From today’s Paul Krugman column on the extension of the most pernicious of Bush economic policies, deficit-funded, tax giveaways to the wealthiest Americans:

Republicans and conservative Democrats… rejected every suggestion that we do more to avoid deep cuts in public services and help the ailing economy.

But these same politicians are eager to cut checks averaging $3 million each to the richest 120,000 people in the country.

Krugman goes on to note the total cost of these giveaways:

What’s at stake here? According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, making all of the Bush tax cuts permanent, as opposed to following the Obama proposal, would cost the federal government $680 billion in revenue over the next 10 years.

That’s right, $680 billion.

We must not forget that these are the same deficit frauds who fought tooth and nail over extensions of unemployment and COBRA insurance, aid to states, funding for education jobs and myriad jobs bills which could have helped to put America back to work.

In this economy, amidst devastating unemployment for workers and families struggling to get by, Republicans and some of the most conservative Democrats are preaching the same trite, “rising tide will lift all boats” supply-side economics that got us into this economic mess.

Queue Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, of my home state of Kentucky, who seemed clueless as to why David Gregory would be asking how tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans should be paid for:

MCCONNELL: What are you talking about, paid for? This is existing tax policy. It’s been in place for ten years. [...]

GREGORY: For a final time, I’ll go back to my question which is, the extension of the tax cuts would cost $3.2 trillion. That’s borrowed money, that adds to the deficit. Do you have a plan to pay for that extension?

MCCONNELL: You’re talking about current tax policy. Why did it all of a sudden become something that we, quote, ‘pay for’? (Via Think Progress)

This is the governing philosophy of modern conservatism.  We need not pay for wars or tax cuts for the rich.  But strengthening the safety net, funding teacher’s jobs or assisting struggling states during this Great Recession must be paid for, no matter how dire the economy.

I guess we can’t expect much more from folks who want to take our government and drown it in a bathtub.

This past Saturday in Seattle, Washington Community Action Network (WCAN) and their allies in the Washington HCAN coalition took on the army of lobbyists trying to put the health insurance industry and their profits above the needs of consumers and their health.  The industry lobbyists have been pressuring the National Association of Insurance Commissioners to protect their bottom line at all costs.

In the video below Deana Knutsen, President of the WCAN board and Secretary Treasurer of USAction spoke about the protest of the health insurance lobbyists. 

Check out the album Health Care Advocates Disinfect Big Insurance Meeting on the USAction Facebook page for great pictures from the action, like the ones below.

Activists and advocates for consumers have been counteracting the industry’s lobbyist army in the fight over implementation of health care reform.  All the efforts have paid off as Ethan Rome, Executive Director of HCAN, noted on their blog earlier this week:

Today the NAIC took a step toward ending the health insurance companies’ stranglehold on our health care. The top state insurance regulators from across the nation voted to put patient care above insurance company profits. This decision moves us closer to more affordable health care for families and businesses and will help ensure that the new health care law fulfills its promise. Advocates have battled every step of the way to hold the insurance companies accountable, and we will continue to do so.

Many challenges remain before we can declare victory in the MLR fight. Pivotal aspects of the technical rules discussed today in Seattle remain unresolved, including crucial decisions on how to treat federal taxes and agent/broker fees. The NAIC still has work to do, and it should finish its deliberations soon so the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) can swiftly develop final rules that take effect on schedule for 2011 health plans.

This is a positive step towards justice and a fair health care system in our country.  The insurance industry wields their power by spending hundreds of millions to water down reform and protect their outlandish profits.  The NAIC decision is clear evidence that your voice matters and that we have the people power to hold the insurance industry accountable. 

Watching the news these days, it’s easy to feel discouraged about the economy, the jobless rate and the loud, hateful voices on wedge issues.  However, a diverse coalition of progressive organizations have a vision to take back the conversation by organizing the “One Nation Working Together” March, taking place in Washington, DC on October 2^nd.

