Tag Archives: Washington D.C

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Protect Medicare … AFSCME e-Action Network


It’s truly scary.

The federal budget that was introduced by
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and passed in the House of Representatives last month
is being voted on in the Senate this week. And in all my years of working
in Washington, DC, I can honestly say that I’ve rarely seen anything this
alarming.

That’s why I need you to take just a minute and send a message
to your senators right now.

Protect MedicareYou’ve probably already heard about the Ryan budget
because of its radical proposal to eliminate Medicare as we know it. But
it’s worse than that. It’s clear that what he’s calling the “Pathway to
Prosperity” should really be named the “Pathway to Poverty,” given what it means
for most Americans. The Ryan pathway is a wrong turn for America. It only brings
more prosperity to insurance companies, Wall Street fat cats, and the wealthiest
companies and individuals in America while dumping the rest of us in a dead end.
It’s outrageous.

And it must be stopped in the
Senate: Please take action against this radical bill right
now.

  • Ryan’s budget includes deep
    cuts to federal programs that fund state and local governments at a time when
    many states are already in crisis, and more and more people need their services.
    It’s nothing short of
    another outright attack on public employees and the services we provide.
  • The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates
    that Medicare beneficiaries’ premiums and other out-of-pocket expenses would double when compared to
    Medicare as it is now – from $6,150 to $12,500.
  • Ryan claims this bill would
    reduce the deficit by $4.3 trillion. What he doesn’t say is that it’s almost
    entirely wiped out by the
    $4.2 trillion in tax cuts to benefit the wealthiest Americans. Indeed, it would reduce the
    tax rate for prosperous corporations and reduce the tax rate paid by the
    wealthiest to its lowest level since 1931.

This budget proposal is so radical
that even some Republicans, like Newt
Gingrich, are distancing themselves from it. And while home during
recess, many of the House Republicans who voted for it (all but 4 did) were
taken to task at town hall meetings by the same people who voted for them last
November.

It’s clear
that the voices of working Americans are being heard and making a difference in
this fight. So please, speak out against this extreme proposal today by sending
a message to your senators. Let them know that you won’t stand by while Medicare, Medicaid,
and even Social Security are dismantled to pay for tax breaks for the rich and
subsidies to oil companies.

In solidarity,

Chuck Loveless
Legislative
Director
AFSCME

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Critical Abortion Vote Looms – Take Action Now


Defund Planned Parenthood? Failed. Eliminate family planning funds? Nope. Still attacking women’s health? You betcha.

Since the start of this Congress, House leadership has pursued an agenda seeking to reduce women’s access to reproductive health care services. Now they are pushing H.R. 3, a bill that proposes dangerous restrictions on insurance coverage for abortion.

It’s time to send Speaker Boehner and House leadership a message. Tell your Representative to stop the attacks on women’s health and vote NO on H.R. 3.

H.R. 3 would harm women’s health and would even raise taxes on individuals and small businesses to punish private health care decisions. Now we are hearing that this bill may come to the House floor for a vote as early as next week. We must stop them. Tell your Representative to oppose this harmful bill and protect women’s health.

www.nwlc.org

H.R. 3 reduces women’s access to abortion care in many ways, but here are some of its most outrageous provisions —Raises taxes and increases costs on many individuals and small businesses with insurance plans that cover abortion, which could force individuals and employers to drop abortion coverage from their health insurance plans. It could even shut down the entire private market for insurance coverage that includes abortion.

Writes into permanent law a ban on abortion coverage for ALL women who depend on the government for their health care. This includes low-income women currently covered under Medicaid, women who will become eligible for Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, women serving in the U.S. military, federal employees, residents of the District of Columbia, women in federal prisons and women covered by the Indian Health Service.

Unbelievably, H.R. 3 contains no exceptions for circumstances where a woman faces serious health consequences, even if continuing the pregnancy could cause permanent damage to her heart, lungs, or kidneys.

We refuse to stand by as they continue their outrageous attack on women’s health. Tell your Representative to vote NO on H.R. 3 and its dangerous restrictions on women’s health care coverage today.

Thank you for helping us protect women’s access to reproductive health services. We will continue to work tirelessly to defeat this bill.

Sincerely,

Judy Waxman

Vice President for Health and Reproductive Rights

National Women’s Law Center

P.S. Your generous donation allows us to continue to stand up for women and their families. Support our work today.

