Democrats Can Pile On About What A Nightmare Trump's Budget Is-- But Can't Come Up With One Of Their Own?

If the budget is a statement of values, the Democrats' presumed inability to unite behind one, speaks volumes about a party whose tent is too big to be functional. Trump's DOA budget will never get a vote but his intention of a high increase for the Pentagon and paying for his vanity wall by cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is all anyone needs to know about his values and his party's values. Trump's obscene $4.7 trillion budget would cut $845 billion from Medicare-- didn't he say he was the only Republican who would never cut that?-- $241 billion from Medicaid and slash Social Security by $25 billion over 10 years-- not to mention drastic cuts to food stamps and a $207 billion cut to student loans including the outright elimination of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. Democrats will have a field day demonizing his budget-- and rightly so. But what about their own?

Yesterday Sarah Ferris and Heather Caygle, reporting for Politico, wrote that though the Democrats have finally gained back control of the House "they’re likely to skip one of their most fundamental responsibilities: passing a budget. Eager to steer clear of another public intraparty battle, House Democrats are expected to avoid a vote on a budget this year."

House Democrats are still drafting a budget, which would offer their first chance as a new majority to formally outline their broader agenda. But the resolution-- which is purely a political messaging document and is not signed into law-- would also stoke major ideological clashes within the caucus over “Medicare for All,” the “Green New Deal” and defense spending.

“We’re still proceeding as if we’re going to do one, but we’re also considering other options because we don’t know if we can get 218 votes for anything,” House Budget Chairman John Yarmuth (D-KY) said in an interview Monday.

Indeed, in a worst-case scenario for Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her party, the budget could be an embarrassing flop on the House floor.

Most Democrats say publicly they want a chance to vote on their party’s fiscal blueprint after eight years of rejecting GOP budgets.

Privately, however, lawmakers and aides say that a budget is unlikely to come for a final vote. It’s an acknowledgment of the divisions within the caucus even on key principles, and a sign of how difficult it will be to craft actual legislation in the months to come.

Democratic leaders have made no formal decision, though Yarmuth met Monday with Pelosi and other top Democratic leaders, including House Appropriations Chairwoman Nita Lowey (D-NY), as they discussed skipping a floor vote. That meeting comes after Yarmuth has spent weeks huddling with dozens of committee and caucus leaders as he strives to bring it to the floor despite the daunting odds.

Several senior Democratic aides said it makes little political sense to spend weeks perfecting a messaging document when there are other items with far greater partywide appeal on their to-do list, like an upcoming vote to address the gender pay gap.

That’s particularly true, they added, after the caucus’ factions openly warred last week over how to handle Rep. Ilhan Omar’s comments criticizing pro-Israel advocates.

“I hope we can work through a budget process, but it will not be easy, and I get the idea that it may be impossible to arrive at consensus on that document,” said Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI), chairman of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee.

“It’s ultimately a political decision whether to bring a budget to the floor,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) added. “And so a pragmatic decision often gets made: Where do you want to put your political capital?”

Yarmuth said his budget won’t include some of the most iconic ideas championed by progressives, like Medicare for All or the Green New Deal, which have been panned by moderates.

But he acknowledged in a separate interview last week that the decision could cost him votes from the party’s progressives: “The complicating factor is that there are members who probably would have a hard time voting for a budget that didn’t in some way anticipate the Green New Deal. Same thing with Medicare for All.”

House Democrats still plan to release their budget draft this month, which will be their counteroffer to the newly unveiled White House budget. Unlike spending bills to fund the government, Congress doesn’t need to pass a budget on the floor. The House and Senate rarely find agreement during divided government.

With a tricky electoral map for Republicans in 2020, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is unlikely to put his members through a budget vote on the floor, though his budget chairman, Mike Enzi (R-WY), has said he plans to draft one.

But failing to pass a budget would be an embarrassment for Democratic leaders, who hammered Republicans when they were in power for consistently struggling to unite over a party blueprint-- and failing to put one on the floor at all last year. House Republicans skipped a floor vote amid an ugly intraparty fight over how deeply to cut assistance programs for the poor.