OneNation is comprised of a broad coalition, including labor, faith, civil rights, women, environmental, economic justice, community, youth, immigrant and GLBT groups, as well as many others.  USAction has endorsed the march, sits on the Steering Committee and is eager to bring communities together and demand the change we voted for in 2008.

Hundreds of thousands of people will march in solidarity on the National Mall on October 2^nd to protect our jobs, our education, our economy and our civil rights.

On November 2nd, we will make our voices heard at the ballot boxes.  The American dream is not dead.  We will march because we are frustrated and unsatisfied with the status quo.  We have a chance - which we are taking - to galvanize a movement that both looks like America and resonates with all segments of the American public.

Alan Charney, Policy and Strategy Director at USAction, said that “we have accomplished a lot without a movement.  Now we need a movement.”  So join us, as one nation, working together.

Keep an eye on this blog to keep up with the news on the ground.  Also be sure to check out OneNation on facebook and twitter.

When most people hear the phrase “health care reform,” they think of the fierce legislative battle, media war and ground game waged in 2009 and early 2010.  But how many people really know or understand what’s in the bill and how it affects them?  How many more people would know and understand if we had $250,000 to use to teach them?

Beginning next month, a key provision in the law will allow millions of young adults to remain on or be added to their parents’ health insurance plans until they turn 26.  Many young people, however, are unaware of this which is why we at USAction want to launch a brand new campaign called, “Under 26 and Uninsured? We’ve Got You Covered!”

The campaign will be geared toward informing as many young adults as possible and their parents about what the new law means for them.  To spread the word, we’ll launch a brand new web site, design educational materials, conduct a nationwide advertising and social media campaign and host 75 community-based public-education events and 25 training sessions for volunteers and community groups.

But to make this happen, we need your help and we need your votes.

We are competing to win the money next month in an online fundraising opportunity called Pepsi Refresh Everything.  This money would fund our campaign, which would begin in October and run for a year.

Pepsi is giving away some serious money and we think we have a great shot at winning.  Moreover, because of the way the contest is set up, we can raise money for ourselves plus a slate of fellow progressive organizations working on progressive issues.  The other groups on the slate include organizations that are working to mobilize young voters, coordinate progressive efforts at the state level, improve access to college, promote healthy eating, provide legal and advocacy support for low-income communities and fight homelessness.   In total, the slate of groups we are working in partnership with has the chance to win more than $750,000 in September - but only if we get the votes.

That’s where you come in.

We’re asking you to sign-up to be a daily voter for USAction Education Fund, the 501(c)(3) sister to USAction.

As a daily voter, you’ll receive a short email each morning in the month of September with a link where you can go and cast 10 votes each day for all the organizations on the Progressive Slate (that’s what we’re calling all of our groups working together).  Voting takes a mere few seconds and it’s easier than making Ramen noodles (and less yucky).

Working with the other organizations on the slate, we’re hoping to build a group of several thousand daily voters-can you sign up now?

www.theprogressiveslate.com/pepsi_september.php?name=usaction

There has been some debate on this blog and others about whether the health care reform package goes far enough.  That debate aside, this is our chance to take advantage of a great provision and get thousands of additional people insured.

So please sign up today and then forward this to all your friends and family urging them to register and vote as well!

Senator Olympia Snowe (R, ME) was in Saco, Maine today talking to voters on Maine Street.  Small business owners and other Mainers who work with USAction affiliate Maine People’s Alliance (MPA) asked Sen. Snowe to support fair and responsible taxes and to fight to protect Main Street, not Wall Street, by repealing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

A report from MPA staff:

Senator Snowe was talking to folks in shops and restaurants on Maine street when she went into Sam’s Place, an art supply store, where she met with three small business owners and another local MPA member as well as four canvassers who had stories from folks in Saco that focused on the need to let the Bush tax cuts expire.

Senator Snowe agreed with their points about the unfairness of cuts for the rich, but steered the conversation towards general small business needs whenever possible.

We are happy that Senator Snowe sees the inequity in our federal tax system.  It could not be much more clear that the policies of Bush, which today’s Republican Party continues to support, overwhelmingly favor the wealthy over the middle class and saving our struggling economy. 

