A Legislative Agenda for the First 100 Days

Let’s imagine that, after several months of drafting, the final touches are being placed on what has come to be known as The First 100 Days: A Working People’s Agenda for the First 100 Days of the Incoming Democratic Administration. This project has identified several key areas where the new Democratic administration must take bold steps within its first 100 days.

The responsiveness of the president-elect to The First 100 Days will depend not only on the logic and persuasiveness of the document itself, but also on the capacity of the constituencies uniting behind this document to back up each word with people power.

The Crisis

The United States has plunged into a significant economic crisis that, at a minimum, is heading toward a severe recession. Yet the crisis is not simply about the immediate economic situation. A series of factors have contributed to an economic unraveling that is fueled by political uncertainty:

• The living standard has declined for the average U.S. worker since the mid-1970s. While productivity has increased, workers’ pay has decreased. Structural unemployment has worsened as sectors of the economy have begun to reorganize, move, or disappear altogether. In addition, the adoption of neoliberalism as the given economic framework in the capitalist world generally and the United States in particular has meant an assault on the public sector and public service, a factor that became tragically apparent when Hurricane Katrina hit. Meanwhile, the domino effects of a credit crisis (that began as part of the speculative boom in housing prices and values) continue to destroy the lives and savings of millions of working people.

• Neoliberal globalization, in both its military and nonmilitary forms, has brought unprecedented levels of migration. In the United States, as part of this global migration, we have seen a steady increase in immigration beginning in the 1970s (particularly from Indochina), through the 1980s (largely as a result of the Central American wars), into the 1990s, and today (stemming from the collapse of the Soviet bloc, along with the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA] and the migration of Mexicans into the United States).

• Efforts at some form of national health care have been undermined since World War II, largely by political conservatives. Renewed attention to the more than 44,000,000 people lacking any health insurance, along with the legions of people who have inadequate health care coverage, surfaced in the early 2000s.

• Workers remain under attack, and not just as a result of a problematic economy. The ability of workers to join or form unions has declined with each year.

• The global community is becoming less equal. In terms of income and wealth, inequality has consistently grown under the neoliberal order. In the United States, the top 1 percent controls more than 35 percent of the wealth. At the global level, the richest 225 individuals have more wealth than the bottom 47 percent of the world’s population. This dramatic wealth disparity, not seen in the United States since the 1920s, is a major source of social instability and resentment, undermining the entire notion of democracy.

• Inequality in the United States also has a racial and gendered face to it, due to a regression from the victories of the civil rights and women’s movements, along with the growing tendency to blame the setbacks of white men on those who have been subjected to historic discrimination.

• Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the national security/neoliberal authoritarian state have changed the terms of domestic and international politics. In addition to destroying the countries involved, these wars are a tremendous drain on the U.S. budget (with a cost of approximately $845 billion by the end of 2008). Insecurity in the United States has also increased in response to the rising global resentment toward U.S. policies abroad. The growth of the neoliberal authoritarian state has brought a decrease in actual democracy and civil liberties.

The time has now come to fight for the bottom 80 percent.

Federal Response

It must be understood that the efforts within the first 100 days cannot represent the totality of the new administration’s program. A mandate to bring about more sweeping change must be organized and mobilized over the coming months and years. This will require a combination of movement-building and building a broader social consensus in favor of significant structural change.

Economic Triage

The ongoing economic meltdown, particularly the collapse of the housing bubble and the lending/credit/foreclosure calamity, calls for both immediate relief and long-term management. This will require the sort of economic aid that has been diverted to cover the Iraq/Afghan war costs, and attention must ultimately be paid to reversing the more than 30 years of attacks on working people and their declining living standards. In the short-term, however, several steps need to be taken, including, but not limited to:

• A moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. Immediate steps must be taken to halt foreclosures and evictions, while providing immediate assistance to those affected by these actions to renegotiate the terms of their debt. This may mean federal assistance to pull individuals out of usurious loans, allowing them to more comfortably rebuild their financial standing; this would be a step just short of declaring personal bankruptcy. The Republicans’ efforts to restrict individuals’ ability to declare personal bankruptcy must be reversed. The new administration must also reestablish the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC). This would be a 21st-century version of the New Deal measure that statutorily arranged a temporary corporation to stabilize uncertain mortgage markets. Upon reinstitution, the HOLC would acquire defaulted loans from mortgage lenders and offer sustainable refinancing options for homeowners to prevent future foreclosures.

