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Solutions
How to Green Our Parched Farmlands and Finance Critical Infrastructure
There are workarounds the U.S. can use to fund affordable housing, drought responses, and other urgently-needed infrastructure that was left out of the two recent spending bills.
Sep 03, 2022
Congress has passed two major infrastructure bills in the last year, but imminent needs remain. The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law chiefly focused on conventional highway programs, and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) mainly centered on energy security and combating climate change. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), over $2 trillion in much-needed infrastructure is still unfunded, including projects to address drought, affordable housing, high-speed rail, and power transmission lines. By 2039, per the ASCE, continued underinvestment at current rates will cost $10 trillion in cumulative lost GDP, more than 3 million jobs in that year, and $2.24 trillion in exports over the next 20 years.
Critically needed water and other infrastructure projects can be funded without tapping the federal budget, with funds generated through a national infrastructure bank.
Particularly urgent today is infrastructure to counteract the record-breaking drought in the U.S. Southwest, where 50% of the nation's food supply is grown. Subsidies for such things as the purchase of electric vehicles, featured in the IRA, will pad the coffers of the industries lobbying for them but will not get water to our parched farmlands any time soon. More direct action is needed. But as noted by Todd Tucker in a Roosevelt Institute article, "Today, a gridlocked and austerity-minded Congress balks at appropriating sufficient money to ensure emergency readiness. ... [T]he US system of government's numerous veto points make emergency response harder than under parliamentary or authoritarian systems."
There are, however, other ways to finance these essential projects. "A work-around," says Tucker, "is so-called off-balance sheet money creation." That was the approach taken in the 1930s, when commercial banks were bankrupt and the country faced its worst-ever economic depression; yet the government succeeded in building infrastructure as never before.
Off-budget Funding: The Model of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation
For funding its national infrastructure campaign in the Great Depression, Congress called on the publicly-owned Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). It was not actually a bank; it got its liquidity by issuing bonds. Notes Tucker, "The RFC was allowed to borrow money from the Treasury and the capital markets, and then invest in relief and mobilization efforts that would eventually generate a return for taxpayers, all while skating past austerity hawks determined to cut or freeze government spending."
According to James Butkiewicz, professor of economics at the University of Delaware:
The RFC was an executive agency with the ability to obtain funding through the Treasury outside of the normal legislative process. Thus, the RFC could be used to finance a variety of favored projects and programs without obtaining legislative approval. RFC lending did not count toward budgetary expenditures, so the expansion of the role and influence of the government through the RFC was not reflected in the federal budget.
The RFC lent to federal government agencies including the Commodity Credit Corporation (which lent to farmers), the Electric Home and Farm Authority, the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), the Public Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). It also made direct loans to local governments and businesses and funded eight RFC wartime subsidiaries in the 1940s that were essential to the war effort.
The infrastructure projects of one agency alone, the Works Progress Administration, included 1,000 miles of new and rebuilt airport runways, 651,000 miles of highway, 124,000 bridges, 8,000 parks, and 18,000 playgrounds and athletic fields; and some 84,000 miles of drainage pipes, 69,000 highway light standards, and 125,000 public buildings (built, rebuilt, or expanded), including 41,300 schools. For local governments that had hit their borrowing limits on their taxpayer-funded general obligation bonds, a workaround was devised: they could borrow by issuing "revenue bonds," which were backed not by taxes but by the revenue that would be generated by the infrastructure funded by the loans.
A bill currently before Congress, HR 3339, proposes to duplicate the feats of the RFC without increasing the federal budget deficit or taxes, by forming a National Infrastructure Bank (NIB).
China's State "Policy Banks"
China is dealing with the global economic downturn by embarking on a stimulus program involving large national infrastructure projects, including massive water infrastructure. For funding, the government is drawing on three state-owned "policy banks" structured like the RFC.
The Chinese government is one of those systems referred to by Todd Tucker as not being hampered by "a gridlocked and austerity-minded Congress." It can just issue a five-year plan and hit the ground running. In May 2022, it began construction on 3,876 large projects with a total investment of nearly 2.4 trillion yuan (about $350 billion).
Funding is coming chiefly from China's "policy banks" set up in 1994 to provide targeted loans in areas where profit-driven banks might be reluctant to lend. They are the China Development Bank, the Export- Import Bank of China and the Agricultural Development Bank of China. As noted in a June 30 article in the Washington Post, China could also draw on its "Big Four" banks--Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., China Construction Bank Corp., Agricultural Bank of China Ltd., and Bank of China Ltd.--but "they are essentially profit-driven commercial banks that can be quite picky when it comes to selecting borrowers and projects. The policy lenders, however, operate on a non-profit basis and are often recruited to pour cheap funds into projects that are less attractive financially but matter to the longer-term development of the economy."
Like the RFC, the policy banks mainly get their funds by issuing bonds. They can also get "Pledged Supplementary Lending" directly from the Chinese central bank, which presumably creates the money on its books, as all central banks are empowered to do.
Dealing with China's Water Crisis
According to the Xinhua News Agency, on July 7 construction began on a project linking China's two mega water infrastructures--the Three Gorges Project and the South-to-North Water Diversion Project--transferring water from the water-abundant south to the arid northern region of the country. The goal is a national water grid, increasing the quantity of water available for use nationally by about 20% and increasing China's irrigated area by about 10%.
The South-to-North Water Diversion Project is already well underway. The middle route, the most prominent one due to its role in feeding water to the nation's capital, begins at the Danjiangkou Reservoir in the Hanjiang River in central China's Hubei and runs northeastward to Beijing and Tianjin. It was completed and began supplying water in December 2014. The eastern route began supplying water in November 2013, transferring water from Jiangsu to areas including East China's Shandong Province. The new project will channel water from the Three Gorges Reservoir area to the Hanjiang River, a tributary of the Yangtze River. It is scheduled to be completed in nine years.
Solving Our Water Crisis
The total estimated investment for China's national water grid is about 2.99 trillion yuan (U.S. $470 billion). This is comparable to the $400 billion the National Infrastructure Bank Coalition proposes to allocate through HR 3339 to address the serious drought in the U.S. Southwest.
As in China, one alternative being considered by the NIB team is to divert water from areas that have it in excess. One proposal is a pipeline to ship Mississippi River floodwaters to the parched Colorado River via a Wyoming tributary. Another option is to pump water from the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest to California via a subterranean pipeline on the floor of the Pacific Ocean--not upstream water used by Washington and Oregon residents, but water from the ocean outflow where the river feeds into the Pacific and its freshwater becomes unusable saltwater.
Those are doable alternatives, but political and regulatory obstacles remain. Ideally, sources of water would be found that are new not just to the Southwest but to the surface of the planet. This is another proposal being explored by the NIB team--to tap "deep seated water" or "primary water," the plentiful water supplies below normal groundwater tables.
Studies have found evidence of several oceans' worth of water locked up in rock as far down as 1,000 kilometers below the Earth's surface. (See The Smithsonian Magazine, "How the Earth's Mantle Sends Water Up Toward the Surface," June 2022.) This water is not part of the hydrologic cycle (clouds to rain to ground to clouds again), as shown on testing by its lack of environmental contaminants. From the time when atomic testing began in the Pacific, hydrologic water has contained traces of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen used as a fuel in thermonuclear bombs. Primary water shoots up tritium-free --clean, fresh and usually drinkable without filtration.
There are many verified cases of mountaintop wells that have gushed water for decades in arid lands. This water is now being located and tapped by enterprising hydrogeologists using technological innovations like those used in other extractive industries, but without their destructive impact on the environment. For more on primary water and the promising vistas it opens up, see my earlier articles here and here.
Funding Through the National Infrastructure Bank
Critically needed water and other infrastructure projects can be funded without tapping the federal budget, with funds generated through a national infrastructure bank. Unlike the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the publicly-owned bank proposed in HR 3339 is designed to be a true depository bank, which can leverage its funds as all depository banks are allowed to do: with a 10% capital requirement, it can leverage $1 in capital into $10 in loans.
For capitalization, the NIB will follow the model of Alexander Hamilton's First U.S. Bank: shares in the bank will be swapped for existing U.S. bonds. The shares will earn a 2% dividend and are non-voting. Control of the bank and its operations will remain with the public, an independent board of directors, and a panel of carefully selected non-partisan experts, precluding manipulation for political ends.
