[This article also appears on Huffingtonpost.com. You can access it from my author page here.]
"I don't care about that."
That is what Rick Perry said in the New York Times when John Harwood told him his tax plan would increase income inequality. Give Perry credit for his honesty. After all, he just articulated out loud what is the accepted dogma of the modern Tea Party-owned Republican party, which is completely dedicated to protecting the wealthy and corporations on the backs of the (rapidly shrinking) middle class, by way of a religious adherence to far-right free market principles.
But there is a danger to Republicans adopting a "Let them eat cake" approach. By dismissing income equality as a key issue, the GOP is headed for a trip wire the party doesn't seem to see coming.
We see it in their approach to Occupy Wall Street. The GOP strategy seems to be that if they can dismiss the protesters as a bunch of crazies (or "human debris," as the always vile Rush Limbaugh put it), then Americans won't notice the issues underlying the protest.
In the short term, the Republican strategy will probably work. By highlighting the elements that look and sound the most out of the mainstream, average Americans won't be able to relate to the protesters and will be wary of being grouped with them.
But what the Republicans are missing is that the anger underneath the Occupy Wall Street protests isn't limited to the dedicated individuals sleeping in a Lower Manhattan park.
So long as the GOP can frame Occupy Wall Street as an attack on the rich or an attack on capitalism, its appeal will be limited. No matter how tough things are with the U.S. economy, Americans don't hate rich people. On the contrary, they aspire to be rich people.
But the middle class can't become wealthy if the government is, through action and inaction, helping the rich get richer while keeping the middle class down, as it has done for the last 30 years (something Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson demonstrate in "Winner-Take-All Politics").
And Americans have no use for unfairness. They want there to be a correlation between hard work and success. For the financial executives who caused the 2008 financial crisis, there wasn't even a correlation between success and success. Wall Street bankers made billions of dollars for recklessly devising and selling financial instruments they knew were junk, resulting in a near financial collapse that required a government bailout from the Bush administration.
The resulting recession and economic stagnation hit the middle class hard while leaving the wealthiest Americans untouched and corporations flush with cash. (Paul Krugman provided a great recap earlier this month of the abuses that led to the financial crisis.)
The bottom line is that income inequality has been skyrocketing since Ronald Reagan took office (and accelerated under George W. Bush) behind policies (like massive unpaid-for tax cuts for the wealthy) that had the effect of redistributing income from the middle class upward.
Mother Jones recently compiled some staggering statistics on income inequality:
- Between 2007 and 2009 (pre- and post-financial crisis), Wall Street profits rose 720 percent while American's home equity plummeted 35 percent, all while the unemployment rate went up 102 percent.
- The average income of the top 1 percent has nearly quadrupled since 1980, but the top 20 percent showed only modest growth while the bottom 80 percent flatlined during that period. As a result, the top 1 percent's share of income has exploded by nearly 120 percent since 1980, while the top 20 percent went up a bit and the bottom 80 percent lost its share of income. Put another way, if income growth was equal during the period, the top one percent would have made $597,241 less per household (totaling $673 billion), while the bottom 90 percent would have made more (between $3,733 and $10,100 per household, depending on where the family fell in the percentile list).
- Even as the top 1 percent made out like bandits over the last 30 years, they actually bore less of the tax burden. Between 1992 and 2007, the 400 taxpayers with the highest incomes experienced a 392 percent increase in income but saw their average tax rate go down 37 percent.
- As of 2007, the top 1 percent of Americans in wealth controlled 34.6 percent of America's net worth. The top 10 percent controlled a whopping 73 percent of the country's wealth. And these figures came before the housing bubble burst, hitting the middle and working classes especially hard.
The AP recently did a study that found that the recovery from the 2008 recession has been the most unequal of any recovery since the 1930s. The money did not find its way to the middle class. The percentage of the economy made up of workers' pay and benefits hit an all-time low, all while corporate profits surged, as did CEO compensation. And the stock market recovery put money in the pockets of the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans, even as the middle class continued to struggle and lose ground. In fact, the New York Times ran a front page story today noting how there has been a 53 percent increase in poverty in the suburbs since 2000, with the bulk of that coming after the 2008 financial crisis.
The key to why the Republicans are miscalculating in dismissing income inequality lies in a telling piece of data Mother Jones provides: The actual distribution of income in the United States is far more unbalanced than Americans think it is, and, as importantly, far, far above what they think it should be.
The Republicans want to claim that the Democrats are engaging in class warfare by trying to let the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire, but the Republicans have been waging a class war on behalf of the top ten percent against everyone else for the last 30 years.
It's not about hating on the rich. Nobody begrudges entrepreneurs and hard-working visionaries like Steve Jobs and Warren Buffet their successes. No, the anger underneath Occupy Wall Street is about fairness. And income inequality fostered by government policy is not fair.
As unemployment continues to remain high, the economic situation remains murky, and Americans start to see the redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy, anger will intensify. And when the anger moves from more easily dismissible protesters in Lower Manhattan to a larger swath of the American citizenry, comments like Perry's "I don't care about that" will not be received well.
