Unfinished Business

Now that the vox populi has spoken in the most expensive election in the history of human civilization (courtesy of the Supremes and Citizens United), it might be a good time to take a breath or two before the 2016 campaign begins to take stock of the unfinished business of the current, but soon to expire, 112^th Congress.

As Ezra Klein has noted, the 112th Congress will likely be remembered as one of the worst in American history. Not only did the shameful 1112th Congress pass fewer public laws than any Congress since Harry Truman, it is more polarized and more unpopular than any previous Congress, scoring the same approval rating as Hugo Chavez -- 9%. 

How did they manage to earn such a level of disapproval you ask? Well how about creating a false crisis over increasing the debt limit in the summer of 2011 that cost the US its AAA credit rating, dealt a blow to business and consumer confidence, and set back the recovery? This was an act of economic sabotage which, had it been done by a foreign power, could have been regarded as a causus belli. But then they did something even stupider -- as part of the deal to end this manufactured crisis the venal 112th Congress decided to create a special “supercommittee” to hammer out a grand bargain on a deficit reduction deal. They tied failure of this “supercommittee” to a spending sequester that would enact  automatic  across the board spending cuts that neither party likes, which will really cripple the economy if allowed to take place. And guess what --- the “stupidcommittee” failed, and those automatic spending cuts are now due to be enacted on January 1, 2013 unless the remnant of this dysfunctional lame duck Congress does something about it.  Good luck!

The problem is that the 2012 election basically affirmed the status quo with the Republicans retaining control of the House of Representatives and the Democrats control of the Senate and White House. This is the same recipe for partisan gridlock in Washington that we have had for the past few years, and there is no reason to think that the results of the election will do much of anything to break this pattern.

One may reasonably ask: How did it get this bad? Maybe it is the fault of both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. Bull! It was the Republicans fault. Don’t take my word for it, read the book by two longtime Congress-watchers, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks” who say that the Tea Party tide of 2010 that caused the dysfunction of the 112th Congress. Although that tide is mercifully receding, Republicans will still control the majority in the House of Representatives for the 113th Congress and will most likely continue on their path of obstruction. 

One might think that having now failed to achieve their major political objectives, to ensure that Barack Obama would be a one-term president, and to gain the majority in the Senate, the leaders of the GOP (Guardians of Plutocracy) would decide to back off their ideological extremism and return to moderation. I wouldn’t bet on it. There aren’t any moderates left in the Republican leadership to make the case for this kind of sensible move to the political center because they were purged in the Republicans primaries earlier this year. This is the reason the prospects for progressive legislation in the next four years continue to be poor. I agree with Alan Wolfe that it is all but certain that the Republicans in the 113^th Congress won’t be any more cooperative with President Obama and the Democrats than those in the 112^th were, and that ”It will take more than one presidential election before the Republicans will ever prefer governance to politics.”

Wolfe goes on to argue that since Obama cannot hope to get any significant new legislation through the next two Congresses, he should become the “Educator in Chief” and really explain to Americans that we really, really do need to do something about wealth and income inequality and about global climate change (perhaps someday). While this may be realistic and pragmatic advice, I do not think it is good enough. President Obama should lead with a real legislative agenda, not with just a bunch of talking points for the punditocracy to jabber about.

Nor do I think it is a good idea for President Obama and the Congressional Democrats to try to “play nice” with their Republican colleagues. There will be some who will say that given how narrow the Obama victory was and how divided the country is, it would be best to pursue the path of moderation. Go for the relatively noncontroversial issues: a sensible deal of taxation and deficit reduction that balances cuts in entitlement spending with modest increases in the nominal tax rate for the wealthiest Americans; increase spending for education, shore up Medicare and Medicaid in sensible ways, and so forth. If President Obama reaches out to the other side with an olive branch, the thinking goes, and there is hope for piecemeal incremental progress.

The problem with this advice is that it is basically the game plan Obama followed in his first term in his forlorn attempt to overcome Washington partisanship. What happened was that the Republicans bit the hands that reached out to them and responded to offers of compromise as their cue to move the goal-posts even further to the right. By leading with moderation all Obama got was a ratcheting of the center of political discourse into the crazy zone (death panels and socialism) and at the end of the day, no deal anyway. One hopes that Obama has learned this lesson and recalibrates his negotiation strategy so that he does not begin with a moderate left-center position, and then cave to center or to the right of that, as he did in agreeing to the extension of the Bush tax cuts in exchange for an extension of unemployment insurance in the midst of the Great Recession.

Instead of moderation and compromise, I think that progressives both within and on the fringes of the Democratic party need to urge that President Obama and the democratic party leadership in the Congress go on the offensive with a real progressive legislative agenda, rather than with a modest and moderate one that their Republican colleagues will obstruct in any case. The progressive wing of the party was loyal to the Democrats this time around and did not undermine his chances of re-election by supporting third party candidates, like Jill Stein, in large numbers. It is time for progressives to urge that Obama adopt a progressive policy agenda in his second term. 

One of the big failings of President Obama’s first term was that he held onto the notion that he could overcome partisanship in Washington by just being reasonable and moderate in his political objectives. He took “Medicare for All” off the table from the get-go and went with what was essentially a Republican, market-based, plan to extend medical insurance to (almost) all Americans. Now that “Romney-care” has been rechristened as “Obamacare” and the supreme Supreme, Chief Justice Roberts, has given it his constitutional blessing, it would be a good idea for the Democrats to push to put back the “public option” that was stripped from the proposal even though it did not make any difference in the end on the number of Republicans who voted for the Affordable Care Act. So, the first element of a progressive democratic agenda is to work to strengthen and extend Obamacare and to ensure its successful implementation. It will never become “Medicare for All” in its present legislative form, but can out an end to some of the greatest injustices of a market-based health insurance system. How about bringing back the “public option” that was traded away in a failed attempt to win over some Republican votes?

