Anne Kim and Jonathan Cowan of Third Way took to the Politico Arena op-ed page (and website) on Thursday with the hoary slander that progressives care only about "expanding the entitlement state" and have no interest in economic growth or expanding wealth. Apparently blind to the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, they then replay New Democrat staples from the 1990s as if they were somehow new or relevant. They get it wrong.
As Barack Obama took charge of an economy in free fall, progressives urged the new administration to undertake the largest investment-led stimulus in our history. Third Way Democrats worked to make it smaller and weaker. Despite that, the recovery act did stop the fall and begin to pull the country out of recession. With unemployment still nearly at 10%, progressives continue to push for more job creation and aid to the states to forestall brutal cuts in teachers and police and other vital services.
Looking towards the new economy that we must build out of the ruins of the old, the president has it right. We can't go back to the old bubble-bust economy built on debt and speculation. We need to build on a new foundation. That includes public investment in areas vital to our future: education and training, a 21st century infrastructure, research and development, new energy. It includes a new global strategy and industrial policy to insure that we make things in America once more. And it should include an extension of our basic social contract, insuring retirement security, affordable health care and education, a living wage and safe working conditions, first rate public education to all Americans. On that foundation, we can build an economy - as we did after World War II - that works for working people, and revives America's broad middle class.
Kim and Cowan recycle the conservative canard that progressive support for the Obama health care plan is motivated by a desire to turn the US into (gasp!) Denmark, where (they think) everyone lives on "entitlements." Apparently these Third Way Democrats reject the argument advanced by their Democratic president that health care reform, in addition to being a matter of economic justice, is also the first step toward getting control of health care costs -- which every economist agrees is the real driver of long term public deficits. (Denmark, with a more comprehensive public healthcare system spends only 9.8 percent of it's GDP on health care. The US spends 16 percent. Far from luxuriating on entitlements, the Danes have the most extensive worker training program in Europe, successfully sustaining a high wage economy that enjoys a trading surplus with its neighbors. Denmark has also outpaced the US in exports. They have a 2.2 percent trade surplus compared to the 5.2 percent US chronic trade deficit.
There is one thought in the Kim-Cowan op-ed that every progressive completely agrees with: they say we can deal with growing deficits "only if we generate the kind of supercharged economic growth we had in the 1950s and mid-60s." Exactly.
But how do these Third Way Democrats propose to achieve that kind of growth? Their program is austerity for the paycheck class (cutting spending on vital domestic investments) and tax cuts for business and the wealthy.
Right now, conservative Democrats, especially in the Senate, are resisting efforts to invest in more job growth - and efforts to help the states who are cutting back spending and firing public workers, making the economy worse.
Progressive Democrats are pushing for more spending on jobs. But Third Way austerity advocates in the Congress (and in the President's deficit commission) want to slash spending (and cut Social Security and Medicare). All this threatens to choke off a still-fragile economic recovery. Their tax cuts for the wealthy reflect a trickle down economics that led us into our present straits, and ignore the reality of a tax code in which Warren Buffett, one of America's wealthiest men, admits he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. Kim-Cowan might want to check the tax rates of the 50-60s (which included a 90% upper tax bracket) before touting that as their model.
You would think Third Way Democrats, who post "growth and wealth creation" on their op-ed banner would spend a little time explaining the economic crisis that has just seen massive and dangerous economic contraction -- and destroyed several generations of wealth. Instead they blame progressives who pushed for "entitlements."
For three decades, government economic policy has been dominated by a conservative ideology that is not so much pro-business as obsequious to a set of business interests that ultimately had little to do with the long-term health of the national economy. It was an ideology that said we could send much of our manufacturing base overseas; see millions of living-wage jobs disappear and not be replaced with other secure, living-wage jobs; and still somehow prosper on a economy largely based on finance, information and services. It was an ideology that has given us an historic concentration of wealth at the very top -- 65 percent of the income growth since 2000 has gone to the wealthiest 1 percent of the population, while median household incomes have dropped 4 percent when adjusted for inflation.