The participants in Occupy Wall Street may not look like Middle America, and they may not have a polished plan to rectify the problems they are seeking to publicize, but that doesn't make the anger they are expressing less real. More importantly, that anger is shared by more Americans than would make the GOP comfortable.
So Republicans should ridicule Occupy Wall Street at their own risk. They may be able to belittle the protesters, but they can't hide income inequality from the American people.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
I Hope Obama's Veto Threat Is the Start of a New Effort to Fight Back Against the GOP
[This article also appears on Huffingtonpost.com. You can access it from my author page here.]
When I read that Jerry Brown was "bewildered and stunned" at how ideological and uncompromising the GOP had become in California, I was surprised and dismayed, all at the same time.
I was surprised because I had to wonder if the governor had been paying attention to national politics. I've discussed how the Republicans have become a Tea Party-captured institution of far-right activism. Even conservative columnist David Brooks went from arguing in November 2010 that pragmatic conservatives would dominate the Republican leadership in the House to a full-on anti-Tea Party rant in July 2011, declaring that the GOP had been "infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative" and that would not "accept the logic of compromise" or "accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities." He went on to conclude that they have "no economic theory worthy of the name" and "no sense of moral decency."
But I was dismayed, because it only made clearer how much damage the Tea Party-captured Republicans are doing to the country's political process, and how few people outside of those immersed in politics seem to be noticing. And, as I discussed after the debt ceiling battle, I've had it with the total capitulation of the Democrats and the president.
What really struck me about the timing of the Brown piece in the New York Times was that over the last few weeks, it feels as though I've seen story after story that exposes the very specific agenda of the new GOP, which is, as 28-year-veteran Republican Congressional staffer Mike Lofgren put it, "solely and exclusively" interested in helping the wealthy (while camouflaging their policy positions to hide their true motives). Specifically, in just the last few weeks:
- After successfully dangling the U.S. economy over a cliff and threatening to drop it in a bid to extort spending cuts before agreeing to raising the debt ceiling, the GOP again is playing chicken, refusing to pass legislation funding the government (which could lead to a government shut-down) if they can't extort spending cuts in exchange for helping people suffering from the effects of natural disasters like Hurricane Irene. And this comes just weeks after the Republicans held the funding of the FAA hostage (resulting in the loss of tens of millions of dollars in uncollected taxes from the airlines) while trying to include cuts and union-busting provisions to the legislation.
- With millions of Americans out of work and more suffering due to the slow economy, the Republican leadership in Congress wrote a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke asking him not to try and help spur the economy (something CNBC described as "highly unusual"), blatantly and callously putting their political strategy for 2012 ahead of what's best for the American people.
- The Republicans energetically and vehemently went on the offensive to protect the wealthy from the president's proposed tax on millionaires to help spread the sacrifice in addressing the long-term budget situation, but rejected the president's call for a middle class payroll tax break. (Fortunately, Mother Jones came up with a short, to-the-point, six-item list demonstrating the fictional assertions behind the GOP's stated reasons for opposing a millionaire tax.)
And the Republican refusal to consider any revenue increases to help cut the deficit goes against the views of an overwhelming majority of the American people, including Republicans. A July Gallup poll revealed that while Americans do want cuts to close the budget gap, 68 percent of Republicans and 69 percent of independents said that their preferred method to balance the budget included at least some tax increases.
But I'm also dismayed because I'm afraid Brown's surprise at GOP unreasonableness is symbolic of the lack of understanding of Democrats in how to handle what is happening in the country now. After all, despite holding positions shared by a majority of the American people (on issues from gay marriage to tax increases on the wealthy), the party hasn't made a clear case as to why they should be preferred to Republicans. The president's poll numbers are falling, a Republican won a special election to fill Anthony Weiner's House seat (yes, I know the Democrats ran a weak candidate and Ed Koch decided that the Orthodox Jewish candidate would be worse at protecting Israel than the Catholic one, but a Democrat losing a House seat in Queens and Brooklyn is newsworthy), and the Democrats are in the strategically problematic position of defending far more Senate seats than the Republicans in 2012.
The problem can be summed up in some recent conflicting poll numbers. Greg Sargent wrote in the Washington Post how a recent MSNBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that while a majority disapproved of the president's handling of the economy, those same respondents nevertheless supported his policies over those of the GOP.
Clearly, there is a disconnect between policy and politics.
Part of the problem, of course, is that by failing time and time again to stand up to the Tea Party Republicans in the House, the Democrats haven't provided a clear contrast for voters. And in doing so, they've allowed the conversation to shift to the right, with the GOP agenda dominating the conversation. But I think it's more than that. I think that in the current atmosphere in the country, policy positions aren't enough. It's about emotion.
My thinking on this issue came from the oddest place: A 2009 Fox News program. As part of my research for my graduate school thesis, I have been doing a textual analysis of cable news programs in August 2009, around the time Sarah Palin coined the term "death panels" to misrepresent provisions in proposed health care reform legislation (it was PolitiFacts' top lie of 2009). I was reading the transcript from Sean Hannity's August 13, 2009, show, during which a member of his "focus group" said, in reference to the 2008 election: "I felt very safe with Bush. And that was a prime issue for me."
