Levees Not War

Two-Week Tantrum Epitomizes GOP’s Recovery-Strangling Refusal to Share in Work of Governing

And so, after 16 days, after a $24 billion loss to the economy, and just hours before the United States was about to pass through its federal debt limit, with potentially catastrophic global consequences, the Senate (81–18) and House (285–144) have approved a budget deal that could have been voted on weeks ago—months ago, really. The bill will keep the federal government operating through Jan. 15, 2014, and extends the debt ceiling only until Feb. 7. None of the GOP’s demands were met.

In effect, 162 of 278 Republican members of Congress—that’s 58 percent—voted for the United States to default on its debt for the first time in the nation’s history.

If You Vote Republican, Don’t Expect Functional Government

GOP representatives did, however, sing all three verses of “Amazing Grace” in a caucus meeting on Tuesday before voting, again, not to reopen the government.

We have observed often before that Republicans nowadays do not seek office in order to govern, as Democrats and independents understand the term, but rather to hold power—power to dismantle government. Republicans in the generations of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon had different governing philosophies from their Democratic brethren, but at least they all agreed that the point of holding public office was to serve what they regarded as the public good (which, for both parties, usually included portions of private and corporate good, too). President Eisenhower, for example, pushed Congress relentlessly to pass the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 that authorized what is today a 47,000-mile system of interstate highways throughout the United States, widely regarded as the single greatest public works project in the nation’s history. President Nixon, though he is remembered for darker accomplishments, oversaw the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupation Safety and Health Administration, and his progressive legislation included the earned income tax credit, Equal Employment Opportunity Act, and the Endangered Species Act.

Today’s Republican party, such as it is, is motivated by no such constructive purpose. Having purged moderates and what the true believers call RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) from their ranks, and now living in fear of primary challenges from fervent, purer-than-thou Tea Party radicals, surviving GOP officeholders seem able only to obstruct and stall the normal operations of government on the federal level—while being paid $177,000 per year. At the state level, however, the GOP has shown great energy and ingenuity in rolling back hard-won voting rights, women’s access to reproductive choice and birth control, cutting further the taxes of the rich and striking down taxation and regulation of industry, and helping the spread of guns in bars, restaurants, schools, playgrounds, churches, etc.

Senate Republicans have used the filibuster against President Obama’s proposed legislation and nominees with a frequency never seen before in American history. Robert Draper, author of Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives (2012), has written about a once-secret meeting the night of Obama’s inauguration in January 2009 in which Republican leaders gathered to plot an all-out obstruction of all of the new president’s initiatives. This while the nation and the world were plunging down an economic abyss brought on largely by Republican laissez-faire economic policies and “fiscal stewardship” of tax-cutting and massive privatization. (If the GOP had had its way, the Social Security system would have been privatized . . . before the 2008 financial meltdown.)

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Shutdown, with No Exit Strategy, Shows GOP’s Governing Style

And so, just as the Republicans were helping drown the U.S. economic recovery in every way imaginable, giving not a single vote to the new president’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus) of 2009, and blocking from even coming to the floor for a vote the American Jobs Act that Obama first proposed in a speech to a joint session of Congress two years ago, so their most recent, 16-day, shutdown of the federal government contained in concentrated form all the destructiveness of their regressive, anti-democratic, and truly job-killing (in)activity of the past several years.

We have also written at times about Democrats’ weaknesses (there are many), but if Americans want functional government—from passage of legislation that benefits the public, and roads and bridges and levees in good repair, to food and drug inspections and air traffic safety, not to mention the social safety nets of Social Security and Medicare and unemployment insurance—then remember that voting for one party results in a fairly functional government, imperfect, but moving toward broader coverage of people’s rights and benefits. The other party—well, the past two weeks have shown that even when they manage to hijack a plane, they really do not know how to fly or bring it in for a landing, and, in any case, they would have already cut funding for paying the flight training school instructors, air traffic controllers, and turned out the lights on the pot-holed runway.

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What Are the Democrats Saying?