As it turns out, there is nothing pro-growth about tax cuts that further enrich the wealthy but starve our schools and allow our infrastructure to crumble. There's nothing pro-business about having regulatory agencies turn a blind eye to Wall Street greed, in the mistaken belief that addicted gamblers will police themselves amid the glittering lights of the Wall Street casino. There is certainly nothing pro-wealth in the decades-long effort by conservatives to weaken unions and otherwise disempower workers; the "experiments to eliminate teacher tenure" that Kim and Cowan apparently applaud are but one example of the effort to treat workers as disposable and suppress their wages.
And it is more than a little bizarre to recycle the New Dem 1990 agenda for the economy coming out of the mess. "Experiments to eliminate teacher tenure" is but idle chatter at a time when literally tens of thousands of teachers, tenured or not, are facing layoffs in the brutal budgets of states and localities. Kim-Cowan support affordable college--but fail to note that despite passing the greatest increase in student aid since the GI Bill, soaring tuitions are pricing college out of the reach of more and more students.
The old nostrums of the right have been tried and failed. The New Dem/Third Way conservative light program offers no remedy. This country must, as the president has stated, build on a new foundation. The Kim-Cowan call to go back to the 1990s won't get us there.
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Of course, this will never happen so long as the lobbies own the Congress. So, as with every issue, we need to start with campaign reform. We need to get Congress back to working for The People.
Each of these core areas will benefit from the fourth — R&D. Americans are nothing if not innovative. We are very close to breakthroughs in solar power and medicine that can help springboard our economy forward. Alternative energy, transportation, education, power distribution, communications, nanotech — all will see rapid growth over the near term. We are at the base of an exponential technological curve that is going vertical as I write, and America can either lead or it can follow.
Few will argue that our infrastructure has not fallen to shambles, but where is the leadership on how to best restore its utility? Public transportation is one vital area for focus. We are woefully behind Europe and Japan when it comes to rail transit. Such forms of public transportation would help to unclog roadways, reduce pollution, and gain energy independence, but again — there are entrenched lobbies that will resist every step of the way.
One problem with the spending component of the first stimulus plan was that rather than being directed where it would do the most good — to the areas mentioned above, it was an open spending spree. Much of the money was largely wasted. Another problem is that just pouring cash into broken systems is foolhardy by anyone’s measure. These are the issues that set moderates against such initiatives.
What America is lacking right now is a cogent plan for how we can make the transition to our new economy. One thing is certain, as stated in the post, tax cuts for the rich have been proven to do nothing but provide more wealth for the wealthy. So, when will we start the conversation about raising taxes to help fund the programs we need? There has to be a plan to balance the books at some point. I believe that there are masses of moderates who would support efforts if shown the path.
I'm convinced there was a Y2K event. We just haven't realized it until now. Glad I'm not the only one who's noticed the country, led by this administration with its appointments, is stuck in the 1990s.
Sing it, Centrists:
"So tonight I'm gonna party like it's 1999..."
Derrick Jensen, Engame, page 35
Corporate power is not an ideology.
We are not engaged in a philosophical exercise between ideologies; we are at war ... and we are losing.
Our government is controlled by an increasingly narrow, powerful, well-funded group of special interests. Their conduct has been nothing short of treasonous. Real wages have not increased in the US since 1973 while Wall Street soars. The Gulf of Mexico has been transformed into a dead-zone destroying one of our great national assets and causing unimaginable environmental harm. Jobs? Exported! Mass transit? Dead! Education? Dying! Retirement security? Non-existent! National health? Unaffordable!
"Progressives" seem believe they can just tweak a few policies to put the country back on the right path. They seem to believe in this candidate or perhaps the next one. They seem to believe that "a little more liberal" will get us where we need to go.
In some ways, so called progressives really are the main problem we face. Instead of acknowledging we're in a war and that we stand at the brink of societal collapse, they still believe they can vote or legislate their way out of the problem. The US has been conquered by global corporate forces but progressives naively still believe the old rules apply.
Until they awaken to the real battle before us, no progress is possible.
I'm afraid our resources are few and our fellow citizens are poorly informed. In the near-term, I think the mission has to be one of spreading the word. To call for national strikes or the overthrow of the government or radical changes is far beyond today's realities. Revolutionaries seeking instant gratification are deluded. Revolution must emanate from a supportive populace.
Much of the energy needed for radical transformation will come from the ultimate collapse of our consumer society. The saying "suffering is the origin of all consciousness" comes to mind.
