News
How Obamacare repeal helps rich, hurts poor
by Frank Clemente and Ron Pollack
01.11.17 Republican plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act(Obamacare) threaten the health care of 30 million Americans and would erode some rare progress made recently to reverse America's growing economic inequality. By taxing rich households and big corporations to subsidize health care for working families, the ACA does what good public policy should: level the playing field to give everyone a shot, not just those at the top. Abolishing the ACA would only further tilt the field in favor of the wealt… Continue Reading
Carl's Jr., Hardee's workers blast Labor nominee at Senate forum
by Jill Disis
01.10.17 One worker said his wages were stolen. Another said she was forced to work without overtime pay. A third worker described her struggles to provide for a family of six children -- on $8.75 an hour after years of experience in the food industry. The three are current and former employees of CKE Restaurants, the fast-food company run by secretary of labor nominee Andrew Puzder that is known for its Carl's Jr. and Hardee's chains. They spoke for nearly two hours Tuesday about poor working conditio… Continue Reading
Restaurants run by Trump’s pick for US labor secretary regularly serve up female objectification
by Neha Thirani Bagri
01.10.17 "I like our ads. I like beautiful women eating burgers in bikinis. I think it's very American." That's what Andrew Puzder, US president-elect Donald Trump's nomination for labor secretary-and the current CEO of CKE Restaurants, the parent company of chains including Carl's Jr and Hardee's-said in defense of highly sexualized Carl's Jr. ads that have been compared to porn on many occasions. The attitude is common in the fast food industry, where sexual harassment is ubiquitous: 40% of women wor… Continue Reading
Millions sign up for Obamacare as Trump and GOP lawmakers scramble for a way to roll it back
by Noam N. Levey
01.10.17 While Republicans struggle to find a way to roll back the Affordable Care Act without jeopardizing healthcare for tens of millions of people, Americans continue to sign up for Obamacare health plans. As of Dec. 24, more than 11.5 million people had enrolled in a health plan through one of the insurance marketplaces created by the law, including HealthCare.gov and Covered California, federal data released Tuesday show. That is nearly 300,000 more sign-ups than at the same point a year earlier, … Continue Reading
Democrats Form Congressional Caucus To Support Public Education
by Rebecca Klein
01.10.17 Members of Congress have formed a new caucus to support the goals of public education under Donald Trump's presidency. Although the caucus has been in the works for over a year, Trump's election and his nomination of Betsy DeVos as education secretary has given the group heightened urgency, according to those involved with the effort. Several Democratic members of Congress announced the effort alongside the presidents of the nation's two largest teachers unions at a press conference on Tues… Continue Reading
New House Education Caucus, Union Leaders Continue Anti-Betsy DeVos Push
by Andrew Ujifusa
01.10.17 A new caucus of the House of Representatives announced Tuesday it was dedicated to fighting the nomination of Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump's pick to be education secretary, and to fight for what its members said was crucial funding for public schools. During a press conference here on Tuesday, Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., who announced the formation of the House Public Education Caucus along with Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., said he opposed DeVos' push for private school vouchers in p… Continue Reading
Mark Pocan launches House Public Education Caucus in opposition to Betsy DeVos nomination
by Jessie Opoien
01.10.17 U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan on Tuesday announced the formation of a House Public Education Caucus in opposition to President-elect Donald Trump's nomination of Betsy DeVos as education secretary. DeVos, a Michigan billionaire who has been a major backer for charter schools and taxpayer-funded voucher schools in her home state and throughout the country, was set to go before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions for her confirmation hearing on Tuesday. Her hearing was p… Continue Reading
Where’s the GOP’s health-care plan?
