Wednesday, April 17, 2013


Rubio suddenly in no rush on immigration
By A.B. Stoddard - 04/01/13 02:06 PM ET

It's always darkest before the dawn or Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is losing his nerve. Proponents of immigration reform are exhilarated: A deal is close at hand after years of disagreement, with organized labor and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce walking away from the negotiating table late Friday mutually pleased with a guest-worker compromise. Yet on Saturday, Rubio sent Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy a letter urging more hearings and warning against a "rush to legislate." 

Then Sunday morning Easter morning no less Rubio sent out an unsubtle statement to the press titled "No final agreement on immigration legislation yet" in which he voiced his concern that "this process cannot be rushed or done in secret."

That was a surprise to his fellow Gang of Eight members from both parties in the Senate, who have met with Rubio and other immigration reform advocates continuously in recent months. Although Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Rubio's announcement Sunday was technically correct — that Rubio was "correctly pointing out that the language hasn't been fully drafted" — he still described the group's work as nearly complete, saying, "We have substantive agreement on all the major pieces now between the eight of us."

Everyone knows Rubio is in a political corner, but if he disagrees with something the Gang of Eight has decided on, he clearly didn't tell them. Rubio has 2016 presidential hopes and he once was a Tea Party hero and cannot afford to move too close to the center if he hopes to survive a GOP primary, the angling for which has already begun. But he was the one who started the immigration push, and at this point the momentum is likely to build no matter how much he tries to slow it. 

As Rubio struggles to buy more time, President Obama and the backers of reform, who not only have seen a Congress fail to legislate at all in recent years but also know the midterm campaigns begin months from now, want to move ahead immediately. Rubio will have to decide just how much he truly wants reform.

CAN CONGRESS PASS IMMIGRATION REFORM WITHOUT RUBIO? AskAB returns Tuesday April 2. Please join my weekly video Q&A by sending your questions and comments to askab@thehill.com.Thank you


Rubio wimps out at CPAC
By Brent Budowsky - 03/14/13 06:00 PM ET

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) demonstrated in his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference meeting that he lacks the toughness and political courage to be elected president in 2016. By running like a frightened rabbit from his own immigration proposals and refusing to champion them in his speech, Rubio suggests he has nothing to fear except his base itself. If Rubio could not handle this speech, he's gonna have a tough time in roughhouse Republican presidential primaries, and he will look like shredded wheat if he ever faces the inside fastball of the formidable Hillary Clinton if this mismatch ever comes to pass.

As I understand Rubio's points in his CPAC speech, he gave a passionate defense of platitudes about American exceptionalism and a fiery oration supporting the good old American family. Presidents are made of sterner stuff than this. What will he do when negotiations get tough in the Senate if he is so afraid of the GOP base that he treated his major legislative priority with the enthusiasm that Count Dracula treated the cross?

I like and respect Rubio, but what I saw at CPAC was a nice man not nearly ready for presidential prime time and a Republican Party not nearly ready to compete for Hispanic votes when the rubber meets the road.

Read more: 
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Meet the Twenty-eight Lawmakers Who Have Quit ALEC This Month
April 26, 2012  

The exodus of major corporations from the corporate front group American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has made headlines nationwide as the group’s agenda has been increasingly scrutinized by the general public.

Zaid Jilani is Communications and Outreach Coordinator for United Republic. He is the former Senior Reporter-Blogger for...

But as these corporations have fled ALEC, there has also been one other little-noticed exodus from the group: that of legislators. Source Watch and Keystone Progress have been tracking the defections of lawmakers. Here are 28 who have left so far:

- Sen. Nan Orrock (D-GA): “As a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council for several years, having joined ALEC with the primary goal of better understanding the corporate-dominated organization, I know first-hand that ALEC is not the innocuous organization it claims to be.” [4/17/12]

- Sen. Greg Cromer (R-LA): “‘It has been brought to my attention that there have been meetings and/or activities with ALEC staff members within the state of Louisiana that I have not been privy to,’ Cromer wrote in his resignation letter that went out as an email to key lawmakers and staffers.” [4/17/12]

- Sen. Mike Colona (D-MO): “‘Their agenda is radical and wrong for Missouri. I was a member and saw firsthand the sort of extreme legislation they push on state legislators around the country,’ Cromer said in a statement to the organization “Progress Missouri.” [4/12/12]