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As One Budget Battle Ends, Another Begins …from -Joan Entmacher and Judy Waxman, National Women’s Law Center


Thank you for all you have done to help protect women and their families. We are counting on you in the struggles to come to fight these efforts to destroy programs that millions of Americans need every day.

from …

Joan Entmacher

Vice President, Family Economic Security

National Women’s Law Center

Judy Waxman

Vice President for Health and Reproductive Rights

National Women’s Law Center

As you’ve probably heard, Congress has approved and the President signed a spending bill for the remainder of the federal government’s current fiscal year. And thanks to your support, we were able to safeguard (and even increase) funding for some vital programs.

Under this plan, which funds programs through the end of September, the budget for Head Start will increase, allowing 60,000 low-income children to continue receiving a valuable jumpstart to their education. Plus, we put the brakes on the effort to take away funding for Planned Parenthood and other critical family planning services across the country. If anti-choice politicians had prevailed, many women would have had nowhere to turn for contraception and preventive health screenings.

Unfortunately, however, these actions came at a high price: the 2011 budget agreement forbids the District of Columbia from using its own local tax dollars to give low-income women access to abortion services they need, putting an already vulnerable population at increased risk. And the agreement includes cuts to health, education and human services programs that will be detrimental to women and their families.

But the fight we had over this year’s budget is dwarfed by what we’re facing farther down the road. The House Republican majority just voted today for a budget for 2012 and beyond that would give more tax breaks to millionaires and corporations while eviscerating Medicaid, Medicare and other programs vital to women.

In supporting Representative Paul Ryan’s budget proposal, the House voted to:Cut, then cap, Medicaid, which would cause millions of vulnerable women to lose their health coverage. End Medicare as we know it, replacing the current guaranteed insurance system with a voucher program that would stick seniors with higher health care costs.

Cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations, permanently extending the Bush-era tax cuts, capping the top personal income tax, extending the December 2010 reduction in the estate tax for multi-million dollar estates, and lowering corporations’ tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent.

Put Social Security cuts on a fast-track in Congress, placing millions of women and others who rely on Social Security benefits at risk.

Other provisions in the bill would slash funding for domestic programs such as child care, Head Start, K-12 education, Pell grants, family planning and other women’s health services, job training, housing and energy assistance, and services for the elderly.

The list goes on, but here’s the bottom line: this budget would unravel the fragile safety net for millions of Americans even as it puts TRILLIONS of dollars in the pockets of corporations and the wealthy. This isn’t a fiscal plan — it’s an attack on the very idea that our society should protect its most vulnerable members and on public structures that give ALL Americans a chance at a better life.

Thank you for all you have done to help protect women and their families. We are counting on you in the struggles to come to fight these efforts to destroy programs that millions of Americans need every day.

Sincerely,

Joan Entmacher

Vice President, Family Economic Security

National Women’s Law Center

Judy Waxman

Vice President for Health and Reproductive Rights

National Women’s Law Center

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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.

~ my 2cents ...

weekend views &some News …


The weather is just as mad as what is going on politically No?

With a couple of days, left in February the countdown to March Madness and the NCAA championships begins by those devoted college bb fans. The crazy climate(changes) around the country are just as mad but the madness in Washington, DC and specifically on the floor of the Senate begins on Monday the last day of February.

Last year at this time, President Obama was in Philadelphia talking about what HCR will do for everyone what the exchanges will offer when implemented. Though if you listened to the Media garbage back then, we were supposed to believe that it is his last ditch effort to push, jam, ram and or dupe Senators to get HCR through; but contrary to what Republicans and or “the Media” says the debate on HCR took about a year. I don’t know about you but that hardly qualifies for ramming or rushing in my opinion. The biggest issue for me about HCR was that Congress did not listen to the people and of course, “the media” kept the public from hearing all of what HCR could you for us personally. Now, after a few months of media network staff shake-ups we find out that FOX was NOT the only station with a strategy to limit the information “We the People” received by the bigwigs like Murdoch and the Koch brothers. The fact is there were more people who wanted a Public Option back then but apparently little or no airplay. Finding out that the 24/7 news cycle is actually manipulated to the extent that it is should make us all give pause and question what we see or hear on the television machine.

