The U.S. Senate passed legislation today to extend the amount of time out of work Americans can receive unemployment insurance benefits. The House overwhelmingly passed the bill in October; the measure now goes to the president for his signature. The Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2008 (H.R.6867) provides workers with an additional seven weeks of unemployment benefits for workers who have exhausted their regular unemployment and an additional 13 weeks of benefits for workers in states with the highest unemployment.
In light of today’s devastating economic news that new jobless claims rose to their highest level in more than 16 years, the Senate did the right thing for millions of out-of-work Americans. Unemployment benefits for more than a million Americans are set to expire by the end of the year. This extension will provide much-needed help for these families who still have to put food on the table, pay their home and heating bills, and look for a job.
With our nation’s financial wounds deepening by the day, we can’t allow the rug to get pulled out from under workers looking for a new job. Extending unemployment benefits is a no-brainer – it’s one of the most effective things we can do to help workers and stimulate our economy. With the holiday season fast approaching, it’s time for the President to give workers and families a helping hand by immediately signing this bill.
Today, the Democratic Caucus officially re-elected Rep. George Miller to chair the House Education and Labor Committee for the 111th Congress.
It is an honor and a privilege to continue to chair the Education and Labor Committee in the next Congress, and I thank my colleagues for their support.
If anything, this historic election reminded us that Americans from all regions, backgrounds and political stripes are united in our shared hopes and aspirations: A quality, affordable education for our children; a good-paying job with decent benefits; and a secure retirement after a lifetime of hard work. In a nation as great as ours, these dreams can – and must – be achieved.
I look forward to working with all members of this committee, the next Congress, and the new administration on a Main Street recovery plan that will revitalize our economy, and toward our larger goal of rebuilding and strengthening America’s middle class. Like President-Elect Obama, I’m confident we can reach this goal by working in a bipartisan way that transcends the politics of the past, and by making sure that our government is open, accountable and engages the public. Moving forward, our committee will also build on our efforts to use innovative strategies to make sure that the voices of Americans around the country are heard here in Washington.
I also know that no one is more excited about the opportunities before us than Senator Ted Kennedy. No one has fought harder for our children, workers and families than Ted, and no one could ask for a better partner in these challenging times. I am thrilled that he has returned to the Senate, and look forward to continuing to work closely with him on the important tasks that lie ahead.
Today, a Wall Street Journal editorial further perpetuated an active campaign that is blatantly misrepresenting Democratic efforts to preserve and strengthen Americans’ retirement security. In light of these ongoing distortions, Chairman George Miller reiterated the committee’s legislative priorities in preparation for the next Congress’ efforts to help Americans enjoy a secure retirement.
The Wall Street Journal is needlessly creating fear among Americans rightly worried about their retirement security by misrepresenting my efforts to strengthen workers’ retirement savings – attacks that have no basis in fact. I do not support ‘abolishing’ 401(k)s, moving these plans, or changing their tax status, plain and simple. The truth is that Democrats in Congress are working to preserve and strengthen 401(k)s.
Last year, our Committee worked with the employer and investment community to pass legislation to increase transparency and protect workers’ hard-earned retirement savings from excessive and hidden fees that could cut deeply into their accounts. In addition to providing workers with better information about the fees they’re paying, we know other steps must be taken to make sure our retirement system is as strong as it can be for our nation’s workers and retirees. These principles will help guide the next Congress as we work to ensure that every American can enjoy a safe and secure retirement.
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Recent hearings held by the committee have shown the devastating toll the economic downturn has leveled on Americans’ retirement savings, including the loss of over $4 trillion in pension benefits.
To help preserve and strengthen 401(k)-style and other retirement plans, Chairman Miller today released the following principles:
• Expose excess fees that Wall Street middle men take from workers accounts. Currently, millions of Americans are paying excessive 401(k) fees at the hands of Wall Street middle men who refuse to fully disclose and detail extra fees and charges paid by employees. This is wrong, especially in light of the dramatic losses faced by millions of Americans in their 401(k) plans this year. According to the GAO, even a difference of just 1 percentage point in hidden fees can drastically eat into a worker’s 401(k) account balance – by as much as 20 percent or more over a career. This 1 percentage point difference could cost a worker with a $20,000 account balance more than $12,000 in reduced savings over this time period.