- Pennsylvania Reps. Kate Harper (R), Sandra Major (R), Mark Mustio (R), Harry Readshaw (D), and Sen. John Pippy (R) [4/26/12]

- Sen. George Muñoz (D-NM) [4/20/12]

- Rep. Ted Vick (D-SC): “Recent revelations concerning ALEC’s funding sources from radical elements have proven to be the final straw for me. ALEC has become too partisan and too extreme.” [4/24/12]

- Nebraska Senators Danielle Conrad (D), Tony Fulton (R), Health Mello (D), and Jeremy Norquist (D)[4/26/12]

- Texas Democratic Party Reps. Alma Allen, Armando Martinez, Dawnna Dukes, Hubert Vo, Harold Dutton, Chente, Quintanilla, Eddie Rodriguez, José Menéndez, Ruth Jones McClendon, Eric Johnson, Tracy King, Ryan Guillen [4/2012]

- Rep. Jennifer Selig (D-UT) [4/9/12]

- Rep. Kevin Van De Wege (D-WA): “My membership status is increasingly becoming a divisive issue this year, and I prefer to put my time and energy into efforts that unite our district rather than divide it.” [4/11/12]
We applaud these legislators for leaving the corporate front group, which has been responsible for pushing destructive special interest legislation, from climate change denial in schools, to anti-union and anti-consumer bills, to the controversial Voter ID and Stand Your Ground laws.
April 26, 2012  

Hagel: No budget cuts off-limits
By Jeremy Herb - 04/03/13 12:51 PM ET
  
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Wednesday said no budget cuts will be off-limits as the Pentagon looks to tighten its belt. “We need to challenge all past assumptions, and we need to put everything on the table,” Hagel said in his first major policy address, according to prepared remarks.

Speaking at National Defense University at Fort McNair, Hagel defended his review of the military’s strategy, which he ordered shortly after taking over at the Pentagon. He said the military must look at change “that involves not just tweaking or chipping away at existing structures and practices but, where necessary, fashioning entirely new ones that are better suited to 21st century realities and challenges.”
Hagel said the biggest fiscal challenges facing the Pentagon are not declining or flat-lined budgets, but the “growing imbalance” of how money is spent internally.

“It is already clear to me that any serious effort to reform and reshape our defense enterprise must confront the principal drivers of growth in the Department’s base budget namely acquisitions, personnel costs and overhead,” he said. Hagel’s speech comes one month after across-the-board sequestration cuts took effect, occurring just two days after he was sworn in as defense secretary. With no budget deal on the horizon between the White House and Congress, how Hagel and the military tackle sequestration has the potential to be a major part of his legacy at the Pentagon.

The military already issued a new strategic guidance in 2012, after the Pentagon’s budgets over the next decade were reduced by $487 billion under the Budget Control Act. With sequestration, $41 billion will be cut in 2013 and $500 billion could be reduced in the next decade, which senior military leaders have said would require the Pentagon to change its new strategy and scale back ambitions. Hagel said Wednesday that the department’s new strategic review should come with options so the military can be prepared if there is a budget deal to reverse sequester or if the cuts do persist for years.

“We cannot simply wish or hope our way to carrying out a responsible national security strategy and its implementation,” he said. “The Department must understand the challenges and uncertainties, plan for the risks and, yes, recognize the opportunities inherent in budget constraints and more efficient and effective restructuring.”

Hagel talked about streamlining the military’s command structures, paring back the “world’s largest back-office” and examining the number of active-duty service members. He touched on the need for a more cost-effective acquisitions process and avoiding the major cost overruns that have plagued weapons programs like the F-35.

But he also emphasized that the military is not a business.
"The military is not, and should never be, run like a corporation," Hagel said. "But that does not mean we don’t have a good deal to learn from what the private sector has achieved over the past 20 to 30 years."
The moves Hagel discussed Wednesday are among the most common cited by budget cutters who say that the Pentagon can achieve the level of cost savings required under sequestration. Hagel did not get into many specifics in his address, saying that he did not want to prejudge the strategic review that’s currently under way.

“It could turn out that making dramatic changes in each of these areas could prove unwise, untenable or politically impossible,” Hagel said. “Yet we have no choice but to take a very close look and see how we can do all of this better.” Hagel’s first chance to lay out specifics will come next week, when the Pentagon unveils its 2014 budget request. Pentagon officials have said the budget won’t include the $50 billion reduction in 2014 that would be required if sequester is not changed. The budget is expected, however, to include long-term cost savers including base closures and increases in healthcare fees — both of which were roundly rejected by Congress during the 2013 budget process.

