BushCo policies cut American's throats...

From American Progress:

What's Hurting GM Is Hurting America

Autoworkers in the Rust Belt and around North America suffered a rough blow this Thanksgiving week: General Motors announced plans yesterday to cut 30,000 manufacturing jobs (25,000 in the United States) and close a dozen plants, one day after Ford Motors announced 4,000 more job cuts. The GM layoffs are the company's most substantial "since a huge restructuring in 1991 when 74,000 jobs were lost," and the largest single round of U.S. layoffs in almost three years, "since Kmart said it would cut 37,000 jobs in January 2003."

As Paul Krugman writes, the signs of decline in Detroit are a "reminder of how far we have come from the days when hard-working Americans could count on a reasonable degree of economic security." GM's move is the latest sign of a fundamental shift away from the progressive vision of an "opportunity society," where every hard-working person can realize his or her goals through education, decent work, and fair pay. Replacing this society is not President Bush's empty vision of an "ownership society," but the tough realities of greater job uncertainty, lower wages, higher health care costs, and a shrinking middle class.

Critically, these changes are not simply dictates of the market. Rather, they are in large part the result of specific policy decisions that have left American workers and businesses unprepared for the dynamic changes occurring in the global economy.

THE DISAPPEARING OPPORTUNITY NATION:
General Motors, once "an unassailable symbol of the nation's industrial might," is now a shadow of its former self, "and the post-World War II promise of blue-collar factory work being a secure path to the American dream has faded with it." But GM is not unique, and neither are the hardships of its workers. The forces affecting GM employees are simply "extreme versions of what's occurring across the American labor market," the Los Angeles Times notes, "where such economic risks as unemployment and health costs once broadly shared by business and government are being shifted directly onto the backs of American working families."

Americans are owning more, indeed -- more risk, more debt, and higher health care costs. Detroit families are now aware that the good life auto work has afforded their families for generations, "and for hundreds of thousands of other families in Michigan and elsewhere across the country, is ending." Said one imperiled autoworker, Jerry Roy: "People survive somehow, regardless of what happens. I mean, it's sad, I could cry all night, but I'll figure out a way to get by - somehow."

UNDERCUTTING AMERICAN WORKERS:
Even as the U.S. workforce faces greater vulnerability, the Bush administration has taken aim programs designed to help workers find new employment opportunities. President Bush sought to chop half a billion dollars out of federal job training funding in the most recent budget. Federal job training programs, including dislocated-worker training programs, would have been cut by $200 million. Federal aid to states for job training, which includes funding to help veterans re-enter the workforce, would have lost $300 million in funds.

Bush has also neglected the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program, one of the primary safety nets in place for workers displaced by trade. His administration "has tightened the eligibility requirements for TAA, denying many workers even the modest resources available under that program," and "pursued policies that leave many workers who qualify for TAA benefits without access to this program." At the same time, he has pushed to privatize or cut vital programs like Social Security and Medicaid when they are more important than ever, "now that workers in the world's richest nation can no longer count on the private sector to provide them with economic security."

THE HEALTH CARE CRISIS:
A leading cause of General Motors layoffs is our country's health care crisis. "GM's problem," the New York Times reports, "at least in terms of its costs, is the enormous price of health care benefits for hundreds of thousands of retirees. G.M. is the largest private provider of health care, covering more than a million Americans." The trouble isn't that autoworkers have had too good a deal on health insurance -- it's that "most Americans have had too bad a deal."

As Robert Kuttner writes, "Somehow, the rest of the industrial world can provide health coverage for everyone and only spend an average of about 10 percent of its national income," while America spend 15 percent and leaves over 46 million people without health insurance.

One innovative way to start to address the auto industry's problem: health care for hybrids. American Progress has proposed a plan, now embraced by Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) as the Competitiveness and Accountability Act, that would "offer automakers the following deal: If they invest substantially in fuel-efficient technology, Congress will relieve them of the health insurance burden of their retirees." (American Progress also has a systemic plan to provide affordable health insurance to all Americans.)

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