"We have a lot of work to do," says Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif), shown here at a Capitol Hill news conference on the Federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina in February. "Hurricane Katrina was a stark reminder of the failure of our government to address the challenges of inequality and poverty that still confront our nation."
Don’t buy all the crap coming fromGOP talking-point memos or the blather from mainstream pundits. The midterm elections do not signal a move to the center. Yes, a few conservative Democrats were elected, but the big gainers were progressives. In particular, the Congressional Progressive Caucus is on the rise.
No longer will Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) be able to grab the gavel and run, as he did at a hearing last year when faced with pointed questions from Congressional Democrats about the PATRIOT Act, Guantanamo and the “war on terror.” During a hearing, Sensenbrenner, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, used his standing to abruptly declare the committee’s public hearing on the PATRIOT Act over. He cut off the microphones of the Democratic half of the panel and smugly shuffled out of the room, thereby avoiding any more frivolous questions about “civil rights.”
Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich)—the new chair of the Judiciary Committee— will welcome such questions.
Democrats as a whole will benefit from controlling the House of Representatives, but yesterday’s victory bodes especially well for members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), a coalition of 63 left-leaning Democrats that includes Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Indeed the CPC is poised to increase its ranks. In an unprecedented move this fall, CPC members—coming together under the newly formed Progressive Majority Project—pooled their money, time and staff to lend support to progressives running in 12 House races. Eight of those CPC-backed candidates won, which makes all this talk about conservative Democrats in the ascendancy a bunch of bunk. (In addition, two CPC members, Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), have moved on to the Senate.)
Though the CPC represents about a third of House Democrats, the caucus members hold ranking minority positions on half of the House’s 20 standing committees, including Conyers on the Judiciary Committee, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) on the Education and the Workforce Committee, and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) on the Government Reform Committee. As chairmen of those committees, CPC members will now be in a position to both promote progressive legislation and investigate administration wrongdoing. The assumption of committee chairmanships is one way the CPC is working to transform the group from the House’s largest caucus into its most powerful.
“It is important to recognize that this was not just a vote against George Bush and the Republican Congress, it was a vote for a Democratic agenda that is rooted in progressive values,” said Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.). “In just the first 100 hours, we will be uniting behind Leader Pelosi to move a legislative agenda designed to address real issues that impact Americans.”
To build unity among the growing caucus, the CPC in May of last year hired formerAFL-CIO official Bill Goold, its first full-time employee, as a policy coordinator. Five months later, the caucus drafted a new four-point “Progressive Promise,” a kind of Ten Commandments for progressives; the points centered around economic justice, civil rights, global peace and energy independence. A framework of general policy initiatives, such as raising the minimum wage and opposing media consolidation, is included.
The Progressive Promise provides the CPC with a foundation from which to build their legislative efforts. Last year, Lee, the co-chair of the CPC, turned the Promise’s commitment to global peace into HR (House Resolution) 197, which would make it “the policy of the United States not to enter into any base agreement with the Government of Iraq that would lead to a permanent United Sates military presence in Iraq.” The bill, as she wrote in an 2005In These Times “House Call” column, would force the hand of supporters of the president. “If they don’t support being in Iraq permanently, they should co-sponsor my bill, and put themselves on record. It is that simple.”
And HR 676, introduced by Conyers and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), has become a rallying point for the CPC, labor unions, nurses and other activists. The proposal, which would establish universal health care, drew co-sponsorship from more than 70 representatives, was endorsed by as many labor unions and was the subject of rallies in dozens of U.S. cities this year.
Both bills now have a chance to get a fuller hearing. And on a wide range of issues, real alternatives can now be put forward. “We must move to address our domestic priorities: creating good jobs, increasing access to healthcare and providing the best possible education for our children,” Pelosi wrote inIn These Times, following the 2004 election. “We also must reform the tax code and stop rewarding outsourcing. As a matter of basic fairness, no taxpayer should have to subsidize the outsourcing of his or her own job.”
There is reason to celebrate. Before heading to bed at 5 a.m. today, Chris Bowers of MyDD.com, a blog that has been instrumental in supporting progressive campaigns and politicians, posted the following congratulatory message:
“Wave of new conservative Democrats, my ass. [S]omeone tell me again how the new wave of Democrats is overwhelmingly conservative. … Republicans beaten at the top of their game. Republicans broke all of their fundraising and voter contact records this year. They had better maps than ever before. They had a better opportunity to pass whatever legislation they liked than ever before. And they were still crushed,” wrote Bowers.
“This is no time to start being risk-averse,” Bowers added. “We must continue to pursue the strategies that brought us here: silent revolution, fifty-state strategy, small donor explosion, [and a] progressive movement. We are all in this together.”
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HR 676
United States National Health Insurance Program (the Program) to provide all individuals residing in the United States and in U.S. territories with free health care that includes all medically necessary care, such as primary care and prevention, prescription drugs, emergency care, and mental health services.
Who is going to pay for this fiasco in the making? The poor benighted chumps who actually work for a living….........It sounds great until you get the bill.
