spokesman, “The White House and the rest of the Democrats who run Washington are terrified about the political impact of gas prices, because many of their policies — like the national energy tax — are explicitly designed to raise energy prices.” In reality, big oil profits go up with higher gas prices, and the only “national energy tax” is the cost of our national oil dependence. Speaker Boehner‘s office has the “concern” that Democrats are calling for investigations of market fraud “to distract from the real issue” of the “need to increase the supply of American energy.” In other words, they’re worried that the American public agree that oil companies and Wall Street need to be reined in, not left in charge of our energy policy. Even members of Boehner’s own caucus — like Rep. Tom Graves (R-GA) and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) — admit the time has come to cut oil subsidies

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Budget: Shutdown Averted


Late Friday night, just minutes from an impending government shutdown, congressional negotiators and President Barack Obama reached a deal to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year, cutting $38.5 billion under current funding levels. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and other Republicans hailed the deal as an important step to reining in the deficit, while Obama lauded it as a bipartisan achievement, comparing it to the compromise he helped broker late last year on extending the Bush tax cuts for two years. “A few months ago, I was able to sign a tax cut for American families because both parties worked through their differences and found common ground,” he said in a statement. “Now the same cooperation will make possible the biggest annual spending cut in history, and it’s my sincere hope that we can continue to come together as we face the many difficult challenges that lie ahead, from creating jobs and growing our economy to educating our children and reducing our deficit.” To keep the government running, lawmakers passed a short-term spending measure and are preparing to vote on a final agreement later this week.

CUTS DWARFED BY BUSH TAX CUTS: While the details of the deal are still emerging — the agreement would cut $13 billion from programs at the Departments of Labor, Education and Health and Human Services, $1 billion more in an across-the-board cut from domestic agencies and $8 billion in cuts to the State Department and foreign aid — the New York Times reports that negotiations came down to the wire, as Republicans sought to move the goal posts on negotiation and press for greater cuts. On Thursday night, for instance, Obama believed that he “had made a breakthrough in the negotiations, when he told Mr. Boehner that he would sign on to spending cuts of roughly $38 billion — $5 billion more than he had offered two days earlier.” But the following morning, Boehner reneged, saying that he would demand “north of the amount we’d offered the night before.” The demand led to a heated exchange between Obama and Boehner in which the President said, “I’m the president of the United States, you’re the speaker of the House. We’re the two most responsible leaders right now. We had a conversation last night, and what I’m hearing now doesn’t reflect that.” The final agreement of $38.5 billion in spending cuts, however, ia still dwarfed by the lost revenue from extending the Bush tax cuts, which the Republicans loudly championed. That policy deprives the government of roughly $150 billion in revenue over a similar period of time. As Alex Seitz-Wald points out, “So while they very nearly shut down the government to extract painful spending cuts, Republicans had already wiped out those spending cuts many times over with the revenue lost from extending the Bush tax cuts.”

RIDERS REMAIN: Despite securing a significant concession on spending, House Republicans were forced to drop over 40 riders or policy demands — including Rep. Mike Pence’s (R-IN) amendment to defund Planned Parenthood and another provision that would have blocked standards to protect public health from carbon dioxide, mercury, and other toxic pollutants — from the short-term budget bill. Instead, they secured a guarantee that the issue would receive an up or down vote on the Senate floor and kept provision that would prohibit the District of Columbia from using its own funds to pay for abortion services. The rider would not save any additional federal dollars, however, since it only prohibits the District from spending its own locally-raised tax dollars on the procedure, reviving a 13-year ban President Obama overturned in 2009. Washington D.C.’s Congressional delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), condemned the provision and warned that Republicans may still advance an unresolved measure that would ban on the city from running needle exchange programs and would actually increase spending (a study from Yale University found that needle exchange can reduce government spending by millions of dollars by preventing disease transmission.) “The District is still on the auction block during the final negotiations over the budget bill because Republicans want a ban on the use of D.C. local funds for needle-exchange programs in the package, which would guarantee the spread of HIV/AIDS among our citizens,” Norton said. Another rider secured by Republicans would also reinstate a school voucher program in D.C. and make small changes in the Affordable Care Act.