Much like the legislative battles in recent months over regulation of Wall Street, extension of unemployment insurance to jobless workers and of state aid and jobs funding for teachers, Senator Snowe, along with Senator Susan Collins, also of Maine, will be essential votes to end the Bush tax cuts and ensure that Wall Street and millionaires pay their fair share.

When I was a kid, the check came once a month.

My parents paid into Social Security – in fact, in a bit of irony, one of my father’s jobs was with the Social Security Administration, maintaining computers that must have been the size of cement trucks (and about as speedy!)

Both parents died when we were young – and years before they would have began collecting out of Social Security what they paid in. But after my brother, sister and I were adopted, the check that came once a month helped feed us, clothe us, keep a roof over our heads.

The check kept coming when I was in college. But it grew smaller and smaller. That’s because in the early 1980s, President Reagan and Congress decided to rein in expenses by ending the survivors’ benefits program for those of us attending college whose parents had died when we were young.

That was okay; I earned money washing dishes and busing tables at a restaurant and my college tuition was dirt cheap. By then I could earn my way.

But for millions of Americans – some retired, some disabled and some survivors of those who paid into the system – Social Security is the line of demarcation between sustainability and abject poverty.

That’s why, as we look forward to celebrating Social Security’s 75th birthday this Saturday, and as we prepare for yet another attempt to reduce benefits, it’s important to remember the principles upon which this promise to America was founded. Social Security belongs to the workers and their families who have worked hard, paid taxes in and earned its benefits. Social Security did not cause the federal deficit and its benefits should not be cut to reduce the deficit.

Yes: I have my own Social Security story to share. But so do millions of Americans, and some stories are much more moving and profound – and span several generations.

I was reminded of this recently while reading a speech that USAction President William McNary gave some years ago when USAction helped lead the successful effort to defeat President Bush’s attempts to privatize Social Security. (Given what happened to the stock market in 2008, can you imagine the damage that would have accrued had Bush succeeded?)

I’m going to close with McNary’s story – every bit as relevant today as it was when he first delivered it some years ago:

I know an African American man whose parents only lived three years after they started collecting benefits from Social Security. In those three years, it was over 90 percent of their income. Without it, they would have been in poverty.

This same man – his first wife died of breast cancer when she was 35 years old, leaving him with three young children. He worked for a not-for-profit and wondered how he would make ends meet.

At the urging of a social worker, he filled out some papers and an amazing thing began to happen: on the third of every month – like clockwork – he received a check from the Social Security Administration to help care for his young children. (If the third of the month fell on a Sunday or a holiday, the check came on Saturday!)

When William, his oldest son, turned 18, the amount was reduced a little bit.

When Aisha, his oldest daughter, turned 18, the amount was reduced a little bit.

And when his youngest daughter, Aaliyah, turned 18 a couple of years ago, it stopped entirely.

You’ve probably guessed by now, but that African American man was me.

Because my wife Lula had paid into the Social Security fund while she was alive, it allowed her to keep a promise that we had made to our children: that they would be the second generation in our family to go to college. And they did.

A Social Security card is more than just a document. It’s more than just a card with your name on it that you carry around in your wallet.

Social Security is a promise from one generation to the next. A promise that we cannot allow this generation to break.

It is a system that unites us all.

Across the country today thousands are speaking out at hundreds of events to call for an end to corporate influence over our democracy.  Together with The Other98%, MoveOn.org, SEIU, Credo Action, The Nation and many other groups representing millions, USAction affiliates and USAction/TrueMajority members will be rallying to stand up for the Other 98% of us who can’t afford to buy elections.

This week, Target, Google and Verizon are our latest examples of corporate corruption and greed:

• Target learned the hard way that John Robert’s Supreme Court does not speak for the priorities or values of the American people.  After making a $150,000 donation to a MN Chamber of Commerce political group trying to buy the Minnesota Governer’s race, Target lost 1.3 billion in value on the stock market in a matter of days.  
• Google and Verizon are trying to increase profit opportunities by allowing companies to pay for their site to load faster than others, which could have a Wal-Mart affect on the internet.  Google is doing their best to make their motto of “Don’t Be Evil” a complete joke, all while forcing me to consider switching back to my old Hotmail account… HotChat here I come?

