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Michelle Obama unveils Blueprint for America’s Working Women and Families

July 28th, 2008
By JILL MILLER ZIMON

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You can read Barack Obama’s agenda for helping women and families balance work and life in his Blueprint for America’s Working Women and Families, and later today, I’m told, there will be video of the announcement, which occurred in Chicago just about 20 minutes ago.

From the inbox:

Michelle Obama will address a gathering of Women for Obama in Chicago on Monday. There, she will discuss the campaign’s success in reaching women across the country, and discuss why her husband, Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama, will be a champion in addressing the unique challenges facing working women and families. Mrs. Obama will also unveil a Blueprint for America’s Working Women and Families, detailing Barack Obama’s agenda to help women balance work and family, to keep themselves and their families healthy, and to prosper in a changing economy.

Michelle Obama kicked off the Women for Obama program in Chicago in April 2007. Since then, Women for Obama has created a nationwide network of tens of thousands of women working to educate and empower themselves on the issues that are most important to women and families. Throughout the primary, the group has played a key role in Senator Obama’s campaign through its fundraising, grassroots activity and online organizing efforts.

“We know the importance of women’s voices and votes in this election cannot be overstated, and I am so proud of the progress Women for Obama has made over the last year, bringing the issues that are most important to women and families to the center of this campaign,” said Michelle Obama. “As President, Barack will change Washington so that instead of just talking about family values; we actually have policies that value families. Policies that make it easier for working parents to support, care for, and raise their families; policies that no longer force working women to choose between their kids and their careers. Barack understands the struggles working women and families face every day, because the women he loves most in the world have gone through it. That’s why he carries our stories – and the stories of women he’s met all across America – with him every day.”

This luncheon, benefiting the Obama Victory Fund, will take place at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago on Monday.

I’ve browsed the Blueprint and here’s a list of the topics covered:

  1. Fight for pay equity
  2. Making Work Pay for Working Families
  3. Increase the Minimum Wage to $9.50 by 2011
  4. Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit
  5. Provide a Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit to an Additional 7.5 Million Women
  6. Create Automatic Workplace Pensions
  7. Expand Retirement Savings Incentives for Working Families
  8. Expand Family and Medical Leave Act
  9. Encourage States to Adopt Paid Leave
  10. Expand Paid Sick Days to 22 Million Women
  11. Protect Against Caregiver Discrimination
  12. Expand Flexible Work Arrangements
  13. Expand High Quality Afterschool and Summer Learning Opportunities
  14. Fix the Nation’s Health Care System
  15. Ensure All Children Have Health Insurance
  16. Fight Cancer
  17. Supports a Woman’s Right To Choose

You’ll have to read the pdf to get the meat on each of those.

Does he offer enough ideas and details? Not enough? What would you add? What would you remove?

What more do you want to know?

How does this blueprint compare to what John McCain has promised to do for working women and families?



This entry was posted on Monday, July 28th, 2008 at 1:42 pm and is filed under Family, Children, Mother, Father, Newsweek Blogitics, Women, Women's Issues, 2008 Elections, Health, Barack Obama, John McCain, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 41 Comments

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    Wow. In one fell swoop Obama just fell off the far left side of the planet again. I can imagine the moderates and the independents are more likely to go vote for McCain even more today.

    Far left social programs pandering to Hillary Clintons Women voters......

    Is there no group that is safe from Obama's attempted pandering??
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    You can't get something for nothing...

    Of the 17 proposals mentioned above, all of them except 2 or 3 of them are proposals that expand the cost and scope of existing government programs. In a time of record deficits, where, may I ask, is the money going to come from to pay for all of these things?

    Promising to expand benefits to workers at the expense of employers and the taxpayer base during presidential elections is pretty standard operating procedure for the Democrats. Nothing that Obama has proposed here is something that hasn't been proposed before.

    This is hardly the "change" we have been waiting for. Just recycled ideas from the Democrats.
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    First, I guess you do not have to study economics to get a sociology degree from Princeton. Michelle Obama makes herself look like an AA black with such a outlandish set of ideas.

    After reading the list, I would guess that family run Asian business will be the only private business left in the U.S. They would have the advantages in avoiding the high costs of this set of nanny state initiatives.

    Once again, I ask why would anyone want to start a new business or attempt a new enterprise whne facing the burdens that the Obama Administration is going to punt on the private sector.
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    Remember McCain promised to fight for a balanced budget and I think hes sincere. Obama just unveiled 250 billion dollars of NEW spending.
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    Gosh, if these are 'promises,' these seem like more of the same 'castle in the air material' that I as mother and grandmother, have heard from every politician since Adlai Stephenson. If this list is a wish list, so be it, but there is no way these can be offered as promises to be kept. To do so is to hold out, once again, false hope

    The new president will inherit unprecedented debt in the trillions of dollars, money borrowed incidentally from Asia. The Asians are not going to forgive this debt. In fact, the trade imbalances we have with Asia already makes the US the weakest sister of the big eight. That is utterly serious. The US borrows but has no ability to repay in any timely way.

