Category — Peter Roskam's Corporate Agenda

If you are a resident of the 6th Congressional District and you work for a wage, it makes absolutely no sense for you to vote to re-elect Representative Peter Roskam this fall. Voting for Roskam means voting for unfair wages, against workplace safety, and in favor of relocating your job overseas.

Peter Roskam is not just neglecting the needs of Illinois workers. Rather Roskam is using his office to actively work against their best interests. He consistently backs the interests of capital over labor and indeed Roskam has voted the position of the National Association of Manufacturers 100 percent of the time during his first term.

Here’s the latest example.

Yesterday (4/30/2008), the House voted to pass the Worker Protection Against Combustible Dust Explosion and Fire Act, H.R. 5522 by a vote of 247-165. The bill was prompted by the tragic explosion that occurred at the Imperial sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, Georgia in February. The blast, which killed 13 workers and severely injured many others, was caused by the ignition of sugar dust which had built up to hazardous levels.

But back in 2006, following a series of other similar explosions, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board had identified 281 previous incidents involving combustible dust that had killed 119 workers and injured over 700 since 19080. The board had urged the Occupational Health and Safety Administration to issue standards to protect workers from these hazards, but OSHA, which under the Bush administration that is so unfriendly to regulation of business, has failed to do so. If OSHA had acted, it is possible that the tragedy at Port Wentworth could have been avoided. This has been a pattern with OSHA under Bush.

The bill that was brought to a vote yesterday was necessary to force  OSHA to issue standards because the Bush administration has not compelled it to do so.  The bill still needs to be approved by the Senate where its future is uncertain.

The video that follows is Rep. George Miller speaking on the House floor in favor of the bill. He goes into quite a bit more detail on the history leading up to the legislation.

So the bill passed, but our own Representative Roskam voted against it. Roskam, as we have seen before with the Popcorn Worker’s standard shares Bush’s animosity toward workplace regulation. Bush and Roskam look with fondness back to the era before effective labor unions and progressive legislation when big business could do what ever it pleased and the workers be damned.

If you are an Illinois worker, don’t look to Roskam to stand up for your right to a safe workplace…or a fair day’s wage…or the right to organize. Roskam is not on your side.

The United States Chamber of Commerce recently honored Peter Roskam for proving in his first term to be “an effective ally to the business community”.

Sounds great until you realize what exactly “being an effective ally to the business community” means.

Put simply, it means consistently voting against the interests of the majority of citizens in your district and giving big business exactly what it demands.

It means means Roskam voting against reducing the dependence on fossil fuels that is threatening our national security and destroying our environment by requiring minimum standards for the percentage of electricity generated using renewable sources of energy.

It means Roskam voting against tax incentives for energy conservation and development of clean, renewable energy sources because they are funded by the repeal of tax breaks to big oil companies now enjoying huge profits at our expense every time we fill up our tanks.

It means Roskam voting against the Children’s Health and Medicare Protection Act of 2007 which would have insured that Illinois’ uninsured children receive the kind of health care that Roskam’s own kids get at taxpayer expense.

It means Roskam standing up for the interests of big drug companies rather than allowing the Medicare program to negotiate for better prices on prescription drugs.

It means Roskam voting against protection of his constituents right to equal pay for equal work. And their right to organize.

And it means Roskam voting against protecting middle class taxpayers from the Alternative Minimum Tax.

So congratulations on your big award, Peter, and thanks for nothing. Its time we had a new Representative in Congress who works for us and not for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Peter Roskam will be speaking at the 2008 Big I Legislative Conference and Convention tomorrow. That’s “I” as in Insurance. Big I is a nickname for the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America, an insurance industry lobby group. They are having their convention in Washington and Roskam will be speaking at a luncheon meeting for young agents and for the InsurPac state chairpersons. InsurPac is IIAB’s political action committee. They gave $5000 in donations to Roskam’s campaign in 2007.On its website, InsurPac describes the reason behind it’s generosity:

“While contributions do not buy solutions to legislative debates, they do allow members of IIABA’s government affairs team significant face-time with elected officials. Through InsurPac, IIABA is allowed the opportunity to educate these members and develop working relationships with them. Lobbying and a well-funded PAC go hand-in-hand.”

One is left to wonder how much “significant face-time” would cost for the residents of Roskam’s district here in Illinois.. I imagine that at these rates, it would be out of reach for most of us.

In all seriousness, there is nothing nefarious about this particular contribution or this particular speech. My impression of Roskam is that he operates with deliberate transparency when it comes to campaign financial matters. He is not a crook.

But I do think that residents of the 6th should consider that Roskam is a member of the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees the banking, financial services, and insurance industries. As such, Roskam is courted by groups like IIAB and receives lots of PAC contributions from this sector. In fact, this is the largest sector for Roskam by far. Roskam has received over $236,000 in individual and PAC contributions from the Finance/Insurance/Real Estate sector during the current cycle. That’s a lot of face time.

Roskam has time and time again shown himself to vote in favor of corporate interests over those of the residents of his district. One wonders whether it’s the result of all this lobbying activity. One wonders who’s voice he really is on Capitol Hill. This is particularly troubling when one considers the upcoming issues that Congress is going to be dealing with relative to the mortgage crisis and the reevaluation of financial services regulation. Will Roskam be speaking up for us in those deliberations?