The NIB is projected to lend $5 trillion over 10 years, or roughly $500 billion per year. That means each year the NIB will have to add $50 billion in new capitalization in the form of debt for equity swaps. The incentive for investors is the extra 2% yield the NIB provides on its preferred stock, plus a government guarantee. The U.S. Postal Service, the fourth largest holder of U.S. Treasuries globally, is one possible investor. Others are pension funds and builder associations with investment portfolios, all of which need a certain number of triple-A-rated investments. NIB bonds will have a better rate of return than Treasuries, while achieving the laudable purpose of filling the critical infrastructure gap.
To clear checks from the newly-created loan deposits, the NIB will bring in cash from incoming customer deposits, loan repayments, NIB-issued bonds, and/or borrowing from the Federal Reserve. How much cash it will need and its timing depends on how many infrastructure companies maintain their deposit accounts with the NIB.
The $5 trillion the NIB lends over 10 years will add $5 trillion to the total money supply; but the "productive" loans it will be making are the sort that do not add to price inflation. In fact, they can reduce it--by raising GDP growth, increasing the supply side of the supply-versus-demand inflation equation.
America achieved its greatest-ever infrastructure campaign in the midst of the Great Depression. We can do that again today, and we can do it with the same machinery: off-budget financing through a government-owned national financial institution.
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The Cynics' Monkey Wrench
We're all in this together.
Jul 29, 2022
If you depart from an "us vs. them" philosophy of life, your first confrontation is likely to be with the cynics.
Perhaps the most important thing I learned was how deeply and intensely people wanted to be listened to.
Last week, for instance, I wrote about the weekend I spent, a decade ago, getting handgun training from the NRA--and what I learned, which is that the things you need to fear are endless, and when one of them pops up in your life you'd better be prepared to kill it. One reader said he wondered "if Robert has ever truly felt as though his life or those he values were threatened" and quickly answered his own question: Of course not! And then he crooned, oh so tenderly: "Must be nice for Robert to live in such an insulated bubble."
Issue solved! Everyone needs a gun, except for the utterly naive.
If I'd had a gun, I may have taken aim at this snarky fool, but eventually I started calming down and thinking about his words--this monkey wrench of cynicism, as I called it--with slightly more positive energy.
Have I ever felt threatened? Well, considering that I live in Chicago--in a neighborhood on the city's northeast side called Rogers Park, which is one of the most culturally and ethnically diverse neighborhoods on Planet Earth--the answer is, uh . . . yes. In fact, I started thinking about my move to Chicago, from rural Michigan, when I was in my late 20s. Oh, the welcome I had!
I had been a back-to-the-lander, work for which I had no natural skills, and decided I needed to begin looking for a career in journalism. When I got nowhere locally, I realized my best option was the big, complicated city 120 or so miles to the west. This was a complex move, to put it mildly: from a rented farmhouse to a fifth-floor-walkup studio apartment, in the neighborhood known as Lakeview, which had not, in the mid-'70s, begun to gentrify. It was untamed in those days, as exemplified by some graffiti that showed up one day in the foyer of my new building: "Little Eagles of Wilton." (Wilton was a street a block away.) "Will Kill!"
My friend Dick, who had a pickup truck, helped me with the move. We hauled the basic miscellany that was now my life--a mattress, a chair, a table, my bicycle, a few dishes, a bunch of books--up those five floors. Within minutes of finishing, there was a knock on the door. Huh?
A voice said: "Police." Then: "This is a homicide investigation."
Wow! Welcome to Chicago! Turns out they wanted to talk to my neighbor, who wasn't answering his door, so they wanted to climb through my window and walk across the flat roof--I was on the top floor of the building--to the neighbor's window and enter his apartment that way. Yeah, sure, go ahead.
I later learned that no, the neighbor was not a murderer. He wasn't actually a suspect, just someone who may have had some information. I have no idea what became of the investigation, but I later became friends with the guy. And this "welcome" to Chicago certainly had metaphorical significance, telling me I had just moved to a city full of surprises. All sorts of surprises. I had essentially known that anyway, but now I knew it in real time.
Fortunately, this potential for surprise is what attracted me to the city in the first place. I had moved with a determination not to be afraid--of the people I encountered, of the city itself. What I told myself right from the start was: Look everybody in the eye. Doing this accomplished something more significant than simply making eye contact. The first thing it did was give me control of my own emotions, because I imagined that, somehow, we're all in this together. Thus I created an emotional foundation for myself that acknowledged complexity--I might be shocked--but regardless, I was not going to think of the other person as my enemy . . . and thus be afraid of him.
OK cynics, I know you're getting revved, anxious to toss in another monkey wrench. I'm not saying there isn't danger out there, that life is all nicey-nice if you have a positive attitude. What I'm saying is that fear is mostly internal. We create the context in which we live. And if we live in fear, well, we can quickly, and often unnecessarily, manufacture dangerous enemies, both in our minds and in the real world.
I think back again to my first year in Chicago, living in that studio apartment. What if I'd had a gun? I'd have been stuck in my little world, ever waiting for the time to come when I had to defend myself (maybe from the Little Eagles of Wilton). I would not have been able to let the city itself, in all its complex fullness, into my life. I would not have loved my life. I would have been disconnected from it.
And the career I found my way into--journalism--required just that sort of openness . . . to everybody. Perhaps the most important thing I learned was how deeply and intensely people wanted to be listened to. And oh, they had things to say! I remember, for instance, talking to a husband and wife who had had two sons murdered, one of them--I had written about the crime--by his best friend. Guess what? I also talked to the parents of the boy who had committed the murder. I listened to both stories. The remorse was overwhelming in both living rooms. No, there was no easy fix to this; the wounds were lifelong. But they all needed to be heard, and I feel that by listening, taking notes, putting their stories into coherent words, I had, just maybe, helped us all see--envision--a world beyond the violence that had happened.
Please don't assume I say these words simplistically, naively. I've been a victim. Some years ago I was jumped on a street near my house by three teenage boys, who punched me in the face, knocked me down, attempted--but failed--to rob me. When I screamed for help, they ran. No big deal, right? Worse things have happened.
But I do know the dark side. Because I was active in the city's Restorative Justice movement, some friends held a circle for me afterward and I wound up learning how much I was loved. And if the boys had been caught, what I would have wanted most wasn't revenge. It would have been sitting in a circle with them, looking them in the eyes, listening to their stories and letting them hear mine.
In the process, we would have learned something incredible. We're all in this together.
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Making "Build Back Better" Better: Aligning Climate, Jobs, and Justice
Biden's timetable is not enough to halt colossal climate damage.
Jun 01, 2021
At the end of March 2021, President Joe Biden laid out his $2 trillion American Jobs Plan-part of his "Build Back Better" infrastructure program-to "reimagine and rebuild a new economy." Congress is expected to spend months debating and revising the plan. The public and many special interests will play a significant role in that process. President Biden has promised to follow up with additional proposals to further address climate policy and social needs.
Many particular interests will seek to benefit from the overall Build Back Better program-and that's good. But as Congress and the public work to shape the ultimate form of that program, we also need to keep our eyes on the ultimate prize: combining climate, jobs, and justice. What policies can integrate the needs of working people, the most oppressed, and our threatened climate and environment?
The Green New Deal reconfigured American politics with its core proposition: fix joblessness and inequality by putting people to work at good jobs fixing the climate. The Biden administration's Build Back Better (BBB) plan has put that idea front and center in American politics. Now we need to specify strategies that will actually achieve all three objectives at once.
There are many valuable plans that have been proposed in addition to Biden's Build Back Better plan. They include the original Green New Deal resolution sponsored by Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; the THRIVE (Transform, Heal, and Renew by Investing in a Vibrant Economy) Agenda; the Evergreen Action Plan; the Sierra Club's "How to Build Back Better" economic renewal plan; the AFL-CIO's "Energy Transitions" proposals; the BlueGreen Alliance's "Solidarity for Climate Action," and a variety of others. All offer contributions for overall vision and for policy details.
There are six essential elements that must be integrated in order to realize the Build Back Better we need for climate, jobs, and justice:
- Managed decline of fossil fuel burning
- Full-spectrum job creation
- Fair access to good jobs
- Labor rights and standards
- Urgent and effective climate protection
- No worker or community left behind
These strategies can serve as criteria for developing, evaluating, and selecting policies to make Build Back Better all that it could be.
