Giving (less than) equal time to the left here:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/a-new-road-map-for-progressive-democrats http://rooseveltinstitute.org/new-rules-for-the-21st-century/New Road Map for Progressive Democrats
By John Cassidy, New Yorker, April 11, 2019
Wednesday was an interesting day in progressive politics. At a press briefing on Capitol Hill, Senator Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, launched the Medicare for All Act of 2019, which calls for a nationwide single-payer health-care system. After pointing out that the United States spends more than twice as much per capita on health care as other countries, with unimpressive results, Sanders declared, “The current debate about Medicare for All really has nothing to do with health care. It has everything to do with greed and profiteering. It is about whether we continue a dysfunctional system which allowed the top five health-insurance companies to make over twenty billion dollars in profits last year, and the top sixty-five C.E.O.s in the industry to make $1.7 billion in compensation.”
Across town, the Roosevelt Institute, a liberal think tank, unveiled a new report that calls for a broad rebalancing of power away from big corporations—such as health-insurance companies—Wall Street, and other politically connected groups. Stacey Abrams, the Georgia politician who is still deciding whether to enter the 2020 Presidential race, spoke at the event and endorsed the report, which is called “New Rules for the 21st Century: Corporate Power, Public Power, and the Future of the American Economy.”
The report reminds us that we inhabit a country where labor unions have been emasculated, giant monopolistic businesses dominate many sectors of the economy, C.E.O.s and other corporate executives routinely grant themselves huge compensation packages, corporations spend vast sums on lobbying and campaign contributions, many federal courts are packed with judges schooled in “anti-labor, anti-regulation jurisprudence,” and there are still huge disparities in wealth between the rich and the poor and whites and nonwhites. “Over the last half century, a calculated one-two punch has been used to shape our economy, and ultimately our democracy, at every level,” the report says. “First, government was used to build regulatory, tax, and procurement structures that multiplied wealth and power for a small subset of Americans. Second, public sector programs that served the rest of the country were intentionally and systematically eroded.”
It was Sanders, of course, who popularized a version of this narrative during his 2016 Presidential bid, stating repeatedly that the economy had been “rigged” in favor of the one per cent. At the time, the emphasis on the nexus between economic and political power marked Sanders out from many Democrats, as did his calls to replace the Affordable Care Act with a single-payer system and provide free college education. But the Democratic Party’s center of gravity has shifted, and the two events on Wednesday confirmed how the Party’s progressive wing is now driving the policy agenda. Fourteen Democratic senators have co-sponsored the Medicare for All Act of 2019, and four of them are running for President: Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren. Gillibrand appeared alongside Sanders at Wednesday’s press conference, and spoke in favor of the new bill.
Almost all the Democratic candidates have endorsed the concept of debt-free college. Warren, a leading progressive voice in the Senate since winning office, in 2012, has also laid out a series of detailed proposals that are directly aimed at rebalancing economic and political power. They include imposing an annual wealth tax on households with more than fifty million dollars in assets, breaking up big companies in the technology and agribusiness sectors, and forcing corporations to appoint worker representatives to their boards. Booker has proposed an innovative “baby bonds” program, which could help close the wealth gap between whites and blacks.
The Roosevelt Institute report is an effort to provide a unified analytical approach and coherent policy agenda for this progressive moment in the Democratic Party. It broadens the lens from the class-based analysis of Sanders circa 2016 to put a larger focus on race, gender, and antitrust. At the same time, however, it keeps attention firmly centered on which groups in society exercise power—market power, bargaining power, and political power. To “build a stronger, more inclusive economy and democracy, progressive policymakers need a one-two punch of their own,” the report says, “curbing the concentrated power in our economy and political system while also reclaiming public power and building on the strengths of government to directly address both the individual and collective challenges facing our nation.”
This broad focus makes sense. The conservative policy agenda that triumphed from the nineteen-seventies onward was an expansive one, and it will take an equally expansive effort to roll it back. In explaining how best to curb corporate power, the report groups its recommendations into six different areas: a “progressive tax policy,” including a higher top rate, a broader corporate tax, and a new wealth tax; “a new anti-trust agenda,” featuring strict limits on mergers and the regulation of technology monopolies; “corporate governance reform,” designed to give all of a business’s stakeholders a say in how it is run; “expanded financial regulation”; “the restoration of worker power,” including making it easier for unions to organize and confirming the right of employees to go on strike; and far-reaching political reforms, including strict limits on corporate contributions and a new Voting Rights Act, which would curb voter suppression.
Turning to spending programs, the report says that the federal government should “ensure universal access to essential goods and services,” a category it defines to include housing, health care, pre-kindergarten, a post-high-school education, and broadband access. The report doesn’t contain detailed spending proposals or detailed financing plans, but it endorses greater public investment and creating a “public option” wherever possible. It also takes a slap at the market-based approach underlying the Affordable Care Act, noting that “Subsidizing the market provision of health insurance (through employers and through private marketplaces), for example, leaves Americans paying more for worse coverage than any other advanced nation. Meanwhile, every estimate of direct provision single-payer health-insurance proposals, such as Medicare for All, shows that they would cost less and cover more people.”
Supporters of the A.C.A. would contest this characterization. They could also point out that Sanders hasn’t provided a full cost analysis for the Medicare for All plan or explained in detail how it would be financed. (On Wednesday, his office did provide a list of possible financing options, which included the introduction of employer and employee contributions, raising the top rate of income tax to seventy per cent for those making over ten million dollars a year, and “establishing a tax on extreme wealth.”) As the Democratic primary campaign proceeds, the issue of how to pay for the candidates’ various proposals is likely to become a flash point. For now, though, most of the candidates are focussing on their own plans, trying to insure that they are sufficiently ambitious and tailored to meet the unique demands of the moment.
In its concluding section, the Roosevelt Institute report strikes a hopeful note. “The task ahead is large, but it’s not impossible,” it says. “We are at a rare moment in our politics when older paradigms for how we govern our society and shape our economy no longer work, and a new worldview, though emerging, is not yet dominant. Americans are hungry for big, new ideas, and voters will reward leadership that is able to articulate those ideas clearly and put them into action.”
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