A great ad recently put out by Americans United for Change on the Republicans’ attack on the President’s budget and their alternative plan – or lack there of.

From Americans United: “After weeks of bashing President Obama’s budget plan that lays a solid foundation for renewing our economy through investments in health care, education, and energy, House Republicans have finally come forward with their “alternative” budget.  Funny thing is, it doesn’t contain a single number. Instead it criticizes the President even more and calls for a redo of the last eight years: more tax breaks for millionaires and corporations that outsource American jobs.  They even threw their scheme for privatizing Social Security in there. The American people are not interested in traveling down the exact same road that led the nation into this economic crisis to begin with.”

On Wednesday night, the House Budget Committee adopted a budget outline by a party-line vote of 24-15 that will advance President Obama’s visionary budget goals.  The Budget Committee’s plan includes funding to reform our health care system and so-called “reconciliation” instructions that would allow legislation implementing Obama’s health care and education policies to move through the Senate without the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster.  The Committee considered and rejected 27 of 28 Republican amendments, including one by ranking member Paul Ryan (R-WI) that would have barred the use of a health care reserve fund to pay for the creation of a public health insurance plan option.  The House budget plan advances President Obama’s commitment to invest in domestic priorities, including annually-funded programs administered by state and local governments.

On Thursday, the Senate Budget Committee adopted its version of a budget blueprint also on a party-line vote of 13-10.  It includes a “reserve fund” for both health care and education legislation, which cannot add to the budget deficit.  The Senate plan does not include reconciliation language and therefore would require 60 votes to pass health care reform legislation.   The Budget Committee rejected Republican proposals to cut funding and to freeze non-defense annually-funded domestic spending at its current levels.

Also, this week, a new ad (see video) backing President Obama’s budget blueprint by Americans United for Change—a coalition of unions including the AFSCME, community, environmental, progressive and other groups—urges viewers to call Congress to support Obama’s budget because it:…will rebuild our economy on a solid foundation. Jobs, health care, education, clean energy reform. On this foundation we can build real, long-term economic prosperity for all Americans.

As pointed out at AFL-CIONow blog, Republicans in both houses offered up their usual scorn and criticism, but no alternative of their own to the eight years of co-rule with the Bush administration. During those eight years, the TV ad points out, the administration “turned our economy into a house of cards,” adding: Last fall, that house came tumbling down.

When asked about the ”just say no” stance Republicans have taken on the budget, Obama said:

Their alternative is to stand pat and to simply say, “We are just going to not invest in health care. We’re not going to take on energy. We’ll wait until the next time that gas gets to $4 a gallon. We will not improve our schools. And we’ll allow China or India or other countries to lap our young people in terms of their performance. We will settle on lower growth rates, and we will continue to contract, both as an economy and our ability to provide a better life for our kids.”

That, I don’t think, is the better option.

As the U.S. House and Senate begin key work on President Obama’s budget request, AFSCME Indiana Council 62, working with state legislative leaders and two other groups, encouraged the Indiana congressional delegation to support President Obama’s budget plan to rebuild and renew America this week.  “Without the president’s budget, we’re concerned that our school systems … will collapse because they don’t have the money available and the state does not have the money available,” said Lettie Oliver, associate director of AFSCME District 62, which is based in Indianapolis. “We’re also looking to ensure that we have health care for everybody. … I’m more concerned about the price tag and the devastation of American citizens without the president’s budget.”

Oliver was joined by state Rep. Bill Crawford, Chair of the Ways and Means Committee; Rep. Dennis Tyler, Vice Chair of the Labor and Employment Committee; Rep. John Bartlett, Chairman of the Government and Regulatory Reform Committee; LuCinda Hohmann of Environment America; and Jeremy Funk of Americans United for Change urged members of Congress to end the failed policies of the Bush era by supporting real commitments to health care, education and restarting our economy.

Americans United for Change also unveiled a new ad airing this week in support of the President’s budget plan on broadcast television in the Indianapolis, Ft. Wayne, Terra Haute, and South Bend media markets.

Politico recently reported that a new poll by the independent Gallup organization shows a majority of Americans favor a new law to make it easier for workers to form unions and to bargain for better lives for their families.  That public support may be pivotal to the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that would protect workers from coercion, harassment and illegal firing when they try to form unions.  It would also give workers the choice on how to form a union instead of leaving that choice to their employers.

Workers also got strong backing from President Obama, a supporter of the Employee Free Choice Act, who said “We need to level the playing field for workers and the unions that represent their interests because we cannot have a strong middle-class without a strong labor movement,” earlier this month.

The poll of 1,024 adults across the country shows 53 percent of respondents support the Employee Free Choice Act, and illustrates positive public attitudes toward unions.  The independent survey echoes the fundamental public support for labor found in previous surveys.

The sheer audacity of AIG is mind boggling.

First, AIG’s greed and negligence helped bring our entire economy to the brink of failure. Then, you and I and every American each hand them $500 of our hard-earned cash to the tune of $170 billion—and they have the gall to award massive bonuses to their managers. With our money! It makes me sick.

The employees receiving these retention bonuses are from the AIG Financial Products division that was actually responsible for its near collapse. Huh? We’ve let the top managers of a failed company continue to enrich themselves at taxpayers’ expense, while the rest of us suffer from the worst economy since the Great Depression. Auto workers, school teachers, public service workers—people like you and me—all across the country have tightened their belts and have been asked to revisit contract language on pay and benefits.

President Obama has called this an outrage, saying: “It’s hard to understand how derivative traders at AIG warranted any bonuses, much less $165 million in extra pay. How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?”

