AFSCME Legislative Report
AFSCME LEGISLATIVE REPORT
May 25, 2007
In this issue:
Deal Reached on War Spending Bill
By large
bipartisan margins, the House and Senate approved a new spending
plan to fund the war in Iraq on Thursday. President Bush vetoed the
bill passed previously by the Congress because he objected to any
troop withdrawal language being added. The new bill excludes the
troop withdrawal language since Congress lacked the support to
override the President's veto, but the new bill includes benchmarks
of progress which must be met for continued economic aid for Iraq.
The President is expected to sign this bill. Some Democrats may also
conduct another debate over a timetable for withdrawing the troops
when it considers a defense bill later in the year. In addition to
nearly $100 billion in money for the war, the bill includes new
domestic funding for hurricane relief, the State Children's Health
Insurance Program, provisions which delay Medicaid cuts to teaching
hospitals and public facilities that the Administration is advancing
through regulatory changes, and a one-year extension of the Secure
Rural Schools Act which provides funding for local governments in
Oregon, California and Washington. The bill also includes an
increase in the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour, from $5.15,
and an extension of selected small-business tax breaks.
(Ed
Jayne- ejayne@afscme.org)
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AFSCME Vice President Testifies on Capitol
Hill
AFSCME International Vice President and Council 13
Executive Director, David Fillman, testified on May 24 before the
House Education and Labor Committee's Subcommittee on Workforce
Protections. The hearing, entitled "Workplace Safety: Why Do
Millions of Workers Remain Without OSHA Coverage," focused on the
more than eight million public employees who are not covered by a
federally approved workplace safety and health program. Joining
David Fillman on the panel was Mrs. Casey Jones whose husband, Clyde
Jones, an AFSCME member, was killed in an explosion last year while
working at a wastewater treatment facility in Daytona Beach,
Florida.
Fillman told the Subcommittee that 26 states do not have a
federally approved program in place to protect public employees, and
that "having a safe job should not depend on the state in which
public employees work." Council 13 has worked for state adoption of
a federally approved OSHA program for 20 years. In his testimony,
Fillman talked about the accident that took Mrs. Jones' husband's
life. He said that, "the state law that was enacted in 1982 to
assist employers to make their workplaces safe had been repealed by
Governor Jeb Bush and the Florida legislature in 1999." Mrs.
Jones testified that the National Chemical Safety Board has
determined that her husband's death was preventable. She said that
the Board "found numerous basic safety issues which were ignored due
to the lack of any requirement that the City adhere to such
standards." It concluded that, had basic safety standards been
in place, her husband would be alive today.
Legislation has been introduced in both the House and the Senate
that would extend the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act to
all public employees. The Protecting America's Workers Act (H.R
2049/S. 1244) was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Edward Kennedy
(D-MA) and in the House by Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA).
(Cynthia
Bradley- cbradley@afscme.org)
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House Republican Leaders Gear Up for Spending
Battle
The budget plan recently passed by Congress calls
for more than $20 billion in additional spending for vital public
services, like education, child care and health care. Yet President
Bush has already threatened to veto any spending bills that exceed
his tight spending limits. Conservatives in the House Republican
Caucus have now launched an effort to sustain President Bush's
threatened vetoes of spending bills later this year in what they
call a "defining moment" for their party. They are circulating a
letter pledging to vote to sustain vetoes of spending bills, thus
depriving needed resources to many important public service programs
that fund the jobs of AFSCME members.
President Bush and the
Republican leadership in the Congress have made tax cuts for the
wealthy and increased defense spending a higher priority over urgent
needs at home for too long now. We now have a chance to reorder
those priorities and begin to reverse the economic trends that place
the rich and powerful ahead of the needs of working families.
(Ed Jayne- ejayne@afscme.org)
Your Voice is
needed in Battle over Spending
Priorities
Please call your Representative at
1-888-460-0813 and urge him or her to support increased funding for
vital public services, including education, child care, health care
and other priorities, and urge that they not sign any letters
promising to sustain a presidential veto of spending bills.
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Forces Clash over Internet Taxes
Two hearings
were held in Congress over the right of state and local governments
to collect taxes associated with the growth of the Internet and the
increasing amount of goods and services sold over it. The House
Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law heard
forceful testimony from Mark Murphy of AFSCME's Research and
Collective Bargaining Services Department, along with the National
Governors Association and several others, about the impact of the
sovereign rights of states and localities to collect access taxes on
Internet providers and the impact that revenue losses have on public
services.
Congress must now decide whether to continue the temporary
moratorium on new taxes on Internet access, which expires on
November 1. As more services are offered over the Internet in a
tax-free environment, it threatens traditional revenue sources and
potentially deprives state and local governments of substantial
resources. The Senate Commerce Committee also held a hearing on the
moratorium debate efforts to make it permanent, and new legislation
making it easier for states to collect billions in sales taxes owed
but not collected on Internet purchases.
(Ed Jayne- ejayne@afscme.org)
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Collective Bargaining Bill for Public Safety Officers
Gains Cosponsors
The Public Safety Officers
Employer-Employee Cooperation Act (H.R. 980) has attracted 201 House
cosponsors. The bill would establish minimum standards for states in
resolving workplace disputes and give all public safety employees
the right to bargain over pay and working conditions. The bill
picked up steam in May after public safety officers from across the
country were in Washington, D.C. to lobby their legislators during
National Correctional Officers Week and National Police Week.
(Jayne Clancy- jclancy@afscme.org)
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COPS Bill Passes House
The House passed the
COPS Improvement Act of 2007 (H.R. 1700) which authorizes $1.5
billion annually from 2008 through 2013 for state and local law
enforcement programs. H.R. 1700 provides $600 million annually for
officers to perform intelligence, antiterrorism and homeland
security duties and $350 annually for law enforcement technology
grants. The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a companion bill (S.
