Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez — chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee and the Democratic Policy Committee, as well as former chairman of the Natural Resources Committee — says this about the idea of suspending the federal gas tax for three months this summer a solution to high gas prices:
“The call by Sens. Clinton and McCain to temporarily suspend the federal tax on gasoline is a short-sighted stunt that will hurt consumers and do nothing to reduce the price of gas.
“American consumers and our economy need a real solution to the energy crisis, not an empty trick. You can run cars on a lot of different fuels, but snake oil isn’t one of them.
“In the hopes of winning votes, the Senators are preying on consumers’ justified anxiety about the economy without offering a solution to their real problems. There’s nothing in our history to indicate that oil companies will pass on any savings to the consumer. So despite the McCain and Clinton gas tax holiday, the price at the pump will continue to rise and oil companies will take even more of the profit.
“My constituents are reeling from the highest gas prices in the country. But they understand that we can only break the oil chokehold and bring prices down by investing in highways and mass transit, new technology, renewable energy, and energy efficiency.
“Siphoning off the political energy from these necessary steps to focus instead on a plan that some political consultants favor is cynical politics. Taking a break from the federal gas tax and the hundreds of thousands of jobs it produces is harmful to the long-term economic well-being of our country.
“Sen. Clinton knows it is not easy to pass a windfall profits tax on oil companies. We have been trying to rein in record oil profits for years, and the House has repeatedly passed legislation to roll unjustified federal oil subsidies and invest instead in renewable energy – but President Bush and Senate Republicans have blocked us. Some of the subsidies we are trying to eliminate started under President Bill Clinton’s administration.
“Sen. Clinton is trying to intimidate members of Congress into validating her bad policy prescriptions. Congress should reject her and Sen. McCain’s idea. Relief from soaring gas prices will only come from smart investments and real change in our energy policy.”
And for what? Check out this calculator to see how much you would save. It ain’t much… and that’s assuming most prominent economists are dead wrong when they say demand and prices would simply rise to about the same levels they’re at now.
It was five years ago today that President George W. Bush landed on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln and, against the backdrop of an enormous “Mission Accomplished” banner, declared major combat operations in Iraq at an end. Lest there be any confusion about what was and wasn’t said and seen that day, here it is in two parts:
Some critics are particularly irked by what White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said during her briefing yesterday: “President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said ‘mission accomplished for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission.’ And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner. And I recognize that the media is going to play this up again tomorrow, as they do every single year.”
Cue House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller’s head exploding:
“This latest White House comment is reprehensible and should be repudiated. Yet again, the Bush Administration, faced with its own failures in Iraq, is trying to rewrite history rather than write a new policy to end the war and bring our troops home in a timely and responsible manner.
“The assertion yesterday by the White House that the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner was meant simply to describe the mission of the USS Abraham Lincoln and its sailors in 2003 is clearly not believable and should be publicly repudiated by the President. The unjustified and misleading declaration of ‘Mission Accomplished’ by the President was the entire basis for his speech five years ago today, and it is a deep insult to all Americans and our servicemen and servicewomen that the White House is once again deliberately distorting the truth.
“The White House knowingly hung the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner in a public relations effort to convince the world that military operations in Iraq had been completed quickly just as White House and Pentagon officials had repeatedly said would happen before the war began. Well, we all know what happened after that, because so far over 4,000 military personnel have lost their lives in Iraq and nearly 30,000 have been wounded.
“The President’s reckless and shortsighted decision to send America into an unjustified war in Iraq is one of the most costly and devastating foreign policy decision ever made by an American president. What the White House owes Americans is a new policy in Iraq that will bring our troops home, not a new version of history that only deceives Americans further, just as the Administration knowingly deceived Americans and the Congress in the buildup to this tragic war.”