It also wouldn’t be the first time Pelosi punted; her previous majority skipped a budget in 2010, even when Democrats controlled both chambers.

Still, Democrats had been expected to pass a budget this year after their decisive win in November, with their members eager to define their political brand and show progress to their base after two years in a GOP-controlled Washington.

This year’s historic freshman class, however, heightens the challenges for Democratic budget writers. Forty-three of the party’s new members come from previously Republican-held districts, and GOP operatives are watching closely for controversial votes.

Even with the rise of progressive lawmakers like high-profile freshman Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, there are more Democrats in the centrist Blue Dog and New Democrat coalitions than in the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Every major caucus and committee is in talks with Yarmuth and other top Democrats to craft this year’s blueprint. And every corner of the caucus will need to back the budget, because Democrats can afford to lose few votes on the floor.

Some moderates [Note: when Politico uses the term "moderate" to describe the far right of the Democratic Party, they are doing so help make the Republican-lite policies that wing espouses seem attractive to the casual reader] say they have little interest in squabbling over the fine print of a budget this year. Instead, they say Democrats should focus on the looming threat of another budget sequester, which would impose billions of dollars in cuts if Congress can’t reach a deal this fall.

“What matters is the numbers. A lot of the budget resolution ends up being sort of a messaging document, which I think most people here have less interest in,” said Rep. Derek Kilmer (New Dem-WA), co-chair of the New Democrat Coalition. “My hope is that we can thread that needle in a careful way.”

Rep. Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR), a co-chair of the Blue Dog Coalition, said his group has only occasionally voted to support Democratic budgets on the floor in the past. This year, the group has worked behind the scenes to push for a budget proposal that wouldn’t add to the deficit, along with other demands, but hasn’t committed to supporting it.

“Maybe there’s an opportunity to have a paid-for budget that makes sense and we can get behind,” Schrader told reporters when asked about the budget’s prospects.

A deficit-neutral proposal, however, would force Democrats to make tough sacrifices when writing the budget. The outcome could anger defense hawks who want to see massive Pentagon budgets or progressives who want bigger investments in education and anti-poverty programs.

“The job he has to do, I wouldn’t want to do it,” Rep. Tom O’Halleran (Blue Dog-AZ), another co-chair of the Blue Dog Coalition, said of Yarmuth. “The American people expect us to do a budget, that’s our job. It’s one of the core responsibilities of Congress, especially the House.”

Democrats say they fear drafting a budget resolution would harden battle lines among the various factions, particularly defense hawks and doves as they’re forced to settle on a total dollar amount for the Pentagon.

“Obviously, we would love to be able to have a Democratic Caucus unity budget, but it’s going to be a line to walk to get there,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in an interview. One of their group’s key requests involves more accountability for Pentagon spending.

Yesterday, in an e-mail, Bernie told his supporters that "It was not long ago that the idea of Medicare for All was dismissed and ridiculed by the corporate media and political establishment of this country. Too radical, they said. Fringe. Crazy. Pie in the sky. Well, they are not saying that anymore. Because today, not only do a strong majority of Americans believe health care should be a right in this country, but it is also a mainstream Democratic Party position... How can we call this a civilized society when some Americans have access to the best medical care in the world and others are unable to walk into a doctor’s office because they lack money? How can we tolerate a situation where the children or parents of the rich get the medical attention they need in order to stay alive, while members of working-class families, who lack health insurance, have to die or needlessly suffer or go hopelessly into debt to get the care they need?"

I hope he asks Pelosi and the reactionary Blue Dogs and New Dems she's coddling. And particularly Blue Dog Cheri Bustos, the DCCC Chair who is busy recruiting more Blue Dogs and more New Dems to further pollute the Democratic Party's values and turn it into another neo-liberal institution owned and operated by the plutocracy.

In the context of a battle over fundamental economic theory, William K. Black noted on Monday that "polls showing enormous public support for the key progressive initiatives terrify the neoliberals. Sanders’ 2016 policy initiatives have transformed the Democratic Party candidates’ policy proposals for 2020. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Warren’s policy proposals are having a similar effect. Polls show broad support for the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, a jobs guaranty program, a tax system that would reverse the current race to plutocracy, a campaign to reduce gun slaughter and massacres, the restoration of the rule of law (including antitrust laws) to business (particularly banking and Silicon Valley), and a meaningful minimum wage."

