Setting the Record Straight on Obama, Health Care and Unions

If you're following the politics of the Iowa Democratic caucus contest, you're familiar with the dust-up surrounding Barack Obama's health care plan, AFSCME's critique of it, his labeling of union's as "special interests" (as I read in a recent Paul Krugman column), the anti-government rhetoric the Senator has used to defend the absence of a mandate from his health insurance plan and the fact that it does not cover 15 million Americans.

Let's start with Obama's health insurance plan: it is the only "universal" health insurance proposal on the presidential trail that does not cover every American. The simple fact is that it leaves 15 million Americans without the medical care they need. Hillary Clinton and John Edwards' plans do not leave anyone behind. This is the difference that the AFSCME political action committee has pointed out in the direct mail piece that the Obama campaign has been complaining about in the media.

What's more, as Krugman has pointed out, Obama has used anti-government rhetoric to defend his position on health care and Social Security. In so doing, he makes the right-wing's argument about public services and unions. This is unacceptable, especially at a time when it is so important to promote a vibrant trade movement.

People can debate the details of the candidate's plans but the biggest difference that matters is that Barack Obama's plan does not cover 15 million people. There are clearly different policy ways to achieve the goals of controlling costs and providing quality health care for all. But you can't cover everyone if your plan does not even intend to do so.

AFSCME has fought for universal health care for decades. Our goal is simple: to protect and improve health care for those who have it, and to provide it for 47 million Americans who don't. And we are hardly a "special interest" when it comes to this or any issue. As most people know, union members have bargained hard for affordable health insurance that provides high quality care. Our members have fought for these benefits for years and their contracts have helped to set the standard for what every American should have.

When it comes to health care, our union and the labor movement in general are not a "special interest." We fight for the general interest. Our campaign for health care for all is about our commitment to a better America, and no one in America should go without the medical care they need as so many in our country do now.

The Obama campaign's criticism of our political action committee and some of the so-called 527 efforts, such as the one organized in support of Edwards, is troubling because they are suggesting that workers are somehow a special interest, just like insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry. That's obviously absurd on its face. It is workers who built this country and it is their unions that created America's middle-class.

We are an important part of the Democratic base that's critical to making the Democratic nominee our next president. Senator Obama and his staff and consultants should understand this. After all, Obama's national field director is a former AFSCME staffer who ran our independent expenditure program in the last election cycle. And the director of his Iowa campaign played a key role running an interest group AFSCME and other progressive organizations helped create to defeat President Bush's proposal to privatize Social Security (it's now working on a number of other important issues).

I don't understand Senator Obama's confusion about the difference between special interests and ordinary American's like the Iowa voters who will caucus on January 3. He certainly was not confused when he accepted our union's PAC money and volunteers and other support in his campaigns for the State Senate and the U.S. Senate. What's more, it does not help the Democratic nominee, regardless of who she or he is, to have him criticize the activities of workers and their unions now – whether those activities are member education, 527 efforts or independent expenditures – when they'll be so critical to the outcome of the general election later.

It's important for all of the Democratic candidates and their supporters to remember that we're all on the same side with the same goal – taking back the White House for America's working families and making it the peoples' house again.

Comments

[Lon]

There is something funny, in the sense of misleading, in the suggestion that the debate is about 15 million people that the Clinton and Edwards plans take care of while Obama's plan does not. After all the way that the Clinton and Edwards plan take care of them is to make it illegal for them to not buy health insurance.

Krugman is more honest about this. In his view these 15 million are freeloaders who are making health insurance more expensive for everyone else. So the Clinton and Edwards plans are not designed to benefit these people (unless some subset of them are too stupid to decide what is in their own best interest) but rather to punish them to the benefit of the rest.

This may be fair, but it is certainly not the issue that is described in the above account.

Now who does more to make health care affordable so that more people will find it affordable to buy it without the risk of criminialization seems to be a subject of debate. But that would be a more honest debate.

[illinoisan]

I received two pieces of mail today from Council 31 AFSCME Illinois. Both of them are covered with glossy photos of Obama and state unequivically that AFSCME Illinois endorses Barack Obama for President.

One of the mailings is the January 2008 union newsletter "On the Move" #112 and contains a strong editorial by Director Henry Bayer endorsing Obama. The other AFSCME Illinois mailing is a glossy broadside that looks like Obama campaign literature without the Obama logo.

[RobertArend]

So, what is the deal with my own AFSCME union? Where is Gerald McEntee's solidarity with private-sector workers. Does AFSCME not recognize that the jobs of public employees across this nation are dependant on good-wage jobs with healthcare benefits for those not employed by government?

A private-sector employee earning $20 an hour pays the taxes that a minimum wage employee can never be expected to contribute.

As more and more family sustaining jobs leave this country, so, then, must government reduce their own workforce.

President Clinton gave us NAFTA. Now his wife hammers another nail into the coffin of the middleclass with her support for the Peru Fair Trade Agreement.

As much as I have been critical of Jerry Stern for dividing the AFL-CIO, he is at least allowing the members in the individual states SEIU represents to determine for themselves who to endorse. Perhaps that action clears away all the smoke over Stern's reasoning for fracturing the House of Labor. And maybe my criticism was missplaced.

I am not ready to surrender my conviction that Stern should have worked within the AFL-CIO for change, but I am so very close to an apology.

__two hats

[oldpotsmuggler]

A Uniter, not a Divider!!