Iowa Senator's Bill Will Help Rekindle Our Economy

To read the full column, click here.

Washington, D.C. ? Today, as Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduces the Rebuild America Act, the Center for American Progress released a column finding that the bill is essential for helping restore our nation's middle class. Sen. Harkin's proposal combines a number of key elements?each of which would make a significant difference in the lives of everyday Americans?into a single, comprehensive bill that would go a long way toward strengthening a broad swathe of American families.

The American middle class is the heart of our economy and restoring its strength is key to getting the economy going again. A growing body of economic research indicates that a weakened middle class does not just hurt those who are losing ground, but rather it hurts all of us by stifling our country's economic growth. The stated purpose of Sen. Harkin's bill is "to rebuild the American middle class by creating jobs, investing in our future, building opportunity for working families, and restoring balance to the tax code." To achieve this goal the bill unites together a wide range of policy proposals, including a number that the Center for American Progress champions. By bringing together a number of discrete elements under the framework of helping the middle class, the bill provides a coherent way of thinking about a number of policies that are too often viewed as separate and unrelated.

"Sen. Harkin recognizes that a strong and stable middle class is critical to America's growth now and in the future," said Neera Tanden, President of the Center for American Progress. "The Rebuild America Act tackles some of the most immediate challenges facing America's economy today, ranging from the rising costs of colleges to stagnant wages to the shortage of skilled workers in key industries. By leveraging federal investments and encouraging key industry partnerships, this legislation would make great strides in helping to prepare America's workers for the jobs of tomorrow and improving economic security for working families, while also restoring fairness to the tax code. Sen. Harkin has a long history of defending the middle class and I commend him for his continued leadership on these issues."

The central elements of the legislation essential to rebuilding the middle class include :

• Supporting great teachers. The College and Career Readiness Classrooms Act, the education portion of Sen. Harkin's legislation, would make a major and timely investment in the teacher workforce of our nation's schools. The bill requires that federal funds support effective models of professional development that are goal-driven and focused on college and career readiness for students, increase teacher expertise in subject areas, and are sustained, embedded in the work of the classroom teacher and the school, and conceived and implemented through collaboration with teachers and teacher organizations.
• Preparing Americans for jobs of the future. The bill will provide community colleges with the funding they need to design training programs that are responsive to the local labor market, and will encourage industry partnerships that ensure the education and training provided is relevant to workforce needs.
• Improving our infrastructure. The Rebuild America Act would increase federal infrastructure spending by more than $300 million over 10 years?investments that would go a long way toward improving our highways, bridges, transit, airports, school buildings, wastewater-treatment facilities, and energy grid.
• Modernizing workplace standards. Sen. Harkin's bill zeroes in on perhaps the two most important components of reform to help everyday American families juggle the demands of work and family?child care and paid sick leave. The bill would ensure that funds to states would improve the quality and availability of child care to families as well as support the skills and credentialing process of the workforce. Further, the legislation incorporates paid sick days as an important component of work-life policies to benefit working families.
• Raising pay for middle-class Americans. Too many modestly paid, white-collar workers are largely unable to collect overtime due to unreasonably low income limits ($455/week). These limits render many workers earning more than about $24,000 per year ineligible for overtime. This cuts into these workers' earnings and provides little incentive for firms to reduce workloads on overburdened workers by hiring additional workers. Sen. Harkin's bill would raise this too-low cap and index it for inflation. The bill would also help workers join together to collectively bargain for better pay and working conditions by raising the fines for employers that violate the law and undermine worker rights.
• Restoring fairness in the tax code. The Rebuild America Act restores fairness and fiscal responsibility to the tax code by instating the "Buffett Rule," which ensures that no millionaire pays lower taxes as a share of income than middle-class families. It also addresses the unfairness of taxing investment income more favorably than wages by raising the top rate on capital gains, which are received overwhelmingly by the richest Americans, to 25 percent. The bill requires ending tax breaks that reward the offshoring of jobs and asks Wall Street to contribute its fair share through a "financial crisis responsibility fee," and through the enactment of a modest financial-transactions tax.

To read the full column, click here.

The Rebuild America Act unites together a wide range of policy proposals, including many championed by CAP and detailed in the following policy briefs and reports:

• From Qualifications to Results: Promoting Teacher Effectiveness Through Federal Policy by Robin Chait
• Building a Technically Skilled Workforce: Partnerships between Community Colleges and Industries are the Key by Louis Soares and Stephen Steigledger
• Meeting the Infrastructure Imperative by Donna Cooper
• The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict: The Poor, the Professionals, and the Missing Middle by Joan C. Williams and Heather Boushey
• A Sweet 16 to Build a Strong Middle Class: Policies to Strengthen the Foundation of our Economy by Karla Walter
• Budgeting for Growth and Prosperity: A long-term Plan to Balance the Budget, Grow the Economy, and Strengthen the Middle Class by Michael Ettlinger, Michael Linden, and Seth Hanlon

To speak with a CAP expert, please contact Katie Peters at 202.741.6285 or kpeters@americanprogress.org.

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