The Democrats’ "alternative" proposal, a one-time tax rebate, offers, if anything, even smaller payments to working people. Many would receive nothing because their earnings are so low they do not pay income taxes.

Feigning concern for workers who are jobless, Bush signed a measure extending short-term unemployment benefits that the Democrats and Republicans in Congress had so callously delayed when they rushed off to take their holiday break. But the 13-week extension is shorter than what Congress has passed during previous periods of growing unemployment.

Shifting the tax burden even more from the rich to working people, limiting unemployment benefits--that’s what the twin big-business parties have to offer.

But workers and farmers, who create the wealth, should not pay one penny of taxes. The labor movement should demand: Tax the rich, not working people! For a steeply graduated income tax--up to 100 percent--on the wealthiest individuals.

More broadly, the working-class movement needs to champion a program of demands to defend the needs of working people from the ravages of the spreading depression. The central demands include the following:

• Jobs for all! For a massive government program of public works to create jobs, at union-scale wages, building facilities for the educational, health, housing, recreational, and other needs of the population.
• Shorten the workweek with no cut in pay to spread the available work around.
• Defend and extend affirmative action in employment, housing, and education. For dual-seniority lists in layoffs.
• Raise the minimum wage.
• For full and automatic cost-of-living increases in wages and benefits to protect working people from inflation.
• Halt farm foreclosures. For government-funded cheap credit and price supports to guarantee a secure living to working farmers.
• Cancel the foreign debt that is strangling Third World nations.