Who's More Likely To Grant Biden A Honeymoon-- The Republicans Or The Progressives?

 

In her powerful Washington Post OpEd-- Working People Delivered Biden His Victory; Now He Needs To Deliver For Them-- early this morning, former Ohio state Senator Nina Turner noted that is was Black, brown and white families making under $100,000, along with the vast majority of young people who delivered Biden his victory. "These voters," she wrote, "are the heart and the future of a massive progressive movement inside and outside of the Democratic Party, and it is to them that Joe Biden and Kamala D. Harris must answer."

And in a letter to his supporters this afternoon, Bernie had a very similar message: while everyone claims credit for Biden's victory, it "multi-racial, multi-generational progressive grassroots organizations all across this country played an extraordinary role in helping to make this victory possible. We made phone calls, we texted, we registered voters, we did virtual rallies, we distributed literature and we knocked on doors when possible. Knowing the importance of this election we did everything that we could, and more. Together, we built widespread support for Biden among young people, people of color and the working class. In my view, Biden's success would not have been possible without those extraordinary efforts... [O]ver 53% of young people ages 18 to 29 voted, which not only eclipses 2016's turnout rate, but would be the highest youth turnout rate in American history. And those young people voted overwhelmingly for Biden and other Democrats... Further, the strong economic agenda that the progressive movement fought for helped bring out low-income working people to vote for Biden. National exit polls show that voters with an annual family income under $50,000 voted against Trump by a 15-point margin... [W]e're going to have to do everything possible to make sure that Congress and the new president move rapidly and aggressively to address the enormous crises facing our country."

On Thursday, Paul Krugman was already urging Biden to "claim that he has been given a strong mandate to govern the nation" (even though most of his votes were anti-Trump votes more than pro-Biden votes. Krugman warned that "there are real questions about whether he will, in fact, be able to govern. At the moment, it seems likely that the Senate-- which is wildly unrepresentative of the American people-- will remain in the hands of an extremist party that will sabotage Biden in every way it can." He then explained why divided government is such a problem and points to GOP obstruction during the Obama years.

Republicans used hardball tactics, including threats to cause a default on the national debt, to force a premature withdrawal of fiscal support that slowed the pace of economic recovery. I’ve estimated that without this de facto sabotage, the unemployment rate in 2014 might have been about two percentage points lower than it actually was.

And the need for more spending is even more acute now than it was in 2011, when Republicans took control of the House... We desperately need a new round of federal spending on health care, aid to the unemployed and businesses, and support for strapped state and local governments. Reasonable estimates suggest that we should spend $200 billion or more each month until a vaccine brings the pandemic to an end. I’d be shocked if a Senate still controlled by Mitch McConnell would agree to anything like this.

Even after the pandemic is over, we’re likely to face both persistent economic weakness and a desperate need for more public investment. But McConnell effectively blocked infrastructure spending even with Donald Trump in the White House. Why would he become more amenable with Biden in office?

Krugman is not without influence but it is Mohamed El-Erian, president of Cambridge's Queens' College, who is probably the single most respected voice in the world in the circle of serious investors and, like Krugman, he warns that A divided electorate spells trouble for the US economy. "The 2020 election," he wrote, "has confirmed that the US remains a deeply divided country facing mounting challenges that threaten both this and future generations. Despite a collective wake-up call in the form of a severe health and economic crisis, the country seems both unwilling and unable to embark on the decisive measures needed. The unwillingness comes from fundamental differences of views on how best to pursue economic and financial reforms while urgently dealing with the threats from COVID-19. The inability is due to a probably divided Congress, where the damage of the past few years to the most basic of cross-party working relationships has been accentuated by the past month's rush to approve a new Supreme Court justice."

What is at risk here is not just the longer-term oriented reforms seeking to limit another move down in productivity, yet more household economic insecurity, and a worsening in inequality. Also at risk is the short-term health and economic effort to help the nation recover from the considerable damage that the first COVID-19 wave left in its wake.

...[T]he Federal Reserve will be pushed yet again to do more with increasingly ineffective and inevitably distortionary policy tools. The traditional monetary policy mindset will continue to give even more ground as the Fed faces pressure to insure risks that are difficult to price, let alone underwrite properly.

This venturing into even bigger experimental unconventional monetary policies will do little to genuinely stimulate the economy. Instead, it is likely to create further distortions in financial markets, increase incentives for irresponsible risk-taking and lead to the misallocation of resources throughout the economy. This will heighten the threat of financial instability. In the process, the already large disconnect between Main Street and Wall Street will widen, adding political and social challenges.

...[This] translates into a more difficult outlook for both the short and longer term. It means less dynamic supply and less buoyant demand. The growth in the economic pie will not just be less than what's needed. It will also fall short of what the two sides of the political divide believe is possible under their different approaches, fuelling a messy blame game that will further undermine the social fabric.

The US plight is also problematic for a global economic recovery that is now more likely to become more uneven and more uncertain. America's internal divisions will preclude the early resumption of its traditional role in informing, influencing and sometimes imposing outcomes in multilateral economic co-ordination forums. They will also increase the risk of deglobalisation and the further weaponisation of economic and investment tools.

Ultimately, the combination of another health emergency, a weakening economy and increased financial instability will force the US government into decisive action-- but not before considerable damage to the lives, livelihoods and mental wellbeing of this generation, and perhaps future ones as well.

Not very cheerful-- and quite ominous, considering the source. Matt Viser, Seung Min Kim and Annie Linskey reported for the Washington Post over the weekend that Biden plans immediate flurry of executive orders to reverse Trump policies. He'll start on January 20 by having the country rejoin the Paris climate accords, reversing Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization, repealing the ban on Muslims, and reinstateing the DREAMER program. "Biden’s top advisers have spent months quietly working on how best to implement his agenda, with hundreds of transition officials preparing to get to work inside various federal agencies. They have assembled a book filled with his campaign commitments to help guide their early decisions." That's good-- since his campaign commitments are much better than his instincts. It's good that his team recognizes that pushing major legislation through Congress is pretty much off the table with McConnell running the Senate. [Reminder: this.]

Biden is planning to set up a coronavirus task force on Monday, in recognition that the global pandemic will be the primary issue that he must confront. The task force, which could begin meeting within days, will be co-chaired by former surgeon general Vivek H. Murthy and David Kessler, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner.

...“The policy team, the transition policy teams, are focusing now very much on executive power,” said a Biden ally who has been in touch with his team who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. “I expect that to be freely used in a Biden administration at this point, if the Senate becomes a roadblock.”

A Republican-held Senate-- or even one with a narrow Democratic majority-- probably will affect Biden’s Cabinet picks given the Senate’s power to confirm nominees.

One option being discussed is appointing Cabinet members in an acting capacity, a tactic that Trump also used.

