For most working families, the choices the nation needs to make are clear cut: A strong economy for working families instead of more massive tax cuts for millionaires. Well-paying, safe jobs in the United States rather than trade agreements that ship jobs overseas. Strong retirement security and Social Security in place of Wall Street-based privatized Social Security.

Yet, the choices made by the Bush administration in its first 28 months in office have not only ignored working family priorities, they have undermined nearly every fundamental principle key to the nation’s fabric: education, affordable and available health care and prescription drugs, workers’ rights, family-supportive wages, strong overtime protections and workplace safety.

Throughout May and June, working families across the nation will be taking part in AFL-CIO central labor council meetings, with union activists hosting special forums on “America’s Choices” and the impact Bush’s choices have had on working families.

The forums will examine the Bush record on job loss, his tax cut for the rich, the states’ fiscal crises, infrastructure needs and other critical issues such as workers’ freedom to join unions, protecting overtime pay, health care, retirement security and education. They also will offer sensible policy alternatives and strategies to fight the assault on working families.

Some of the economic choices Bush has made include his 2001 $1.35 trillion tax cut for the rich and expansion of job-killing, free trade policies. The impact of those choices is stark: 2.6 million private-sector jobs lost since 2001, a record level of personal bankruptcies and the loss of health insurance for 1.4 million people since 2001.

Now, Bush is seeking even more tax cuts, as much as $550 billion, including elimination of taxes on corporate dividends, reduction of capital gains taxes and big tax cuts for the wealthy.

Under the tax cut bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, the nation’s richest .1 percent of the population would pocket approximately $139 billion in tax cuts through 2013, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported. “This is essentially the same amount of tax cuts that would be received by the entire bottom 89 percent of households combined,” according to the center.

Under the Senate bill, the wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers would win more than $41,000 over the next four years, while the vast majority of taxpayers, those in the bottom 60 percent, would see about $100 a year, according to the Citizens for Tax Justice. Congress will vote on a reconciled version of the two bills before Memorial Day.

Bush also is backing new laws that would gut workers’ overtime pay, privatize federal jobs and eliminate collective bargaining rights for many federal workers.

“You can just see the strain the poor economy is putting on working families. Bankruptcies in this area are higher than ever—even to people who have had perfect credit ratings,” says V. Daniel Radford, executive secretary-treasurer of the Cincinnati AFL-CIO Labor Council, which held an America’s Choices forum May 7.

Radford says the America’s Choices forum presents a good opportunity not just to educate union and community members about the economy and Bush’s choices, “but it’ll make it more likely they’ll take that information back into the plant and their neighborhoods so people can decide to fight back to make sure that right choices are made for working families.”     

More

Download the America’s Choices presentation.

Access talking points, a sample outreach flier and more.

See when America's Choices forums are happening in your area.

Get the facts on the nation’s economic crisis.

Find out the latest Bush plan on replacing secure pensions with cash-balance retirement.

Learn more about proposed trade policies that could devastate U.S. jobs.

See how "Leave No Child Behind" means critical cuts in education programs.