Last week, President Obama laid out an aggressive plan to put Americans back to work. What we need now is for Congress to pass this legislation so that workers and our economy can get back on track.
With the American Jobs Act, Missouri would see nearly 24,000 jobs supported:
In addition, the American Jobs Act gives much needed tax relief to the engine of our economy: the middle class and small businesses. 120,000 firms in Missouri alone would see the payroll tax halved to 3.1%, while a Missouri family with a median income of $49,000 would receive a tax cut of $1,520.
Missourians can't afford to wait while Congress continues to twiddle its thumbs and engage in partisan attacks. Missourians need jobs now and this is the path forward.
It's time for action.
As AFSCME members, we have the privilige of serving our communities on a daily basis and providing vital services to citizens. Here in Missouri, one of the many jobs we do involves caring for our most honored citizens, our veterans.
Recently, there have been some reports that Missouri's veterans homes will be forced to close due to funding issues. While there are some horrible budget cuts that have been made to some programs and initiatives, and there is a likelihood that there will be more in the future due to the economic crisis our country and state are in, we want to be absolutely clear that as workers who care for our honored veterans, we are committed to ensuring that these homes remain open in order to continue to provide the highest quality of care to those who have dedicated their lives to serving our country.
As was reported in the St Louis Post-Dispatch today, state officials have no intention of closing any of the seven veterans homes in Missouri. Council 72 has and will continue to advocate to ensure that our veterans receive the highest level of care as well as advocate to keep the veterans homes open, properly funded and staffed with workers dedicated to serving our heroes.
For the full story as reported in the St Louis Post-Dispatch, click here.
This year, we've seen an unprecedented number of attacks on workers, the middle class, our unions and our rights to collectively bargain. If you were wondering if these attacks were coordinated across the nation, wonder no more. The Nation has an excellent series exposing the despicable practices of an organization innocuously named ALEC - the American Legislative Exchange Council.
read the series HERE: ALEC Exposed
As John Nichols writes, "ALEC’s priorities for the 2011 session included bills to privatize education, break unions, deregulate major industries, pass voter ID laws and more. In states across the country they succeeded, with stacks of new laws signed by GOP governors like Ohio’s John Kasich and Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, both ALEC alums."
We saw these offensive assaults on working families front and center in Missouri earlier this year during the legislative session with legislation including Right-to-Work for Less, Paycheck Decption and other frivolous bills that did nothing to get our economy back on track and were simply anti-worker, anti-Middle Class attacks.
See just how low certain legislators and Governors like Scott Walker in Wisconsin and John Kasich in Ohio and their greedy coprporate buddies will go to defeat workers and break their unions, further burden the middle class, privatize education and impose restrictive voter ID laws.
We know these attacks on our rights will keep coming and we must be prepared to fight back. Knowing what we're up against is the beginning of the battle as well as educating our coworkers, family and friends so we know when we see these kinds of assaults again - and rest assured we will, that they are simply a coordinated attack aimed at restricting our rights and something AFSCME and our allies won't stand for.
Recently, AFSCME members and allies from Missouri Jobs with Justice, the Missouri AFLCIO and others joined together outside Senator Roy Blunt's office in St Louis to demand that he stop giving us a raw deal. We demanded that Senator Blunt STOP supporting tax breaks for the very rich and big corporations at the expense of workers and the vital services we provide.
Even the rain couldn't dampen our message as over 200 Missourians rallied in defense of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the workers who ensure delivery of the services these programs provide. In these tough economic times, we demand that our legislators stop giving us a raw deal and start making corporations, their greedy CEOs and the wealthiest among us pay their fair share.
Workers and the middle class didn't create this economic crisis and addressing the deficit on the backs of working families won't solve it. We need our leaders to