1. Managed Decline of Fossil-Fuel Burning
Biden's Build Back Better plan seeks 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035 and net zero GHG emissions by 2050. No firm goal has been announced for 2030, but Climate Action Tracker says the U.S. needs to cut around 60% of its GHG emissions by 2030 to reach this 2050 goal.
Biden's timetable is not enough to halt colossal climate damage. It will go on adding to the GHG emissions that are already in the atmosphere. But it does provide targets for initial planning and emission reductions, which can be augmented later. The most important thing is to get started on reducing emissions right now and start planning for the subsequent stages.
Right now we are seeing a chaotic, unmanaged decline of fossil-fuel industries. This is most evident in coal, where declining demand and collapsing profitability are leading to massive mine and power plant closings, job loss, destruction of coal communities, and decimation of unions. In the COVID-19 pandemic we also saw devastation of oil and gas employment and workers. With the fall in the relative cost of renewable energy in relation to fossil fuels, the future holds more of the same for coal, oil, and gas. Public policy and civil society actions like divestment and protest will further squeeze fossil fuel industries.
The alternative to such chaotic decline is a managed decline in fossil fuel use. This requires setting step-by-step targets for reduction and then implementing policies to manage the consequences. (Programs to protect workers and communities are addressed in section 6, "No Worker Left Behind.") According to the 2020 "Production Gap Report," "the world will need to decrease fossil fuel production by roughly 6% per year between 2020 and 2030" to reach the Paris goal of 1.5degC. Countries are instead planning and projecting an average annual increase of 2%, which by 2030 would result in more than double the production consistent with the 1.5degC limit.
Fortunately, the U.S. can realize 90 percent clean energy by 2035 while actually lowering wholesale power costs because of the falling cost of renewable energy. Here is what we need to do now:
1) Legally binding enforcement of GHG emissions limits through renewable portfolio standards (RPSs) and other regulations, not just "incentives" like subsidies or cap-and-trade.
2) A freeze on new fossil fuel infrastructure.
3) Phased additional shutdowns initially focused on health promotion and reducing pollution of frontline communities.
4) Planned investment in replacement alternative energy and energy use reduction to prevent shortages and hardships.
2. Full-Spectrum Job Creation
The existing U.S. labor market is segmented, stratified, and highly unequal. Tens of millions who want to work are unemployed or defined as outside the official workforce. Forty percent of the workforce make less than $15 per hour with few or no benefits while a few workers make $100,000 a year or more. Millions have no marketable skills while employers bid for a small number with special skills and talents. Some have unimpeded access to whatever jobs are available while others have been systematically excluded by race, gender, geography, legal status, and background from all but the worst available jobs. An estimated 10 million workers have permanently lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic and the uneven "K-shaped recovery" that has benefitted some while leaving others in depression-like conditions.
The Build Back Better proposal would create 5 million new jobs. Other proposals are even more ambitious: The THRIVE Agenda, for example, pushes for the creation of 15 million new jobs. That would be enough to provide jobs for all those who want them, including those now unemployed and underemployed. And it would create a full employment economy that would create greater bargaining power and therefore higher wages for workers as a whole.
The unique opportunity presented by the current moment is to create jobs for all varieties of workers. Every kind of worker can contribute to climate protection. Highly skilled building trades workers can build new solar and wind installations, electrical grids, building retrofits, and many other means of reducing GHGs. Manufacturing workers will be needed for everything from converting to electric vehicles to manufacturing solar equipment and materials for climate-safe buildings. There is a huge amount of work for which large numbers of workers can be quickly trained, such as insulating buildings, installing solar panels, and making forests and farms more effective carbon sinks.
The climate jobs plan should include jobs for every kind of worker. It should:
- Support jobs for specific union, occupations, and other groups. But it should do so in the context of a broader strategy that benefits all workers and creates a more just and equitable world of work.
- Guarantee jobs for both high-skilled construction and manufacturing workers and for those who have been marginalized within the workforce, including undocumented immigrants.
- Provide jobs not just for currently high-skilled workers, but for the entire range of workers and unions, through a program to provide decent jobs for those who have been forced to accept sub-standard jobs or no jobs at all. Such a program will ensure jobs for all who want them.
3. Fair Access to Jobs and Good Jobs
Simply creating more jobs will not eliminate the grossly unjust and wasteful distribution of access to jobs. At least 40% of workers are locked into low-wage jobs that are often contingent, insecure, and lack benefits. Many more want to work but have no jobs at all. Creating access to good jobs for those who have been excluded from them will require deliberate policies, including:
- Job ladders within and between workplaces and companies to allow workers to move from lower- to higher-skill jobs.
- Strong affirmative action rules that guarantee discriminated-against groups access to jobs and training
- Industrial location policy that directs job-creating investment to depressed areas and those that are being affected by shrinking of the fossil fuel economy.
- Massive expansion of apprentice programs to allow entry-level workers to become skilled all-round craftspeople.
- Designing the green jobs programs to provide training and advancement to better jobs.
- "Hire local" requirements for employers in communities with inadequate employment.
4. Labor Rights and Standards
Simply creating more jobs will not necessarily elevate the quality or pay of available jobs. Making climate jobs be good jobs will take deliberate policies. That includes enforced job standards like minimum wages, prevailing wage policies, and health and safety protection. It also includes the empowerment of workers by guaranteeing their right to organize, bargain collectively, and engage in concerted action on the job. Public policy should create opportunities for unions to recruit large numbers of members in the "green" economy.
A green jobs program should:
- Require federal standards mandating project labor agreements.
- Establish a minimum wage that guarantees a living wage.
- Require that contractors pay the prevailing wage.
- Implement the elements of The PRO Act to ensure workers rights to organize.
- Prevent employers from interfering with workers' rights to organize.
5. Urgent and Effective Climate Protection
To meet the climate emergency, the federal and other governments should immediately invest in the known solutions that can rapidly reduce GHG emissions by as much as 90 percent. These are primarily renewable energy and energy efficiency. They should also evaluate way to eliminate the remaining emissions and fund research on those demonstrated to be most beneficial when including climate, health, safety, and environmental impacts as well as cost.
There are many ways to reduce GHG pollution. Selecting those that will best combine the objectives of eliminating greenhouse gases, creating jobs, and correcting injustice will require careful evaluation.
Effective, job-productive climate protection will involve many different elements that are complementary or even synergistic. Some ways to reduce climate destroying GHGs replace the burning of fossil fuel with other sources of energy. These are primarily renewable sources like solar, wind, geothermal, and waterpower, though they may also include other sources. GHG pollution can also be reduced by using energy more efficiently to reduce the amount that is needed. The economic sectors that use the most energy are transportation, electricity, industry, buildings, and agriculture; methods to reduce their use range from insulating houses to powering vehicles by electricity rather than gasoline.
Technologies known by such names as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) propose to remove GHG emissions from smokestacks or to suck them out of the atmosphere after they are emitted; despite massive investment, so far such technologies appear to require large amounts of energy themselves and to be costly and largely ineffective. They can do little to solve the climate emergency.
Renewable energy, including solar, wind, and geothermal energy have become much cheaper in recent years, to the point that they are often cheaper than coal and often competitive with oil and natural gas, even disregarding the enormous cost of fossil fuels in health and climate effects. According to Forbes, "plummeting wind, solar, and storage prices have fallen so fast that the
United States can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 - without raising customer costs at all from today's levels, and actually decreasing wholesale power costs 10%."
Climate safety can be achieved with existing technology; it does not require waiting for some hoped-for technology of the future. Renewable energy and energy efficiency create far more jobs per dollar invested than either fossil fuel or high-tech investments like nuclear power or carbon capture and storage. (Because some renewable energy and energy efficiency jobs are currently low paid, it is important to enforce the labor rights and standards laid out in section 4 above.)
