GOP House Gets Failing Grades on Working Family Issues, Report Card Reveals
WASHINGTON – On subjects of creating jobs and protecting families’ paychecks, workers’ rights and health care and retirement security, the new House Republican majority has failed working families, a report card issued today by the House Education and the Workforce Democrats concluded.
“U.S. unemployment has remained stubbornly high since the financial crisis of 2008. With 14 million unemployed, putting Americans back to work should be Congress’s top priority,” the Working Families Report Card stated. “However, in the first seven months of the 112th Congress, not a single jobs bill was allowed to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. Instead, the House passed bills that eliminate jobs.”
Summary of failing subjects:
• Job Creation –The House has not considered a single jobs bill this year but has passed bills that cut up to 2 million jobs.
• Protecting Workers’ Paychecks – The House Republican majority repeatedly voted to cut workers’ pay, especially in the construction industry.
• Protecting Workers’ Rights – The House saw an especially ferocious assault on agencies charged with enforcing workers’ rights and is moving to gut workers’ ability to fight unlawful outsourcing.
• Protecting Workers’ Health Care and Retirement Security – The House Republican majority voted to end Medicare with a plan that would cost a 54-year-old $182,000 in retirement savings and younger workers even more.
The Working Families Report Card covered the first seven months of 2011. However, the report warned that prospects for House action to create jobs in the fall will likely depend on the outcome of a number of upcoming legislative flashpoints:
• Whether the House will cut or create construction jobs in the highway transportation bill
• Whether the House will jeopardize airport jobs (again) in FAA reauthorization
• Whether the House will refuse to extend unemployment insurance benefits
• Whether the House will continue blocking Democrats’ ‘Make it in America’ agenda
• Continued fallout from the debt limit brinksmanship
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