Robert B. Reich's Blog, page 25
February 27, 2021
The Only Way Democrats Will Get Anything DoneMitch McConnell may...
The Only Way Democrats Will Get Anything Done
Mitch McConnell may no longer be Senate Majority Leader, but Republicans can still block legislation supported by the vast majority. That’s because of a Senate rule called the filibuster. If we have any hope of safeguarding our democracy and ushering in transformative change, Democrats must wield their power to get rid of the filibuster – and fast.
The filibuster is a Senate rule requiring a 60-vote supermajority to pass legislation. Which means a minority of senators can often block legislation that the vast majority of Americans want and need.
It’s not in the Constitution. In fact, it’s arguably unconstitutional. Alexander Hamilton regarded a supermajority rule as “a poison” that would lead to “contemptible compromises of the public good.”
Even without the filibuster, Senate Republicans already have outsized influence. The 50 of them represent 41 and a half million fewer Americans than the 50 Senate Democrats. Wyoming, with 579,000 people gets two senators. California, with 40 million also gets two senators.
Meanwhile, Republican-controlled states are gearing up to pass even more restrictive voting laws along with additional partisan gerrymandering that could enable Republicans in Washington to maintain power for the next decade.
The best way to prevent this is with national election standards through the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act – but these important bills are stymied as long as the filibuster remains in place.
The filibuster is rooted in racism. In the late 19th century, Southern senators crafted the “talking filibuster” – in which a member could delay the passage of a bill with a long-winded speech – in order to protect the pro-slavery Senate minority.
The current version of the filibuster, requiring 60 votes to end debate, was popularized in the Jim Crow era by Southern senators seeking to prevent passage of civil rights legislation. From the end of Reconstruction to 1964, the filibuster was used only to kill civil rights bills.
Senators can now use a process called “reconciliation” to pass legislation on budgetary matters, requiring a bare majority of 51 votes. But the filibuster can still stop bills on voting rights, the climate crisis, campaign finance reform, and other crucial legislation Americans need – and on which Joe Biden has based much of his presidency.
Getting rid of the filibuster is also good politics. As long as the filibuster is intact, Senate Republicans could keep the Senate in gridlock, and then run in the 2022 midterms on Democrats’ failure to get anything done.
The good news is the filibuster is a Senate rule. As I said, it’s not in the Constitution. It’s not even in a law. Like any other Senate rule it can be changed by a simple majority of senators.
With Vice President Kamala Harris now serving as the tie-breaking vote, Senate Democrats can and must abolish the filibuster.
There are a few conservative Senate Democrats who don’t like the idea, but Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer can get them to fall in line. That’s what leadership is all about. They must end the filibuster and get America moving. Now.
February 23, 2021
The Freedom to Freeze
February 22, 2021
Unrigging the GOP’s Minority RuleThe Republican Party is...
Unrigging the GOP’s Minority Rule
The Republican Party is shrinking. It’s lost the popular vote in seven of the past eight Presidential elections. Since Trump’s attempted coup, more Americans are abandoning it every day.
Yet even as a shrinking minority party, the GOP intends to entrench themselves in power over the majority. Here’s their playbook – and what the rest of us can do to stop them.1. In presidential elections, they’ll continue to try to win enough swing states to dominate the Electoral College and win the presidency.
The answer is to make the Electoral College irrelevant by having states join the growing movement to pass laws giving all their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote.
2. In the Senate, they’ll continue to try to win enough seats in mostly white, sparsely populated rural states to outvote highly populated urban states.
The answer here is for Congress to grant statehood to Washington D.C., and to work with Puerto Rico, which recently voted in favor of statehood, on a concrete path to self-determination.
3. They also aim to use the Senate filibuster to block the majority. The answer is to eliminate the filibuster, which Senate Democrats can do without a single Republican vote.
4. Finally, the GOP will use its control over state governments to gerrymander congressional districts and gain disproportionate power in the House. And they will pass even more laws making it harder for Democrats to vote.
The answer is to prevent gerrymandering and voter suppression by passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act – which Democrats can do with a simple majority of 51 votes once they eliminate the filibuster. The values of the Republican Party do not reflect the values of most Americans. It should not be allowed to silence the voices of the majority.
