AFSCME Legislative Highlights
Legislation Department
July 14, 2006
Congress — Week ending July 14
House approves extensions of the Voting Rights Act. WIA bill clears Senate. Labor rallies against expected anti-worker ruling. Hearing to be held on sunset legislation.
In this issue:
Voting Rights Act Overwhelmingly Approved in the House
By a vote of 390-33 the "Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006" (H.R. 9) was overwhelmingly approved by the House of Representatives on July 13. H.R. 9 will reauthorize three key provisions of the historic Voting Rights Act that are scheduled to expire next year. Before the final vote, the House defeated four amendments, pushed by Southern Republicans.
An amendment by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), to shorten the reauthorization from 25 years to 10 years failed by a vote of 134-288. An amendment offered by Rep. Steve King (R-IA), that would eliminate the existing federal requirement that ballots in other languages be made available to voters in jurisdictions where a significant part of the population does not speak English failed by a vote of 185-238. Another amendment offered by Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) that would require the Justice Department to help jurisdictions opt out of Voting Rights Act supervision failed by a vote of 118-302. And finally, Rep. Charlie Norwood's (R-GA) amendment that would impose a new formula to determine which jurisdictions have to clear changes in voting procedures with the Justice Department failed by a vote of 96-319.
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Senate Clears WIA Bill Unexpectedly
Just before the Independence Day recess, the Senate passed its version of H.R. 27, reauthorizing the Workforce Investment Act (WIA). The bill passed unanimously after Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Sen. Michael Enzi (R-WY), Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP) agreed to move the bill out of the HELP committee with a few modifications and without block grant authority sought by the governors and the Labor Department. Of the modifications, the most significant was a provision giving local workforce boards unlimited authority to transfer funds between the WIA adult and dislocated workers programs.
The Senate bill does not block grant the employment service with WIA programs and continues current WIA restrictions on religious-based discrimination in WIA programs while the House bill repeals the non-discrimination provisions and creates a block grant. In addition, both bills require all WIA partner programs, including vocational rehabilitation, TANF, unemployment insurance, adult education, and trade adjustment assistance to contribute funds for one-stop operations. We are lobbying to prevent a conference committee from going forward unless there is agreement first to stay with the Senate position on both the block grant and faith-based issues.
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Vote on Education Bill Shows Growing Bipartisan Support for Wage Hike
In response to a continuing Democratic effort to secure an increase in the federal minimum wage Rep. George Miller (D-CA), Ranking Member of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, offered a non-binding motion to direct congressional negotiators to include an increase to $7.25 per hour to the minimum wage paid to workers who receive federal job training assistance in the conference report on vocational education.
Every House Democrat voted in favor of the non-binding motion. In addition, the motion garnered the support of 64 GOP members. This suggests that the only thing preventing the House from passing an increase in the minimum wage is the refusal of the House Republican leadership to allow a straight up or down vote on the matter. A full-time minimum wage worker earns just $10,712 per year — which is $5,888 less than the $16,600 needed to lift a family of three above the federal poverty threshold. Due to Republican inaction, the minimum wage is at its lowest level in more than 50 years, when adjusted for inflation. Congress has not raised the federal minimum wage since 1997.
In other indications of GOP rank and file support for an increase in the federal minimum wage, 26 GOP members sent a letter to Majority Leader Dennis Hastert (R-IL) urging him to schedule a minimum wage floor vote before Congress adjourns for the August recess. In addition, there were reports that a group of moderate Republicans were working on a bill that would raise the minimum wage and provide tax breaks for small businesses and farmers.
On the other side of the Capitol, a group of Democratic senators hosted their third press conference in a month promising to block lawmakers' pay raises until a minimum wage increase is enacted. Sens. Charles Schumer (D-NY), Edward Kennedy (D-MA), Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), and Robert Menendez (D-NJ) reiterated the intent of the Senate Democrats to block a cost-of-living adjustment for lawmakers from going into effect until the minimum wage is increased. At the press conference, Kennedy compared lack of movement on the federal minimum wage to the average salaries of chief executive officers, which he said have gone up by 73 percent since the minimum wage was last raised in 1997. If the minimum wage rose in the same manner that CEO pay has, Kennedy said it would be $8.34 today.
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AFSCME Rallies Against Expected Anti-Worker NLRB Ruling
The five-member National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is considering three cases which could strip millions of workers - including nurses, quality control inspectors, sales representatives, and many others - of their rights to form a union and collectively bargain. Yet despite the great significance of the ruling and the urging of many members of Congress, the Republican majority of the Board refused to hear oral arguments at a public hearing on the matter.
AFSCME's Washington-based staff joined with hundreds of other union members in rallying in front of the Washington, D.C. offices of the NLRB to urge the Board not to strip union rights from millions of workers.
In a series of cases widely viewed as among the most important that the Board will decide this decade, the Board will clarify which types of workers are supervisors, a designation that would leave these newly classified supervisors without the right to form a union provided by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). In 2001, the Supreme Court rejected the Board's method of determining supervisory status in the Kentucky River case forcing the Board to reexamine the issue. In three pending cases, the Board will put forth its new test for determining who is a supervisor. The new test is supposed to be based on factors such as the use of independent judgment in directing employees, the amount of time spent supervising, and changes in the workplace giving employees greater autonomy. Once the three cases are decided, 135 cases pending at the Board will move forward, extending the impact of the Board's millions of workers who are potentially impacted by the decision. In addition to the employees involved in the Board's pending cases, the stakes are high for millions of workers whose jobs include even minor, incidental, or occasional supervisory duties. For instance, over three million registered nurses and nurses practitioners could lose their right to form a union if the Board decides to expand the definition of supervisor to cover a wider range of job classifications. Additionally, long-time union members could suddenly lose representation when their contracts run out.
