With Some Reservations, UAW Supports President's Middle Class Tax Cut Framework

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December 09, 2010

UAW Backs Middle Class Tax Cut Framework

Dear Senator:

The Senate will soon take up comprehensive tax and unemployment insurance legislation growing out of the compromise agreement reached between the White House and Republican leadership. This legislation will provide much needed support to American families who are struggling to find work, to keep businesses afloat, and to keep their families fed, clothed and housed. Moreover, it will provide urgently needed stimulus to grow the economy and to create jobs. While we are disappointed by the inclusion of costly income and estate tax giveaways to the wealthiest Americans, the UAW urges you to vote for this less than perfect compromise.

The UAW is very pleased that the compromise extends unemployment benefits at their current level through the end of 2011. If enacted, this extension will restore benefits to 800,000 laid off workers who have lost them since November 30, and will prevent an additional six million laid off workers and their families from losing benefits next year. Importantly, the President's Council of Economic Advisors anticipates that this extension will create 600,000 jobs 2011. A recent Department of Labor report found that each dollar spent on unemployment insurance increases the gross domestic product by two dollars. This stimulative impact is one reason that 35 prominent economists, including five Nobel Laureates and five past chairs of the Council of Economic Advisors, recently signed a letter urging the continuation of federal unemployment benefits to stimulate demand and warning that letting the program expire will further weaken the economy.

We are also pleased with the stimulative tax breaks for working families that are contained in the compromise. The agreement includes a two percent, employee-side payroll tax holiday for over 155 million workers, as well as extensions of the child tax credit, the earned income tax credit and the American opportunity tax credit. We note that the Social Security Trust Fund will be fully reimbursed from the general fund for the revenues lost due to the payroll tax holiday. Working families will likely spend this money in their local communities, creating jobs and stimulating overall growth. That's why the Congressional Budget Office, for instance, has concluded that "policies aimed at lower income households tend to have greater stimulative effects." We believe the small business tax cuts are beneficial as well. These include allowing businesses to expense all of their capital investments in 2011, which the Treasury Department estimates could generate more than $50 billion in additional investment in the U.S. in 2011.

In contrast, we are very disappointed that the compromise includes a two-year extension of the upper-income tax cuts and an agreement about the inheritance tax that is overly generous to Americans who already have a disproportionate share of the nation's income. The upper-income tax cuts will cost $60 billion per year, money that would be far better spent creating jobs through, for example, infrastructure projects. CBO has found that extending tax cuts for high-income households is the worst policy option for boosting jobs and economic growth. The agreement on the estate tax will make it weaker than at any time since its inception in 1916. Wealth inequality is already at the highest level since 1928. We are concerned that a weaker estate tax will result in the richest one percent owning even more of our nation's wealth and will shift the responsibility for paying taxes from the wealthy to the middle class. We believe the benefits for job creation and economic growth would have been much greater if the money had been used to extend unemployment insurance even longer or added to the payroll tax holiday or to the refundable tax credits.

Taken together, despite the misguided tax provisions benefiting the very wealthiest and least deserving Americans, the UAW believes the agreement will provide urgently needed support to working families, to displaced workers, to low-income Americans, and to the nation's economy. For these reasons, we urge you to vote for the legislation built on this tax and UI compromise agreement.

Sincerely,
Barbara Somson
Legislative Director


http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/12/09/uaw-backs-middle-class-tax-cut-framework

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. That changed my mind.

:sarcasm:

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3. meh

trumps Trumka

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

5. The Union leadership is far past Obama on spelunking.

[Hannah Bell]

2. Obama Tax Deal Gives In to Moneyed Interests, AFL-CIO Chief Says

Dec. 7 (Bloomberg) -- The leader of the largest U.S. labor federation portrayed the deal President Barack Obama cut with Republicans to extend all of the Bush-era tax cuts as caving in “to Wall Street and moneyed interests.”

“Two years ago, working Americans had high hopes that we would ultimately emerge from the deep, punishing financial debacle,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said today in an e- mailed statement. “Today, that vision has dimmed.”

The tax-cut deal announced by Obama yesterday rewards Republican obstructionism by giving rich people tax breaks they don’t need, Trumka said.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-12-07/obama-tax-deal-gives-in-to-moneyed-interests-afl-cio-chief-says.html


UAW: Selling out their membership since the 1970s.

[NNN0LHI]

6. People driving imports and scab built cars have been selling out the UAW since the 1970s

And they are not hard to spot either. They kind of stand out in a crowd. And this, "Oops, I thought my Toyota Prius was built in Seattle.", BS doesn't work either.

Don

[Hannah Bell]

9. who let those cars into the us with low tariffs? why were japanese cars so successful

v. german, french, italian & british cars?

you need to look a little further than your own nose. it wasn't consumers who sold out american workers. flood any market with cheaper yet reliable goods & people will buy them.

there's an interesting history there in terms of cycles of labor-busting imports.

[NNN0LHI]

10. Long as the people driving those cars can withstand the same scrutiny on their job its no problem

Because if that is what you want that is what you will get.

If I can get a scab or someone in another country to provide whatever goods or services you currently provide for a nickel less than you do that is the way I will go if you want me to.

Is that what you are wanting?

Don

[Hannah Bell]

11. I don't want you to do anything. Just asking you to look at the big picture.

The attack on workers is 3 fronts in both cases:

1. Introduction of a cheaper "product"
2. Anti-worker media rhetoric
3. Collusion with union leadership to push through detrimental labor agreements


My only quarrel with you is that your focus is totally on consumer decisions. Consumer decisions that were made in an atmosphere of

1) media manipulation
2) economic constraint (in the case of the auto industry, the 70s recessions & inflation were particularly important)
3) active participation by political "leadership" in making cheaper products available & attractive. IT WAS NO ACCIDENT.

We are in similar times. All you can talk about is how one teacher here bought a Japanese car.

Sorry, that hasn't been relevant since the 80s, since it's no longer possible to buy (or even identify) a 100% american-made car. I'm talking parts/components as well as final assembly.

And that's the case in *every* country on the globe -- no one can buy a car that's wholly manufactured in their own country anymore, even the Japanese.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

4. The Working Poor Will Pay Higher Taxes after Obama's GOP Tax Compromise

amborin just posted this.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=9735299&mesg_id=9735299

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7. others posting on those repeated threads have pointed ot the lie in that

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

8. Then I've got to go find them. Thanks.