Selecting effective strategies requires science-based evaluation of their effectiveness in reducing GHG emissions, safety, cost-effectiveness, and job creation. Unfortunately, policy decisions about investment in research and deployment of technologies are often based on lobbying by interests that hope to gain from government subsidies. A useful template for scientific evaluation of climate technology choices may be the proposal in Biden's original climate plan from August 2020 regarding "small modular nuclear reactors." It makes the broad point that, to address the climate emergency, we must look at "all low- and zero-carbon technologies." The plan includes research on such reactors but does not endorse their deployment. Rather, it says the research will examine issues "ranging from cost to safety to waste disposal systems" that remain an "ongoing challenge with nuclear power today." An objective evaluation of these "challenges" is almost certain to conclude that cost, safety, and waste disposal make nuclear energy a far worse option than renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Such objective evaluation that includes all relevant factors is essential for all decisions about how to fight climate change. There are well-heeled lobbyists ready to promote projects that may squander valuable resources on wasteful and even dangerous programs. Their success would undermine the whole climate jobs program with the public and make it too costly without creating sufficient good jobs. Almost any goal or policy can serve as a misleading justification for costly, ineffective, and even dangerous programs.
A program to combine climate protection with jobs and justice should:
- Start now with technologies that are available, cost-effective, and job effective. That is likely to mean renewable energy and energy efficiency, which can provide 90% of power generation by 2030. The faster emissions are reduced, the less need there will be for costly technologies with harmful side effects.
- Accept scientific criteria for cost, safety, waste disposal and jobs in evaluating all climate programs, including nuclear power, carbon capture, pollution permit programs, and taxes.
- Include all costs, including, safety, health, and other forms of pollution, and collateral costs and benefits, in all evaluations.
- Include all job benefits, for jobs of all kinds all along the skill and wage spectrum in evaluations.
- Research other technologies that may be useful for the more difficult to eliminate forms of GHG emissions, such as some high-temperature manufacturing and air and sea transportation. Do not invest in implementation until the full benefits of renewable energy and energy efficiency have been realized.
- Carefully plan, sequence, and phase-in programs according to both social and climate needs.
- After GHG emissions have been halted, explore cost-effective techniques for removing existing GHGs from the atmosphere. While mechanical means for achieving this, such as carbon capture and storage, have been proposed, such means are unlikely to be cost-effective relative to natural carbon sinks like properly managed trees, soils and ocean plants like kelp.
6. No Worker Left Behind
While Build Back Better will produce far more jobs than it eliminates, it is likely also to threaten the jobs of some workers in fossil fuel producing and using industries. It is unjust that any worker or community should suffer through no fault of their own because of a policy that is necessary to protect everyone-and such unintended consequences of climate policy are likely to provoke a backlash against climate protection.
Fortunately, there are ways to provide alternative jobs, livelihoods, and community resources when fossil-fuel burning is reduced. The means to protect workers and communities from the unintended side effects of such change are often referred to as a "just transition." Such programs should be built into all "Build Back Better" programs.
- Community and worker protection (CWP) funds should collect money in advance of threatened closings to replace taxes and fees paid by fossil-fuel facilities and to invest in good jobs in affected communities.
- CWP funds, in cooperation with other private and public sources, should make targeted investments in fossil fuel energy communities designed to create jobs before or at the pace that fossil fuel jobs are declining.
- Workers harmed by climate protection policies should receive full wages and benefits for at least four years; up to four years of education or training, including tuition and living expenses; and decent pensions with health care for those ready to retire.
- Workers who seek a new career path should receive income replacement with either a four-year college education or vocational job training with living expenses provided, as well as assistance with dependent care, mortgage and other debt relief, transportation costs, and other areas of economic pressure for workers in transition. Such education and training should start preemptively long before workers are laid off.
- Communities adversely affected by climate protection policies should be targeted for funding for economic development investments through regional commissions and authorities, for example projects that enhance workforce competitiveness, remediate damage done by fossil fuel extraction, build and repair infrastructure, and increase community capacity like broadband projects, clean drinking water, organic farming, and energy efficiency.
As Congress and the public work out the details of Build Back Better legislation over the coming months, there are many details that will need to be considered, many of which will affect particular interests and constituencies. To establish broad support these will need to be taken into account in shaping the final legislation. But it is also essential that the ultimate plan successfully integrates the ultimate goals of climate, jobs, and justice. These six strategies provide a framework for developing, evaluating, and selecting policies to make Build Back Better achieve those goals.
Originally posted at labor4sustainability.org.
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At a Time When America Faces Cascading Crises, Republicans Just Say No
The scope of what they won't do is breathtaking.
Jun 01, 2021
Just say no. That seems to sum up the position of Republicans in the Congress these days. For all the talk about bipartisan compromise or about the two parties working together, at the end of the day, the Republican position is simply to say no.
The scope of what they won't do is breathtaking.
They say no to expanding support for day care, vital in an economy where both parents must work. They say no to investing in renewable energy and electric cars. They say no to renovating America's decrepit and outmoded infrastructure, including clean and safe drinking water. They say no to democracy reforms and ending secret money in politics. They just say no.
It doesn't matter if the reform is essential to human life and to equal justice under the law.
It doesn't matter how popular the issue is. Most Americans want sensible gun control laws. According to the Pew Research Center, 70% of Republicans support background checks for all sales of guns, including those at gun shows. When it comes to passing the reforms, Republicans in both Houses just say no.
It doesn't matter if it is simply about basic fairness. Fifty-five of America's biggest corporations paid no federal income taxes last year and the wealth of just 650 billionaires rose by 50%, all while millions of working Americans suffered. Two-thirds of Americans support raising taxes on those making more than $400,000 a year, as Joe Biden has proposed. Republicans in both Houses reject any tax increase on corporations or the wealthy, including the 82% benefit that went to the top 1% and 63% that went to the top one-tenth of 1% of Trump's only major legislative accomplishment in 2017.
It doesn't matter if the reform is about meeting a threat to our existence. Catastrophic climate change already takes lives and costs this country billions of dollars each year--and it gets worse annually. Scientists give us about 10 years to make the transition to renewable energy. Joe Biden has proposed a modest investment in renewable energy, electric cars and retrofitting homes. His proposal is far less than scientists say is needed, far less even from what he promised during his campaign. He's already compromised in the face of expected Republican opposition. But Republicans just say no.
It doesn't matter if the reform is essential to human life and to equal justice under the law. Most Americans support police reform, including a federal ban on chokeholds (71%), a prohibition of racial profiling (71%), and an end to "qualified immunity" for officers in legal cases (59%). For decades and currently Congress hasn't been able to pass an anti-lynching law. Efforts to pass reforms meet with--no surprise now--almost universal Republican opposition.
It doesn't even matter if the measure is a bipartisan bill to have an independent bipartisan commission investigate sacking the Capitol and the attempt to stop certification of the 2020 presidential election on Jan. 6. Even though their lives and limbs were at risk, Senate Republicans lined up in support of a filibuster to just say no.
Republicans use efforts to find common ground to stall progress before lining up to say no. They make big gestures that turn out on inspection just to be jive. For example, the biggest "bipartisan" negotiations are over Joe Biden's Americans Jobs Bill, which Republicans oppose. Biden called for $2.3 trillion over eight years to invest in rebuilding America, kickstarting the transition to sustainable energy, and ensuring quality affordable day care, essential if parents are to go back to work. In April, Republicans offered a laughable $568 billion over five years, stripping virtually everything but roads and bridges from their proposal (and most of that was already in the budget).
Biden compromised, cutting $552 billion out of his proposal. Republicans got headlines for going up to $953 billion--only that was a feint. As the analysis of the invaluable Congressional Progressive Caucus Action Fund showed, the second Republican offer was spread out over eight years. And they proposed to pay for most of that by taking funds previously appropriated to deal with the pandemic and its victims over the next years. In spending per year, the actual change in the second proposal over the first was just $2 billion a year. That isn't a good faith negotiation; that's a joke.
Republicans don't want corporations or the wealthy to pay more in taxes. They don't want to raise the minimum wage. They oppose reforms that would make it easier for workers to organize and bargain collectively. In 20 states, Republican governors are cutting off federal unemployment insurance, hoping to force people to take low-paying jobs. They don't want to revive the Voting Rights Act; they want to further suppress the vote. They don't want to limit the role of big money in elections or end gerrymandering of districts to their benefit. This list can go on.