THE NEXT FIGHT: Over the weekend, Republicans reiterated that the short-term funding negotiations were only a dress rehearsal for the looming fight over an increase in the debt ceiling. Boehner insisted on Saturday that there is “not a chance” Republicans will deliver a “clean bill” to raise the debt ceiling and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) predicted that “the White House and the president will actually capitulate” and agree to “spending caps, entitlement reforms, budget process reforms ” in the debt limit increase. It is widely understood, however, that failing to raise the debt ceiling on schedule could have immediate and dire consequences for government services and the global economy. As the Center for American Progress’ David Min has pointed out, it would force an immediate cut of approximately 40 percent to all activities of the federal government — a severe blow to our already struggling economy. It could also erode confidence in U.S. Treasury bonds, causing interest rates to spike and the possible destabilization of global financial markets. If investor confidence is eroded and Treasury rates go up, the higher costs of debt maintenance would counteract (and potentially could even be larger than) any spending cuts at issue. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has acknowledged as much, as has Boehner, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), and conservative columnist George Will . This has not prevented many GOP lawmakers from threatening to vote down an increase in the debt limit if their partisan demands are not met. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has said there can be no increase without entitlement cuts and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) demanded an implicit 44 percent cut in all government programs in exchange for an increase.

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Congress: Shutdown Fever

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The federal government is now hours away from a shutdown, after House Republicans once again refused to compromise with Senate Democrats and the White House on funding for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year. The third White House meeting in two days failed to produce a deal last night, with Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) releasing a joint statement saying, “We have narrowed the issues, however, we have not yet reached an agreement. We will continue to work through the night to attempt to resolve our remaining differences.” President Obama added that he is “not yet prepared to express wild optimism” about avoiding a shutdown, even though the parties are about $5 billion apart when it comes to the level of spending cuts they say are acceptable (which “amounts to one-half of 1 percent of the trillion dollars in spending”). Unless the situation is resolved by midnight, the shutdown will go into effect, marking the first time that the federal government has shut down in 15 years.

NOT ABOUT THE MONEY : Reid took to the Senate floor early yesterday to announce that the parties had essentially settled on a level of spending cuts for the remainder of FY2011, and that the holdup is because of various policy “riders” that Republicans want to include on the funding bill, including one cutting funding for Planned Parenthood and another blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases. “The two main issues that are holding this matter up are the choice of women, reproductive rights, and clean air,” Reid said. Republicans attached more than 80 riders to their initial funding bill, including several that actually increase federal spending . “We will continue to insist that the policy riders passed in H.R. 1 are on the table. It’s just as important to many of our members as the spending cuts themselves,” Boehner said. If it occurs, this would not be the first time that the GOP has shut down the government over matters unrelated to the budget. In fact, “It was this same insistence on unrelated policy riders by Republicans that prompted the last government shutdown in 1995.” As the Denver Post reported at the time, “[Speaker] Gingrich and [Senate Majority Leader] Dole are offering the funding and higher-debt bills but have loaded them with ‘riders’ such as the Medicare bill that the president won’t accept and with other items such as limits on appeals by death-row inmates.” Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has urged his party to drop the policy riders in order to avoid a shutdown. “And my recommendation to my friends in the House is, you know, it’s highly unlikely many riders are going to get passed…so why don’t you take the spending [cuts] and let’s get on to the budget,” he said. Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID) had the same message for his GOP colleagues. “If it is repeal Obamacare, do we think in two weeks or a month Obama’s going to go — ‘you guys were right, and sign onto it?’ I don’t think so. So you better look at what your goals are and what you’re willing to accept or don’t do it,” Simpson said.