• Bring young and low-wage workers into the system at a higher rate through automatic enrollment for employers already offering 401(k)s. Unless employers more quickly automatically enroll new workers, nearly 40 percent of workers born in 1990 will have no 401(k)-style savings at all when they retire, according to the GAO. Current law allows employers to automatically enroll their workers in their companies’ 401(k)s but employers have been slow to enroll employees. Studies show that automatic enrollment can increase participation by as much as 35 percentage points. And even after 3-4 years, the vast majority of those automatically enrolled are still participating.
• Ensure that retirement accounts have diversified investment options with low fees. Many 401(k) plans have inadequate, and all too often, expensive investment options. Workers should have access to simple investment options, including low-cost index funds.
• Ensure workers have access to reliable independent investment advice. Too often, workers are given self-interested advice from financial advisors or money managers – advice that may not always lead to the best retirement investment. All plan participants should have access to objective advice and investment information to help them better manage their savings.
• Reduce vesting periods and improve portability of 401(k) accounts. Workers are leaving millions of dollars on the table because of employers’ rules that take away their savings when they change jobs. In many cases workers are required to work at a firm for three years or more before they can fully access their retirement savings. In addition, the GAO says that by automatically rolling over accounts into a new retirement plan when workers leave a job, Americans’ retirement savings would increase by a projected 11 percent on average, with the biggest percentage increases for low-income workers.
In April, the committee passed the 401(k) Fair Disclosure for Retirement Security Act (H.R. 3185), which would help workers shop around for the best retirement investment options by providing complete information on how much in fees is taken from their retirement accounts. The legislation was supported by the AFL-CIO, the AARP, the American Society of Pension Professionals and Actuaries, the Council of Independent 401(k) Recordkeepers, and the Pension Rights Center.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced today that the unemployment rate jumped to 6.5 percent after 240,000 jobs were lost in October, the highest unemployment rate since March 1994.
Today’s announcement that our economy lost almost a quarter million jobs in October proves that we need to move quickly to help American families deal with a rapidly failing economy. The 1.2 million Americans who lost their jobs this year are desperate for real solutions to get our nation back to work and our economy moving forward again.
We must get started right away by passing a Main Street recovery plan that will get Americans back to work by making real investments in energy independence and infrastructure improvements, and providing immediate relief to families and workers struggling with long-term unemployment.
More than a million out of work Americans stand to lose their extended unemployment benefits by the end of the year. With potentially millions more joining the ranks of the long-term unemployed, any economic recovery package must extend the amount of time that a worker can receive unemployment insurance benefits while they look for another job.
As we build a more resilient and robust economy, we must also ensure that workers are able to benefit as growth returns. Workers must be able to earn a fair wage, decent benefits and have the ability to enjoy a secure retirement. I look forward to working with the new Congress and the Obama administration to enact additional policies that will further strengthen our economy and its backbone – American workers and middle-class families.
Yesterday's historic election of Senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden as our next President and Vice President was a true victory for every child, student, worker and family in America. I congratulate Senators Obama and Biden, and I look forward to working closely with them to change the direction of our country and get our economy moving forward again.
During the past two years, the Education and Labor Committee has focused on strengthening our nation's middle class – a priority that Senators Obama and Biden clearly share, as demonstrated by their careers and the focus of their historic campaign.
With our country facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and our global leadership at risk, this mission is more important than ever.
In the next Congress, this committee will be dedicated to working with the new Obama-Biden administration and members of both parties of Congress to rescue our economy by rebuilding and strengthening America's middle class. We must get started right away by passing a Main Street recovery plan that will get Americans back to work and provide immediate relief to families and workers struggling with long-term unemployment and depleted state budgets.
We will dedicate ourselves to improving our nation's schools and continue our efforts to make college more affordable and accessible, so that every student has the opportunity to succeed. We are committed to rebuilding our country's roads, bridges and schools, and to green retrofitting and other modern energy programs that will create millions of good-paying jobs and reestablish America's technological leadership.
We will fight to restore workers' rights, so that every American can benefit from economic opportunity. And we will make the preservation and strengthening of retirement savings a priority, so that all Americans can enjoy a secure retirement after a lifetime of hard work.
Today marks a new beginning. Together, we can rescue our economy, restore the promise of the American Dream, and ensure that, in a nation as great as ours, the interests of students, workers, families and retirees are at the heart of our nation's priorities.
The U.S. Department of Education recently released new regulations for the No Child Left Behind Act.