Perhaps in the interests of continued transparency, Roskam will post the text of his speech tomorrow on his website. He says he’s our voice in Congress. I for one would like to hear what that voice is telling the insurance industry.

Trying to understand last weekend’s crisis with Bear Stearns is the kind of thing that just makes my eyes glaze over. I am virtually illiterate when it comes to such matters. But the whole thing did ring a bell to me, being old enough to remember the savings and loan crisis of of the Reagan years. And the plot sounds kind of the same to me: Republican administration unfriendly to regulation of financial services. Excessive greed and lack of adequate regulation spurs previously staid financial industry types to engage in reckless practices resulting in catastrophic collapse and need for government (IE: taxpayer) bailout. Am I wrong?

The Bear Stearns situation had to be pretty scary to get the Feds to intervene so quickly and dramatically over the weekend. It leaves laymen like me feeling a bit jittery wondering when the next shoe is going to drop. It doesn’t help that commentators are beginning to talk about recession as if it has actually arrived and some daring even to bring up the D word.

In light of the Bear Stearns catastrophe, Representative Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, proposed making significant changes in financial services regulation including the establishment of a “Risk Regulator” (possibly the Federal Reserve) with power to assess and intervene regarding risk across financial markets of all kinds. Its regulatory powers would not be limited only to certain types of corporations such as commercial banks vs investment banks vs other kinds of lenders, as is now the case with regulatory agencies, and would be more responsive to risk associated with newly evolving forms of financial services and funds. Frank also suggested new government interventions to ease the foreclosure crisis.

Enter Peter Roskam. Our Congressman is a member of the very same Financial Services Committee, whose job it is to oversee all components of the nation’s housing and financial services sectors including banking, insurance, real estate, public and assisted housing, and securities. He serves on the subcommittees responsible for capital markets and for oversight and investigations. Seems like Roskam is going to be close to the center of this discussion on regulation.

Peter Roskam says that he wants to be our “voice in Congress”. It will be interesting to observe just whose voice he really is during the upcoming deliberation. Is he going to vote in the interests of us ordinary folks who reside in his district? Or is he going to work on behalf of those who are bankrolling his re-election bid, folks like:

• American Bankers Association PAC
• Bank of America PAC
• Capital One Financial Political Fund
• Chicago Board of Options Exchange PAC
• Citigroup, Inc. PAC
• Consumer Bankers Association PAC
• Federal National Mortgage Association PAC
• Financial Services Institute PAC
• Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. PAC
• J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. PAC
• LaSalle Bank Corporation Federal PAC
• Morgan Stanley PAC
• Mortgage Bankers Association PAC
• National Venture Capital Association PAC
• New Century Financial Corporation PAC
• New York Stock Exchange, Inc. PAC
• Securities Industry and Financial Markets PAC
• Washington Mutual PAC 

I don’t know the answer, but stay tuned.

Peter Roskam is Mr. Law and Order when it comes to migrant workers who come to our country seeking a better life for themselves and their children. But Roskam draws the line at telling the big corporations he represents in Congress, or even the President that they need to obey the law. In fact, Roskam wants to give the President and the telephone companies a pass. This is a pattern with Roskam: giving free rein to Bush’s lawless administration while promoting the interests of corporations over those of ordinary citizens.

George W. Bush broke the law by directing the National Security Agency to start eavesdropping on American citizens without warrants by listening in on their phone calls and reading their email messages He did this despite having the legal means at his disposal to obtain warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Bush solicited the cooperation of some large telephone companies in his criminal enterprise and they cheerfully complied.

Once Bush’s illegal program was uncovered, he started pressuring Congress to cover his own ass and the collective asses of the telephone companies by granting the companies retroactive immunity from prosecution for their complicity.

Now the question of immunity is coming to a head. Under consideration now are two competing revisions of a revision of the FISA legislation: the Senate version provides retroactive immunity to the telephone companies, the House version does not.

Bush and Roskam and other Republicans are trying to intimidate legislators and scare citizens into accepting the Senate’s bill, even presenting television commercials with a ticking time bomb implying that the bill is the only thing than can prevent another terrorist attack. Citizens should not let themselves be cowed by the likes of Bush and Roskam. It is possible to be secure and at the same time require that the President and the corporations obey the laws and observe due process when their is a real need for surveillance.

Residents of the 6th Congressional District can help Democrats in Congress ensure that the final bill supports the rule of law and protects citizens from warrantless surveillance by doing 3 simple things:

• Call the White House at (202) 456-1111 and tell President Bush to quit trying to scare the public into accepting a bad FISA bill including immunity
• Call Peter Roskam at (202) 225-4561 and tell him the same thing. Remind him of his own words: “we are a nation of laws.”
• Visit the Fix FISA website of Rep John Conyers and Senator Patrick Leahy and use their simple tool to help you send a letter to the editor of a local newspaper

The need is urgent Please do these 3 things today and let men like George Bush and Peter Roskam know that laws are for everyone.