“Just by virtue of the calendar and how many positions are filled, that’s always a possibility,” the person said. “Because the Senate moves so slowly now, so much more slowly than it used to.”

...If Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) stays as majority leader, he would be trying to manage a conference torn between two factions with different interests, but neither necessarily eager to help Biden-- one with senators running for reelection in swing states in 2022 [Note: Lisa Murkowski, Rubio, Chuck Grassley seat, Richard Burr seat, Rob Portman, Pat Toomey seat, and Ron Johnson] and another with those seeking the national spotlight as they vie for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination [Note: Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz].

“In the old days, the mandate meant that the other side would be more amenable, or feeling they had an impetus to work,” said Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-PA). “I’m not sure that applies any longer.”

It is unclear whether Biden has communicated with McConnell yet directly; aides have not commented on any conversation.

A closely divided Congress could hamper Biden’s efforts to do sweeping legislative actions on immigration changes. He has also said he would send a bill to Congress repealing liability protections for gun manufacturers, and close background-check loopholes. He has pledged to repeal the Republican-passed tax cuts from 2017, an effort that could be stymied if Republicans hold the Senate majority.

Without congressional cooperation, however, Biden has said that he plans to immediately reverse Trump’s rollback of 100 public health and environmental rules that the Obama administration had in place.

He would also institute new ethics guidelines at the White House, and he has pledged to sign an executive order the first day in office saying that no member of his administration could influence any Justice Department investigations.

...Much of Biden’s early agenda-- including which pieces of legislation to prioritize-- will be determined in the coming weeks as his transition team begins taking on a far more prominent role.

Biden’s transition effort is being overseen by Ted Kaufman, one of his closest advisers. Kaufman, who was appointed to replace Biden in the Senate when Biden became vice president in 2009, also helped co-write an update to the law governing the transition process, which was passed in 2015 and signed by President Barack Obama.

Biden’s transition team has been given government-issued computers and iPhones for conducting secure communications, and 10,000 square feet of office space in the Herbert C. Hoover Building in Washington, although most of the work is being done virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic. His advisers have been granted temporary security clearances and undergone FBI background checks to fast-track the processing of personnel who can receive briefings on intelligence.

But one important next step is for the head of the General Services Administration to rule that the election results are final, enabling Biden’s transition team to expand its work and gain access to government funds. Biden officials are prepared for legal action if that administrator-- Emily W. Murphy, a Trump political appointee-- delays that decision, according to officials familiar with the matter.

Trump has so far not conceded defeat, falsely claiming Saturday that he won the election.

Pamela Pennington, a GSA spokeswoman, said that Murphy would ascertain “the apparent successful candidate once a winner is clear based on the process laid out in the Constitution.” Until that decision is made, she said, the Biden transition team would continue to receive limited access to government resources.

The transition from Trump to Biden would have few historic parallels, rivaled perhaps only by 1860-1861, when southern states seceded before Abraham Lincoln took office, and 1932-1933, when Herbert Hoover sought to undermine Franklin D. Roosevelt and prevent him from implementing his New Deal policies.

The last time there was a prolonged delay in a transfer of power was in 2000, when uncertainty over the results in the contest between then-Vice President Al Gore (D) and then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush (R) stretched out until the Supreme Court ended a Florida recount that gave Bush the victory on Dec. 12.

The Bush administration’s sluggish start and lack of qualified personnel in place was cited by the 9/11 Commission Report as a critical vulnerability to U.S. national security for the attacks that occurred less than eight months after the inauguration. That prompted changes to the law and the granting of access at an earlier date following the political conventions.

“When George W. Bush left he made clear to his Cabinet that this is going to be the best transition of power that’s ever occurred. Because we weren’t treated very well when we came into power,” said Michael Leavitt, who at the time was the outgoing secretary of Health and Human Services. “Barack Obama to his credit said the same thing. There was a spirit of cooperation that went on and needs to continue. Whether it will or not I don’t know. But we’re better prepared.”

Chris Lu, the executive director of the Obama-Biden transition in 2008, said that within two hours of the election being called in 2008 he had a formal letter beginning the transition process.

“We literally at 9 a.m. the next morning walked into a transition office and had access to it,” he said. “It was the model for the smoothest transition of power.”

Making a clear break from the Trump administration's adversarial posture toward the civil service is also a top priority for the Biden transition team.

The Trump administration's suspicion of career officials and early calls for them to “get with the program” or “go” created tensions with incoming political appointees that never dissipated. Biden officials are hoping to create a positive atmosphere by avoiding some of the terminology and labels they think contributed to the mistrust.

No One Can Force A Presidential Candidate-- Let Alone A President-- To Read (Or Understand) The U.S. Constitution... Trump's Executive Orders

The big news Sunday was Trump's executive orders after he sabotaged the negotiations with Congress for a pandemic relief bill. No doubt, his zombie followers will eat it up. No one else will. Jim Tankersley did an analysis for NY Times readers-- Trump’s Go-It-Alone Stimulus Won’t Do Much to Lift the Recovery. He wrote that Señor Trumpanzee's executive actions "were pitched as a unilateral jolt for an ailing economy. But there is only one group of workers that seems guaranteed to benefit from them, at least right away: lawyers." The orders include an eviction moratorium, a new benefit to supplement unemployment assistance for workers and a temporary delay in payroll taxes-- although if re-elected he's planning to make it permanent, a way to fulfill nearly 9 decades of GOP dreams to end Social Security. "They could," wrote Tankersley, "give renters a break and ease payments for some student loan borrowers. But they are likely to do little to deliver cash any time soon to Americans hit hard by the recession. Even conservative groups have warned that suspending payroll tax collections is unlikely to translate into more money for workers. An executive action seeking to essentially create a new unemployment benefit out of thin air will almost certainly be challenged in court. And as Mr. Trump’s own aides concede, the orders will not provide any aid to small businesses, state and local governments or low- and middle-income workers. If the actions signal the death of a congressional deal to provide that aid, economists warn, the economy will limp toward November without the fiscal support that hastened its recovery after its quick dive into a pandemic-induced recession."

The federal government’s aid to small businesses through the Payroll Protection Program was set to expire on Saturday. Executives, trade groups and business lobbyists had pushed hard for a second round of lending-- along with new programs to get money to the businesses and industries hit hardest in the crisis-- to be included in any congressional stimulus deal. Mr. Trump’s actions do nothing to help those companies.

Low- and middle-income families’ spending power was bolstered in the spring by direct payments of $1,200 per adult that were included in a relief bill Mr. Trump signed into law in March. Lawmakers were pushing for a second round of those checks in a legislative deal. Mr. Trump’s measures will not provide them.

The orders will not provide aid to states and local governments, whose tax revenues have plunged as a direct result of the contraction in economic activity brought on by the virus. Without more money from the federal government, states and local governments will almost certainly have to cut their budgets and lay off workers, increasing the ranks of the unemployed.

