Category — Economic Justice

If you are a corporate executive hoping to protect your $37 million annual compensation, Peter Roskam’s got your back. If you are an Illinois worker, laid off by that executive when he off-shored your job to India or Costa Rica, and your unemployment benefits are about to run out, Peter Roskam says “tough luck”.

Peter Roskam demonstrated again yesterday his utter lack of compassion and concern for working people in his district by voting against H.R. 5749, the Emergency Extended Unemployment Compensation Act of 2008. Democrats in Congress had proposed extending unemployment benefits, on an emergency basis, by an additional 3 months for unemployed workers in all states and by 6 months for workers in states with unemployment rates higher than 6%. The Democrats were responding to the report by the Labor Department that the jobless rate had increased by 0.5% to 5.5% in May, the largest increase in 23 years. May was the fifth consecutive month of job loss.

The measure failed to pass in the house, lacking only 3 votes, one of them Roskam’s. House Democrats will continue to pursue an extension of benefits.

Peter Roskam has demonstrated time and time again by his votes his preoccupation with serving only the interests of large corporations and economic elites. Then, after after he votes to obstruct Democratic efforts to help the middle class and the underprivileged in his district, he comes home and whines and complains about the extreme partisanship in Congress that is preventing him from helping his constituents. In reality though it is Roskam who is playing partisan politics and catering to special interests.

6th District residents who have lost their jobs or fear losing them should contact Peter Roskam and demand that he put partisan politics aside and stop obstructing Democratic efforts to aid unemployed workers. Roskam can be reached at his Washington office at (202) 225-4561 or in Bloomingdale at (630) 893-9670.

The House voted overwhelmingly last week (5/14) in favor of the long-awaited Farm Bill which included substantial improvements in funding of food programs to help the poor.

Among the food program provisions are improvements to the food stamp program:

• Increasing the $10 minimum monthly benefit (unchanged for 30 years) to $14, and indexing it for inflation
• Increasing and indexing the standard deduction for households of three or fewer
• Removing the cap on the deductible amount of child care expenses in eligible households
• Indexing the food stamp household asset limits ($2,000; $3,000 for households with elderly or
disabled), which have gone unchanged for decades
• Allowing more families to save without penalty by excluding education savings and tax-preferred
retirement accounts from food stamp asset limits.

In my opinion any President or Congressman who would oppose these modest provisions for the poor is without heart and without conscience. Peter Roskam voted against them. President Bush then vetoed them today. Then Roskam voted against them again.

There has been a bit of a snafu regarding the veto and the veto override today. It seems that a clerical error resulted in an incomplete copy of the bill being sent to the President so it seems the exercise will have to be repeated. That gives Roskam a chance to vote again and redeem himself. Please call him and ask him to quit being a creep and vote to help our brothers and sisters who are hungry. Roskam can be reached at his Washington office at (202) 225-4561 or in Bloomingdale at (630) 893-9670.

Then go and read Ellen of the Tenth’s post on the farm bill vote. She “scooped” my usual sources and I first learned about the vote last week from her blog. Ellen shares some insight on what its like to depend on food stamps.

John H. Armstrong, a Christian author, editor and adjunct professor at Wheaton College writes a blog that I happen upon occasionally when it touches on matters related to the district. John is polite and thoughtful in his writing (accusations that could never be leveled successfully against me) and I enjoy the blog when I visit though I do not generally share his viewpoints.

Earlier this month John wrote a piece about enjoying Peter Roskam’s hospitality in Washington and being helped out by Roskam’s staff when his American Airlines flight was cancelled. Five words from that piece have been nagging at me ever since: “Congressman Roskam is a serious Christian.”

Reading those words I felt a visceral reaction and compelled to respond but at the same felt myself to have no real standing to do so. I no longer profess to be a Christian. I was raised in a Protestant community and ministered for a time within the Catholic church. I became disenchanted with the church and found that, once I removed myself from it’s influence , many of its claims of certainty to be pretty dubious.