President Obama after the Shutdown’s End:

The key now is a budget that cuts out the things that we don’t need, closes corporate tax loopholes that don’t help create jobs, and frees up resources for the things that do help us grow—like education and infrastructure and research. . . . 

Let’s work together to make government work better, instead of treating it like an enemy or purposely making it work worse. That’s not what the founders of this nation envisioned when they gave us the gift of self-government. You don’t like a particular policy or a particular president, then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election. Push to change it. But don’t break it. Don’t break what our predecessors spent over two centuries building. That’s not being faithful to what this country is about.

—Remarks by the President on the Reopening of the Government, Oct. 17, 2013

Senator Elizabeth Warren:

I am NOT celebrating tonight. . . . the reason we were in this mess in the first place is that a reckless faction in Congress took the government and the economy hostage for no good purpose and to no productive end. According to the S&P index . . . $24 billion has been flushed down the drain for a completely unnecessary political stunt.

$24 billion dollars. How many children could have been back in Head Start classes? How many seniors could have had a hot lunch through Meals on Wheels? How many scientists could have gotten their research funded? How many bridges could have been repaired and trains upgraded?

The Republicans keep saying, “Leave the sequester in place and cut all those budgets.” They keep trying to cut funding for the things that would help us build a future. But they are ready to flush away $24 billion on a political stunt.  

—Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), e-mail to supporters, Oct. 16, 2013

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Top two illustrations by Chamomile Tea Party. ‘Republican Demands’ chart by The Washington Post’s Wonkblog.

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Our last post was illustrated with a big YES and this can do no less.

Congratulations to the 111th Congress—especially Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (with emphasis on “Leader”) and the suddenly productive Senate in the last days of this so-called lame duck session. Not so lame, after all. Let’s set aside for a moment the regrettable extension of the Bush tax cuts, now properly called the Obama-Republican tax cuts, or “Kumbaya for Billionaires.” This extension, however hateful to us, seems to have opened the gates toward better things. We want to briefly celebrate the last few days’ repeal of the odious Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, passage of a health bill for 9/11 responder-heroes sickened by (some dying from) the toxic ash at Ground Zero, and Senate passage of the New START treaty with Russia that will reduce nuclear stockpiles and provide for closer monitoring of old weapons facilities in the former Soviet Union. (See “Hiroshima, 65 Years On” and “Nagasaki, Not Forgotten.”) (The photo above shows President Obama and Russian President Dmitri A. Medvedev signing the treaty in Prague in early April.)

We also want to thank the Republican senators who joined the Democratic majority and helped put these bills over the top. We understand that these votes were not politically easy for them, and we’re grateful for their votes of conscience. Senator Dick Lugar of Indiana, in particular, helped move his colleagues to vote for New START. The nation should be grateful to Mr. Lugar, one of the true grown-ups of the Senate, and the Republican senators who listened to him.

The bills approved in the last week were passed in a flurry of activity because they had been deliberately held up for an unconscionably long time by the Republican leadership. They—particularly Jon Kyl of Arizona—repeatedly delayed dealing with the New START treaty, then whined about being rushed into action. Senator John Kerry deserves praise, too, for his steady, patient leadership on New START. The GOP also stubbornly, coldly stonewalled passage of the 9/11 responders health bill until they were shamed into submission by Jon Stewart (dead serious on Comedy Central) and Shepard Smith of Fox News, to both of whom we tip every hat on the rack. How many sick and dying workers suffered needlessly as Republicans postured about fiscal austerity while pushing for the billionaires’ tax cut extension? (The bill, we note with dismay, was whittled down from the $7.4 billion legislation passed by the House to $4.3 billion.) New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand deserves great credit for her leadership on the DADT repeal.

While praising the accomplishments of the 111th Congress under the leadership of Senator Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, let us point you to a piece from just after the midterm elections, “A Failure to Communicate—Not a Failure to Govern,” that shows the accomplishments of the House and Senate in the last two years. The Democrats, with scarcely a vote from the other side, passed an impressive, indeed historic amount of public-friendly legislation. They deserve our gratitude, which can come in the form of phone calls, letters faxed and mailed (see our Political Action page for contact info), and votes. Campaign volunteering, too.