Supplemental unemployment benefits of $600 per week, which expired at the end of July, had been supporting consumer spending at a time when about 30 million Americans are unemployed. Mr. Trump’s memo seeking to repurpose other money, including federal disaster aid, to essentially create a $400-a-week bonus payment is likely to be challenged in court and is unlikely to deliver additional cash to laid-off workers any time soon. It, too, raises questions even if it is deemed legal-- for instance, whether states that are already struggling with their budgets will be able to afford the 25 percent contribution that Mr. Trump’s memo says they will need to make toward the new benefit.

...But if negotiations falter now and aid remains scarce for people and businesses, Mr. Trump will be making a political bet: that it is better to tell voters he tried to help the economy than to have actually helped it. Mr. Trump is the president, and he has happily claimed credit for the economy’s performance.

If job growth slows further, and millions of unemployed Americans struggle to make ends meet, he will need to make the case for why the symbolism of acting alone won out over the farther-reaching effects of cutting a deal.

On State of the Union yesterday, Pelosi told Dana Bash that "whether they're legal or not takes time to figure out. I associate my remarks with what the Senator Sasse who says, they're 'unconstitutional slop.' Right now we want to address the needs of the American people. As my constitutional advisers tell me, they're absurdly unconstitutional." In case anyone doesn't understand what Pelosi was saying there, Alan Grayson, a bona fide genius, explained that "The Trump executive orders are not only illegal, but they’re unconstitutional. Anyone who tries to implement them will be facing criminal charges under the Antideficiency Act, 31 USC 1341. And, obviously, this is an impeachable offense, a “high crime” that abuses the power of the office. Trump is a Constitutional pyromaniac. As to the policies in the executive orders, the emperor has no clothes, so he’s trying to steal the Democrats’ clothes. It’s pathetic to watch the orangutan scratch his belly, screetch, and pretend that he gives a damn about anyone else."

Tom Suozzi (D-NY) represents the North Shore of Long Island, from the border of AOC's district in Queens (Whitestone and Beechhurst) straight thru Nassau and into Suffolk as far as Kings Park and the Nissequogue River. The former Nassau County Executive, Suozzi is now a member of the House Ways and Means Committee. Understanding how tax dollars are raised and spent is his field of expertise. And this morning, discussing Trump's clownish executive orders, he told us that "It’s not about the merits of $400 unemployment (of which $100 is paid by the states), or a payroll tax cut (which will decimate Social Security) or any of his executive orders. It is about the fact that it’s ILLEGAL. It is why we have a Congress. The President can’t, other than in limited instances, just do what he wants, especially when it comes to spending money. It’s just more in a long list of gimmicks by a failing president trying to hold on to power."

The Washington Post assigned a team to work on figuring it out-- Jeff Stein, Erica Werner and Renae Merle. They saw it-- as did much of Congress-- through the parameters of Trump's challenge to the constitutional order. "The measures," they wrote, "would attempt to wrest away some of Congress’s most fundamental, constitutionally mandated powers-- tax and spending policy. Trump acknowledged that some of the actions could be challenged in court but indicated he would persevere. Trump bemoaned how Democrats had refused to accept his demands during the recent negotiations but attempted to brush it aside, saying four measures he signed Saturday 'will take care of pretty much this entire situation.' But there were instant questions about whether Trump’s actions were as ironclad as he made them out to be. A leading national expert on unemployment benefits said one of the actions would not increase federal unemployment benefits at all. Instead, the expert said it would instead create a new program that could take “months” to set up. And Trump’s directive to halt evictions primarily calls for federal agencies to 'consider' if they should be stopped. Trump also mischaracterized the legal stature of the measures, referring to them as 'bills.' Congress writes and votes on bills, not the White House. The documents Trump signed on Saturday were a combination of memorandums and an executive order."

McConnell cheered him on, although he didn't explain why Trump's executive actions didn't include a second $1,200/person stimulus check that Congress had already agreed to. As Forbes reported, Trump targeted a payroll tax, reduced unemployment benefits, a bogus eviction moratorium study that won't keep a single family from being evicted and some student loan relief that will do little to help anyone "as his four areas of focus for an executive order. He never mentioned including stimulus checks as part of his executive order plan."

Jack Balkin summed up the unemployment aide program part of Trump's made-for-TV ploy on his must-read blog as Inadequate, Unworkable, and Unlawful. He wrote that Trumpanzee's "effort to relieve the pressure he and Senate Republicans have been feeling over the expiration of enhanced unemployment benefits is a failure on every level. It provides too little in aid. It will miss many families in need. It will expire very soon. It likely cannot be implemented in some states. And it is transparently unlawful."





How many lies can you count? As Alan Grayson put it the day after Trump's nationally televised half hour of gaslighting, "I would advise anyone who is still under the illusion that Trump is fit for office to listen to his speech yesterday. He is a babbling fool and a Constitutional pyromaniac, with a human applause track wired in the room to feed his infinite, insatiable ego."

Jim Himes (D-CT), like every congressional Democrat I've spoken to, is not satisfied with how the GOP is handling this, not even a little. "The so-called executive orders are way too little, way too late," he told me. "Americans are suffering badly and the Republican response has been to 'hit pause,' then to ask for F-35s and full expensing of business lunches, and now to offer weak presidential action. It is time for my Republican colleagues to summon even a fraction of the passion and enthusiasm with which they cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% to actually help the American people in a historic crisis."

Bernie Will Wipe Away The Stench Of Trumpism And The Trumpists... And He Can Use Some Help

As we mentioned yesterday, Jeff Stein and Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post revealed a document from Bernie headquarters that shows the new frontrunner-- in both the Democratic primary and the general election-- "is considering dozens of executive orders he could unilaterally enact on a wide range of domestic policy issues if elected president, including immigration, the environment and prescription drugs."

Aides have presented Sanders with a list of possible executive actions, including more than a dozen options for reversing President Trump’s immigration policy, such as lifting the cap on the number of refugees accepted into the United States and immediately halting border wall construction. Another option is the reinstatement of an Obama-era program that granted legal status to undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.

The document reviewed by the Washington Post shows how the Sanders campaign has already begun extensive planning for how the senator would lead the country in his first days as president if he won the Democratic nomination and defeated Trump in November. Many of the proposals Sanders has floated on the campaign trail do not have support from congressional Republicans and are opposed by some Democrats, so a willingness to move forward without congressional approval could determine whether many of his policies are enacted.

The list of potential executive orders includes unilaterally allowing the United States to import prescription drugs from Canada, directing the Justice Department to legalize marijuana, and declaring climate change a national emergency while banning the exportation of crude oil. Other options cited in the document include canceling federal contracts for firms paying workers less than $15 an hour and reversing federal rules blocking U.S. funding to organizations that provide abortion counseling.

