“Up-And-Running Now”: Hillary’s “Establishment Politics” Has Already Delivered Some Of The Paid Leave Sanders Promises
The negative reviews of and cascading events from Bernie Sanders’ less-than-deft Q&A with the New York Daily News earlier this week continue. But there is one additional passage from that interview that deserves, but has largely escaped, notice (emphasis mine):
Alright, I believe that in the midst of the kinds of crises that we face with a disappearing middle class and massive levels of income and wealth inequality, the only major country on earth not guarantee to healthcare to all people, only major country not to provide paid family and medical leave, it is time to get beyond establishment politics. So to put your question in maybe a simpler way, is she a candidate of the establishment? The answer is, of course she is.
This is an astonishing thing for Sanders to say for a couple of reasons. First because, as he surely knows, it was the “establishment” Bill Clinton who, as one of his first acts as president in 1993, signed the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) after it had twice been vetoed by his predecessor. Second (and maybe Sanders doesn’t know this; few do), having signed the FMLA providing up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to workers to care for a newborn or a sick family member, Clinton, with the active help of his wife, became the first president to use federal power to provide paid leave to American workers.
I know this because I wrote the speech in which he unveiled the policies. It was a commencement address delivered on May 23, 1999 at Grambling State University, an historically black college in norther Louisiana that boasts, among other things, one of the best marching bands in the country. In the speech, Clinton announce two executive actions. First, federal workers would be allowed to use the sick leave they’d earned to take time off to care for other sick family members. Second, and potentially more important, states would be allowed to let public and private sector workers who have paid into the state’s federally regulated unemployment insurance systems to collect payments from those systems while they’re on leave caring for a newborn or a newly adopted child. Having attended the meetings where these policies were hashed out, I can assure you that they were a joint East Wing/West Wing initiative. The main person behind them was Nicole Rabner, who was the First Lady’s senior domestic policy adviser as well as a special assistant to the president.
The first policy (paid leave for federal workers) is still in place today. The second (allowing states to tap their unemployment insurance systems for paid leave) was overturned by George W. Bush, who deemed it a harmful imposition on businesses. But four states (California, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Washington) that have separate Temporary Disability Systems, which are not federally regulated, used those systems to create basically the same voluntary family leave programs the Clintons were trying to incentivize. A major study of California’s, the largest and longest running paid leave program, found that it improved children’s health outcomes without measurably harming business productivity.
So the “establishment” politician Hillary Clinton can rightly claim a share of the credit for the paid leave programs that exist in the United States. They’re far from universal, but they’re real, up-and-running programs that seem to be working as advertised. And the reason they’re not more wide spread is not “establishment politics”–they are in fact the result of establishment politics–but Republican resistance.
Both Clinton and Sanders sponsored bills in the Senate to expand family leave that didn’t pass, and each has put forward plans to do so if they’re elected president (though the plans differ in how they’re financed). So both are, for progressives, on the “right side” of the issue. But only one of them has actually accomplished anything on this, and it isn’t Bernie Sanders.
By: Paul Glastris, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, April 8, 2016
“Republican Ideas Haven’t Changed Since The 1970s”: John Boehner Should Try Listening To His Own Economic Advice For Obama
After President Obama released his 2016 budget on Monday, House Speaker John Boehner published a list of ten things that are “newer than Obama’s ideas.” Instagram, Angry Birds, Frozen, and the selfie stick all made the cut. Boehner’s office even created a clunky hashtag for the list—#NewerThanObamasIdeas. The irony is rich: Republican ideas have hardly changed since the 1970s.
It’s true that many proposals in Obama’s budget, like increased infrastructure spending, comprehensive immigration reform, and universal pre-kindergarten, were in his previous budget too. But there were many new ideas, as well. He proposed a new, 19 percent minimum tax on foreign corporate profits—a big move towards the GOP’s preferred territorial tax system. He also wants to expand a tax credit for child care while increasing the capital gains tax rate from 23.8 percent to 28 percent. He put forward a major overhaul of the unemployment insurance system.