Republicans celebrate the economy of 2018 under Donald Trump before the pandemic. Yet that was an economy in which 40% of Americans had negative net incomes, and were forced to borrow to pay for basic household needs. That was an economy that subsidized fossil fuels and ignored the threat posed by climate change. That was an economy that forced parents into debt to pay for day care, forced students into debt to pay for college, and forced Americans to pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, even those that were created on the taxpayer's dime.
Of course, when they run for re-election, Republicans will take credit for Biden's American Rescue Plan that was passed without one Republican vote. No one should be fooled. At a time when America faces cascading crises, Republicans just say no. If we want even to begin to address the troubles we have, voters will have to say no to those who are standing in the way.
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Looking to 2022, People's Action Launches Game-Changing Electoral Strategy to Boost Progressive Power
Building on success of 2020 deep canvassing program to defeat Trump, national organizing network plans to elect progressive champions in competitive federal races.
Jun 01, 2021
People's Action today launched a game-changing electoral strategy, Rise Up 2022, to boost progressive power in the U.S. Senate and House by organizing in competitive races to flip Republican-held swing seats in the 2022 elections. People's Action will partner with its member organizations across the country to implement the Rise Up 2022 strategy, building on the power of its groundbreaking 2020 strategy centered around deep canvassing. The strategy aims to elect progressives in Democratic primaries and then win general elections in swing districts by using progressive policies to engage voters who are typically shut out of politics and ignored by the Democratic establishment.
"Democrats backed themselves into a corner a long time ago when they began sacrificing bold action for marginal wins," People's Action Movement Politics Director Brooke Adams said. "Our 2022 strategy will finally kick this habit. Using our innovative deep canvassing program, we'll turnout our folks, persuade people not yet with us to support us, and help elect progressive champions by driving issue-oriented campaigns in competitive races. We're not afraid to roll up our sleeves because to win next year, we need to organize everywhere and everyone."
The strategy will include:
- Listening sessions with candidates to hear the concerns of their constituents;
- Deep canvassing campaigns to turnout midterm drop-off voters and move persuadable voters to vote for endorsed candidates;
- Candidate-based and issue-oriented deep canvassing; and
- Other candidate events and forums.
Candidate endorsement will begin in the fall. The full list of races where People's Action plans to recruit and engage candidates may be found below:
- AR-2
- AZ-Gubernatorial
- AZ-6
- CA-25
- CO-8 (new district)
- IA-Senate
- IA-1
- IA-2
- IL-13
- IL 17
- MI-3
- MI- 6
- MO-Senate
- NC-Senate
- NC-8
- NC-11
- NC-13
- NH-Gubernatorial
- NJ-2
- NY-11
- NY-22
- PA-Senate
- PA-10
- TX-23
- WA-3
- WA-4
- WI-Senate
People's Action's Movement Politics program recruits, runs, and elects progressives into local and statewide offices across the country. Since 2016, People's Action has helped elect over 380 movement politics candidates. The program focuses on electing women, people of color, and low-income people who are grounded in progressive movement building with our member organizations. From 2020-2021 People's Action recruited 35,000 volunteers from all 50 states, sent 35 million text messages, and had hundreds of thousands of deep canvass conversations to defeat Donald Trump.
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'A Huge Victory': Migrant Advocates Cheer End of 'Remain in Mexico' Asylum Policy
The Biden administration must now "swiftly move to dismantle the Trump administration's other attacks on the asylum system, including the unconscionable Title 42 order," said one prominent ACLU attorney.
Jun 01, 2021
Migrant rights advocates on Tuesday welcomed an announcement by the Biden administration that it is ending the so-called Migrant Protection Protocols--commonly known as the "Remain in Mexico" program--in a move to reverse yet another of former President Donald Trump's xenophobic and racist immigration policies.
"The administration must follow through on this announcement by ensuring that everyone who has been subjected to this policy can now pursue their asylum cases in the United States, in safety and without additional trauma or delay."
--Judy Rabinovitz, ACLU
In a memorandum (pdf) announcing the move, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas wrote that the Migration Protection Protocols (MPP)--under which tens of thousands of Central American asylum-seekers were forced to wait in Mexico until their claims were reviewed--"does not adequately or sustainably enhance border management in such a way as to justify the program's extensive operational burdens and other shortfalls."
"It is certainly true that some removal proceedings conducted pursuant to MPP were completed more expeditiously than is typical for non-detained cases, but this came with certain significant drawbacks that are cause for concern," wrote Mayorkas. "The focus on speed was not always matched with sufficient efforts to ensure that conditions in Mexico enabled migrants to attend their immigration proceedings."
"I share the belief that we can only manage migration in an effective, responsible, and durable manner if we approach the issue comprehensively, looking well beyond our own borders," he added.
President Joe Biden suspended the MPP program on his first day in office as part of a raft of executive orders and other actions aimed at dismantling Trump's anti-immigrant policies. In the months since, the administration has ended the so-called Muslim ban, allowed families separated under Trump's "zero-tolerance" policy to remain in the U.S., raised the refugee admittance cap, preserved the Defered Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and canceled contracts related to the construction of the Mexican border wall.
However, immigrant rights advocates have criticized the Biden administration for deporting hundreds of thousands of people--largely under a Trump-era policy called Title 42--as well as for jailing migrants including children in overcrowded facilities, and for seeking nearly $25 billion in funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection in his proposed 2022 budget.
Democratic lawmakers and migrant advocates applauded Tuesday's policy shift.
Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security, and Nanette Diaz Barragan (D-Calif), who heads the House Homeland Security subcommittee on Border Security, Facilitation, and Operations, published a joint statement calling MPP a "stain on our nation's history and our long-standing tradition of protecting refugees and asylum-seekers."
"Despite Republican efforts to misrepresent U.S. asylum law and smear those fleeing violence and seeking asylum, we must remember that it is completely legal to come to the U.S. border and seek asylum," Thompson and Barragan said.
"While the process has been underway to dismantle MPP and bring asylum-seekers in the country, more still needs to be done to help those hurt by the policy and we look forward to working with the administration on those efforts," they added. "We must ensure we have a just and humane asylum processing system."
Judy Rabinovitz, the lead ACLU attorney who challenged the MPP policy, said in a statement that "this is a huge victory."
"The forced return policy was cruel, depraved, and illegal, and we are glad that it has finally been rescinded," asserted Rabinovitz. "The administration must follow through on this announcement by ensuring that everyone who has been subjected to this policy can now pursue their asylum cases in the United States, in safety and without additional trauma or delay."
Rabinovitz added that Biden "must swiftly move to dismantle the Trump administration's other attacks on the asylum system, including the unconscionable Title 42 order."
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Omar Revives Bill to Repeal Law Cited to Justify Trump Muslim Ban, WWII Japanese Internment
"The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 is rooted in the xenophobic history of our country... It is that same xenophobia that has fueled the thousands of anti-Asian incidents and crimes this past year."
Jun 01, 2021
Asserting that "no one should be targeted based solely on their religion, ethnicity, or national origin," Rep. Ilhan Omar on Tuesday reintroduced a bill that, if passed, would repeal an 18th-century law that was cited to justify former President Donald Trump's Muslim ban and the imprisonment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II.
"As an American of Japanese ancestry and a survivor of concentration camps U.S. style, it is past time we repeal the last vestiges of the archaic laws known as Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798."
--Mike Honda, former U.S. congressman
The Neighbors Not Enemies Act (pdf)--which was first introduced by Omar (D-Minn.) in January 2020--would fully repeal the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) of 1798, the only surviving law among the four Alien and Sedition Acts signed by then-President John Adams.
The laws restricted criticism of the federal government, raised the residency requirement for U.S. citizenship from five to 14 years, and targeted foreign nationals deemed dangerous or from hostile nations, among other highly controversial provisions.
According to a press release from Omar's office:
The AEA allows the president to determine how and if all foreign nationals from a specific country should be "apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed." The Act was used during World War II to detain and deport German, Japanese, and Italian immigrants. More recently... Trump used the law to justify the Muslim ban. The AEA grants the president extreme executive powers to target an entire group based only on their nationality.
"No one should be targeted based solely on their religion, ethnicity, or national origin," said Omar in a statement. "This xenophobic law is dangerous and must be taken off the books."
"We must close all policy loopholes to prevent more pain to be inflicted on our communities," added Omar. "It's way past time we put this hateful law in the dustbin of history where it belongs."