The campaign’s potential executive orders come amid increased scrutiny about how Sanders, one of the most left-leaning members in Congress, would attempt to advance his agenda. One of Sanders’s top rivals on the campaign trail, former vice president Joe Biden, has talked about working with Republicans in some cases to enact his agenda. Sanders’s approach appears to be different.

The unilateral actions considered by Sanders’s campaign are likely to be fiercely opposed by conservatives and even moderate liberals. Sanders could face criticism for moving to take more power away from the legislative branch amid ever-expanding executive authority, although he has been a vocal proponent of giving Congress more power over the country’s wars and military interventions. Many Democrats and some Republicans have criticized Trump for the numerous executive orders he signed in the early part of his presidency.

“Every time a president leaves office, they leave office with more power the next president in line can take and expand,” said Jason Pye, vice president of legislative affairs for FreedomWorks, a conservative group. “You’re getting to the point where the legislative branch has lost so much of its power... it almost does not matter. And that should concern every person in this country.”

Sanders has already released a slew of legislative proposals that would have to be approved by Congress, including a “Medicare-for-all” single-payer health-care system and a Green New Deal to remake the nation’s energy system.

He has faced questions from voters in recent weeks on the campaign trail about how he would deal with Republican resistance in Congress should he be elected and made to work with a GOP-dominated Senate.

“I love your ideas, Bernie,” a woman told him at a town hall in Anamosa, Iowa, in January. “But what are you going to do about the partisanship that prevents any good Democrat from getting anywhere in Congress right now?”

Sanders replied, “We’re going to run a different type of presidency.”

Sanders also said he was prepared to make his case to voters, even in red states, in a bid to pressure Republican lawmakers to support his agenda.

“It’s not just sitting down and arguing with Mitch McConnell,” he said, referring to the Republican Senate majority leader. “It is getting people to stand up and fight back.”

On the campaign trail, Sanders talks frequently about implementing sweeping changes in the way the government deals with health care, climate change and the economy, but he often discusses enacting those changes through legislation rather than through executive orders.

Other possible executive orders being considered include the immediate release of disaster aid to Puerto Rico and a review of federal policies toward Native American tribal groups.

“Bernie will try to do all he can do with executive orders as quickly as he can, while fully cognizant of the fact much more will have to be done by legislative means,” said Robert C. Hockett, a professor at Cornell University who has advised Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on economic policy matters. “The idea is to get as much done as you can, as quickly as you can.”

A prominent Blue America advisor suggested that Bernie go beyond the leak to The Post and officially announce and hugely publicize a list of planned executive orders. Why? It will show Bernie’s strength and transparency while contrasting him with Biden's dishonest and unrealistic nonsense about working with Moscow Mitch-- tantamount to getting nothing of consequence done-- the entire premise of a Status Quo Joe presidency. Campaigning on the proposed executive actions will also highlight Congress’ inability to block numerous urgent Bernie policies while emphasizing the fact that Bernie will only pass other laws upon Congress being persuaded over the following two and four years-- by more mobilization of more voters-- and by replacing reactionary congress members of both parties with progressives like these. This also knocks out of the park 3 widely shared memes:

• Lefties are wimps-- in between filling up Gulags;
• Bernie will get nothing done;
• Bernie will end voters’ future "choices."

There are dozens of candidates who are running on Bernie's platform and who have endorsed Bernie's candidacy. It's important to help as many of them as possible, especially the best and most prepared of them. I spoke with Liam O'Mara of Orange County, California yesterday about how his own plans will sync up with President Sanders'. He told me that "Senator Sanders and I share a desire to aid the working and middle classes in this country, and to reverse the damage of a 40+ year class war waged by the right on the American people. A trillion dollars in wealth has been lost by the bottom 50% while the top 1% broke all records for profit. This massive redistribution is killing the American Dream, and both the Senator and myself have long been sounding the alarm over it. And yes, there is only so much that can be done with even our overly-powerful presidency. We need to replace the reactionaries and toadies for the oligarchy that currently fill the halls of Congress with solid progressives who want to tackle the real issues and revitalize the promise of the New Deal for the 21st century. To get Sanders's agenda through, I and folks like me all across this country need your help."

Milwaukie, Oregon Mayor Mark Gamba is taking on a reactionary Blue Dog, Kurt Schrader this year (OR-05). He told us, "I'm not surprised by Bernie's list of executive orders. He watched as Congress, under Republican sway, stymied many of Obama's relatively uncontroversial attempts to cause positive change. We don't have time to waste arguing with sold out politicians. We literally have 10 years to save our children's futures. We have people dying right now because they can't afford the drugs their doctors have prescribed, and that is with an insurance policy that includes prescriptions. We have people becoming homeless right now because the cost of housing has far outstripped the minimum wage. Yes, we should fix all those things with laws passed by congress and that will be my job, to move as much of it as possible, as fast as possible. Mine and a few dozen others in the Brand New Congress that the people will elect to replace the corporate shills that have sold them out. However, President Sanders will be right to treat many of these issues as emergencies and behave accordingly."

"Our plans," said Rochester, NY progressive Robin Wilt, a dedicated Berniecrat, "are simply what the vast majority of the American people, and those in NY-25, support, but that the corporate-controlled establishment has resisted. A majority of Americans (58 percent) support the idea of replacing the Affordable Care Act with a federally-funded health care system. In repeated Kaiser polls, 2/3 of Americans had a positive reaction to Medicare-for-all. Similarly, Public Policy Polling (PPP) has found that overwhelmingly (88 percent), voters oppose cutting Social Security benefits, while according to Gallup polling, 67 percent of Americans support removing the cap and requiring high-income earners to pay the payroll tax for all of their income. The common ground among Americans goes on and on: a majority of Americans-- 61 percent-- believe that upper-income earners pay too little in taxes and 64 percent believe that corporations don’t pay their fair share in taxes. Significant majorities believe that wealth distribution is unfair in America and support raising the minimum wage, and say they are worried about the climate crisis. Over and over, a consistent majority of Americans support the policies that Bernie Sanders wants to implement, and now we simply need a Congress on board that actually reflects the interests and desires of the American people."

"I am fully in support of Bernie Sanders' platform and endorse him for president, because he understands that the working class in this country is suffering because of the greed of corporations and the 1%," said Rebecca Parson without hesitation." She's the progressive Democrat running for a seat in Washington held by chief New Dem Derek Kilmer. "Our corporate politicians and the entire professional apparatus that surrounds them," she continued "have utterly failed to propose and pass policies that will help us. I'm fighting for single-payer Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and Housing for All, because they will benefit WA-06 and the entire country. I was one of the first candidates in the country to call for national rent control, and as someone whose rent has gone up 16% in the past few years, this will help me, too. The inside-outside strategy, which is what Bernie is proposing, is a proven strategy for winning legislation for the people, as the Civil Rights movement showed."