However, the White House has been backing off on this for quite a long time — this is from more than a year ago:
House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Martinez; House Ways and Means Health Subcomittee Chairman Pete Stark, D-Fremont; Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma; and Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-NY, today introduced the “Family Leave Insurance Act of 2008,” which would provide workers 12 weeks of paid leave for maternity or paternity; to care for a sick family member; to recover from an illness; or to deal with emergencies related to someone’s armed-services deployment.
Stark said there’s a lot of talk about family values in Washington, and now it’s “time for Congress to… take action that families will actually value. The Family and Medical Leave Act has been a tremendous success, but many workers cannot afford to take unpaid leave.”
Miller said millions have taken unpaid leave under FMLA, but “millions more are put in the impossible position of choosing between paying their bills and dealing with an illness or welcoming a new child to the family. Americans shouldn’t have to make that choice.”
“Family-friendly policies like guaranteed paid leave not only help parents balance work and family, but also improve employers’ bottom lines,” he continued. “When workers have the ability to take advantage of these family-friendly policies, their employers benefit from increased recruitment and retention rates, decreased absenteeism and improved productivity.”
Per Stark’s news release, the bill would:
Provide all workers with 12 weeks of paid leave over a 12-month period to care for a new child, provide for an ill family member, treat their own illness, or deal with an exigency caused by the deployment of a member of the military;
Provide these benefits through a new trust fund that is financed equally by employers and employees, who will each contribute 0.2% of the employee’s pay;
Let self-employed workers opt in by paying both the employer and employee premiums;
Progressively tier the benefits so that a low-wage worker (earning less than $30,000) will receive full or near full salary replacement, middle-income workers ($30,000- $60,000) receive 55% wage replacement, and higher earners (over $60,000) receive 40-45%, with the benefit capped at approximately $800 per week;
Administer the program through the Department of Labor which will contract with states to administer the program (similar to how the Unemployment Insurance program is run); and
Let states and businesses with materially equivalent or better benefits opt out of the program.
The House yesterday spent an hour debating House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s H.Res.1077, “calling on the Government of the People’s Republic of China to end its crackdown in Tibet and enter into a substantive dialogue with His Holiness the Dalai Lama to find a negotiated solution that respects the distinctive language, culture, religious identity, and fundamental freedoms of all Tibetans, and for other purposes.” The vote, however, was postponed.
UPDATE @ 12:27 P.M. WEDNESDAY:The House voted on the bill today, passing it 413-1 with Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, the lone holdout; he never votes for any bill not expressly authorized by the Constitution.
Here’s Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, speaking Tuesday about the nonbinding resolution:
The House today voted 308-116 to reauthorize the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) — America’s effort to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS worldwide — at $50 billion over five years, considerably more than the $30 billion for which President Bush had asked.
Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, was among the five original co-authors both of this H.R. 5501, the Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde United States Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act, and the original PEPFAR legislation back in 2003. Of the reauthorization, she said today there’s “perhaps no other piece of legislation that Congress will consider this year that will have greater impact on the lives of people around the world.”
Lee said she’s sad that former House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, who died Feb. 11, and former chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., who died in November, weren’t here to see this bipartisan compromise.
She noted the bill passed today includes language from her own PATHWAY Act, H.R. 1713 — which strikes the requirement that at least a third of U.S. funds for global HIV/AIDS prevention be earmarked for abstinence-until-marriage programs. Indeed, House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, issued a statement today saying he’s “disappointed the Majority turned back a balanced Republican alternative that would have authorized funding for the PEPFAR program at the level requested by President Bush, while protecting taxpayers from funding programs that support abortions overseas.”
Lee also noted the House version doesn’t include language from her H.R. 3337, the HIV Non-Discrimination in Travel and Immigration Act, which would overturn the current travel and immigration ban on people living with HIV/AIDS wishing to enter the United States. “I’m happy that the Senate version of PEPFAR does adopt the language to eliminate the ban,” she said. “I will work with my colleagues to make sure that when we get to conference, the ban is repealed once and for all.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco; Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Martinez; and Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, are part of a bipartisan Congressional delegation which met today in Dharamsala, India with the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.
