American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) Bills

ALEC has over 800 "model" bills affecting the rights and future of every American in every single state. These bills can be categorized as follows:

• Worker and Consumer Rights: Limiting worker and consumer rights, privatizing government services, and pushing "Free" trade. These bills limit workers rights and drain labor unions of resources for protecting employees, undermine consumer protections, favor the Wall Street financial agenda, limit the ability to cap exorbitant interest rates on credit cards and big bank fees. These bills and resolutions also attempt to funnel tax dollars to for-profit corporations through privatization schemes and push the "free trade" agenda that has shipped good-paying American jobs overseas.
• Tort Reform, Corporate Liability, and the Rights of Injured Americans: Bills to change the laws to limit the rights and remedies of Americans injured or killed by corporations.
• Privatizing Public Education, Higher Ed Policy, and Teachers: These bills decimate teacher's unions, make education a private commodity rather than a public good, and push universities to be more politically conservative.
• Health, Pharmaceuticals, and Safety Net Programs: privatizing Medicare, deregulating health insurers, protecting negligent doctors, and cutting holes in the safety net.
• Environment, Energy, and Agriculture: Undermining environmental protections, limiting the ability of local government to manage land use, and protecting corporate polluters. These "model bills" and resolutions thwart efforts to address climate change, streamline siting of nuclear power plants, and oppose efforts to address hazardous coal waste.
• Democracy, Voter Rights, and Federal Power: Efforts to limit democratic participation, facilitate big money in politics, and override the federal government. This includes "Voter ID" bills being pushed in many states, including Minnesota.
• Taxes and Budgets: Bills that would create tax giveaways to Big Business, give tax breaks to the richest, and eviscerate state legislatures' ability to raise revenue through tax increases. These "model bills" and resolutions also push for extending the Bush tax cuts and attempt to use temporary legislative majorities to tie the hands of future majorities to raise taxes to meet citizens' needs.
• Guns, Prisons, Crime, and Immigration: Bills that would result in taxpayers subsidizing the profits of the private prison industry by putting more people in for-profit prisons and keeping them in jail for longer. The bills also would put more guns on streets and interfere with local law enforcement decisions about how best to interact with immigrant communities.