Obama’s 1st Year Not Change He Promised

By Jim Cavanaugh, SCFL President

A year ago a new President, having been elected with a mandate-sized majority, took office with his party holding solid majorities in both houses of Congress. A year later it is fair to ask how this new government is doing.

Barack Obama and his party took over the government with a huge mess to clean up and an ambitious agenda. The country was fighting wars on two fronts and back home the economy had collapsed. The voters gave them control of the government in order to fix those things, but also to finally fix a broken health care system and to address a myriad of problems which had been exacerbated by the government-for-the-rich previous administration.

They started off pretty good, passing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) which many economists credit with preventing the Recession from getting even worse. However, legislative efforts have pretty much gone down hill since then. And, the economy still sports an official unemployment rate of 10 percent and a devastating rate of over 17 percent if you count the underemployed and those who have stopped looking for work.

The new President used his bully pulpit to get the ARRA passed and included in that legislation a tax cut for the middle class, which he had promised during his campaign. Also in the first weeks of his administration, he reversed several of Bush’s anti-union Executive Orders, including a ban on Project Labor Agreements for federal government construction projects. The first piece of legislation he signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. And he appointed a decidedly pro-labor Secretary of Labor, who has since worked hard to reverse DOL’s neglect of wage violation claims.

On the other hand, the new President reappointed Bush’s Secretary of Defense, plucked his Treasury Secretary and other appointees from Wall Street, and is now attempting to reappoint the same Federal Reserve Chairman who presided over the financial collapse.

More War, Fewer Good Jobs

On foreign policy, the new President’s deadline for “withdrawal” from Iraq by this August probably won’t be met, but probably no one will notice anyway since “withdrawal” for him means leaving 40,000 troops in that country. Meanwhile, in the midst of saber-rattling over Iran and Yemen, he has escalated the war in Afghanistan and set himself up for a Lyndon Johnson-type legacy.

In the campaigns to elect this new government, organized labor was all in. For its efforts, it has received a few bones as noted above, but its number one priority – the Employee Free Choice Act – has been pushed to the back burner; and, as nervous politicians watch the next election approach this November, may wind up being completely removed from the stove.

Unkept Promises

Perhaps no where has this new government flubbed things more badly than in the long drawn out effort to pass a health care reform bill, a key issue in the elections that put this government into power.

During the primary season, Obama’s main opponent, Hillary Clinton, floated the idea of forcing everyone to buy health insurance, sort of like the requirement to carry automobile insurance. That trial balloon landed with a thud and Obama stated his belief that a public option was a necessity in order to bring down costs and make sure everyone was covered.

McCainCare

In the general election, Obama’s opponent proposed taxing health care benefits. For union members, especially, and for many others as well, this was a rallying point against that opponent and in favor of Obama, who proclaimed that health care reform should be funded with a tax on those making over $250,000.

In recent weeks Obama has backed off both those positions and at this writing, as the legislation limps toward passage, we are looking at the likelihood of a law that requires people to buy health insurance from private carriers and that at least partially pays for any new costs by taxing employer-provided health insurance. Several labor honchos, who have been negotiating against themselves from the beginning of this debate, got some compromises from the President on the benefits taxation issue, but nevertheless allowed organized labor to be implicated by not holding to its bottom line – absolutely no taxation of benefits.

Health Insurer’s Still Control Senate

The failure to produce genuine health care reform can be blamed largely on the U.S. Senate and its undemocratic filibuster rule which essentially requires 60 votes, rather than a simple majority of 51 votes, to pass legislation. The minority party, determined and unified, holds 40 votes. The Senate leadership thus had to seek the 60 votes from some of the more conservative members of its own party and, especially, from the partyless Senator Joe Lieberman, one of the most unprincipled individuals to ever sit in a U.S. legislative body. Lieberman, who supported Obama’s opponent during the campaign, has backtracked on many positions he had previously proclaimed. He even refused to support allowing people between the ages of 55 and 65 to buy into Medicare with their own money. It is clear that he and a few of the more conservative members of the majority party would support no legislation that might in any way impinge upon the insurance industry’s profits.

With a president apparently willing to back any compromise and a few recalcitrant Senators willing to do the bidding of the private health care industry, the Senate eventually passed, on Christmas Eve, a totally inadequate bill. Meanwhile, the House had passed a better, though far from perfect bill. Hanging over efforts to mesh the two bills is the Senate’s tyranny-of-the-minority filibuster rule. And that pretty much guarantees the end product, after preoccupying this new government for well over half of its first year, will be legislation that has maybe a couple improvements like rules about pre-existing conditions but that in no way fixes a broken system.

So then, how is this new government doing? The kindest word I can come up with to describe its first year is: “disappointing.” And that is a big understatement.