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Wall Street Is Behind The Coup Against Nancy Pelosi

Wall Street Is Behind The Coup Against Nancy Pelosi

Reprinted with permission from Independent Media Institute.

 

It’s impossible to understand the Democratic rebellion against Nancy Pelosi without understanding the way power works in the House of Representatives. To understand the self-serving men behind this rebellion, heed the words of the late screenwriter William Goldman: Follow the money.

There is discontent with Pelosi’s ideology on the left, and that’s understandable. But ideology is not driving this campaign, and this is no populist rebellion. In fact, its leaders have no discernible ideology at all.

That’s how corporate money rolls in the Democratic Party. It lays low, hides its true colors, and pretends it only wants to “get things done.”

The anti-Pelosi insurgency is not a movement. It’s a cabal, orchestrated by the appropriately hashtagged #FiveWhiteGuys, a group of self-self-interested players with big money behind them. These white males resemble nothing so much as the next-generation terminator played by Robert Patrick in “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” They’re cunning, aggressive, shape-shifting, and so reflective that anyone who looks at them sees only a distorted image of themselves.

If you’re looking to change politics, they don’t reflect you.

Rebel Without a Cause

This ersatz rebellion’s most visible leader is Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, a custom-crafted biography in a suit who appears to hold no core beliefs. That’s undoubtedly a plus for the political operatives who recruited and promoted him. An early profile has Moulton variously calling himself “a progressive Democrat,” a “pragmatic Democrat,” and a “frustrated Democrat”—and that was just during his first primary.

Moulton was reportedly recruited to run for Congress by “New Politics,” a group that seeks to elect both Democratic and Republican veterans. It describes itself as “bipartisan,” a word will come up again in the story of the anti-Pelosi rebellion. New Politics’ other success story is Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, who notably blamed Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, rather than the ill-advised Iraq war, for the rise of ISIS.

Moulton, who reportedly backed that tragic misadventure, enjoyed the early support of two generals who helped lead it, David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal. (Unfortunately, both are now disgraced: McChrystal for disrespecting the civilian chain of command, and Petraeus for revealing secrets to an extramarital lover as he cheated on his wife, a crime that would have likely led to criminal indictment for a less well-connected official.)

As the Washington Post reports, Moulton “has aligned with Republicans on some policy bills, ranging from a ban on the gun accessories used in last year’s mass shooting in Las Vegas to a recent legislation allowing veterans to use medical marijuana.”

Moulton had praise for Pelosi when he was asked about her last year, saying she had achieved an “awful lot.” He told Politico’s Michael Kruse that he thought much of the Republican criticism of her was “unfair,” but added, “the reality is that we’re losing.”

Well, Pelosi’s winning now. What’s his rationale for opposing Pelosi today? “If that many seats change hands,” Moulton said after the election, “that’s just all the more reason the American people are calling out for change.”

Heads, he wins. Tails, Pelosi loses.

The FIRE Brigade

Moulton’s given to making hazy statements like: “Congress needs a new leader. Period.”

The only concrete thing about him appears to be the money he’s raised for like-minded candidates. “Thanks to a network of donors rooted in the financial centers of Boston and New York,” reports the Post, “Moulton’s Serve America PAC and related political committees raised a combined $8 million for the election cycle.”

Moulton has been well-rewarded for his ideological plasticity. During his short political career, Moulton has received a total of $1,723,870 from the investor class that comprises the so-called “FIRE” sector—financial, insurance, and real estate. He has also received more than $160,000 from Pharma. (These figures come from Open Secrets.)

Moulton isn’t the only member of the five-man anti-Pelosi band, of course. The rhythm section is composed of Colorado’s Ed Perlmutter, Oregon’s Kurt Schrader, and Bill Foster of Illinois. The three men have received $4,082,803, $987,050, and $2,747,969 respectively from the FIRE sector. Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio, who mounted a longshot challenge to Pelosi in 2016, is the band’s other leader—the Keith Richards, if you will, to Moulton’s would-be Jagger.

Ryan isn’t running this time around. Instead, Ryan recently insisted that there are “plenty of really competent females that we can replace her with.”

For sheer tone-deafness in gender relations, that phrase belongs with Mitt Romney’s 2012 comment about the “binders full of women” he hoped to appoint as president. It may be worse, in fact, since it suggests females can’t be assumed to be competent. The remark will have an added sting for Democratic women who remember Ryan’s past positions on reproductive rights.

