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The Political Watershed « Thread Started on Apr 28, 2007, 11

Daily newsbrief journal for April 2007, also see http://www.usdemocrats.com/brief for a global 100-page perpetual brief and follow twitter @usdemocrats


The Political Watershed « Thread Started on Apr 28, 2007, 11

Postby admin » Sat Jan 28, 2012 11:39 am

The Political Watershed « Thread Started on Apr 28, 2007, 11:42am » --------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Political Watershed Prepared Remarks of Senator Paul Wellstone Before the New Hampshire Democrats' Harry S. Truman Dinner Lebanon, New Hampshire September 26, 1998 We stand on a highland separating two fields of history, a point from which two separate streams flow. Behind us lies a progressive era spanning three-score years. But the terrain ahead may have a distinctly different nature, unless we change course. The election of 1998 looms as a potential watershed, defining the political landscape before and after. We need to move beyond the President's scandal. The President's scandal engulfs political America like a heavy fog that obscures our vision of the future. But watch, we stand at a turning point. That's why we need to cut through the all-encompassing scandal and focus on what's at stake in this election. And much is at stake.Scandal discourages voters. As David Broder recalled recently in the Washington Post, the Watergate scandal depressed turnout in the 1974 midterm elections. Democratic turnout fell 2 percent below 1970 levels, but Republican turnout fell 5 percent, and Republicans lost 49 seats in the House and 4 in the Senate. Even absent scandal, turnout in midterm elections has sunk to dangerously low levels. When only 36 percent vote, turnout, more than reason, determines our future. As much as the times themselves, who came to the polls determined the Democrats' loss of 52 House seats and 8 Senate seats in the last midterm election.If, as a general matter, the Democrats' goal is turnOUT, the Republicans' goal is turnOFF. They positively do not want most Americans to vote, and haven't for at least the last quarter century, because most Americans do not support their policies. That's one reason why they're always on the wrong side of ballot-access issues like poll taxes, the Voting Rights Act, and the motor-voter law. Low turnout helps Republicans generally.Of our current situation, one Democratic pollster warned: "Democratic voters, demoralized by President Clinton's problems and seeing little incentive to vote for politicians and a system teetering on the brink of moral bankruptcy, may choose to stay home on November 3, while Republicans may turn out at average or higher than average levels to help cure the moral ills of politics." The Christian Coalition's Executive director, Randy Tate, told the Washington Post's Thomas Edsall that the scandal will produce an outpouring of conservative religious voters in November. Pollster Ed Goeas forecasts Democrats losing 15 or 20 seats in the House and 4 to 6 seats in the Senate.This election is not about President Clinton. He's not on ballot, and never will be again. This election is about you. This election is about a real threat to the American people.This election could bring about the most sweeping transfer of power in half a century. The post-Watergate election of 1974 merely entrenched an already functional Democratic Congressional majority. This election could create an effective Republican majority. And for the first time since the Nation began to elect Senators by popular vote, it could grant the Republican Party a filibuster-proof United States Senate. Consider how it felt to be a Republican in the Senate between 1935 and 1941, or between 1963 and 1967, when the Democratic majority had enough votes to cut off debate without a single Republican vote.The consequences of this transfer of power could be profound. It could result in nothing less than turning back the clock on half a century of social justice legislation.Remember what this new breed of Republicans wanted to do, and would have done, if we had not stopped them?Remember what they tried to do to America's public schools? Even though they have learned to talk about the need for education, remember they tried to eliminate the Department of Education, and even their latest budget still seeks to cut education funding. When they cannot abolish the Department outright, they seek to eliminate Federal education policy through block grants. And they seek to divert taxpayer funding from the public schools to private and religious schools through vouchers and education tax breaks.They seek to divert resources away from public schools at a time when more than 14 million American children go to school in buildings needing significant repairs. They seek to decrease federal education spending when it is already depressed by several objective measures. We are devoting only three-quarters the effort to education that Dick Nixon and Jerry Ford did, and Nixon and Ford had a Soviet Union to worry about.What's more, as the Education Department made clear in a report earlier this month, the next 10 years will see