Finally, there is a sign that those in Washington are hearing the cries from protestors around the country about making Wall Street pay for the damage they have done to the economy.

Legislation imposing a financial transaction tax was introduced today in the Senate by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and in the House by Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore, that could raise somewhere between $700 billion and $1.2 trillion over 10 years, The Huffington Post reported.

The transaction tax was first proposed in the 1970s by the late American economist and Nobel Prize Winner James Tobin, as The Washington Post noted. Hundreds of economists and responsible investors support the tax, including Nobel Laureates Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, stock market billionaire Warren Buffet and former Goldman Sachs Chairman John Whitehead. Some in the 1% agree with the 99% about taxing Wall Street.

The legislation would impose a transaction tax of 0.03% on every single trade of stocks, bonds, options, futures, swaps, and credit default swaps. It would be a small cost for those who are saving for retirement or a child’s education; the average person paying into a 401(K) would pay only one dollar per year. The bill has its greatest impact on investors who engage in constant, high-volume trading, not ordinary workers who barely touch their investment until they need it.

The United States is not even the first country to consider a financial transaction tax. In September, the European Union proposed a financial transaction tax of its own that would take effect in 2014, said Bloomberg Businessweek. It is estimated that the financial transaction tax for the EU could raise about 57 billion euros, or $78 billion a year. The EU proposal would apply a tax of 0.1% on trade stocks and bonds, higher than the financial transaction tax in the U.S.

The financial transaction tax will also be a major issue at the upcoming G-20 summit in Cannes, France, where the United States will be a major player. The introduction of the bill gives the United States a possible elevated role in the international debate over the financial transaction tax. President Obama should voice his support of the financial transaction tax at the G-20 summit and join other countries that already have the tax as law, such as the United Kingdom and Hong Kong.

The AFL-CIO and National Nurses United both back the lawmakers’ bill and have also scheduled a rally in front of the Treasury Department on November 3. Other major labor organizations are already on board and have started to take their support of the Wall Street tax to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner in person. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable have both voiced their opposition to the financial transaction tax.

There is now a massive movement by organizations to get the support of the public on the financial transactions tax. Americans for Financial Reform is circulating petitions in support of the Wall Street tax along with Rebuild the Dream and MoveOn.org. The petitions will allow the public to voice their support for the Wall Street tax and send a message to Washington to pass the bill.

The financial transaction tax is especially relevant today because of the upcoming decision by the congressional deficit-reduction supercommittee that is in charge of finding $1.2 trillion in savings before the end of the month. This financial transaction tax is a great idea to raise revenue instead of cutting programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

For most people Social Security cuts are something to be feared in the future, but for one group of people cuts in Social Security are already a real and present danger: the employees of the Social Security Administration. And these Social Security cuts are having a harmful effect today on beneficiaries and would-be beneficiaries.

Cuts in the agency’s fiscal year 2011 budget resulted in the loss of 3,500 state and federal employee jobs and cutbacks on overtime. As a result, 300 contact stations have been closed, eliminating in-person services in many rural and remote sites. Other offices began closing early each business day.

The SSA has also suspended mailing the Social Security statements indefinitely without advance notice to the public, eliminating an important link between young workers and the benefits they will receive when they retire.

To highlight these issues Social Security workers held informational pickets at Social Security offices across the country today, educating the public and legislators on the devastating impact of the fiscal 2011 budget cuts. Retirees and SSA employees in 96 cities have held informational pickets outside Social Security offices to draw attention to the devastating effects the cuts would have on services.

As things now stand fiscal year 2012, which began October 1, could be worse than fiscal year 2011. SSA faces a further budget cut of $800 million, even as the agency faces rising rents and health care costs. The SSA could also lose another 4,400 employees, for a total reduction of 7,900 employees in two years. This would result in even slower processing of Social Security disability claims. Agency staff would complete 2.8 million disability claims, nearly 400,000 fewer than in 2011, with pending levels rising from 845,000 to about 1.2 million and processing time exceeding 4 months. And all of this when there will be 10,000 new retirees claiming benefits each day for the next 20 years.

