Rebuild America Act Introduced

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, recently introduced the Rebuild America Act, which offers a path toward a brighter economic future for most Americans. While addressing many of the biggest problems confronting our nation's economy, the bill would provide good jobs for working families, stabilize state and local governments, and update current labor laws.

In enacted, this bill would increase employment by making big investments in rebuilding our roads, bridges, and transportation systems. It would help develop renewable energy, promote manufacturing in the United States, and provide assistance to state and local governments to retain police, firefighters, and teachers. It would also invest in school modernization and help states improve their teachers' effectiveness.

Kim Bobo, the executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice, who will be coming to Wichita on May 16-17, said, "The bill offers an excellent vision for investing in jobs, raising core standards and paying for investments in fair and just ways. This is exactly the kind of bill that creates a vision for the future and stimulates conversations about how government can serve the common good."

By raising the minimum wage to $9.80 an hour over a period of three years and then indexing it to inflation, the bill would directly help workers. The bill would also adjust the minimum wage for tipped workers (currently set at $2.13 an hour). Both provisions are long overdue.

The bill would strengthen overtime laws, which have eroded over time, to insure that workers would be paid time and a half for every hour over 40 hours a week. It further would protect the right to join a union and bargain collectively. By taxing all earned income and changing the formula for cost-of-living adjustments, it would strengthen Social Security Insurance. It also would provide for paid sick days to care for one's self and one's family.

The Rebuild America Act would add millions of jobs to the economy and raise the typical family's income and enhance its retirement security. It would be paid for by making changes in the tax code that would shift the burden of hundreds of billions of dollars of federal taxation from working and middle class families to those who can afford to pay.

                                                           --source:Interfaith Domestic Human Needs Network