Mid-term Elections: Our Next Battle

AFSCME led the effort to pass a crucial $26 billion jobs bill to assist state and local governments. Now the enemies of working families have vowed to take Congress back and destroy the progress we’ve made. It’s up to us to stop them.

In June and July, AFSCME ran full-page ads in major newspapers as part of our campaign in support of the Jobs Bill.  This one prompts Republican U.S. Ses. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins - both women represent Main - to vote in favor of the legislation.  Our efforts paid off as the legislators cast the two votes necessary to break a legislative blockade.

Photo Credit:

Mark Finkenstaedt

AFSCME led the effort to pass a crucial $26 billion jobs bill to assist state and local governments. Now the enemies of working families have vowed to take Congress back and destroy the progress we’ve made. It’s up to us to stop them.

By Gonzalo Baeza

AFSCME members are wise to the ongoing attempt to make public workers the scapegoats for our nation’s economic woes. As the November mid-term elections approach, we must be ready to confront the forces that plundered and pillaged our economy over the last decade and now — under the guise of “reform” and fake populist outrage — want to take back Congress and gubernatorial seats across the country.

When it comes to lies and propaganda, our enemies are relentless. This summer, they fought tooth and nail against a bill to provide $26 billion in aid to state and local governments. Thanks to the efforts of AFSCME members, they lost. The measure, which passed in early August, stopped the layoffs of hundreds of thousands of public employees. Furthermore, it passed without adding a penny to the deficit. In fact, it was paid for, in part, by closing corporate tax loopholes. According to a CNN poll released after the vote, 60 percent of Americans supported the bill to protect public employee jobs. And there’s a good reason for that support. As leading economist Mark Zandi has found, the most effective way to stimulate local economies and increase job creation is to inject federal assistance into the state programs that are having problems. Zandi has established that every dollar invested in public services grows the economy by $1.41.

Our union led the fight for this important invest-ment in states and jobs, generating more than 60,000 phone calls, letters and e-mails to Congress, and running television, radio and online ads. As Pres-ident McEntee said after the U.S. House of Represen-tatives passed the bill, “Americans won a tremendous victory in the United States Congress — a victory that is going to save hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

Some of our opponents disagree. Instead of coming to the aid of state and local governments in these troubled times, they called public employees “special interests” and voted to hand you a pink slip.

According to House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), legislators should stop pushing “special interest bailouts,” adding that “we do not have the money to bail out the states. It’s time for them to get their arms around their own problems.” In Boehner’s view, if there are not enough teachers in classrooms or police on the streets it’s the states’ problem. In other words, it’s your problem.

And Boehner isn’t alone. According to Sharron Angle, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Nevada, saving American jobs is not a priority. “The emergency is only in [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid’s mind,” she said. “This is an emergency for the Democrats, a way to solidify the base, if you will, with our taxpayer dollars.”

Angle, has frequently called for privatizing Social Security and Medicare for younger workers.

While state shortfalls in fiscal years 2009 and 2010 totaled more than $300 billion, the enemies of working families seem unfazed. As Republican Conference Chair Mike Pence (R-Ind.) bluntly stated: “Republicans are absolutely determined to stand against more of the same stimulus spending.”

It gets worse. In the view of U.S. Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.), leader of the congressional Tea Party Caucus, securing emergency funding to help states means that “taxpayer money will essentially be laundered through the public employee unions, and spent to reelect those same Democrats this fall.” Apparently, nobody told her that this vital federal aid goes directly to state and local governments and school districts. It has nothing to do with the political calculations Bachmann and her cohorts are so prone to make.

Nonetheless, politicians like Boehner and Bachmann would rather feign preoccupation about government “spending” and the deficit — the same problems that didn’t seem to bother them when George W. Bush was in office and between 2001 and 2008, turned a $236 billion budget surplus into a $1.3 trillion shortfall. If they were genuinely concerned about the deficit, they would not be fighting so hard to extend a tax cut for the richest 2 percent of Americans — at a budget cost of $700 billion over the next 10 years.

According to a recent CBS News poll, 38 percent of Americans think the most important problem facing our country is jobs. The budget deficit, on the other hand, was signaled as a top concern by a mere 5 percent.

“The folks who don’t like working families only care about tax-breaks for the wealthy and returning to the failed policies of George W. Bush,” President McEntee said after the jobs bill passed in the Senate. “Our members and all Americans will remember their reprehensible record in November.”

The Issues at Stake

Public sector job losses reached 48,000 in July — the biggest decline for public employees in a year. Mean-while, the economy is boosting demand for the safety net services provided by states. Accord-ing to a recent study by researchers at the University of California/San Francisco, the recession that started in 2008 and the record job losses in 2008 and 2009, led 5.4 million Americans to enroll in Medi-caid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Likewise, by January 2010, 12.8 percent of the U.S. population was receiving food stamps.

Instead of staffing up to meet this demand, at least 42 states have cut spending. Should we lose our majorities in Congress, rest assured that we would see even more of the obstructionism that over the last year has stalled vital legislation such as extended unemployment benefits, financial reform and supplemental funding for state and local governments. This zero-sum game has to end.

Along with the need to save and create jobs, there are a number of crucial issues that are at stake in November. These are some of the most important.

Protect our pensions: Our enemies are fostering the myth that public employee pensions are “bloated” and that states have no money to make good on their promise to guarantee workers their hard-earned retirement. Take, for instance, former eBay CEO and gubernatorial candidate for California, Meg Whitman, who advocates raising the retirement age for state workers and bringing “new government workers in under a different deal where they receive a defined-contribution retirement plan similar to the 401(k) plans.”

Defend health care reform: After decades of struggle and a year of debate, comprehensive health care reform was enacted, thanks to the commitment of AFSCME activists. Meanwhile, its opponents have promised to deny funding for health care reform if not overturn the bill completely. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R), one of the bill’s most vociferous critics, recently said that they will try to repeal the bill, and if they are unable to “repeal it outright, at least change and alter the course of it. And, if need be, not fund it.”

The nation is finally on a path to address skyrocketing costs and rein in insurance company abuses. We must not let the special interests and those who represent them in Congress destroy all that we have accomplished.

Stand up for public services: Anti-worker pundits are spearheading a campaign to undermine public services and those who provide them. They have repeatedly said that no state bailouts should be contemplated until the wages and pensions of public sector employees are brought into line. Instead of focusing on helping out American workers, they want public employees to keep “feeling the pain” as if the massive wave of layoffs and furloughs over the last year had not been enough. It’s a tried and tested formula. Pit workers against workers while fostering resentment against public employees who simply try to bargain for a better future.

The bottom line is that, to people like Boehner, Pawlenty, Whitman and so many others, American workers are nothing but “special interests.” Their allies in Congress are looking to swell their ranks in November and push their destructive agenda no matter the cost. We can only stop them if we show up at the polls in full force and deliver a clear message: Don’t play politics with our jobs.

When it comes to supporting our jobs, it’s clear who stands on our side. When the U.S. House of Representatives voted in August on a bill to save public services and public employee jobs, the battle lines were drawn sharply. Out of the 257 Democrats in the House, 245 voted “yes” on jobs. AFSCME ran numerous ads on TV and YouTube to make our message clear: In November, we’ll remember those who tried to throw us under the bus. Photo: Mark Finkenstaedt