He’s giving a speech this morning at the National Press Club, and I’ll run the video when I get it. In the meantime, some highlights:
AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka will urge President Barack Obama to make next week’s State of the Union Address a “call to action, a call to invest in our future, to create jobs, to be the country we can and must be,” in remarks today at the National Press Club. Arguing that the United States has “choices” to make, the labor leader will ask: “What kind of country are we? A country of isolated individuals fending for themselves or a country with shared values and a shared vision? A country with scant resources, fading glory and no choices? Or a blessed nation with the potential to do right by its people and be a leader in the world?”
Trumka will take direct aim at the idea that national austerity is a form of smart politics: “In this topsy-turvy world, the same leaders who fought so valiantly to cut taxes for the wealthy turn right around and lecture us about the imminent bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare. … When we are reduced to competing to cut spending instead of deciding how to compete in the world economy and secure our future, then we are having the wrong conversation.”
TRUMKA ON 2012: “We have just been through one lost decade—when America’s standard of living fell, when our wealth shrank, when millions lost their homes, when young people could not find work. America cannot afford another lost decade. … Last year’s election was fundamentally about jobs, and I believe the 2012 election will be fundamentally about jobs. America wants to work. People who live in Wonderland may not have noticed, but there is a lot of work to be done here.”