Knowing what we know now, how, under President Obama, U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies have stepped up drone attacks in Pakistan, decimated al-Qaida, cut off threats to America before they could take place, and, most of all, killed Osama bin Laden, the woman's statement has no basis in fact.
But she wasn't making a factual assertion. She was expressing a feeling. She bought the line the GOP was pushing in the campaign (and continued to push in 2009) that Obama wouldn't do enough to keep the country safe from terrorists, and that's how she felt.
What does that have to do with 2011? Well, the emotions being felt by many Americans now are equally pronounced. After three years of a down economy since the financial crisis, they're worried and angry. And all they see in government is dysfunction (putting aside for the moment the reason for the dysfunction). For example, in a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, 71 percent of respondents had a negative view of the debt ceiling deal, and they blamed both parties for the mess.
So like the woman who felt safer with Bush, voting decisions may not match up with the facts. Democrats have to recognize and work with the anger and fear that Americans are feeling. And they can best do that by demonstrating how they differ from the current crop of extremist, unreasonable Tea Party Republicans.
Which is why the president's threat this week to veto any deficit-reduction bill that doesn't include tax increases on the wealthy along with cuts to Medicare is so important. It's not just the issue (a vast majority agree with him), but for once he seems to be fighting for the American people. For once, it appears like he gets it. Is it too late? There is no way of knowing if voters (especially independents) have irretrievably soured on the president. But something had to change.
There is an anti-incumbent feeling now. Congress's approval rating is, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll, a record low 12 percent. At this point, other than partisans on both sides, too many Americans think there is no difference between the parties. They think both parties are bought and paid for by special interests, and that they're not looking out for the American people. While it's true that too many Democrats are beholden to the corporations that fund their campaigns, there is a real difference between the parties. We saw the damage George W. Bush inflicted on the country for most of the 2000s, and we are seeing the far-right agenda being relentlessly pursued as we speak by the Republicans who control the House. If the GOP were to control Congress and the White House, things would get much worse for most Americans in a hurry.
I understand that President Obama is very interested in appearing above the fray, avoiding partisan battles. But the current GOP is interested in nothing but partisan battles. They are focused on defeating President Obama in 2012, not lowering unemployment or jump-starting the economy. Democrats in Washington, including the president, have to start doing a better job of addressing the fears and anger of the American people, while pointing to the differences in the policies of the two parties. They have to find a way to demonstrate that the Republicans' policies are not only potentially disastrous, but they seek to redistribute wealth upward, helping the rich get richer, destroying the middle class, and further pushing the wealth disparity to levels not seen since Hoover was president. And that means standing up to the Tea Party and forcing the debate back toward the center.
Since in office, the president has been more interested in policy than politics, but policy alone isn't enough anymore. As Jerry Brown discovered, things have changed. Many Americans don't see a difference in the parties. They're afraid, and they're angry. It's up to the Democrats, especially the president, to understand the lay of the land an act accordingly. If they don't, the anger- and fear-driven anti-incumbent fervor could drive the party from Washington, no matter what their policy positions are. And that would be disastrous for the American people.
When I read that Jerry Brown was "bewildered and stunned" at how ideological and uncompromising the GOP had become in California, I was surprised and dismayed, all at the same time.
I was surprised because I had to wonder if the governor had been paying attention to national politics. I've discussed how the Republicans have become a Tea Party-captured institution of far-right activism. Even conservative columnist David Brooks went from arguing in November 2010 that pragmatic conservatives would dominate the Republican leadership in the House to a full-on anti-Tea Party rant in July 2011, declaring that the GOP had been "infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative" and that would not "accept the logic of compromise" or "accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities." He went on to conclude that they have "no economic theory worthy of the name" and "no sense of moral decency."
But I was dismayed, because it only made clearer how much damage the Tea Party-captured Republicans are doing to the country's political process, and how few people outside of those immersed in politics seem to be noticing. And, as I discussed after the debt ceiling battle, I've had it with the total capitulation of the Democrats and the president.
What really struck me about the timing of the Brown piece in the New York Times was that over the last few weeks, it feels as though I've seen story after story that exposes the very specific agenda of the new GOP, which is, as 28-year-veteran Republican Congressional staffer Mike Lofgren put it, "solely and exclusively" interested in helping the wealthy (while camouflaging their policy positions to hide their true motives). Specifically, in just the last few weeks:
- After successfully dangling the U.S. economy over a cliff and threatening to drop it in a bid to extort spending cuts before agreeing to raising the debt ceiling, the GOP again is playing chicken, refusing to pass legislation funding the government (which could lead to a government shut-down) if they can't extort spending cuts in exchange for helping people suffering from the effects of natural disasters like Hurricane Irene. And this comes just weeks after the Republicans held the funding of the FAA hostage (resulting in the loss of tens of millions of dollars in uncollected taxes from the airlines) while trying to include cuts and union-busting provisions to the legislation.