a 5 percent increase in 6th-to-8th graders and an 11 percent increase in high school students. And as Secretary Riley warned earlier this month, the average teacher is about 50 years old, and more than a million teachers are nearing retirement. This intersection of student and teacher demographics means that America needs to hire 2.2 million teachers over the next decade.For progressives, this demographic intersection really would be a golden opportunity to inspire, train, and hire a new generation of bright young teachers into the public schools of our communities, fresh with new ideas and new energy. But you can't buy golden opportunities with tin-cup budgets like those we have now, or those that we're likely to see under an increasingly conservative Congress. No, we need to reenergize our base and win new converts to the vision of a new education Century.Remember what they wanted to do to Medicare? Even though Medicare and Social Security have proved to be the most effective anti-poverty and life-extending programs in history, these Republicans don't believe in them. Remember what Speaker Newt Gingrich said about Medicare? He said:"Now, we didn't get rid of it in round one because we don't think that that's politically smart and we don't think that that's the right way to go through a transition. But we believe it's going to wither on the vine because we think people are voluntarily going to leave it."Remember that in 1995, they wanted to cut Medicare by $270 billion, or 14 percent over 7 years. They wanted to raise Medicare premiums, increase deductibles, and raise the age of eligibility, all to finance massive tax breaks for the wealthy. They would have roughly doubled the premiums the elderly pay from $553.20 a year to between $1080 and $1116 a year by 2002. Senate Republicans would have more than doubled the deductible — the amount seniors have to pay before their Medicare insurance begins paying the bills — from the first $100 of doctors' and outpatient costs to $210 by 2002. Senate Republicans also would have increased the age at which one could first become eligible for Medicare from 65 to 67 years old.And look what they're trying to do to Social Security now. Even when half of the elderly would fall into poverty today were it not for Social Security, they want Americans to swap the progressive Social Security system for a system of individual accounts that would let the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Even in the wake of a 15 percent drop in the stock market, they still peddle a riverboat gamble, when our elderly deserve a guaranteed Social Security benefit. How dare they risk it!Remember how they would have spent the money they got from those Medicare cuts? Republicans first, last, and always, seem to choose to spend money on tax breaks that go predominantly to the rich. Their perennial favorite is to cut or eliminate taxes on capital gains. The philosophy they espouse is no less than this: You work and earn by the sweat of your brow and the government will tax you at the highest rate. But those who make their money off of money instead of labor, buying and selling stocks and bonds, should not have to pay any taxes at all! This summer they contemplated spending a trillion dollars on tax breaks for the rich over the next 10 years without a penny of offsets. The magnitude of their zeal for their wealthy friends is simply breathtaking.The Republican Congress's agenda became crystal clear one week in June of this year. That week, at the behest of House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer, a conference committee restored a special tax break for estates worth more than $17 million each that resulted from a drafting error. That same week, a House Appropriation panel approved a proposal to cut summer jobs for kids and eliminate home heating assistance for the elderly. Republican priorities could not be plainer.And this month, as an election-season gambit, they advanced a smaller, unfunded tax bill that would cost $80 billion over the next 5 years. Most of the tax cuts in that bill would go to the best-off 15 percent of taxpayers, those with average incomes of $163,000. Under this latest Republican plan, the top 2 percent of taxpayers (who make an average of $525,000) would get tax breaks averaging $1,709 a year, while the bottom 60 percent of taxpayers would get a tax cut averaging $34. We can only expect more of this reverse-Robin-Hood if Republicans increase their majority.Remember what they tried to do to environmental funding? Even when science stands on the brink of discovering the cure for cancer, the plague of the 20th Century, from the bark of the threatened, slow-growing yew tree of the Pacific Northwest, 33/ they advance timber and business interests and fight the Endangered Species Act. Even when toxic wastes, water, and air imperil neighborhoods throughout the country with the specter of another Love Canal, they facilitate the shipment of nuclear waste to poor neighborhoods near El Paso, Texas. And even when scientists say that the last remaining glacier in America will melt within 30 years, when Chinese rivers flood even more than before, and when average