None of these represent radical departures from Obama’s previous agendas. But Obama is a Democrat, not a Republican. He wasn’t suddenly going to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and repeal the Affordable Care Act, just as Republicans won’t suddenly wake up and support a single-payer system and higher taxes on the rich.
And Republican ideas on the economy have aged even worse than the Democrats’ stale agenda. Take monetary policy. Throughout Obama’s presidency, GOP lawmakers have frequently criticized the Federal Reserve for low interest rates and its recently-ended bond-buying program. Those policies, they have argued, would send inflation shooting upwards. That, of course, has not happened. Inflation has remained below the Fed’s 2 percent target for years. The greater risk is actually deflation—falling prices.
Of course, in the 1970s, inflation was a very real concern. Then-Fed chair Paul Volcker raised interest rates, causing a recession, but stamping out inflation. Republicans, fearing pre-Volcker inflation, are trying to apply those lessons during a very different time, when the far greater risk to the economy has been a weak labor market. If the Fed had implemented them, it would have led to a disastrous economic contraction.
Or consider taxes. Most of the Republican Party has a laser-like focus at lowering the top marginal tax rates. But some reform-minded conservatives also want to finance a huge expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC)—a tax credit available to parents. They believe that the Reagan tax cuts in the 1980s that lowered the top marginal tax rate from 70 percent to 50 percent was a smart move. But they see far fewer benefits in lowering marginal tax rates now. “Let’s say we cut the 15 percent federal income-tax rate faced by much of the middle class to 10 percent,” Robert Stein writes in the reformicon’s new conservative agenda, titled “Room to Grow.” “Instead of keeping 85 cents for a dollar of extra effort, a worker would get 90 cents—an improvement of only 5.9 percent.… For these workers, cutting the 15 percent rate to 10 percent would make absolutely no difference in work incentives.” A CTC expansion would put money directly into the pockets of parents who need it. While a few prominent members in the Republican Party have adopted Stein’s tax proposal, most notably Senator Marco Rubio, the vast majority of the party would rather lower marginal rates further instead of expanding the CTC. In other words, Republican tax ideas are still stuck in the 1970s as well.
At the end of Boehner’s listicle, his office writes, “The simple truth is this: The federal budget shouldn’t be cobwebbed by the policies of the past. It should be focused on the future—a future where our kids and grandkids can grow up free from the fear of never-ending debt and a bloated Washington bureaucracy.” His party should listen to that advice.
By: Danny Vinik, The New Republic, February 6, 2015
“Not A Good Sign”: Wisconsin’s Walker, Struggling, Rolls Out New Platform
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) had a plan: win a second term, take advantage of a good year for Republicans, and soon after prepare for a national campaign. The plan is looking a little shaky right now, with polls show him in the midst of a very competitive re-election campaign against Democratic businesswoman Mary Burke.
A month ago, the Republican incumbent and his allies tried moving to the left, blasting Burke as an “outsourcing one-percenter.”
That didn’t do much to improve Walker’s standing, so the governor is now moving back to the right, promising big tax cuts and drug testing for those receiving public aid in a second term.
With less than two months to go in a tight re-election race, the Republican governor put forward a 62-page plan that sums up the actions of his first term, defends them against the critique of his Democratic rival, former Trek Bicycle executive Mary Burke, and offers several new proposals.
“It’s our next wave of the Wisconsin comeback. It’s our plan to make sure that everyone who wants a job can find a job,” Walker said in a telephone interview.
As a rule, when an incumbent is still scrambling seven weeks before Election Day, looking for a platform while struggling to defend his record, it’s not a good sign.
Walker, referencing a one-page summary of his agenda, told the AP, “That’s our plan of action for the next four years. Tear it off. Hang it up. Put it next to your computer. Put it on your fridge.”