The massive, coordinated assault on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) scholars by the most elite forces of orthodoxy represents a watershed moment in economics, but we must not lose sight that the real attack is actually on progressives, particularly the newly elected progressive members of Congress plus Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders. Even that statement is incomplete, for it is the combination of the rise of these progressive elected officials, the 2020 presidential election (and nomination battle), and the exceptional embrace of progressive policies by the general public and Democratic Party candidates for the presidential nomination that prompted the coordinated and personalized assault of overwhelmingly neoliberal economists on MMT scholars. This first column in a series provides an overview of why the progressives’ embrace of MMT spurred the terrified assault on MMT by orthodox economists.

...The emerging progressive policy core enjoys far stronger public support than do the neoliberal policies of the self-described Democratic Party ‘moderates.’ That professed ‘moderation,’ has become code for extreme opposition to the policies that the public overwhelmingly supports. The progressive policy core is centrist in terms of the electorate’s preferences. The progressive policy core is not “socialist,” “extreme,” or “left.”

The Democratic Party “moderates,” on two key economic issues, their embrace of austerity and willingness to cut the safety net, are to the right of Republican conservatives. Republicans only pretend to embrace austerity when there is a Democratic president. The New Democrats, Blue Dogs, and “Problem Solver” Democrats actually believe in inflicting self-destructive austerity and cuts to the safety net regardless of the President’s party. Neoliberal Democrats’ big club to bash progressive policies is the typically mythical catastrophic effects of federal budget deficits. MMT scholarship disarms neoliberals, removing the legitimacy of their deficit hysteria ‘club’ in the vast bulk of circumstances where federal deficits do not cause significant shortages of real resources.

Fox News, President Trump, and neoliberal economists mounted a desperate attack on the progressive policy core precisely because the public overwhelmingly supports it. Their attack makes three claims. First, the policy core represents bad economics. Second, the policy core represents ‘socialism.’ Third, even if the policies are desirable, the world cannot afford to adopt them. These three points form the all-encompassing neoliberal meme that the government cannot and should not act to protect the public. They think the government should serve and fund the plutocrats, kleptocrats, and the “chicken hawks’” massive military expenditures and wars.  Neoliberals try desperately to convince the public to adopt their ideology that democratic government is fundamentally illegitimate while the reality of a rigged kleptocracy represents the fiction of ‘capitalism.’

Since the Blue Dog Eva Putzova is competing with for the AZ-01 seat, Tom O'Halleran, is a member of the Budget Committee who is so very fond of austerity-- and since he quoted above-- I asked Eva where she comes down on these budgetary questions. She told us she supports "the request of the Congressional Progressive Caucus to include more accountability for Pentagon spending that would include a rigorous audit. Money that is wasted in defense spending can be reallocated to needed investments in veteran care, healthcare, green energy, education, and other areas without harming our national security. In fact, if we are serious about national security and defense we turn our attention to the real vulnerabilities of our communities: electrical grid, clean water supply, and digital security."

The virulent attacks by conservatives against the progressive agenda are not swaying candidates like Mike Siegel in Texas. In fact-- just the opposite. Last night he told us that "The 2020 election will be the moment when Americans can decide, once and for all, that we want universal healthcare. The public sentiment is there. It is up to candidates and elected officials to honor the will of the people. Here in Central and Gulf Coast Texas, we have at least four national battleground Congressional districts for the 2020 election, in TX-10, TX-21, TX-22, and TX-31, and several more contested races. In TX-10, I will be running strong on Medicare for All, not only because it is the right thing to do, not only because this legislation will save thousands upon thousands of lives, but also because we must draw a line in the sand for every Democratic candidate, and push every candidate to support universal healthcare. We only have these opportunities once every 20 or 40 years, to reform the national healthcare system. If we don't push for Medicare for All now, we might lose our chance for a generation or more. The people are counting us to show a little courage; to resist the moneyed interests; and to fight for their health and lives."