PROCEDURAL SHENANIGANS : Democrats, after bringing H.R. 1 up for a vote in the Senate and defeating it, eventually agreed to more than $30 billion in cuts, essentially conceding to the GOP’s original position. But House Republicans, in an attempt to shift blame for the shutdown, have been passing various pieces of legislation that they know have no chance of becoming law. The first simply reasserted that, if the Senate approved, H.R. 1 would become law. Yesterday, the House Republicans tried a different tactic, bringing to the floor another stopgap funding bill that would keep the government open for one week. However, the Republicans attached several poison pills to the measure that they knew were unacceptable to Senate Democrats and the administration, including a restriction against the District of Columbia using its own local funds for abortions and several anti-environmental provisions, plus an extra $12 billion in cuts. The White House issued a veto threat against the bill, calling it “a distraction from the real work that would bring us closer to a reasonable compromise.” Because the stopgap measure would have funded the military for the rest of the fiscal year, House Republicans then decried the President for opposing a “troop funding bill.” Of course, they left out of their rhetoric the fact that House Democrats “tried three times to pass a measure that would ensure the troops received pay,” and that the clean continuing resolution requested by the White House would also fully fund the military.

HURTING THE ECONOMY : If the government shuts down tonight, all government functions deemed non-essential will be stopped in their tracks. But non-essential describes a wide variety of important government functions, which, if they stop, can do economic harm to individuals, businesses, and the wider economy. According to analysts at Goldman Sachs, a shutdown “could shave 0.2 percent off the growth of Gross Domestic Product for every week it continued.” Since it would come during tax season, a shutdown would also “delay $42.1 billion of refunds to about 14 million U.S. taxpayers,” the majority of whom are middle-class or low-income. A shutdown could possibly increase the deficit by increasing the costs of funding the nation’s debt (which it did in 1995). $50 million in small business loans per day from the Small Business Administration will be blocked, workplace safety complaints will go unanswered, and insider trading investigations will grind to a halt. And, of course, 800,000 federal employees will be furloughed, costing the Treasury about $174 million per day in back wages. A shutdown also threatens the already fragile housing market, as “the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development‘s Federal Housing Administration — which insures and guarantees a large number of single-family mortgages and even more rental and multifamily properties — would cease operations,” thereby preventing home closings and the issuance of new private sector loans.

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Congress: Shutdown Showdown

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Congressional leaders failed to reach an agreement to fund the federal government late last night in a White House meeting with President Obama, increasing the possibility of a government shutdown. Emerging from the 90-minute meeting just before midnight with House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Obama said that while no final deal had been reached, both sides narrowed the differences between their positions. He added, “I remain confident that if we’re serious about getting something done, we should be able to complete a deal and get it passed and avert a shutdown.” But it’s unclear how serious all parties have been in these negotiations. Funding for the government runs out at midnight tomorrow, and Republicans have thus far been unwilling to make any meaningful concessions, setting up the possibility of the first shutdown in 15 years. In fact, many analysts believe that a shutdown is already inevitable, as a deal had to be reached Tuesday night in order to allow enough time for the bill to work its way through the House and Senate and be signed by the president.

MOVING THE GOAL POSTS: Congressional leaders have been negotiating over funding the government for months, but while Democrats have repeatedly ceded ground, Republicans have so far refused to budge. Last week, Senate Democrats and the White House agreed to a compromise that would cut $33 billion below current levels. Obama has consistently said that he’s willing to meet the GOP halfway, but with the $33 billion figures, Democrats went more than half the way to the GOP bill to fund the government for the rest of the year. In fact, the figure goes even further than the GOP’s original version of the funding bill, which would have cut only $32 billion. GOP leaders quickly withdrew that proposal after it was introduced in February under intense pressure from Tea Party activists and conservative Republicans in Congress. Their newer proposal would cut $61 billion. Noting that Democrats had already agreed to “the Republicans’ original proposal,” Reid said last night, “I guess they were for it before they were against it. But now they’re moving the goal post again .” Meanwhile, Republicans are insisting on using this crisis to advance their unrelated political agenda by demanding that any funding bill include “policy riders” to prohibit funding for abortion and family planning, the EPA’s enforcement of climate change rules, and the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. These issues are irrelevant to funding the government and simply complicate negotiations while increasing the likelihood of an impasse, and thus a shutdown. As Obama said Tuesday, “What we can’t be doing is using last year’s budget process to have arguments about abortion, to have arguments about the Environmental Protection Agency, to try to use this budget negotiation as a vehicle for every ideological or political difference between the two parties.”