Why does Ryan say Pelosi has to go? “We need a brand change,” Ryan told Rolling Stone. For content-free criticism, that’s about as empty—and as cringeworthy—as it gets.

No Labels, No Point

The rhetorical style of these Democratic “rebels”—vague on the issues, big on cliches and platitudes, the rhetorical equivalent of cotton candy—comes with a pedigree. It is the hallmark of “centrism,” the billionaire-funded political faction that serves its financial backers by selling themselves as “non-ideological,” “technocratic” architects of “bipartisan” consensus who can “break the gridlock” and “solve problems.”

For this crowd, “solving problems” always winds up meaning the same thing: cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and an unwarranted obsession with the federal deficit that always—just accidentally, mind you!—winds up helping corporations and the billionaire class.

The “centrist” political style claims to be “above parties and partisanship”—which, in the end, is another way of saying it’s free of any principles except the interests of its paymasters. It often comes in the guise of patriotism, as when Seth Moulton says he places “country over party”—a comment that, implicitly, is a deep insult to those who believe one party’s proposals would serve the country better than the other’s.

The anti-Pelosi campaign is being supported by one of the mainstays of the corporate centrist world—the cynical political ploy known as “No Labels,” which I wrote about in 2012, and its creation, the “Problem Solvers Caucus.” If you called “No Labels” a guaranteed-employment plan for Republican and Democratic political hacks, you would not be wrong.

Besides, the Problem Solvers Caucus—which, predictably, promised to “break the gridlock” and get things done—hasn’t solved any problems. Given their agenda, that’s a good thing—but it’s hardly a mandate to lead.

It’s Not About the Speakership—It’s About Blocking Progressive Change

The No Labels crowd is throwing its public influence (negligible) and its ability to muster campaign cash (considerable) behind the anti-Pelosi effort for a reason: they see this as an opportunity to weaken the Democrats’ newfound power in the House. That’s especially urgent for the big-money crowd at a time when nearly half of successful new candidates ran on Medicare for All and more than 100 House Democrats have joined the Expand Social Security Caucus.

The “centrist” campaign may help explain why Pelosi plans to impose a new rule making it harder to raise middle-class taxes. This rule would make it harder to achieve either Medicare for All or expanded Social Security, even though any new taxes would leave the working class much better off financially than it is today.

Rep. Tom Reed, a Republican member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, has already indicated he could back Pelosi if more such changes were put in place. The caucus’ additional proposed changes, roughly outlined here, would effectively give Republicans veto power over progressive legislation.

It is noteworthy that there was no serious attempt to implement these rules when Republicans ran the House.

Even more than the speakership, this procedural power grab motivates the anti-Pelosi crowd and its backers. They might even withdraw their opposition to her if they could seize this power for themselves and their “centrist” allies in both parties.

No wonder these “rebels” are vague about their goals. Given the massive support for Medicare for All (more than 70 percent of the public, 85 percent of Democrats) and expanding Social Security, they know their agenda is extremely unpopular. If they truly believed in “country over party,” they would support programs that most of the country wants and needs.

How Power Works

Here’s how power really works in the House of Representatives. The Speaker holds enormous power, but only serves at the pleasure of her caucus. The representatives in that caucus are not her employees; they are her constituents. Anyone who wants to become Speaker has to win their support.

One very effective way to do that is by raising money, as Pelosi has prodigiously done. Another is by managing the House, and the caucus, effectively enough to rack up a list of accomplishments that will help those representatives win reelection.

Here’s something else worth knowing about Democratic power in the House: Its party organizations are still deeply hierarchical, and are built on deeply embedded relationships. If the Moulton/Ryan gang succeeds in unseating Pelosi, the speakership will not go to someone the left supports. Sure, it would be great to see Barbara Lee become Speaker, but that simply isn’t going to happen. Besides, she’s not even running. (Lee is running for the House’s number five position.)

The Five Guys (not to be confused with the burger chain of the same name) and their backers are almost certainly looking for one of two outcomes: either Pelosi accedes to their demands, which will paralyze the Democratic agenda, or Pelosi is replaced with someone who will. But if Pelosi goes down, that replacement will probably not be Rep. Marcia Fudge, despite her public expressions of interest (as of this writing) and Moulton’s professed support for her.

