NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | April 3 , 2015 | PAGE 9
Budget ‘vote-o-rama’ forces senators to take a stance on retirement security
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Mem-
bers of the U.S. Senate on March
25 voted on dozens of amend-
ments to the Fiscal Year 2016
Budget. The marathon session
dubbed “vote-o-rama” forced
many senators, including 2016
GOP presidential hopefuls, to
take definitive positions on issues
such as raising the minimum
wage, preserving Medicare and
Social Security earned benefits,
and protecting against Medicaid
cuts.
Democratic Senators Patty
Murray (WA), Elizabeth Warren
(MA), Joe Manchin (WV), Sher-
rod Brown (OH), and Brian
Schatz (HI) offered an amend-
ment to expand Social Security.
The amendment lost on almost a
completely straight party-line
vote: every Democrat but Heidi
Heitkamp (ND) and Tom Carper
(DE) voted for it, with Dianne
Feinstein (D) and Barbara
Mikulski (D) not voting. Every
Republican voted against it.
Another amendment, this one
by Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.),
bans federal consideration of
construction contracts with proj-
ect labor agreements. It passed
51-49, with all Democrats and
independents voting against it,
along with three Republicans.
Project labor agreements are
used to set standards on govern-
ment-funded projects to estab-
lish workforce standards that all
contractors and subcontractors
must meet. President Barack
Obama issued an executive or-
der six years ago “to encourage
agencies to consider requiring
the use of project labor agree-
ments in connection with large-
scale construction projects” over
$25 million.
Flake’s amendment bans that.
The Senate passed the full
budget, 52-46. It would slash
$5.1 trillion in spending over 10
years. The proposal slashes
$431 billion from Medicare
over a decade but does not pro-
vide many specifics on how
those savings would be
achieved. Instead, the plan tasks
individual Senate committees
with jurisdiction over Medicare
to find such savings. A tally of
the full budget vote is at
http://tinyurl.com/q3blcqj.
“This budget works for the
best off, but it sure doesn’t work
for working Americans,” Ore-
gon Sen. Jeff Merkley said in a
press release.
“You would think that with
such tremendous sacrifice being
asked of ordinary Americans,
this budget would also ask for
some sacrifices from the
wealthy and well-connected —
but you would be wrong. This
budget preserves every egre-
gious special-interest tax loop-
hole on the books, down to the
one that actually subsidizes the
cost of shipping American jobs
overseas. And it fails to do any-
thing about a tax code in which
the very wealthiest Americans
pay a lower tax rate than many
middle-class families,” he said.
The House budget would
pare $148 billion from Medicare
and convert it into a voucher-
like program for future benefi-
ciaries, a step the Senate
shunned. Passed by a vote of
228-199 , the House budget cuts
$5.5 trillion overall, drastically
reducing funding for Medicaid
and the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program (SNAP)
while increasing defense spend-
ing. The chambers will start
hammering out a final budget
deal in the coming weeks.
“Make no mistake, these
budgets are radically anti-re-
tiree,” said Richard Fiesta, exec-
utive director of the Alliance.
“The Alliance fiercely opposes
both budgets and will work vig-
orously to prevent them from
becoming law.”
(Editor’s Note: the Alliance
for Retired Americans con-
tributed to this report.)