Remarks by AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka, Campaign for America's Future
June 08, 2010
Good afternoon. It's wonderful to be here with you today. On behalf of the 11.5 million working women and men of the AFL-CIO and our community affiliate Working America, I want to thank the Campaign for America's Future, and all of you, for all that you do to make real the promise of America.
My friends, in 2008, we voted, together with a clear majority of our fellow Americans, to send George W. Bush back to Texas - and to reject the policies that took America in a catastrophic direction - down a path of national ruin in every sense - political ruin in Florida in 2000; financial ruin first in Enron, then in the great crash of 2008; military disaster in Iraq; moral catastrophe in Abu Ghraib; and finally, the physical destruction of our great city of New Orleans. Continuing along this path was a journey into national darkness, and the American people finally turned away from the politics of fear and manipulation toward change.
I want to talk today about the fight for our future. But before I do I want to talk briefly about our past as a nation. On our airwaves today, you can hear a twisted version of our nation's history. People who call themselves populists defend Wall Street and big oil companies. Some of these same people then turn around and paint anyone who disagrees with them as pro-fascist - complete with images of our president in Nazi regalia. They wave the flag and attack the Republic for which it stands, shouting "keep your government out of my Medicare." In the same breath, they denounce all government and then demand that somebody "hold BP accountable." [Who do they think should do that? Rand Paul?]
I've always thought of myself as a populist. So I went back and looked at the platform of the People's Party, the original Populists. The first item in the platform was support for a government takeover of the railroads - to stop big business from oppressing farmers and workers. The last item was support for striking textile workers in Rochester, New York. Real Populists knew in 1890, and we know today, that our government - our democratic republic - together with an educated and mobilized American people - was the best check on the power of wealth and privilege.
You know, I began my working life as a coal miner, like my father and my grandfather. We learned a long time ago in the United Mine Workers what the progressive tradition in America meant - it meant the freedom to form a union and bargain - the chance to turn dangerous jobs at poverty wages into safe, good jobs. It meant a government that stopped sending the National Guard to break strikes and started sending mine inspectors to save lives. The progressive tradition meant dignity in retirement through Social Security and Medicare.
The progressive tradition in America means the same thing today - the promise of a society built on what unites us, not manipulated by what divides us, a government in which we all have a voice and through which we help each other, an economy that works for all.
My friends, our economy is not working for all. 9.7% unemployment, 17% under-employment, 26% teen unemployment, and an astonishing 38% unemployment among African American teens. Every third household has someone who has been unemployed over the last two years. Real wages have been stagnant for decades. Millions have been thrown out of their homes, and the housing market is still not stabilized.
We have seen that you cannot substitute bad loans for good jobs without bringing on catastrophe. And while President Obama's recovery plan did a lot of good, it was underpowered compared with the strength of President Bush's economic catastrophe - in large part because it got pared back in a vain effort to satisfy hypocritical Congressional Republicans and weak-kneed Democrats. So now we face long-term mass unemployment if our government does not act, and act boldly.
Americans of all political persuasions are angry, and rightly so. We need political leaders to speak to that anger, to harness it to attack the plutocracy that has run our country into the ground, to build an economy that works for all. But instead our politics seems to be about a choice between apostles of hate masquerading as populists, and voices of complacency masquerading as progressivism.
We must demand progressive populist leadership - Now.
We, the labor movement and the broad progressive community, must hold the political leaders we elected accountable for strong action on the economy. Doing nothing, pretending people are not hurting, treating mass unemployment as a minor event - is how the political space opens for the politics of hate and scapegoating. Last week, the AFL-CIO marched in Arizona against the politics of hate - against racism masquerading as immigration policy. But it is not enough to condemn hatred. Progressives must demand our elected leaders fight for economic justice, and my friends, economic justice begins with good jobs.
So we need to have some tests for anyone who claims to represent working people in our political system.
Are you fighting to create good jobs and provide help for those who can't find work?
Will you fight to keep good jobs here in America, and quit rewarding companies that make millions by moving jobs offshore and abusing their workers?
Will you make Wall Street pay to clean up the mess they made - and regulate them so they can't do it again?
Will you defend the American public against those who would hide behind deficit reduction and do nothing while a generation of young Americans sees their opportunities shrivel and die?
Will you fight for the kind of foundational change that can rebuild the American middle class, make our economy more productive, and make sure that wages will rise in tandem with productivity?
Will you work to restore the basic human right for everyone who works in this country to form a union without fear of retaliation? We know the best way to do that is to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.
Elected officials need to understand, if you pass these tests, progressives and the labor movement will stand with you. If you fail these tests, no matter your party, we cannot help you. If you are an unreliable ally on these basic questions, you will find that we are also unreliable allies.
President Obama said last week that getting Americans back to work is his top priority. He has a vision for our future - a vision where we make things in America again, where good jobs and rising wages, driven by investments in infrastructure and education, restore the American middle class. President Obama has said we must make the great change to a low carbon economy, and create millions of good jobs in the process. This is the right vision for America. This is a future worth fighting and campaigning for.
President Obama has talked the right talk. It is now time to walk the walk. And I mean the walk from the White House to Capitol Hill, the place in our government where great visions can either turn into laws and budget resolutions, or die.