Pelosi’s office said the delegation was welcomed by thousands of Tibetans in a ceremony led by Speaker Karma Choephel of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, and then proceeded to an audience the Dalai Lama to discuss issues relating to Tibet and the plight of Tibetan refugees in India. Later, the delegation visited the Tibetan Children’s Village, supported in part with U.S. aid to educate and look after thousands of Tibetan children, most of whom are orphans and new refugees from Tibet; the delegation also met with Tibetan monks, nuns, and children who recently escaped Tibet.
“I am humbled and honored to meet with the Dalai Lama,” Miller said. “It is my hope that our visit today will help draw additional attention and support to the effort by the Tibetan people to live in peace and freedom in their own country. The Chinese government’s brutal crackdown against peaceful protest is abhorrent and must end. The United States, as a leader of free nations, is obligated to support the peaceful efforts of the Tibetans and to condemn China’s repressive measures.”
The Chinese crackdown in Tibet is having repercussions here in the Bay Area. Someone poured flammable liquid on a door at the Chinese consulate in San Francisco early Thursday morning and set it alight, prompting an arson investigation. And San Francisco is bracing for the Olympic torch’s arrival April 9 on its way to the Summer Olympics in Beijing, expecting pro-Tibetan protestors to come out in droves.
Read Pelosi’s remarks praising the Dalai Lama’s leadership and calling for an end to the crackdown by the Chinese government in Tibet, after the jump… Read the rest of this entry »
House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Martinez, this afternoon issued a scathing news release blasting Republicans for defeating the bipartisan GIVE Act, H.R. 5563, aimed at supporting and increasing the ranks of community service volunteers who perform essential services like mentoring at-risk young people, tutoring schoolchildren, improving public safety, and rebuilding communities devastated by natural disasters.
“The Republican leadership decided to hold community service programs hostage to its petty partisan political agenda,” said Miller. “The GIVE Act would have supported the tens of millions of Americans who improve their communities through community service and volunteerism, but Roadblock Republicans decided to stop the legislation for the sake of simple obstructionism. They should be ashamed of themselves. Democrats acted in a good-faith way to develop this legislation on a bipartisan basis, and Republicans chose to take the low road. This is exactly the kind of obstructionism that led voters to remove Republicans from power in 2006, and it shows that Republicans still aren’t serious about working to find solutions that solve America’s challenges.”
As Miller notes:
Republicans had supported the bill up to now; in passed Miller’s committee last year with a unanimous bipartisan vote of 44-0.
Republicans were closely involved in developing the bill. Every GOP amendment that was considered by the House Rules Committee was made in order. All of those amendments were offered on the floor of the House, and all of the amendments that were approved by the House were later made part of the bill that Republicans defeated today.
The GIVE Act includes provisions that would have required by law background checks on individuals participating in federally-funded volunteer and community service programs. As a result, by voting against the GIVE Act today, Republicans killed legislation that included in statute protections for children against sexual predators.
Here’s Miller talking up the bill:
Here’s Miller opening a can of whupa– on a Republican opponent:
Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairwoman Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, today rolled out the CPC’s alternative budget, which would cut defense spending; halve U.S. poverty in a decade; and include a second economic stimulus package containing many of the provisions — more spending on public works, food stamps, unemployment insurance and Medicaid assistance to states — pared by Republican demand from the first package last month.
Said Lee, in her news release:
“The CPC’s budget is the only proposal that addresses poverty head on and is also the only alternative to cut even one dime from Pentagon spending. Progressives are very concerned that the Bush administration’s bloated defense budget request is the highest since WWII and propose limiting defense spending to $468.3 billion, which is $68.7 billion under the President’s request and does not compromise national security.
“Because Americans have been hit hard by the Iraq recession, our alternative assumes the redeployment of troops and contractors from Iraq between now and FY 2009, saving tax-payers at least $135 billion over the next 18 months.
