harelb@cabot.dartmouth.edu (Harel Barzilai) (06/15/91)
"With last year's budget agreement, under which both domestic and
military spending have a fixed three-year spending cap, this
informal division has become official.
"That means that increases in domestic spending for one purpose can
be paid for only by decreasing another. This, of course, pits
low-income workers and the poor against middle-income workers,
just as it pits education advocates against health-care
supporters, environmentalists against housing groups, and so on...
14 IN THESE TIMES MAY 15-21, 1991
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L e a d e r s h i p C o u n c i l W o u l d L e a d
D e m o c r a t s I n W r o n g D i r e c t i o n
=========================================================
The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), a group of elected offi-
cials seeking ways for their party to recapture the White House, met
last week in Cleveland. Their chairman, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton
struck the keynote. Most of his speech consisted of platitudes about
a "new choice" that offered nothing new. Clinton would retain the
Democratic Party's traditional commitment to the poor, particularly
poor children, he said, but he would also develop a new ability to
sell the party as the advocate of the middle classes. This would be
done by convincing the "very burdened middle class" that the Dem-
orats can be trusted "to defend our national interest abroad, to put
their values in Democratic social policy at home" and to spend
their tax money "with discipline." In short, Clinton wants a kinder,
gentler Republican Party.
The theory underlying the DLC's approach -- accurately reflected
in Clinton's words -- is that Democrats have lost the past three presi-
dential elections because they tilted too heavily toward the poor,
particularly blacks, and because they have insufficiently supported
military spending. And there is a perception among parts of the elec-
torate that this is so, even though no recent Democratic candidate
for president fits this profile.
Neither Jimmy Carter, nor Walter Mondale -- much less Michael
Dukakis -- challenged the Reagan-Bush priorities that gave us federal
budgets so loaded with military spending that little was left for so-
cial needs. Indeed, the escalation of military spending was begun
during Carter's presidency, and it has been supported by presiden-
tial candidates and most congressional leaders ever since. True,
Mondale did give lip service to the needs of the poor during the last
stages of his campaign in 1984. But since he did not challenge the
military priorities reflected in the Reagan budget, his crocodile tears
about the poor gained him little credibility among the poor and lost
him support among the middle classes who feared they would be
stuck with the bill.
If the Democrats want to win the presidency next year -- and more
important if they are to deserve to win -- they will have to represent
a genuine alternative to the Bush administration and its priorities.
To do that they will have to define national security and well being
in terms of the health and welfare of the American people, and not
in terms of our ability to police the world in order to protect inter-
national corporate interests, mislabeled as "national interests."
The American people have faced the inevitability of crises in pub-
lic education, health care, housing, the environment, the nation's in-
frastructure, mass transit and the growing disparity between rich and
the poor for the past decade or more. These crises are now in full view
and loom larger with each passing year. They cannot be solved
by a federal government that allocates only 15 percent of its budget
to all of the domestic needs of the nation while spending more than
that on its military establishment.
It is true that the Democrats' attempts to relieve some of the suf-
fering of our nation's least-affluent citizens have lost them support
from some of those in the middle. But that is because these at-
tempts have been made at their expense, and never at the expense
of the military-industrial complex. With last year's budget agree-
ment, under which both domestic and military spending have a fixed
three-year spending cap, this informal division has become official.
That means that increases in domestic spending for one purpose
can be paid for only by decreasing another. This, of course, pits low-
income workers and the poor against middle-income workers, just
as it pits education advocates against health-care supporters, en-
vironmentalists against housing groups, and so on in all the possible
combinations and permutations.
This is an ingenious device to divide and neutralize all of those
who, in their narrow ways, are fighting to improve the quality of life
for the American people. But it also makes it easier for people to see
the long-term underlying reality. And it offers an opposition party a
chance to counter the existing national priorities. If the Democrats
really do have the best interest of working Americans at heart -- and
if they want to become a real opposition party -- here is their oppor-
tunity.
Such a move would require a genuine campaign of education. It
would require more than sound bites and slogans. But it would
clearly be in the best national interest, a truly patriotic endeavor for
which the majority of the American people might be grateful. And it
might even inspire that half of the eligible voters who stay home on
election day to come out and vote.
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