Hagel also made a pitch Wednesday for more “flexibility” to deal with sequestration, something military officials had been hesitant to request back before the cuts went into effect. “If we get time and flexibility to implement savings, we could limit the impact of spending reductions on force structure and modernization while still making a significant contribution to deficit reduction,” Hagel said.

“By contrast, the cuts required by sequester afford neither time nor flexibility. These quick and dramatic cuts would almost certainly require reductions in what have long been considered core military capabilities and changes in the traditional roles and missions among the uniformed services,” he added.

Friday, March 15, 2013


House Speaker John Boehner speaks to reporters after a House GOP meeting on the debt ceiling in July 2011. (Chet Susslin)
Updated: March 1, 2013 | 6:04 p.m. 
March 1, 2013 | 12:53 p.m.

Who really birthed the sequester? To hear Republicans tell it, the White House all but single-handedly spawned the huge across-the-board cuts to defense and domestic programs, the enforcement “trigger” of the summer 2011 debt-ceiling deal.

But is there really any “Rosebud” moment to be recollected from that year's agonizing fiscal negotiations to illustrate that Obama or any other individual, or party, was solely responsible for conceiving this idea?
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and other Republicans keep insisting that there is, even while there can be no dispute that they had to collaborate with Democrats in seeing the sequester become law. Yet Republicans still see some gain in saying it was Obama who came up with the idea for the sequester, explaining that the president didn’t want the debt limit to get in the way of his 2012 presidential campaign. Lately, they have sought to brand the cuts the "Obamaquester."

Support for this Republican mantra gained momentum with the release in September of the book The Price of Politics, by Washington Post Associate Editor Bob Woodward. In it, Woodward asserts that the sequester was the idea of then-Office of Management and Budget Director Jacob Lew and White House Director of Legislative Affairs Rob Nabors. The debate got fresh fodder last weekend when Woodward wrote an op-ed article on the same topic for The Post.

But Democrats and senior administration officials have said that is not the complete picture and that Boehner and other Republicans have been engaging in revisionist history by disingenuously trying to downplay their contributing roles. For instance, Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, has told National Journal: “I find it curious that the speaker is now disavowing the deal [the final 2011 Budget Control Act, including the sequestration], considering he had said he got 98 percent of what he wanted.” He was referring to Boehner saying during an interview aired Aug. 1, 2011, on the CBS Evening News that “when you look at this final agreement that we came to with the White House, I got 98 percent of what I wanted. I’m pretty happy.”

And on the House floor Thursday, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland pushed back on the GOP effort to blame the White House for the sequester.

In fact, Hoyer noted, six days before Republicans claimed Nabors first presented the sequester idea to them on Capitol Hill during a July 25, 2011, meeting, a House Republican bill had been passed to limit government spending — known as the “Cut, Cap, and Balance Act” — that “had as its fallback a sequester if the objectives of that bill were not reached.”

Boehner spokesman Michael Steel responded: “The idea of a sequester dates back to Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act in the 1980s. No one is saying President Obama—or Jack Lew—invented it. The point is that they insisted it be included in the Budget Control Act, because they didn’t want to face another debate over the debt limit before the president's reelection.”

With $85 billion in first-year sequestration cuts set to kick in on Friday, it’s worth looking back on how the idea came to be—if for no other reason than to offer a lesson in how Republicans and Democrats, Congress and the White House make policy when there’s a gun to their heads, as was the case in the summer of 2011 when the debt-limit crisis loomed over Washington.

Senior congressional Republican aides claim that the first time a sequester plan was broached was during a visit to the Capitol on July 25, 2011, from Nabors, who met with Boehner’s then-chief of staff, Barry Jackson, and the speaker’s policy director, Brett Loper. 

What Nabors had to deliver at that meeting was a sequester concept devised at the White House by Lew and others as a way to end months of haggling over raising the debt ceiling.

At that time, Republicans and Democrats deadlocked over rival approaches to extend the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling. There were just 10 days left before the Aug. 2 deadline by which the Treasury Department said the nation would lose the ability to pay all of its bills.