Part of the trouble is, Walker used similar rhetoric four years ago, when he promised Wisconsin he’d create 250,000 private sector jobs by the end of his first term – and said he should be judged according to that standard. Nearly four years later, the governor is less than halfway to his goal, and has yet to explain why he couldn’t keep his highest-profile promise.
But even putting that aside, the two key tenets of the Republican’s new agenda – tax cuts and drug testing – probably polled well, but they each come with one big flaw.
On the former, Walker already cut taxes in his first term, and it’s caused a mess for Wisconsin’s state finances. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorialized last week:
Wisconsin’s state budget may be out of balance by nearly $1.8 billion when the new two-year cycle begins next July, and for that you can thank Gov. Scott Walker’s fiscal policies.
While the expected shortfall may end up being smaller – or larger – than it appears to be now, it’s clear that a combination of Walker policies and lagging growth in tax revenue blew a hole in the state’s finances.
The governor, facing this reality, is calling for more tax breaks. Perfect.
But the latter is arguably even more offensive. The plan would require “drug testing at an undisclosed cost for able-bodied adults receiving unemployment insurance payments or benefits under FoodShare, the successor to the food stamps program.” It’s part of a political phenomenon we discussed earlier this year: conservative policymakers keep targeting welfare recipients with drug tests, and the policies keep failing rather spectacularly.
We know exactly what drives these efforts. For many, especially on the right, it makes sense to assume those who are struggling are to blame for their plight. If you’re relying on TANF aid to help your family keep its head above water, maybe there’s something wrong with your lifestyle. Maybe the state should assume you have a drug problem.
But recent real-world evidence points in a different direction. Requiring those who are relying on the safety net to give the government their bodily fluids in exchange for benefits is not only legally dubious; it’s also ineffective and a waste of money.
If Walker doesn’t know these previous experiments have failed, he should. If he does know and chooses to push the idea anyway, it would seem the governor’s plan for the next seven weeks is built on little more than callous cynicism.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 16, 2014
“What The Republicans Failed To Accomplish”: Vital Tasks The House Did Not Address Before Taking An Unnecessary Recess
Many House members were at the airport yesterday, desperate to begin their five-week vacation, when the chamber’s leadership called them back. An emergency bill to provide money for the humanitarian crisis at the Southern border had earlier been pulled from the floor because of objections from the hard right; now some Republicans wanted to try again.
“You can’t go home!” Representative Blake Farenthold of Texas said, according to the Washington Post. That would send a terrible message to President Obama: “You’re right, we’re a do-nothing Congress.”
Sorry, congressman. That message had already been broadcast long before the House tripped over its own divisions on the border bill. The failure of this Congress (principally the House) to perform the most basic tasks of governing is breathtakingly broad. Though members did manage to pass a bill overhauling the Department of Veterans Affairs, here is a catalog of the vital tasks the House was unable to accomplish before taking an unnecessary recess:
- Passing a full slate of appropriations bills for the 2015 fiscal year, or a continuing resolution to keep the government open past Sept. 30.
- Passing a long-term transportation bill. (The one approved this week expires in 10 months, and is full of gimmicks made necessary by the failure to raise the gas tax.)
- Passing comprehensive immigration reform.
- Renewing the Export-Import Bank and terrorism risk insurance.
- Raising the minimum wage.
- Extending unemployment insurance.
- Passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would ban discrimination in hiring on the basis of sexual orientation.
- Passing the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would help ensure that women are paid equally to men.
- Fixing the Voting Rights Act after it was gutted by the Supreme Court.
- Passing any form of legislation to impose background checks on gun buyers.
- Passing any long-term legislation to stimulate the economy and create jobs.
But there is one thing House Republicans did enthusiastically before packing their bags: They voted to sue the president for taking executive actions they disliked — actions that were necessary because Republicans failed to do their jobs.
By: David Firestone, Taking Note, The Editorial Page Editors Blog, The New York Times, August 1, 2014
“Pity The Poor Plutocrats”: Time’s Winged Chariot Draws Near, And There’s No Baggage Compartment
Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt…a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.