temperatures repeatedly set new records, they join forces with business interests who deny global climate change and insist on selling and consuming now -- future generations be damned.Forget about advancing Democratic priorities. This year, even with their current majority, Republicans were able to smother our efforts to reduce teen smoking, rebuild crumbling schools, protect patients against HMOs, reform campaign finance, and raise the minimum wage. 34/ If they get 60 Members in the Senate, they can use the Senate rules to cut off amendments on subjects other than those they want to debate.Yes, even though voters may have been distracted during the news blackout that has come with the President's scandal, big things are at stake in November's election.And here's the challenge: We know this will be a low turnout election. To guard against the misfortunes that we justifiably fear, activists have to take action. Progressives need to understand the challenge that we face. We need to take every single useful step that we can to increase turnout among progressive voters. With overall turnout so much less, every single voter who turns out matters so much more.You are our base -- our core constituency. You have the most important role. Every individual voter counts. This is our key to surviving this election.Here's where committed people like you come in. Talk to your neighbors, organize networks in your communities, call in to talk radio, and work with your friends. Your grassroots work will be of tremendous value.In a world where so much is negative and demoralizing, this is one concrete, positive thing that you can do that can make a difference.And when we get by this election, we need to begin again in earnest to reform the system by which we finance our elections, to pull our system back from that precipice of moral bankruptcy. And when we get past this election, we must reclaim the terrain of moral democracy, in which leaders strive for what's good and right for America, not simply for what's most beneficial to a particular set of swing voters or contributors.And when we do that, we can break out of the fog of politics and look out on a new Century of progress, watered by a fresh spring of social justice. May that be the watershed that this election becomes. And in that new Century, may the prophet's words then ring true, and may "justice roll on like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream." 35/-------------------------------------------------------------------- footnotes:1/ David S. Broder, "Troubles for the Democrats," Wash. Post, Sept. 11, 1998, at A31 2/ Only 36 percent turned out in 1994, and only 33 percent voted in 1990 and 1986, compared to over 45 percent in 1962 and 1966. See Norman J. Ornstein, Thomas E. Mann, Michael J. Malbin, Vital Statistics on Congress 1997-1998, at 51 (1998).3/ For net party gains in House and Senate seats, see id. at 54-55. The Republican's 52-House-seat gain in 1994 was the largest since their gain of 56 seats in 1946. Their Senate seat gain amounted to 9 seats after Senator Richard Shelby changed party affiliation the day after the election to remain in the majority party.4/ David S. Broder, "Troubles for the Democrats," Wash. Post, Sept. 11, 1998, at A31.5/ Thomas B. Edsall, "Leader Sees A Boost for Religious Right Vote: Scandal May Focus Debate on Values," Wash. Post, Sept. 18, 1998, at A19.6/ David S. Broder, "Troubles for the Democrats," Wash. Post, Sept. 11, 1998, at A31.7/ See Gerald F. Seib, "Magic Number Stands at 60 (Not Home Runs)," Wall St. J., Sept. 23, 1998, at A24 ("they would totally dominate the floor debate and everything that's passed," says Jean Neal, chief of staff to Democratic Sen. Richard Bryan).8/ See Norman J. Ornstein, Thomas E. Mann, Michael J. Malbin, Vital Statistics on Congress 1997-1998, at 42-43 (1998) (these were times when Democrats had more than two-thirds of the seats, as was required under the cloture rule then in force).9/ See House Budget Committee Democratic Caucus, Summary and Analysis of the House Republican II Budget Resolution for Fiscal Year 1999. The budget resolution approved by the House of Representatives June 5 would cut $4.4 billion in discretionary education, training, employment, and social services programs below the Balanced Budget Act over the next 5 years.10/Consider those in the Gorton amendment that passed in the Senate earlier this year or the so-called "Dollars to the Classroom" bill before the House last week. See House Democratic Leadership 11/ Consider what Congress tried November 4, 1997 (House vote no. 569), and again for D.C. May 30, 1998 (House vote no. 119).See House Democratic Leadership12/ Consider those in Senator Coverdell's bill earlier this year.13/ General Accounting Office, School Facilities: America's Schools Report Differing Conditions, report HEHS-96-103 (June 14, 1996) 14/ For example, as a share of the economy, federal education spending is lower than at any time between 1966 and 1982, and 22 percent below its peak in 1971 and 1972. As a share of all federal spending, federal education spending is lower than any time from '66 to '80 and again 22 percent below its 1971 peak. As