WASHINGTON, D.C. | May 28, 2014 –
It’s no secret the president’s health care law is making life difficult for working families. Many of the ObamaCare problems plaguing the nation’s workplaces – lower wages, loss of existing coverage, higher costs – are emerging in classrooms across the country as well. To learn more about the consequences of the health care law on the nation’s schools and students, the Education and the Workforce Committee launched the #YourStory initiative.
I follow Congressman Kline’s committee to get a sense of this strain of the U.S. right-wing, which seems unwilling to do more than to offer rhetorical fodder for the most paranoid. This is a particularly cynical line of reasoning. Obviously, school districts, thanks to three decades of right-wing government bashing and budget cutting, are struggling for funding. One of the ways they have saved money over the years is by cutting out full-time positions. (Another way is to privatize the schools and so beat back the unions.)
We have an odd ethical principle in the U.S. that says that part-time people don’t need benefits; workers without benefits are very cheap. This was bad for everyone. In a minor way, the ACA is trying to turn that around. Is there a great outcry for adequate pubic school funding? Not a peep. Is there an outcry about the over use of part-time people in education? Not a peep. All of our problems are caused by the ACA. We just need to get rid of it and get back to the good old days when schools could rely on cheap labor.