- With millions of Americans out of work and more suffering due to the slow economy, the Republican leadership in Congress wrote a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke asking him not to try and help spur the economy (something CNBC described as "highly unusual"), blatantly and callously putting their political strategy for 2012 ahead of what's best for the American people.
- The Republicans energetically and vehemently went on the offensive to protect the wealthy from the president's proposed tax on millionaires to help spread the sacrifice in addressing the long-term budget situation, but rejected the president's call for a middle class payroll tax break. (Fortunately, Mother Jones came up with a short, to-the-point, six-item list demonstrating the fictional assertions behind the GOP's stated reasons for opposing a millionaire tax.)
And the Republican refusal to consider any revenue increases to help cut the deficit goes against the views of an overwhelming majority of the American people, including Republicans. A July Gallup poll revealed that while Americans do want cuts to close the budget gap, 68 percent of Republicans and 69 percent of independents said that their preferred method to balance the budget included at least some tax increases.
But I'm also dismayed because I'm afraid Brown's surprise at GOP unreasonableness is symbolic of the lack of understanding of Democrats in how to handle what is happening in the country now. After all, despite holding positions shared by a majority of the American people (on issues from gay marriage to tax increases on the wealthy), the party hasn't made a clear case as to why they should be preferred to Republicans. The president's poll numbers are falling, a Republican won a special election to fill Anthony Weiner's House seat (yes, I know the Democrats ran a weak candidate and Ed Koch decided that the Orthodox Jewish candidate would be worse at protecting Israel than the Catholic one, but a Democrat losing a House seat in Queens and Brooklyn is newsworthy), and the Democrats are in the strategically problematic position of defending far more Senate seats than the Republicans in 2012.
The problem can be summed up in some recent conflicting poll numbers. Greg Sargent wrote in the Washington Post how a recent MSNBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that while a majority disapproved of the president's handling of the economy, those same respondents nevertheless supported his policies over those of the GOP.
Clearly, there is a disconnect between policy and politics.
Part of the problem, of course, is that by failing time and time again to stand up to the Tea Party Republicans in the House, the Democrats haven't provided a clear contrast for voters. And in doing so, they've allowed the conversation to shift to the right, with the GOP agenda dominating the conversation. But I think it's more than that. I think that in the current atmosphere in the country, policy positions aren't enough. It's about emotion.
My thinking on this issue came from the oddest place: A 2009 Fox News program. As part of my research for my graduate school thesis, I have been doing a textual analysis of cable news programs in August 2009, around the time Sarah Palin coined the term "death panels" to misrepresent provisions in proposed health care reform legislation (it was PolitiFacts' top lie of 2009). I was reading the transcript from Sean Hannity's August 13, 2009, show, during which a member of his "focus group" said, in reference to the 2008 election: "I felt very safe with Bush. And that was a prime issue for me."
Knowing what we know now, how, under President Obama, U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies have stepped up drone attacks in Pakistan, decimated al-Qaida, cut off threats to America before they could take place, and, most of all, killed Osama bin Laden, the woman's statement has no basis in fact.
But she wasn't making a factual assertion. She was expressing a feeling. She bought the line the GOP was pushing in the campaign (and continued to push in 2009) that Obama wouldn't do enough to keep the country safe from terrorists, and that's how she felt.
What does that have to do with 2011? Well, the emotions being felt by many Americans now are equally pronounced. After three years of a down economy since the financial crisis, they're worried and angry. And all they see in government is dysfunction (putting aside for the moment the reason for the dysfunction). For example, in a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, 71 percent of respondents had a negative view of the debt ceiling deal, and they blamed both parties for the mess.
So like the woman who felt safer with Bush, voting decisions may not match up with the facts. Democrats have to recognize and work with the anger and fear that Americans are feeling. And they can best do that by demonstrating how they differ from the current crop of extremist, unreasonable Tea Party Republicans.
Which is why the president's threat this week to veto any deficit-reduction bill that doesn't include tax increases on the wealthy along with cuts to Medicare is so important. It's not just the issue (a vast majority agree with him), but for once he seems to be fighting for the American people. For once, it appears like he gets it. Is it too late? There is no way of knowing if voters (especially independents) have irretrievably soured on the president. But something had to change.
There is an anti-incumbent feeling now. Congress's approval rating is, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll, a record low 12 percent. At this point, other than partisans on both sides, too many Americans think there is no difference between the parties. They think both parties are bought and paid for by special interests, and that they're not looking out for the American people. While it's true that too many Democrats are beholden to the corporations that fund their campaigns, there is a real difference between the parties. We saw the damage George W. Bush inflicted on the country for most of the 2000s, and we are seeing the far-right agenda being relentlessly pursued as we speak by the Republicans who control the House. If the GOP were to control Congress and the White House, things would get much worse for most Americans in a hurry.
