AFSCME LEGISLATIVE REPORT May 25, 2007

[Omaha Steve]

Below are the top stories of the week from Capitol Hill.

The Congress will be in recess next week. The next weekly report will be published Friday, June 8.

AFSCME LEGISLATIVE REPORT
May 25, 2007

In this issue:

* Deal Reached on War Spending Bill
* AFSCME Vice President Testifies on Capitol Hill
* House Republican Leaders Gear Up for Spending Battle
* Forces Clash over Internet Taxes
* Collective Bargaining Bill for Public Safety Officers Gains Cosponsors
* COPS Bill Passes House
* Speaker Pelosi Convenes National Summit on America's Children
* Senate Begins Debate on Overhaul of Immigration Laws
* Hearing Highlights How Private Plans Threaten the Financial Solvency of the Medicare Program

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- [e-mail])

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- [e-mail])

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- [e-mail])

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.

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- [e-mail])

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- [e-mail])

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- [e-mail])

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- [e-mail])

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- [e-mail])

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- [e-mail])

Click here to join the AFSCME e-Activist Network.

AFSCME Department of Legislation
Phone: [phone] or 800/732-8120
Fax: [phone]
E-mail: [e-mail]
Website: http://www.afscme.org/
Produced by Union Labor

Visit the web address below to tell your friends about this.
Tell-a-friend!

If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for AFSCME Action Center.