California's Central Valley has one terrible conservative after another in Congress-- from Devin Nunes (R) to Jim Costa (Blue Dog). Kim Williams, a former Obama-era diplomat and college professor, is taking on Costa this year. Yesterday, she told me that "Bernie has gained traction in every forgotten corner of America because he has the backbone to stand up for real change. We need him, but we also need progressives at every level of government who will push his policies over the finish line and ensure federal money and resources funnel down to those who need it most. This means we need a Congress who will send Medicare for All and a Green New Deal to President Sanders’ desk for signature. It means we need progressive governors, mayors, county supervisors, and city council members who won’t block progress and ensure more voters can access the polls on Election Day. And it means supporting progressive candidates for central committees who will reshape the Democratic Party from the inside out and support candidates who will truly fight for the people. This is why each weekend our canvassing team promotes an entire progressive slate. As we’ve knocked on thousands of doors, we’ve handed out literature for not just our campaign, but for progressives running for the Democratic Central Committee, our progressive champion for mayor, and Bernie Sanders. We do this because we understand it will take all of us to write America’s next chapter and we’ll need every progressive ally to band together for change."

Indiana progressive candidate, Jennifer Christie asks voters to "Imagine having a progressive Congress working with President Bernie Sanders. I am running because we need real action to solve tough issues. What I love about Bernie is that he has political courage and is willing to fight for the planet and working families without hesitation, even if it means taking on powerful corporate interests to do it. I am ready to help him fight! I am running in a competitive primary for an open seat where I am the progressive candidate. I am the only scientist running in this race, and also the only mom with young children. I have four young children, and each day I work this campaign with their future in mind. Recently, the DCCC threw their support behind one of our opponents. The DCCC has never prioritized candidates who have embraced and fought for progressive issues and values. Our opponent does not have a single issue listed on her website. In contrast, Climate Change, Medicare for All, Education for All, fair taxes and wages, and common-sense gun reform are all centerpieces of our campaign. Furthermore, we have comprehensive policies, including a Climate Agenda to solve the climate crisis with a Green New Deal. Like Bernie, I am not afraid to take on these issues. Furthermore, I am proud that our campaign does not take any corporate PAC money, nor any fossil fuel money, nor any other dark money whatsoever. We have known for decades about climate change, yet we have seen almost no legislative movement to solve this existential threat. We have a healthcare system that leaves tens of millions of people behind. Our tax structure favors the very wealthy. And gun reform is held ransom by the NRA. We are going to change this...All of it!  We will take real action. When in Congress, I will be a voice for our the future of our planet, working families, and children. Like Bernie, I cannot be bought. That’s probably scary to special interests, but for the rest of us, it’s long overdue. I look forward to passing a Bernie budget, solving the climate crisis, and guaranteeing healthcare and college for all Americans. We will transform our economy, our nation, and the world."

Why It's Important Not To Nominate Someone Without Vision Like Status Quo Joe Or Mayo Pete

On Monday, American Prospect editor David Dayen conjured up his magazine's readers the idea of the next administration using presidential power for good in The Day One Agenda. He pointed out that Obama disappointed a great many progressives by "failing to live up to his lofty rhetoric" and noting that "a strain of liberal thought defended him by insisting that presidents just weren’t that powerful. Political scientist Brendan Nyhan mocked the mindset of the uninitiated by calling it the Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency, after the DC Comics hero who possessed a ring that gave him near-total power, bound only by his imagination and will. To Nyhan, partisans hold the misguided notion that a president 'can achieve any political or policy objective if only he tries hard enough or uses the right tactics.' In reality, he argued, a strong legislature, a Supreme Court that can overturn laws, and the dynamics of a polarized age make policy accomplishments a difficult climb." And he announced that the magazine "has assembled a team of journalists and subject matter experts to identify numerous core areas where executive authority is available and warranted in the hope that this will serve as a guide for how change can happen starting in 2021, regardless of who runs Congress." They also "asked the 2020 presidential candidates whether they would commit to any or all of the 30 executive power actions The Prospect had come up with-- like overhauling the business of Wall Street, cancelling student debt, legalizing marijuana and unleashing the existing anti-monopoly arsenal. Have you noted that none of this has anything at all to do with the current front-runner and virtually all of it comes from Bernie's vision for our country?

Theoretically speaking, this is all correct. A president has a thicket of checks and balances to maneuver through. But America has also been passing laws for over 232 years, and buried in the U.S. Code are the raw materials for fundamental change. It doesn’t take Green Lantern’s ring to unearth these possibilities, just a president willing to use the laws already passed to their fullest potential.

The Prospect has identified 30 meaningful executive actions, all derived from authority in specific statutes, which could be implemented on Day One by a new president. These would not be executive orders, much less abuses of authority, but strategic exercise of legitimate presidential power.

Without signing a single new law, the next president can lower prescription drug prices, cancel student debt, break up the big banks, give everybody who wants one a bank account, counteract the dominance of monopoly power, protect farmers from price discrimination and unfair dealing, force divestment from fossil fuel projects, close a slew of tax loopholes, hold crooked CEOs accountable, mandate reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, allow the effective legalization of marijuana, make it easier for 800,000 workers to join a union, and much, much more. We have compiled a series of essays to explain precisely how, and under what authority, the next president can accomplish all this.

The need for a Day One agenda is particularly acute as we head into 2020. I keep sensing an undercurrent of despair when talking to liberal partisans about the election, a sigh that beating Trump is not enough but all that can be done. Yes, Democrats are only an even-money shot, at best, to flip the Senate. And yes, even if they succeed, Mitch “Grim Reaper” McConnell can obstruct the majority with the filibuster, and it would not be up to the next president, but the 50th senator ideologically, someone like Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema, to agree to change the Senate rules to eliminate the 60-vote threshold for legislation. (There’s always budget reconciliation, but that limited path goes through the same conservaDems.)

But this reality does not have to inspire progressive anguish. Anyone telling you that a Democratic victory next November would merely signal four years of endless gridlock hasn’t thought about the possibilities laid out in this issue. And if you doubt the opportunity for strong executive action, let me direct your attention to Donald Trump.

...Few of Trump’s ideas have been good policy, from a progressive perspective. Some, like the invocation of emergency powers, are a common tool of despots which never turns out well even when used by small-d democrats, from Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus to Roosevelt’s Japanese internment camps.

...As Trump has repeatedly shown, in entire issue areas like foreign policy and immigration and global trade, the next president would have expansive authority, all granted by a plain reading of the Constitution, specific congressional statute, or the legislative branch’s studied deference. Who the next president chooses for the Federal Reserve Board will define the course of economic policy.