Nabors is described as putting forth to Jackson and Loper during that closed-door meeting a “sequester” plan as the White House’s latest compromise. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid also got a similar rundown. The idea was not novel or plucked out of thin air; such an enforcement process dated from at least the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985—better known as the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act—which set deficit targets and called for a sequester to go into effect if they were not met.

In this case, the idea was pitched as a way to address what had been a key issue: how to accommodate congressional Republicans’ demands for dollar-for-dollar spending cuts in return for Obama’s request to raise the borrowing authority by $2.1 trillion—and to authorize that entire amount in a single vote so that another debt-ceiling crisis would not have to be addressed during the 2012 election year.

The two sides were seen as fast agreeing on about $900 billion in cuts, some identified in earlier bipartisan negotiations. But the rub against doing what Obama wanted was the question of how to ensure Congress would follow through with the remaining roughly $1.2 trillion in cuts once the full amount of the debt ceiling he was requesting was already approved. The White House’s proposed sequester would compel Congress to follow through with the further reductions by November or face unappealing automatic cuts, split between domestic and defense spending.

In response, Boehner aides Jackson and Loper expressed reluctance and skepticism, suggesting to Nabors that this “sequester” was not as good a plan as one the House Republicans already had. The Republican strategy had come to involve voting on about $1 trillion in cuts right away and allowing a smaller debt-limit increase, then working on more cuts and tax and entitlement reform before voting on another debt-limit increase in 2012.

But Obama was ruling that out, even threatening to veto it, arguing that a shorter-term debt-limit increase could create uncertainty by risking another bitter partisan fight and a default within only a matter of months.
“The only bottom line that I have is that we have to extend this debt ceiling through the next election, into 2013. And the reason for it is we’ve now seen how difficult it is to get any kind of deal done,” Obama said during a July 22, 2011, news conference.

The sequester plan that Nabors outlined at the Capitol was refined, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President Joe Biden both weighing in. As part of a final, negotiated deal, called the Budget Control Act, there was agreement on $900 billion in spending cuts and the creation of a bipartisan Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, which would negotiate the $1.2 trillion more in cuts. If that so-called super committee failed, or if Congress did not follow through with its recommendation, automatic cuts would begin on Jan. 2, 2013.

Administration officials do not deny that a sequester plan was discussed at the July 25, 2011, meeting between Nabors and Jackson and Loper. But they say that was not the first time the discussion of such an enforcement mechanism—a la Gramm-Rudman-Hollings—had been brought up in various negotiations, dating from bipartisan talks with House and Senate members led by Biden earlier in the year. “It was always in the air,” a senior White House aide told National Journal.

In fact, there is some outside evidence that this is true, beyond the fact House Republicans had passed a bill only six days earlier containing its own sequester back-up plan. News accounts of even earlier talks involving congressional leaders and Obama at the White House mention the notion of a deal involving “triggers” that would force Congress to follow through with agreed cuts. 

Democrats also note that even a plan offered by McConnell which would have given the president authority to raise the ceiling in several steps would, by its own nature, have had to also involve a kind of trigger mechanism. Under McConnell’s plan, the president would have been granted the authority to raise the ceiling to the full amount requested by the White House in two subsequent tranches, both of which could be blocked through congressional resolutions of disapproval that required a two-thirds majority. That gave the White House the opportunity to raise the debt ceiling while also giving Republicans a chance to vote against it.

But there was a part missing in that equation: How do you ensure that $1.2 trillion would be cut? According to one senior Senate Democratic aide, “That’s where the sequester came in, but it was a pretty obvious solution since there needed to be some kind of enforceable mechanism if Republicans were going to go along with the McConnell plan. They [Republicans] would not accept a plan where they voted against the second tranches of the ceiling, but were left with no guarantee that the cuts would actually happen.”

The aide said that is what Democrats mean when they argue that the sequester came about at the Republicans’ behest. “We obviously would have been OK with just the $900 billion in cuts, and some kind of an agreement to seek more. But because Republicans demanded dollar-for-dollar, we were forced to find a way to get from $900 billion to $2 trillion. It is really ridiculous for them to try to wriggle out now. If they had not insisted on dollar-for-dollar or had been open to revenues, the sequester would not exist.”