The Five Guys may block Pelosi, but they will not choose her successor. Instead, in the chaos that would follow a Pelosi defeat, the speakership will probably go to the second-highest member of the Democratic hierarchy: Steny Hoyer.

End Game

The left is distressed with Pelosi, and that’s understandable. Pelosi’s commitment to “pay as you go” funding is a political and procedural mistake of the first order. The new tax rule is, as MoveOn.org and others have said, “a staggeringly bad idea”—although that may have been forced on her by the Five Guys crowd. (Progressives should note, however, that this rule could be waived at any time to pass progressive programs.)

A Hoyer speakership would be a catastrophe for the left, for reasons Politico’s Bill Scher lays out here. Hoyer represents the worst of the corporate-backed, “centrist,” economically neoliberal party elite. His faction’s disastrous policies and muddled messaging led it into the political wilderness. With this election, the party has only begun to make up some of the ground lost under its rule.

Progressives should mobilize to defeat Hoyer and replace him, preferably someone who can serve as an heir apparent. And if the left wants a more progressive House Speaker, it needs to run candidates in more primaries. When House Democrats are more progressive, Pelosi or her successor will either change accordingly or be replaced.

Yes, Pelosi’s a big fundraiser. She reportedly raised $135.6 million for this election cycle. A cynic might say that this figure, when compared to Moulton’s $8 million, makes her about 17 times more likely to win this speakership fight.

Pelosi raises that money, from a variety of sources, because she plays to win in the current system. Nancy Pelosi can’t, and won’t, lead the fight to get money out of politics. But then, the Democratic left needs to stop waiting for politicians to fight their battles. That’s what movements are for.

This country needs a mass movement that will demand fundamental political change. But nobody needs the Five Guys’ corporate-backed chaos, or the reactionary regime it seeks to impose on the House of Representatives.

If some leftists don’t want Pelosi to win, that’s understandable. But they should hope with all their hearts that her opponents lose.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

Richard “RJ” Eskow is Senior Advisor for Health and Economic Justice at Social Security Works. He is also the host of The Zero Hour, a syndicated progressive radio and television program.

 

 

Austerity’s Ghost: How Pete Peterson Will Keep Haunting Out Future

Austerity’s Ghost: How Pete Peterson Will Keep Haunting Out Future

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet.

Peter G. “Pete” Peterson, the billionaire businessman and anti-government crusader, died last week at the age of 91. He leaves behind family and friends who will miss him, and a vast coterie of consultants and politicians who may miss his checks even more. They can take comfort from the words of Percy Bysshe Shelley: “He doth not sleep/he hath awakened from the dream of life …”

Peterson will be mourned by those who loved him. But that’s no reason to forget the harm he has done, especially since his family vows to continue his work. His son, speaking on behalf of the foundation Peterson created, says that “we will carry on his legacy with passion and pride.”

That legacy is marked by Pete Peterson’s long war against Social Security and Medicare, his austerity economics, and the false aura of objectivity Peterson used to promote his ideology.

Behind his carefully stage-managed veneer of bipartisanship (his team once tried to get me suspended from a publication for calling him right-wing), Peterson engaged in a decades-long war on the social contract. Programs like Social Security and Medicare were his immediate targets, but his ultimate goal was even broader: He wanted to extinguish the ideal of public goods, and put an end to the notion that certain social programs should be universal.

Peterson took conservative ideas and gave them an undeserved air of truth and neutrality. Politicians who embraced them were more likely to receive a steady flow of high-dollar contributions and gaining entrée to the right salons and alliances.

Thanks to Peterson, prominent journalists can make outlandish and inaccurate statements about “entitlement” programs, while still laying claim to journalistic objectivity. That’s no mean feat on Peterson’s part—although it becomes easier when you can spend nearly half a billion dollars in four years to promote your agenda, as Peterson did. (Peterson engaged in his crusade for decades; his total spending isn’t known.)

Peterson may be gone, but his ideology still holds sway in the corridors of political and media power.

Doing the Math

Peterson was a corporate success at a young age, and then joined Richard Nixon’s Cabinet. But he became a billionaire as co-founder of the Blackstone Group, one of four firms that exemplify what The Economist calls “the barbarian establishment.” As that (hardly left-wing) publication writes:

“The standard operating procedures of private equity—purchasing businesses, adding debt, minimizing taxes, cutting costs (and facilities and employment), extracting large fees—are just the sort of things to aggravate popular anger about finance.”