I understand that President Obama is very interested in appearing above the fray, avoiding partisan battles. But the current GOP is interested in nothing but partisan battles. They are focused on defeating President Obama in 2012, not lowering unemployment or jump-starting the economy. Democrats in Washington, including the president, have to start doing a better job of addressing the fears and anger of the American people, while pointing to the differences in the policies of the two parties. They have to find a way to demonstrate that the Republicans' policies are not only potentially disastrous, but they seek to redistribute wealth upward, helping the rich get richer, destroying the middle class, and further pushing the wealth disparity to levels not seen since Hoover was president. And that means standing up to the Tea Party and forcing the debate back toward the center.
Since in office, the president has been more interested in policy than politics, but policy alone isn't enough anymore. As Jerry Brown discovered, things have changed. Many Americans don't see a difference in the parties. They're afraid, and they're angry. It's up to the Democrats, especially the president, to understand the lay of the land an act accordingly. If they don't, the anger- and fear-driven anti-incumbent fervor could drive the party from Washington, no matter what their policy positions are. And that would be disastrous for the American people.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
The Debt Ceiling "Compromise" Is a Total Democratic Capitulation to the GOP
[This article also appears on Huffingtonpost.com. You can access it from my author page here.]
Imagine this scenario: You're pro-choice and you attend a debate between two candidates for office on the issue of a constitutional amendment to criminalize abortion. The first candidate argues that abortion is murder, and if a doctor performs an abortion on a woman, both of them should be charged with first-degree homicide. The second candidate then rises in rebuttal, saying, "No, if a doctor performs an abortion, only he should be charged with first-degree murder. The mother should be charged with negligent homicide."
Would you feel represented? Of course not. But that's what has happened with the debt ceiling negotiations.
It's easy to take shots at the Tea Party-controlled Republican leadership for holding the American economy hostage to fulfill their extreme-right, not-supported-by-the-American-people obsession with cutting spending, and how their alleged concern over debt is really a smoke screen to fundamentally change American society, returning the country back to the 1920s when corporations and the wealthy were allowed to run amok and there was no social safety net for everyone else (leading, of course, to the greatest depression of the 20th century). I did just that last week.
But what has me so angry right now is the news of Harry Reid signing off on a compromise to the debt-ceiling clash that is, in essence, a complete capitulation to the Tea Party position. I have never been so pessimistic about the state of our political process and the future of the country.
I have one simple question: Where are the Democrats?
Isn't the Democratic party supposed to be the institution in place to oppose the Republicans when they offer bad policy, especially when polls show that a majority of Americans don't share the GOP obsession with spending cuts? (Not only did polls from CBS News and Gallup show that Americans favored revenue increases along with spending cuts to settle the debt ceiling impasse, but another Gallup poll on July 20 revealed that only 16 percent of Americans thought the deficit was "the most important problem facing the country today," while 27 percent listed unemployment and 31 percent said the economy in general.)
After all, you can't blame the Republicans for advancing their agenda. And while using blackmail and putting the country's economic condition in peril may be amoral, it's pointless to expect the John Boehners of the world to stand up to that amorality.
No, it's on the Democrats, who, not incidentally, control two of the three institutions necessary to make a deal, to stand up to what Steve Benen called "extortion politics."
It's the job of the Democrats to stand firm on the proposition that the debt ceiling (honoring past commitments democratically agreed to by a decade's worth of Congresses and presidents) has nothing to do with decisions on how to handle future budgets, and to link them is just extortion politics.
It's the job of the Democrats to make the case that while fiscal responsibility is an important long-term goal (after all, it was a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who signed the last budget with a surplus, while a Republican president working with a Republican Congress proceeded to sign off on budget after budget with deficits), with the economy struggling and unemployment high, slashing spending now will only make things worse for most (that is, those not in the top one percent of wealth) Americans.
It's the job of the Democrats to stand firm that not one dollar of spending should be cut before tax cuts are rolled back for the wealthiest Americans, tax breaks are discontinued for corporate jets, and subsidies are discarded for large oil companies raking in copious profits.
It's the job of the Democrats to continually highlight that massive spending cuts, especially slashing Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, have a human face. That while the Republicans were straight-out lying (Politfact's top lie of 2009) when they told tales of death panels and policies to discontinue care to seniors, cuts to Medicare and Social Security would actually send countless senior citizens into desperate financial situations.
But what did the Democrats do? They accepted the Tea Party premise that it was vital right now to address spending instead of unemployment and the economy. They never held firm on the idea that the debt ceiling had nothing to do with future budgets. They never pressed the case that by not raising the debt ceiling, Republicans would be taking the unbelievably un-American step of forcing the country to renege on its already agreed-to obligations. They didn't make a clear case to the American people that the GOP was holding the American economy hostage to fulfill their political motives. (For example, John Boehner admitted that many in his caucus wanted to let the debt ceiling deadline pass and "create chaos" in order to force through their far-right fiscal policies, including a balanced budget amendment, and yet the Democrats did nothing to publicize this fact.) They failed to make the case to the American people that the cuts being thrown around by Republicans would negatively impact their day-to-day lives, far more than deficits would this year. They never held firm on insisting on the wealthiest Americans, who profited most from the last decade of fiscal irresponsibility, paying their share toward the fiscal solution with rollbacks of the Bush tax cuts, standing with those looking to support the wealthiest Americans instead of the rest of us.
