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Stories tagged with “Tom Harkin”

Economy

Sen. Harkin Bill Would End America’s Time As Only Developed Nation Without Paid Sick Days

By Pat Garofalo on Mar 30, 2012 at 11:50 am

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA)

The U.S. has the weakest labor protections in the industrialized world, and is the only developed nation that doesn’t guarantee workers some sort of paid sick leave. Lost productivity due to sick workers attending work and infecting other employees costs the U.S. economy $180 billion annually.

Yesterday, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) released the Rebuild America Act, and one of its many provisions would ensure that all workers have access to paid sick days. Inevitably, proposals of this sort draw the ire of Big Business, which claims that every policy meant to aid workers will drive up costs and increase joblessness. But as David Madland noted yesterday, that simply isn’t the case:

The aftermath of the Great Recession has cultivated a fear that policies that support workers and their families will subsequently constrain business profitability and cause employers to lay off workers or close their doors entirely. Contrary to fears from the business community, the passage of paid sick days legislation in San Francisco (the first city to enact such a law) did not hamper job growth. In fact San Francisco created more jobs and experienced more economic growth after passing the law than the surrounding counties without such legislation.

According to a study in the American Journal of Public Health, a lack of paid sick days led to millions of additional cases of H1N1 flu in 2009. Since the federal government hasn’t acted, several cities have passed paid sick day requirements of their own (though Republicans in Wisconsin overrode Milwaukee’s law last year). Harkin’s bill — in addition to its myriad other strong proposals — would end America’s shameful rein as the only developed nation that forces workers to choose between their health and their job.

Justice

Grassley & Harkin Introduce Bipartisan Bill To Fix Supreme Court Assault On Older Workers

By Ian Millhiser on Mar 15, 2012 at 3:20 pm

Nearly three years ago, the Supreme Court rolled back decades of precedent to make it harder for older workers to stand up to age discrimination in the workplace:

Employment discrimination cases are difficult to prove because the plaintiff ultimately must show what their boss was thinking at the time they were fired or demoted–it is illegal for an employer to fire a worker because they think the worker is too old or too black or too female, but not because they think the worker is incompetent or poorly dressed. Since workers don’t have ESP, the Supreme Court long ago put certain procedures in place to make sure that laws banning discrimination amount to more than just empty promises.

“Mixed motive” suits are an example of these procedures. To win a mixed motive case, a plaintiff had to prove that discrimination was one of the reasons behind their boss’ decision to fire or demote them. It was then up to their boss to prove that they would have made the same decision regardless of the worker’s race or gender or age. Workers are spared the nearly impossible task of having to prove that that their boss was thinking only of bigotry when they lashed out at their employee; and employers are given a fair chance to prove that discrimination is not the real reason why the worker was cast aside. . . .[Gross v. FBL Financial Services] eliminates such claims in age discrimination cases. Thanks to Justice Thomas’ majority opinion, victims of age discrimination are helpless unless they can get inside their boss’ head and show that their boss would have behaved differently if the victim had been a little younger.

A bill introduced Tuesday by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) will overturn Gross and restore to older workers the same ability to fight discrimination that they agreed before a 5-4 Supreme Court took it away from them. Although many Senate Democrats have long supported undoing the justices’ mischief in this way, this is the first time a Republican has signed on to the effort — Grassley’s endorsement of the bill is a hopeful sign that it could become law.

Enacting this bill is not simply important because it will restore necessary rights to older workers, it also is important to push back against a Supreme Court that openly flouts its own precedents. Justice Thomas’ majority opinion in Gross acknowledged that his decision was at war with longstanding precedent, but he dismissed this fact by simply saying “it is far from clear that the Court would have the same approach were it to consider the question today in the first instance.” In other words, Thomas believes that, because the Supreme Court is now dominated by five far right justices, it should no longer have to follow precedents from a more sensible era.

Climate Progress

Harkin: ‘Indisputable’ Climate Change Behind Missouri River Flood

By Brad Johnson on Jun 28, 2011 at 12:56 pm

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) is calling for flood management officials to recognize the role of global warming in creating more dangerous disasters. Yesterday, as the federal government agreed to assume most of the costs of the Missouri River flood in the state of Iowa, Harkin told reporters that U.S. Army Corps of Engineers needs to take into account the “indisputable” climate change that has been increasing precipitation intensity in the Midwest. The Master Water Control Manual of the Missouri River Basin ignores the existence of manmade global warming, and left the corps unprepared for the scope of this year’s record precipitation. Harkin told the Quad City Times that climate change is “indisputable“:

I think it’s indisputable that something is happening to our climate. Perhaps the basis of that manual needs to be revised for climate change that’s happening and the amount of snowpack.

Speaking before television reporters on Monday afternoon, as President Obama signed a federal disaster declaration for the region, Harkin reiterated that the flooding disaster could have been managed if not for the global warming caused by fossil fuel pollution:

If we hadn’t had those big rainfalls, their plans would have worked. That’s why I say we have to maybe go back and revise that master plan simply because something is happening with our climate. and we’re getting more rain and more snowpack in areas that we’ve never had before.

Watch it:

The corps manual does not mention the implications of climate change for the river basin, despite years of relevant scientific publications and government reports. As climate change accelerates, the challenge of handling the greater droughts and floods in our future will only increase. Our national flood-control system is grossly unprepared for what is coming, even if immediate action is taken to eliminate climate pollution.

