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For Immediate Release
August, 26 2009, 08:59am EDT
Contact:
Marcus Mrowka, 202-730-7759
Mark McCullough, 202-730-7283
SEIU: Continue to Honor Kennedy Legacy, Pass Healthcare Reform
WASHINGTON
Today, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) released the following statement by SEIU President Andy Stern on the passing of Senator Edward M. Kennedy:
"In Senator Kennedy's vision of America, every family has access to affordable healthcare, every worker has a paycheck that supports their family and a secure retirement, every child has a right to a quality education, and every immigrant can achieve the American Dream.
"Senator Kennedy spent his entire adult life, through tragedy and triumph, in pursuit of this America. From his first major speech in support of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to his last vote on President Obama's economic recovery plan, his vision of a more perfect nation never wavered.
"Because of Senator Kennedy, millions of children have access to healthcare, crucial immunizations, Head Start programs, and grants and loans to make college more affordable. Unemployed workers have access to COBRA and low-income mothers are able to get food, healthcare and other resources for themselves and their children. People with disabilities are treated with respect and dignity and workers are protected by an adequate minimum wage.
"Senator Kennedy's America is our America. It is the America of the nurse in Pittsburgh, the janitor in Miami, and the child care provider in Maine. It is the America that SEIU members continue to fight for. And Senator Kennedy stood beside us in that fight longer than anyone else.
"Senator Kennedy stood with SEIU members on countless picket lines and contract negotiations. He stood with millions of hardworking immigrants and SEIU members to call for comprehensive immigration reform in 2005. He stood with workers fighting for a voice on the job by championing the Employee Free Choice Act. And until his final days he stood with SEIU healthcare workers and other workers to win access to affordable healthcare for all Americans.
"Thirty nine years ago, Senator Kennedy introduced his first bill to overhaul our nation's broken healthcare system and provide affordable coverage to all Americans. We stand closer now than ever before to achieving what Senator Kennedy called the cause of his life.
"Let us continue his cause. Let us take action this year to pass healthcare reform. And let us continue to build Kennedy's vision of America."
With 2 million members in Canada, the United States and Puerto Rico, SEIU is the fastest-growing union in the Americas. Focused on uniting workers in healthcare, public services and property services, SEIU members are winning better wages, healthcare and more secure jobs for our communities, while uniting their strength with their counterparts around the world to help ensure that workers--not just corporations and CEOs--benefit from today's global economy.
LATEST NEWS
Trump Healthcare Payment Proposal Sparks Fresh Medicare for All Demands to Fix ‘Broken’ Healthcare System
“These subsidies have to get bigger and bigger and bigger to keep the ACA affordable,” said US Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. “The fight for healthcare right now can’t end with ACA subsidies. It has to be bigger.”
Nov 10, 2025
As the government appears poised to reopen, with Republicans having successfully avoided concessions on their goal of eliminating Affordable Care Act tax credits, President Donald Trump has proposed his own solution to the looming explosion in health insurance costs.
By agreeing to reopen the government without a deal, Democrats have given up their main leverage to force Republicans to extend the credits set to expire at the end of the year. If this happens, over 22 million Americans are expected to see their monthly insurance premiums more than double. As enrollment data for next year shows, Americans are already seeing skyrocketing healthcare costs, not just for ACA recipients but for everyone.
While Republicans successfully strong-armed their opposition into caving by using the shutdown to turn the screws on government workers and food stamp recipients, they still have to weather the political fallout of the coming healthcare apocalypse. A poll released Thursday by KFF found that 74% of Americans—half of whom are self-identified Republicans—want to see the credits extended. Three-quarters also say they'd blame either Trump or Republicans in Congress if they weren't.
On Truth Social Saturday, as a shutdown deal appeared likely, Trump proposed his own idea:
I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over. In other words, take from the BIG, BAD Insurance Companies, give it to the people, and terminate, per Dollar spent, the worst Healthcare anywhere in the World, ObamaCare.
Trump is correct that under the current scheme, Americans don't actually receive money directly. But experts warn that while there’s a visceral populist logic to his proposal, the flaws of replacing those annual subsidies with a one-time payment become obvious with the barest of scrutiny, especially when it is paired with a proposal to fully repeal the ACA.