In short, the Democrats did more than just cave. They actually adopted the Republican position, and then engaged in a debate on how extreme that Republican position would be (offering far-right crazy in opposition to the Tea Party's all-out, society-changing crazy).
Put another way, the Democrats didn't fulfill their duty in a two-party system of representing the opposing point of view on the debt ceiling (especially, again, when polls show that the people don't support the GOP's draconian position on the issue).
It has been argued that since the Tea Party members of the House, as David Brooks put it, "do not accept the logic of compromise," "do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities," and "have no sense of moral decency," the Democrats had to be the adults, doing what was necessary to avoid a default and the calamitous results for the American economy that would come with it. Under this argument, the Democrats could not stand firm because their first allegiance had to be preventing default, no matter what it took, while the Tea Party Republicans irresponsibly ran around declaring that a default would not be a big deal.
I don't buy this argument. In fact, I find that approach weak and counter-productive. What would stop the Tea Party from holding the economy hostage again and again? The Democrats had a moral obligation to stand firm to protect the American people from the Tea Party zealots in the House (and the members of the Republican leadership that were too afraid of a primary challenge to stand up to their lunatic fringe). And they failed.
As importantly, while a default and/or a credit downgrade would have been disastrous for the American economy, I'm not convinced that the drastic slashes in spending (with zero increase in revenues) in the "compromise" won't be as bad or worse. As Paul Krugman said on This Week today:
"We have 9 percent unemployment. These spending cuts are going to worsen unemployment. It's even going to hold the long-run fiscal picture because we have a situation where more and more people are becoming permanent long-term unemployed. ... I have nobody I know who thinks the unemployment rate will be below 8 percent at the end of next year. With the spending cuts it might be above 9 percent at the end of next year. There is no light at the end of this tunnel. We're having a debate in Washington, all about, 'Gee, we'll make the economy worse, but will we make it worse on 90 percent of the Republicans' terms or 100 percent of Republicans' terms?' The answer is 100 percent."
The debate over the debt ceiling was an epic test for leading Democrats, and each and every one of them failed miserably. Reid, as the majority leader of the Senate, had the ability to hijack the discussion in the same way Boehner did. Same goes for the president. But both chose to adopt the Republican position and, as Krugman said, fight over whether it would be 90 percent or 100 percent Republican.
Who was fighting for the traditional Democratic position, the one that looked out for middle-class and working-class Americans? No Democrat in a position of power.
(I want to acknowledge the argument many have made that this outcome is, in fact, consistent with the president's policy preferences, in that he, like the Republicans in Congress, favors massive spending cuts. We don't know what is inside the president's mind. But as a Democratic president, I feel like he had an obligation to stand up to the Republican madness, and, as such, I will hold him accountable for not doing so.)
So we got a "compromise" that was really a capitulation, and we had to endure sad-sack Democratic quotes, like Diane Feinstein not being pleased, and Carl Levin pointing the finger of blame at the president. It's unacceptable. If they're not happy, why didn't they stand firm against the GOP proposal?
And what is especially galling about the whole sad affair is that the Democrats have seen over the past year how far-right Republican policies are pushing voters over to Democratic candidates. It began in 2010 when Republicans lost extremely winnable Senate seats in Nevada, Delaware, Colorado and West Virginia because voters rejected Tea Party-GOP nominees (something I discussed last November). It continued through the emergence of buyer's remorse in states electing Republican governors, including New Jersey, Ohio, Michigan, Florida and Wisconsin. It was on stark display in upstate New York when voters in a traditionally conservative district elected a Democrat in a special House election. And it is currently visible in the senate recall efforts in Wisconsin. Opposing draconian cuts, especially to Medicare, has been good political business for Democrats (something Republicans, of course, realize).
So not only is standing up to Republican excesses the right thing for Democrats to do, it has also been demonstrated to be good politics. But the Demcorats still managed to completely capitulate to the Tea Party position. And in doing so, they potentially removed the Medicare issue as one they could use to hammer Republicans in 2012.
The takeaway from the debt ceiling negotiations, for me, is that while the two-party system is alive and well in the United States when it comes to partisan bickering and political gamesmanship, when it comes to the powers in Washington deciding what to do for the country, the two-party system is dead. Democrats have abdicated the role of fighting for the interests of the American people, so that we now have Republicans and Democrats who will eventually accept the Republican position.
Such a state of affairs is upsetting to me as a liberal/progressive. But it is far more of a blow to me as an American citizen. Who in Washington is presenting the argument for what is best for the whole country, not just corporations and the wealthiest one percent? Nobody I see, and certainly not Harry Reid and Barack Obama.
The Republicans are the easy villains in this sordid affair. Their behavior in holding the country hostage to push a far-right agenda out of step with the beliefs of the American people has been disgraceful.