Although we’ve been harshly critical of the president about the tax deal among other issues, we thank him for his steadfast push on New START and applaud his careful, strategic planning on repeal of DADT (he wanted to build military brass support + Senate repeal rather than letting the courts kill it). The president says “we are not doomed to endless gridlock.” We can hope, but we expect insane and raucous fights, often over nothing, in the 112th Congress. We pray that the president and (still) Senate Majority Leader Reid and congressional Democrats have learned a few things about standing up for what they believe in, persisting, getting the message sharp and clear, and not backing down. The tax bill was a horrible, costly, long-damaging error that didn’t have to happen. It hurt Obama’s relations with his own party, but may have earned a little goodwill from a few members of the opposition party (we’re not holding our breath). Let’s hope Democrats have learned some lessons in fighting. And let’s keep after them to keep the gloves on. They’ll need them.

These positive developments, after so many months of obstruction and passivity, all make for a merrier holiday season. They will bring a healthier new year for the long-suffering 9/11 responders (not just New Yorkers: volunteers poured in from every state), some relief for military service members oppressed by the unjust, 17-year-long DADT policy, and a safer new era for every person and nation endangered by aging and unsupervised nuclear stockpiles and weapons systems.

Now, back to writing those last Christmas cards (including ours to you) and wrapping a few last gifts . . .

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Obama/Medvedev photo by Doug Mills/New York Times

U.S. Capitol by E. McKnight Kauffer

We’ll soon have more to say about Thursday’s health care reform summit, but first wanted to share some good observations written by Ezra Klein of the Washington Post (a sharp, gifted young blogger-reporter who knows policy like a wonk but explains it in plain English). In a blog post titled “Sen. Lamar Alexander Explains Why There’ll Be No Compromise,” Klein observes:

At best, what you can say today is demonstrating is that there’s a sharp contrast in the philosophies on display: Democrats believe the federal government is capable of writing and implementing legislation that will take a big step forward on a hard problem. Republicans believe government doesn’t have that capability, and shouldn’t try. There’s no real compromise available between those two position, but they’re philosophies that the American people can choose between.

(This, by the way, is a good, clear way of saying from another angle what we’ve observed before about the parties’ different philosophies of governance, and shows why, if, say, you want public, government-directed investment in flood defense infrastructure or environmental protection, if you want public officials who just might believe in a social contract and a social safety net, you want to vote in as many Democrats—preferably progressive Democrats—as possible.)

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“Work as if you are in the early days of a better nation.” —Alasdair Gray

We were delighted to see President Obama’s fiery, fightin’ spirit Friday as he swung into Elyria, Ohio, in full campaign mode with his “never stop fighting” speech. You go, O.

But, listen, populist rhetoric alone won’t do it. Democrats—and the White House in particular—must take strong actions (take stands, build support, gather coalitions, and cast votes). Be specific and firm about health care and banking reforms. Don’t be so vague, aloof, and passive. Stop letting opponents frame the debate. Take strong action. Grab them bankers by the throat. Make ’em gasp. (See the example of JFK vs. U.S. Steel in 1962 in Frank Rich’s column “After the Massachusetts Massacre.”)

In our last post we urged Democrats to be boldly populist and fight for the ordinary voters. We called on Democrats—and independents and any elected officials who want to make this a better, internally stronger nation—to speak up for the positive role of government. It is imperative to counter the conservative/Republican con job about government’s being “the problem” (as Reagan famously accused, though Jimmy Carter had done the same before him—thanks a lot) and give definite examples of how the public benefits from good government.

To start with some good talking points, the message is well summarized in the following passages from our friend Joe Conason in his bestselling book Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth (hailed by Paul Krugman as “must reading for anyone who wants to understand America today”):

“. . . remember that America in the twentieth century was built on liberal policy, from the Progressive Era through the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the GI Bill, and the Great Society. The modern economy—a private enterprise system that relies on government safeguards against depression and extreme poverty—is the legacy of liberal leadership, from Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson. . . . Conservatism in power always threatens to undo that national progress . . .

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