Presidents can make regulatory decisions like who qualifies for overtime pay. They can decide who serves as a worker’s employer, a critical determination for collective bargaining. They can choose whether corporations should still enjoy a “safe harbor” to facilitate stock buybacks that enrich investors at the expense of workers. They can’t bring forth Medicare for All, but they can use Section 1332 waivers from the Affordable Care Act to enable single-payer programs at the state level, and potentially use nearly $1 billion from the ACA’s Prevention and Public Health Fund to defray startup costs.

Once you start thinking about the possibilities, it’s hard to stop. Statutory language is sometimes clear and sometimes muddled, but regulatory discretion is almost always broad. What a president chooses to emphasize, and how much the letter of the law can be bent to their preferences, makes a huge difference.

Executive orders are a poor substitute for the authorities already existing in statutory language. It’s nice that Democratic primary candidates have been talking about executive orders, such as Kamala Harris’s proposed actions to mitigate gun violence, or Beto O’Rourke’s ideas on immigration. Some executive orders will make a huge difference in people’s lives, like Harris’s, Amy Klobuchar’s, and Cory Booker’s plans for clemency boards and mass commutations for low-level federal drug offenders. (Joe Biden’s plan along these lines, predictably, is far narrower.)

But there’s no substitute for authority from Congress. And in a surprising number of cases, presidents already have it. They don’t have to rummage for a few votes for financial reform; the architecture of existing law allows them to reform already. They don’t have to muster courage from swing-seat representatives to fight big corporations and tax the rich; the Federal Trade Commission and the IRS can get us there.

Public momentum can keep these rules in place, as advances for the American people tend to stick around. For instance, when you cancel publicly held student debt, as the education secretary has the authority to do under the “compromise and settlement” provision of the Higher Education Act, it’s difficult to un-cancel it. When you license out excessively priced prescription drugs to generic competitors, as the government can do under the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 or Section 1498 of the federal code, it’ll be difficult to un-license it, and shoot drug prices back up again.

And aggressive executive action can spur legislative action. Congress doesn’t particularly like governing, but they hate being circumvented. Presidents making known their intentions to use existing statutes to solve problems can lead to lawmakers finally getting around to it themselves.

How about the electoral college? Is there any sane reason to keep that? Any reason at all? Can soneone get rid of that on day one?

Children Of The Revolution

“In America,” wrote the Our Revolution team in a mass e-mail this morning, “we often make the mistake of overvaluing the importance of individual leaders and undervaluing the impact of grassroots movements. One of the most destructive consequences of this tendency can be seen in the dangerously naive comments of out-of-touch politicians and pundits who think the underlying problems that led to the election of Donald Trump will magically disappear if we are able to simply find the best candidate to beat him next November. At Our Revolution, we know that simply defeating Trump is not enough to transform our corrupt system… The only way to challenge the structural forces that threaten our survival as a society is to build a grassroots movement powerful enough to challenge establishment control over our politics and economy… [W]e are building a national grassroots network of powerful local groups who are fighting to win progressive issue fights, elect progressive champions, transform the Democratic party, and be ready to fight alongside President Bernie Sanders to make lasting structural change. The future of progressive America depends on our ability to mobilize a movement powerful enough to help our next president defeat the corporate elites who will do whatever it takes to maintain the status quo… During the first six months of 2019, our grassroots movement mobilized to get a record number of House Democrats to support Medicare for All by taking on the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies; we organized workers to fight plant closures by General Motors and other major corporations; we fought to rollback the DCCC Blacklist and other Democratic Party policies designed to favor establishment politicians over progressive challengers; and we won elections up and down the ballot from the LA School Board to the Philadelphia City Council. Grassroots movement-building matters. We have a responsibility to every person in America to do everything we can to build a grassroots movement powerful enough to challenge entrenched corporate power and win. That’s what Our Revolution is all about.”

Until 2016— more than a decade after our founding— Blue America had never endorsed a presidential candidate. Bernie was our first. This year we’re waiting and watching, impressed by Bernie and by Elizabeth Warren and open to hear the messages of other candidates who stand a chance of beating Trump next year. Meanwhile, we’re back to our regular mission: recruiting and supporting progressives for Congress.




If Bernie or Elizabeth becomes the next president— or they merge their efforts and become a winning ticket— their agenda is going to be very hard to fulfill without a supportive Congress. That isn’t going to be a Congress led by Mitch McConnell. Nor a Congress led by Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer (nor by their hand-picked heirs, Cheri Bustos and Hakeem Jeffries).

Meagan Day, writing for Jacobin asserted that “Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in the United States. If he were to make it through a crowded Democratic Party primary field, successfully dodging attacks from party elites who recognize he’s not their ally, there’s no question that he could win the presidency in 2020. It’s an exciting prospect for those of us who believe, as Sanders once put it, that ‘this is class warfare, and we’re going to stand up and fight.’” In her post, Here’s What Bernie Could Do in Power, she notes that the Supreme Court is likely to be a stumbling block for “decades to come” and that “a majority of Congress will likely be composed of some combination of conservative Republicans who are bent on austerity and centrist Democrats who are more than willing to meet them halfway. Even if their numbers increase exponentially, progressives like Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who share Bernie’s economic and social justice agenda, will be in the minority under a Sanders administration.”

We should have healthy reservations about what a lone democratic socialist could accomplish at the helm of the capitalist state. In this political environment, what could Sanders do besides fight and loose, negotiate and concede, inevitably disappoint?

Executive orders are powerful tools for the president, who often issue hundreds of them for both good and ill. There are the soaring heights of Lincoln’s famous Emancipation Proclamation, and there’s also Trump’s recent directive permitting more federal logging on public lands. Franklin D. Roosevelt used 3,522 executive orders to do things like create the Civil Works Administration, which gave jobs to the unemployed, and the Rural Electrification Administration, which brought power to the rural poor; he also used an executive order to initiate the internship of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Executive orders are ephemeral: they can be reversed by the president who comes next, overturned by the Supreme Court, and in some cases nullified by new legislation. To make lasting change, we can’t rely on directives from a single politician. We need a mass movement from below that can send progressive and democratic-socialist representatives into the state, while mounting protests, strikes, and other disruptive activities that create crises outside of the state, to which officials are forced to respond.

But building that movement is not mutually exclusive with aggressive executive action. If a hypothetical President Sanders were to pass hundreds or even thousands of orders intended to curb the power of capitalists, it would be a major boon to extra-parliamentary movements.

First, ambitious executive orders can expand the popular imagination and raise expectations. Policy ideas that once seemed unfeasible can be instantly legitimated, and so can the politics that animate them. Second, adjustments made by executive order that mitigate ruling-class power make it easier for workers to organize and participate in political activity aimed at longer-term change.