It is a fact of American public life today that the Congressional Republicans are the party of no. They have decided that they will profit from failure. They are short selling America. They are not just watching our collective house burn and hoping to pick up the ruins on the cheap. They are cutting the fire hoses and sometimes even pouring on the gasoline. And unfortunately they have some help.
Because, up on Capitol Hill, there is a handful of Democrats who are afraid to do what's right for America. They would rather let American families lose their health insurance, than take a vote someone might criticize. They would rather see kids crowded into under-resourced classrooms and firehouses shut down. They would rather see a lost generation of unemployed youth and stunted small business. And worst of all - there are some Senators who call themselves Democrats who want to protect tax breaks for leveraged buyout billionaires - even if it means closing schools and cutting off health care for the unemployed.
Some say, well let's throw those dogs a bone. Let's get rid of the corporate income tax. Or let's cut Social Security - even though Social Security is the healthiest part of our entire retirement system. That's a bone the dogs will like. Then those dogs will vote for jobs. Then they'll want to help the unemployed.
The dogs say they care about deficits. It is true that we have a long-term deficit problem, driven mainly by a weak economy and excessive growth in health care costs. We absolutely must do something about that. And we have a shortfall in government revenue, as federal tax revenues as a share of the economy are at their lowest point in 50 years.
But over the next 10 years the budget deficit would be manageable without the economic downturn and the fiscal policies of the previous administration. Our medium-term deficit problem is all about the tax cuts George Bush gave the rich and the economic collapse that killed revenue by killing jobs. So let's keep that in mind as the dogs ask us to make the middle class pay for the policies of the Bush administration that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy and the privileged.
Let us also keep in mind that we have no short-term deficit problem. Textbook economics and decades of experience teach us that slashing spending when we still have high unemployment is a terrible idea. Not only will many suffer needlessly - but it does little to improve the budget deficit, because what the government saves by cutting back on spending, it loses as a weaker economy depresses tax receipts.
By the way, that's not just my opinion - that's the opinion of Paul Krugman and Joe Stiglitz and Christina Romer. Last time I checked they had more Nobel Prizes in economics than the whole Congress with Pete Peterson thrown in.
Some say, let's put everything on the table. That will make the dogs happy. Let's invite them to chew away on Social Security, on Medicare, on unemployment insurance, on education. Others may say what they will, but for the AFL-CIO everything is not on the table. Most of all, what retirement security remains to American workers is not on the table.
This approach to governing - the throw the dogs a bone, or invite them up on the table approach - is crazy. We need political leadership that talks about creating jobs, fights to create jobs, and then talks about creating jobs again. Political leadership that will not mix messages or pull punches, that will speak with one voice in the press and on Capitol Hill - that will go to war on behalf of our economic future.
Because the truth is that it's always the same people on the Hill who stand in the way - they stood in the way of real health care reform, and they stood in the way of financial reform and now they are standing between our country and our economic future. We have seen what Presidential leadership can do on financial reform - when the President stands up for the good of our country, stands up for working people who are hurt and angry, the dogs roll over. That's the kind of leadership we must have today on jobs.
This week Congress is back. President Obama is right - jobs must be the first priority. So before I close, here is what the President and the progressive community must fight to get done:
First, Speaker Pelosi and the House leadership fought courageously for a real jobs bill before the Memorial Day recess. But the House could only pass a shamefully weakened version of this bill. Even so, the House bill extended unemployment insurance, funded summer jobs and infrastructure, and closed the hedge fund and leveraged buyout tax loophole. The Senate must take up that bill, not weaken it, and make it real by restoring health care for the long term unemployed and aid to our states and cities and then pass it.
Senator Harkin has a bill that would keep more than 200,000 teachers from being laid off. Congress must pass his bill.
Congressman George Miller and Senator Sherrod Brown have a bill that would create more than a million good new jobs, with labor rights protections - targeted at the communities across our country hardest hit by Wall Street's economic crisis. They propose to pay for it by an increase in the income tax on people who make more than $10 million a year. This is the kind of leadership we need to see from Congress.
At the same time, the Senate is taking up an energy and climate change bill. Progressives must work to ensure that this bill is a jobs bill-that it sets our economy on a course to take on the challenge of climate change in a way that rebuilds our manufacturing economy, and puts millions of Americans back to work building a sustainable future.
Because the truth is that the deficits that are threatening our country right now are our jobs deficit and our infrastructure deficit. $2.2 trillion in twentieth century infrastructure we are letting crumble, and twenty-first century infrastructure that we are not building - the smart grid and high speed rail and universal broadband.
It is simply sick that we have millions of unemployed, trillions of dollars of work to do, and politicians blocking action in the name of a deficit crisis that doesn't exist.
Finally - Congress must understand that if workers don't have the right to organize, we will never have an economy that works for all. Every day the Employee Free Choice Act is not passed is a day we don't spend rebuilding our middle class. Restoring Americans' human rights in the workplace is going to be on the agenda until it gets done. If you doubt we are serious, just ask Blanche Lincoln.
We're on the march now - we have marched on Wall Street and on K Street for good jobs and Wall Street accountability. But now we need to bring that spirit here to Washington, to Capitol Hill, so we can help President Obama make good on his pledge to make good jobs priority one.
What really matters to the people here in Washington - Wall Street or Main Street, jobs or bankers' bonuses and bond markets? Now is the time for our elected leaders to really and truly show they are on our side - on the side of our country, and our country's future.
Thank you.