The views many of us hold are way, way out of the mainstream. That must change before a foundation for revolution can exist.
So, unfortunately, job one has to be simple persuasion. At least for now, we have the internet to spread the word. In my view, the fundamental message should not be on funding social security or on the state of education or health care or any of the rest of the laundry list. The focus should be put on the corruption of our democracy by a narrow group of multi-national corporations.
Break-up the banks. End "corporate personhood." Destroy both corporate parties. Slash the military corporate welfare program. Invest in people before profits. Live sustainably. Mandate that the first obligation of corporations is to benefit society.
How do we get there? When there are 100 million Americans in the streets demanding these same things, we'll know the answer.
The will of the senate is the will of the special interests.
Until EVERYONE starts talking and blogging and marching for Campaign Reform we are just spinning our wheels discussing anything that might challenge the special interests.
Oil monopolies, Insurance monopolies, Wall Street, and the Banks if not in league, are aiding and abetting Bin Laden, who’s plainly stated goal is to bankrupt the United States like they did the Soviet Union.
David Graham Phillips wrote “Treason is a strong word, but not too strong, rather too weak, to characterize the situation in which the Senate is the eager, resourceful, indefatigable agent of interests as hostile to the American people as any invading army could be.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote “ The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power."
"We The People" are supposed to be in power, but we have let it be stolen from us like Jefferson, Eisenhower and many, many others warned. Join the fight.
http://www.fairelectionsnow.org/volunteer/petition (FENA)
http://change-congress.org/
http://movetoamend.org/
You are absolutely right. Without public campaign financing, we will never see power restored to the people.
Fanned.
The Left likes corporatism for three reasons, says Locke: (1) it satisfies government’s (i.e., politicians’) lust for power; (2) its machinery makes redistribution of wealth to favored constituencies possible; and (3) it enables politicians to accomplish this while remaining personally affluent.
The Right likes corporatism for three different reasons, says Locke: (1) big business can achieve enormous profits, capitalist-style, while unloading some of the cost and risk onto government; (2) the merger of business and government enables those at the helm of big business to influence government in ways favorable to themselves (e.g., thwarting true competition, which big business has seen as a nuisance since John D. Rockefeller, Sr. was heard to pronounce competition a “sin”); and (3) this merger seems able to minimize or dissipate whatever social unrest its policies create in the masses.
Yep, we want to be like that.
Roger - do you have any proof to verify the ridiculous assertations you make?
Roger Hicks, what is the President's policy towards reforming this broken economy? State simply and clearly in a sentence or paragraph. I don't see one iota of policy or procedure for renewing the middle class.
Why is their so much turmoil in the Democratic Party voters if he has a policy? I appreciate an answer. I believe it is a justified question.
President Obama "There are some things we can only do together, as one nation... So what we should be asking is not whether we need a 'big government' or a 'small government,' but how we can create a smarter, better government."
"So unless we're willing to challenge the broken system in Washington, and stop letting lobbyists use their clout to get their way, nothing else is going to change." Obama
This isn't Obama's doing, at least in so much as he did not create it. This state of affairs was already the case and has been the case since conservatives started de-regulating and tearing down Roosevelt’s policies. Whether he can or will effect change as he promised is yet to be seen.
Republicans Vote Against Their Own Legislation There is something really ROTTEN going on Here's an example.
The Republicans proposed a deficit reduction commission. Six Republicans co-sponsored it. President Obama embraced it. When it came time for a vote on the legislation, all six Republicans that had co-sponsored the bill voted against it. Just one example out of too many to count,
Republicans do not care about policy or the people of this country, they only care about regaining power.
The one thing that you can be positive of is that there is only rejoicing whenever the party of no can stymie our government.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/05/07/4254552-challenge-rename-this-graph
I guess pretty graphs and easy answers are your way, eh WmC?
Constituent driven beltway "progressives" keep insisting we can school our way back to the top of the globalization heap. Ever since public employees replaced labor as its main constituency, the Democratic party has been little more than the HR department for corporatism gone wild.
Evidence below
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/4/2/853460/-Hiring-Makes-Best-Showing-Since-March-2007,-Jobless-Rate-Steady-at-9.7