Emergency Campaign for America’s Priorities In the News…

 POLITICS

Labor, Allies Pivot Off Social Security, Target Reconciliation

Congress Daily PM

October 11, 2005

              Many of the groups that fought to defeat plans for a Social Security overhaul this year are planning Wednesday to kick off a short-term campaign to do the same with proposed tax and spending cuts under budget reconciliation. The Emergency Campaign for America's Priorities, which is backed by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and others, plans to use localized tactics to urge 70-80 GOP House members and 15 senators it has targeted in 31 states to oppose the reconciliation package. The campaign includes the principals who have run the "anti-privatization" group Americans United to Protect Social Security, including consultants Steve Hildebrand and Paul Tewes and media strategists Brad Woodhouse and Cara Morris. "We have been retained by a lot of the coalition members to motivate grassroots and target House and Senate members on reconciliation," Morris said.

             Morris said the group will attempt to make the issue salient by employing many of the same tactics that it used in the Social Security campaign, such as town halls, news releases, state-specific reports and creative news events. During the Social Security debate, Americans United pressed House and Senate members to take a position on Social Security proposals and worked to stir local opposition to private accounts. Congressional Republicans appear unlikely to move the issue this year. While the public is familiar with Social Security, Morris said, the ECAP campaign is unlikely to use budget reconciliation terms such as "entitlement savings threshold." She said the task is to "explain this in a way that people understand: tax cuts for the wealthy and spending cut [on programs] for people who need them most."

            AFSCME Legislative Director Chuck Loveless described ECAP as "a temporary campaign" that is distinct from the Social Security effort. He said AFSCME members held the new group's first events Monday in Green Bay, Wis., and today in Providence, R.I. The AFL-CIO, USAction, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and Campaign for America's Future -- which participated in Americans United -- are ECAP members, as are the Food Research and Action Center and Coalition on Human Needs. Sources said the campaign would operate in the "low seven figures."

Congressional leaders are considering a tax cut package while also looking to cut $50 billion in entitlement spending over the next five years. Some of the spending cuts are designed to offset costs related to hurricane recovery, which Loveless said would figure into the ECAP campaign. Republican congressional aides today countered that fiscal restraint combined with tax relief -- such as tax cuts following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- helped sustain the U.S. economy, and that the same policy is needed now. "We're trying to find the savings in reconciliation to make a large dent in the cost of Hurricane Katrina [relief] ... so the cost of paying for it doesn't become a burden for our children," a spokesman for House Speaker Hastert said. A spokeswoman for Senate Budget Chairman Gregg said the reconciliation process allows Congress the chance to slow the projected growth of mandatory spending. "Given that Congress has approved more than $70 billion in disaster aid to the Gulf Coast, it is now more important than ever to ... take steps to reduce the deficit by $34.7 billion as planned in the budget resolution," she said.
    -- by Mark Wegner