Second, we need another round of economic stimulus to accelerate the economic recovery. With much of the East Coast devastated by Hurricane Sandy (the real October surprise in this election) what better way to deliver a needed jolt to the economy than by passing a significant federal infrastructure spending bill? It could be structured so that it contained grants for states and counties to apply for federal funds to rebuild critical infrastructure damaged by the storms, but it should also address the need to build a new, more resilient infrastructure that can withstand or bounce back from future environmental shocks like the one we have just experienced. This is not rocket science – it must be obvious even to so-called “low information voters” that what America needs now is (literally) “nation-building” in America – we have to rebuilt America’s physical infrastructure – our plumbing, electrical grids, our roads, trains, and airports, and our water supply systems to be able to survive the altered climatic conditions of the 21^st century.

Third, America needs to get serious about controlling carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions. Forget about “cap and trade” -- go for a  rebatable carbon tax of the kind James Hansen and his colleagues have proposed. Such a tax would enable us to place a real market price on burning fossil fuels of all kinds, while providing consumers with a monthly “green dividend check” to offset the increased cost of fossil fuel consumption. Democrats should put the “Climate Stewardship Act” on the legislative agenda, and let the Republicans howl all they want about the EPA and “too much regulation.” The Roberts court, having reaffirmed that Congress can levy taxes (duh!), will not be able to block it either. Then educate the American people as to why it is needed and how they and their children and grandchildren will benefit from a quicker transition to an energy economy that is less reliant on fossil fuels. While the Republicans are trying to figure out how to tell more lies, hit them with a bill that will eliminate the current subsidies to the petroleum, coal, and natural gas interests that have spent millions on TV ads trying to make people into “Energy Voters.” Yeah, well some of us already are energy voters, and we are voting for renewable energy not for more fossil fuels.

Fourth, we still need to have real financial reform that breaks up the banks that are too big to fail and places restrictions on risky gambling on Wall Street. The bankers largely backed Romney in this election; Obama owes them nothing. He should proceed to reign them in.

Fifth, we need urgently to resolve the immigration mess once and for all with a policy that allows paths to permanent residence and in some cases citizenship to the millions of undocumented workers on whom our economy depends. The passage of the “dream act” in Maryland may be a sign that the country is moving away from hysterical nativism and xenophobia on this topic.

Sixth, lets end the failed “war on drugs.” Let our Mexico and our southern neighbors address the many problems it has created for them dealing with the “narco-economy” that it has created. In this light it might be instructive to revisit the history of Prohibition (see Boardwalk Empire) and reflect upon the important lesson in political philosophy delivered by the failure of the Volstead Act – one cannot enforce virtue through legislation. Instead create community-based programs to deal with drug addiction as a public health problem and increase funding for similar programs to address other vices with adverse health impacts such as alcoholism and obesity. While we are at it, propose an “amnesty” bill that would have the effect of emptying the prisons of non-violent offenders convicted on drug charges and given ridiculous mandatory minimum sentences for victimless crimes. Calling for a general amnesty for such offenders will really give the Republicans fits, but so what – fuck ‘em. If they are going to say “no” anyway to anything that the Democrats propose, then at least propose things that make real sense and would make a real difference. Then when it does not pass, spare no effort on blaming the Republicans for sabotaging our democracy.

The rhetoric of this campaign has been surprising free of Democrats playing the “blame game” – even though it is obvious to most observers that the retrograde 112^th Congress has been obstructing progress on the economy, health care, infrastructure spending, immigration reform, and most other reasonable and necessary legislative initiatives. No doubt this was due to a political calculation on the part of democratic campaign strategists that people don’t like it when you blame others for you own failures, and that making such a charge is tantamount to admitting that much of the democratic legislative agenda was thwarted in the 112^th Congress at a time when the President wanted to run on his record. But that political calculation is now expired, so the democratic leadership should feel free to put the House and Senate Republican caucuses on the defensive by proposing an ambitious and progressive new legislative agenda for the 113^th Congress, and blaming the Republicans when the bills die in the Congress.

Freed from the need to run for re-election, President Obama should lead more confidently and aggressively in his second term both domestically and internationally. Domestically, he should be pushing his democratic allies in the Congress to take up this more forward-looking agenda and fight for it with him, not only as the “educator in chief,” but the “persuader in chief.” Obama needs to get off of the sidelines and go over Congress directly to the American people.

He also needs to attend to important foreign policy challenges, for instance, forging a relationship with China’s new leader Xi Jinping that will end our schizoid “frienemy” relationship and ask him to step up as a real partner in maintaining international peace and security in places like Syria, Iran, and Pakistan, not only North Korea. He also really needs to put more pressure on Israel’s right-wing coalition to deal seriously with the settlements and the question of Palestine. Dare I mention, Cuba?  

One last thought, while I think that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have done about as well as could be expected given unrelenting Republican obstructionism, sabotage, and lying, their tenure as party leaders should also expire with the current Congress. The Democrats should elect new, more progressive leaders in the House and Senate to carry the fight to the next level. But before they go there is still that little matter of the “spending sequester” and the fiscal cliff that looms before us. I think they should try to convince the rump 112^th Congress that before it passes into history that it should have the decency not take the rest of us down with it.