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Labor Party
Press
News & Short Takes
Eisenhower
Democrat
"In a strange way, this budget completes
the transformation of Bill Clinton into Dwight
Eisenhower," commented Matt Miller on PBS’s Newshour
program the night after Clinton announced his budget plan for
the 2001 fiscal year. Miller is a former staffer at the
Clinton administration’s Office of Management and Budget.
A new analysis of the $1.83 trillion budget by
the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities confirms Miller’s
thesis. The study found that, at a moment when government
coffers are spilling over, President Clinton has offered the
nation a budget that would literally bring government
expenditures to their lowest levels (relative to the economy)
since Eisenhower. Total federal expenditures would drop from
about 19 percent of the economy to 17 percent in 2010. Some 85
percent of the projected budget surplus would go to debt
reduction.
"This is a curious choice," writes
columnist Robert Borosage. "It is as if a prosperous
couple decide to devote their rising incomes to paying off the
mortgage on the house, even though they don’t have adequate
health insurance, are raising one child in poverty, couldn’t
afford to send another to college, haven’t repaired leaks in
the basement and have retired parents who can’t afford the
drugs they need."
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Hungrier
in the USA
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Photo
©2000 Harvey Finkle,
Impact Visuals
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At least 2.3 million adults and children, or
nearly one percent of the U.S. population, are likely to
experience a spell of homelessness at least once during a
year, according to a new analysis by the Urban League (www.urban.org).
That number appears to be increasing, not decreasing, in this
era of budget surpluses. Soup kitchen and meal distribution
services in central cities nearly quadrupled between 1987 and
1996. Nationwide, such programs now serve about 570,000 free
meals every day.
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Churned
Out by Business
Coca-Cola recently announced it will lay off
6,000 workers, or 20 percent of its workforce. J.C. Penney
plans to shut down 300 stores, laying off undisclosed
thousands. Bethlehem Steel wants to cut its salaried workforce
by 15 percent. The newly merged Exxon Mobil says it will lay
off as many as 16,000 people.
It’s not just in our imaginations: the
layoffs are coming fast and hard. The Chicago personnel
consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas says U.S.
companies announced 675,000 layoffs last year, barely down
from 678,000 in 1998, the highest level for the decade. The
Labor Department, meanwhile, has even higher preliminary
estimates: they say the number of people laid off in 1999 may
have reached 1.57 million.
Many companies, reports the Wall Street
Journal, are hiring and laying off at the same time in a
process some people call "churning."
"It seems like companies could find a way
to put people into other positions," one laid-off
telephone assembler tells the Journal. "But I guess the
world is changing, and you just have to accept it." (We
don’t.)
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Congress
Helps the Rich ...
On March 9, the House passed a bill to
increase the minimum wage by a dollar (from $5.15 to $6.15)
over two years. Problem is, they put huge tax cuts for rich
people and businesses into the bill as well. An analysis by
Citizens for Tax Justice and the Economic Policy Institute
found that the legislation would give upper-income taxpayers
$11 in tax breaks over the next decade for every dollar in
increased wages to low-wage workers. The House bill also
includes a provision that would exempt 1.5 million workers
from overtime pay, including computer professionals and people
in home offices.
President Clinton has promised to veto the
bill if it comes to his desk in this form.
"It’s ridiculous that a minimum wage
bill supposedly designed to aid low-wage workers would
actually give its biggest benefits to the highest income
people in the country," said Robert McIntyre of Citizens
for Tax Justice.
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...
& Asbestos Victimizers
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| Cartoon
©2000 Carol*Simpson
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"Under our noses, a venomous ‘asbestos
compensation’ bill is wending its way through
Congress," reports
UE’s Dave Kotelchuck in the current issue of the UE
News. On March 15, the House Judiciary Committee held
hearings on a bill entitled the Fairness in Asbestos
Compensation Act of 1999 (HR1283).
The bill would establish an Asbestos
Resolution Corporation with "exclusive authority"
over all asbestos lawsuits. That corporation would appoint a
Medical Advisory Board that would alone determine whether a
person’s illness qualified as asbestos-related. Workers
would be required to enter into arbitration before they were
allowed to file a lawsuit against a company that exposed them
to asbestos dust. The bill would also prohibit punitive
damages against companies in civil suits over asbestos
exposure.
A version of this bill (S758) was passed in
the Senate last year, Kotelchuck notes. Its sponsors included
Democrat Charles Schumer of New York, Robert Torricelli of New
Jersey, and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut. The New York
Times reported that the chief corporate sponsor of the bill is
Samuel J. Heyman, head of the GAF Corp., headquartered in
Wayne, N.J. — a major Democratic Party donor.
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