February 15, 2021
No Compromising with the GOP CultI keep hearing that Joe Biden...
No Compromising with the GOP Cult
I keep hearing that Joe Biden has to govern from the “center.” He has no choice, they say, because he has razor-thin majorities in Congress and the Republican Party has moved to the right.
Rubbish. First, there is no “center” between the reality-based world and the conspiracy-fueled, hate-filled world of today’s Republican Party. Second, the problems the country is facing cannot be solved with milquetoast, centrist solutions – they demand immediate, bold action.
I’ve been in or around politics for 50 years. I’ve served several Democratic presidents who have needed Republican votes. But the Republicans now in Congress are nothing like those I’ve dealt with.
Today’s Republican Party is a cult.
93 percent of House Republicans voted against impeaching Trump for inciting an insurrection, and Senate Republicans refuse to convict him. This is after Trump’s insurrection threatened even their own lives.
The 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump are facing backlash from their colleagues, with some even calling to remove Liz Cheney from her leadership position.
But hardly any have condemned the vile conspiracy theories spouted by Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has claimed that the Sandy Hook and Parkland school shootings were “false flags” and that the deadly California wildfires were sparked by a Jewish space laser, among other wild lies.
All of this marks the culmination of the GOP’s growing lunacy over the last four years. With Trump at its head, the Republican Party has embraced blatant white supremacy, and now inhabits a counterfactual wonderland of lies and conspiracies.
Even by mid-January, polls show three out of four Republicans don’t think Biden won legitimately. 45 percent support the storming of the Capitol; 57 percent say Trump should be the Republican candidate in 2024.
And a growing fringe – including some Republicans in Congress – openly talk of redressing grievances through violence.
With this Republican Party, Biden cannot be a “centrist.”
Instead, he must deliver bold change for the American people, refusing to compromise with violent Trumpism. Barring Trump from ever holding public office again. Expelling Trump’s co-conspirators from Congress.
Don’t listen to people claiming this would be a “distraction” from Biden’s agenda. There is no healing without accountability. If we let those who incited this insurrection off the hook, we’re inviting it to happen again. And next time they might succeed.
It should all be part of Biden’s agenda. Biden must fight for democracy and against authoritarianism – including strengthening voting rights, getting big money out of politics, and taking on the Republican Party’s anti-democratic agenda of gerrymandering and voter suppression.
There is no longer a “center” in American politics. No middle ground between lies and facts. No halfway point between civil discourse and violence. No midrange between democracy and fascism.
We either have a future based on lies, violence, and authoritarianism – or on unyielding truth, unshakeable civility, and democracy. Biden and the Democrats must fight for the latter. And we must make them.
February 14, 2021
Trump is History. It’s Joe Biden Who’s Changing America
February 8, 2021
Cancel Perks for the Worst President in HistoryHow should the...
Cancel Perks for the Worst President in History
How should the nation respond to an ex-president who has incited an insurrection, brought our democracy to the brink of destruction, and left so much pain and suffering in his wake?
In addition to being convicted in the Senate, which could bar him from running for office again, he shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the cushy benefits former presidents receive.
These benefits were created under the Former Presidents’ Act of 1958, which was drawn up after Harry Truman told the House Majority Leader that he was going broke.
The benefits in the Former President’s Act now include a yearly pension of over $200,000, an annual $1 million travel budget, an annual $500,000 travel budget for spouses, an office “appropriately furnished and equipped,” and staff to operate that office – for the rest of the former president’s life.
But what about a twice-impeached former president who did everything he could to attack Black and brown communities, and ended his presidency by inciting an insurrection against the United States government?
Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t think someone with that record should receive millions in taxpayer-funded benefits at all, let alone every single year for the rest of his life.
Thankfully, it doesn’t have to happen: A simple majority in Congress can pass a law barring this ex-president from the normal perks afforded to former presidents. For the sake of the country, Congress must do so.