Peterson promptly put his billions to work on a new mission: Cutting government programs, especially Medicare and Social Security, and reducing government deficits. (The fact that these moves would reduce the political incentive to tax billionaires is never mentioned in Peterson’s work.)

Peterson’s sleight-of-hand trick, and it was a brilliant one, was to present his opinions as neutral and objective truth. As the New York Times reported in 2011:

“If some consider him Cassandra and others Chicken Little, Mr. Peterson considers himself, in self-deprecating (and self-interested) terms, as a data-driven businessman who ‘simply did the math.’”

Here’s some real math: Medicare saves lives, and “greater spending per beneficiary is associated with significantly lower mortality rates.” So does Medicaid. Social Security lifts 22 million Americans out of poverty, including children and non-elderly adults.

The Peterson team claims that its proposals would exclude the poor, but cuts are a slippery slope. Social Security benefits are already meager, and any reductions—including cuts to cost-of-living increases and increases in the eligibility age—will lead to added poverty.

And poverty kills.

Sleight of Hand

Deficits were Peterson’s obsession. But when it came to economics, Peterson did the arithmetic, not “the math.” His zero-sum approach to government budgets failed to recognize the wide range of policy choices that are open to governments or the ways that government spending can create economic growth.

In a 2010 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Peterson argued that “spending cuts must play a lead role in any solution to our long-term structural deficits.” That’s an ideological statement that can’t be found anywhere in “the math.” For revenue, Peterson’s go-to solution was a consumption tax that would disproportionately harm the middle class.

No cut is too cruel for the Peterson crowd. A Peterson-backed group praised the draconian spending cuts in Donald Trump’s budget proposal last year, writing, “The President deserves credit for setting a fiscal goal and working to meet it.”

But it chastised the Republican for failing to apply an equally heavy hand to Social Security and Medicare.

Testing Mean

The policy heart of the Peterson agenda is means testing: of Social Security, Medicare, and other vital government programs. The Concord Coalition, which Peterson co-founded, pioneered the idea of means-testing Social Security benefits and reducing them for anyone making $40,000 per year or more. The idea quickly spread to Medicare and other universal programs.

It sounds reasonable, at first. Why should rich people collect taxpayer-funded benefits? One answer—because it’s an insurance program—can be hard to convey, but is nevertheless important.

Voters forget that means-testing is a slippery slope. Once it’s applied to vital programs, it can be ratcheted down until most Americans are excluded from them. Should we means-test public high schools? Elementary schools?

Means-testing works for anti-poverty programs. But under social insurance programs like Social Security, everybody contributes and everyone is eligible for benefits (with limited exceptions).

For 50 years, both political parties favored these kinds of universal programs. Peterson changed that.

When people are debating means-testing, they’re not asking a more obvious question: If we’re so concerned about giving “free rides” to rich people, why don’t we just raise their taxes?

Supporting Cast

Peterson assembled an ensemble cast of characters to push his message. Ex-senator Alan Simpson became a key spokesman, primarily because he shared Peterson’s gift for making a heavily ideological agenda sound like blunt truth-telling. Erskine Bowles, David Walker, and a coterie of economic and policy consultants also filled the ranks.

Peterson recruited media figures, too, through his “Fiscal Summits” and other events. Prominent journalists were offered hosting and guest appearances at Peterson events (and were presumably paid for them) At least one received a board seat on a Peterson organization, while at the same time “objectively” covering Peterson-style initiatives. (I reported on Lesley Stahl’s conflict of interest in 2013.) Journalists were also given talking points to help them sound knowledgeable about fiscal policy.

Politicians of both parties embraced the Peterson agenda for years. Bill Clinton, who received Peterson funding on the road to the White House. turned the Democratic Party in a more Peterson-friendly fiscal direction. Clinton emphasized deficit reduction, privatization, and means-testing as president, while over-praising the skills of the private sector.

Reaching the Summit

Clinton was a regular highlight at Peterson’s Fiscal Summit presentations, which feature the self-satisfied musings of privileged individuals who think they’re being brave for proposing policies that would pummel other Americans. These events typically treat even the worst political hacks, like John Boehner, as if they were statesmen. Paul Ryan, that empty-headed master of the Potemkin PowerPoint presentation, owes much of his undeserved “policy wonk” reputation to his hobnobbing with the Peterson crowd.