Van Hollen also noted that an offer had been made to have revenues, such as closing special-interest tax loopholes, incorporated into the plan instead. But he said that Republicans dismissed that, and that they are the ones who decided to leave the defense cuts in the plan. Those military cuts are the ones House Republicans now spew the most anger about, and they have even since passed once-chamber legislation to soften them through deeper cuts to social and safety-net programs.

All the while, Democrats reiterated that the final deal—ultimately supported by majorities in both chambers—was later depicted by Boehner as “98 percent of what I wanted.”

But a senior GOP congressional aide has told National Journal it is simply not fair to refer to that remark by Boehner without also noting the context in which it was made—that is, that it was made months before the super committee failed, and after what the aide said had been personal commitments to Boehner from Reid and Obama that the panel would get its work done.

Based on those assurances, the aide said, Boehner truly felt that the Budget Control Act would result in the $1.2 trillion in discretionary spending caps and a package of entitlement and tax reforms that were being promised, and so he went along with the agreement, including its sequester trigger. “Obviously, the second part didn’t happen,” the aide said.

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Monday, March 11, 2013


'Big Government' Isn't the Problem, Big Money Is
  Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney responds to cheers from the crowd as he speaks at a campaign rally at West Hills Elementary School in Knoxville, Tenn., Sunday, March 4, 2012. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Conservatives love to rail against “big government.” But the surge of cynicism engulfing the nation isn’t about government’s size. It flows from a growing perception that government doesn’t work for average people but for big business, Wall Street and the very rich—who, in effect, have bought it. In a recent Pew poll, 77 percent of respondents said too much power is in the hands of a few rich people and corporations.

Robert Reich, a former secretary of labor, is the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of...

Surging inequality, not Wall Street banditry, is the underlying cause of the Great Recession.
That view is understandable. Wall Street got bailed out by taxpayers, but one out of every three homeowners with a mortgage is underwater, caught in the tsunami caused by the Street’s excesses. The bailout wasn’t conditioned on the banks helping these homeowners, and subsequent help has been meager. The recent settlement of claims against the banks is tiny compared with how much homeowners have lost. Millions of people are losing their homes or simply walking away from mortgage payments they can no longer afford.

Homeowners can’t use bankruptcy to reorganize their mortgage loans because the banks have engineered laws to prohibit this. Banks have also made it extremely difficult for young people to use bankruptcy to reorganize their student loans. Yet corporations routinely use bankruptcy to renege on contracts. American Airlines, which is in bankruptcy, plans to fire 13,000 people—16 percent of its workforce—while cutting back health benefits for current employees. It also intended to terminate its underfunded pension plans, until the government agency charged with picking up the tab screamed so loudly that American backed off and proposed to freeze the plans.

Not a day goes by without Republicans decrying the budget deficit. But its biggest driver is Big Money’s corruption of Washington. One of the federal budget’s largest and fastest-growing programs is Medicare, whose costs would be far lower if drug companies reduced their prices. It hasn’t happened because Big Pharma won’t allow it. Medicare’s administrative costs are only 3 percent, far below the 10 percent average of private insurers. So it would be logical to tame rising healthcare costs by allowing any family to opt in. That was the idea behind the “public option.” But health insurers stopped it in its tracks.

The other big budget expense is defense. The US spends more on its military than China, Russia, Britain, France, Japan and Germany combined. The “basic” military budget (the annual cost of paying troops and buying planes, ships and tanks—not including the costs of actually fighting wars) keeps growing. With the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, the cost of fighting wars is projected to drop—but the base budget is scheduled to rise. It’s already about 25 percent higher than it was a decade ago, adjusted for inflation. One big reason is that it’s almost impossible to terminate large military contracts. Defense contractors have cultivated sponsors on Capitol Hill and located their facilities in politically important districts. Lockheed, Raytheon and others have made national defense America’s biggest jobs program.

“Big government” isn’t the problem. The problem is the Big Money that’s taking over government. Government is doing fewer of the things most of us want it to do—providing good public schools and affordable access to college, improving infrastructure, maintaining safety nets and protecting the public from dangers—and more of the things big corporations, Wall Street and wealthy plutocrats want it to do.
Some conservatives argue that we wouldn’t have to worry about this if we had a smaller government to begin with, because big government attracts Big Money. On ABC’s This Week a few months ago, Congressman Paul Ryan told me that “if the power and money are going to be here in Washington…that’s where the powerful are going to go to influence it.” Ryan has it upside down. A smaller government that’s still dominated by money would continue to do the bidding of Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry, oil companies, agribusiness, big insurance, military contractors and rich individuals. It just wouldn’t do anything else.