The Right has caught onto the fact that dramatic shifts in policy have enormous potential to alter the balance of power. Donald Trump’s barrage of executive orders is a case in point. From instituting a discriminatory travel ban to ordering the construction of a border wall, he has moved political goalposts and established horrifying norms in American politics, even as fights have ensued in the courts and in Congress.

A President Sanders wouldn’t be able to bring society’s masters to heel alone, but he would be obligated to use every tool at his disposal, including executive orders. Here are just a few examples of the kind of measures he could issue in office. This list is far from comprehensive, but it demonstrates the power of a single president to intervene and to create new political possibilities— in this case for the many, instead of the few.

CLIMATE

By executive order, a president could set aggressive greenhouse gas and energy use reduction goals across the federal government, including the military (the Department of Defense is one of the world’s worst polluters). He could direct all appropriate executive branch agencies— including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department, and the Army Corps of Engineers— to account for the greenhouse gas impacts of any proposed infrastructure project, and declare that any project with the potential to exacerbate climate change should be rejected.

“This will inevitably lead to litigation,” explains Basav Sen, Climate Justice Project Director at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). “Courts will eventually allow some of these projects to proceed, but this is a very important delaying tactic, and it creates a roadblock because the industry will have to fight a court battle against the federal government for every piece of harmful infrastructure they try to build. Some of them will be blocked and all of them will be significantly slowed down, sinking capital and making it harder to build new fossil fuel infrastructure.”

Sanders could also issue an executive order directing federal agencies to account for environmental justice impacts of all proposed infrastructure projects, Sen adds, and then reject the ones which do disproportionate harm to communities of color and the poor.

He could also issue an executive order to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord. “The Paris agreement is fundamentally flawed,” says Sen. “Its goals are not ambitious enough and it is entirely voluntary. But that being said, it is still important for us to be part of the global community of responsible nations, and actually engage with this process and contribute in the ways that we can to global climate action.”

A President Sanders could establish an interagency task force to lay out the parameters of a Green New Deal. He could also stop all lease sales for coal, oil and gas extraction, uranium mining, and other forms of mining and logging on federal land. Finally, he could bar any company with environmental violations in the last ten years from securing federal contracts. Taken together, these executive orders would push American climate policy in a dramatically more sustainable direction, making it harder for business to degrade the planet for profit.




Foreign Policy

The United States has the most far-reaching military presence in world history. By executive order, President Sanders could “withdraw troops from countries around the world where they are deployed,” says Phyllis Bennis, Director of the New Internationalism project at IPS, including places where they are “carrying out assassinations and other so-called counterterrorism actions, which are in violation of international law and which are not keeping us safer and are not keeping people in other countries safer.

Sanders could issue an executive order declaring the official termination of the “Kill List,” a database of individuals that the Pentagon has flagged for capture or murder. He could also end all secret bombing campaigns. “In 2017 alone, there may be as many as six thousand civilians who have been killed in US-led coalition bombings in Iraq and Syria,” says Bennis. “It’s horrific. Secret bombings are clearly not secret to the people who are being bombed,” and yet they occur constantly, wasting money to destroy lives. As commander in chief, Sanders could end them unilaterally.

President Sanders could issue an executive order reestablishing the legitimacy of the War Powers Resolution, which requires Congressional consent to make war. Presidents have been violating this law for decades. The first successful assertion of Congress’s power to override executive warmaking since 9/11 came last year, when Sanders himself invoked the War Powers Resolution in a bill to end US support for Saudi intervention in Yemen. Sanders could issue an executive order establishing a policy of abjuring any military intervention not authorized by Congress, publicly affirming the antiwar and pro-democratic principles that would motivate his own compliance with the War Powers Resolution.

Sanders could also declare that no individual who has worked for a defense contracting company can be appointed to a federal agency. Issuing an order like this “would have the effect of redefining publicly what American interests are,” says Bennis. “Do the interests of the Pentagon reflect the interests of corporations, or of the US people?”

While the power of the purse belongs to Congress, Sanders could establish a commission to conduct a top-to-bottom review of the military budget, with a view to radically scaling it down. President Trump recently ordered a task force to identify bloat in the US Postal Service— why not create one to assess the most frivolous and destructive military the world has ever encountered?

Finally, the Pentagon currently has a program to provide free and low-cost military equipment to US law enforcement agencies. “That’s how you got an armored personnel carrier in the streets of Ferguson after Mike Brown was killed,” says Bennis. “And when they had it, they used it.” President Sanders could issue an executive order discontinuing this program, forestalling efforts to militarize domestic police and make war in American streets.

Criminal Justice

The structure of the criminal justice system poses unique challenges for the executive branch, since most of its activity occurs under state and local jurisdiction. Still, a president could chip away at the foundation of mass incarceration through certain executive orders, and could use others to send a powerful message.

Sanders could issue an executive order directing his Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security to shutter federal private prisons completely, including immigrant detention centers, and cut all contracts with private prison companies.

Sanders could also issue an executive order directing the Department of Justice to abandon mandatory minimum sentences in federal prosecution, and to pursue non-carceral solutions for low-level offenders. The president also has the power to grant clemency to federal prisoners by executive order: President Jimmy Carter pardoned draft dodgers en masse in the wake of the Vietnam War, and Obama did the same for hundreds of drug offenders in his final days in office. Obama’s commutations applied selectively to inmates who had completed ten years of their sentence and who had behaved well in prison. Sanders could finish the job by pardoning every federally incarcerated drug offender sentenced under the draconian requirements of the War on Drugs, no matter how much of their sentence they’d served or whether they’d gotten a GED or held a job— criteria that were important to the Obama administration.

Similarly, while presidents can’t decide on absolute funding amounts, they can set priorities for how that funding is used within agencies. “The Department of Justice can say we’re not going to spend this billion dollars that would otherwise go to the Drug Enforcement Agency for law enforcement on pursuing and prosecuting drug dealers,” says Kara Gotsch, Director of Strategic Initiatives at The Sentencing Project. “Instead we want that money to be shifted. We want to take a billion dollars and invest in an intervention program trying to divert people with substance-use disorders into treatment, a community health-based approach. There’s so much that can be done at the administrative level to reprioritize strategies on how we address crime.”

Sanders could issue an executive order directing all agencies to stop civil asset forfeiture, the practice of seizing someone’s property merely on the suspicion that they’ve committed a crime. Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, placed limits on it, but they were rolled back. Sanders could declare an immediate end to the civil asset forfeiture across agencies, from the DEA and the FBI to the Department of Homeland Security.

By executive order, Obama “banned the box,” meaning the tick-box that compels federal employment applicants to disclose their criminal records. Trump has not rescinded the order yet, but he’s likely to get around to it sometime. If he does, Sanders can reissue the order with an extra provision: ban the box for federal contractors as well, since they are nearly as many of them as there are direct federal workers.

