The Social Security Administration announced Thursday that Social Security benefits are set to jump by 5.8 percent next year, the largest increase in more than 25 years. But if George Bush and John McCain had implemented their plan to privatize Social Security and put our hard-earned money into risky private accounts on Wall Street, seniors would be seeing a massive reduction in their benefits instead.

As this ad explains, putting John McCain and Wall Street speculators in control of Social Security is a gamble Americans just can’t afford to take.

Paid for by American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees PEOPLE (1625 L St, NW, Washington, DC 20036) and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

AFSCME President Gerald McEntee appeared on CNN Tuesday afternoon to discuss a concerted effort by the labor movement to counteract reluctance by some voters to support Barack Obama because of the color of his skin.

“It’s kind of an anxiety that sits out there. It’s a brand new experience for [many voters] and it has to be overcome by education.”

Americans can’t afford to let smears, rumors and fear-mongering to distract them from the real issues which are at stake in this election – like John McCain’s plans to privatize Social Security, tax health care benefits for the first time ever and make permanent Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy. A vote for Barack Obama is a vote for working families, for revitalizing the middle class and restoring the American dream.

McEntee’s interview was a follow-up to an earlier report by CNN’s John King which can be viewed online here:

Paid for by American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees PEOPLE (1625 L St, NW, Washington, DC 20036) and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

While in Pennsylvania yesterday campaigning for the Obama-Biden ticket, Hillary Clinton rewrote the Republicans’ favorite “Drill, baby, drill!” chant to reflect what Americans need right now: “Jobs, baby, jobs!”

That was the message Barack Obama delivered as he outlined an economic plan that “begins with one word that’s on everyone’s mind, and it’s spelled J-O-B-S.” Building on his previous proposals, the plan will go a long way toward helping the middle class, creating jobs, keeping people in their homes and providing help to struggling communities.

Obama’s specific proposals include:

• A $3,000 tax credit to companies for each new job they create over the next two years.
• New legislation to allow families to withdraw 15% of their retirement savings without facing tax penalties.
• A 90-day moratorium on foreclosures for any homeowners making good-faith efforts to pay their mortgages.
• The creation of a Federal Reserve and Treasury program to lend to states and cities with fiscal problems.

Also included in Obama’s plan: eliminating income taxes on unemployment benefits, doubling loan guarantees to American automakers, and pushing the Treasury Dept. to unfreeze the markets for mortgages, car loans, student loans and credit card loans.

After several days of confusion and mixed messages from his campaign, John McCain unveiled his own economic proposals today. His plan focuses on cutting taxes for the wealthy, accelerating tax write-offs for bad investments and reducing the capital gains tax. McCain offers no tax cuts for middle class income or investments, doesn’t encourage the creation of new jobs and does nothing to help cash-strapped states and municipalities.

Maybe that’s why new Quinnipiac polls of four battleground states released today show voters have overwhelmingly rejected McCain’s approach to the economy. Less than one in four polled think McCain has “shown effective leadership” in dealing with the financial crisis.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, has continued to demonstrate the steady leadership we need, and his solutions will help restore America’s economic prosperity. Many of Obama’s proposals can be put into place right now under the existing bailout or through new emergency legislation – and they will all be implemented when Barack Obama is our next president.

Paid for by American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees PEOPLE (1625 L St, NW, Washington, DC 20036) and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

Joe Rugola, Ohio AFL-CIO President and OAPSE/AFSCME Local 4 Executive Director, and Barb Phillips (OAPSE), Ashland-Wayne-Holmes Labor Council President. (photo by AFL-CIO)

Joe Rugola, Executive Director of OAPSE/AFSCME Local 4 and President of the Ohio AFL-CIO, has set out on a statewide walk to call attention to the costs of eight years of Bush-McCain economic policies. More than 180,000 jobs have been lost in Ohio, and nearly 1,100 plants, factories and other workplaces have been shuttered.

The “Road to Recovery” tour will stop at cities throughout the state, and will include visits to closed and downsized job sites. Rugola is telling the union voters he’ll meet along the way how important it is that we elect a president who will rebuild America’s economy and bring jobs back to our country, not one who will continue George W. Bush’s failed policies.

Our goal is to highlight and demonstrate to Ohioans that there’s a reason why we’ve lost so many jobs and why our economy’s been wrecked and so many lives devastated. Our goal is to raise awareness and let people know what’s going on and that they can change it by electing Barack Obama… somebody who will put the emphasis of the country on the middle class and advance the interest of working people for a change.

