Elaine Chao, Labor Secretary served on Northwest Airlines board

[Bluebear]

Chao has a distinguished career in public service, having served as President Bush's deputy secretary of transportation from 1989 to 1991. She was the director of the Peace Corps from 1991 to 1992 and then led the United Way from 1992 to 1996. She was named to the board of directors of Northwest Airlines in 1999. She's currently a distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research organization. She's married to Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell. A Chinese immigrant, Chao has said she opposes affirmative action but favors equal opportunity for all. She was appointed two days after Linda Chavez, Bush's first pick for labor secretary, withdrew her name.
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As recently as Monday, Chao outlined a pension reform package that would require changes in pension, tax and other laws. The plan is based on a single-employer defined benefit plan, which has a fixed payout at retirement.

"If nothing is done, the financial integrity of the federal insurance system will be compromised and the pension security of 34 million workers and retirees will be more at risk," Chao said at the National Press Club.

Not only will the Bush administration be using her political skills to help get this new pension package through Congress, but she will also be a face of the new Social Security proposal that would create investment accounts holding two-thirds of workers' annual payroll taxes.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Inauguration/story?id=122080

[yorkiemommie1]

1. wasn't she pushing the new 'overtime' rules???

:puke:

[Bluebear]

3. Yup. the anti-labor Labor secretary

WASHINGTON -- Labor Secretary Elaine Chao told Congress yesterday that new overtime regulations would strengthen ''protection for more American workers than ever before," but a former federal investigator countered that the rules would subtly undermine eligibility of nursery school teachers, nurses, and others.

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2004/04/29/chao_defends_overtime_plan/

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

2. Wasn't she the one who said the stock market 'is' the economy?

JUDY WOODRUFF'S INSIDE POLITICS
February 6, 2004 - 15:30 ET

WOODRUFF: We are joined now by the Secretary of Labor, Elaine Chao...
I want to cite the one economic analyst with Credit Suisse First Boston. He said, these are his words, quote, "very disappointing; we're not getting the jobs to replace the stimulus in the economy which will fade once the first quarter ends." Another economist said, "It's theweakest job-creation rate relative to economic growth on record."

CHAO: Well, the stock market is, after all, the final arbiter. And the stock market was very strong this morning in reaction to the news that we have just received.

http://www.house.gov/budget_democrats/analyses/aug10employment.pdf

[annabanana]

4. So... should someone approaching retirement age,

and vested in that wonder of yesteryear, a traditional pension plan..get it NOW before they change the rules?

[Bluebear]

5. Apparently they should "work somewhere else" if they don't like it

We are about to see a wave of 70 year old fry cooks.

[yorkiemommie1]

7. we see lots of elderly

pizza deliverymen here in SoCal. Not middle-aged. OLD.

[Bluebear]

8. Baggers at the grocery store...

Once I got into a conversation with a guy who must have been 75 bagging groceries. I said something like "well, it keeps you busy", thinking he just liked to work. He replied "No, it keeps me eating" in classic New England dryness.

[acmejack]

6. A "distinguished career in public service"!

My ass! Maybe in anti-public service, or as in "Human relations". She is certainly no friend of the working class.

[wli]

9. legislating social security into the position of the "last sucker"

Then the stock market can collapse without institutional investors feeling the pinch at all. Instead, nobody in the lower classes gets retirement pensions.