Enough is enough; we can’t let big corporations run everything! 

More than 400,000 people have already signed on to the pledge to Fight Washington Corruption and we are joined by these Representatives on the Hill.  August is a long congressional recess so it’s an important moment to ask other Representatives to join our reform campaign. 

Click here to find an event in your area to ask your member of Congress to sign the pledge and join us in standing against corporate influence.

The pledge includes three critical reforms:

• Overturning the Supreme Court decisions allowing unlimited corporate spending on elections;
• Fair Elections that give public financing to grassroots candidates so they can compete; and
• Ending backroom deals with corporate lobbyists by making all lobbying activity public, and shutting the revolving door between K Street and the government.

If you have not yet signed the Fight Washington Corruption pledge, then click the button below:

This is a long fight and we will always be outspent by corporations who will do anything to increase their profit margin, so we have got to stay together until we take back our democracy from corporations run amok.

The U.S. House must approve $26 billion so that teachers, firefighters, police officers and others can continue to educate our children and keep working to ensure the safety of our families and communities.

Tomorrow, the House is scheduled to take up the measure, which would prevent the immediate layoff of hundreds of thousands of workers across the country.  USAction supports the legislation but opposes the way it is partly funded - through cuts to food stamps beginning in the year 2014.

 USAction Policy Director Alan Charney said the following: 

The question facing the House on Tuesday is not how to pay for our teachers and first- responders but whether we will pay for our teachers and first-responders.  We hope that, come another day, we can more comprehensively address the hunger issue in America. But on this day, we must pass this bill for our teachers and first-responders. Otherwise, they will lose their jobs. It’s as simple as that.

Charney added that a vote against the measure is not just a vote against critically important workers. “This also is an up-or-down vote on economic recovery,” Charney said. “This money will be spent immediately at the community level. It not only will save jobs but will help create employment as public sector workers spend money in the private sector. And we know that jobs are the missing component of economic recovery.”

David Elliot is the Communications Director at USAction.

This post originally appeared here on Daily Kos.

Voter turnout this election cycle among what’s been called the Rising American Electorate - a group that includes Latinos, young voters, and unmarried women, all of whom trend left — is in jeopardy.

We have a huge challenge ahead of us to convince the “Obama surge” voters to remain engaged in November 2010 and beyond. Polls show an enthusiasm gap among many of these potential voters. They fear the change they voted for in 2008 hasn’t happened deeply or profoundly enough.

On one issue in which I have been involved for decades I want to offer an alternate narrative. That issue is health care reform. Full disclosure: I’m the executive director of USAction and together with many powerful allies we formed Health Care for America Now, a broad-based coalition made up of some 1,100 groups.

The Obama Administration has seen several big wins - financial reform, student loan reform, economic recovery legislation. But perhaps the biggest win in terms of historic legacy was health care reform.

I know many people reading this may be thinking, “You know, that was really not worth the paper it was printed on and we could have done so much better if only the movement had been more aggressive, more left, more powerful, more something.” While more reform certainly would have been preferable, it is critical for us as a movement to recognize this as a victory, as it is for many reasons.

First, we established a new right in America. Health care is now a right, and that is huge! It is an imperfect right as Social Security was certainly an imperfect right when it was created in the 1930s. At the time, the NAACP called the flawed Social Security legislation “a sieve with holes just big enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through.” Indeed, nearly two-thirds of African Americans and just over half of women in the work force were not covered. Today, Social Security is widely accepted to be the core of the American social welfare system. As Thaddeus Stevens said when he supported passing the 14th Amendment, “Do you inquire why, holding these views and possessing some will of my own, I accept so imperfect a proposition? I answer because I live among men and not angels.” Health care is now a right in America.

