Multimedia

The importance of enacting the Employee Free Choice Act and its prognosis in Congress is explained in a plenary session featuring Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa; former congressman David Bonior, chairman of American Rights at Work; Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America; Kimberly Freeman, acting executive director, American Rights at Work; and Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

Vice President Joe Biden's economic policy adviser, Jared Bernstein, is the featured speaker at a panel discussion that analyzes President Obama's response to the economic crisis. Other panelists were Robert Juttner, The American Prospect; Katrina vanden Hauvel, The Nation; and Emma Coleman Jordan, Georgetown Law School.

America's Future co-director Robert Borosage opens the America's Future Now! conference with a challenge to the progressive movement to seize a chance for progressive change that the nation has not seen since at least the 1960s. The dramatic and sweeping failure of conservative policies and the ascendancy of the Obama administration and a Democratic—albeit not always progressive—Congress gives progressives the opportunity to enact bold reforms in areas ranging from health care to energy policy. "We are not likely to see this opportunity again," he says.

In this address, Borosage answers the question of whether progressives should support the Obama administration as it pursues its agenda or challenge it to change direction. "There is one certain answer to that choice," he says. "Yes."

Jared Bernstein, economic policy adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, explains the Obama administration's economic policy decisions in this address at America's Future Now. He says the country needs to end the “shampoo economy—bubble, bust, repeat” and replace it with an economy that can sustain middle-class prosperity. He also says the nation needs “a government that’s amply funded, fiscally responsible, and competently run.” That means “we have to invest in health care, environment, and education to create the foundation for a strong, sustainable American economy.”