Finally, Sanders could take some risky moves with executive orders in an attempt to break new ground around criminal justice issues. For example, last year Sanders introduced a bill in the Senate to withhold federal anti-crime funding from cities that use a cash bail system. While funding is primarily the jurisdiction of Congress, an executive order could be a powerful gesture to legitimate the movement to end cash bail. In 2017, Trump issued a comparable order stripping sanctuary cities of eligibility for federal grants. Though it was swiftly declared unconstitutional by the courts, it had a major impact on the political atmosphere, escalating anti-immigrant sentiment and validating the idea that undocumented immigrants endanger US citizens.

If Sanders were to try the same tactic for cash bail, it might get struck down— but it would put the injustice of the cash bail system in the national spotlight, strengthening congressional efforts to pass a bill like his No Money Bail Act.

Economy

The United States is full of places that banks have decided it’s unprofitable to serve. This forces people to turn to predatory payday lenders and check-cashing operations, spending an average of 10 percent of their income on the exorbitant fees that “alternative” financial services charge. There’s a solution to this problem within our reach: federal law already requires the US Postal Service to have a brick-and-mortar post office in every zip code, and 60 percent of them are in zip codes with only one or no bank branches. President Bernie Sanders could issue an executive order directing the post office to begin offering public banking, ensuring that nobody will be kept from traditional financial services.

Besides simply avoiding certain neighborhoods, banks also engage in discriminatory lending. While they’re no longer allowed to deny loans to African Americans on racial grounds, for example, they can run complex risk-assessment algorithms that perpetuate racial bias, and simply hide behind the numbers when the fairness of their lending policies is questioned. Sanders could issue an executive order requiring all financial supervisory agencies to prioritize documenting and combating lending discrimination, not only reaffirming the spirit of the Fair Lending Act but also leaving a paper trail of disparate outcomes and potential corporate violators.

The Volcker Rule, which prohibits banks from using depositors’ money for the kind of risky speculation that led to the 2008 economic collapse, made Wall Street angry. Under Trump, federal bank regulators were put to work rewriting the rule to give bankers more leeway. Sanders could issue an executive order instructing all of these agencies— the Fed, the SEC, and the FDIC— to leave the Volcker Rule intact. And while he’s at it, Sanders could issue an order prohibiting Obama-style appointments of Wall Street bankers, lawyers, and lobbyists to agencies tasked with overseeing the finance sector.

In 2014, Obama issued an executive order setting the minimum wage for federal employees and contractors at $10.10 per hour— four dollars less than what analysts at MIT determined constituted a living wage. Sanders could issue an executive order correcting the problem, establishing a task force to determine the real living wage across the United States and setting the federal worker minimum accordingly.

Finally, Sanders could issue an executive order establishing new priorities across federal agencies that administer social programs. Last April, Trump issued an order stating that “many of the programs designed to help families have instead delayed economic independence, perpetuated poverty, and weakened family bonds” and instructing agencies to adhere to what it called the “Principles of Economic Mobility”: strengthening work requirements, reserving benefits only for the poorest (means-testing), reducing “wasteful spending by consolidating or eliminating Federal programs that are duplicative or ineffective” (austerity), and empowering the private sector to step in and solve problems currently delegated to the federal government (privatization).

Sanders could immediately reverse that order and issue one of his own, instructing agencies wherever possible to operate according to “Principles of Economic Equality,” such as universal program design instead of means-testing, decommodification instead of privatization, and redistribution instead of austerity.

Canceling Student Debt

Americans hold more than $1.5 trillion in student debt. It keeps tens of millions of people from buying homes and starting families, and locks them into jobs they don’t want, often more than one at a time, scrambling to make payments before interest gets out of control. What could a President Bernie Sanders do by executive order to address this crisis? For one thing, he could issue an executive order directing his secretary of education to erase all debt from fraudulent for-profit colleges.

During Obama’s tenure, activists pressured his education secretary, Arne Duncan, to cancel all the federally held debt incurred by students who pursued degrees at fraudulent for-profit colleges like Corinthian and ITT. But Duncan demurred. One of the rationales he gave, according to Ann Larson of the Debt Collective, was that the Department of Education didn’t have a mandate for such a dramatic move, since its leaders aren’t elected. An executive order from Obama would have undermined that rationale— but none materialized.

But that would still be only a drop in the bucket. What about students with degrees from typical nonprofit universities who are struggling to find a foothold due to their student debt burden? In 2015, 70 percent of college seniors graduated from nonprofit colleges with student debt.

Larson says a president could do something about that, too. “When Congress was first given the power to issue and collect student loans in 1958, the Department of Education also received a power from Congress called ‘compromise and settlement,’ which allows them to waive the right to collect on them,” says Larson. “And then the Higher Education Act in 1965 solidified that power in the hands of the secretary of education.”

Sanders could issue an executive order directing his secretary of education to immediately write off all student loan debt for which the federal government is the creditor, which is the majority of student loan debt in the United States. The executive order could also direct the Department of Education to assume all the debt of borrowers who owe money to private lenders, and write that off too, reducing Americans’ student loan burden from $1.5 trillion to zero.

According to economists’ estimates, immediate cancellation of all student debt would deliver a major windfall to the American economy, reducing unemployment by roughly 0.3 percent and boosting GDP by almost a trillion dollars over the next decade.

Democratic socialists have a far-reaching program for political change that needs to be measured in decades, not years. We can’t expect this change to happen overnight, nor for it to be enacted by a single politician. As Eugene Debs said, “I would not lead you into this promised land if I could, because if I could lead you in, someone else would lead you out.”

But much can be done in the present to both ameliorate suffering and pave the way for future transformations.

We know that reactionary measures from the top can sow division and resignation among working people, and present formidable material obstacles to resistance. By the same token, bold progressive action from the top can foster the emergence of socialism from below— as long as it is undertaken in the spirit of a slogan Sanders used during his 2016 campaign: “Not Me, Us.”

And, in the meantime, we’ve got to do everything we can to elect a Congress that shares progressive Democratic values. That starts with primaries, replacing the heirs to the American Liberty League— the conservative Democrats who sold themselves to the business elites to fight FDR and the New Deal— with Democrats who embrace the values espoused by Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie. How about Briana Urbina in and Steny Hoyer out? Marie Newman instead of Dan Lipinski? Shaniyat Chowdhury instead of Gregory Meeks (NY), Eva Putzova instead of Tom O’Halleran (AZ) and Michael Owens instead of David Scott (GA)? And there are plenty of others we’re looking at now— Henry Cuellar, a reactionary in south Texas, Eliot Engel in the north Bronx and Westchester, who does more for the Likud Party than for the Democratic Party… See that ActBlue thermometer on the right, that’s where you can help move the political revolution inside Congress along— primaries first and then replacing Republicans with progressive Democrats after.