Congress

Stop Reversals Of The Long-term Benefits Of The First Earth Day April 22, 1970

April 23, 2020 Ralph Nader. Resist! Congress, Earth Day, Environment, pollution

Earth Day, April 22, 1970, was the most consequential demonstration of civic energy in modern American history. Engaging nearly 20 million Americans participating in about 13,000 local events, this first Earth Day changed corporate and government policies through popular demands for clean air, water, soil, and food. Senator Gaylord Nelson launched Earth Day, having tired of Congressional inaction and the power of the corporate pollution lobby. Earth Day quickly became a grassroots educational and action-driven week of activities that aroused the country. Even reactionary President Nixon quickly planted a tree on the White House South lawn in recognition of the public support for environmentalism after he saw the huge turnouts at rallies and marches.

As One Of Largest Bailouts In History Looms, ‘Crisis Ridden’ Corporations Reap Record Profits

April 21, 2020 Alan Macleod, Mintpress News. Educate! Bailout, Congress, COVID-19, Recession

Hospitals overflowing with sick and dying patients. Overworked staff risking their lives wearing garbage bags as makeshift protective equipment against an invisible but deadly virus. Refrigerated containers left outside medical facilities, filling with the dead. Mass graves being dug in the city. It is like something out of a horror movie. But it is very real and is happening right now in America. “We are doing the best we can,” Derrick Smith, a certified registered nurse anesthetist in New York City told MintPress last week, “but people are dying left and right, no exaggeration.” “I’ve never imagined or seen our healthcare system take such a beating before,” he said. “This is something that none of us have ever really seen.”

Head Of The Postal Workers Union Says The Postal Service Could Be Dead In Three Months

April 17, 2020 Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. Organize! Congress, Labor Movement, Postal Service, Recession

Among the most prominent victims of the coronavirus financial crisis is the United States Postal Service, which could quite literally run out of money to operate if the federal government does not approve a rescue package for it soon. The Trump administration—which, like much of the GOP, has long advocated for cutbacks and privatization of the postal service—actively prevented the USPS from being bailed out in the CARES Act, even as Donald Trump has made a show of publicly thanking Fedex and UPS for their work. Not very subtle. Fifty years ago last month, U.S. postal workers staged an unprecedented and historic eight-day strike, backing down the Nixon administration and winning the right to collective bargaining. A half century later, Mark Dimondstein, the leader of the 200,000-strong American Postal Workers Union, says that Republicans are using today’s crisis as an opportunity to destroy the postal service as a public entity once and for all.

Lone Watchdog Demands Federal Reserve Release Names Of Corporations Receiving Taxpayer Bailouts

April 17, 2020 Jake Johnson, Commondreams. Resist! Bailout, Congress, Corporatism, Federal Reserve, Watchdog

The lone watchdog on a congressional committee formed to oversee the Trump administration's handling of a multi-trillion-dollar coronavirus bailout package demanded Wednesday that the Federal Reserve release to the public both the names of corporations receiving taxpayer bailout money and details on how the funds are being used. "The public deserves to know which companies are receiving taxpayer-backed lending through the Fed and on what terms, and to be able to monitor what those companies do after receiving taxpayer support," Bharat Ramamurti, thus far the only person who has been appointed to the newly created Congressional Oversight Commission, wrote in a letter to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.

Bailout The Pension System

April 14, 2020 Ed Ott, Portside. Organize! Congress, Pensions, Working Class

It is not a secret that the United States has an inadequate and underfunded pension retirement system. Its about to get much worse! The private and public sectors’ pension plans are suffering terrible losses as a result of layoffs and investment losses. We are weeks away from a new assault on what’s left of millions of pensions across the country. There are two kinds of pension plans: (1) a defined benefit plan is when workers retire and get a set amount of money each month (such as 80 percent of their highest wage). This was the gold standard many unions won for their members in the post-WWII years. It required employers to set aside enough money to ensure workers would have adequate income when they retired. (2) Starting in the 1980s employers began to reject defined benefit plans as too expensive and moved to defined contribution plans – so-called “modern pensions.”

UE Union: The Relief Workers Need Now

April 8, 2020 The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America Union. Create! Congress, COVID-19, Recession, Worker Rights and Jobs

As Congress crafts a new relief package, they need to refrain from providing further giveaways to big corporations, and they need to put real restrictions on the ones they included in the CARES Act. Any private corporation that receives funding from the federal government should be subjected to stringent regulations to ensure that they are using that money to maintain good jobs and provide socially useful goods and services, not to fatten their profits. No federal loans or grants should be used to pay bonuses to any members of senior management, not just airline CEOs. Any corporation receiving financial assistance from the federal government must agree to a $15 per hour minimum wage and neutrality in union organizing campaigns.

Are We About To Lose The US Postal Service?

April 8, 2020 A Grand Alliance To Save The Postal Service, Popular Resistance. Organize! Budget, Congress, Privatization, US Postal Service

The Postal Service is under an unprecedented strain from the Coronavirus pandemic and we all need to act. The crisis is straining every part of the Postal Service. It is putting new obligations on the USPS, while postal revenue falls. For millions of Americans, the Postal Service is their only contact with the outside world right now. Its network is keeping our prescriptions filled and food on our shelves. But when the Congress passed its huge two-trillion dollar stimulus, they left the Postal Service out in the cold! There are credible reports that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin lobbied hard to stop Congress from including financial support for the USPS in the stimulus bill. His department is in charge of the White House's attempt to sell off the Postal Service to private corporations.

Was The Fed Just Nationalized?