YU ARE PAYING FOR IT ANYWAY ...FOOL
Many who work do not have health coverage…is there a news white-out in Texas…or are yu just stupid…one would gather…both…
Maybe yu could get help for your….hetro-boredom….
TexasTagger…yu are just what the neo-cons love…ostentatiously uninformed , too psuedo- prideful…working middle-class idiot, that for some unexplained psycosomatic reasonings ; identifies with agendas that do not effect your own best interest….
Yu…Mr.Tagger need to be protected from yourself…
Maybe a rubber room or a straight jacket….meds…?
Look….Tex….Redhorse is gonna throw yu a bone, what good it will do is up to yu….
Google…Ben Cohens Cookie Graph…or go to Youtube and search for… Oreo cookies & BB’S….TOO MUCH LIKE RIGHT….with Tavis Smiley…...
Now Ben Cohen is a Jewish name…so we don’t want to hear any denialist bullshit….
Maybe we will all learn something….....
10 billion from nukes too health care….not so hard…...eeh
ah…..the never ending wisdom of plain ol’ common sense…........
The article brings up a critical point: That of the cognitive political dissonance over ideological alignment in the USA today. It is a dissonance that covers the terms “conservative” and “liberal” as well as “progressive”. Thus radical rightists such as Bush/Cheney are called “conservatives”, liberals such as Pelosi are called “progressives”, and so forth. In general it masks the profound shift to the right that has occured since Reagan. The ‘06 election results only open a door of possible reversal, they do not actually reverse it.
It is in this befogged atmosphere that the Democrats are trying to carry out a hijacking of “progressivism”, in a frantic attempt to delay a mass bolt of grassroots progressive activists - who assume a RADICAL LEFT content for the term - from a conservative party with no substantial solutions to the deep problems facing America and the world. Unless of course one believes stem cell research is the solution to all our problems.
Mapping the actual history of the term “progressive” would begin to resolve this confusion. It would also reveal the the present is not the first time conservatives and liberals have hijacked “progressivism”.
Now on to the substance of the article:
The Bleifuss/Burt/Bowers comments promise a renewed assault upon independent-minded leftists. Given the bullying tone and abusive terminology, it looks to be nasty. It will have to be, for hard core Democrat leftists will have their work cut out over the next 2 years covering the left flank of the Democratic Party as it betrays the hopes placed in it by grassroots progressive left activists. Signally, these will be the failure to impeach Bush/Cheney - necessary for expeditious Iraq withdrawal - failure to repeal the Military Commissions Act and failure to repeal the Patriot Acts.
After 6 years of Roves’ lying spinmanship, are we now to be subject to a “Pwog” version of dissembling spin?
Example: The article headline claims “The big winners from the ‘06 midterms were members of the House Progressive Caucus”, misleading one into a sense that the Caucus received some sort of popular mandate in the 2006 elections. But as one reads a bit further, it is revealed that all this amounts to is that certain select progressive Democrats now occupy key House committee chairmanships due, not to popular election, but to the extremely undemocratic anachronism of House seniority rules! These invariably benefit Congresspeople in “safe” districts who are automatically relected term after term, which means for the Democrats, districts where Republicans are very weak, often weaker than the independent Left. This is not “democracy”, but bureaucracy, in action.
Example: “In an unprecedented move this fall, CPC members—coming together under the newly formed Progressive Majority Project—pooled their money, time and staff to lend support to progressives running in 12 House races. Eight of those CPC-backed candidates won, which makes all this talk about conservative Democrats in the ascendancy a bunch of bunk.” We are not told if these presumably “progressive” Democrats replaced Republicans or even conservative Democrats in “swing” districts - an event that, if it were true, would indicate a fairly dramatic and unprecedented (in recent times) shift to the left by formerly conservative voters. But no evidence of this is given at all. For all anybody knows, these are either liberal to progressive replacements for a previous liberal occupant. No change there.
Finally, no concrete analysis is presented of the politics of Democrats elected in Republican “swing” districts - the races that actually gave the Democrats the House majority.
The rest is largely hopeful happy talk. The day we have universal health care in the USA will be, under present conditions, the day Corporate America realizes how it is shooting itself in the foot with the present idiotic system. No doubt “pwogs” of the Bleifuss/Burt/Bowers stripe will be there to claim “credit” for Corporate America’s actions.
But what enables this sort of spin is a deliberately confounding abuse of the term “progressive”. In particular it is combined with “liberal”, the latter a different political species. In this way Pelosi is represented as a “progressive” simply because she is a member of the CPC. But Pelosi pledged 100% support for the murdurous, US sponsored apartheid state of Israel before AIPAC, now under criminal investigation: http://brickburner.blogs.com/my_weblog/2006/11/nancy_pelosi_an.html
Since when is this stance - hardly a minor issue today - become “progressive”? It would be hardly be the only issue that would define Pelosi as something other than progressive.
Conversely, it is assumed that a correct stance on, say, abortion rights signifies “progressivism”. That would be news to Giuliani, McCain and may other genuine conservatives!
So dance, spinmeisters, dance! We on the independant Left are also pleased that the election results have placed such ripe and juicy targets in our sights!
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What We Can Learn: An Excerpt from Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?
What We Can Learn: An Excerpt from Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?
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