Some of these regulations are steps in the right direction; but others will do little to change the criticism facing NCLB . It is troubling that the Bush administration has waited until the last possible minute to address some of the serious concerns with No Child Left Behind, in particular the lack of uniformity across the states when calculating their high school graduation rates. No Child Left Behind law is in need of significant and fundamental improvements -- so that every child has the opportunity to get a world class public education. I look forward to working with the next administration to make the law more fair, more flexible and better funded.
Today, I chaired a U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor hearing in San Francisco where we examined how the current financial crisis is affecting retirement savings. Witnesses told us that after a lifetime of planning and saving, a growing number of retirees are facing shrinking 401(k)s and increasing insecurity as a result of the ongoing financial crisis. While this crisis may have started on Wall Street, it's Main Street that stands to suffer the most. More than ever before, there is an urgent need to help Americans strengthen their retirement savings.
We also learned today that U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation lost at least $3 billion in stock investments during the last fiscal year through August, and invested a significant portion of its funds in mortgage-backed securities. The head of the PBGC, Charles Millard, will testify before the committee on Friday in Washington regarding the agency's financial problems.
Taxpayers subsidize 401(k) plans by $80 billion dollars annually. For a taxpayer investment of this size, we must ensure that the structure of 401(k)s adequately protects the nest eggs of participating workers.
At the hearing today, we heard from Roberta Quan, a retired school teacher from San Pablo, CA, who is also caring for her husband who has Alzheimer’s: "The recent unstable financial crisis is having a devastating effect on my life. A lifetime of savings in catastrophic decline is demoralizing. The bottom line is that I am retired and unable to re-earn lost funds."
Steve Carroll, a retired writer from Petaluma, CA, told us: "Our monthly budget has been severely depleted for life. We still have our IRAs. But, as they are in mutual stock funds they are so far down in value that selling any of them right now, as the law requires of [my partner] Chuck, the loss would be an enormous percentage of the investment."
Current regulations require account holders of 401(k)-type account to withdraw a minimum amount of money every year after they reach 70 ½ years old. If seniors do not take out a minimum amount based on an Internal Revenue Service formula, they are subject to a 50 percent penalty. For instance, if an individual fails to withdraw $4,000, they would be assessed a $2,000 tax the next year.
Other witnesses spoke about problems with the current retirement security system where individually directed 401(k)-type plans have become a worker's main retirement savings vehicle. Where investment decisions were once made by professionals managing a traditional pension portfolio on behalf of workers, the responsibility of picking the right investments and implementing retirement savings strategies are left up to an individual account holder.
We started this investigation last week, as part of a series of hearings the House is conducting to investigate the causes of the financial crisis, and what additional steps are needed to protect homeowners, workers, and families.
Last week, Peter Orszag, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, told us that American workers have lost more than $2 trillion in retirement savings over the last fifteen months – an astonishing loss that could lead workers to delay their retirement.
Several experts also told us that workers closest to retirement could suffer the most from this financial tsunami. But while the housing and financial crises are intensifying retirement insecurity, we also know that workers’ retirement savings have been declining for quite some time. Rising unemployment, stagnating wages and benefits, and a shift away from more traditional defined-benefit pension plans have been making it much harder for workers to save for retirement while juggling other expenses.
Now, the number of investors taking loans on their 401(k) accounts is increasing. And hardship withdrawals are also increasing. T. Rowe Price estimates a 14 percent increase in hardship withdrawals just in the first eight months of 2008. And, all the signs point to an increased frequency of 401(k) loans and hardship withdrawals in the coming year.
As other committees’ hearings have revealed, many of the Wall Street titans responsible for this crisis have still escaped with their plush perks, lavish spa trips and golden parachutes intact. This is an outrage. For too long, the Bush administration anything goes economic policy allowed Wall Street to go unchecked.
As we look at how we can rebuild workers’ retirement savings and our nation’s economy, the Democratic Congress will continue to conduct this much-needed oversight on behalf of the American people.
Being able to save for retirement after a lifetime of hard work has always been a core tenet of the American Dream. We can’t allow the promise of a secure retirement for workers to become a casualty of the financial crisis.
$5.1 billion in emergency funds was released yesterday to help seniors and families pay their heating bills this winter. Congress passed the funding for LIHEAP, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, last month as part of a larger appropriations package.
With the financial crisis making hard economic times even worse for many families, we must make sure that Americans have the help they need to heat their homes this winter. This emergency relief will help the millions of seniors and low-income families who all too often are forced to choose between paying their heating bills and putting food on the table. In my home state of California alone, these funds will provide nearly $250 million in much-needed help for families and seniors. With the burdensome cost of high energy prices, this aid will give a critical helping hand to millions of families struggling to make ends meet.