But the Democrats can't escape blame. When the moment of truth came, they showed no resolve. I'd honestly rather have faced a government default that would have been squarely on the shoulders of the Tea Party. At least then we would know exactly what happened and who was responsible. But when working class and middle class Americans, already hammered by a decade of increasing wealth disparity and an unemployment crisis, are further ground down by draconian and unnecessary budget cuts, while the wealthy enjoy tax cuts and oil companies continue to receive subsidies, it will be sad to know that the Democrats signed off on such an outcome.
We will look back and know that when the debt ceiling issue was in play, the Republicans made their case, but nobody in a position of power made the opposing argument. The Democrats just went along. And Democratic leaders will have to live with the consequences, along with the rest of us.
Imagine this scenario: You're pro-choice and you attend a debate between two candidates for office on the issue of a constitutional amendment to criminalize abortion. The first candidate argues that abortion is murder, and if a doctor performs an abortion on a woman, both of them should be charged with first-degree homicide. The second candidate then rises in rebuttal, saying, "No, if a doctor performs an abortion, only he should be charged with first-degree murder. The mother should be charged with negligent homicide."
Would you feel represented? Of course not. But that's what has happened with the debt ceiling negotiations.
It's easy to take shots at the Tea Party-controlled Republican leadership for holding the American economy hostage to fulfill their extreme-right, not-supported-by-the-American-people obsession with cutting spending, and how their alleged concern over debt is really a smoke screen to fundamentally change American society, returning the country back to the 1920s when corporations and the wealthy were allowed to run amok and there was no social safety net for everyone else (leading, of course, to the greatest depression of the 20th century). I did just that last week.
But what has me so angry right now is the news of Harry Reid signing off on a compromise to the debt-ceiling clash that is, in essence, a complete capitulation to the Tea Party position. I have never been so pessimistic about the state of our political process and the future of the country.
I have one simple question: Where are the Democrats?
Isn't the Democratic party supposed to be the institution in place to oppose the Republicans when they offer bad policy, especially when polls show that a majority of Americans don't share the GOP obsession with spending cuts? (Not only did polls from CBS News and Gallup show that Americans favored revenue increases along with spending cuts to settle the debt ceiling impasse, but another Gallup poll on July 20 revealed that only 16 percent of Americans thought the deficit was "the most important problem facing the country today," while 27 percent listed unemployment and 31 percent said the economy in general.)
After all, you can't blame the Republicans for advancing their agenda. And while using blackmail and putting the country's economic condition in peril may be amoral, it's pointless to expect the John Boehners of the world to stand up to that amorality.
No, it's on the Democrats, who, not incidentally, control two of the three institutions necessary to make a deal, to stand up to what Steve Benen called "extortion politics."
It's the job of the Democrats to stand firm on the proposition that the debt ceiling (honoring past commitments democratically agreed to by a decade's worth of Congresses and presidents) has nothing to do with decisions on how to handle future budgets, and to link them is just extortion politics.
It's the job of the Democrats to make the case that while fiscal responsibility is an important long-term goal (after all, it was a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who signed the last budget with a surplus, while a Republican president working with a Republican Congress proceeded to sign off on budget after budget with deficits), with the economy struggling and unemployment high, slashing spending now will only make things worse for most (that is, those not in the top one percent of wealth) Americans.
It's the job of the Democrats to stand firm that not one dollar of spending should be cut before tax cuts are rolled back for the wealthiest Americans, tax breaks are discontinued for corporate jets, and subsidies are discarded for large oil companies raking in copious profits.
It's the job of the Democrats to continually highlight that massive spending cuts, especially slashing Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, have a human face. That while the Republicans were straight-out lying (Politfact's top lie of 2009) when they told tales of death panels and policies to discontinue care to seniors, cuts to Medicare and Social Security would actually send countless senior citizens into desperate financial situations.
But what did the Democrats do? They accepted the Tea Party premise that it was vital right now to address spending instead of unemployment and the economy. They never held firm on the idea that the debt ceiling had nothing to do with future budgets. They never pressed the case that by not raising the debt ceiling, Republicans would be taking the unbelievably un-American step of forcing the country to renege on its already agreed-to obligations. They didn't make a clear case to the American people that the GOP was holding the American economy hostage to fulfill their political motives. (For example, John Boehner admitted that many in his caucus wanted to let the debt ceiling deadline pass and "create chaos" in order to force through their far-right fiscal policies, including a balanced budget amendment, and yet the Democrats did nothing to publicize this fact.) They failed to make the case to the American people that the cuts being thrown around by Republicans would negatively impact their day-to-day lives, far more than deficits would this year. They never held firm on insisting on the wealthiest Americans, who profited most from the last decade of fiscal irresponsibility, paying their share toward the fiscal solution with rollbacks of the Bush tax cuts, standing with those looking to support the wealthiest Americans instead of the rest of us.
In short, the Democrats did more than just cave. They actually adopted the Republican position, and then engaged in a debate on how extreme that Republican position would be (offering far-right crazy in opposition to the Tea Party's all-out, society-changing crazy).
Put another way, the Democrats didn't fulfill their duty in a two-party system of representing the opposing point of view on the debt ceiling (especially, again, when polls show that the people don't support the GOP's draconian position on the issue).
