The Brutal Choice
Independent progressive mobilization is vital now because the administration and the Congress are about to face brutal choices about the priorities and the direction of the country--and at this point, the administration needs a course correction.
In the short term, the question is posed as a choice between jobs and deficits. The administration's economists join progressives in arguing that more must be done to put people to work. Its pollsters suggest that anger at the deficits and skepticism about government spending make that too risky to push. The desire to provide reassurance about deficits has muddled the call for action on jobs. The uncertain trumpet from the White House emboldens conservatives in the Congress. Blue-Dog Democrats in the House blocked what should have been a routine extension of unemployment and health care benefits at a time of record long-term unemployment.
Democrats in the Senate derailed consideration of a $23 billion
emergency bill that would forestall the layoff of 300,000 teachers next
year.
Mass unemployment is a national emergency and a human tragedy, not a
normal condition. It cannot be met with politics as usual.
Progressives must come together to demand action from the White House
and the Congress. The voices of those who have lost their jobs must be
heard. No issue is of greater concern to Americans--and no issue of
greater importance to the country.
The Pitched Battle Over Direction
The current jockeying is simply a prelude to what will be a pitched battle over priorities and deficits after the election. The president tasked a Bipartisan Commission on the Fiscal Responsibility and Reform to report by December 1 on a path to deficit reduction. Whether the Commission can reach agreement is in question, but the elite consensus has already begun to congeal. Meanwhile, the budget crisis that the recession caused at the state and local level has already begun to force hard decisions on laying off teachers, closing parks and libraries, raising tolls and fares.
America is headed into a period in which it must make choices. Will we make the investments vital to the new economy or sacrifice them to austerity? Will we make the commitment to provide every child a healthy start and a world-class education or will we rob some of their future? Will we choose to police the world or to rebuild America? Will we have progressive tax reform or impose consumption taxes the hit working people disproportionately? Will workers be insured a secure retirement with adequate health care at the end of a long work life or will we cut Social Security and limit Medicare?
This debate has already begun, and the early direction is forbidding. Soaring health care costs are virtually the entire source of rising long-term deficits, but the focus instead has turned to "fixing" Social Security to reassure markets.
We spend almost as much as the rest of the world combined on our military while not making the investments the president says are vital to the new economy, but the president has called for a three-year hard freeze on domestic spending, leaving the military budget to rise. In a time of Gilded-Age inequality, the wealthiest Americans pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries, but attention has turned to a regressive hidden sales tax, not progressive tax reforms.
These choices concern what kind of country we create. Coming out of World War II, our debt burden was 120 percent of gross domestic product, much higher than it is now. Yet we passed the GI Bill and sent a generation of veterans to college or advanced training. We provided a Marshall Plan to revive Europe, and create a market for our exports. President Eisenhower put a lid on military spending and built the Interstate Highway System. We constructed schools for the baby-boom generation. America built a broad middle class while dramatically reducing its debt burdens.
We will face that choice again, only in a society marked by economic inequity and division, not wartime solidarity. It will take broad public education and a sustained progressive mobilization to make these choices correctly.
Reform or Reaction: The Choice is Ours
Pundits now predict that Democrats will fare badly in the fall elections, with the majority of the House said even to be at risk. Clearly, a more conservative Congress, with obstructionists rewarded for their opposition, will make any reform more difficult.
In off-year elections, much depends on who turns out. The right is mobilized, but has limited appeal. The real question is what happens to the emerging progressive majority? Does the rising Obama electorate the young, single women and minorities turn out or stay home? Do workers vote their hopes or their fears? Will seniors be encouraged or angered by health care reforms? Will progressives mobilize to drive reform, or stay home in frustration and dismay?
Much will depend on what progressives do. We can drive the issues that frame the election. We can expose the right's efforts to take us back to the policies that failed. A progressive majority is there to be forged, but it won't turn out automatically. In the end, it is not the anger of the right that will determine the rate of America's renewal. It is the energy, the persistence, the will of progressives that will decide. The choice is ours.(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