Watch video from the first day of the tour in Youngstown, and read more at the AFL-CIO Now blog.

Paid for by American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees PEOPLE (1625 L St, NW, Washington, DC 20036) and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

As Wall Street suffered even more losses yesterday, the New York Daily News reported this from a top McCain strategist: "If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we’re going to lose." So John McCain’s trying to change the subject, hoping to distract voters with smears and distortions that Time’s Joe Klein calls a "desperate empty embarrassment."

It’s no wonder McCain doesn’t want to talk about the economy. By fighting to roll back regulations on Wall Street, he helped land us in the mess we’re in now. Maybe that’s why McCain famously insisted "the fundamentals of the economy are strong" even as the giant investment firms started to collapse. And as the situation got worse, he told 60 Minutes, "I think the deregulation was probably helpful to the growth of our economy."

But if the Bush-McCain policies have helped grow the economy, why did the U.S. lose 159,000 jobs in September? That amounts to the worst month in five years and continues a string of nine consecutive months of job losses. McCain’s top adviser Greg Strimple had this response to the bad economic news: "We are looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis."

Barack Obama saw this crisis coming and urged government intervention to face it head-on in a March 22, 2007 letter to Chairman Bernanke and Secretary Paulson. Obama is the leader we need now, with a plan that will to dig us out of this mess and restore the middle class. McCain’s plan? More tax cuts for the wealthy and even more deregulation.

We don’t need to change the subject, we need to change direction.

Paid for by American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees PEOPLE (1625 L St, NW, Washington, DC 20036) and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

The latest issue of Newsweek features an analysis of John McCain’s health care plan by Jane Bryant Quinn, an expert on personal finance. McCain’s plan would tax employer-provided insurance as income, and encourage workers to purchase individual coverage by issuing tax credits of up to $5000 – payable directly to the insurance companies.

Her take?

“Friends, there’s zero evidence that that works. In the long run, tax credits will raise your costs without changing the game. And we still won’t have helped most of the uninsured.”

McCain’s vision for health care would give the private insurance companies even more control over who gets health care, how much they pay and what is and isn’t covered. It relies on what Bryant Quinn calls the “magic of the marketplace” to improve offerings and keep costs low – but the events of the last few weeks on Wall Street have shown us what happens when corporate profits are the driving force behind our government’s policies.

Working Americans can’t afford more of that kind of “magic,” and we can’t afford to elect John McCain.

Paid for by American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees PEOPLE (1625 L St, NW, Washington, DC 20036) and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

In what must have come as a shock to the McCain campaign yesterday, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin has credited “good union jobs” for helping her family get the health care they otherwise would have been unable to afford. Jonathan Martin at Politico.com has the details:

“We’ve gone through periods of our life here with paying out of pocket for health coverage until Todd and I both landed a couple of good union jobs,” Palin explained to conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt. “Early on in our marriage, we didn’t have health insurance, and we had to either make the choice of paying out of pocket for catastrophic coverage or just crossing our fingers, hoping that nobody would get hurt, nobody would get sick.”

Maybe Palin should tell her running mate, because in addition to opposing the Employee Free Choice Act, making Americans pay out of pocket for health care is exactly what John McCain wants to do.

According to the Economic Policy Institute report “Obama health plan outperforms McCain plain in coverage and efficiency,” McCain’s plan would tax employer health care benefits and shift the burden of finding health coverage to individuals. The report finds that roughly 20 million fewer people would have employer-sponsored insurance by 2018.

Hotline On Call posted yesterday about a new AFL-CIO mailer (215k PDF) being sent to over 1 million voters in swing states. It spells out the risks to our health care under McCain’s plan:

• Taxing employer health care benefits would put 158 million Americans at risk of losing their coverage. [CAP, 4/29/08]
• Already weak protections for individuals with pre-existing conditions would be gutted, and insurance companies would be able to deny coverage and procedures even more easily than they do now. [CAP, 4/29/08]
• McCain also wants to privatize Medicare – just like the plan he proposed for Social Security. [Columbia Journalism Review, 4/18/08]

In other words, when it comes to health care under a McCain administration, you’re on your own.

The McCain campaign will no doubt try to tell us Palin didn’t mean what she said about good union jobs and health care, but the truth is this is just one more example of John McCain being out of touch with the American people.

Find more details in a recent report available for free download from the EPI Policy Center.