By Mark Gruenberg

PAI Staff Writer

WASHINGTON (PAI)--Union leaders, including AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney and leaders of the Change to Win unions, blasted the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street that lawmakers struggled to pass the week of Sept. 29.  The unionists said it would not help homeowners losing their mortgages, or workers.  They said a separate stimulus plan would do that--a stimulus plan the Senate rejected on Sept. 27.

            Their statements came as House leaders, responding to pressure from the GOP Bush government and to a compromise the leaders worked out with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, struggled a second time to round up votes for the plan, after the House defeated it 228-205 on Sept. 29.   Paulson warned that without it, Wall Street and credit would crash and take the economy--including jobs, homes and pensions--with it.

            The Senate revived the bailout plan later in the week, attaching tax provisions such as curbing the sweep of the alternative minimum tax and alternative energy tax credits.  It passed 75-24, with all three senators involved in the presidential contest--Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.)--temporarily leaving the campaign trail to vote for it.  The House approved the revised plan 263-171 on the afternoon of Oct. 3.

            But Sweeney, Laborers President Terry O’Sullivan, Teamsters President James Hoffa, Service Employees President Andrew Stern and Change to Win Chair Anna Burger were skeptical.  The Laborers urged their members to call Congress and demand defeat of a “no-strings-attached” bailout.

            “The bailout bill gives too little relief to homeowners and too much power to an administration that has demonstrated neither competence nor foresight,” Sweeney said of the GOP Bush regime. 

            “It will require vigilant monitoring.  And without a robust economic recovery package and concrete help for homeowners, the bailout will not work.  It will not address the real underlying weaknesses in the U.S. economy, and it will not earn the confidence of working men and women.  It should not be enacted unless Congress moves forward with a meaningful economic stimulus package now,” he declared.

            But Senate Republicans didn’t listen.  They mustered enough votes on Sept. 27 to block the second stimulus package.  Democrats needed 60 votes to shut off a threatened GOP filibuster against it, and got 52.  The vote was 52-42, and Sweeney said Bush and the GOP not only blocked the stimulus but watered down taxpayer protections Democrats wanted in the bailout bill.

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            One of the items that was jettisoned, Sweeney said, was bankruptcy relief for homeowners.  Homeowners stuck with sub-prime mortgages face foreclosures and eviction.  Wall Street trading in complex securities based on those mortgages produced the financial mess in the first place.

            “We understand the very serious risks to working families of a financial collapse, and we appreciate the need for comprehensive action” by the government, he conceded.  But with “serious doubts” about Paulson’s plan--even as modified by Congress--and “the magnitude of the powers and expenditures” Paulson sought, “We call on Congress to pass an economic stimulus package for Main Street, together with bankruptcy reform to help homeowners,” he added.

            “Without a stimulus and bankruptcy reform, the bailout looks like what it is--help for Wall Street--when what America needs is help for Main Street,” Sweeney concluded.

            O’Sullivan took an even sterner tack, while campaigning for the $100 billion in construction projects the stimulus package would provide.  He said the Wall Street financiers “should be thinking about bail”--for staying out of jail--“rather than a bailout.”

            “The most important asset in America is not Wall Street–it’s Main Street and working people.  Unfortunately all Americans are stuck in the same boat with those at fault and if they sink, they will drag us down with them. But this bailout cannot be another Bush no-strings raid on taxpayers and the Treasury.”

            O’Sullivan noted that every billion dollars spent on rebuilding the nation’s roads, airports and mass transit creates 47,500 jobs.  The construction money was part of the stimulus package the Senate Republicans defeated.

            He also said the bailout must include protections for worker pensions which suffered large losses because of Wall Street irresponsibility--a point Teamsters President James Hoffa echoed--and it must “ensure that taxpayers receive any future profit from mortgages bought by the Treasury.”

            And the unionists demanded tough caps on executive pay for firms that use the bailout money--a provision lawmakers watered down.  O’Sullivan said the bailout must include “new regulations to prevent this from happening again,” plus “more transparency, limits on leverage, increased capital requirements, stricter conflict of interest protections” and banning “certain industries” from writing mortgages, “such as corporate homebuilders who helped cause the crisis by pushing risky loans.”

            Burger laid the political blame on the GOP.  “The failed policies of George Bush and John McCain got us into this mess, so we’re not just going to let them off the hook.  This should not be put on the backs of taxpayers who are struggling to get by,” she said.