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House Panel to Hold Hearing on Sunset Commission Legislation
After weeks of negotiations, House Republicans introduced the "Government Efficiency Act" (H.R. 5766) this week, a bill that would establish sunset commissions to review all federal programs and agencies, including discretionary programs that support state and local services as well as entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Next week, the House Committee on Government Reform will hold a hearing on the bill. While the floor schedule has not been set, there is a strong possibility that the bill will be debated by the House as soon as the week of July 24.
The bill is promoted by conservatives who support massive cuts in federal spending and believe that sunset commissions will lead to cuts that would otherwise be too unpopular to enact. Under the bill, the commissions would be made up of presidential appointees who could work behind closed doors without any requirement that they seek public input. The recommendations of each commission would be packaged into a single piece of legislation that the Congress would be forced to consider under expedited procedures that would restrict the ability to make changes to the commission recommendations during debate on the floor of the House or Senate.
It is likely that the sunset commissions would call for the outright elimination of many programs. But the commissions could also do substantial harm by recommending changes in the way programs are operated. For example, commission recommendations could include eliminating or weakening worker protections such as collective bargaining rights for federal and transit workers, civil rights, and Davis-Bacon standards. Programs such as Occupational Safety and Health could be gutted by changes that weaken enforcement. Programs operated at the federal, state and local level could be privatized or block granted. The sunset commission legislation would also present a new avenue for privatizing Social Security and cutting Medicare and Medicaid.
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Senate HELP Committee Republicans Refuse to Protect Health Care Workers and First Responders from Pandemic Influenza
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will consider legislation next week to reauthorize a public health program that provides funding to state and local governments for bioterrorism and public health preparedness. AFSCME has been working with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in an effort to include a provision in the bill requiring that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issue an emergency temporary standard to protect health care workers and first responders from pandemic flu. A standard would set out the steps that employers would be required to take to reduce the transmission of pandemic influenza to workers who will be treating and transporting flu victims. Despite the fact that health care workers and first responders will be at high risk of becoming infected, committee Republicans refused to include any language in the bill that would impose such requirements on employers.
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Senate Passes Another Free-Trade Agreement
By a vote of 60-34, with six members not voting, the Senate passed the U.S.-Oman Free Trade Agreement (OFTA) (S. 3569). The OFTA continues the long and shameful history of congressional support for trade agreements that ignore workers' rights while protecting the rights of corporations and investors. Oman bans labor unions and has been cited by the U.S. State Department for human trafficking and forced labor. The OFTA gives foreign corporations more rights than U.S. citizens because it allows any company incorporated in Oman to sue the U.S. government in a secret tribunal, demanding payment from our tax dollars, if the company feels that any U.S. government policy is restricting their ability to make a profit. And, the OFTA could undermine U.S. national security by promoting rights for foreign companies, including government-owned companies, to operate our sensitive infrastructure such as electricity grids, port operations and more.
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Federal Medicaid Spending Slowing
Contrary to an established trend, federal Medicaid spending for the first three quarters of this fiscal year is below that for FY 2005, according to preliminary data analyzed by Federal Funds Information for States (FFIS) and released this week. While the shift of prescription drug costs from Medicaid to the new Medicare prescription drug benefit accounts for some of the reduced federal spending, other federal policy changes are contributing to the reduction in the federal contribution as well. For example, most states are in the first year of a multi-year decline in their Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (FMAP) payments, which is a significant cost-shift to states. Also, many provisions of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 reduce federal Medicaid spending, including new citizenship verification requirements which will cut the Medicaid rolls, deductible/cost sharing provisions that will shift costs to recipients, a new ceiling on provider taxes and limits on reimbursements for specific medical services and related costs. The report concludes, "It appears that the federal government is succeeding in changing the nature of Medicaid from an open-ended entitlement to one where change is negotiated, leveraged and focused heavily toward reducing budgetary costs."
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Persistent Troubling Budget Deficits Cannot Overcome White House's Attempted Spin
President Bush failed this week in his attempt to positively spin the White House's new estimated federal budget deficit for 2006. With great fanfare, the White House's Mid-Session Review estimated the 2006 budget deficit had decreased and would be "only" $296 billion. In fact, the 2005 deficit was $318 billion and thus the new estimated 2006 deficit would decrease only $22 billion or a mere seven percent. Unfortunately, the deficit persists because Bush's large tax breaks for the rich reduced revenues dramatically. In fact, the White House estimated that 2006 revenues as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) would be 18.3 percent — significantly below 2000's 20.9 percent or 2001's 19.8 percent. The former Bush White House economist and former Director of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Holtz-Eakin said, "the long-term outlook is such a deep well of sorrow that I can't get much happiness out of this year". Ranking Senate Budget Committee Democrat Kent Conrad (D-ND) said that Bush's attempt to spin these huge deficits and structural budget problems as good news is like "holding a press conference to brag about new lifeboats on the Titanic".
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School Vouchers for the District of Columbia
The Senate Appropriations Committee approved $13 million for the District of Columbia's school voucher program, the same amount appropriated for FY 2006. The House-passed legislation would provide about $15 million. The Senate bill would broaden eligibility for the program by allowing students who entered the voucher program in the fall of 2004 or 2005 to continue to receive voucher support as long as their family income does not exceed 300 percent of the federal poverty level. Currently, the cut-off is 200 percent, and students from families with income that increases beyond that amount "earn out" of the program.
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