“Under the Bush administration, a disproportionate amount of funding has gone to the Pentagon and provided tax cuts for the wealthy, while urgent domestic priorities have gone under-funded, poverty has increased, and the gap between the super wealthy and everybody else grew at an alarming rate. To reverse these trends, CPC’s plan includes a second economic stimulus package, which provides funding increases for unemployment insurance, food stamps, housing assistance and Federal Medical Assistance Percentage payments to states.
“The budget also makes an investment of $73.05 billion in FY 2009, which increases to $129.3 billion in FY 2018, to fund a comprehensive strategy to cut poverty in half in a decade and provide immediate and long-term help for Hurricane Katrina victims.
“It is just common sense to redistribute funding, both domestic and international, to help our nation to become more secure and I urge my colleagues to vote for this sensible and mainstream budget plan that balances in FY 2012.
“Progressives are on the right side of the issues that affect the American people and will garner significant support to be in a position to shift economic priorities this Congressional session.”
The CPC each year issues its own budget proposal as a counterpoint to the administration’s, in order to call attention to its legislative agenda. Last year’s was defeated on an 81-340 vote, with its Bay Area supporters including Lee; CPC co-chairwoman Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma; Pete Stark, D-Fremont; George Miller, D-Martinez; Mike Honda, D-San Jose; and Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose.
Most members of the Bay Area’s House delegation are among original cosponsors of the Right to Clean Vehicles Act, a bill introduced today which would force the Environmental Protection Agency to grant a waiver giving California and 12 other states the ability to implement limits on greenhouse-gas emissions from cars.
Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, issued a news release expressing her support for the House bill.
“There is simply no excuse for the Bush administration to deny California’s waiver, or any other state’s effort to combat global warming and promote the use of cleaner, more efficient vehicles on their roads,” she said. “The Right to Clean Vehicles Act will give a much-needed green light to states taking the right approach to achieving a greener future and I am proud to support it.”
Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Pleasanton, wasn’t listed among the original cosponsors in Sherman’s news release, but spokesman Andy Stone just told me McNerney fully supports it as well — he just hadn’t had time to fully review it and sign on before the authors went public today, but should be listed among the cosponsors by next week.
House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said it “will only make matters worse by raising taxes and setting the table for even higher prices at the pump,” which is both “unacceptable” and “irresponsible.”
Don Young, the House Natural Resources Committee’s ranking Republican, said it’s “a true indication of how out of touch they (Democrats) are with the needs of our nation… It makes no sense whatsoever.”
And Jim McCrery, the Ways and Means Committee’s ranking Republican, said it “completely ignores reality” and “will make our economy more dependent on foreign sources of energy… This is worse than no solution at all.”
Here’s what their fellow Republican California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had to say:
I commend Speaker Nancy Pelosi and members of Congress who worked hard to pass this critical legislation that will allow us to continue investing in our nation’s renewable energy supplies – we need as much clean energy in our resource mix as possible. With our aggressive environmental goals, unprecedented energy portfolio standards and booming ‘green economy,’ California has a vital stake in legislation to be passed by Congress and approved by President Bush.
A long-term solar tax credit is critical because of the time needed to bid, permit, engineer and build solar projects. Today’s action will help California in its efforts to reduce carbon emissions and our dependence on imported fuel sources. I urge the U.S. Senate and the President to quickly pass this legislation.
Wow, this sounds a lot like saying that, “At a time when our economy is struggling, this bill will provide savings to consumers, protect the environment, create jobs and make our nation stronger by ending our dependence on foreign oil.” Or, that “(e)nding our dependence on foreign oil and using renewable energy to help fight global warming will make our nation stronger.” Or, that the bill will “put us on a path toward energy security and energy independence in a fiscally responsible way.”
But those latter words of praise came from Democrats — House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Martinez; Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Pleasanton; and Hosue Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, respectively.
“The call by Sens. Clinton and McCain to temporarily suspend the federal tax on gasoline is a short-sighted stunt that will hurt consumers and do nothing to reduce the price of gas.
