I love Robert Greenstein of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), but I find his reasoning on the House Rules passed yesterday, which included a PAYGO rule, defeatist reasoning.
First, don't let anyone confuse us that the PAYGO rule the House passed yesterday is not the same as the PAYGO law which corporate Democrats pushed through, and Obama signed, in 2010, the last time the Dems controlled the House of Representatives, Senate and Presidency. Even after reading Greenstein's article, I remain convinced this re-instatement of the PAYGO rule (after Republicans had adopted what is known as a CUTGO rule) means giving up legislative leverage before the Dems begin to agitate for new legislation. Why should anyone care that Republicans can call something a "middle class tax increase?" They do that already even without a PAYGO rule or PAYGO law. After all, they fairly consistently called Obama a "socialist," and it stuck with 40% of American voters at least, and a majority of older white Baby Boomers and Oldsters. And really, Bob Greenstein, let Mulvaney try to do or even do what you fear. With more progressives than in a long time in Congress yelling back at Mulvaney, let's see how angry we get so as to begin to force the type of changes a majority of Americans want to see. Republicans, when controlling the House, Senate, and Presidency, ramroded through tax cuts for billionaires and corporations by waiving PAYGO and CUTGO, and the reaction was the Democratic Party took back the House and various Statehouses. There would have been even more Democratic Party victories but for gerrymandering and voter suppression. The answer is to change the status quo--as Dr. Horrible would say, The Status is not Quo--and let's agitate to make 2020 an even greater wave which even overtakes those suppression type efforts. Democrats acting boldly will more likely lead to a Democratic Senate and a Democratic Party led presidency.
After reading this article from Mr. Greenstein, who remains one of the most astute observers of legislation in DC for the past 20 years, I realized attacking the PAYGO law by not having a PAYGO rule would have focused a spotlight on Pelosi and Hoyer as they pushed the PAYGO law in the first place. All this complicated reasoning Greenstein employed is really about Pelosi and Hoyer saving face.
Too bad only Khanna, Ocasio-Cortez, and Gabbard were the only Democrats with guts to expose the charade. But substantively, this type of rule narrows the scope of policy debates, and forces politicians to compromise in ways that are more capitulations than compromises. The rule gives further procedural cover to scaredy-cat Dems and corporate media to attack progressives in Congress, "Follow the rule and the law. Tell us how to pay for it." It immediately puts progressives on the defensive beyond just rhetoric, as it is a House rule. The rule tells the Democratic Party leaders and other congresspeople what is acceptable to the capitalist donor class before the first hearings on a proposed law begins. Yet, we know when there is a war or a giveaway to the wealthy interests, the concern for debt/deficits disappear, and a roll call vote to waive PAYGO or before CUTGO gets made and not many people are the wiser as to how that was done. It is only when we speak of legislation to directly help people that suddenly, we have to defend ourselves against the taunt, "Oh, how do we pay for this?" I get we will have to say this anyway, but why give any Democrats cover under procedural rules or laws on top of that?
When Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in their unfortunately famous "The Communist Manifesto," spoke about the "dictatorship" of the proletariat, they were using the term "dictatorship" to mean there would be new rules that would limit the ability of the capitalist class to block the will of the proletariat class. See Wiki for a start, and Marx's speech in 1872 where he speaks kindly of procedural democratic/republican values in England, U.S. and Holland as ways to transfer power in a peaceful, not revolutionary, manner. It is an interesting definition of the term "dictatorship," as Marx particularly had studied how rules the British Parliament had set up at the end of the 1700's and into the early 1800's with respect to restricting the commons, subsidizing capitalist ventures, laws imposing the death penalty for breaking machines, and the like, had tilted power away from both the peasants and workers' guilds still in Great Britain, and also the old aristocracy. Marx and Engels liked the latter change, as they abhorred feudalism, and were also clear they recognized the positive side of growing capitalist-oriented economic development. However, both men sought different rules to govern on behalf of the growing industrialized workers, and not the owners of the machinery and businesses. Michael Harrington is excellent on this in the early chapters of his magisterial work, "Socialism," and his next book thereafter, "The Twilight of Capitalism," the latter in Chapter 1. We know, however, how dangerous it was for Marx and Engels to have used the term, and how Lenin, Stalin, Mao and others distorted and betrayed Marx's and Engels' most positive values. The crimes of Communism in the 20th Century can still be laid at the feet of Marx and Engels to the extent it was their too opaque a definition of "dictatorship" that lent itself to an easy and deadly, even genocidal, abuse.
In any event, I admit to being very angry at the House passing the PAYGO "rule" yesterday because the House leadership, once again, is reacting to what "is" instead of daring to change "is." Again, so what if Mulvaney and Trump behave with contempt and petulance? Let people see. Let young people see, let older people see, let the majority of Americans throughout the land see what Republican governance truly means. Why hide behind a set of rules that keep us from seeing clearly how the national leadership actually operates? Why keep giving succor to a rule scaredy-cat Democrats passed in 2010 that Republicans have run with the same way Truman's loyalty oath program put in via executive order in 1945 and 1946 was used and abused with glee by Republicans during the later Joe McCarthy Era starting in 1950 and lasting through the rest of the 1950s and beyond?
This procedural battle may be lost, but it is past time for progressive Democrats in Congress to agitate and push forward an agenda that says, Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. This is, sadly, a torpedo from our own side, but it is part of the Argument Among the Rational, meaning those who are decent, but live within the current Overton Window, and those of us who wish to push that window outward.
