Unions Blast Reid’s $15B Jobs Bill As A “Band-Aid”

By Janet Peterson on February 24, 2010, 7:03 am Posted in Economy News

Liberal groups have lined up in order to blast Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s latest proposal. After Democrat Max Baucus and Republican Chuck Grassley worked with other members of the Senate to craft a truly bipartisan jobs bill, Reid introduced his own version. The $15 million proposal is far short of the bipartisan legislation and national unions and left wing organizations have quickly renounced it as a bad bill.

A Bad Band-Aid

The President of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka called Reid’s bill a first step, but nothing more. He also likened passing only this $15 million measure to cutting off an arm, and sticking a band-aid on the end of it. The head of a liberal think tank backed by several unions included his views that Reid’s bill was both puny and small. Unions are hardly the only groups dislike the bill. The NAACP and the National Council of La Raza are two others who have warned Democrats that Reid’s bill doesn’t do enough.

Meeting Somewhere In The Middle

Of course the unions aren’t content with the Baucus-Grassley bill that would cost the country somewhere in the neighborhood of $80 million either. In fact the unions and several other liberal groups aren’t even entirely happy with the House of Representatives version which would cost a whopping $154 million. The unions have said of the three versions that have come forth, the House’s version is the one they are most comfortable with but they’d like to tack on additions to that bill.

 

Perhaps the one piece that the unions have stated they need to have in any jobs bill is an extension of unemployment and health care benefits until at least the end of this year. The much more expensive House bill includes $63 million to extend Cobra an extra three months. Cobra coverage for the unemployed is slated to expire at the end of February as the law is currently set up.

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