On November 4th, women spoke! Women took the polls and voted for Barack Obama in strong numbers! Nationally, 56% of voting women elected Obama while here in Georgia, 54% of voting women did. Great credit should be given to African American and Latina women, whose HUGE voting percentages, helped him win. 96% of African American and 68% of Latina women voted for Obama-Biden.
How many of you studied the agendas of both candidates before voting? Now that we have spoken, hopefully President-Elect Obama and Vice-President Elect Joe Biden will listen. We can’t forget that we need help from Congress to pass their agenda. Let’s contact our local and national representatives to tell them that our vote counts and we want to see changes like these! Call on 9to5 Atlanta if you need any help in contacting your legislator.
Obama and Biden have outlined an agenda of issues for working women and families that could bring big changes and relief to many working moms. Here are a few items they would like to do, taken directly from their new website, http://www.change.gov/. Read through them and let us know which items would be most helpful to you, as working mother!
· Provide a Making Work Pay Tax Cut for America's Working Families: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will restore fairness to the tax code and provide 150 million workers the tax relief they need. Obama and Biden will create a new "Making Work Pay" tax credit of up to $500 per person, or $1,000 per working family. The Making Work Pay tax credit will completely eliminate income taxes for 10 million Americans.
· Raise the minimum wage: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will raise the minimum wage, index it to inflation, and increase the Earned Income Tax Credit to make sure that full-time workers earn a living wage that allows them to raise their families and pay for basic needs.
· Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit: As president, Obama will reward work by increasing the number of working parents eligible for EITC benefits, increasing the benefit available to parents who support their children through child support payments, and reducing the EITC marriage penalty which hurts low-income families. Under the Obama-Biden plan, full-time workers making minimum wage will get an EITC benefit up to $555, more than three times greater than the $175 benefit they get today. If the workers are responsibly supporting their children on child support, the Obama-Biden plan will give those workers a benefit of $1,110.
· Extend Paid Sick Days to All Workers: Half of all private sector workers have no paid sick days and the problem is worse for employees in low-paying jobs, where less than a quarter receive any paid sick days. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will require that employers provide seven paid sick days per year.
· Expand the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA): The FMLA covers only certain people who work for employers with 50 or more employees. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will expand the FMLA to cover businesses with 25 or more employees, and to cover more purposes including allowing: leave for workers who provide elder care; 24 hours of leave each year for parents to participate in their children's academic activities at school; leave for workers who care for individuals who reside in their home for 6 months or more; and leave for employees to address domestic violence and sexual assault.
· Expand High-Quality Afterschool Opportunities: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will double funding for the main federal support for afterschool programs, the 21st Century Learning Centers program, to serve one million more children. They will include measures to maximize performance and effectiveness across grantees nationwide.
· Expand the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit: The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit provides too little relief to families that struggle to afford child care expenses. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will reform the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit by making it refundable and allowing low-income families to receive up to a 50 percent credit for their child care expenses.
· Expand Flexible Work Arrangements: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will address this concern by creating a program to inform businesses about the benefits of flexible work schedules for productivity and establishing positive workplaces; helping businesses create flexible work opportunities; and increasing federal incentives for telecommuting. Obama and Biden will also make the federal government a model employer in terms of adopting flexible work schedules and permitting employees to petition to request flexible arrangements.
4 comments:
It would be most helpful for me to have the health insurance issue addressed. I am in a gay relationship and my parter is a teacher. She is pregnant and having our first child this April. The plan is for me to be a stay at home mom, but the cost of insurance is unreasonable and I am unable to be covered under her insurance plan. Of course this would all be fixed if we were given the right to marry, but until then, I need a solution to the health care bind I find myself in.
Here in the Golden State of California we are in the midst of an unprecedented budget situation. We cannot call it a "crisis" because the California budget process as currently structured, is always in crisis.
In California you can change the state constitution to effectively discriminate against a whole class of citizens, but a 2/3 vote is required to pass a state budget. Our so-called Republican Governor cannot get a single legislator of his own party to agree to his budget.
Bottom line is California s going to need some help from Washington in the new administration. Good progressive national healthcare reform would be a big help. It will be good for labor, good for business, good for California, and good for America.
Healthcare reform! This is an absolute necessary first step in helping all families out of financial hardship and securing the health of our women and children. The appointment of Tom Daschle as Secretary of Health and Human Services has been highly praised and points to his commitment to this issue.
I also applaud Obama's interest in early childhood education. Not only is it a financial hardship for many women and families, but it is crucial to the development of our children. Paying for my own son's childcare is as much as a monthly mortgage payment.
As the father of a preschooler and husband of a grad student, I am appalled and frightened by both the health care system and public educational system. Glad to read about the positive changes hopefully on the horizon.
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