Most of us agree that the television machine and cable stations should not be allowed to just give us what THEY want us to hear see and use to judge how those bills will not only affect us but how it might affect our voting, but if we take the November elections into account, it worked . The information coming out of the airwaves was deceptive back then when Congress was trying to pass legislation before the midterm elections and now that Congress is getting back to work next week we all need to push for better, more accurate ok demand the truth when reporting opposed to what most if not all are delivering to us currently. In addition, if being manipulated by those in the News biz industry wasn’t bad enough those guest spots are now such jokes because they seem sound and act scripted. I want the real news fair and balanced on all stations whether owned by right or center politically or on the extreme right.

It would be great if left of center, the Democratic Party in both chambers of Congress actually conceives some sort of plan and or strategy and start calling the bluffs of the Republican Tea Party. The fact is the public deserves to know what kinds of disgusting amendments the Republican Tea Party tries to attach to reasonably fair and balanced bills in order that no one could vote for them. I admit I have yet to understand why the House and Senate adjourn early or take breaks so often leaving the people’s business until the last minute. It worked during the lame duck session but you have to wonder if they are dedicated public servants or a bunch of politicians who have no plan and just avoiding the obvious for as long as they can blaming the President for his lack of leadership. The lack of leadership in Democratic Party in Congress worked for two years; seemingly distracted by their election campaigns. The lame duck session was constructive their lack of good strategy bit us back with tea party members being elected and some of them extreme with the so-called mainstream conservatives trying to keep up in order that they keep their seats in Congress and that worked too. I thought the tea party was bad and they are but they have also given a few negative blows to their Republican sub-group voting against them which was unexpected by Republican led leader of the House. There were promises made in that so called “Pledge to America” that has yet to —– and is being questioned more and more and because of the tea party, folks right of center, think John McCain, Tim Pawlenty and a few others who use to be considered reasonable have now chosen to lean even farther right, practice exclusion, are seemingly birthers. If you pay attention to what Pawlenty has been saying, if elected President will reenact dadt at least who knows what else he will promise, maybe strip the constitution of the 14th and 17th amendments. Well, calling March mad because of college basketball is mild considering the madness that is in the political air definitely applies to what we will probably see on the floor of Congress for the next two years and it will probably make us all mad. Unless of course hearing about a completely new round of offensive gossip, promotion of falsehoods and outright lies about the President’s beliefs and or if he is an American is not enough. It seems like strategically filtered blips put into interviews by potential Presidential candidates and talking heads, which makes me mad because really it just does not belong on the airwaves in any form especially in the news. Most people expect truthful news maybe some spin but these days the spin is laced with some truth or maybe it’s the Republican truth accepted pushed at us by not just right wing stations but by seemingly progressive stations who actually are owned by righties definitely limiting left of center news get on the airwaves.

Last… as February leaves let the madness of March begin …Talk about March Madness, last March Republican Senator Paul Broun, from Georgia; stated that all you had to do was read it for yourself; he knows for sure President Obama was a Socialist. A reporter asked if he thought President Obama was born in the US, Broun stated he did not know but frankly as someone in public office, he should have said yes. It might just be me but isn’t that the response birthers usually give, maybe a tea party member. It is amazing to know that this kind of behavior is what we get and accept from people holding public office that we pay to do the business of the people. If Barack Obama were white, there would be absolutely no questions about his beliefs, race, and or religion. It’s offensive that a Public Servant would behave in such a way; but then the list of Senators behaving like Broun are many and should make people outraged or at least question his competency. It is ironic that a year ago Broun was acting out, still got elected, the charade is over and the truth of what the Republicans have planned for Americans is out.

What happened, the end results of the November elections is a warning to those who stayed home to protest, voted right of center for whatever reason and for registered Republican voters. I have a question for all those above -is this what you want and voted for yourselves or the future of your children because what I see spreading all over the country, mostly the south does not fit what less government has always been described as by any stretch of the imagination.

 Other News …

**Reports of a 2week compromise by dems&repubs in the Senate which might help avoid govt shutdown

**Tripoli braces for even more deadly clashes

**NFL mediations take place on Tuesday

**Security forces switch sides in Libya -join protesters

**Shuttle docks with space station for last and the 13th time

**83rd annual Acad Awards tonight

**will cnn back off the major coverage they planned of the tea party or will they show how right of centr they truly are

**Governors will make that trip to Washington, DC minus Scott Walker who is trying to figure out how they will get the dems at the table only to proceed with dismantling the unions with a quick vote -they just have to be in the room and the vote taken -and it’s all over –