What happens if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid can't get the votes he needs from conservaDems and Joe Lieberman to shut down a filibuster before a final vote on health care reform?

For months, many strategically savvy progressives have pointed to the obscure budget reconciliation process...

Democratic leaders yesterday sent their strongest signals yet that they were eager to pass a jobs creation and benefits-extension package to help stop the economic and political bleeding caused by a 10 percent official unemployment rate, the worst in a generation.

They have to promote...

SEIU President Andy Stern is joining hundreds of progressives -- and potentially more -- in a newly organized protest outside the Washington, D.C. offices of Goldman Sachs on Monday at noon. SEIU is part of a co-sponsoring coalition, Americans For Financial Reform, that also includes other unions, such...

WASHINGTON -- Sources close to God reported Thursday that the Supreme Being was angered at recent comments by Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein that's he's just a banker "doing God's work." Blankfein's comments, God and other experts believe, stand in sharp contrast to the firm's track record as...

Today, the centrist lobbying powerhouse for the elderly, the American Association for Retired Persons (AARP), is scheduled to endorse the House health care bill despite its possibly flawed public option. Still, the House bill is winning high marks from a growing number of influential progressives for...

Is Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner the new champion of real financial reform, fighting to rein in Wall Street and the big banks? That's the impression you might get when seeing the largely fawning coverage he's received lately from mainstream media outlets, such NBC's Meet the Press or Time...

The unveiling last week of new health reform bills by House and Senate leaders has focused most public and media attention on the scope of the public option. But, in truth, neither the House nor Senate versions of that measure could offer the extensive, affordable coverage that reformers are hoping...

With the capital being torn apart by partisan fighting over everything from health care reform to Afghanistan, the last two weeks in Washington, D.C have seen a bonanza of comic talent descend on a laugh-starved city. Thanks to the Bentzen Ball organized by blogger hipsters-turned-entrepeneurs Brightest Young Things...

On the same day that Senator Harry Reid announced that the Senate would consider an "opt-out" public option, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka reminded Democrats to hold to basic progressive goals in pushing for reform. He told reporters Monday in a conference call, "We cannot be in favor of...

Taxpayers and working families losing their jobs and their homes "will not benefit" from the huge $700 billion TARP bailout that saved banks and Wall Street firms a year ago, the Treasury Department's Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky reported Wednesday. As he told CBS News and the...

Even under President Obama, the gridlocked National Labor Relations Board is still broken in responding to anti-union abuses. A case in point: After nearly 20 years of a protracted legal battle, four construction unions finally reached a settlement with Flour Daniel, Inc. over its practice of discriminating against union...

Just over a year after the financial meltdown spurred government bailouts, loans and guarantees worth a staggering $17.5 trillion to the financial industry, leaders in the field are finally paying consumers back.

How? They're fighting hard against a Consumer Financial Protection Agency and gutting what reform advocates say...

Rachel Maddow last night took on corporate PR maestro Rick Berman. Berman has established a bevy of anti-reform "non-profit" websites that enable him to attack everything from ACORN to unions to Mothers Against Drunk Driving while defending trans-fats, lowering the minimum wage and high fructose corn syrup as good...

Republicans reacted wtih outrage last week after Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) offered a blistering attack on the nearly-invisible Republican healthcare proposals: "The Republican health care plan is this: Don't get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly."

Unfortunately, the White House isn't doing all it can to...

The selection Wednesday of Richard Trumka as president of the AFL-CIO could add a harder progressive edge to the tough drives for health care and economic reform facing progressives and the Obama administration. At the same time, he was joined in the top AFL-CIO leadership ranks by two women:...

So much for the economic independence that's supposed to come with young adulthood.

But when unemployment among young men workers is the highest it's been in 61 years, as noted by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, it's little wonder that workers under 35 are facing so many...

When health facilities ignore the quality-of-care concerns of nurses, whether involving nurse-patient staffing ratios or infection control practices, people die or get ill needlessly.

Now, as reported by the AFL-CIO Now blog, those dangers now face patients who are expected to seek treatment for swine flu/H1N1...

Last week, Glenn Beck supplemented his racist pandering by picking up the hoary right-wing talking point that both health care and labor reform would "murder" small businesses. Defending small businesses, in fact, is the last refuge of big businesses and their right-wing allies just defending their profit...

In the wake of the administration's signaling that it was willing to drop the public option, progressive groups, unions and liberal Democrats came out strongly for the key reform measure Monday. But will there be enough grass-roots activism to save the public option that a...

While the "astro-turf" generated anger targeting health reform continued to grab headlines, Democrats and progressives are pushing back on several fronts. Their counter-punching includes everything from massive ad buys to pro-reform viral emails to aggressive PR about productive Congressional Town Hall meetings that featured...