This stinks. The bonuses must be stopped.

AFSCME has been a leader in the fight to restrain undeserved CEO pay and to make corporate boards more democratic. Join our campaign to stop the AIG bonuses and get our money back. Send a message to the AIG board and your elected officials in Washington, DC. Tell them to get our money back!

No way. No how. No bonuses.

In 1981, when AFSCME librarians in San Jose, California, saw glaring inequities in jobs dominated by women and the ones dominated by men, they went on strike for pay equity, marking the first time workers went to the picket line over this issue.
(AFSCME archive photo)

AFSCME is celebrating Women’s History Month by remembering the women before us who made it happen and looking to the future of our labor movement.

Early union women took on issues like child labor, safe working conditions and better pay. In 1881, washerwomen in Atlanta went on strike for better wages and gained the support of the entire city to establish black workers as instrumental to the New South’s economy.

One hundred years later in 1981, AFSCME San Jose Local 101 went on strike, marking the first time women workers went to the picket lines for equal pay.

Women continue to be a force in unions — it is predicted that by 2020 women will be a majority of the unionized workforce.

Earlier this month, AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer William Lucy joined a celebration of International Women’s Day at the United Nations — archived video of his speech at the event is available on the UN site. President Obama’s proclamation in honor of Women’s History Month is available on the White House website.

Last week, President Obama ordered new guidelines for contracting in federal agencies. In a memorandum sent to the heads of all executive departments and agencies, he ordered a government-wide review of federal contracting procedures to be completed by July 1 with new guidelines to be in place by September 30.

The president declared, “We will stop outsourcing services that should be performed by the government,” noting that annual spending on private contracts had doubled to more than $500 billion during the Bush administration.

The new guidelines will set criteria for contracting out public services, limit allowable circumstances for no-bid contracts, and assess agencies’ ability to properly manage contracts given the shrinking federal workforce tasked with contracting oversight. Read more on the White House blog.

On March 5, AFSCME participated in President Obama’s Forum on Health Care Reform. The summit was part of the new administration’s effort to gain momentum for the President’s health care reform initiatives and was attended by approximately 120 participants including bipartisan representatives from Congress, health insurance plans, hospitals, providers, consumers, business and labor.

President Obama addressed the forum, saying “[t]he status quo is the one option that’s not on the table, and those who seek to block any reform at all – any reform at any costs – will not prevail this time around.”

On the same day, the Department of Health & Human Services launched a new website dedicated to this effort at HealthReform.gov and the White House blog posted a rundown of the forum as it took place.

The immediate goal was to create a dialogue among the stakeholders and congressional representatives about the urgency for reform. In addition, broad policy themes were briefly discussed, but the emphasis at this early date in the process was to set a collaborative tone and gain consensus around the need for reform.

The administration clearly met its objectives for the meeting. Participants all agreed that reform is urgently needed and should be tackled this year. There was strong support for covering everyone, transforming the health care delivery system to promote prevention and enhance quality, and implementing information technology as funded in the recently enacted economic recovery bill.

There was recognition by the participants, and by the President, that this transformation will require substantial investment, but that the investment will reap economic dividends over the medium to long term.

While a few Republican congressional representatives voiced dissent at the idea that reform can and should be enacted this year, on this day their position was both muted and overwhelmed by the strong support for health care reform among the participants.

Stunningly bad news on the nation’s jobless rate today: Unemployment worsened to 8.1 percent in February, from 7.6 percent in January, the highest level in more than a quarter century, according to Labor Department data.

We’re now looking at historical comparisons of joblessness not to the bad recession of the Reagan years but to the Depression era. This from Bloomberg:

Employers eliminated 651,000 jobs, the third straight month that losses surpassed 600,000 — the first time that’s happened since the data began in 1939.

The plunge of America’s economy continued to devastate working families. The government announced today that 651,000 jobs were lost last month.

And from The New York Times:

[E]conomists expect that unemployment will continue to rise for the rest of the year and into early 2010, with the unemployment rate reaching 9 to 10 percent by the time a recovery begins. With so many job losses occurring in manufacturing, economists say that many workers will struggle to find new jobs that pay as much as they had been earning, even when the recession ends.

That is why AFSCME made supporting President Obama’s stimulus bill the top legislative priority in our “Make America Happen” campaign – our effort to win long term investment in public services, win quality affordable health care for all and strengthen the middle class through the Employee Free Choice Act.

The economic stimulus bill will go a long way toward restarting our economy and helping states, counties and cities provide the vital services that the public relies on in times of crisis. We know it's not a panacea for the historic problems we are seeing at the state and local level — but we know that without the stimulus bill our members and the American people would feel much more pain.

With today’s new report of job losses and record unemployment, it is more vital than ever that Congress move quickly to pass President Obama’s budget, reform health care and pass the Employee Free Choice Act. We need to rebuild our economy, put people back to work and renew the American Dream.

George W. Bush ran the economy into the ground before retiring to Texas. Republican presidential candidates ignored the concerns of middle class Americans in the last election. GOP leaders in Congress are obstructing President Obama’s efforts to revitalize our economy and put America back to work.

So who’s the Republican Party’s REAL leader these days?

Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin? No.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal? No.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell? No.
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele? No.

Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh has climbed to the top of the Republican Party – by dragging it down. Limbaugh says he hopes President Obama’s economic plan fails and Republican leaders have rushed to agree.

Take a look at the latest ad from Americans United for Change, “Leader,” running now on DC and national cable, which shows the leadership of the Republican Party fighting America’s best chance to get back on its feet: