Heritage Action Launches ‘Save Our Paycheck’ Tour to Highlight How Biden’s Policies Hurt Americans
Republicans Sen. Rick Scott (FL) and Gov. Brian Kemp (GA) will be featured speakers as part of Heritage Action’s national tour in August and September to highlight how President Joe Biden’s economic policies are hurting Americans.
“President Joe Biden and Washington Democrats are leading our nation down an unsustainable path with their failed economic policies and reckless spending,” Scott said in the announcement on Tuesday of the tour. “Americans deserve better. The Democrats’ spending addiction has created an inflation crisis and their solution is to spend more and tax more.”
“And instead of focusing on getting Americans back to work and helping small businesses re-open, Democrats are insistent on paying workers more to stay home and rely on government assistance,” Scott said. “These policies don’t work, and we are seeing it every day.”
The “Save Our Paycheck National Tour” is in response to the “Biden-Harris Administration’s war on Americans’ pocketbooks,” according to Heritage.
Heritage, working with the Coalition to Protect American Workers, will “host state and national officials at local businesses across the country in a series of events aimed at exposing how disastrous President Biden’s policies have been for the American worker.”
“The tour will also highlight the personal testimony of business owners, American workers, and grassroots leaders most impacted by President Biden’s failed economic agenda,” the press release announcing the tour said.
“Thanks to Bidenflation and the Administration’s continued attacks on our pocketbooks, Americans are losing purchasing power every month — blue state lockdowns and Congress’ disastrous spending plans have led to higher taxes and higher unemployment,” Heritage Action Executive Director Jessica Anderson said of the tour. “The Save Our Paychecks tour will shed light on the American workers and businesses who have been left behind by the Biden Administration.”
Erica Kious, the former owner of the now-shuttered San Francisco Salon where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) got her hair done despite coronavirus pandemic lockdowns, will kick off the event on August 10 in Fresno, California.
“After owning a very successful salon in San Francisco for over ten years, my dreams and hard work came to an abrupt end,” Kious said. “I was ultimately forced to shut down by extreme leftist politics due to the exposure of Nancy Pelosi’s hypocritical actions in my salon relative to the mask policies surrounding the coronavirus pandemic.”
“Americans need to know that the left is dedicated to destroying small business owners like me and hurting American workers—it’s time to save our paychecks.”
The Florida Politics website reported on the tour:
Scott has repeatedly hammered the Biden administration for big spending, noting the national debt as a major concern.
“President Biden’s silence on inflation is deafening, and his lack of leadership in the face of this serious threat is hurting people every day. Every increase in food, gas and household good prices, even increases of just a few cents, negatively impact families, especially low-income families and those on fixed incomes. For our nation’s poorest families, like mine growing up, rising prices are devastating — I know because I watched my parents struggle with inflation and putting food on the table when I was a kid,” Scott said, referencing his personal narrative in comments in May.
Scott, a former two-term Governor of Florida before getting elected to the Senate in 2018, expects people to come around to his way of thinking on these issues and for that mandate to become clear for Republicans in the midterms next year.
“It’s going to be a hell of a 2022,” Scott said during a call with reporters in June.
Follow Penny Starr on Twitter or send news tips to pstarr@breitbart.com.
The UAW has long since given up defending safe working conditions. On the contrary, the joint corporate/union safety committees which were initiated during the Chrysler bailout in the late 1970’s and subsequently spread throughout the industry became a model across all industries for transforming the union into a corporatist police force for company management on the shop floor.
Six months of the Biden administration—A balance sheet
Six months ago, Joseph Biden was inaugurated president of the United States, under conditions of unprecedented crisis of US capitalism and the entire social and political order.
His predecessor, Donald Trump, did not attend the ceremony, signaling his refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election. Only two weeks before, on January 6, Trump’s supporters had stormed the Capitol and temporarily halted the congressional certification of state electoral votes. The aim of the attempted coup was to stop the transfer of power and establish a personalist dictatorship. In the words of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, it was Trump’s “Reichstag moment.”
When Biden took office, 400,000 people were dead from the COVID-19 pandemic, while millions were unemployed. Just months earlier, every city, town, and village in America had seen protests in opposition to police violence.
Biden marked the six-month anniversary with brief remarks presenting American society in glowing terms. “For all those predictions of doom and gloom six months in, here’s where things stand,” he said. “Record growth, record job creation, workers getting hard-earned breaks.” He added, “Put simply: Our economy is on the move, and we have COVID-19 on the run.”
Summing up his prognosis, the US president proclaimed: “It turns out capitalism is alive and very well.” The truth is that the policies of the Biden administration have entirely failed to resolve the social crisis in America and they cannot, because they are based on the framework of American capitalism.
The pandemic, far from being “on the run,” is undergoing a new resurgence. Since Biden took office, an additional 225,000 people have died from the pandemic. All indications are that by the winter, with the new surge accompanying the spread of the Delta variant, the death toll under Biden will have exceeded that under Trump.
The policies of the Biden administration have been driven by the interests of Wall Street and the super-rich. This is why, despite occasional criticisms of Trump’s callous and anti-scientific response to the coronavirus pandemic, Biden has pursued the same policy of restoring corporate profit-making by forcing workers back to work and children back to school as quickly as possible, regardless of the dangers to their lives and health.
Trump’s response to the economic depression that accompanied the onset of the pandemic was to pour trillions into bolstering the banks, hedge funds and corporations, with bipartisan bills like the CARES Act. Biden pursues essentially the same policy, although with less support from the Republicans than the Democrats gave Trump. He boasts of success on the economic front, although seven million fewer workers have jobs today than before the pandemic began, and millions face wage cuts, poverty, eviction and foreclosure.
Only in foreign policy is there a significant shift from Trump to Biden, and this in tactics only, not strategy. Biden has placed more emphasis on the US utilization of NATO and the “Quad,” a de facto alliance with Japan, Australia and India. Significant sections of the military-intelligence apparatus backed Biden against Trump because they sought a more effective mobilization of US power against Russia and China.
And if Biden’s statement that “capitalism is alive and very well” were true, it begs the question: Why is there a mounting fascist threat to American democracy?
In the six months since Biden’s inauguration, the Republican Party has maintained its intransigent opposition to any serious investigation into the events of January 6. Half-hearted Democratic proposals, first for an “independent” bipartisan commission to investigate the attack, then for a bipartisan congressional investigation, have been blocked outright or endlessly delayed.
Meanwhile, evidence continues to emerge of the central role played by Trump and his allies in Congress in seeking to carry out a political coup d’état to overturn the results of the election and maintain himself in office. But neither Trump nor his accomplices have even been questioned, let alone tried, convicted and jailed.
Instead, Trump has renewed his agitation against the election, seeking to transform the Republican Party into an openly fascistic movement subordinated to his personal authority. And his supporters in the Republican Party are using their control of state legislatures to enact unprecedented and sweeping attacks on the right to vote.
Biden himself acknowledged something of the reality of the crisis of American capitalism in a speech last week in Philadelphia, when he declared “We are facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War.” But he offered no way forward, except to appeal to “my Republican friends in the Congress, states and cities and counties to stand up” against this assault—although they are the very ones carrying it out.
In an effort to prop up illusions in the Democratic Party, the representatives of its “left” wing, portray Biden’s policies in extravagant terms. Last week Senator Bernie Sanders claimed that Biden’s “reconciliation” bill on social spending amounted to “the most consequential piece of legislation for working families since the 1930s.” Or, like Bhaskar Sunkara of Jacobin, affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, they express disappointment in what has been achieved so far, but express the hope that “Biden has shown a willingness to think big,” and that additional pressure should be brought to bear on congressional Democrats.
For his part, Biden uses every possible occasion to make clear he has no intention of implementing any measures that challenge the interests of the financial oligarchy, declaring last weekend, “Communism is a failed system, universally failed system. I don’t see socialism as a very useful substitute.”
The truth is that the Biden administration is based on Wall Street and the military, mobilizing behind it sections of the upper middle class through the utilization of identity politics. Well aware of the explosive social conditions developing in America, moreover, the administration supports the union “organization” campaign at Amazon and the PRO Act, to make it easier to install unions at work locations where they otherwise would have difficulty convincing workers to pay dues for the privilege of having their wages and benefits cut.
It is telling that when workers engage in genuine anti-corporate struggles, like the strikes waged by autoworkers against Volvo Trucks in Dublin, Virginia, the supposedly “pro-labor” president falls completely silent. Biden is for the unions, not for the workers, because he correctly sees the unions as an instrument of the US ruling class in policing the working class.
Workers must draw the lessons of six months of the Biden administration. None of the problems confronting the working class, from the disastrous pandemic response to unparalleled levels of social inequality, to the danger of imperialist world war and fascist dictatorship, can be addressed without breaking the grip of the financial oligarchy over every aspect of society.
Lundstedt’s assertion of financial strength and Volvo’s continued billion-dollar earnings contradict the dishonest argument implicitly advanced by both the company and the UAW over the course of the past three months, namely, that there was simply not enough corporate money to meet workers’ demands and reverse the long-term decline of wages and benefits, and that workers would, in fact, have to accept even further sacrifices.
Volvo Group announces $1.1 billion second-quarter profits, after telling Virginia workers it could not afford wage and benefit improvements
On Tuesday, Sweden-based Volvo Group announced strong profits of over a billion dollars for the second quarter of the year. The earnings report comes shortly after the conclusion of a five-week-long strike at the conglomerate’s New River Valley heavy trucks plant in southwestern Virginia. Last week, the company, with crucial assistance provided by the United Auto Workers union, imposed a six-year contract that substantially raises workers’ health care costs and keeps wage increases for many below inflation, among other concessions.
While the aim of Volvo and the UAW has been to crush opposition through the shutdown of the strike and enforcement of the contract, workers have returned to the plant in an angry and defiant mood, telling the World Socialist Web Site that production has proceeded only haltingly since Monday.
In its earning statement, Volvo reported roughly $1.12 billion (9.7 billion Swedish kronor) in adjusted operating income, a key measure of corporate profit, for April through June. Combined with its first-quarter earnings, the company took in approximately $2.5 billion in profits for the first six months of the year.
The company also reported a second-quarter operating margin of 10.7 percent, near the upper end for the automotive manufacturing industry, albeit down from the first quarter’s high of 12.6 percent.
Although Volvo’s operating income for the quarter grew sizably compared to the amount for the same period last year, nearly tripling, it narrowly missed financial analysts’ projections of 9.84 billion Swedish kronor, sending Volvo’s share price down 2.9 percent for the day.
The response by analysts at some giant banking firms was nevertheless still favorable, with a research note by JP Morgan stating, “Volvo printed a good set of results, slightly below street estimates.”
Revenue also grew substantially, with net sales for the quarter of approximately $10.4 billion, a rise of 43 percent from the same period last year, when taking into account Volvo’s sale of Japan-based UD Trucks. But despite the growth in sales and profit compared to the second quarter of 2020, which was during the still-early stages of the pandemic and widespread economic disruption, the figures remained down in relation to two years ago, when Volvo reported roughly $13.9 billion in sales and $1.7 billion in adjusted operating income.
CEO Martin Lundstedt, in the company’s earnings statement, said that although Volvo faced “short-term challenges,” it is still “maneuvering from a position of strength.”
Lundstedt’s assertion of financial strength and Volvo’s continued billion-dollar earnings contradict the dishonest argument implicitly advanced by both the company and the UAW over the course of the past three months, namely, that there was simply not enough corporate money to meet workers’ demands and reverse the long-term decline of wages and benefits, and that workers would, in fact, have to accept even further sacrifices.
Commenting on Volvo’s profit report, a veteran Volvo worker said, “Goes to show you they have plenty of money and could have easily paid us what we were asking. They are looking out for the top investors and piss on the employees.”
In its earnings reports, the company largely sought to pretend as though the strike at New River Valley had never happened, referring only to “substantial production stoppages” due to semi-conductor shortages and other “disturbances in the supply chain.” The strike was referred to explicitly only once during a conference call with investors Tuesday, when an analyst for Goldman Sachs asked what profit margins would have been were it not for the walkout, to which Volvo’s chief financial officer, Jan Ytterberg, gave an evasive answer.
However, the ongoing semi-conductor shortage, which has plagued both the auto industry and other global manufacturers, presents a real problem for Volvo, and was the focus of much of the comments by Lundstedt.
“The global supply chain for semiconductors as well as for other components remains unstable and with low visibility,” Lundstedt said in a statement accompanying the earnings report. “There will be further disruptions and stoppages in both truck production and other parts of the group in the second half of the year.”
CFO Ytterberg told investors during the call that the ongoing shortage of semiconductors and other supply chain challenges means the company will “need to have continued focus on cost discipline and cash cautiousness going forward.” The attacks contained in the recently imposed contract are thus viewed by its executives as only the initial offensive in a broader campaign to restructure its operations, imposing the costs of supply chain shortages and the transition to electric vehicle technologies onto workers.
While such “discipline” is relentlessly imposed on workers, it does not extend to Volvo’s treatment of investors, whom it has handed nearly $6 billion in dividends and payouts this year. Nor does “cash cautiousness” preclude multimillion-dollar pay packages for the company’s executives, in their view, with CEO Martin Lundstedt receiving compensation of around $5 million in 2020.
Volvo has repeatedly sought to reassure investors that it will now attempt to dramatically ramp up production to fulfill its backlog of orders. Lundstedt said that “the short-term priorities in all parts of the organization” are to meet demand “as quick and precise as possible as order books are full” for the rest of the year.
As with other employers, Volvo is seeking to insulate its profits from the impact of the chip shortage by driving down labor costs, containing wages, shifting more health care expenses onto workers, and generally increasing the exploitation of its workforce. These were the primary objectives of each of the pro-company contracts pushed by the UAW, and which workers repeatedly rejected, the first two times by 90 percent.
After workers defeated a third, essentially identical, tentative agreement by nearly two thirds on July 9, the UAW announced that Volvo would move to impose its “last, best and final” proposal the following week. The union proceeded to facilitate this blatant corporate strikebreaking, forcing a revote on the deal one week ago, which the UAW dubiously claimed resulted in ratification by just 17 votes.
Summing up the experience of the struggle, the Volvo Workers Rank-and-File Committee, which led the struggle against Volvo and the UAW’s concessionary demands, wrote in a statement Sunday, “The fight continues. Opposition and anger are inevitably going to reignite as the full reality of this new contract comes to light, and as the company tries to enforce speedup to make up for lost production.”
Workers at Ford’s Rouge complex in Dearborn, Michigan denounce “horrible” conditions in the aftermath of the death of co-worker Khaled Nasser
Khaled Nasser, an electrician at a steel mill at Cleveland Cliff’s Dearborn Works near Detroit, was pronounced dead at the scene Friday morning when he slipped over the guardrail of a catwalk during regular maintenance on a Basic Oxygen Furnace and fell 50 feet to the concrete. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Nasser was 50 years old.
The Dearborn Works, part of Ford’s massive Rouge manufacturing complex, was spun off by the automaker in 1989. Cleveland Cliffs took over the facility after acquiring the previous operator, AK Steel, last year.