"You have to read between the lines here to imagine what President Trump is proposing," said Larry Levitt, the executive vice president for health policy at KFF. "It sounds like it could be a plan for health accounts that could be used for insurance that doesn’t cover preexisting conditions, which could create a death spiral in ACA plans that do."
One of the Senate's most prominent proponents of eliminating the ACA and other parts of the social safety net, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), said he was "writing the bill right now," and clarified that it would indeed involve "HSA-style accounts" for Americans in place of subsidized insurance.
On Sunday, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) noted that this was just a reheating of the "same old, tired proposal of repealing the Affordable Care Act, giving people a benefit in the form of a health savings account, but allowing insurance companies once again to cancel policies and refuse to write policies for people who have preexisting health conditions."
HSAs were a key component of the Republicans' failed 2017 plan to "repeal and replace" the ACA, which many critics pointed out would allow insurers to skyrocket the costs of insurance for those dealing with preexisting conditions.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who sits on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), called Trump's new plan "unsurprisingly nonsensical."
"Is he suggesting eliminating health insurance and giving people a few thousand dollars instead?" Murphy asked. "And then when they get a cancer diagnosis, they just go bankrupt?"
But while many Democrats decried yet another effort to dismantle the ACA, some progressives pointed out that health insurance costs, and healthcare costs more generally, have still exploded under Obamacare, which—despite introducing new guardrails—still leaves profit-driven insurance intact and requires all Americans to purchase it.
"Yes, Mr. President: You’re right. We do have 'the worst healthcare' of any major country," replied Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the HELP committee's ranking member, who has long decried the profiteering of insurance companies. "Despite spending twice as much per capita, we are the only major country not to guarantee health care to all as a human right. The solution: Medicare for All."
He was joined by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who ripped Trump's plan on Fox News.
"Healthcare premiums... they are going to spike about 100% in some cases," Khanna said. "Now, if you take the tax credits and you just give them to the American people, who is the president expecting them to buy the plans from? Is he expecting them to get junk insurance?"
"I agree with him that the system is broken," he continued. "And we should be expanding Medicare to have Medicare for All. But in the meantime, we've got to give people help so that their premiums don't spike."
On social media, Khanna pointed to a 2020 analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which found that the US would spend about $650 billion less on healthcare per year in 2030 if it adopted Medicare for All because it would drastically reduce the administrative waste and non-healthcare-related spending inherent to private insurance. It would also allow the government to use its massive leverage as America's primary insurer to negotiate dramatic price reductions for drugs and medical services.
Those arguments have also been made by Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a long-time Medicare for All proponent who is running for the open Senate seat in Michigan in 2026. He explained to a crowd that the fact that Republicans "can muck around with subsidies" in the first place is evidence of a broader healthcare crisis that stems from the preeminence of privatized healthcare.
"The very fact that we're watching as these subsidies have to get bigger and bigger and bigger to keep the ACA affordable, the very fact that we're relying on Medicaid to be expanded, that, to me, is the reason why in a moment like this, it's not enough just to protect what we have," he said.
He continued on social media: "The fight for healthcare right now can’t end with ACA subsidies. It has to be bigger. Too many Americans are suffering over medical debt and spiraling costs. It should be nothing short of Medicare for All."
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Hegseth Says 6 More Men Killed in Latest Boat Bombings
At least 76 people have been killed in 19 US attacks on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean since early September.
Nov 10, 2025
Six people were killed Sunday in US military strikes on what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed were boats smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, bringing the total death toll from all such reported attacks to at least 76 since early September.
"Yesterday, at the direction of President [Donald] Trump, two lethal kinetic strikes were conducted on two vessels operated by designated terrorist organizations. These vessels were known by our intelligence to be associated with illicit narcotics smuggling, were carrying narcotics, and were transiting along a known narco-trafficking transit route in the eastern Pacific," Hegseth said Monday on social media without providing evidence to support his claim.
"Both strikes were conducted in international waters and three male narco-terrorists were aboard each vessel. All six were killed," he added. "No US forces were harmed. Under President Trump, we are protecting the homeland and killing these cartel terrorists who wish to harm our country and its people."
