Lame-duck Congress requires vigilance

When Congress returned in mid-November after the elections, legislators still had to deal with 10 spending bills that had been left unresolved. Tor Cowan, acting director of the AFT department of legislation, warns that “we need to be on guard” during this lame-duck session. “We have to be careful about what items make their way into omnibus spending bills, since they usually become the last train out of the station before adjournment.”

The practice of bundling controversial items into these huge bills makes it difficult for members of Congress to oppose the underlying measure based on a single issue, Cowan says. One bitter example of this tactic was the voucher bill for Washington, D.C., schools, which was folded into an omnibus spending package and passed nearly a year ago. This year, the danger may lie in what Congress decides to jettison. Although both the House and Senate have voted in favor of restoring overtime pay rights for workers, getting this provision into the final spending bill remains in question.

Now, with Republicans controlling the White House and Congress, “we can expect a continuation of the debate on the role and scope of the federal government, particularly through the budget and appropriations process,” says Cowan.

Bush takes aim at Social Security

Following his election victory, President Bush wasted little time in detailing his legislative priorities for a second term—including efforts to privatize Social Security.

“I earned capital in the campaign—political capital—and now I intend to spend it,” Bush told reporters at a news conference held just hours after the election. Among the items topping the president’s agenda was Social Security “reform.”

Earlier in 2004, the Bush administration’s “Economic Report of the President” outlined two principal goals for the program: cutting Social Security benefits and creating private accounts under the program. The proposals prompted a firestorm of protest from those who saw diverting Social Security into private accounts as an attack on this fundamental safety net for millions of Americans because it would shift a part of the guaranteed Social Security benefit to a risky 401(k) type of account. And many warn that the Bush reform plan is based on fuzzy math and fuzzy logic.

“Here’s the problem,” a Nov. 8 Newsday editorial explained: “Bush wants to allow workers to siphon off a portion of their payroll taxes into private accounts and invest it in the stock market for their eventual retirement. But Social Security is a pay-as-you-go program. The payroll taxes of current workers pay the benefits of current retirees. So every dime that goes into private accounts is a dime that won’t be available to pay benefits for retirees today and in the near future.”

Filling that hole, several groups warn, could cost $1 trillion or more—about one-quarter of the nation’s gross domestic product.

In 2002, delegates to the AFT national convention overwhelmingly passed a resolution opposing plans to replace Social Security’s guaranteed benefits with individual retirement accounts and pledging union support for a Social Security system that “maintains economic security for current and future retirees, reducing the economic burden on younger family members to care for their older relatives.” The AFT is committed to fighting the privatization of Social Security.

Giving a leg up to immigrant students

After languishing for a year, the DREAM Act showed new signs of life this fall when it became part of an authorization bill for the Department of Justice. DREAM stands for the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act of 2003. It would remove any legal barriers for states wishing to allow immigrant children who have graduated from high schools within the state to enroll in public colleges at in-state tuition rates. The AFT wrote to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) Oct. 6 to support the bill, noting that in some states, such as California, New York and Texas, legislatures already have acted. Other states have interpreted a 1996 immigration law as barring that kind of tuition advantage.

In his letter, Cowan points out that helping the children of immigrants to pursue higher education and participate fully in society makes good sense. The bill has bipartisan support in Congress, but because of national security concerns has been kept on the back burner for a year.