What is Mitt Romney’s “plan for a stronger middle class?” James P. Hoffa, President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, has an editorial in today’s
Detroit News that every middle class American should read.
Hoffa pulls no punches, “[It] reads like a manifesto in the war on workers — for the other side.”
The point of Mr. Hoffa’s editorial is to show that Mitt Romney’s plan is simply a plan to redistribute wealth from the 99% to the 1%. How would he accomplish this? One needs to look no further than his tax cut plan which gives millionaires an $87,000 a year tax cut; however, for 95 percent of the population, taxes would go up by about 1.2 percent, an average of $500 a year.
Not only that, as Mr. Hoffa states, “in Mitt Romney's world view, low wages are the solution” and “that most Americans' standard of living will fall if Romney is elected president.” It is also expected that Romney would take a page from Scott Walker’s playbook and, “attack[s] workers ability to bargain collectively.”
Workers need collective bargaining now more than ever to protect themselves from corporations that ship jobs overseas and cut wages, benefits and pensions. Collective bargaining helps level the playing field for employees so CEOs aren't the only ones who benefit from a company's success.
We know how well Scott Walker’s “tools” have worked in Wisconsin. Wisconsin has led the nation in job losses since Act 10 was rammed through the state legislature and put into effect.
We have seen this play before, it started on Ronald Reagan, continued under Bush the Elder, eased under Clinton, and accelerated under Bush the Younger. Cutting taxes for the rich solves nothing as a matter of fact I am still waiting for that quarter I was promised under Reagan to trickle down to me.