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, 112th 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 113th Congress won’t be
any more cooperative with President Obama and the Democrats than those in the
112th 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 21st
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 112th 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 112th 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 113th 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 112th Congress that before it passes into
history that it should have the decency not take the rest of us down with it.