AFSCME Legislative Highlights
 Congress
— Week ending March 31
House Budget Committee Passes Crippling Budget for Fiscal Year 2007. Senate Passes Lobby Reform and Begins Debate on Immigration. House Passes Higher Education Bill.
In this issue:
House Budget Panel Ignores GOP Moderates and Approves Harmful Budget
In what could spell real trouble for Republican leaders when the budget comes to the House floor as early as next week for a vote, the House Budget Committee ignored the concerns of a crucial group of moderate Republicans who pleaded for increased spending for domestic programs. Instead, the House Budget Committee approved on a party-line vote, an FY2007 Budget Resolution that is similar to the President's budget and much more severe than the plan recently adopted by the Senate. The House panel's budget plan calls for significant new tax cuts and would slash funding for domestic programs. Overall, the House plan would increase the deficit over the next five years by $256 billion more than what deficits would be if current policy was left unchanged.
The House budget plan will cause real cuts in vital domestic programs, which employ hundreds of thousands of AFSCME members. Overall, it provides for the next year $9 billion less in domestic funding than is needed to ensure that these programs merely keep pace with inflation. As a result, cuts can be expected in education, veterans' medical care, law enforcement, student loans, transportation, environmental protection, medical research, and other important public services that affect individuals
and communities across the country. An amendment offered by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) seeking to increase spending for key services by about $7 billion, similar to the bipartisan Specter-Harkin amendment overwhelmingly adopted in the Senate, was rejected. If House GOP leaders allow a vote, it will be offered again on the House floor with the support of approximately 22 moderate Republicans who signed a letter to Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) asking for increased spending in health care, education and labor-related programs.
At the same time, the committee's budget plan calls for a whopping seven percent increase in defense spending. It requires Congress to cut $6.8 billion in unspecified entitlement programs over five years. The new cuts are not expected to come out of Medicare and Medicaid, but will likely come out of low income and child care programs. The panel's budget plan also assumes $227 billion in additional tax cuts over five years, including extensions of Bush's current tax cuts.
If approved by the full House, a joint House-Senate conference committee will be charged with resolving the deep differences between the two plans.
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AFSCME Leaders and Activists:
The House Budget Resolution is likely to be considered on the House floor next week. Please call your Representative and urge him/her to oppose the House budget resolution because it includes deep cuts in vital public services, while at the same time providing more tax cuts for the wealthy.
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Immigration Bill Moves Forward in Senate
Prodded on by its Chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), the Senate Judiciary Committee managed to reach a consensus on an immigration reform bill despite sharp divisions in GOP ranks. The bill, which was approved on a 12-6 vote with all the Democrats and 4 of the 10 Republicans in support, looks radically different from what the House passed in December. The four GOP members who supported the bill in final passage were Specter, Brownback (KS), Graham (SC) and DeWine (OH).
The Judiciary Committee bill includes a provision from the Kennedy-McCain bill (S.1033) that would allow undocumented workers to sign up for a six-year temporary worker program after they pay a $1,000 fine. These workers could then apply for citizenship at the end of the six-year period provided that they hold jobs, pass criminal background checks, learn English, pay all back taxes and pay another $1,000. Eligibility for this program would be limited to those who were physically present and employed in the U.S. before January 7, 2004, and have remained employed ever since.
The Judiciary Committee bill also includes a second major provision from the Kennedy-McCain bill that would authorize a new temporary worker program that would allow roughly 800,000 immigrants (400,000 plus their working spouses) to come to the United States in the first year with the
ceiling increasing by up to 20 percent each year depending on "market demand." These guest workers would be provided with a path to citizenship as well. Applicants for these two programs would go to "the end of the line," allowing the three million pending applicants to be processed first.
Following the completion of the work of the Judiciary Committee bill, the full Senate began to debate immigration reform. As it did so, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) and House Speaker Hastert made a strategic shift by abandoning their opposition to a guest worker program declaring that a final bill cannot focus solely on border enforcement. The House had passed a punitive enforcement-only bill in December 2005.
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Senate Opts Not to Take up Campaign Finance Reform; House Makes Plans to Do So
On Wednesday, the Senate approved lobby reform legislation by a vote of 90 to 8. The Senate finished work on the bill (S. 2349) by agreeing that only certain amendments would be considered. This prevented an amendment from being offered that would have established new campaign finance regulations on so-called 527 organizations and accounts, including union separate, segregated political accounts operated by AFSCME and our affiliates.