Sunday's attacks raised the death toll in the Trump administration's nine-week campaign to at least 76 people in 19 attacks in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea. The US strikes have come amid Trump's deployment of warships and thousands of troops off the coast of Venezuela and follow the president's approval of covert CIA action and threats to attack inside the oil-rich country.
Last week, Republicans in the US Senate rejected a bipartisan war powers resolution aimed at stopping the Trump administration from continuing its bombing of alleged drug boats or attacking Venezuela without lawmakers’ assent, as required by law.
Trump administration officials have admitted that they aren't attempting to identify people aboard boats before or after bombing them. Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) recently told CNN that Pentagon officials briefed her “that they do not need to positively identify individuals on the vessel to do the strikes."
Jacobs also said that the administration is not making any effort to imprison survivors of the strikes or prosecute them, “because they could not satisfy the evidentiary burden.”
In the past, drug trafficking in the Caribbean and Pacific has been treated by the US government as a law enforcement issue, with the Coast Guard and other agencies sometimes intercepting boats and arresting those on board if evidence was found, granting them a day in court.
Leaders in Venezuela, Colombia, and other nations; United Nations officials; human rights groups; and Democratic US lawmakers are among those who have condemned the boat bombings as extrajudicial assassination, murder, and war crimes.
While some residents of the Venezuelan villages from which the targeted boats departed have said that many of the men killed in the strikes were running drugs, regional officials and relatives of victims have asserted that numerous men slain in the attacks were not narco-traffickers.
According to an MSNBC investigation published last week, the identities of up to 50 strike victims remain publicly unknown. In a rare display of congressional bipartisanship, Reps. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), Mike Turner (R-Ohio), Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), and Jason Crow (D-Col.) last week sent a letter to Trump seeking clarification on the administration's legal reasoning for the strikes and asking, "What evidence confirms that those killed were cartel operatives, rather than coerced, deceived, or trafficked civilians?"
"We strongly support the effort to reduce the flow of narcotics into this country," the lawmakers wrote. "This effort, like every action the United States military takes, must be done within the legal, moral, and ethical framework that sets us apart from our adversaries."
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Endorsing Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota, Sanders Expands Push for 'Fighters' for Working Class in Senate
"We don’t need more corporate Democrats in the Senate. We need Peggy Flanagan, who’ll fight for working people."
Nov 10, 2025
Calling for more Democratic lawmakers who have “the guts to stand up for working people," Sen. Bernie Sanders weighed in on another US Senate primary on Monday, hours after a handful of Democrats agreed to reopen the federal government without Republican concessions on healthcare.
Sanders (I-Vt.), who earlier this year announced his support for Democratic Senate candidates Graham Platner in Maine and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, has now formally endorsed Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan's candidacy for the US Senate.
In his endorsement, Sanders said that the Senate needs lawmakers who will stand up "against the billionaires and the corporate interests," and argued that Flanagan understands the needs of working-class people personally due in part to her own blue-collar background.
"Peggy knows what it is to struggle," he said. "She was raised by a hard-working single mother who needed [the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] to help put food on the table and Medicaid for healthcare. And she’s dedicated her career to fighting for working families."
Sanders also hailed Flanagan's accomplishments as both lieutenant governor and Minnesota state legislator, and he said she would work to fight for progressive priorities on a national level.
"Peggy fought to raise the minimum wage and she got it done," he said. "She fought for paid family leave and she got it done. We need fighters who are from the working class and for the working class here in the Senate. Peggy will fight for Medicare for All, to raise the minimum wage to a living wage, and to address the crises we face in childcare, education, and housing."
Sanders concluded his endorsement by arguing that "we don’t need more corporate Democrats in the Senate. We need Peggy Flanagan, who’ll fight for working people."
Progressive political consultant Rebecca Katz hailed Sanders' endorsements of Flanagan, Platner, and El-Sayed, whom she described on X as "three good candidates who understand the stakes and know how to fight back."
Flanagan is running to replace retiring Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), who has been serving in the Senate ever since former Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) resigned in 2018. Flanagan will be facing off against Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn), a centrist Democrat who has several endorsements from the Democratic establishment, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
According to Minnesota Reformer, Flanagan has also scored endorsements from Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who both stumped for her at the Minnesota State Fair this past summer.
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