Progress Now Action

Working America, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO, wants to know what it’s like to be a working woman in America. Today, they are launching their 6th Ask a Working Woman survey online at www.askaworkingwoman.com.

They want feedback on things like equal pay, sick day benefits, health care coverage, pensions and flex time. What are the most challenging issues for women in the workplace? The last time, Working America received feedback from some 22,000 women.

After they finish gathering the data, they will crunch the numbers and forward what working women have to say to the politicians with the power to make it better. The survey is open to all and will be available on line until June 20 at www.askaworkingwoman.com  or http://aaww.questionpro.com/ .

During the month of May Labor 2008 will kick off its biggest mobilization effort. Union activists all around this country will be talking to union households about Sen. McCain’s anti-worker record. In Wisconsin people will be busy recruiting for member-to-member walks and phone banks. The walks begin Saturday May 10th in Milwaukee and May 17th in Wausau, Green Bay, Kenosha, Madison, Eau Claire and La Crosse.

Much of the effort will focus on John McCain’s healthcare plan and how it leaves Working Families on Their Own. Soaring health care costs are forcing wages down for people lucky enough to have insurance. Another 47 million are uninsured. Although John McCain says he intends to combat rising costs, his proposals protect insurance company profits at the expense of working families.

On Sunday's This Week program, George Stephanopoulos asked John McCain, who wants to make health insurance benefits by workers part of their taxable income, the following question:

One of the points Mrs. Edwards made in the Wall Street Journal, she said that your whole life, you had government health care. You were the son of a Naval officer, a Naval officer, now a member of Congress. And her point is, why shouldn’t every American be able to get the kind of health care that members of Congress get or members of the military get?

McCain has been getting ink (finally) about his volatile temper and its relevence. He showed why some have concerns, when he fired quickly back:

It’s a cheap shot, but I did have a period of time where I didn’t have very good government health care. I had it from another government. 

Just last week John McCain announced his economic plan which largely consisted of continuing the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy and going even further by providing massive tax giveaways to some of the largest corporations in the world. McCain even came to Milwaukee to have a closed door meeting with big business elites. Neither at that meeting nor in John McCain’s economic plan could you find a place for the poor. Yet that has not stopped him from having what he calls a “forgotten places” tour this week. Different week, different McCain.

In announcing the tour McCain said that “there must be no forgotten places in America” but his economic policies don’t support that rhetoric. The centerpiece of McCain’s economic plan is almost entirely focused on corporate America and giving them trillions in tax breaks. That along with his flip-flop on the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy will prove costly to our nation’s treasury. Since McCain can’t possibly pay for these giveaways, he has called for a yearlong freeze in federal spending to at least help close some of his proposed budgetary gap. At a time when the cost for everything is continually rising, such a proposal will essentially cut valuable programs that serve the average American and the poor.

Someone should tell John McCain that you can’t remember the poor during a heavily scripted campaign tour but forget them when you are developing budgets and policies that have a negative impact on their lives.

We already know that the centerpiece of John McCain’s plan for the economy consists of massive corporate tax cuts and continuing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. While he has been so focused on tax policy lately isn’t it strange that he continues to delay the release of his tax returns? It looks like “straight talk” ends where his personal fortune begins.

Could it be that McCain is trying to separate his recent populist talk on the stump with the fact that he is one of the richest members of Congress? He owns nine homes worth an estimated $13 million. His wife is estimated to have a $100 million stake in Anheuser Busch, a corporation that her father helped run. Can it really be a surprise that he is so out of touch with the average person? Should we really be shocked that he would push policies the benefit the most elite in our nation?

Today the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on John McCain’s meeting with corporate elites. The report cites a conference call that was hosted by One Wisconsin Now yesterday. The call served as a reality check for McCain’s economic plan. It included comments from James Kvaal of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Sara Rogers of the AFL-CIO, Robert Kraig of Citizen Action of Wisconsin, and Carolyn Castore of ACORN.

Sara Rogers commented that McCain initially wouldn’t acknowledge the problems with our economy. Now that he has been forced to address reality, she said that his plan amounts to only a simple repackaging of the failed Bush agenda.

Robert Kraig addressed the McCain plan on health care which he said would be a radical reconstruction of the system.  Unfortunately it would actually encourage businesses not to pay for insurance and would only give a meager tax credit to people.

Carolyn Castore pointed out that even in the midst of the current housing crisis, McCain wants to lessen regulation on financial institutions.

James Kvaal revealed that McCain’s economic plan would deliver $4 billion in tax breaks to big oil companies and $2 billion to the health care industry. He further said that McCain is proposing a corporate write-off of equipment that will create a massive loophole and cost the rest of us $75 billion. In the end Kvaal concluded that the McCain economic plan “delivers very little to regular people.”

**Update Below**Senator John McCain is visiting the Milwaukee area today and plans to have what he is calling an “economic summit.” What is telling is who John McCain has decided to include in the discussion. Both panels at the event are stacked with nothing but CEO’s of large corporations. This includes one board member of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce as well as their President. It would be wrong to think that these corporate leaders are the only ones qualified to speak about the broader economy. Some of the issues that are on the agenda are things such as education, healthcare, and housing. Does John McCain really believe that CEO’s and the corporate elite are the only ones qualified to contribute on those issues? How elitist of him!