Second, this is a victory because it is the largest income transfer since the Sixties; since, frankly, Medicare and Medicaid. By and large the people who don’t have health care or don’t have adequate health  care are lower income, and now they are going to get better coverage paid for through relatively progressive taxation. In fact, tens of thousands of mostly low-income Americans are going to live who would have died every year. That’s like cutting highway fatalities in America every year in half - and all because of this bill.

Third, this is a great victory for the progressive movement. We would not have won this health care battle - and we did win - if we hadn’t fought for it. I have been involved in health care organizing for thirty-eight years. In 2008, presidential candidates actually competed for progressive loyalty on health care.  In 2009-2010, progressives were crucial to winning enough support to pass the Affordable Care Act.  

Finally, we showed that the government can have a powerful, effective role to meet urgent middle-class needs and even more than that, that liberals can govern. In the midst of the ugly Tea Party rallies and the bleating from the Blue Dogs, we still passed this historic legislation, and we did not do it with Republican votes.

I think this victory is enormous, and the progressive movement cannot forget that. There are appropriately tensions between the Obama Administration and the progressive movement, and this law needs to be improved, but we need to continue to tout these victories if we are going to continue to win in 2010 and beyond.  

Jeff Blum is the Executive Director of USAction.

Thirty-nine Republican senators voted against extending unemployment insurance yesterday.  They claim it is because of the $33 billion that would be added to the deficit, but in the hypocritical fashion of deficit hawks, thirty-eight of those Senators voted to permanently repeal the estate tax which would add than one trillion dollars to the deficit.

Enough is enough!  The people of New Hampshire made their voices heard yesterday at a rally organized by USAction affiliate, NH Citizens Alliance, who teamed with NH for Health Care/SEIU and Working Families Win, at Senator Judd Gregg’s Concord office.  The rally was calling out the Senator for his misplaced priorities and lack of support for his constituents who do not earn over $250,000 dollars a year.

Senator Gregg has consistently voted against the extension of UI benefits and additional stimulus to create new jobs.  In addition, he voted in favor of the Bush-era tax cuts, which cut taxes for the wealthiest one percent. NHCA made it clear to the Senator that the public does not support helping the rich get richer on the backs of a working class struggling to get by.  Olivia Zink, the Community Organizer of NHCA, vehemently expressed the need for this rally:

Through no fault of their own, people all across our country have been laid off and downsized because of the recession, as they sit at their kitchen tables figuring out how to make ends meet, Senator Gregg is actively working to make the wealthy even wealthier.

Zink is right: last week Senator Gregg announced support for extending tax cuts to people who are making more than $250,000 a year.  This will only make our deficit larger and our recovery harder; the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts cost the country $1.7 trillion dollars. What will these proposed tax cuts cost us?

Representative Mark Kirk got a similar message in Illinois last week.  USAction affiliate Citizen Action/Illinois gathered outside Kirk’s office in Northbrook alongside the Chicago Federation of Labor the Northeastern Federation of Labor, Jobs with Justice and Working Families Win.  The working (or unemployed)  people of Illinois called out Kirk for his continued votes against jobless workers and creation of good jobs.

Kirk has also been preaching the same old policies of helping the rich get richer and at the same time denying help to workers.  John Gaudette, organizer for Citizen Action, briefly explained Kirk’s voting record.

When the bill was about tax cuts for the richest Americans or bailouts for Wall Street, Rep. Kirk was a strong YES.  When the thousands of unemployed in his district asked for help, when thousands of COBRA and Medicaid clients needed help, Rep Kirk was a strong NO.

50 unsatisfied constituents told Representative Kirk that they were sick of his continued lack of support for the thousands and thousands of Illinois families out of work and unable to find jobs.

Hopefully they got the message.  We need a forward looking agenda and not the same old policies that got us into this mess in the first place. Our goals are to allow the Bush tax cuts for the rich to run out this year as scheduled eliminate tax loopholes for big corporations and the wealthy and hold Wall Street accountable.

We are also working to pass the Local Jobs for America Act in order to create/save a million jobs.

These are our top priorities and with continued organizing and work from our affiliates and partners across the nation we can put America back to work and make sure corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share.