News Briefs
Even a Democratic Congress listens more to business than labor
Feb 1, 2008 10:19 AM
A $100 billion economic stimulus package — read corporate and personal tax cuts heavily favored by U.S. corporations — is gaining support on Democratic-dominated Capitol Hill despite unions saying it is not enough. They would prefer to spend more on job creation, including school construction, to boost the economy and to expand the safety net with more unemployment insurance for those laid off.
Slated hearings by the Senate Finance Committee on the stimulus bill will feature testimony only from economists associated with the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project, a center-right group heavily backed by Wall Street. A key founder of the project is Robert Rubin, a former Clinton Treasury secretary and now a director and chairman of the executive committee of Citi, the loss-riddled global financial services corporation. No labor representatives have yet been invited.
Others think it’s the wrong stimulus. For example, Sen. Hillary Clinton — despite her husband’s former closeness to Rubin — is calling for a different package: $30 billion in housing assistance, $25 billion in home-energy subsidies, $10 billion on expanding payments to the unemployed and $5 billion for environmental projects.
In a letter to Congress, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney spoke for the AFT and the federation’s other unions in offering the labor movement’s own short-term stimulus package. His proposal includes extending unemployment benefits, increasing food stamp benefits, targeting tax rebates away from the most affluent and toward middle-income and lower-income taxpayers; offering fiscal relief for state and local governments to avoid their imposing tax increases and budget cuts; and speeding up already approved public investment in school construction and bridge repair.
Leo W. Gerard, president of United Steelworkers International, said organized labor’s concerns go well beyond being stiffed at a couple of hearings. “We have a problem in the Democratic Party,” he said. “There’s way too much influence from K Street lobbyists and Rubinistas” — his term for Wall Street Democrats.
“These aren’t the guys you ought to be listening to. These are the guys who brought the economic insanity we’re dealing with now,” Gerard said. “This is the same crowd that helped engineer the credit crunch and the collapse of mortgages.”
Washington Post, Jan. 22
Economist, Jan. 17
AFL-CIO Now, Jan. 22