• An extension of both unemployment and food stamp benefits. The Bush administration has adamantly held the line against such expansion. But greater numbers of the working poor have come to depend on food stamps in order to survive, and the current apportionment insufficiently reflects today’s cost of living. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates that the current food stamp benefit averages about $1 per meal per individual. Benefit amounts are based on the USDA’s Thrifty Food Plan―a theoretical diet created in the 1930s to provide minimally adequate nutrition at a low cost―which hasn’t been updated since 2003. Additionally, according to the Bread for the World group, most food stamp households spend 80 percent of their benefits by the 14th of each month. Thus, the food stamp system must be retooled to meet the full nutritional needs of its recipients.

• Immediate public service job creation. The federal government needs to infuse the economy with funds to prevent further collapse. As part of a longer-term initiative, the federal government must begin emergency public-sector reconstruction work, focusing on bridges, tunnels, and levees. We need a program along the lines of that proposed by President-elect Barack Obama, who suggested the dedication of $210 billion to create construction and environmental jobs: $60 billion would be directed to a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank to rebuild public projects such as highways, bridges, and airports, and $150 billion would be earmarked for the creation of 5 million green-collar jobs to develop more environmentally friendly energy sources. This would be funded through cuts in military spending.

• Federal intervention to halt the collapse of student loan programs. A hidden crisis that is part of the larger credit crunch has been the declining number of banks that offer affordable student loans. This has resulted in a higher demand for available loans and the elimination of higher education opportunities for many students. A federal intervention, therefore, is needed to make sufficient funds available. This could take the form of legislation proposed by Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) in April 2008 to increase federal student aid. This proposal would, among other things, reduce students’ need to take out costly private loans by increasing their access to guaranteed low-interest federal loans. The bill would increase federal loan limits by $1,000 a year for dependent undergraduates and by $2,000 a year for independent undergraduates and students whose parents’ credit score disqualifies them from getting federal parent loans. The new administration should also take steps to restrain predatory lending.

• Elimination of Bush tax cuts. Bush’s tax cuts, along with the Iraq and Afghan Wars, have been bleeding the economy. Steps must be taken to reclaim the money that has been disproportionately funneled to corporations and the wealthy. Though longer-term tax reform will be necessary, the first step is to stop the hemorrhaging.

• Federal aid to the states. Despite growing constraints on state budgets (particularly within the context of the rising unemployment and foreclosure rates), the federal government has increasingly meted out severe budget cuts. Federal assistance should provide the states with more of a safety net as they struggle to balance their budgets.

• A universal health care initiative. Universal, single-payer health care cannot take flight within the first 100 days. The groundwork, however, must be laid immediately. The new administration must:

• Expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), as proposed by the Democratic congressional leadership in 2007.

• Establish a commission to draft legislation for universal single-payer coverage. Plan for a one-year drafting period, followed by national town meetings and hearings. Aim for passage before the midterm elections.

A Qualifying Thought

This agenda will be moot without strong backing from social forces that are prepared to press for its implementation. Any demobilization of those who successfully brought the Democratic candidate to victory will increase the right-wing leverage to assert its own agenda. Right-wing forces will push for a continuation of the Bush administration’s anti-progressive policies. Thus, if we are not prepared to consistently place enough pressure on our “friend” in the White House, we should expect a repeat of the Bill Clinton years―an era in which there was (technically) a high degree of access to the President and top cabinet officials, but the progressive social movements were afforded very little actual power.

The choice is ours, and we have precious little time to decide how we want to proceed.

Adapted from an article appearing in the fall 2008 New Labor Forum (Vol. 17 Issue 3).