PA Senate Republicans Declare War on Working Families with Vicious Budget Cuts to Protect the Rich
Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center
717-255-7156
On May 6, on a party-line vote, the Pennsylvania Senate passed a budget that makes deep cuts in most state services and programs.
Senate Bill (SB) 850 proposes spending $24.6 billion in state general fund dollars in FY2009-10, effectively reducing state expenditures to 2005-06 levels. With the addition of $2.7 billion in federal stimulus funds, total state spending rises to $27.3 billion, $1.7 billion less than the spending plan proposed by Governor Ed Rendell in February.
Even with federal stimulus funds accounted for, every major department will be cut. Funding for the Department of Public Welfare will decline by $250 million, a 4% cut, while funding for environmental protection will decline by 40%.
The Senate plan relies on cuts to balance the budget, rejecting other options. The plan leaves the state’s $740 million Rainy Day Fund untouched and contains little new revenue. It rejects the Governor’s proposed tax on smokeless tobacco and other tobacco products, a new natural gas severance tax, and a cigarette tax rate increase. It leaves $500 million in the Health Care Provider Retention Account, a portion of which could be used to avoid service cuts.
The Fight for National Healthcare is also the Fight for Obama’s Agenda for Change
Has Obama lost the trust of progressives, as Krugman says?
Paul Krugman says “yes.” Is the health care fight an opportunity to change who wins in Washington?
Glenn Greenwald
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
Aug. 21, 2009
Paul Krugman has an excellent column today arguing that progressives have backlashed so intensely over the prospect of Obama’s dropping the public option because — for reasons extending far beyond specific health care issues — they no longer trust the President. Citing Obama’s steadfast continuation of Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies, the administration’s extreme coziness with crisis-causing banks, and the endless retreats on health care, Krugman says that “a backlash in the progressive base . . . has been building for months” and that “progressives are now in revolt. Mr. Obama took their trust for granted, and in the process lost it.”
Krugman contends that while “the fight over the public option involves real policy substance,” it is at least as much “a proxy for broader questions about the president’s priorities and overall approach.” That’s the argument I made the other day about why the health care fight is so important regardless of one’s views of the public option. The central pledges of the Obama campaign were less about specific policy positions and much more about changing the way Washington works — to liberate political outcomes from the dictates of corporate interests; to ensure vast new levels of transparency in government; to separate our national security and terrorism approaches from the politics of fear. With some mild exceptions, those have been repeatedly violated. Negotiating his health care reform plan in total secrecy and converting it into a gigantic gift to the pharmaceutical and insurance industries — which is exactly what a plan with (1) mandates, (2) no public option and (3) a ban on bulk negotiations for drug prices would be — would constitute yet another core violation of those commitments, yet another bolstering (a major one) of the very power dynamic he vowed to subvert.
Continue reading The Fight for National Healthcare is also the Fight for Obama’s Agenda for Change
Congress Can Save Healthcare Reform by Passing the Weiner Amendment for Medicare for All
Memo to the left on healthcare – don’t mourn, escalate
by National Nurses Movement
Tue Aug 18, 2009 at 04:12:03 PM PDT
There’s a fundamental lesson in collective bargaining that seems to have been lost on the White House, and those in Congress who devised their failing strategy on healthcare reform:
Don’t make all your compromises before you walk in the room.
For all those now wringing their hands over the apparent abandonment of the public option and like Rachel Maddow dissecting the train wreck of the once promising opportunity for genuine healthcare reform, it’s time to ask: what happened? who could have foreseen that semi barreling down the highway? and what do we do now?
Cong. Weiner Discusses Medicare for All on Morning Joe TV Show
For rest of interview go to next page.
Continue reading Cong. Weiner Discusses Medicare for All on Morning Joe TV Show
Real News Interview with USW President Leo Gerard on Healthcare
Obama Concession on ‘Public Option’ Compromise Is Attempt to Sidetrack Single Payer Option
Progressives must turn up the heat for the Single Payer option – the Weiner Amendment to HR 3200, to be introduced on floor of House in September. The Weiner Amendment substitutes the text of HR 676 the National Healthcare Act for the current text of HR 3200, the liberal compromise with the insurance industry.
See article below by liberal blogger Jane Hamsher. The debate about public option is a phony debate because there are not enough votes to pass a healthcare bill without the public option, and the White House knows this. Why start a debate about the public option? Because the grassroots pressure for Medicare for All is building and word of the Weiner amendment is spreading. Call your Congressperson and ask for a Yes vote on the Weiner amendment.
Obama picks public option fight with liberals
by Jane Hamsher
Founder, FireDogLake.com
Many people are rightly upset that the White House is sending stronger and stronger signals that they are willing to jettison a public option. What was once the defining feature of the Obama health care plan has now been dismissed with a bipartisan flourish. “[I]t’s both the right and the left that have become so fixated on this that they forget everything else,” he says.
There are 435 seats on the House. Of those, 257 are filled by Democrats and 178 by Republicans. Which means a majority is 218. The Republicans have vowed to vote against health care, period. The Democrats can pass health care on their own, but if they lose 40 of their own, they only have 217 votes.
AFL-CIO convention may feature showdown over health care
AFL-CIO convention may feature showdown over health care
By Mark Gruenberg
16 August 2009
| WASHINGTON – With one month to go before September’s national AFL-CIO Convention in Pittsburgh, the biggest floor fight there may be over health care. And that floor fight, in turn, could affect the whole health care battle on Capitol Hill and nationally. |
| That’s because while the federation has supported and actively campaigned for legislation based on the principles of universality, cost controls, choosing your own doctor and a government-run alternative to the insurance companies, 552 labor bodies — from international unions down to local councils — want to go in a different direction: A government-run single-payer Medicare-like system.So if the AFL-CIO yanks its support for legislation being considered in Congress, and backed by Democratic President Barack Obama, that legislation could sink.
Continue reading AFL-CIO convention may feature showdown over health care |
Richard Trumka Calls for National Single Payer Healthcare in August 15 Speech in Pittsburgh
Complete Analysis of Right Wing Lies about Healthcare Reform Bill
The Complete Deconstructing the Right Wing Lies on the Health Insurance Bill
The right’s lies about the current health insurance proposals before Congress have rarely been compiled in such concise form before.
To view article, please click on the link below –
http://pleasecutthecrap.typepad.com/main/deconstructing-rw-lies-hcbill.html
Beaver County Blue: Voice of the 17th CD of Progressive Democrats of America 