–President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in a 1954 letter to his brother Edgar
Pity the poor plutocrats, victims of the envious mob. You can hardly open the Wall Street Journal these days without reading a self-pitying screed by some billionaire hungry for love.
A while back it was venture capitalist Tom Perkins, who equated criticism of the wealthy with the Holocaust.
“I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its ‘one percent,’ namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the ‘rich,’” he opined in a letter to the newspaper.
Makes sense to me. One day they’re saying Wall Street bankers should pay the same tax rate as the guys who rotate their tires, next day they’re flinging them into concentration camps. Soon billionaires will be hiding in attic penthouses, quietly fondling stock certificates. Their limos will be disguised as UPS trucks, their yachts as humble tugboats.
In a subsequent San Francisco speaking engagement, Perkins suggested that the United States formally adopt a one-dollar, one-vote electoral system. Citizens, he said, should be like shareholders in a corporation.
“You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How’s that?”
The audience laughed, but Perkins claimed to be dead serious. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the investment firm he co-founded, called itself shocked, and emphasized its disagreement.
More recently, Charles Koch, the elder of the infamous Koch brothers of legend and song, contributed an op-ed to the Journal bitterly complaining that people targeted by TV attack ads he’s paid for are actually allowed to talk back. The brothers, you see, are pure idealists campaigning for liberty.
So that when their Tea Party front groups oppose a public transport system in Nashville, Tennessee, work to forbid Georgia Power from investing in solar technology, or spend big on a county referendum on open pit mining in Wisconsin, it has nothing whatsoever to do with Koch Industries’ oil, gas and mining profits. It’s all about freedom.
And when the same organizations spend millions on TV commercials featuring actresses reading prepared scripts, pretending to have been injured by the Affordable Care Act and attacking Democratic U.S. senators in Arkansas, Louisiana and Alaska, that too is all about liberty.
However, wicked “collectivists” who “promise heaven but deliver hell,” — hell evidently being reliable health insurance not subject to cancellation on an employer’s whim — have called the Koch brothers out. One such is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who went so far as to call their secretive methods “un-American.”
“Instead of encouraging free and open debate,” Charles Koch whined, “collectivists strive to discredit and intimidate opponents. They engage in character assassination. (I should know, as the almost daily target of their attacks.) This is the approach that…Saul Alinsky famously advocated in the 20th [century], and that so many despots have infamously practiced. Such tactics are the antithesis of what is required for a free society.”
“Despots,” mind you. Boo-hoo-hoo. Far from being abashed, Senator Reid must have been thrilled that his taunts lured Koch out of hiding. These boys normally prefer to hide the hundreds of millions they spend purchasing U.S. Senate seats behind benign-sounding outfits like “Americans for Prosperity.”
Because who’s against prosperity, right?
That said, I do think it’s wrong to call anybody “un-American.” To the contrary, the Koch brothers are every bit as American as John D. Rockefeller, H.L. Hunt or Scrooge McDuck, dabbling in his private bullion pool. The comic-heroic figure of the tycoon furiously stamping his little webbed feet because people are free to disagree with him has long been a staple of national life.
Like Charles and David Koch, who inherited hundreds of millions from their oilman father — a founding member of the John Birch Society, which famously held that President Eisenhower was a card-carrying member of the International Communist Conspiracy — their legacy often includes crackpot megalomania. Hence “collectivists,” a polite euphemism.
Koch’s Syndrome, you might call it: combining an obsessive-compulsive need to accumulate money — these boys are worth $100 billion, but they’re nevertheless bitter about paying taxes — along with a deep-seated fear of being found unworthy. Surrounded by obsequious underlings all their lives, they’ve no idea if they’ve ever really deserved it.
It may also be significant that Tom Perkins is 82, the Koch brothers 78 and 73, respectively.
Time’s winged chariot draws near, and there’s no baggage compartment.
By: Gene Lyons, The National Memo, April 9, 2014
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