a share of all education spending -- including state and locals, federal education spending is lower than at any time from '64 through '83 and 27 percent below its 1968 peak. The calculations are the author's based on Department of Education data for total Federal education spending in Paul M. Irwin, Congressional Research Service, "Federal Education Funding: A 1996 Perspective" (May 6, 1996), and subsequent data.15/ U.S. Department of Education, "A Back to School Special Report on the Baby Boom Echo: America's Schools Are Overcrowded and Wearing Out" (Sept. 8, 1998) .16/ Linda Perlstein, "Schools Cautioned on Hasty Hiring: Many Districts ‘Sacrificing Quality for Quantity,' Riley Says," Wash. Post, Sept. 16, 1998, at A12 17/ Id.18/ While more than a third (35.2 percent) of seniors lived in poverty as recently as 1959, after Medicare's enactment in 1965 and implementation 1966, poverty among seniors declined dramatically, so that since 1984, the poverty rate for seniors has remained stable between 11 and 13 percent, a third of its 1959 levels. See Joseph Dalaker & Mary Naifeh, Bureau of the Census, U.S. Department of Commerce, Poverty in the United States: 1997, at C-6 (table C-2) (persons 65 and over with incomes below the poverty level). 19/ Before Social Security and Medicare, in 1930, a 65-year-old man could not expect to live to age 77, and a 65-year-old woman had a life expectancy just over 77. In 1990, a 65-year-old man could expect to live to 80, and a 65-year-old woman could expect to live to 85. See Staff of House Comm. on Ways and Means, 103d Cong., 2d Sess., Overview of Entitlement Programs: 1994 Green Book, at 855 (Comm. Print No. 103-27, 1994).20/ Newt Gingrich, Speech to Blue Cross/Blue Shield Conference (Oct. 24, 1995).21/ See, e.g., "‘Medicare Plus' or ‘Medicare Choice,' the Basics Are the Same," N.Y. Times, Sept. 23, 1995, at 8; Eric Pianin & Spencer Rich, "Senate GOP Offers Plan to Cut Medicare by $270 Billion Over 7 Years," Wash. Post, Sept. 23, 1995, at A4; David Wessel, "In Medicare Battle, Republicans Display Skill at Making Words Mean Just What They Choose," Wall St. J., at A16.22/ See, e.g., Robert Pear, "Cornerstones of Revolution: The G.O.P.'s Overhaul of Two Vast Systems Moves Ahead," N.Y. Times, Sept. 23, 1995, at 8 ("A Premium Debate"); Adam Clymer, "So Many Measures, So Little Time," N.Y. Times, Sept. 25, 1995, at A12 ("Comparison: Overhauling Medicare and Medicaid: House and Senate Plans"). Under current law, the premium would have risen to $729.60 a year, see, e.g., Robert Pear, "House G.O.P. Plan Doubles Premiums Under Medicare," N.Y. Times, Sept. 22, 1995, at A1, A26, and President Clinton's plan would have increased the premium to $996 a year. See, e.g., Robert Pear, "House G.O.P. Plan Doubles Premiums Under Medicare," N.Y. Times, Sept. 22, 1995, at A1, A26; "‘Medicare Plus' or ‘Medicare Choice,' the Basics Are the Same," N.Y. Times, Sept. 23, 1995, at 8.23/ See, e.g., Robert Pear, "Cornerstones of Revolution: The G.O.P.'s Overhaul of Two Vast Systems Moves Ahead," N.Y. Times, Sept. 23, 1995, at 8 ("A Premium Debate"); "‘Medicare Plus' or ‘Medicare Choice,' the Basics Are the Same," N.Y. Times, Sept. 23, 1995, at 8; Adam Clymer, "So Many Measures, So Little Time," N.Y. Times, Sept. 25, 1995, at A12 ("Comparison: Overhauling Medicare and Medicaid: House and Senate Plans").24/ See Eric Pianin & Spencer Rich, "Senate GOP Offers Plan to Cut Medicare by $270 Billion Over 7 Years," Wash. Post, Sept. 23, 1995, at A4 (the change would have taken effect between the years 2003 and 2027).25/ See Social Security Administration, Fast Facts & Figures About Social Security 8 (1995) (using 1992 data, more than 52 percent of the aged would fall below the poverty level without Social Security, of which 14 percent stay below the poverty level even with Social Security, while Social Security lifts 38 percent out of poverty).26/ The Dow Jones Industrial average has dropped 15 percent from its July peak. "How Russia Set Off Wave that Swamped Markets World-Wide," Wall St. J., Sept. 22, 1998, at A1.27/See "House Republicans Consider Nearly $1 Trillion In Tax Cuts" (July 17, 1998) .28/ See David E. Rosenbaum, "A Mistake Prevails, as Certainly as Death and Taxes," N.Y. Times, June 24, 1998.29/ See Katharine Q. Seelye, "Panel Approves Deep Cuts in Programs Championed by Clinton," N.Y. Times, June 24, 1998.30/See Iris J. Lav, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "Archer Tax Proposal Uses Social Security Funds for Inefficient and Poorly Targeted Tax Cuts" (Sept. 16, 1998).31/ Citizens for Tax Justice, "CTJ Analyzes House Tax Plan" (Sept. 17, 1998) .32/ Id.33/ See 16 U.S.C. § 4801 .34/ Katharine Q. Seelye, "Republicans Vote Down Minimum-Wage Increase," N.Y. Times, Sept. 23, 1998, at A16; Helen Dewar, "Senate Rejects $1 Hike in Minimum Wage: Democrats Vow to Make Vote a Campaign Issue," Wash. Post, Sept. 23, 1998, at A4 Greg Hitt, "Senate Blocks Increase of $1 in Minimum Wage," Wall St. J., Sept. 23, 1998, at A2 ("The Senate, the graveyard of much of both political parties' election-year agenda").35/ Amos 5:24 (Modern Language Bible).
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