Health Care | Social Security | Workplace Safety | Future of Coal | Right to Organize

Health Care

Barack Obama will pay for his health care proposal by repealing the Bush tax cuts for those who make over $200,000 a year – not taking it out of your pocket. He will make sure that employers who do not pay their fair share for health care benefits start doing so. His plan will mean that every person who is uninsured now will be covered by insurance.

John McCain will tax the health care benefits active and retired UMWA members receive by making the value of those benefits part of taxable income. Although McCain would give people a small income tax credit for health care, his proposal would increase your Social Security and Medicare taxes as well as state income taxes. And McCain’s plan still would not lead to full health care coverage for all.

Social Security

Obama is against privatizing Social Security, and he does not believe we need to raise the retirement age. Obama supports raising the earnings cap on Social Security payroll taxes so that the rich pay more of their fair share.

McCain agrees with George Bush that we should privatize Social Security, putting retirees’ benefits at risk in the stock market. He has voted twice to replace Social Security’s guaranteed benefits with income from risk-based private investments.

Workplace Safety

Barack Obama has paid attention to the series of disasters that have struck the coalfields in the last several years. He’s from a coal state, and understands the dangers coal miners and other workers face daily on the job. He has committed to appointing people at MSHA and OSHA who will put workers’ safety first, not helping corporations fatten their bottom lines at the expense of safety and health.

John McCain has never worked a real job a day in his life, and he has no knowledge about issues like workplace safety. He would have to rely on the advice of his corporate buddies when deciding who to choose to be in charge at MSHA and OSHA. We’ve already had eight years of that, with disastrous results.

The future of coal

Barack Obama is from a coal state. He understands the impact a strong coal industry has on our communities. Obama not only supports the concept of clean coal, he will also dedicate funding to speed the research and development needed to get that technology put in place as soon as possible.

John McCain talks a good game about clean coal, but the fact is that he introduced legislation in Congress that would cut 30 percent of the coal jobs in Appalachia and the Illinois basin. He also supports climate change legislation that would nearly eliminate coal as part of our nation’s energy mix within 40 years, whether we can develop clean coal technology or not.

The right to organize unions

Obama supports the Employee Free Choice Act, and has repeatedly said that he will support and encourage the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively. Obama is a co-sponsor of legislation that will overturn decisions by the Bush National Labor Relations Board that have stripped hundreds of thousands of working Americans of their right to organize.

McCain voted to kill the Employee Free Choice Act–which would restore the right to organize unions–in the Senate. He also supported a Republican bill that would have created a national Right to Work law, which would have essentially gutted unions across America. McCain also voted for legislation that would have allowed scabs to permanently replace workers who were forced out on strike.