Last week, Congress approved an emergency rescue plan in response to the worst financial crisis our country has seen since the Great Depression. We know that this plan alone will not magically turn the economy around. But we are confident that without it we will not have the chance to move forward.
We insisted that the plan include strong protections for taxpayers and tough accountability – neither of which was included in the President’s original request to Congress.
Immediately after the plan was approved, Speaker Pelosi announced that the House would conduct a series of hearings to investigate the causes of the current financial crisis and what steps we should take next to protect homeowners, workers and families struggling today.
As part of that commitment, the Committee on Education and Labor today is holding a hearing to explore how this financial crisis is impacting the retirement security of American families.
Yesterday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee launched the first of many oversight hearings examining the toxic mix of corporate greed, recklessness, and deregulation that created this financial crisis.
During his testimony, Lehman’s CEO, Mr. Fuld, showed no remorse for his catastrophic mismanagement of the company. In fact, he repeatedly denied responsibility for running the storied Lehman Brothers investment house into financial oblivion.
He refused to admit that his own reckless management – and his industry’s success of keeping regulators at bay – directly contributed to this historic financial crisis that is costing taxpayers, shareholders, and the nation’s current and future retirees billions of dollars from their nest eggs.
All the while, he insisted on taking obscene multi-million dollar bonuses for his executive teammates.
Unlike Wall Street executives, American families don’t have a golden parachute to fall back on. It’s clear that their retirement security may be one of the greatest casualties of this financial crisis.
The current financial and housing crises are stripping wealth from American families at a record rate.
A new poll just found that 63 percent of Americans are worried that they will not have enough savings for their retirement. Tragically, they may very well be right. Due to the collapse of the housing market and the financial crisis, trillions of dollars that Americans were counting on has been lost.
Americans were counting on much of this wealth for their retirement. Now it is gone – as is their ability to adequately fund their retirement.
Even before the current meltdown, middle-income families were losing ground due to the decline in middle-class wages over the last decade – making it harder for them to save for their retirement and family emergencies.
Retirement and financial experts now predict that retirees and older workers who rely on financial investments for retirement income may suffer more than any portion of the American population in the coming years.
According a survey released today by the AARP, one in five middle-aged workers stopped contributing to their retirement plans in the last year because they had trouble making ends meet. One in three workers has considered delaying retirement.
Now, the number of investors taking loans on their 401(k) accounts is increasing. And hardship withdrawals are also increasing.
T. Rowe Price estimates a 14 percent increase in hardship withdrawals just in the first eight months of 2008.
And, all the signs point to an increased frequency of 401(k) loans and hardship withdrawals in the coming year.
It makes sense that more Americans will be raiding their retirement accounts as they deal with rising unemployment and increasing costs of basic necessities.
Unfortunately, these drastic measures taken by workers today will have a long-lasting impact by significantly reducing account balances once these workers reach retirement age.
Over the past 12 months, more than a half trillion dollars have evaporated from 401(k) plans as a direct result of the crisis in the markets.
Some experts say that it will take as long as 3 years to recover market losses in 401(k)-style accounts – but only if the market turns around soon.
Just like consumer directed retirement plans, traditional pension plans are not immune from the financial crisis.
Although pension plans hire professional money managers and are required to be diversified, these plans will likely lose value as a result of the weak performance of the investment markets.
Sophisticated pension funds lost 20 to 30 percent of their value during the 2001 recession and took several years to overcome those losses.
We must keep our eye on these plans and I await further data on the health of our nation’s pensions.
While this crisis began on Wall Street, much of the financial burden will ultimately be borne by Main Street. And this did not happen overnight.
With the Republicans’ help and armed with their powerful lobbyists, Wall Street cunningly held off fair regulations by Congress, arguing that Americans would be better off if left to their own devices.
As Congress continues our investigations into this crisis, we cannot allow those responsible to emerge unscathed. The American people are paying the price of this go-go, Wild West approach to governing.
One cost will be the concern that our nation’s workers will not have sufficient savings to ensure a secure retirement after a lifetime of hard work. In the coming months, this committee will examine what measures may be needed to ensure a safe and secure retirement for workers, retirees and their families.
For starters, we know that 401(k) holders lack critical information about how their money is managed and what fees they pay.