If you are going to speak about healthcare issues, why not include working people that struggle to pay ever increasing medical costs? Instead McCain has a CEO. If you are going to talk about housing, why lock out people that have fallen pray to predatory lenders? Instead McCain has a Mortgage Company CEO. In many ways regular folks are the people that are on the front lines of all aspects in this economy. These are the kinds of people that sounded the alarm long ago about our troubling economy. Yet these are the very people that McCain has locked out in favor of the corporate elite.

UPDATE: We may have found a few more reasons for McCain’s elite-only summit today:

“As McCain touts his tax plan at the manufacturing plant in Milwaukee today to allow for the expensing of equipment, McCain will be helping out the very manufacturing industry that has helped him over the years — to the tune or $838,415 in campaign donations over his lifetime, according to a Public Campaign Action Fund analysis of campaign finance data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.”

Let me get this straight. McCain receives massive amounts of cash from manufacturing interests, shows up to an elite-only “economic summit” to listen to manufacturers who will then cash in handsomely if his proposed loopholes are enacted? No wonder he locked out the public today, he has more important constituencies to please.

Senator John McCain will be making a campaign stop in the Milwaukee area on Wednesday. He is supposed to talk about the economy and hype his out of touch plans to treat what ails it. Yes, the man that admitted that he doesn’t really understand economics plans on lecturing the rest of us on economic solutions. If his recent pattern is any indication, he will be fully prepared to offer all kinds of rhetoric about the economic problems of the working class. Before people start lapping up his sales pitch, they might want to look at the details of his actual agenda. As the Washington Post recently observed, McCain is trying to send a populist message while offering little else than corporate tax cuts.

In Pittsburgh on Tuesday, McCain even took a few potshots at well deserved targets in the banking and lending industries. While he has been paying this lip service to the average worker, his economic plan has very little for them. The centerpiece of McCain’s economic plan is a massive tax cut for corporations. Some of the very corporations that he has recently criticized on the stump would be big time beneficiaries of his corporate giveaway plan.

Contact Speaker Michael Huebsch and his co-hort Representative Stephen Nass, and let them know that you object to their destroying Wisconsin's world-class educational institution.

Wisconsin used to take pride in its university system supported by a bipartisan consensus to create a world-class educational facility.

Now, under the leadership of the GOP-led state Assembly, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and its sister campuses are under assault, deadly assault.

From the blog Waxing America:

While people are rushing to file their income taxes all across the state, it seems appropriate to focus on the tax that we are paying for the war in Iraq. The Bush administration and its facilitators in Congress bemoan taxes but continue to spend those dollars in Iraq. Senator John McCain is essentially promising more of this losing formula. As they continue to pour in unprecedented money, the list of serious consequences at home continues to grow. It is now past time to call the war in Iraq exactly what it is: a huge tax on all of us. Wisconsin’s share of the massive Iraq tax bill is $8.3 Billion. That breaks down to an Iraq Tax bill of $35,000 for a family of four.

Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz has said that we will face the costs of the Iraq war for decades to come. According to him we have already wracked up a $3 trillion bill in Iraq and every month that we stay there, it costs us $22 billion. Economists fear the long-term damage from the war in Iraq. It is responsible for adding billions to our debt which now tops $9 trillion. Economists are not the only group of people that see the economic disaster brought by the Iraq war. Nine in ten Americans also say that the Iraq war is contributing to our economic problems.

The Center on Wisconsin Strategy and the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families released an analysis showing that the gap between the rich and poor is growing in Wisconsin. While Wisconsin still fares much better than the national average and most other states, it has been moving in the wrong direction over the last number of years.

The analysis found that households with the highest incomes in Wisconsin increased their wealth by 36 percent between the late 1980s and the mid 2000s, compared with a 7 percent growth in income for the poorest households and 14 percent for middle-income households. It also shows that Wisconsin has the 11th most equal distribution of income nationwide, but that is up from the 1990’s when we had the 5th most equal distribution.

Wisconsin AFL-CIO President David Newby has it spot-on regarding John McCain's unwillingness to join a roundtable to talk with working people about the incredible challenges facing families under the current economic disaster of George Bush and his cheerleader John McCain. 

Read what Newby had to say, after the jump.

Earlier this week John McCain finally decided to address the housing crisis that has been devastating for so many people and to the entire economy. Unfortunately his speech offered no actual solutions for the many families feeling the full weight of the crisis. The great plan offered by the man that “doesn’t really understand economics?” His bold solution is that he will “examine new proposals and evaluate them” and hold two meetings. Thank goodness, help is on the way! John McCain is holding two meetings!

Although McCain’s statement didn’t include plans for struggling families, he did say that he wants even less regulation for the lenders. How out of touch can one person be? Apparently McCain is not able to grasp the severity of the problem because he doesn’t feel it. He is the seventh wealthiest senator and owns at least 4 properties in both Washington and Arizona. Further, he has received over $1.2 million from commercial banks and mortgage lending interests. Can there be any surprise that he would suggest less regulation on an industry that has run wild without proper oversight? In the mean time the regular folks that are struggling can sit and wait until he has held a few more meetings.