Nasser’s identity was initially withheld by the United Auto Workers union and the company, but later released over the weekend in response to the massive outpouring on Facebook of solidarity, sorrow and condolences that followed the announcement of his death. Both he and his family are well known and loved among co-workers and friends in the area. Of Yemeni background, Mr. Nasser’s death is being widely mourned in the large and tightly-knit Arab-American community in Dearborn.
A co-worker’s wife wrote, “This is so sad, my husband said he was a nice guy. He was an electrician at the BOF. Our condolences go out to his family, they are in our thoughts and prayers.”
“Condolences to all the family in Memory of our Brother Steelworker,” added another worker. A friend added, “He was such a good man who loved life, always smiling and always talked about his family. He will be missed.” Hundreds of people added to the stream of deeply felt condolences.
The World Socialist Web Site spoke with electricians who work in the complex about the conditions that led to Mr. Nasser’s death. One had worked in that area before Ford sold it to Severstall and then Cleveland Cliffs/AK Steel. “It’s just horrible,” he said. “Your sight distance is limited.”
A by-product of the BOF process, in which oxygen is forced into hot molten iron converting it into steel, is a dense and blinding smog, he said. “You can’t see the ground below the catwalks, and the railings are not high enough to prevent a fall.” There are no safety cables to tie off to. This is a standard requirement for high hazard areas, but has been ignored by the companies who operate the furnaces, the union and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspectors who inevitably visit the facility in the aftermath of a fatality.
Mr. Nasser was a member of UAW Local 600, which issued a perfunctory statement of condolences. But Rouge workers who spoke to the WSWS did not even know if the workers in the steel plant still had a union, because “they are never around and they don’t do anything.”
“Anytime someone dies on the job it’s sad,” added a colleague. “We are upset even if we don’t know the man personally. It was absolutely unnecessary.”
The Rouge blast furnaces began production in May 1920. Hot metal was used to cast engine blocks, cylinder heads, intake and exhaust manifolds for the Model T’s that were assembled at the company’s historic Highland Park plant.
By 1927 the Rouge complex had grown into the largest factory in the world at the time. It included 93 structures, 90 miles of railroad tracks, 27 miles of conveyors, 53,000 machine tools and 75,000 employees. The feverish industrial expansion which had begun at the outset of World War I would continue until the end of World War II, when the complex employed more than 100,000 workers.
Today, after decades of layoffs, Rouge is a shadow of the massive industrial complex it once was. The workforce now consists of only 6,000 workers.
The pro-corporate website www.fundinguniverse.com describes the process by which the company introduced pay cuts, fob cuts and the erosion of safety and other concessions at the steel plant:
“In the summer of 1982, a consortium of Japanese companies under the leadership of Nippon Kokan (NKK) began negotiations with Ford for the purchase of Rouge Steel ... Talks between Ford and NKK collapsed in 1983, however, because the Japanese wanted to reduce Rouge’s labor costs. Workers at Rouge Steel—organized under the UAW rather than the U.S. Steelworkers because of Rouge Steel’s origin within Ford Motor—maintained an hourly rate of pay almost $5 higher than the U.S. industry standard.
“Following the failed talks with NKK, officials at UAW Local 600 began to negotiate with Ford over proposed wage reductions at Rouge Steel,” the pro-company analysts continue. “Philip Caldwell [then-president of Ford] had announced that Ford Motor was suffering its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression: in the four years preceding 1983, Ford had lost $2.1 billion and had eliminated 67,000 workers from a workforce of 158,000. Clearly, operations at the Rouge had to change, and meetings between Caldwell and UAW Local 600 president Michael Rinaldi in the summer of 1983 resulted in wage and benefit reductions for Rouge Steel workers.”
The UAW has long since given up defending safe working conditions. On the contrary, the joint corporate/union safety committees which were initiated during the Chrysler bailout in the late 1970’s and subsequently spread throughout the industry became a model across all industries for transforming the union into a corporatist police force for company management on the shop floor.
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