CHEERING A SHUTDOWN: While Republican congressional leaders repeatedly insisted there’s not “one Republican in Congress who wants a government shutdown,” this simply isn’t true. Numerous Republican representatives and senators — especially those backed by the Tea Party movement — have called for a shutdown if Democrats don’t concede to virtually everything Republicans want. And at a closed door meeting of House Republicans late Monday night, the caucus reportedly gave Boehner “an ovation when he informed them that he was advising the House Administration Committee to begin preparing for a possible shutdown.” For his part, Boehner appears averse to a shutdown, telling his GOP colleagues that if there is a shutdown, Democrats “win.” “The Democrats think they benefit from a government shutdown. I agree,” he said. But freshmen GOP lawmakers and Tea Party favorites like Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) are charging toward a shutdown anyway. And the Tea Party activists that put many of these lawmakers in office are even more eager, rallying in front of the Capitol last week with chants demanding Republicans “Shut it down!” They repeated those calls at another rally outside the Capitol yesterday. A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds that 68 percent of self-identified tea partiers and 56 percent of self-identified Republicans want the GOP to refuse to compromise on budget talks, even if it shuts down the government. Only 28 percent of tea partiers advised GOP leaders to compromise, compared to 66 percent of independents. This puts Boehner in a very tough position. While publicly, he says he does not want a shutdown, he’s been completely beholden to the Tea Party. For instance, on ABC’s Good Morning America today, Boehner called a shutdown “irresponsible”; yet moments later said, “there’s no daylight between the Tea Party and me.” “What they want is they want us to cut spending. They want us to deal with this crushing debt that’s going to crush the future for our kids and grandkids. There’s no daylight there.”

WHAT A SHUTDOWN MEANS: While it’s still unclear exactly what government agencies and services would be taken offline in a shutdown, it is clear that “a shutdown would have real effects on everyday Americans,” as the President said last night, and federal agencies have already prepared contingency plans in case one occurs. Nearly all “non-essential” government functions — those that don’t directly protect life or property — would be shutdown, furloughing some 800,000 federal workers (out of 2.1 million). “The cost of back pay for furloughed government workers would be $174 million for each day the government is closed,” according to a Bloomberg Government analysis. Indeed, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s shutdowns in the mid 1990s cost taxpayers over $800 million in lost productivity. Ironically, a shutdown would also likely grow the the deficit, by increasing the costs of funding our debt, just as it did in 1995. The timing of the shutdown near tax day is particularly inconvenient, as it means the IRS “would not audit tax returns and would not issue refunds to taxpayers who file returns on paper.” For Social Security, a shutdown means that while current beneficiaries could still receive checks, “[a] huge backlog of applications for Social Security disability benefits would grow even larger.” The National Institutes of Health would stop accepting new patients. The State Department would stop or delay issuing passports for Americans and visas for foreigners. The Federal Housing Administration, “the world’s largest insurer of mortgages, could not make new loan guarantees for home buyers,” while the Small Business Administration would stop processing loan applications. And the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission would shut down much of their activities, while “95 percent of workplace safety complaints” would go unanswered. National Parks and Smithsonian Institution museums would close. Meanwhile, “If a shutdown were to happen, the federal money that helps states pay the administrative costs of their stretched unemployment programs could dry up.” This could put immense strain on states that are already struggling to deal with big budget shortfalls from the Great Recession. But the most troubling outcome of a shutdown is that troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan would not be paid. While the Pentagon could pay one week’s worth of work, “all uniformed military personnel would continue to work but would stop receiving paychecks” after that. Speaking to troops in Iraq today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said an interruption in pay would hurt military families, many of whom now live paycheck to paycheck. “I hope this thing doesn’t happen,” Gates said.