Via Adriana Mulero Claudio, by Isamar Abreu
Yesterday I questioned several politicos including Paul Ryan. I asked him -- if he's really a fiscal conservative, wouldn't he back expanding Medicare, not gutting it?
For the other vids, see: http://www.washingtonstakeout.com
Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) is ranking member on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. We started our questioning by incorrectly attributing a quote from Rep. Spencer Bachus to Shelby that the proper role of the government should be to serve banks. As he and his assistant quickly noted, that quote wasn’t his and I apologize for the error, it was given to me from a typically very accurate associate who made a mistake. The rest of our questioning:
Sam Husseini: Your three biggest funders, according to Open Secrets — I don’t know if you want to dispute this [as he did the quote] — Travelers Company, J.P. Morgan and Blackstone group. Why shouldn’t regular people see things as you’re sort of doing the bidding of the big banks?
Richard Shelby: Well I haven’t done that. The people of Alabama know that I do their bidding and the American people know that I stand up for them. I don’t represent banks; I represent people. Some people represent banks but they’re hired to do this; I’m hired by the people of Alabama.
Husseini: This week saw a battle between the realtors and the banks — basically small businesses and the banks — and you decidedly came down on the side of the banks in terms of credit card and debit card fees.
Shelby: There’s a cost for any transaction for convenience and I believe we should not let the government set the price of anything in the marketplace — that’s what they would do. That should be set by private parties.
Husseini: During the financial meltdown, it was portrayed as an emergency: that we’ve got to bail Wall Street out or else it’s cataclysmic. And now, not just from you but from Obama saying fixing unemployment will take time, why is there urgency when it comes to ‘Oh my gosh the banks are in trouble,’ but not urgency when it comes to ‘Oh my god, middle America is in trouble.’
Shelby: Well if you go back to the history, you’ll recall that I was the one who opposed all the bank bailouts, all the car bailouts. The market should work. We should not throw taxpayers’ money at that. We should let the market create jobs, we should save people’s money, and that’s what I have always stood for.
[originally published on Washington Stakeout on June 13, 2011; posted on posthaven Nov. 13, 2015]
Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) is House Minority Whip.
Sam Husseini: When the Wall Street collapse happened and there was a Wall Street bailout, which you voted for I believe.
Steny Hoyer: Yes, as did Mr. Ryan, my predecessor [at the microphone].
Husseini: — Everybody was saying ‘We gotta do this and then things will trickle down to regular folks,’ nobody said that we should help regular folks and that will trickle to the big banks. Obama yesterday [sic, Friday] said that it will take time for regular folks to get better. Is that really defensible, to tell — it’s a big emergency for the banks but not for regular people?
Hoyer: Well I don’t think those are the facts, either. First of all, with respect to the September 2008 TARP piece of legislation, I voted for that because President Bush, Secretary Paulson, Mr. Bernanke and many, many others said that if we did not intervene very quickly and stabilize the financial community that we would have a depression, not a recession, a depression in America. I think that our intervention stopped that from happening, stabilized the financial community. Your premise that we didn’t do anything — very frankly, soon after President Obama took office, we passed a piece of legislation that gave very substantial help to some — as a matter of fact a third of it was a tax cut for working Americans. So I think that we need to focus on building jobs, on giving opportunities to people —
Husseini: — It apparently wasn’t enough —
Hoyer: — we have a “make it in America agenda” which I’m pursuing, which is trying to reinvigorate the manufacturing sector of our economy which has been growing but which needs to grow much more robustly, bring jobs home from overseas; keep jobs here. And the American public understand [sic] that we’re making things in America, giving them the kind of jobs they need, they will be in much better shape. So we need to focus on average men, working men and women. We Democrats have been doing that.
Husseini: On foreign policy: What about the constitutional role of Congress? We’re getting into wars — Congress has just abdicated its constitutional responsibility, hasn’t it?
Hoyer: Well Congress just had a vote, as you know, last week on the issue and chose not to pass a resolution that would have withdrawn our participation with our allies in an effort that’s supported by the international community in Libya. Clearly the Congress has seized of this issue and will continue to be. So there’s not going to be an abdication but clearly I think that the president needs to have a full consultation with the Congress and the Congress needs to express its view, as it can and as it will shortly when we deal with the defense appropriations bills.