However, just as the Senate was deciding not to deal with 527 legislation, the House leadership was indicating that it would schedule a floor debate on it. Next week, the House is planning to consider the "527 Reform Act of 2005" (H.R. 513), introduced by Reps. Christopher Shays (R-CT) and Martin Meehan (D-MA). The bill would make it much more difficult for unions to engage in grassroots activity directed at the public, in support of state and local candidates. It would also shutdown progressive 527 organizations that engaged in grassroots activity in 2004 that helped produced the highest voter turnout since 1968.
While the design of the Shays-Meehan bill would eliminate grassroots work that unions and progressive organizations engage in, it would not have the same impact on conservative 527 organizations because of their capacity to raise substantial sums from a large number of individual contributors. In addition, the bill would not have the same impact on corporations and trade associations, allowing them to continue their political activity.
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AFSCME Providers Mobilize to Fight Federal Cuts to Quality Child Care
AFSCME's child care providers, parents and children turned out in full force in targeted congressional districts to urge House members to vote against cuts to child care in the federal budget. Council 61's Iowa Child Care Providers Together (CCPT) held an event in Davenport, Iowa calling on Rep. Jim Nussle (R-IA) to vote against the federal budget cuts. In Albany, New York, AFSCME NY and CSEA Voices stood with Rep. Michael McNulty (D-NY), to call on moderate Republicans to oppose child care cuts. In Battle Creek, Michigan, Council 25's Child Care Providers called on Rep. Joe Schwarz (R-MI) to save funding for quality child care.
The House budget resolution provides $9 billion less in funding in FY 2007 for domestic discretionary programs than is needed just to maintain current services like quality child care. Overall, 250,000 fewer children now receive child care assistance than they did in FY 2000. If Congress follows the Administration's lead on child care, 650,000 children by 2011 will have lost child care assistance according to the Administration's own budget tables. This is not acceptable, and AFSCME will continue to fight service cuts. The full U.S. House of Representatives is expected to take a floor vote on the FY2007 budget as early as next week.
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House Passes Higher Education Bill
The House passed, 221-199, The Higher Education Act (H.R. 609) to reauthorize most higher education programs for the next five years but would cover student loan programs for the next eight years to make them consistent with a budget law enacted earlier this year. The bill passed largely on party lines with 14 Democrats voting for the bill and 18 Republicans opposing, most of them conservatives who tend to oppose a large federal role in education. The House earlier rejected, 200-220, a substitute bill, offered by Rep. George Miller (CA), the ranking Democrat on the Education and Workforce Committee. The Miller substitute which was supported by AFSCME would have cut interest rates on student loans by half for one year. It also would have made a number of professions — nurses, librarians, child welfare workers and emergency responders — eligible for loan forgiveness programs.
The bill that passed did authorize an increase in the maximum Pell grant by $200 to $6,000. However, Pell grants are funded annually in the Labor-HHS spending bill and have long fallen short of their authorized maximums. The maximum grant is currently $4,050, which is $900 less, adjusted for inflation, than in 1975-76.
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AFSCME Members Speak Out Against the New Prescription Drug Law
Recently, AFSCME and Americans United kicked off a national campaign to fix President Bush's new prescription drug law (Medicare Part D). Together, we are calling for the elimination of the sign-up deadline and penalties until the Bush Part D Disaster is fixed. AFSCME Council 92 participated in an event in Silver Spring, Maryland where speakers included AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka. In Canandaigua, New York, AFSCME NY turned out nearly 50 members to speak out against the Part D disaster. Council 36's retiree chapter spoke out with Rep. Hilda Solis (D-CA) in East Los Angeles, California. In Des Moines, Iowa, Council 61 exposed the challenges and frustrations in trying to participate in Medicare Part D at the State Capitol.
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U.S. Department of Labor Proposes to Eliminate Anti-Discrimination Tool
AFSCME opposes the U.S. Department of Labor's proposal to eliminate a critical anti-discrimination tool which helps ensure that companies receiving federal dollars provide equal employment opportunities. More than one-fifth of the nation's workforce is employed by federal contractors and would be affected by this proposal. The little-publicized proposed rule would eliminate the Equal Opportunity Survey (EO Survey), which is administered by the Department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Program (OFCCP). Developed over the course of two decades and the previous three administrations, the EO Survey is designed to enable OFCCP to identify and investigate federal contractors that may be discriminating against women and people of color.
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