He should also be barred from receiving national security briefings now that he’s left office. There is no reason that someone this dangerous should be privy to the highest levels of intelligence as a private citizen – especially given his looming legal and financial entanglements with foreign entities. He was already a national security risk in office; as a private citizen, there’s no telling what he would do with classified information.
Fortunately, it doesn’t take an act of Congress to cut off access to briefings: It’s up to Joe Biden, and Joe Biden alone. He has the power to prevent his predecessor from receiving any and all national security briefings. For the sake of America and the world, he must do so.
Regardless of how the impeachment trial in the Senate ends, one thing is clear: Someone who has disgraced the office of the president so maliciously should not reap its amenities for the rest of his life.
No cushy benefits. No national security briefings. No perks for the worst president in history.
February 7, 2021
Here’s my reunion with Wall Street titan Asher Edelman, 33 years...
Here’s my reunion with Wall Street titan Asher Edelman, 33 years after we duked it out on the PBS Newshour.
The Monstrous Predicament Trump Left Behind
January 31, 2021
Biden Must Not Surrender
January 29, 2021
The Sedition That Nobody’s Talking AboutThe sudden lurch from...
The Sedition That Nobody’s Talking About
The sudden lurch from Trump to Biden is generating vertigo all over Washington, including the so-called fourth branch of government – CEOs and their army of lobbyists.
CEOs are being hailed – and hailing themselves – as guardians of democracy. That’s after saying they will no longer donate to the 147 Republican members of Congress who objected to the certification of Biden electors, on the basis of Trump’s lies about widespread fraud.
Give me a break. For years, big corporations have been assaulting democracy with big money, drowning out the voices and needs of ordinary Americans, and fueling much of the anger and cynicism that opened the door to Trump in the first place.
Their assault hasn’t been as violent as the pro-Trump mob who stormed the Capitol. And it’s entirely legal. But it’s arguably more damaging over the long term.
A study published a few years ago by two of America’s most respected political scientists, Princeton professor Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page of Northwestern, concluded that the preferences of the average American “have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically nonsignificant impact upon public policy.” Lawmakers respond almost exclusively to the moneyed interests – those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns.
So now, in the wake of Trump’s calamitous exit and Biden’s ascension, we’re to believe CEOs care about democracy?
As Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, put it, “No one thought they were giving money to people who supported sedition.”
Yet Dimon has been a leader of a more insidious form of sedition. He piloted the corporate lobbying campaign for the Trump tax cut, deploying a vast war chest of corporate donations.
For more than a decade Dimon has driven Wall Street’s charge against stricter bank regulation, opening bipartisan doors in the Capitol with generous gifts from the Street. (Dimon calls himself a Democrat.)
When Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg shut Trump’s Facebook account, he declared: “You just can’t have a functioning democracy without a peaceful transition of power.”
But where was Zuckerberg’s concern for a “functioning democracy” when he amplified Trump’s bigotry and lies for over four years?
After taking down Trump’s Twitter account, Jack Dorsey expressed discomfort about “the power an individual or corporation has over a part of the global public conversation.”
Spare me. Dorsey has fought all attempts to limit Twitter’s power over the “global conversation.” He shuttered Trump only after Democrats secured the presidency and control of the Senate.
Look, I’m glad CEOs are penalizing the 147 Republican seditionists and that big tech is starting to regulate social media content.
But don’t confuse the avowed concerns of these CEOs about democracy with democracy itself. They aren’t answerable to democracy. At most, they’re answerable to big shareholders and institutional investors who don’t give a fig as long as profits keep rolling in.
If they were truly committed to democracy, CEOs would permanently cease corporate donations to all candidates, close their PACs, stop giving to secretive “dark money” groups and discourage donations by their executives.
And they would throw their weight behind the “For the People Act”, the first bills of the new Congress, offering public financing of elections among other reforms.
Don’t hold your breath.
The fourth branch is already amassing a war chest to stop Joe Biden and the Democrats from raising corporate taxes, increasing the minimum wage, breaking up big tech and strengthening labor unions.
Make no mistake: These CEOs and their corporations don’t actually care about protecting democracy. They care only about protecting their bottom line.
Robert B. Reich's Blog
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