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I led a panel discussion at Netroots Nation in Pittsburgh Aug. 13 on how progressives can gain the offensive in talking about such issues as health care reform and federal spending. The panel—Campaign for America's Future bloggers Digby, Monica Sanchez and Dave Johnson—stressed that careful language and issue-framing is especially important now to counter increasingly vehement right-wing narratives.

Scott Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, explains how Chinese steel manufacturers gain an unfair trade advantage over their U.S. counterparts, even though U.S. plants are demonstrably more efficient and technologically advanced. He spoke to a group of bloggers at the Netroots Nation conference in Pittsburgh Aug. 13, 2009, after they toured the Mon Valley Works steel plant outside the city.

The needs of American workers were not adequately addressed during discussions between the Obama administration and Chinese government leadership in late July, said Scott Paul, the executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, in an interview taped July 31 with CNN.

The American worker "unfortunately has been shoved aside or shoved down the road," Scott said, noting that Chinese government policies that have contributed to the shift of 2.3 million jobs from America to China in the past decade—including currency manipulation and and industrial subsidies—were left off the negotiating table. He warned that if these issues are not addressed, the United States faces the prospect of a jobless recovery.

"I think the least we can do right now is hold China to the standards that it agreed to when it entered the World Trade Organization" regarding its currency, industrial subsidies and openness to imports, Paul said.

Members of the House of Representatives' Progressive Caucus declared at a press conference outside the Capitol July 30 they will vote against a health care reform bill that does not have a "robust" public option. Progressives pushed back against conservatives in both parties who have been attempting to slow down and water down health care reform. When the press conference was held, 53 members of the House, a larger contingent than the conservative Blue Dog Coalition, had signed a letter that drew the line against efforts to weaken the public option.

The letter said, in part:

We regard the agreement reached by Chairman Waxman and several Blue Dog members ofthe Committee as fundamentally unacceptable. This agreement is not a step forward toward a good health care bill, but a large step backwards. Any bill that does not provide, at a minimum, for a public option with reimbursement rates based on Medicare rates -not negotiated rates -is unacceptable. It would ensure higher costs for the public plan, and would do nothing to achieve the goal of"keeping insurance companies honest," and their rates down.

To offset the increased costs incurred by adopting the provisions advocated by the Blue Dog members ofthe Committee, the agreement would reduce subsidies to low-and middle-income families, requiring them to pay a larger portion oftheir income for insurance premiums, and would impose an unfunded mandate on the states to pay for what were to have been Federal costs.

In short, this agreement will result in the public, both as insurance purchasers and as taxpayers, paying ever higher rates to insurance companies.

We simply cannot vote for such a proposal.

The next day, the House Energy and Commerce Committee agreed on a compromise that addressed some of the objections of progressives.