However, the manual does note the critical role that the National Weather Service and the U.S. Geological Survey play in providing meteorological and stream flow observations and forecasts. The budgets of both agencies — and their ability to study climate change — are under attack by Tea Party Republicans along the Missouri River like Rep. Steve King (R-IA).

Related Posts

Health

Harkin Defends Health Mandatory Spending, Says Bill Defunding Health Law Won’t Pass Senate

By Igor Volsky on Mar 21, 2011 at 10:40 am

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) dismisses the possibility of Republicans successfully defunding the Affordable Care Act in a new interview with Politico Pro’s David Nather and disputes the GOP claim that Democrats sought to protect reform from Congressional action by funding parts of the law through the mandatory spending process:

On defunding reform:

These are riders that they’re putting on the bill, and appropriations bills, we’re not going to have any riders. So, that’s just not going to happen. It won’t be part of the deal. Now again, if there is legislation that they send over to repeal the health care bill or to do other things to it, well, it’s just not going to get through the Senate, period.

On “mandatory spending” in the health law:

To those arguing against mandatory spending on the health care bill, you might ask them about all the farm programs … because I see some of those are from rural states. That’s mandatory spending. It’s in the law, and it goes on year after year after year. So we do a lot of that around here for things that we don’t want to have to come up year after year after year because they have long-term implications for our country. And some of that is in farm programs and conservation programs and things like that…there is mandatory spending in defense, there is mandatory spending in transportation, energy. I think just in the whole gammit of the government there are mandatory spendings.

Watch it:

Indeed, even some Republicans are disputing the now oft-repeated claim — being advanced by Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Steve King (R-IA) — that Democrats misused the mandatory spending process. As Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) explained during an appearance on the Sean Hannity radio show, “with the advanced appropriations they built in there, it exists outside the normal appropriations process, but tell me something I don’t know.”

Indeed, mandatory funding was openly discussed in the various Congressional Budget Office estimates of health care reform. For instance, this CBO estimate from December 19, 2009 addressed the effects of “mandatory appropriations” for the Prevention and Public Health Fund,” “community health centers” and “the National Health Service Corps.” In an earlier document from November 2009, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf writes, “For example, the House bill would finance the operations of the insurance exchanges through mandatory appropriations rather than a surcharge on the plans offered in the exchanges. ” (The word “mandatory” is used throughout this CBO compilation of health care related documents).

Yglesias

Sen. Harkin on Filibuster Reform

By ThinkProgress on Jun 21, 2010 at 2:29 pm

sen-harkin-photo

By Ryan McNeely

Last Monday, Sen. Harkin (D-IA) delivered an important lecture at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law entitled “Filibuster Reform: Curbing Abuse to Prevent Minority Tyranny in the Senate.” He outlined his specific plan for filibuster reform, which would gradually lower the threshold for Senate action from 60 votes to 51 votes over a period of eight days. Harkin has credibility on this issue, as he first proposed these reforms in 1995 when Democrats were in the minority.

While Harkin conceded that “neither party has clean hands” and that the escalation of cloture votes has become “an arms race,” Harkin argued that conservatives have an ideological interest in portraying government as ineffective. “Some members of the minority party are so reflexively anti-government that in their mind, there can be no compromise.”

The use of the filibuster has increased with each successive Congress, but Harkin made clear that some of the more egregious filibuster abuses — such as holding up a nominee for months only to confirm that nominee unanimously — are not the inevitable outcome of natural Senate evolution but rather the result of calculated decisions by the GOP leadership:

At this point, I do want to digress for a moment and discuss the current Republican minority. Much of the fault lies with the Minority Leader. In the past, Republican leaders have had to deal with extremists in their ranks who wanted to block everything – Jesse Helms is a good example. But, leaders, including Bob Dole, Trent Lott and Bill Frist, while giving members like Helms a long leash, at some point said “enough!” They made clear that the Senator was acting outside the goalposts and that it would not be tolerated. What is different, today, is that the Minority Leader is not willing to constrain the most extreme elements within his caucus.

The key here is that Sen. Shelby can’t block debate on every single executive branch nominee without the tacit approval of Mitch McConnell. McConnell has made a conscious choice to prevent the government from functioning for rank short-term political gain. All calls for Barack Obama to “compromise” with the Senate GOP caucus should be placed in this context.

Politics

Harkin says Senate has the votes to pass a health care bill with a public option.

By Matt Corley on Sep 29, 2009 at 11:23 am

As it reconvenes its health care mark up today, the Senate Finance Committee is set to debate three versions of a public option that could be inserted into the committee’s bill. At the same time, a top Senate Democrat said today that he has the votes to pass a bill that includes a government plan through the entire Senate. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), who recently took over as chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, told Bill Press that Democrats “comfortably” have the votes for a public option:

“I have polled senators, and the vast majority of Democrats — maybe approaching 50 — support a public option,” Harkin said told the liberal Bill Press Radio Show. “So why shouldn’t we have a public option? We have the votes.”

“I believe we’ll have the 60 votes, now that we have the new senator from Massachusetts, to at least get it on the Senate floor,” Harkin later added. “But once we cross that hurdle, we only need 51 votes for the public option. And I believe there are, comfortably, 51 votes for a public option.”

Though a version of the public option isn’t expected to make it out of the Finance Committee, supporters such as Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) say that “the Senate floor is more favorable to the public option than the Finance Committee, and [negotiations with the House are] more favorable than the Senate floor.” ”

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