Some conservative members of Congress want across-the-board cuts from the fiscal 2011 level, which would be extremely detrimental. Across the board cuts, such as the 5% discussed by conservative members, would result in 24 furlough days for every SSA and Disability Determination Service (DDS) employee, and a loss of service to SSA beneficiaries. Each furlough day could result in approximately 19,000 retirement claims, 11,000 initial disability claims, and 3,000 hearings that employees would not be able to complete.

One member of Congress who has spoke out against the FY11 budget cuts to Social Security is Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif. Becerra has demanded a halt to deep budget cuts to the SSA passed by the House of Representatives on February 19. “Social Security did not contribute a single penny to our country’s current fiscal mess yet it’s being thrown on the chopping block to reduce the federal deficit,” said Representative Becerra to Strengthen Social Security. Becerra, who is the Ranking Member on the House Social Security Subcommittee, also said “It is time for all Americans to stand up and strengthen this program, not undermine it.”

Barbara Kennelly, President & CEO, of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare told Strengthen Social Security, “Most importantly, you need to understand these impacts will not be short-term. The backlogs that will result from starving the agency of this crucial funding could take years to clear out, especially if next year’s funding is also below what SSA needs.”

Witold Skwierczynski, Social Security Administration Union Representative for the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents Social Security employees in over 1,300 field offices nationwide had some words about the cuts which were reported by Strenghten Social Security. “It’s clear that the Republican agenda is to shrink Social Security and other essential services to the point where they can destroy them or privatize them. We can’t let them destroy the fabric of American life.”

Now with a congressional “supercommittee” less than a month away from making its recommendation on how to reduce the federal deficit, the fight for preserving Social Security and its benefits has never been more critical.

On the same day that conservatives in the Senate blocked action on a bill that would create 2 million new jobs, progressives and business leaders were in the nearby Russell Senate Office Building discussing what it takes to create good jobs.

The Good Jobs For A Stronger Economy Conference on Tuesday brought together business and organization leaders, along with their ideas for creating better-paying jobs with benefits in the United States and for rebuilding the middle class.

The first portion of the conference was punctuated with sobering facts about the working-class economy.

“In the United States today 20% of adults work in jobs that pay poverty level wages,” said Paul Osterman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“Thirty years ago 25-30% of U.S. GDP came from manufacturing and 10% came from financial institutions,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, the conference’s keynote speaker, who talked about how manufacturing jobs seem to be disappearing in the United States. “Now those numbers are reversed, with 25-30% of U.S. GDP coming from financial institutions and 10% coming from manufacturing.”

Brown was followed by four business owners who talked about the practices their companies implemented to hire and retain workers.

Albert Fuller, president and CEO of Integrated Packaging Corporation, based in Detroit, Michigan, said his firm “is the largest intercity packaging company to employ African Americans in the country.” The business is located in a low-income, predominately African-American neighborhood, he said. Fuller said the business gives former prisoners and those who have completed rehab programs the opportunity to work and prove themselves on the work floor.

Paul Diamond, Vice President of Human Resources for Addus Health Center, said that retaining and hiring good paying caretakers is vital for his firm given the aging and retiring of baby boomers. “We need caretakers who are committed and passionate to attend to patients at their homes day in and day out, whether the weather is sunny or stormy,” he said. Addus Health Center needs to offer good wages and health benefits in order to retain current caretakers and attract new ones, he added.

Barbara Dyer, president and CEO of Hitachi Foundation, talked about the need for U.S. government funding for training workers so they would be able to operate the latest technology. “Currently businesses spend $126 billion on getting talent through job training of workers while $2.3 billion is spent by the U.S. government,” Dyer said. More government funds need to go to community colleges to help train students for the jobs of tomorrow, she said.

Leo Hindery, managing partner of InterMedia Parnters, pointed to the widening gap between the lowest-paid employees and the CEOs. “When I started working the difference was 1 to 10 and now the difference is 1 to 20,” he said. Hindery also mentioned a comment attributed to former General Electric CEO Jack Welsh about the top priorities of corporate America: First the shareholders, second the employees, third the customers, and then, with a pause, the good of the country.

A second panel discussed the reforms in policy and practice that can improve job quality.