    Am I living on Mars? Didnt several million people just lose their homes or are about to? Triage is needed, serious triage. We havent enough in our own coffers to finance what is bleeding to death, let alone all these. I wish it could be so, but I dont see how it can...for several reasons.

    The president doesnt decide minimum wage, Congress does. The president doesnt decide any of these matters. The president certainly cant force States' rights issues.

    To say all these can come to fruition, is completely out of reach ... no president can force these to occur.

    regarding raising taxes to fund such programs. THe US will turn into a wasteland, the rust belt will look like child's play comepared to all the US businesses that will easily move overseas, offshore and to massive outsourcing to avoid being gutted financially. To imagine that even small operations wont move out of the US, is crazy. Many business run on narrow margins. Jacking minimum wage that quickly will definitely tilt many businesses into dramatic downsizing and many will simply close.

    Global economy means people have the ability to stay here if they wish, but do all their business elsewhere... or move to places that are paradise on earth which, like Australia and New Zealand, are making huge tax accomodations to make it easy for businesses to relocate from all over the world.

    Looting the hardest workers and most expansive who bring in the most jobs, is anathema when a country is literally bankrupt.... owes far FAR more than it has ready resources to pay with on time.

    As a woman, as a working woman, as a mother who raised children alone, as a person who went without health insurance for years, as a woman who made it through any number of monstrous obstacles, I definitely wish for more balance and fairness.

    But, my effort has to be on helping people to become better educated, more SKILLED, helping women to NOT have babies so young, to make better choices early on... to point to women seriously training for high paying jobs rather than try to strangle an employer into paying them more for jobs, many of which can be outsourced at HALF the salary to people who live in other parts of the world where cost of living is less than half what it is here. Helping women to move upward to be thoughtful before the fact, those I can put my energy behind.

    But to glue the same old set of fantasies all over the gateposts when someone is running for election, I just shake my head

    There already are huge amounts of money, federal, state and foreign spent on cancer research and r and d seeking cures, as there are huge amounts of money given for delving the mysteries of other diseases.

    Forgive me if I am overly-realistic, but frankly, there are billions of dollars wasted in every program the Feds support, daily. Daily. No one watches moneyy versus result and decides which programs are effective and which are not.

    If I were President, I'd start there. Several weeks ago I went to the Feds website to read the National Budget. You would not believe how unreadable it is. Nothing is laid out clearly. Your own tax returns are logical compared to the messy and illogical way the US budget is laid out.

    enough. enough.

    dr.e
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    McCain offers fewer vote-buying entitlements compared to Obama's lib-Dem grab bag of goodies and, yes, recycled nonsense, some fluff ("encourage," unless it is more sinister, whereby PC goals are tied to things like highway funds) and standard weasel words ("right to choose" WHAT that would be funded by Washington and the taxpayers?).

    "This is hardly the 'change' we have been waiting for. Just recycled ideas from the Democrats."

    It's the predictable regression many of us have anticipated.

    And it's something that McCain, if competent, could exploit and get votes thereby.

    "I can imagine the moderates and the independents are more likely to go vote for McCain even more today."

    Yes, those who are more sensible and who PAY THE TAXES and who would otherwise be affected by these things.

    "Where, may I ask, is the money going to come from to pay for all of these things?"

    1. "The rich" (extending down to an income level approaching $20,000 annually);

    2. The evil military once all our troops are brought back home ASAP.
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    "To say all these can come to fruition, is completely out of reach ...

    But to glue the same old set of fantasies all over the gateposts when someone is running for election, I just shake my head."

    We're all shaking ours here.
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    The fact that he would even unveil this at a time of massive budget deficits and show no compunction or even a willingness to say he will balance the budget is just insane.

    He really needs to look at his advisors. His judgment in them is sorely lacking.
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    It's the change women have been waiting for, and they not only vote, they matter
    It's the change unwealthy working Americans have been waiting for, those who can't get ahead and can't even stay afloat, no matter how hard they work.

    We're in this situation because of the folly of thinking that 'no taxes and no government is a magic potion, even when we're fighting two wars and adjusting to the effects of globalization.

    We've been dependent on a top-down economy for a long time, and it hasn't worked. It's not an economic success when upward mobility is choked off and the middle class is sliding backwards. It's not an economic success when more poverty is created than deleted.
    The people least reponsible for creating our deficits have borne the burden of paying for them too long.

    Now, it's time for a change. This change is one I'm anxious to see arrive.
    I don't depend on the magic of formulaic thinking. I look around and see what's happenining in the country.
    What I see can't be fixed by d