David Inoue, executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League, said that "the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 is rooted in the xenophobic history of our country and has been used to justify the mass incarceration of Japanese and Japanese Americans during [World War II] and more recently, the Muslim ban."
"It is that same xenophobia that has fueled the thousands of anti-Asian incidents and crimes this past year," added Inoue. "We are long past the time when we should have removed this antiquated law and urge swift passage of the Neighbors Not Enemies Act."
Former Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.), who in 1942 at the age of one was interned at Camp Amache in Colorado, said in a statement that he supports the Neighbors Not Enemies Act.
"As an American of Japanese ancestry and a survivor of concentration camps U.S. style, it is past time we repeal the last vestiges of the archaic laws known as Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798," said Honda. "I am proud of Rep. Omar for leading this vital piece of legislation."
The Neighbors Not Enemies Act is co-sponsored by 40 Democratic House members and is supported by dozens of advocacy organizations. The Hill reports the original iteration of the bill never received a vote in the House.
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Why Infrastructure is So Much Bigger Than Just Infrastructure
"The beauty of pursuing a rebuilt infrastructure is that it brings with it the solution to the other four spokes of national renewal... They work together, like the spokes on the metaphorical wheel that unites them."
May 31, 2021
Biden's infrastructure plan is ambitious. But reporting about it doesn't begin to capture just how important it is to the U.S.'s success, even survival. There are five paradigm-bending dimensions that make infrastructure so much more important than infrastructure alone. They are like the five spokes on a wheel of national renewal. Understanding those spokes is essential to mustering the political will to make it happen.
The first spoke is infrastructure itself. Infrastructure is the platform that all of the rest of the economy runs on. Roads, bridges, ports, airports, water systems, sewerage systems, electrical systems, mass transit, etc. The U.S. infrastructure was designed in the post-World War II era when the country had the vision and the money to think big, to build big.
Think of Eisenhower's Interstate Highway System. It created a continental-scale market that drove the high volumes and, so, low costs that allowed U.S. producers to dominate global markets for decades. It spawned the panoply of culture we call suburbia, and the tens of trillions of dollars of private economic activity that followed. That's why the fifties and sixties are commonly called "The Golden Age of Capitalism."
But in the 1980s, the U.S. changed economic paradigms. Rather than building an economy for everybody, Republicans convinced us that we would all be better off if we transferred a huge share of national income and wealth to those who were already the most-wealthy. That was the explicit premise--and promise--of Reagan's Supply Side Economics. It has been our operating economic ideology ever since.
The result was that the government was starved for revenue and began an epoch of exploding deficits. So, we have not made significant improvements to the nation's infrastructure in over four decades, forty years. We are pretending we can have a twenty-first century economy based on a mid-twentieth century infrastructure platform. We can't, and it's childish to play otherwise. If the U.S. wants to be a global economic power in the twenty-first century, it needs a twenty-first century infrastructure on which to operate. That means the existing platform must be rebuilt, upgraded, modernized.
The second spoke on the wheel of national renewal via infrastructure is employment. While the government was shunting trillions of dollars to the already-wealthy, industrialists began transferring factories and factory jobs to low-wage countries so they could get a work force that cost one-twentieth what it cost here. Think Mexico with NAFTA and China with the World Trade Organization. It began as a trickle in the eighties, gained steam in the nineties, and became a tsunami in the aughts.
More than 50,000 U.S. factories were shut down and shipped out. Millions of steel workers and auto workers and ship builders and others who used to make $40 an hour, with union benefits, lost those jobs. Average wages for U.S. workers are little changed from what they were in the seventies, while average wages for Chinese workers are 10 TIMES what they were then. That one fact says it all. Another indicative fact? Forty percent of the U.S. trade deficit with China comes from U.S. corporations that had once produced here, but now produce there and export their products back to the U.S.
The communities that had once supported those jobs and families became ghost towns. We've given the process a name, Deindustrialization, and the aggregate effect a description: the Rust Belt. Yes, many workers found jobs as greeters at Walmart, as counter clerks at McDonalds, as drivers for Uber, baristas at Starbucks, and such. But those jobs do not begin to sustain the lifestyles that the American dream relied on. That's why the American dream is becoming more and more a fantasy, if not a nightmare.
If the U.S. is to have a modern infrastructure and a vibrant economy--one that meets the expectations of our expectations--it needs tens of millions of high-paying jobs that cannot be out-sourced to China or Mexico. That is what a renewed infrastructure promises.
Tens of millions of jobs for construction workers in all trades, and factory workers with the skills to build the Buy American products that a rebuilt infrastructure requires: concrete workers; iron workers; heavy equipment operators; electricians; machinists; sheet metal workers; welders; pipe fitters; solar equipment installers; engineers to design it all; foremen to oversee it; and companies to carry it all out.
It will be vastly larger than the Interstate Highway System was, for it will encompass all facets of the economy's operating platform. It will engender greater economic dynamism than did automobile culture, for it will include not only that in a national fleet of electrical vehicles, but energy generation, transmission, mass transit, insulation of the nation's building stock, and much more. And it cannot be outsourced to China or anywhere else.
The third dimension of necessity--the third spoke in the wheel of national renewal--that compels a massive infrastructure rebuild is the changing global energy paradigm. In the nineteenth century, coal was the central ingredient to industrial civilization. That's why Britain dominated that century: it dominated coal. In the twentieth century, oil replaced coal as the central fuel in the global economy. That's why the U.S. dominated the twentieth century: it dominated oil.
But now, renewable energy is replacing oil as the central energy source for the twenty-first century. Already, the cost of producing electricity from renewables is comparable to the cost of producing by using fossil fuels. And we haven't even begun to drive down the cost curves that follow from massive increases in scale of production. It is easy to chart 90% reductions in the cost of renewable energy production once volumes approach global scale. At that point, continued reliance on fossil fuels to drive an economy will be suicidal, like staying with wood in the 1800s, or with coal in the 1900s. Winners adapt to changing paradigms, or, better yet, drive them.
Right now, China leads the world in renewable technologies, from photovoltaics and wind turbines, to storage batteries and transmission systems. As with infrastructure and jobs, if the U.S. wants to remain a global leader, even a player, it has to quickly shift the locus of its economy's energy source from oil to renewables. No major power has ever led from reliance on past-generation technologies. That is the central task of reconfiguring the nation's infrastructure.
A fourth spoke in the wheel of necessity arguing for a rebuilt infrastructure is climate. Twentieth-century reliance on fossil fuels pumped trillions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It stays there and acts like an insulator, a gaseous blanket, preventing the sun's heat from escaping out into space as it has done since the beginning of the planet. The result is an inexorable warming of the planet, with apocalyptic consequences.
The polar ice caps are melting, so much so that the axis of the earth's rotation has been altered as the gravitational mass at the poles has been redistributed into the oceans. For decades, the oceans acted as heat sinks, absorbing heat from the atmosphere and slowing the rise in its temperature. But they are becoming saturated, suggesting that future heating may not be mitigated, so will increase asymptotically. Melting of the Siberian permafrost is releasing billions of tons of methane into the atmosphere. Methane is 25 times more thermogenic (heat inducing) than is carbon dioxide. The feedback loops are reinforcing each other, amplifying, and accelerating.
At some point, the earth's inherently stabilizing ecological systems will collapse. We don't know when, or what the trigger will be, which is part of the peril, but we're seeing harbingers of it in the collapse of the Great Barrier Reef near Australia, the Amazon rain forest switching to being a CO2 generator, the changing acidity in the oceans, massive die-offs in all manner of species of plants and insects, the worst drought in Europe in 2,000 years, and so on.
Think of a person with lung disease, kidney failure, heart arrythmia, high blood pressure, and liver problems. The slightest thing will spell the end, like we saw with COVID where those with pre-existing conditions had much higher mortality rates. In this case, the end will be of civilization as the biotic carrying systems that undergird human life all collapse, like dominoes, one collapse setting off another, all at the same time, and all without warning.
That is the situation on the planet today and the scale and complexity of it are vastly beyond our ability to control or even fathom. It is impossible to overstate the existential imperative of this, not just for Americans, or for humans, but for all life on the planet. The single most important thing we can do to reverse the headlong hurtling to the precipice of destruction is to reduce the amount of carbon we pump into the atmosphere, which means phasing out fossil fuels by building a renewable energy-based economy, which requires a retrofitted infrastructure, which, as it happens, means millions of high paying jobs that cannot be exported.