by Katrina vanden Heuvel
01.10.17 For six years, Republicans have voted more than 60 times to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. "Repeal and replace" was a staple of Donald Trump's stump speech. Give us control, Republicans promised, and what Mike Pence promises as the "first order of business" will be repeal and replace. Only one problem: There is no plan. Republicans have hundreds of ideas but no replacement plan and no consensus. So now the same politicians who couldn't come up with a serious plan in six years are c… Continue Reading
Democrats to attack Labor nominee's employee treatment
by Tal Kopan
01.10.17 Democrats looking to attack President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for secretary of labor, Andrew Puzder, will unveil new findings on Tuesday detailing the work environment at restaurants in his fast food empire. A pro-worker organization, Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, will unveil its report Tuesday afternoon, followed by a second news conference with prominent Democratic senators including Massachusetts' Elizabeth Warren and Washington's Patty Murray. At the events, workers fro… Continue Reading
Restaurants run by labor secretary nominee report 'disturbing' rates of sexual harassment
by Oliver Laughland
01.10.17 Two-thirds of female fast food workers at restaurants operated by Andrew Puzder, Donald Trump's controversial nomination for US labor secretary, experienced sexual harassment at work, a rate much higher than the industry average, a stinging advocacy survey has claimed. Many female workers, according to the research conducted by Restaurant Opportunities Center (Roc) United, have been harassed by customers referencing the highly sexualised advertising campaigns Puzder has championed as CEO of CKE… Continue Reading
Big Worries About Betsy DeVos
by Editorial Board
01.10.17 The director of the Office of Government Ethics, the nonpartisan agency charged with vetting the financial disclosures of cabinet nominees for potential conflicts of interest, sent an extraordinary letter to Senate Democratic leaders late last week. Never in the four-decade history of the agency, he wrote, have ethics officials felt such "undue pressure ... to rush through these important reviews," leaving "some of the nominees with potentially unknown or unresolved ethics issues shortly before … Continue Reading
Americans don't want to scrap Obamacare without something to replace it, new poll shows
by Noam N. Levey
01.06.17 The vast majority of Americans do not support Republican plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act without enacting a replacement, a new nationwide poll finds. Nearly half the country does not want the law, commonly called Obamacare, to be repealed at all. Even among those who want to see the law rolled back, most say Congress should wait to vote on repeal until the details of a replacement plan have been announced. Just two in 10 Americans support the GOP strategy to quickly vote for r… Continue Reading
Democrats Demand Betsy DeVos Reveal 'Complicated Web' of Money, Lobbying
by Andrew Ujifusa
01.05.17 Six Senate Democrats have a message for Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for education secretary: You owe us a lot of information. In a Thursday letter to DeVos, the Democrats asked her to provide them information about her role in founding advocacy groups supporting school choice, those groups' expenditures and donor lists, and other connections she has to various oganizations. "Understanding your leadership roles in this complicated web of political and not-for-profit org… Continue Reading
Obamacare repeal costs: 3 million jobs gone, $1.5 trillion in lost gross state product
by Dan Mangan
01.05.17 Spending less by getting rid of Obamacare could end up costing a whole lot more. Up to 3 million jobs in the health sector and other areas would be lost if certain key provisions of the Affordable Care Act are repealed by Congress, a new report said Thursday. At the same time, ending those provisions could lead to a whopping $1.5 trillion reduction in gross state product from 2019 through 2023, according to the study. "Repealing key parts of the ACA could trigger massive job los… Continue Reading
Republicans Are Courting Disaster on Health Care
by The Editorial Board
01.04.17 And so it begins. After six years of posturing and futile votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Republicans in the Senate have started a process to erase the most important provisions of the health reform law with a simple majority. Millions of Americans are at risk of losing their coverage. Republican opponents of the health care law insist that it has failed, though it has reduced the number of uninsured Americans to the lowest level in history. They say that it has driven up costs, though… Continue Reading
Democratic governors warn Congress on health care repeal
by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
12.21.16 Democratic governors Wednesday warned top Republicans in Congress that repealing the Obama health care law would stick states with billions of dollars in costs for providing medical care to residents made newly uninsured. The Democratic Governors Association to House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. In the letter, estimating that states could face nearly $69 billion in costs for uncompensated care over the next 10 years if the health law is repealed. States traditio… Continue Reading
Obamacare boosted number of people with health insurance in all states, decreased care cost barriers
by Dan Mangan
12.21.16 A lot of people got health insurance under Obamacare - and they've elected a president who has vowed to take it away. A new study out Wednesday notes that all 50 states and the District of Columbia saw decreases - often sharp decreases - in their rates of people lacking health insurance after implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Nine states "experienced 10 to 13 percentage-point reductions in their adult uninsured rate from 2013 to 2015," the Commonwealth Fund report said. Among… Continue Reading
Yet another report finds that Obamacare is working
by Stacey Burling
12.21.16 A new report from the Commonwealth Fund adds to the evidence that the embattled Affordable Care Act has been doing its job. Since the law's implementation, the number of people without health insurance has dropped in all states. It fell by at least three percentage points in 48 of them and the District of Columbia. The rates are now at "historic lows," said David Blumental, president of the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that supports research on healthy policy issues. "The historic … Continue Reading
School Discipline in a Post-Obama World
by Emily Deruy
12.20.16 Education Secretary John King is a generally soft-spoken, thoughtful guy. It's hard to imagine him as a kid giving his teachers any trouble. But the topmost education official in the United States actually got booted from Phillips Andover Academy, an elite boarding school north of Boston, back when he was a high-school student there in the early 1990s. King, whose parents had both passed away by the time he was 13, felt "unhappy and overwhelmed" by the school's unfamiliar culture and strict rule… Continue Reading
Could black lung benefits be in jeopardy?
12.20.16 Last week, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health released a report indicating a spike in black lung cases in Eastern Kentucky. A big reason for the trend could be with the decline in the coal industry, many miners are now getting tested for black lung in order to get compensation. While the health concern lingers, there is now a new worry. Some former coal miners fear their black lung benefits could go away under President-elect Donald Trump's administration. Trump was voc… Continue Reading