Husseini: Saudi Arabia — [I wanted to ask about U.S. backing of the Saudi Arabia dictatorship.]
Hoyer walked away, but when another reporter asked a question about the budget, he walked back and made some additional remarks. At the end of his remarks, I asked: “On that very point, what about the ‘People’s Budget’ that’s been put forward?” — but Hoyer again walked away. The “People’s Budget” is a plan put forward by members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. See this alert by FAIR about the plan and its lack of coverage, but another major issue is that the Democratic Whip is uninterested in talking about the plan of his fellow Democrats.
Fein was deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan and is author ofConstitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy and American Empire: Before the Fall responded to Hoyer’s comment: “The Constitution requires an affirmative vote from Congress before the United States commences war, which did not happen as regards Libya. Presidential consultation or a congressional vote after the fact does not cure the constitutional violation.”
Francis Boyle, professor of law at University of Illinois, Champaign and author of Tackling America’s Toughest Questions responded: “After 60 days Congress must expressly authorize ongoing military operations, unless Obama asks for another 30 days, which he has not done. And Obama’s Libya War was unconstitutional to begin with. Obama should be impeached for this in order to end the war and uphold the Constitution. I am happy to volunteer my professional services free of charge to any Member of the US House of Representatives who wants to introduce a Bill of Impeachment against Obama over Libya — among other impeachable offenses.”
It was striking how Hoyer and Ryan epitomized the silence of the plight of regular people that Reich referred to earlier in the morning.
[originally published on Washington Stakeout on June 13, 2011; posted on posthaven Nov. 13, 2015]
Robert Reich was secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton and is currently Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.
Sam Husseini: [On Saturday] Obama said fixing unemployment is going to take some time. How do you think such a statement can be justified given the urgency of helping the banks in 2008 and so on and now middle America is in trouble and there doesn’t seem to be real impetus?
Robert Reich: I don’t think the administration can simply rely on time to mend the economy. It needs to come up with a set of bold ideas, even if they can’t get them enacted, that will get jobs back. And the president has got to fight for them to be enacted.
SH: I want to ask you a historical question: if your analysis of this bears out there’s a lot of talk of fixing the corporate tax rates, you know revenue neutral and lowering the rates and plugging the loop holes. Isn’t that very similar to what was done in the Reagan administration so, correct me if I’m wrong: you have this pattern of doing a revenue-neutral thing that lowers the tax rate, then the loopholes come back and you keep replugging the loopholes and re-lowering the corporate tax rate.
RR: There’s a tendency in this country with regard to tax reform to continuously close loopholes and lower tax rates and then the loopholes open again, and then you close those loopholes and you lower the tax rates again on corporations [laugh]. And also on the very rich. Look the problem over the long-term with regard to the budget deficit is very clear and very simple: number one, you’ve got medical costs rising very, very fast, baby boomers retiring. Number two, you’ve got very rich who are paying a lower and lower rate of taxation as they take in more and more of the national income and wealth. Well you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that there’s going to be a long-term budget problem but that is all different from the short-term jobs problem. They are not the same. Solving that long term problem or even making a credible beginning to solve that long-term problem is not going to bring down the rate of unemployment. Government has got to, number one, exempt the first 20,000 dollars of income from the payroll tax for a year, number two, give people the opportunity to declare bankruptcy on their prime rate residence, so they can reorganize they’re mortgages if they’re in distress and give them more bargaining power– that gives them more bargaining power with their mortgage lenders. Number three, a WPA, a civilian conservation corps, some sort of program to hire the long-term unemployed. And we could go on– there are many things that could be done and I think the president has got to put them on the table and fight for them.
SH: And yet the administration isn’t doing that. Is that simply because of money in politics, that they’re getting so much money from Wall Street? Is it because labor hasn’t been as vibrant as the CIO was during the Great Depression and so on? Why is that not happening?