Annette Bernhardt, policy co-director of National Employment Law Center, talked about recent job creation over the last two years in the United States. “Seventy percent of jobs created over the last two years were low-wage-paying jobs and those wages have dropped 2 percent over that same time period.” Bernhardt said a possible solution would be federal aid to states to help create middle-class jobs.

One proposal offered by Marlene Seltzer, president and CEO of Jobs for the Future, was for “The National Fund for Work Force.” It would have two major goals: “create career advancement for low-wage jobs” and “provide a pipeline for training those workers.” Seltzer said that for every $1 that comes from the National Fund, $4 would be produced at the regional level. Over the last three years the National Fund has given $24 million to individual regions and produced over $124 million at the regional level.

Ernesto Cortes, Jr., co-chair and executive director of West / Southwest Regional Network and Industrial Areas Foundation, said that public movements need to be tougher and stronger than they are now. “Don’t have enough tough hard people to organize movements that can last long enough to impact policy makers,” Cortes said. Constituents need to take on politicians who don’t respond to their demands on policy and if need be vote them out of office to send a message, he added.

Peter Colavito, Director of Government Relations for Service Employees International Union, cited the importance of changing the political climate towards unions in the United States and building up a power base in favor of unions in the future. Unions in the United States have slowly disappeared to the point of being extinct, he said, noting that “7 percent of private sector jobs in the United States today are unionized.”

The issue that got the most attention during the conference concerned tax credits and subsidies. Several panelists took the position that tax credits and subsidies should not go to companies and businesses that pay low wages without any benefits but instead should go to companies and businesses that have good paying jobs with health benefits. Without the incentive to make changes companies and businesses will keep on lowering wages, cutting benefits, and shipping jobs overseas because they still get the tax credits and subsidies anyway.

Courtney Foley, the Starkville, Miss. native responsible for making sure that a referendum to bring down an anti-worker bill in Ohio qualifies for the ballot, received this year’s Maria Leavey Tribute Award at the Take Back the American Dream conference on Wednesday.

The Campaign for America’s Future gives this award each year to the person whose tireless, behind-the-scenes work has been critical to the success of the progressive movement in past years. The award is named after Maria Leavey, who was a quintessential unsung progressive hero.

Courtney Foley won the award in part by verifying the 1.3 million signatures collected by the We Are Ohio campaign to repeal the anti-worker bill, SB 5, in the state. SB 5 would eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees.

Courtney said at her acceptance speech that this collection of signatures was “the biggest grassroots movement in Ohio’s history!” She was the Quality Control Director for the entire state of Ohio for the petition process for SB 5 repeal in Ohio. Every signed petition passed through her hands, went into a vault, and through a quality-control screening process to ensure the measure qualified for the ballot.

“We used a vault to keep the signatures safe,” she said at the conference.

Maria Leavey was an organizer with extraordinary talent, a behind-the-scenes force with an uncanny ability to connect rising young talent with Washington leaders, and a tireless advocate who often worked without claiming credit or even compensation.

Since she passed away in 2006 the Conference has honored her legacy with the Maria Leavey Tribute Award, which goes to a person who embodies Maria’s spirit and has made an invaluable contribution to social justice.

The whole SB 5 repeal process started when Courtney first went to work for the unity table in Ohio by helping to develop the idea to hold a “People’s Town Hall” in a small town called Tiffin, population 17,000. At the first organizing meeting Courtney helped them create a roundtable discussion with local community members and they developed a list of speakers. They included a nurse, a teacher, a cop, a firefighter, a former mayor, and a nun to moderate. “They are your friends, and part of the American family,” she said.

Over 120 people attended a community meeting about SB 5 in Tiffin. They spoke about their shared struggles and the evaporating hopes for prosperity of the disappearing middle class.

During her acceptance speech, Courtney had some words for Republicans on their attempt to pass SB 5 in Ohio. She called it, “The Middle Class Destruction Act!” Courtney also had a slogan during her speech for Republican strategies to cut government spending: “Cut Back? Fight Back!”

Courtney, with a small volunteer staff, also held trainings and coordinated operations with organizers throughout the state of Ohio. Courtney did not insert herself into the story, nor did she act as the hero. She was simply a community organizer who inspired local community members to be leaders.