I do retain a deep appreciation for the Judeo-Christian scriptures and the teachings of Jesus and it is based on my understanding and appreciation of that scripture that I have to say that I just don’t get it. I don’t understand how Evangelicals who ally themselves with the political right can reconcile the policies of these leaders that they so revere because they are “serious Christians’ when those policies are so devastating to the poor and the powerless with whom Jesus cast his lot:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has annointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

and to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

-Luke 4:18-19

How can anyone listen to the Jesus of the Gospels and profess to be his follower and then turn a blind eye to the kind of carnage being inflicted on trade unionists and indigenous people in Colombia in order to promote U.S. Corporate interests?

How can one hear his words and turn around to insist that workers should not be required to receive subsistence level wages for full time work while no restrictions may be applied to the huge compensation paid to corporate executives for success that is based on the labor of those workers?

How can listen to the teaching regarding hospitality to strangers and turn around and lay grievous burdens on the backs of migrant workers who come among us and provide us with needed services while providing themselves and their families with the means to a better life?

Pardon me John, and Peter. I don’t pretend to know what is in men’s hearts. But as I observe the self-congratulatory, triumphalistic, pharistical belief system that is accepted as “serious Christianity” by many on the right, I see little in it that relates too or even acknowledges the teachings and commandments of Jesus. I see this right wing public Christianity as having two main functions:

• -Relieving those with wealth and power from the actual necessity of observing the Gospel commandments

-Distracting those who might otherwise act on those commandments with an obsessive focus on sexual morality and other peripheral matters

The end of these being to maintain the status quo. To permit an unjust state of affairs where power and wealth is concentrated in the hands of a very few while countless millions suffer from poverty and hunger and illiteracy and disease and violence.

Shouldn’t “serious Christianity” mean getting serious about tackling economic injustice and ending violence against and oppression of the poor?

This weekend finds our Congressman, Peter Roskam, on a junket to Colombia. There he has been meeting with the Colombian President, Alvaro Uribe, in an effort to smooth the way for a free-trade agreement with Columbia by downplaying the persisent violence against trade unionists, human rights activists and journalists by rightwing para-military groups with connections to both the Uribe administration and the Colombian military. 40 union leaders were killed in the past year alone. And there has been violence directed also at poor people who pose inconveniences to projects by large multunational corporations, a trend that may increase if Roskam and his allies are able to push a free-trade agreement through.

Like his predecessor, Henry Hyde, Roskam has little problem with this kind of terrorism if it supports the rightwing government’s hold on power and thus U.S. corporate interests.

Roskam’s comment from Columbia on the situation there:

“This is a market of 44 million people,” he said. “There are great export opportunities. This is a country that buys a tremendous amount of agricultural equipment.” The best argument for approving the agreement, he said, is geo-political: “We have a lot at stake to see this place flourish and do well.”

So much for human rights.

Peter Roskam continued his self-declared war on “wasteful spending” and “misguided policies” by voting yet again today against the expansion of SCHIP (HR 3963, Children’s Health Insurance Program Extension and Improvement).

The vote was to override the President’s veto of the bill in December. Today’s vote failed to achieve enough votes thanks to the intransigence of Roskam and many of his Roadblock Republican colleagues. Yes, the same Roskam who has enjoyed complaining about excessive partisanship while voting a straight party line in an attempt to obstruct progress by the Democrats in Congress.

This bill, if enacted, would provide health care to 10 million currently uninusred children. Uninsured children are not among Roskam’s legislative priorities. In Roskam’s view, the money needs to be saved to provide aid programs for big business and big tax cuts for his wealthy neighbors.

Peter Roskam wants you to believe that he is your voice in Congress, that he represents your interests as a resident of the 6th Congressional District. That is not, generally speaking, true. If you are very wealthy, live in Glen Ellyn or Wheaton and have “CEO” after your name, perhaps. But not if you are a working person living in Bensenville or in Wood Dale or in West Chicago.

Peter Roskam was elected by voters in the 6th, but he is not representing them. Instead he is serving the interests of large corporations and he has worked hand in hand with George Bush during his first year in office to see that they are well-served indeed.

How closely Roskam is aligned with corporate interests can be seen by looking at the evaluation of his voting record by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). According to that NAM’s evaluation, Roskam has voted NAM’s position 100 percent of the time during his first year in office. He has done so even when NAM’s position conflicted with the interests of his constituents as it frequently does. Roskam has been a perfect rubber stamp for NAM.

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