Millionaires and billionaires aren’t donating to politicians out of generosity. They consider these expenditures to be investments, and they expect a good return on them. Experts say the 2012 elections are likely to be the priciest ever, costing an estimated $6 billion. “It is far worse than it has ever been,” says Senator John McCain. And all restraints on spending are off now that the Supreme Court has determined that money is “speech” and corporations are “people.”

I don’t know where the Occupy movement is heading, but I do know there’s more grassroots energy for progressive change than I’ve seen in decades. The question is how to channel it into a sustainable movement. If you believe as I do that Obama and the Democrats didn’t push hard enough in the president’s first term for the things we believe in, we must push harder next term.

We also must engage with people who may disagree. Reach across to independents, even to Republicans and self-styled Tea Partiers. Find people who are open to arguments and ideas, regardless of the label they apply to themselves. We must also get out of our issue cocoons. It’s fine to fight against climate change, or to push for gay rights or a single-payer health system. But we can’t be so mesmerized by any single issue that we fail to take on the stuff that makes it harder for average Americans to be heard on these issues and more: the growing concentration of income, wealth and political power at the top; the increasing clout of global corporations and Wall Street; and the corruption of our democracy.

Don’t focus solely on Washington or entirely on elections. Corporate campaigns—consumer boycotts of companies behind the largest political contributions, media attention to those that award top executives the fattest compensation packages while laying off the most workers—can play an important role. And when candidates are the targets, don’t wait for them to emerge with agendas and policy positions. Take an active role in creating those agendas—and get candidates to run on them.

We should demand, for example, that the marginal income tax on the top 1 percent return to what it was before 1981—at least 70 percent; that a transactions tax be imposed on all Wall Street deals; that distressed homeowners be allowed to reorganize their mortgages under bankruptcy; that Medicare be available to all; that the basic military budget be cut by at least 25 percent over the next decade; that the Glass-Steagall Act be resurrected and Wall Street’s biggest banks be broken up; and that all political contributions be disclosed, public financing be made available to candidates in general elections and a constitutional amendment be enacted to reverse Citizens United.

Tell incumbents you’ll work your heart out to get them re-elected on condition they campaign on such an agenda. If and when they’re elected, keep up the heat and the support. Too many of us think political activism begins a few months before election day and ends when winners are announced.

The day after election day is the real beginning. Newly elected officials must know that we will continue to mobilize support for a progressive agenda, reward them for pushing it and hold them accountable in the next election cycle if they don’t. We will even go so far as to run candidates against them in their next primary—candidates who will run on that agenda.

Progressives must take back our economy and our democracy from a regressive right backed by a plutocracy that has taken over both. The stakes are especially high. It will not be easy to accomplish. But it must be done. And it is within your power—our power—to do it.


Sunday, March 10, 2013


Meet the Twenty-eight Lawmakers Who Have Quit ALEC This Month
April 26, 2012  

The exodus of major corporations from the corporate front group American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has made headlines nationwide as the group’s agenda has been increasingly scrutinized by the general public.

Zaid Jilani is Communications and Outreach Coordinator for United Republic. He is the former Senior Reporter-Blogger for...

But as these corporations have fled ALEC, there has also been one other little-noticed exodus from the group: that of legislators. Source Watch and Keystone Progress have been tracking the defections of lawmakers. Here are 28 who have left so far:

- Sen. Nan Orrock (D-GA): “As a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council for several years, having joined ALEC with the primary goal of better understanding the corporate-dominated organization, I know first-hand that ALEC is not the innocuous organization it claims to be.” [4/17/12]

- Sen. Greg Cromer (R-LA): “‘It has been brought to my attention that there have been meetings and/or activities with ALEC staff members within the state of Louisiana that I have not been privy to,’ Cromer wrote in his resignation letter that went out as an email to key lawmakers and staffers.” [4/17/12]

- Sen. Mike Colona (D-MO): “‘Their agenda is radical and wrong for Missouri. I was a member and saw firsthand the sort of extreme legislation they push on state legislators around the country,’ Cromer said in a statement to the organization “Progress Missouri.” [4/12/12]

- Pennsylvania Reps. Kate Harper (R), Sandra Major (R), Mark Mustio (R), Harry Readshaw (D), and Sen. John Pippy (R) [4/26/12]