I’m here to say right now, those days are over.
We must have more transparency in 401(k) investment practices. The Wall Street veil of secrecy must end.
I would like to thank all of our witnesses for joining us today. I look forward to their testimony.
And I expect that we will be back here repeatedly until we can ensure greater security for the retirement of hard-working Americans.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced today that 159,000 jobs were lost in September, the steepest decline in five years and the 9th consecutive month of job losses.
Today’s jobs report highlights the massive destruction that the Bush-Cheney-McCain wrecking ball has done to our economy, workers, and families. Eight years of their misguided policies have culminated in nine straight months of job losses. Two million workers have been unemployed for more than 27 months – 167,000 more than in August. Our nation is now dealing with the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
America’s working families are hurting, and in need of real solutions to get our economy back on track. For starters, we must extend unemployment benefits for hundreds of thousands of out-of-work Americans whose current benefits are set to expire this weekend. Today, as the House considers a financial rescue plan to protect the credit that small businesses and families rely on, we will also vote to extend unemployment benefits to help workers cover their bills while looking for a new job.
But workers also need a long-term strategy to generate new jobs. Last week, the House passed a much-needed stimulus that would create millions of good-paying jobs by investing in our crumbling infrastructure – an investment that would get our nation back to work and prevent our economy from falling deeper into recession. Unfortunately for American families, Senate Republicans blocked the package.
This latest news underscores the urgent need to ease the pain of America’s working families and get our economy on the road to recovery.
The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 was signed into law today. The law, passed by the House on July 31 by a vote of 380-49, is the first reauthorization of the nation’s primary higher education laws in a decade.
Today is truly a momentous day for America’s current and future college students and families. Over the past two years, the Democratic Congress has charted a new direction to help make college more affordable and accessible for all qualified students. We’ve enacted the single largest increase in federal student aid since the GI Bill and key measures to protect federal college aid from turbulence in the nation’s credit markets – and all without costing taxpayers a dime. We’ve proven we can work in a bipartisan way to enact good public policies that make sense for students, for our economy, and for taxpayers.
Now, with this bill signed into law, we have taken the next critical steps toward restoring the promise of our nation’s higher education programs: To help all students gain access to a world-class college education. For the first time in years, students and parents will encounter a higher education system that is more consumer-friendly and that operates in the best interests of helping them pay for college. This law will help every student in this country get their fair shot at a college degree, and reclaim their piece of the American Dream.
One year ago today, six coal miners were trapped after a series of catastrophic – yet preventable – events resulted in the collapse of the Crandall Canyon Mine. Our nation became transfixed on the heroic attempts to save the miners and prayed that everyone would return to their families unharmed. On this sad anniversary, our thoughts and prayers are with the families, friends, and communities who lost loved ones in the mine and the rescue attempt.
After the Crandall Canyon mine disaster, the U.S. House of Representatives acted promptly to strengthen our nation’s mine health and safety laws by passing the S-MINER Act. This bill will require more vigorous oversight of retreat mining plans and activities.
Our committee’s investigation and other inquiries have shown that this tragedy was preventable. Actions by an irresponsible mine operator and an incompetent U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration allowed this disaster to occur. Unfortunately, Secretary Chao has failed to hold anyone in MSHA accountable for the agency’s substantial failure to prevent the Crandall tragedy.
This anniversary reminds us of the significant risks miners still face while extracting the coal that meets our nation’s energy needs. The several mine tragedies that have occurred recently have been the result of weak laws, outlaw mine operators, and government agencies asleep at the switch. This is unacceptable. We must work aggressively toward a future where all miners can return home safely after their shifts. There is no better way to honor the lives of these fallen workers than to do all we can to prevent these kinds of tragedies from ever occurring again.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) today issued an $8.77 million citation to Imperial Sugar for the fatal February explosion that killed 13 workers and seriously injured dozens of others at the company’s sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, Georgia.
This unfortunate tragedy didn’t have to happen. The Chemical Safety Board urged OSHA in 2006 to adopt rules that could prevent more deaths and injuries caused by combustible dust explosions. OSHA ignored those recommendations. The agency tasked by Congress to protect the health and safety of American workers has failed to aggressively address this deadly problem.
It is obvious from these events that existing rules and efforts by OSHA to prevent these explosions are not sufficient. The agency should immediately issue an emergency standard to prevent these explosive hazards. Failing that, Congress will act to ensure that the agency does its job.
