Fibonacci Blue / Flickr)” width=”400″ height=”300″ />Protest against ALEC by the Occupy movement and others, St. Paul, Minnesota, March 13, 2012. (Photo: Fibonacci Blue / Flickr)The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) meets in Washington, DC this week for its “States and Nation Policy Summit,” which is one of the ways ALEC crafts and pushes its legislative agenda for the coming year. U.S. Senator Ted Cruz — who helped push the country to the brink of financial default to thwart the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — headlines the conference on Thursday, December 5. Failed vice-presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and his Senator counterpart Ron Johnson (R-WI) will also address the crowd.

But what will happen behind closed doors during the meeting?

ALEC posted part of its legislative agendas for the meeting for the first time this month, while continuing to hide its funders and corporate authors of special interest legislation, as the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has reported. On ALEC’s agenda for 2014 are the following priorities and bills (which will become official ALEC “models” once passed by the task forces — with corporate lobbyists voting as equals alongside state legislators — and approved by the board of directors):

Opposing U.S. Consumers’ Right to Know the Origin of Our Food:

More than 90 percent of consumers want labels saying what country the meat (and fruits, vegetables, and fish) they are buying comes from, according to polls. So the introduction of a “Resolution on Country of Origin Labeling” (PDF, p. 19) — resisting the implementation of what it calls “additional regulations and requirements for our meat producers and processors” — to ALEC’s International Relations Task Force makes clear how beholden ALEC is to Big Ag and multinational corporations rather than U.S. citizens. You can read more about country of origin labeling (COOL) from CMD here and from the blog Bluestem Prairie here.

Undermining Workers’ Rights:

Another bill to undermine unions, masquerading as “employee choice,” called the “Public Employee Choice Act” (PDF, p. 6), is effectively “right to work” for public employees, and undermines collective bargaining by allowing workers to freeload off the benefits of union negotiations without paying the costs of union representation. The bill appears to be based on an Oregon 2014 ballot initiative, Initiative 9. It is similar to so-called “right to work,” only for public employees, and its euphemistic use of the word “choice” has been appealed to the Oregon Supreme Court. The “Public Employee Choice Act Committee” has so far taken in over $52,000 and spent over $36,000 as of November 25, according to campaign finance records filed with the Oregon Secretary of State, which doesn’t track the money spent and raised on dark money “issue ads.

Further efforts to eliminate occupational licensing for any profession, which help ensure that people who want to call themselves doctors, long-haul truckers, accountants, or barbers meet basic standards of training and expertise to guarantee that consumers are safe and get what they pay for. This extreme bill, called the “Private Certification Act” (PDF, p. 11), swims against the current of what most people want, which are to be treated by professionals who meet standards for competence or safety that have been established by law through the democratic process.

Undermining the Rights of Injured Americans to Hold Corporations Accountable:

Amendments to two bills making it harder for Americans injured or killed by corporations to hold those corporation responsible when their products or practices cause serious harm, called the “Punitive Damages Standards Act” (PDF, p. 15), and the “Noneconomic Damage Awards Act” (PDF, p. 30).

An amendment (PDF, p. 25) to a bill to make it harder to bring a lawsuit under state consumer protection statutes, called a “Model Act on Private Enforcement of Consumer Protection Statutes.”

Undermining Public Education and Lining the Pockets of For-Profit School Companies:

Stripping Environmental Protections:

Limiting Patient Rights and Undermining Safety Net Programs:

A bill in place of ALEC’s previous resolutions in support of “Medicaid block grants,” called the “Medicaid Block Grant Act” (PDF, p. 10), which would request “federal authorization to fund the state Medicaid program through a block grant or similar funding.” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has proposed a similar block grant system for Medicaid in several budget proposals. The cuts inherent in this system — as much as 75 percent — “would have substantial effects on the ability of millions of low-income Americans to secure health coverage and have access to needed health-care services,” according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

A bill to place new, potentially burdensome restrictions on who can be hired as so-called “insurance navigators” that are providing assistance to people in states to sign up for insurance using the ACA exchanges, called the “Navigator Background Check Act” (PDF, p. 22). Along with an array of other ALEC bills, this would further undermine the effectiveness of the ACA, as CMD has reported.

A bill to end licensing, certification, and specialty certification for doctors and other medical professionals as requirements to practice medicine in the state and to prohibit the state from funding the Federation of State Medical Boards, euphemistically called the “Patient Access Expansion Act” (PDF, p. 25). This bill was introduced to the task force previously at the 2012 ALEC Winter Task Force Summit and was presumably not approved. It is being re-introduced with no discernible changes.

CMD will be reporting on any news emerging from ALEC’s meeting in Washington, DC this week, so stay tuned to PRWatch.org for more. You can also take action to ask Google to stop funding ALEC by clicking here.