- Sen. George Muñoz (D-NM) [4/20/12]

- Rep. Ted Vick (D-SC): “Recent revelations concerning ALEC’s funding sources from radical elements have proven to be the final straw for me. ALEC has become too partisan and too extreme.” [4/24/12]

- Nebraska Senators Danielle Conrad (D), Tony Fulton (R), Health Mello (D), and Jeremy Norquist (D)[4/26/12]

- Texas Democratic Party Reps. Alma Allen, Armando Martinez, Dawnna Dukes, Hubert Vo, Harold Dutton, Chente, Quintanilla, Eddie Rodriguez, José Menéndez, Ruth Jones McClendon, Eric Johnson, Tracy King, Ryan Guillen [4/2012]

- Rep. Jennifer Selig (D-UT) [4/9/12]

- Rep. Kevin Van De Wege (D-WA): “My membership status is increasingly becoming a divisive issue this year, and I prefer to put my time and energy into efforts that unite our district rather than divide it.” [4/11/12]
We applaud these legislators for leaving the corporate front group, which has been responsible for pushing destructive special interest legislation, from climate change denial in schools, to anti-union and anti-consumer bills, to the controversial Voter ID and Stand Your Ground laws.
April 26, 2012  

Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley; Author, 'Beyond Outrage'
The Answer Isn't Socialism; It's Capitalism That Better Spreads the Benefits of the Productivity Revolution
Posted: 05/06/2012 5:28 pm

Francois Hollande's victory doesn't and shouldn't mean a movement toward socialism in Europe or elsewhere. Socialism isn't the answer to the basic problem haunting all rich nations.
The answer is to reform capitalism. The world's productivity revolution is outpacing the political will of rich societies to fairly distribute its benefits. The result is widening inequality coupled with slow growth and stubbornly high unemployment.

In the United States, almost all the gains from productivity growth have been going to the top 1 percent, and the percent of the working-age population with jobs is now lower than it's been in more than thirty years (before the vast majority of women moved into paid work).

Inequality is also growing in Europe, along with chronic joblessness. Europe is finding it can no longer afford generous safety nets to catch everyone who has fallen out of the working economy.
Consumers in China are gaining ground but consumption continues to shrink as a share of China's increasingly productive economy, while inequality in China is soaring. China's wealthy elites are emulating the most conspicuous consumption of the rich in the West.

At the heart of the productivity revolution are the computers, software, and the Internet that have found their way into the production of almost everything a modern economy creates. Factory workers are being replaced by computerized machine tools and robotics; office workers, by software applications; professionals, by ever more specialized apps; communications and transportation workers, by the Internet.
Some work continues to be outsourced abroad to very low-wage workers in developing nations but this is not the major cause of the present trend. This work now comprises such a tiny fraction of the costs of production that it's becoming cheaper for companies to do more of it at home with computers and software, and even bring back some of it ("in-source") from abroad.

Consumers in rich nations are reaping some of the benefits of the productivity revolution in the form of lower prices or more value for the money -- consider the cost of color TVs, international phone calls, or cross-country flights compared to what they were before.

But most of the gains are going to the shareholders who own the companies, and to the relatively small number of very talented (or very lucky and well-connected) managers, engineers, designers, and legal or financial specialists on whom the companies depend for strategic decisions about what to produce and how.

Increasingly, via stock options and bonuses, the owners and the "talent" are one and the same. While many other people indirectly own shares of stock through their pensions and 401-K plans, 90 percent of the value of all financial assets in the U.S. belongs to the richest 10 percent of the American population.
Meanwhile, a large number of low-paid service workers sell personalized comfort and attention -- something software can't do -- in the retail, restaurant, hotel, and hospital sectors (most U.S. job growth since 2009 has occurred here.) Others -- temps, contract workers, the under- and partially-employed, fill in where they can. A growing number are not working.
The problem is not that the productivity revolution has caused unemployment or under-employment. The problem is its fruits haven't been widely shared. Less work isn't a bad thing. Most people prefer leisure. A productivity revolution such as we are experiencing should enable people to spend less time at work and have more time to do whatever they'd rather do.

The problem comes in the distribution of the benefits of the productivity revolution. A large portion of the population no longer earns the money it needs to live nearly as well as the productivity revolution would otherwise allow. It can't afford the "leisure" its now experiencing involuntarily.