As president, Barack Obama followed in Clinton’s footsteps. As the nation grappled with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, Obama began his presidency by appointing Peterson acolytes Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles to co-chair a commission. That commission wasn’t tasked with addressing soaring unemployment, or lost middle-class wealth, or the foreclosure crisis brought on by Peterson’s colleagues on Wall Street.

Instead, the Simpson/Bowles Commission was charged with reducing government deficits—and cutting Social Security, too, even though that program is forbidden by law from contributing to the federal debt.

Peterson won, again.

There is a clear and direct connection between Obama’s embrace of Peterson-style fiscal austerity, including his administration’s reliance on many old Clinton economic hands, and the Democrats’ loss of political power over the last ten years.

That’s Peterson’s handiwork, too.

A Little Something for the Kids

While he succeeded in penetrating the political and media establishments, Peterson was never able to build popular support for his ideas. No wonder. Among his wacky-sounding and ill-advised publicity campaigns, gimmicks, and astroturf organizations were “Budgetball,” the foolish mock politician “Hugh Jidette” (Huge debt. Get it?), “The Can Kicks Back,” and the “America Speaks” town halls, where attendees saw through the slanted material and rejected Peterson’s ideas anyway.

Peterson and his minions tried to recruit millennials by undermining their trust in the social contract and fomenting generational war. Simpson, himself the beneficiary of government pensions, called older Americans “greedy geezers” while other Peterson acolytes tried to persuade young people that Social Security will go broke before they retire.

That was an especially dirty trick. Peterson-backed cuts would target millennials, not Baby Boomers, because they would gradually be phased in over a period of years. Fortunately, nobody went for their “Budgetball” pitch.

Pete Peterson’s Ghost

For the most part, the political tide has turned against Peterson—at least for now. His ideas are being shunned, at least publicly, by Democrats looking to capture the disaffected mood of struggling working-class Americans—a mood that cuts across lines of race, gender, and geography.

Conor Lamb’s recent Congressional victory in Pennsylvania’s 18th District was embraced by the “centrist,” Peterson-friendly crowd. But Lamb’s campaign included both a hearty embrace of unions and an eloquent defense of Social Security. This Lamb TV ad, for example, explicitly targets the Peterson-friendly smearing of “entitlement programs.” Lamb’s opponent embraced Peterson-style benefit cuts, a position that is considered a major reason for his loss.

But Pete Peterson’s ghost still haunts the American political landscape. The truth is, it was haunting us years before his death.

When Bill Clinton promised in his 1996 State of the Union speech to “give the American people (a government) that lives within its means” and declared that “the era of big Government is over,” Pete Peterson’s ghost was in the hall.

When George W. Bush used a filing cabinet as a prop while asserting that there is no Social Security trust fund—“just IOUs”—Peterson’s ghost was smiling from the wings.

When Martha Raddatz said that “both Medicare and Social Security are going broke” as she moderated a vice presidential debate—a statement that is demonstrably false—Peterson’s ghost was sitting beside her.

When Barack Obama debated Mitt Romney and said, “I suspect that on Social Security, we’ve got a somewhat similar position,” Peterson’s ghost was standing at his elbow. (He was standing at Romney’s side, too, since both candidates shared Peterson’s view.)

When Hillary Clinton scorned the idea of tuition-free higher education in a debate with Bernie Sanders because it wasn’t means-tested, saying “I don’t think taxpayers should be paying to send Donald Trump’s kids to college,” Peterson’s ghost was whispering in her ear.

Peterson’s ghost walks beside John Harwood, Dana Bash, Mark Halperin, and every other television pundit who has appeared at a fiscal summit. It’s looking over the shoulders of Peterson-backed economists and policy advisors as they write their next op-ed about “hard choices” for the middle class. It’s sitting with Republicans in Capitol Hill and White House meeting rooms as they plan for a brutal round of “entitlement cuts.”

Peterson’s family deserves our condolences. But Pete Peterson was not the “profoundly good man” mourned by Bill Clinton—at least, not for the rest of us. Peterson did great harm to people who were far more vulnerable than he was. And, unfortunately, his work lives on.

Pete Peterson does not sleep, according to Percy Bysshe Shelley. But the rest of us need to wake up.

RJ Eskow is a senior fellow with the Campaign for America’s Future.