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Legislation & Politics | ||
Q&A with Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry ReidOn December 7, 2006, incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) visited AFSCME’s Washington, D.C., headquarters to share with our union their agenda and vision for the 110th Congress. Hundreds of AFSCME members submitted questions for the leaders of the new Democratic majority. Many were about the issues of worker rights, the disparity of wealth in our country, and the misplaced priorities of the previous Congress. The following are questions from three AFSCME members and the comments made by Representative. Pelosi and Senator Reid: During your first 100 days in office, what steps will you take to restore and enhance the rights of workers to organize in their workplaces? —Joe Nilsson SENATE MAJORITY LEADER-ELECT HARRY REID: Senator Kennedy is going to hold hearings on the Employee Free Choice Act, which is certainly necessary. With the stamp of approval of this administration, the National Labor Relations Board has been relegated to meaninglessness, but we have to keep trying. The 109th Congress will clearly go down in the history books the most do-nothing Congress in the history of our country. They worked less days, they accomplished less legislatively than any legislative body in this country. Not only did they accomplish little, but this Republican administration hurt the American worker. The NLRB—anything to take away its power was done. We need to change a number of laws, but we can only do that if we get rid of President Bush and don’t elect someone of his ilk. I know we have an uphill battle, but we need to continue it. Even today, good things can happen with strong organizing efforts. For example, in my state, there has been a lot of activity in the construction trades in Las Vegas, with huge numbers of newly organized workers. The home-builders are organized now. When I was a young man, my college roommate didn’t finish school and became a plumber/pipe-fitter. In the last 25 years, there has been no organizing activity in his industry—home building. But in the last few years, we’ve gained thousands of new construction labor workers in Las Vegas. I still think with hard work, organizing can get done. HOUSE SPEAKER-ELECT NANCY PELOSI: One of the top items in our full agenda is the card check bill. Fifty million Americans have said that they would belong to a union if they had the opportunity to do so. But intimidation and coercion have prevented that from happening. We are committed to putting card check legislation on the President’s desk, so working people can see whose side the President is really on.
—James Manwaring SENATE MAJORITY LEADER-ELECT HARRY REID: Something as simple as the minimum wage has not been raised for 10 years. Sixty percent of the people who draw minimum wage are women. For over half of those women, that’s the only money they get to support their family. But [congressional Republicans] couldn’t raise it once in 10 years? That’s the way it was under their leadership, which is why our ability to win those Senate seats was truly a miracle. We could not have won this election without AFSCME. I say that without qualification. And now, we are going to raise the minimum wage. HOUSE SPEAKER-ELECT NANCY PELOSI: The Republicans want to reward wealth. The Democrats want to reward work. That’s where the biggest difference is. They have to understand that their wealth would not have been created without the workers to do it. Our budget will be a budget that represents the values, concerns, hopes and dreams of the American people. The leverage in our country has changed. Until a month ago, it was on the side of the privileged few. The leverage has now changed to the side of working families.
—Nancy Kingsbury HOUSE SPEAKER-ELECT NANCY PELOSI: Understand that they were there to do one thing: to concentrate the wealth of America into the hands of the top 1 percent of the people in this country. The wealth and, therefore, the power. That’s what they do every day, and they are very clear about it. Yet early last year, 58 percent of the people polled said the President “cares about people like me.” They were stomping on working families, day in and day out, and the public thought they cared about people like them. So we had to say, “They would do this to your retirement security because they don’t care about people like you.” The Republicans passed a prescription drug bill that put the pharmaceutical companies first and seniors way last. An energy bill that rewards their oil company friends with huge tax breaks, while and consumers pay at the pump. We got our message out, and the President went down to 38 percent in the polls by September. AFSCME was there at every step of the way to enable this election victory to happen. Our “Six for ’06” is a new direction for all Americans, not just the privileged few. There are many things that we would like to put forth, but we are going to start out in the first 100 hours by being very simple and clear to make the distinction between our priorities and theirs. This is just a beginning. The first vote that members will take will be to drain the swamp so the special interests—the pharmaceutical companies, the oil companies and the insurance companies—don’t have the stranglehold that they have on Congress. We are going to make America safer by passing the 9/11 Commission recommendations. The next thing we will do is give America a raise by raising the minimum wage. We are cutting in half the interest rates on student loans, which is so important to middle class families. We are not only going to give the [HHS] Secretary the authority to negotiate lower prescription drug prices, we are going to mandate that he negotiate lower prices. We are going to make progress on stem cell research, and we are going to roll back the subsidies for Big Oil and use that money to invest in a reserve fund for alternative energy sources. By the time the President comes to the State of the Union address scheduled for January 23, we will have completed our first 100 hours and made a major change in this country’s priorities. |
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