April 5, 2020 Ellen Brown, Popular Resistance. Educate! Congress, Federal budget, Federal Reserve, Recession

Mainstream politicians have long insisted that Medicare for all, a universal basic income, student debt relief and a slew of other much-needed public programs are off the table because the federal government cannot afford them. But that was before Wall Street and the stock market were driven onto life-support by a virus. Congress has now suddenly discovered the magic money tree. It took only a few days for Congress to unanimously pass the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which will be doling out $2.2 trillion in crisis relief, most of it going to Corporate America with few strings attached. Beyond that, the Federal Reserve is making over $4 trillion available to banks, hedge funds and other financial entities of all stripes; it has dropped the fed funds rate (the rate at which banks borrow from each other) effectively to zero; and it has made $1.5 trillion available to the repo market.

How Wall Street And Trump Created The Ventilator Crisis

April 2, 2020 Joyce Chediak, Liberation News. Educate! Congress, COVID-19, Lobbyists, Medical equipment

The $2 trillion relief bill of spending and tax breaks to bolster the hobbled U.S. economy hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic was signed into law on March 27. While offering some relief to workers, it does little to directly address broken supply chains for vital items like ventilators. It does not require manufacturers to coordinate production of equipment and therapeutics in short supply or ensure that masks and ventilators are distributed to where they’re most needed. It does, however, offer bonanzas to corporations. The federal government is open for coronavirus business, and the race to get some of the $2 trillion has become a frenzy. Lobbyists are descending on Washington seeking lucrative contracts. Some are advocating for companies producing a mist spray for killing the virus on airplanes, others for recyclable hospital curtains, still others for a host of disinfectants competing against each other.

Pentagon Asks To Keep Future Spending Secret

April 1, 2020 Steven Aftergood, Federation of American Scientists. Educate! Budget, Congress, Pentagon, Transparency

The Department of Defense is quietly asking Congress to rescind the requirement to produce an unclassified version of the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP) database. Preparation of the unclassified FYDP, which provides estimates of defense spending for the next five years, has been required by law since 1989 (10 USC 221) and has become an integral part of the defense budget process. But the Pentagon said that it should no longer have to offer such information in an unclassified format, according to a DoD legislative proposal for the pending FY 2021 national defense authorization act. “The Department is concerned that attempting publication of unclassified FYDP data might inadvertently reveal sensitive information,” the Pentagon said in its March 6, 2020 proposal.

US Senate’s Final Stimulus Bill: Why It Won’t Be Enough

March 25, 2020 Jack Rasmus, Jack Rasmus.com. Educate! Bailout, Congress, COVID-19, Recession

Just after midnight March 25, 2020, eastern time the US Senate passed a compromise bill of fiscal spending to address the accelerating economic decline. Both Democrat and Senate leaders agreed on the terms. US House of Representatives Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, indicated she would rush approval of the package seeking a unanimous voice vote of the House. Here’s what the terms of the stimulus package looks like, according to initial summaries by the Washington Post and CNN released within minutes of the bill passage: Middle class and worker households would get $500 billion in the form of direct checks ($250B) and increased unemployment insurance benefits for the next four months ($250B)

Senate Panel Briefed On Disparity In Incarceration

January 27, 2020 Hannah Gaskill, Marylandmatters.org Educate! Congress, Electoral Politics, Mass Incarceration, Reform

Maryland has the highest incarceration rate in the nation of black men aged 18 to 24, according to a November report issued by the Justice Policy Institute. The second highest incarceration rate for young black men is in Mississippi. “No disrespect to Mississippi,” said Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee Chairman William C. Smith Jr. (D-Montgomery), “but this should be something that raises everyone’s eyebrows throughout the entire General Assembly, and especially in this committee.”

50 Years After Congress Passed ERA, Amendment Meets Constitutional Threshold

January 19, 2020 Julia Conley, Commondreams. Create! Congress, ERA, Women's Rights

Women's rights advocates celebrated Wednesday as the Virginia legislature became the 38th in the nation to approve the Equal Rights Amendment, nearly 100 years after activists first called for equality between men and women to be enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The approval of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) by Virginia's state Senate and House means that the required three-quarters of U.S. states have now voted to ratify the amendment, which was passed by Congress in 1972. The law aims to constitutionally guarantee the same legal rights regarding pay equity and other workplace discrimination to all Americans regardless of sex. It also provides protections for women from domestic abuse and pregnancy discrimination.

House Committee Holds Hearing: Cannabis Policies For The Next Decade

January 17, 2020 David Amián Valle, Norml.org Create! Congress, Electoral Politics, Marijuana

Washington, DC: Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Subcommittee on Health on Wednesday held a legislative hearing, "Cannabis Policies for the New Decade," during which they considered multiple legislative bills aimed at amending federal cannabis laws. This marks the first time that members of the Energy and Commerce Committee have debated issues specific to marijuana policy reform.

War Powers Resolution ‘Riddled With Holes’

January 12, 2020 the Institute for Public Accuracy. Educate! Congress, Trump, War Powers Act

Francis Boyle is a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. He said today regarding moves in Congress on Iran: “The Kaine resolution and the Slotkin resolution are riddled with so many holes that Trump/Pompeo et al. will drive a truck through them. The legislation proposed by Ro Khanna and Sanders has some problematic rhetoric, which should be dropped, but it is not in the operative provisions and it is consistent with the War Powers Resolution and the War Powers Clause of the Constitution and the United Nations Charter and would make a real difference.” Boyle noted: “Slotkin’s — who notably came out of the CIA — resolution talks of the president being free to act in case of ‘an imminent armed attack.’ This is not consistent with the War Powers Resolution and will likely assist Trump committing aggression.

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