"Welcome back to the White House."
- Vice President Joseph Biden on Friday, February 2nd, addressing a group of labor leaders who were invited to witness President Barak H. Obama sign new executive orders affecting federal contractors and the announcement of the formation of the Task Force on Middle Class Working Families.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney probably summed it up best when he declared, "Today’s actions show that the Obama White House is the working families’ White House."
There's good reason for President Sweeney's cheerfulness. Eight years spent battling the most viciously anti-labor administration since President Grover Cleveland (who in 1894 sent federal troops in to break up the railroad worker's efforts to get George Mortimer Pullman, founder and president of the Pullman Palace Car Company, to treat his employees like human beings, not slaves) has left labor leaders battered, but not bowed. The damage done to this country and it's labor force over these last eight years (actually, over 20 of the last 28 years) has been staggering. But it's not just union members who have been suffering.
For example, the 2009 budget the Bush Administration pushed through before the election seeks to cut $603 billion over 10 years from key social safety net programs, most of that from Medicare and Medicaid, including a $178 billion cut in Medicare over five years. The Bush budget also would cut more than $760 million from job training and employment programs, including training programs for dislocated workers, young people, American Indians and migrant and seasonal farm workers, as well as senior citizen community service employment programs. The previous administration seemed to think that giving a $700 Billion blank check to the bankers who got us into crisis in the first place is perfectly fine, but $760 Million for job training is a bad thing?? Let's put this in perspective - imagine someone giving $700.00 to their buddy who's already rich but has squandered their inheritance, yet this same person complains about the injustice of paying 75 cents to send an entire high school to job training.
And yet, as former Secretary of Labor (under Clinton) Robert Reich explains, "As our economy grew between 2001 and the start of 2007, most Americans didn't share in the prosperity. By the time the recession began last year, according to an Economic Policy Institute study, the median income of households headed by those under age 65 was below what it was in 2000. Typical families kept buying only by going into debt." And while the American Middle Class was being fiscally water-boarded, the labor movement was demonized as the Root Of All Evil, the sole cause of every economic woe our nation suffered, by corporate executives who travel on multi-million dollar luxury jets to Washington, DC., to plead for federal funds to prevent the bankruptcy of once-proud companies that they've run into the ground while sending most of the jobs overseas.
But at least now we've got an Administration which seems to understand that the most immediate way out of this economic Titanic-sized disaster we've gotten into isn't more "voodoo economics;" the most direct way to right this ship is to get all hands on-deck, to get the American people back to work, earning a living wage with decent benefits that allows them to raise a family without having to resort to welfare or crime. This Administration is taking the Action America Needs.
"It
couldn’t come at a better time," stated President Sweeney, about the Administration's announcement to create the White House Task Force on Middle Class Working Families. "It’s flabbergasting, in the midst of a
painful recession, to see Exxon Mobil’s $45.2 billion record profit,
million dollar Wall Street bonuses, and more corporate jets for the
bailout recipients as [these same corporate chieftans] rail against workers’ rights." President Obama's move to limit executive pay for companies receiving federal bail-out funds is also a long over-due correction to the outrageous and unconscionable excesses that have damaged our country's ability to serve as a beacon of Democracy.
The
Task Force on Middle Class Working Families, the Executive Orders, SCHIP
and some of the other efforts in progress are but a First Step in a long and arduous road we must all travel to restore balance, not just between workers
and corporations, but between what is Right and what is Wrong.
It's going to take a LOT of effort on everyone's part to get our country back on track, economically, morally, and socially, but at least now we have a President, Vice President, and Congress who not only are determined to fix these issues so that it works for everyone, but they understand that they work for US, The People.
It's OUR House. Of the People, by the People, for the People.
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