368) in March.
(Jayne Clancy- jclancy@afscme.org)
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Speaker Pelosi Convenes National Summit on America's
Children
On May 22, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
convened a National Summit on America's Children, which featured
several panels of experts who discussed scientific research and
statistical data on early childhood development. The speakers noted
that most brain synapses are produced in the first three years of
life, arguing for federal policies that focus on these earliest
years. They looked broadly at all of the challenges millions of
American children and families face, including food insecurity,
poverty wages, inadequate housing, and lack of access to health
care. As Speaker Pelosi said, "We know that these investments in our
children today pay off many-fold in later years. It makes good
economic sense. It is also the right thing to do. Investing in our
children early leads to their success, and prevents having to
remediate problems later."
Speaker Pelosi, along with co-chairs Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), George
Miller (D-CA), and Chaka Fattah (D-PA), prioritized a number of
policy initiatives aimed at providing a better life for children.
These include improving and expanding access to Head Start and
quality child care; improving the training and compensation of the
early childhood workforce; expanding health care coverage for
children; requiring a minimum number of paid sick days to workers
and paid family leave; strengthening nutrition programs; restoring
full federal funding for child support enforcement; improving the
recruitment and retention of child welfare caseworkers; and
expanding the number of low-income families receiving the child tax
credit. (Fran Bernstein- fbernstein@afscme.org)
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Senate Begins Debate on Overhaul of Immigration Laws
The Senate began, but did not complete, consideration
of a compromise immigration bill that was the product of weeks of
closed-door discussions among a dozen senators from both parties and
two Bush cabinet secretaries. The bill's authors claim that the
legislation would secure the nation's borders, provide a path to
legal status for an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, halt
illegal immigration in the future, reduce backlogs for immigrants
who have waited to settle in the U.S. legally, and offer a temporary
workforce of skilled and unskilled workers for employers in the
future. However, from the outset, the bill was attacked by many of
the very constituencies it was designed to appeal to:
immigrant rights, labor, business and religious groups.
The proposed bill would greatly toughen border enforcement,
eventually doubling the U.S. Border Patrol to 28,000 agents, install
at least 370 miles of border fence and 200 miles of vehicle
barriers. Immigration and Naturalization Service officials estimate
it will take 18 months to put the so-called triggers in place, which
must be done before the process of applying for new legal visas can
move forward.
The bill proposes a new kind of visa, a Z visa, for immigrants
who were in the U.S. before January 1, 2007, without legal papers.
Once the backlog of legal immigrant petitions is cleared, which is
estimated to take eight years, Z visa holders could apply to become
legal permanent residents. But before they could do that, they would
have to return to their home countries to apply for a green card,
pay many thousands of dollars in fees and show that they are able to
speak English. It is estimated that it would take approximately 13
years for a former illegal immigrant to become a U.S. citizen under
this process.
After borders are secured, the bill proposes a new Y visa for
temporary workers. Under this process, employers would have to show
that they tried to recruit American workers before they could hire
temporary immigrants. Immigrants could come for three stints of two
years each, but would have to leave the U.S. for a year between each
episode. They would also have to pay for health insurance for any
family members they brought to the U.S. The bill also would
establish a new merit-based system for awarding permanent resident
visas, or green cards. The point system would give more weight to
job skills and education and less to family ties.
Under the guest worker program, as originally proposed, 400,000
foreign workers could have come to the U.S. each year on two-year
visas, and the number could have increased to 600,000 in response to
demand from employers. By a vote of 74 to 24, the Senate did approve
an amendment offered by Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Barbara Boxer
(D-CA) that cut the annual limit on temporary workers to 200,000.
Debate on the bill is expected to continue after the Memorial Day
recess.
(Marge Allen- mallen@afscme.org)
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Hearing Highlights How Private Plans Threaten the
Financial Solvency of the Medicare Program
This week,
the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee held a hearing to
explore the private, fee-for-service health plans that cover a
growing number of Medicare beneficiaries, but which cost much more
than traditional Medicare (which also operates as fee-for-service).
The committee explored whether beneficiaries receive additional
value from these plans which are paid an average of 19 percent more
than the cost of traditional Medicare and in some cases are paid up
to 50 percent more. The testimony provided at the hearing
contributes to the evidence that the extra payments to the insurance
companies do not go to extra benefits but, rather, go to increasing
the profitability of the insurers.
Private
fee-for-service plans were allowed to enroll Medicare beneficiaries
beginning in 1997, along with private managed care plans. Advocates
of private plans claimed that they would deliver Medicare benefits
at lower cost than traditional Medicare. However, in response to
lobbying by the insurance industry, Congress enacted legislation in
2003 to provide substantial subsidies to the private plans.
Since that time, the private plans have waged aggressive
marketing campaigns to sign up seniors. In fact, a recent story in
the New York Times described complaints filed with several state
insurance commissioners accusing insurance agents of using high
pressure tactics, making false promises and even switching patients
into private plans without their permission. As a result, the number
of seniors enrolled in the private plans has grown dramatically and
their high cost now threatens the financial solvency of the Medicare
program.
Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA), Chair of the Ways and Means Health
Subcommittee, plans to draft legislation to reduce the excess
payments and to use some of the savings to reduce cost sharing for
low-income Medicare beneficiaries and tend to other needs.
(Barbara Coufal- bcoufal@afscme.org)
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AFSCME Department of Legislation
Phone: 202/429-5020 or 800/732-8120
Fax: 202/223-3413
E-mail: legislation@afscme.org
Website: http://www.afscme.org/action/index.html
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