It is clear from OSHA’s report that Imperial Sugar had a company-wide problem with sugar dust. Not even the deaths of 13 workers raised alarm bells with the company as proven by the dangerous conditions exposed at Imperial’s Gramercy, Louisiana plant more than a month later.
(In April, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the Worker Protection Against Combustible Dust Explosion and Fires Act (H.R. 5522). The bill, introduced by Chairman Miller and Rep. John Barrow (D-GA), would require OSHA to issue emergency rules to regulate combustible dust, like sugar dust, that can build up to hazardous levels and explode.)
Today, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) fined the operator of Utah's Crandall Canyon Mine $1.85 million for the disaster that was the site of the worst coal mining tragedy of 2007. Pillars of coal supporting a roof burst, sending coal flying and creating enough force to register a 3.9 on the Richter scale. Rubble blocked every exit, entombing six miners somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 feet underground. Three courageous rescuers who attempted to reach them also died in the rescue effort. Crandall Canyon Mine is operated by Genwal Resources Inc., whose parent company is Murray Energy Corp.
MSHA's accident investigation report affirms the conclusions reached by our own investigation: Murray Energy should not have proposed the flawed retreat mining plan and MSHA should not have approved the plan. It is clear that Murray Energy is an outlaw company that recklessly endangered its employees’ lives. It is tragic that the deaths of six miners and three rescuers resulted from the reckless actions of a few individuals and inadequate MSHA oversight.
Especially troubling is MSHA’s conclusion that Murray Energy misled MSHA regarding bumps that occurred in March 2007. In April of this year, I asked the Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation into this very subject. The April referral was supported by significant evidence committee staff uncovered as they reviewed hundreds of thousands of documents, interviewed many witnesses, and deposed several individuals involved. I am confident that MSHA’s additional evidence in support of our criminal referral will provide further assistance to the Department of Justice in aggressively pursuing this criminal matter.
We will review MSHA’s investigation report and that of the forthcoming review of MSHA’s actions at the mine. The agency’s track record, however, leads me to believe that MSHA is not up to the task of protecting the health and safety of our nation’s miners. We must ensure that another tragedy such as this never happens again.
Today, the national minimum wage increases by 70 cents, from $5.85 per hour to $6.55 per hour. I am proud to say that this is the second of three increases due to take effect under the Fair Minimum Wage Act, enacted by this Democratic Congress and signed into law on May 25, 2007.
The increase in the minimum wage comes at an important time for the millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet. Real incomes have dropped since 2001, while the costs of gasoline, health insurance, and attending college have skyrocketed. With today’s increase, Americans who most urgently need a pay raise will get a badly needed boost.
These pay increases aren’t just about helping workers provide for their families. Unlike tax breaks for the wealthy, the minimum wage increase for American workers will be spent locally, which is good for local businesses, large and small, and good for a struggling economy.
Democrats in Congress have been working to ensure that all Americans are able to share in the benefits provided by their hard work. We will keep working toward those goals in order to help grow and strengthen America’s middle class. So far, Congress has enacted a stimulus package to try to get our economy back on the right track, approved legislation to make college more affordable, and pushed efforts to lower energy and health care costs.
In the wealthiest country in the history of the world, it is an outrage that anyone who works full-time would still wind up in poverty. Democrats will continue to look at solutions that will help all Americans build a better life for themselves and their families.
This morning, the Washington Post exposed the Bush administration’s latest ploy that could radically change the way health and safety regulations are issued. This secret regulation is a clear attempt by the Bush administration and the business community to fundamentally weaken the scientific process for enacting new regulations that protect American workers.
Today, Senator Kennedy and I demanded that Labor Secretary Elaine Chao withdraw this rule immediately and turn over all communications with outside special interests and other documents relating to proposed rule. You can read the letter here.
As we state in our letter, it is disturbing that the Department of Labor is moving this proposal over the objections of career staff in the relevant health and safety agencies. Such career staff have the objective, technical expertise and experience to fully understand the proposal’s implications for workers.
The Bush administration will stop at nothing to rush through a secret rule that will tie the hands of health and safety experts when responding to our nation’s critical health and safety threats.
But, that’s really no surprise at all. For nearly eight years, this administration has consistently failed to respond in a meaningful way to the real health and safety threats workers face while on the job. We’ve seen it when it comes to failing to protect workers who handle a dangerous artificial butter flavoring, ensuring that underground miners are sufficiently protected, and making sure construction workers are able to return home safe after their shift.
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