The Progressive Populist Today Blog: 2021-07-11

Friday, July 16, 2021

Editorial: Different Paths to Progress

Republicans’ hopes to return to power in Congress in 2022 and prevent President Joe Biden’s re-election in 2024 largely depend on blocking Democrats from accomplishing anything in the next year and a half. That’s why Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) was caught in a video as looking forward to “18 more months of chaos” so Republicans would have a shot at reclaiming Congress in the 2022 midterm election.

“For the next 18 months, our job is to do everything we can to slow all of that down to get to December of 2022 and then get in here and lead,” Roy said in a video recorded by a Democratic activist.

Roy added: “Nobody knows what anybody’s gonna do right now. That’s the thing; this is the problem. I actually say, ‘Thank you, Lord, 18 more months of chaos and the inability to get stuff done.’ That’s what we want.”

Roy, a former chief of staff to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), is a member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus but he committed the sin of voting, after the Capitol riots Jan. 6, to certify the election results that put Biden in the White House. After House Republicans stripped Rep. Lynn Cheney (R-Wyo.) of her third-ranking position in May, Roy sought to replace her but lost a bid to Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) after Trump not only endorsed Stefanik but called for Roy to face a primary opponent. So Roy is trying to climb back into good graces with the Trumpers.

In the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is pretty open about his intention to stop any progress. “One hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration,” he said May 5. “We’re confronted with severe challenges from a new administration, and a narrow majority of Democrats in the House and a 50-50 Senate to turn America into a socialist country, and that’s 100 percent of my focus.”

Progressive Democrats are frustrated by the resistance of Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) to doing away with the filibuster so the slim Democratic majority in the Senate can proceed with bills that, among other things, would stop Republican legislatures from suppressing votes and allowing legislatures to set aside votes they don’t like.

Current Senate rules allow the minority to stop bills with a bloc of 41 or more senators, so Democrats would need to find at least 10 Republican senators to pass the “For the People Act,” and there are only a few that will even admit they are considering supporting portions of the bill that would re-enact and strengthen the Voting Rights Act.

Biden on June 24 announced a bipartisan $579 billion deal negotiated with moderate Republicans and Democratic senators that includes $309 billion for transportation, including $109 billion for roads, bridges and other “major projects”; $49 billion for public transit; $66 billion for passenger and freight rail; and $266 billion for other infrastructure, including water systems, broadband infrastructure, environmental remediation and power grids.

The bipartisan bill made substantial cuts from Biden’s American Jobs Plan, which proposed roughly $2.2 trillion in new infrastructure spending over the next eight years. Some of those items tossed from the bipartisan bill may have ended up in the $3.5 trillion budget package Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chair of the Senate Budget Committee, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) got out of the Budget Committee (down from a $6 trillion wish list), which includes Medicare expansion, safety-net programs, green energy and other progressive agenda items, which would be passed in the reconciliation process, which only requires a simple majority for budget-related items.

Biden initially tied the bipartisan infrastucture passage to the success of the reconciliation bill, but he backed down on his veiled threat after criticism from Senate Republicans. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters that the lower chamber will not vote on bipartisan infrastructure legislation until the Senate also passes the reconciliation bill containing those Democratic priorities.

McConnell is trying to scuttle the bipartisan compromise. “The era of bipartisanship on this stuff is over … This is not going to be done on a bipartisan basis,” he said at an event in Kentucky. “This is going to be a hell of a fight over what this country ought to look like in the future and it’s going to unfold here in the next few weeks. I don’t think we’ve had a bigger difference of opinion between the two parties.”

In the meantime, Biden is trying accomplish as much as he can through executive orders. On July 9, Biden rejected the pro-monopoly world view of the last 40 years, issued 72 directives to over a dozen executive agencies, and created a council to make sure agencies do their job in rulemaking to achieve this vision.

“Biden directed agencies to use their rulemaking authority aggressively to stop corporate monopolies in agriculture, defense, pharma, banking, and tech—to name a few,” Zephyr Teachout noted at TheNation.com. “For instance, he directed the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to ban noncompete agreements, so that employers can’t trap employees but have to actually provide benefits that make them choose to stay. He ordered the Department of Agriculture to use its full power under the Packer and Stockyards Act to break the stranglehold of distributors and other corporate giants that crush farmers and farmworkers. He directed the Consumer Financial Protection Board to issue a rule that would allow bank customers to take their financial transaction data with them to a new bank. He directed federal health officials to enable importation of cheaper drugs from Canada in a direct confrontation with Big Pharma.”

Biden’s appointment of LIna Khan as chair of the Federal Trade Commission was also a move in that direction of realigning the Democratic Party back to the New Deal era of the 1930s through the ’70s, when the party stood for workers, small businesses and producers against the “middlemen” and corporate monopolists. “They understood that anti-monopoly laws were partly about keeping prices down—but also about preserving equality and dignity, and making sure that everyone who contributed to the production of goods and services got a fair cut,” Teachout wrote.

After the Reagan and Bush administrations increased corporate power at the expense of unions and other Democratic constituencies, some Democratic officials were co-opted by advocates of monopolization and offshoring industry. “Since Bill Clinton became president, corporate Democrats have been in the driver’s seat when it comes to economic policy, and shut down all dissenters in the antimonopoly policy, Teachout wrote. One key anti-monopoly question remains for the president: his choice as assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division. “Biden has a chance to be the first trust-busting presidency in over 50 years—and we keep getting strong signals that he’s got it in his sights. That’s great news for workers, for small businesses, and for the small communities that have been left out in the collapsing concentration of our country for the last 50 years. He’s well on his way, but a strong appointment at the Department of Justice would go a long way towards finishing the job.”

That, and strong jobs and infrastructure bills should put the Democrats in good shape to keep their majority in the House and add to their Senate majority. And if McConnell manages to derail the bipartisan compromise, he might just finally convinces Manchin and Sinema that the filibuster is a corrupt relic that is used to stop good bills — such as the For the People Act that would stop voter suppression tactics being enacted by Republican legislatures. — JMC