A little over a week ago, Congressmen Harold Ford Jr., Lincoln Davis, and Bart Gordon and 12 other Democrats voted with Republicans to pass another $70 billion in tax cuts, almost all of which would benefit corporations and the wealthy. The Washington Post sums up the impact: "Budgetary dishonesty, distributional unfairness, fiscal irresponsibility -- by now the words are so familiar, it can be hard to appreciate how damaging this fiscal course will be." I've had enough of Gordon, Davis and Harold Ford, Jr. voting with Republicans. The same goes for Jim Cooper and John Tanner.
What about you? Are you too afraid to speak up? What happened to the Democratic voter's voice? Where is labor's voice here in Tennessee? Are we like the Illinois labor organization that just endorsed the re-election bid of Melissa Bean (D) Illinois?
Bean was one of the infamous CAFTA 15, those 15 Democrats along with Tennessee's Jim Cooper and John Tanner who voted with the Republicans for CAFTA, a damaging trade agreement that hurts labor, the working class of all participant nations and is a blatant giveaway to corporations.
CAFTA passed by only two votes! Our Democratic representatives, Cooper and Tanner, represent the two deciding votes. How sad is that? Has no one asked them to defend these votes? Labor docilely stands by and says we don't like it but we have to support them, we have no other choice.
Where are the union protestors? Lee Schillinger, president of the Northeastern Illinois Federation of Labor, said Bean's record supported labor consistently enough to earn the organization's endorsement for the upcoming November election against GOP nominee David McSweeney. "We felt it was much more important to support somebody with a 73 percent voting record on labor issues rather than zero percent, which is what you'd get with (David) McSweeney," he said, speaking of Bean's Republican opponent. "We don't want the ultra-conservative wolf to get back in." Is this the position we think we are in? That we have to accept disloyalty and infidelity to Democratic voters, a thumb of the nose to American workers by our representatives because we have no other choice? By voting this way these defectors are serving special interests who they apparently are beholden to. The only special interests they should be serving are the common interests of the voters who elect them. Just because they call themselves Democrats and just because they vote with the Democratic majority on some issues doesn't mean these representatives don't have to answer to their constituents.
There is hope. Although the AFL-CIO almost always backs Democratic incumbents, it will not support freshman Rep. Melissa Bean (D-Ill.) because of her vote for CAFTA this summer and they have vowed to work against the other fourteen Democrats as well. AFL-CIO's national President John Sweeney said he was "really angry" at Bean and the other Democratic defectors, but I haven't heard of any effort by labor here in Tennessee to hold our representatives responsible.
Don't be silent. Let Ford, Cooper, Gordon, Davis and Tanner know what you think about their Republican voting record - and if there is anyone out there who would like to challenge them in an election, please step forward.
Enough is Enough!