It has been argued that since the Tea Party members of the House, as David Brooks put it, "do not accept the logic of compromise," "do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities," and "have no sense of moral decency," the Democrats had to be the adults, doing what was necessary to avoid a default and the calamitous results for the American economy that would come with it. Under this argument, the Democrats could not stand firm because their first allegiance had to be preventing default, no matter what it took, while the Tea Party Republicans irresponsibly ran around declaring that a default would not be a big deal.
I don't buy this argument. In fact, I find that approach weak and counter-productive. What would stop the Tea Party from holding the economy hostage again and again? The Democrats had a moral obligation to stand firm to protect the American people from the Tea Party zealots in the House (and the members of the Republican leadership that were too afraid of a primary challenge to stand up to their lunatic fringe). And they failed.
As importantly, while a default and/or a credit downgrade would have been disastrous for the American economy, I'm not convinced that the drastic slashes in spending (with zero increase in revenues) in the "compromise" won't be as bad or worse. As Paul Krugman said on This Week today:
"We have 9 percent unemployment. These spending cuts are going to worsen unemployment. It's even going to hold the long-run fiscal picture because we have a situation where more and more people are becoming permanent long-term unemployed. ... I have nobody I know who thinks the unemployment rate will be below 8 percent at the end of next year. With the spending cuts it might be above 9 percent at the end of next year. There is no light at the end of this tunnel. We're having a debate in Washington, all about, 'Gee, we'll make the economy worse, but will we make it worse on 90 percent of the Republicans' terms or 100 percent of Republicans' terms?' The answer is 100 percent."
The debate over the debt ceiling was an epic test for leading Democrats, and each and every one of them failed miserably. Reid, as the majority leader of the Senate, had the ability to hijack the discussion in the same way Boehner did. Same goes for the president. But both chose to adopt the Republican position and, as Krugman said, fight over whether it would be 90 percent or 100 percent Republican.
Who was fighting for the traditional Democratic position, the one that looked out for middle-class and working-class Americans? No Democrat in a position of power.
(I want to acknowledge the argument many have made that this outcome is, in fact, consistent with the president's policy preferences, in that he, like the Republicans in Congress, favors massive spending cuts. We don't know what is inside the president's mind. But as a Democratic president, I feel like he had an obligation to stand up to the Republican madness, and, as such, I will hold him accountable for not doing so.)
So we got a "compromise" that was really a capitulation, and we had to endure sad-sack Democratic quotes, like Diane Feinstein not being pleased, and Carl Levin pointing the finger of blame at the president. It's unacceptable. If they're not happy, why didn't they stand firm against the GOP proposal?
And what is especially galling about the whole sad affair is that the Democrats have seen over the past year how far-right Republican policies are pushing voters over to Democratic candidates. It began in 2010 when Republicans lost extremely winnable Senate seats in Nevada, Delaware, Colorado and West Virginia because voters rejected Tea Party-GOP nominees (something I discussed last November). It continued through the emergence of buyer's remorse in states electing Republican governors, including New Jersey, Ohio, Michigan, Florida and Wisconsin. It was on stark display in upstate New York when voters in a traditionally conservative district elected a Democrat in a special House election. And it is currently visible in the senate recall efforts in Wisconsin. Opposing draconian cuts, especially to Medicare, has been good political business for Democrats (something Republicans, of course, realize).
So not only is standing up to Republican excesses the right thing for Democrats to do, it has also been demonstrated to be good politics. But the Demcorats still managed to completely capitulate to the Tea Party position. And in doing so, they potentially removed the Medicare issue as one they could use to hammer Republicans in 2012.
The takeaway from the debt ceiling negotiations, for me, is that while the two-party system is alive and well in the United States when it comes to partisan bickering and political gamesmanship, when it comes to the powers in Washington deciding what to do for the country, the two-party system is dead. Democrats have abdicated the role of fighting for the interests of the American people, so that we now have Republicans and Democrats who will eventually accept the Republican position.
Such a state of affairs is upsetting to me as a liberal/progressive. But it is far more of a blow to me as an American citizen. Who in Washington is presenting the argument for what is best for the whole country, not just corporations and the wealthiest one percent? Nobody I see, and certainly not Harry Reid and Barack Obama.
The Republicans are the easy villains in this sordid affair. Their behavior in holding the country hostage to push a far-right agenda out of step with the beliefs of the American people has been disgraceful.
But the Democrats can't escape blame. When the moment of truth came, they showed no resolve. I'd honestly rather have faced a government default that would have been squarely on the shoulders of the Tea Party. At least then we would know exactly what happened and who was responsible. But when working class and middle class Americans, already hammered by a decade of increasing wealth disparity and an unemployment crisis, are further ground down by draconian and unnecessary budget cuts, while the wealthy enjoy tax cuts and oil companies continue to receive subsidies, it will be sad to know that the Democrats signed off on such an outcome.
We will look back and know that when the debt ceiling issue was in play, the Republicans made their case, but nobody in a position of power made the opposing argument. The Democrats just went along. And Democratic leaders will have to live with the consequences, along with the rest of us.
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