The final spoke in the wheel of national renewal that centers on infrastructure is political. It is whether democracy endures as the foundation of the American political system. Right now, there are tens of millions of people who are enraged at the system, which they believe has failed them. The genius of Donald Trump and his ilk is that they have convinced those legions that they've been stabbed in the back by baby-eating Democrats, by nebulous, pedophile, blood drinking Deep State actors, and by all similar manner of invented, lurid evil-doers.
The truth is that the system has failed the American worker, by shipping its industrial heartland abroad and reneging on the social contract that said if you work hard, keep your nose clean, and play by the rules, you'll be OK. You will have a comfortable life, and your children will be able to have an even better life than you did.
The unannounced, one-sided abrogation of that contract and the resultant downward mobility inflicted on tens of millions of hard-working people is what animates the mis-guided rage of so many of those seeking to destroy democracy. Their rage will not be mollified by anything less than society's fulfillment of the social contract, which means restoration of the economic opportunity that was once theirs and that is latent and available in a rebuilt national infrastructure.
The beauty of pursuing a rebuilt infrastructure is that it brings with it the solution to the other four spokes of national renewal: plenty of good-paying jobs; adaptation to the new century's new energy paradigm; a climate fix; and saving democracy. They work together, like the spokes on the metaphorical wheel that unites them. Solving one of them solves them all. It's the greatest five-fer in the history of the world, certainly of the nation.
The really amazing thing is that the cost of such an infrastructure renewal is a pittance compared to not doing it. Right now, the U.S. survives by writing hot checks to the world. That is what the $29 trillion run-up in national debt since 1980 is all about. It's what the $6 trillion run-up in just the last year was all about. But that is patently unsustainable.
Once the world's creditors stops imagining the U.S. will ever pay them back, because it can't, because it has an obsolete economy designed for an earlier century, they'll stop lending. The magical credit card will be gone and the economic carnage will make the Great Recession look like a child's Monopoly game gone awry. Interest rates to attract capital will go into the stratosphere, choking off the possibility of rebuilding anything. The shock waves will ripple into the next century.
Or, think of the savings when the U.S. doesn't have to garrison the Middle East any more. We've wasted almost $8 trillion in the past two decades on failed interventions in the Middle East, all to protect U.S. control of the world's oil supply. That is four times what Biden is asking for to cover the entirety of his plan. Would we spend the same amount to maintain control of the world's coal supply? Obviously not, not when coal is an obsolete resource, even a liability. That is about to become the future for oil and we will be able to save hundreds of billions of dollars a year not wasting money fortifying the relic of an obsolete past. In that way--savings on military spending alone--infrastructure revitalization pays for itself.
We would be remiss to not mention the forces that are arrayed against this idea.
Changing institutional paradigms, whether economic, energy, climatic, or other, means changing the centers of power in a civilization. That's why there is so much resistance. Moving away from fossil fuels means defunding probably the greatest locus of wealth on earth. Fossil fuel owners are the greatest funders of national, state, and local politicians who seek to destroy democracy by enacting voter suppression laws. You can understand why.
Democracy is the only institution in the society with the power to redirect national purposes and national resources to new bases of growth, to renewal, and to life. To holders of existing power--and this includes the big banks, the weapons makers, and others--democracy must be destroyed so that it cannot carry out such shifts. That is the fundamental source of conflict in the debate over infrastructure: not whether it is needed; not whether it is possible; not whether it is affordable; but whether existing loci of power are dispossessed in the process.
If they are, those centers of power will do everything they can to stop it. Which they are. They're having their dime-bag politicians, those with the dignity of Matt Gaetz, the gravitas of Marjorie Taylor Greene, the integrity of Lindsey Graham, and the courage of Ted Cruz manufacture excuses for why it can't happen, just like they manufactured excuses for why the nation didn't need a January 6th commission to investigate the gravest attack on the nation since the Civil War. An honest politician is one who, once bought, stays bought, which is what we have in the opposition to renewing the nation's infrastructure.
In 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the former British Foreign Secretary, David Carrington, prophetically weighed the import of it. "So, capitalism has defeated communism. Now, we will see the battle between capitalism and democracy." And those are the political stakes in the quest for improved infrastructure: whether we will be governed as a democracy; or ruled by a plutocratic autocracy--authoritarian rule by the rich. We're already a long ways down that path. This is the final battle in that war and we're fools to underestimate the seriousness of it, for too many trillions of dollars are at stake.
But we should be clear, too, that the overall stakes are so much greater than simply a political order. They include whether we will have a country at all, perhaps whether we will even have human civilization of any sort on earth, short of scattered pockets of survivors huddling in caves. For, if we don't build a new infrastructure so we can immediately address the climate crisis, everything else will be as sand castles on the beach. We can dither and dawdle, play and pretend, like children with our plastic shovels and buckets, but the tide is coming in.
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Abortion Access Is at Stake, But We Will Do Everything We Can to Keep Our Clinic's Doors Open
Arkansas legislators are trying to make abortion inaccessible, so we're taking them to court.
May 29, 2021
Last week, my staff and I watched alongside the rest of the nation as the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would consider a case challenging Mississippi's ban on abortion starting at 15 weeks of pregnancy. This news left us feeling scared about the future of abortion access and thinking about how a bad decision could be devastating for patients like ours, for whom access to abortion is not only life-affirming, but often life-saving.
For nearly a decade, anti-abortion politicians in Arkansas have engaged in a targeted campaign against abortion, aimed at shutting our clinic's doors and making it difficult, if not impossible, for our patients to access the vital reproductive healthcare they seek.
Unfortunately, these fears are not new for us here in Arkansas, where I serve as clinical director of one of the last two clinics standing in the state. We are used to keeping our chins up and fighting for the rights of our patients in the face of unrelenting attacks on our ability to provide, and our patients' ability to access, abortion. And that is exactly what we will do when we go to court to fight Arkansas's abortion ban today.
For nearly a decade, anti-abortion politicians in Arkansas have engaged in a targeted campaign against abortion, aimed at shutting our clinic's doors and making it difficult, if not impossible, for our patients to access the vital reproductive healthcare they seek. Among other things, they've tried to ban abortion at particular points in pregnancy, ban abortion based on our patients' reasons for seeking care, and imposed requirements that clinics must satisfy in order to keep our doors open, designed to be too burdensome to meet.
Rather than increase safety, these restrictions put pregnant people across Arkansas in danger by making it more difficult for patients to access abortion, and more difficult for us to provide this care. For example, Arkansas law currently requires that all abortion patients receive certain state mandated information from us in person and then wait a designated period of time before obtaining an abortion.
Over the past few years, the Legislature has steadily increased this mandatory waiting period from 24, to 48, and now to 72 hours. So many of our patients already have to travel long distances, arrange time off work and/or child care, and find transportation in order to get to our clinic. Because they have to receive the state mandated information in person, and then wait 72 hours before getting their abortion, they have to do all these things twice--for no medical reason. This can be simply insurmountable for some patients, especially those who are poor or low-income, as many of our patients are.
We've gotten used to engaging in what feels like a constant struggle against the state's ever-increasing set of medically unnecessary restrictions. But this year felt different. Anti-abortion legislators pushed through such a high volume of bills aimed at restricting abortion access, and the rate at which they were introduced and passed was faster than in years prior. It also seemed impossible to combat these restrictions: At times, I truly felt helpless. By the end of this whirlwind 2021 session, Arkansas had passed 20 abortion restrictions--positioning the state to tie Louisiana's record from 1978 for most abortion restrictions passed in a single year.
Among these 20 is the near-total abortion ban that Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed into law in March, which we're challenging on behalf of our patients today. This ban would prohibit abortion in nearly every case, and impose criminal penalties on our doctors for providing abortion care.
The day Gov. Hutchinson signed it into law, patients immediately began calling the clinic in a panic to see if they could keep their appointments, and our staff had family members calling them to see if they still had jobs. Amidst this incredible stress, we tried to make clear that abortion is still legal in Arkansas, that our clinic doors are still open, and that we would continue to fight to keep them open.