RR: I honestly think that the president figures that nothing can be enacted through this Republican house and given the numbers of Republican senators, and the only thing he needs to do or can do is work around the margins where he can get some agreement. But that leaves out, it seems to me, the possibility of energizing and mobilizing the public around some very simple, bold steps to get some jobs back and forcing the Republicans’ hand. Pardon me, but that’s what leadership is all about.
SH: Didn’t the administration sort of paint itself into the corner with this Republican House by not taking more vibrant steps when they first got into office?
RR: The administration deserves a great deal of credit for making sure that the great recession didn’t turn into another great depression, but we’re not out of the gravitational pull of the great recession. Most Americans are still seeing their wages drop, their housing values drop, most Americans are still in danger of losing their jobs and so they’re not spending. And if they’re not spending, business is not going to create new jobs. That’s where government comes in. We’ve known for 75 years — this is not new — that when consumers and the private sector cannot and will not spend enough, government has got to be the spender of last resort. And you know it defies logic, it defies reason, to say if we just get public spending down, we’re going to create jobs. That’s not true.
SH: You were of course in the Clinton administration. You weren’t in charge of it, but they deregulated Wall Street. Don’t a lot of the current problems stem from decisions made in the 90′s?
RR: Oh listen, undoubtedly. getting read of Glass-Steagall in the late 1990′s, failing to regulate derivatives — there were mistakes being made in the late 1990′s in the Clinton administration, undoubtedly. But with regard to jobs, Bill Clinton presided over the largest job recovery we’ve ever had, 22 million net new jobs and we saw the economy expand. Not just for the rich, but for everyone. One of the deep structural problems in the economy now, and we’ve seen this since really at least 2000, is that most Americans are not gaining from economic growth. Median wages adjusted for inflation are dropping — you saw that even before the great recession, so there’s not enough purchasing power in the great American middle class to get us out the gravitational pull of the great recession.
SH: Wasn’t a lot of that growth illusionary? People holding down more than one job, people going into credit card debt — wages have been stagnant since the 1970′s.
RR: Certainly the so-called recovery after 2000 was kind of illusionary recovery because so much of it was based on people going deeper and deeper into debt. It was not based on people getting fatter paychecks or people doing better. In the 1990′s some of the 22 million net new jobs created were a matter of double-counting [laughs]. Some people did have to take two or three jobs. But by in large the median wage — and that’s the way you measure overall economic well-being– rose. And it rose in ways that actually generated growth in wages for the bottom fifth as well as the top. We haven’t seen that since then and this is one of the fundamental problems we’re dealing with. But right now, given that the economy is sputtering, given that the recovery is, for all intents and purposes, stalling, there’s got to be bold action out of Washington and the silence, frankly, is deafening.
SH: One last question: you said leadership is necessary, and by that you meant the Obama administration, but let me go back to my question: there’s the famous thing of Roosevelt dealing with a labor leader I think and giving him his list of what he wanted and Roosevelt [saying] go out and make me do it.
RR: Yes, absolutely.
SH: Isn’t there a lack of impetus in labor in going out and making the administration do things?
RR: Well look I wish labor unions and other groups were more powerful in terms of pushing the administration towards a jobs program. People who are unemployed — 13.5 million people who are unemployed in this country, and if you add in people who are too discouraged to look for work it’s close to 14 million — they don’t have much political power. There is no national association of unemployed people in this country. They don’t lobby, they don’t make political contributions, they are not well organized. Washington and New York are existing in an echo-chamber right now that is unrelated to where the rest of the country is. You read the major newspaper of this country — how much news is there about the economic anguish that most Americans are now suffering? Almost none. It’s as if it’s not going on. And that’s what worries me. Out of this kind of economic frustration, anxiety and desperation shared by so many millions and millions of Americans comes a deep cynicism about the capacity of government, about the capacity of any institution, to work. And out of that cynicism comes demagoguery. We have people saying things now, running for president, who make no sense. To talk right now about giving tax breaks to corporations when they’re sitting on $1.9 trillion of cash that they don’t know what to do with is illogical. It defies logic. This is a demand-side problem. Consumers can’t and won’t spend because they are absolutely strapped.
