No FDR, Obama Hands Heart And Soul Of Democratic Party To GOP

The Senate voted successfully for cloture yesterday on the Obama tax cuts deal hammered out between the White House and the Congressional Republicans last week, passing the procedural motion by a convincing 61-7 vote.  We can expect this bill to be on the Senate’s agenda for final passage sometime today.

But the Democratic caucus in the House said last week they would not go along with the White House deal in its current form and have called for additional changes, including an increase of the estate tax before falling in line behind the Senate.

If the Democrats are being “held hostage” by the Republicans, according to President Barack Obama’s latest interpretation of Republican abdurate behavior on extending the Bush tax cuts, then repeal of DADT is being “held hostage” by a White House negotiated tax deal that every Democrat seems to find odious, but appears to be resigned to passing, despite any misgivings they may have about giving away billions of dollars to the wealthiest of Americans.

Everything else on the Senate calendar has been held in abeyance, including DADT, which has a “whistling in the dark” chance of passing as a stand alone measure, introduced late last week by  Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-ME) and co-sponsored by Senators Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY) and Mark Udall (D-CO) with original co-sponsors. Bless them all for trying, although I believe it is a Sisyphean task, with little, if any chance of winning passage.   The DADT repeal vote could come as early as today or tomorrow.

As the 111th Congress lurches toward final adjournment, currently scheduled for Friday, despite opposition by many Democrats in the House caucus, there is no doubt that if the Senate version of the tax cut bill, if passed, is brought to the House floor, there will be more than enough votes to pass it, no matter how odious it seems. The question that remains unanswered is:  “Will Speaker Nancy Pelosi resist White House pressure to bring the Senate measure to the House floor without changes?”

With changes, the House version would have to return to the Senate for another vote taking additional time, something unlikely to be accommodated.  Thus, my restated pessimism about the odds of passing repeal of DADT, asumming a tax deal passed by Congress would politically trump any effort to repeal DADT.  And don’t forget this White House has been insisting that the START Treaty remains a huge priority for passage in the Senate, requiring 67 votes.

But before we turn the page on this Congress, let us not forget how this situation began: Obama political advisor David Axelrod announced just a few days following the mid-term elections’ debacle that the Administration would not fight the Republicans by opposing a temporary extension of the Bush tax cuts in the lame duck session of Congress.  An immediate uproar of opposition propelled a feeble attempt by the White House to walk this announcement back, but ultimately, Obama did indeed cave while shouting  a metaphorical “no mas!”

Never mind–if this odious deal comes to pass–Obama has not only foresaken a major campaign promise , but he has also betrayed his supporters, undercut the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives and given away the store to the Republicans signaling early that he had no stomach for a fight, even if such jawboning would galvanize his base.  Not to be content to accept such an unacceptable outcome, Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist, actually carried out a 9-hour “standing at the podium,” true fillibuster opposing the Obama tax deal last Friday.  Sanders did not support a vote for cloture Monday.

But what the hell–let’s just give away the farm–just the first rail of Democratic Party politics conceived and advanced by FDR in the first 99 days of his administration in 1933 amid the Great Depression, called a “New Deal”— which Congress rapidly adopted to “deliver relief to the unemployed and those in danger of losing farms and homes, recovery to agriculture and business, and reform, which included the banks and the financial houses”.

Sound faintly familiar?  Yes, FDR put together a social and economic platform to save the working man, the American family and provide for their economic security during his nearly 16 years as president.  The scion son of one of America’s wealthiest families, Roosevelt had the ability to articulate to the American public what he believed the country needed and the people deserved during the Great Depression.  He also possessed the requisite guts to take on the Wall Street barons and the bankers who stopped the American economy cold during the Great Depression by shuttering banks throughout the land, while many committed suicide as they came to ruin during the Wall Street Crash of October 1929.

FDR wrapped up the New Deal and Second New Deal that included Social Security and unemployment assistance into the framework of the “Four Freedoms”: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear–which he delivered to Congress during his State of the Union address, January 6, 1941.

These freedoms ring as true today, as they did nearly 70 years ago, when America would face an axis of fascism by a xenophobic Japan and a nationalistic Germany with a monstrous plan to subsume Europe under its control as it exterminated as many Jewry as humanly possible.  America’s economy had lagged for 12 long years following the Wall Street crash of 1929.  Bread lines stretched out across America and people begged to work for food.  There were thousands upon thousands of homeless families jumping trains, living in open fields and poverty struck tenements, which depression era photographers would capture for the ages.

At the end of 2010, America’s economy remains soft and millions are out of work, while many believe they will never work again.  College graduates are interning for no pay and string together short-term contracts with no benefits to survive.  We are at war, tied down in Afghanistan fighting an ephemeral enemy who bases itself across the porous border in Pakistan and fights further away in close by Middle East states such as Yemen. And we have yet to finish off a second war in Iraq.  These wars are burning $2 billion a week from an American treasury which is propped up by billions of dollars in loans from non-ally China.  This situation is simply unsustainable, even for America and all of its wealth.

With so much at stake for the American people, the “coup de grace” was personally delivered by Obama when he caved to the ascendant Republicans last week.  Obama and his negotiators willfully gave up the heart and soul of the Democratic Party to Republicans who proudly work, even brag about their representation of the richest among us.  Obama’s soaring oratory fails him in this moment–no words can save us from vacuous policies that throw good money after bad.

And so I quote FDR who so wisely and eloquently said on Jan. 6, 1941,

A free nation has the right to expect full cooperation from all groups.  A free nation has the right to look to the leaders of business, of labor, and of agriculture, to take the lead in stimulating effort, not among groups, but within their own groups.

The best way of dealing with a few slackers or trouble makers in our midst is,  first, to shame them by patriotic example, and, if that fails, use sovereignty of Government, to save Government…

Certainly, this is no time for any of us to stop thinking about the social and economic problems which are the root cause of social revolution which is today the supreme factor in the world.  For there is nothing mysterious about the foundation of a healthy and strong democracy.  The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple.  They are:  Equality of opportunity for youth and for others; jobs for those who can work; security for those who need it; the ending of special privilege for the few; the preservation of civil liberties for all and the enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.

So as Mr. Obama prepares for a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, I hope he will read FDR’s speech which seems to scream out to all of us nearly 70 years later.  We need not reinvent a wheel.  Take a page out of history Mr. Obama and fight for what is right for Americans–for what is urgently needed now–not in two years, not in eight years, but now.  If our leaders can’t fight for what is right and just during a tenuous time in our history, then what will become of this great experiment called America?