In spite of these challenges, I remain incredibly proud of the work we do at the clinic, and cannot imagine not providing this care. Many staff members have been here for 10 to 15 years or more; it is their life's work. We are dedicated, compassionate, and have an amazing group of volunteers that do critical community outreach. Our patients depend on us for the care they need, and we are thankful for the physicians and staff who work tirelessly to make sure patients receive that care.
Abortion is essential healthcare, and there are still compassionate people in Arkansas willing to provide it, even as it gets more difficult with each attack and limitation. With our legal team, we will do everything we can to make sure the abortion care we provide remains accessible to anyone in Arkansas who needs it.
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Ending Poverty in the Richest Country on Earth
Let's be clear: poverty exists because we allow it to exist.
May 28, 2021
This week, we introduced a congressional resolution asserting that we can end poverty in the richest country on Earth.
We've had the opportunity to study poverty deeply. Rep. Lee has chaired the Congressional Task Force on Poverty and Opportunity since 2013. Rep. Jayapal chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Both of us worked closely with the Poor People's Campaign to produce a "People's Agenda" for pandemic recovery.
Even before the pandemic, more than two in five people in this country were poor or low-income, just $400 or less away from financial ruin. That's 140 million of us. During the pandemic, it got even worse. By the fall of 2020, 8 million more Americans had been pushed into poverty.
We can't end poverty without attacking the interconnected injustices of systemic racism, inequality, militarism and the climate emergency. That's why our resolution calls for a comprehensive response that prioritizes the needs of these 140 million people.
The American Rescue Plan, the Biden administration's COVID-19 relief package, brought crucial relief. But millions of jobs that were lost have not returned. An astounding 30 million people were put at risk of homelessness, and experts warn that the American Rescue Plan will fall short of helping them all.
But being poor in this country means more than going without money, a job or a home. It also means experiencing the brunt of climate disasters. It means mass incarceration--and frequent contact with militarized police forces. And it means ever-increasing restrictions on your right to vote, join a union or see a doctor.
Poverty, in short, intersects with every other injustice in our country.
For instance, poor communities--especially Black, Latina/o, Asian and Pacific Islander communities--are more exposed to air pollution that makes COVID-19 more dangerous. And they're more likely to work the front-line jobs that expose them to the virus.
While vaccines may eventually contain the pandemic, our costly and ineffective health care system will still leave us with the lowest life expectancy and the highest infant and maternal mortality rates among our peer countries. These crises most acutely affect poor and low-income Americans.
Meanwhile, poor people and communities of color are much more likely to be incarcerated or abused by police. Yet ballooning military spending and endless wars have siphoned resources from these same communities--while sending billions of dollars' worth of military equipment to civilian law enforcement, bringing the violence of those wars to our own streets.
And finally, with each passing day, new laws make it harder and harder for these impacted communities to vote. Hundreds have been introduced this year alone.
None of these problems stand alone. We can't end poverty without attacking the interconnected injustices of systemic racism, inequality, militarism and the climate emergency. That's why our resolution calls for a comprehensive response that prioritizes the needs of these 140 million people.
Alongside expanded social welfare programs and unemployment insurance, we're calling for a national, universal single-payer health care program that puts people before profits.
We're calling for a living minimum wage, the right to form unions and a federal jobs guarantee.
We're calling for a housing guarantee that ends evictions and expands affordable housing options and accessible quality education at all levels.
We're calling to transform our climate chaos to a green and renewable future--with equitable public transit, dramatic reductions in pollution and green jobs and infrastructure.
To root out systemic racism, we're calling on Congress to protect the right to vote, establish commissions on reparations for slavery and genocide and ensure the rights of Native people to their sacred lands. We must also enact comprehensive immigration reform that ends detentions, deportations and family separations. And we must end mass incarceration and the militarization of law enforcement.
Our nation has vast wealth and vaster inequality, which is why we're calling for fair taxation on the wealthy--and cuts to our enormous military expenditures. We're calling to end our wars and reconsider the harm done by sanctions and forward military deployments--and to transfer at least 10 percent of the Pentagon budget to fund community needs.
We call our resolution the "Third Reconstruction." During the First Reconstruction after the Civil War, Black Americans joined hands with white allies to build the power to rewrite state constitutions in most of the former Confederate states, winning the right to public education for all and other measures of progress. Multi-racial fusion coalitions were also key to the victories of the Second Reconstruction of the civil rights era in the 1960s.
Our current moment demands action of similarly historic proportions to heal and transform the nation. We need a Third Reconstruction.
A resolution is just the first step. Actually fulfilling it will require pressure from faith communities, unions, workers, immigrants and the racial justice, climate and peace movements. The Third Reconstruction is backed by the Poor People's Campaign, which will not rest until we achieve this goal.
Let's be clear: poverty exists because we allow it to exist. But in November, the people of this country gave their elected officials a new mandate to change that. With this resolution as a roadmap, we can do what needs to be done and deliver for people across America.
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It's Time to Break Big Pharma's Grip on Healthcare and Empower Medicare to Negotiate Cheaper Drug Prices
The Lower Drug Costs Now Act would be long-overdue step towards making prescription medicines more affordable for all Americans.
May 27, 2021
In the thick of the coronavirus pandemic, while receiving billions in taxpayer dollars to help develop critically needed vaccines, the biggest pharmaceutical corporations hoped no one would notice that they were raising prices on more than 800 prescription medicines that families rely on for their health and wellbeing.
That's nothing new: between 2007 and 2018, drug corporations increased list prices on prescription drugs by 160%. As a result, Americans today pay two- to four times more for prescription drugs than people in other countries for the same medicines. That's why Democrats and Republicans alike have campaigned for years to lower drug prices, because the cost is simply unaffordable for too many.
No matter what excuses we hear from drug corporations, prescription medicines can't help people if most Americans can't afford them. In his first address to Congress in April, President Joe Biden called for allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices, urging lawmakers to act this year. But he himself passed up a golden opportunity to include this policy in his American Families Plan.
Lowering prescription drug prices is politically popular--it's the No. 1 issue that voters want Congress to act on. More than 85% of voters in a January 2021 poll agreed that lower drug prices should be a top priority for the Biden administration.
Democrats in both the House and Senate have called for lowering drug prices as part of the American Families Plan. They followed the recommendations in a letter our coalition of 60 social, racial, and economic justice organizations sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer calling on them to advance legislation to stop price gouging and lower drug prices.
Making prescription drugs affordable isn't an issue the U.S. can put off. The price of prescription drugs is rising faster than the price of any other medical good or service. As a result of high costs, one-third of Americans say they've skipped refilling their prescriptions, and one-in-10 admitted to rationing medications in the past. American families' health and financial wellbeing is at risk.
To do so, Americans need their elected leaders to stand up for patients.
The drug-pricing legislation recently reintroduced by House Democrats, the Lower Drug Costs Now Act, would be a significant and long-overdue step towards making prescription medicines more affordable, and finally holding the pharmaceutical industry accountable for price-gouging that puts prescriptions out of reach for millions of people.
Critically, it would allow Medicare to directly negotiate prices on behalf of beneficiaries for the first time, saving taxpayers more than $450 billion. New polling shows that 85% of voters, including a majority of Republicans, support giving Medicare the ability to negotiate drug prices.
These savings could prove a critical resource in the Biden Administration's efforts to rebuild our economy, make healthcare more affordable, create jobs, and ensure accountability for taxpayer funding. Drug corporations would also no longer be able to charge seniors and families more for drugs in the United States than people in other countries pay for that same drug.
Real drug-pricing reform is the last thing Big Pharma wants: they've already launched a seven-figure ad campaign to oppose efforts to rein in their out of control price gouging. It's an industry intent on protecting the status quo that has made pharmaceuticals the most profitable industry in the U.S., even as a growing number of Americans struggle to afford the medications they need.
There's never been a better time for action by our elected leaders than now. Despite the industry's speedy production of vaccines we are still in the midst of a pandemic where access to prescription drugs is even more critical and concerns about affordability are magnified. To truly "build back better," we must make the most of this once-in-a-generation opportunity to reform our healthcare system to lower the price of prescription drugs.
After all, building back better is not possible if millions of people have to continue choosing between paying their bills or paying for prescriptions they need -- that's not a choice we should have to make in one of the wealthiest countries on earth. No matter what excuses we hear from drug corporations, prescription medicines can't help people if most Americans can't afford them.
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