Not only is this a problem for them; it's also a problem for the overall economy. It means that a growing portion of the population lacks the purchasing power to keep the economy going. In the United States, consumers account for 70 percent of economic activity. If they as a whole cannot afford to buy all the goods and services the productivity revolution is generating, the economy becomes stymied. Growth is anemic; unemployment remains high.

That's why "supply-side" tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy are perverse. Corporations and the rich don't need more tax cuts; they're swimming in money as it is. The reason they don't invest in additional productive capacity and hire more people is they don't see a sufficient market for the added goods and services, which means an inadequate return on such investment.

But more Keynesian stimulus won't help solve the more fundamental problem. Although added government spending has gone some way toward filling the gap in demand caused by consumers whose jobs and incomes are disappearing, it can't be a permanent solution. Even if the wealthy paid their fair share of taxes, deficits would soon get out of control. Additional public investments in infrastructure and basic research and development can make the economy more productive - but more productivity doesn't necessarily help if a growing portion of the population can't absorb it.

What to do? Learn from our own history.
The last great surge in productivity occurred between 1870 and 1928, when the technologies of the first industrial revolution were combined with steam power and electricity, mass produced in giant companies enjoying vast economies of scale, and supplied and distributed over a widening system of rails. That ended abruptly in the Great Crash of 1929, when income and wealth had become so concentrated at the top (the owners and financiers of these vast combines) that most people couldn't pay for all these new products and services without going deeply and hopelessly into debt -- resulting in a bubble that loudly and inevitably popped.

If that sounds familiar, it should. A similar thing happened between 1980 and 2007, when productivity revolution of computers, software, and, eventually, the Internet spawned a new economy along with great fortunes. (It's not coincidental that 1928 and 2007 mark the two peaks of income concentration in America over the last hundred years, in which the top 1 percent raked in over 23 percent of total income.)
But here's the big difference. During the Depression decade of the 1930s, the nation reorganized itself so that the gains from growth were far more broadly distributed. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 recognized unions' rights to collectively bargain, and imposed a duty on employers to bargain in good faith. By the 1950s, a third of all workers in the United States were unionized, giving them the power to demand some of the gains from growth. Meanwhile, Social Security, unemployment insurance, and worker's compensation spread a broad safety net. The forty-hour workweek with time-and-a-half for overtime also helped share the work and spread the gains, as did a minimum wage. In 1965, Medicare and Medicaid broadened access to health care. And a progressive income tax, reaching well over 70 percent on the highest incomes, also helped ensure that the gains were spread fairly.

This time, though, the nation has taken no similar steps. Quite the contrary: A resurgent right insists on even more tax breaks for corporations and the rich, massive cuts in public spending that will destroy what's left of our safety nets, including Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, fewer rights for organized labor, more deregulation of labor markets, and a lower (or no) minimum wage.
This is, quite simply, nuts.

And this is why a second Obama administration, should there be one, must focus its attention on more broadly distributing the gains from growth. This doesn't mean "redistributing" from rich to poor, as in a zero-sum game. To the contrary, the rich will do far better with a smaller share of a robust, growing economy than they're doing with a large share of an economy that's barely moving forward.

This will require real tax reform -- not just a "Buffett" minimal tax but substantially higher marginal rates and more brackets at the top, with a capital gains rate matching the income-tax rate. It also means a larger Earned Income Tax Credit, whose benefits extend high into the middle class. That will enable many Americans to move to a 35-hour workweek without losing ground -- thereby making room for more jobs.
It means Medicare for all rather than an absurdly-costly system that relies on private for-profit insurers and providers.

It will require limiting executive salaries and empowering workers to get a larger share of corporate profits. The Employee Free Choice Act should be an explicit part of the second-term agenda.
It will require strict limits on the voracious, irresponsible behavior of Wall Street, from which we've all suffered. The Glass-Steagall Act must be resurrected (the so-called Volcker Rule is more ridden with holes than cheese), and the big banks broken up.

And it will necessitate a public educational system - including early child education - second to none, and available to all our young people.
We don't need socialism. We need a capitalism that works for the vast majority. The productivity revolution should be making our lives better -- not poorer and more insecure. And it will do that when we have the political will to spread its benefits.

ROBERT B. REICH, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock" and "The Work of Nations." His latest is an e-book, "Beyond Outrage." He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.