Bold added. Major afterthought is that I wish I’d asked Reich about “welfare reform” done in the Clinton administration and I wish I didn’t use the term “middle America” to describe people who are not wealthy, since it would seem to exclude poor people. Thanks to Richard Wolff for ideas on several of these questions.
[originally published on Washington Stakeout on June 13, 2011; posted on posthaven Nov. 13, 2015]
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is chairman of the House Budget Committee and has put forward a plan that would end Medicare. He was telling another reporter that he was concerned about providing poor people with a safety net when we had this exchange:
Sam Husseini: If you’re a fiscal conservative and you want to provide a safety net, why wouldn’t you be for something like a single-payer health care system?
Paul Ryan: I think a single-payer health care system would be a disaster for people who need health-care the most. I think it would cause rationing, waiting lines. I think it would be a fiscal house of cards, I think it would help accelerate a national debt crisis and hurt the economy.
Husseini: Wouldn’t it save a lot of money and cover everybody?
Ryan: Absolutely not. I totally and fundamentally disagree with it. I believe that you can have affordable access to healthcare for all Americans, including people with pre-existing conditions, without a government takeover of the healthcare sector. If we actually have government-run healthcare, what I think you’ll have is government managing, government-rationing healthcare. I think that will be a fiscal disaster, I think that it would accelerate a debt crisis that would slow our economy and take jobs and economic growth from those people that need it the most, which are people who are out of work.
Husseini: Doesn’t Medicare have a much lower — 2 or 3 percent — overhead compared to the insurance companies? Which — insurance companies –
Ryan: — That’s an apples and oranges comparison. If you take a look at Medicare itself, Medicare is going bankrupt.
Husseini: That’s the healthcare system in general that’s going bankrupt.
Ryan: There are three facts about medicare that you simply can’t dispute: 10,000 seniors are retiring everyday with fewer workers going into the workforce to pay for them; healthcare costs are skyrocketing at about four times the rate of inflation, which threatens medicare’s ability to give affordable care; and number three, the non-partisan experts agree that Medicare is going bankrupt. So Medicare’s status quo is bankruptcy and that threatens healthcare not only for current seniors but obviously for future seniors, so I believe a patient-centered healthcare system — reforms that put the patient at the center of the healthcare system, not the government — are the best for people who need healthcare and they’re best for the economy, and they’re the best way to avert a debt crisis.
Husseini: But isn’t the problem with healthcare fundamentally the corporate structure? I mean your biggest funders are a who’s who — Northwestern Mutual –
Ryan: — Which is a big employer in Milwaukee by the way —
Husseini: — Aurora Health Care, Abbott Laboratories, Credit Suisse — the insurers — [see "Paul Ryan's Health Industry Ties..." Humana Inc., Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Aetna]
Ryan: — Government-run healthcare doesn’t work. Wherever we’ve seen government-run healthcare, it’s failed.
Husseini: You think that people are worse off in France and Canada?
Ryan: I think we’re worse off if we go with a government healthcare system that will cost us jobs, it will increase our deficit and our debt and I do believe, and I put ideas on the table that show, that we can get to a patient-centered healthcare system that helps create jobs, that helps get healthcare costs under control, and gives everybody affordable healthcare coverage for everyone regardless of income or pre-existing conditions.
Husseini: You think poor people in Europe are worse off than poor people here?
Ryan ends questioning here.
Margaret Flowers from Physicians for a National Health Program responded to Ryan’s statements: “Rep. Ryan’s comments show his true lack of understanding of single payer health care and the effect of health care costs on the economy. Rationing exists in the U.S. right now but it is done in the cruelest possible way — based on ability to pay. While people do wait in lines for elective care in some countries, there are at least 51 million people in the U.S. who can’t even get in line.
“As my testimony and this Congressional briefing argue, we cannot adequately address the deficit without effectively controlling health care costs and single payer is the most fiscally responsible way to finance universal and comprehensive health care.” See Flowers’ testimony before the Deficit Commission and a summary of a briefing done in Congress last Fall on Medicare and the deficit.
Thanks to Sam McCann for transcription. Thanks also to Josh Starcher.
[originally published on Washington Stakeout on June 13, 2011; posted on posthaven Nov. 13, 2015]
