The Real Republican Strategy

By Robert Reich
blog
February 17, 2011

http://robertreich.org/post/3353591266

The Republican strategy is to split the vast middle and
working class -- pitting unionized workers against non-
unionized, public-sector workers against non-public,
older workers within sight of Medicare and Social
Security against younger workers who don't believe
these programs will be there for them, and the poor
against the working middle class.

By splitting working America along these lines,
Republicans hope to deflect attention from the big
story. That's the increasing share of total income and
wealth going to the richest 1 percent while the jobs
and wages of everyone else languish.

Republicans would rather no one notice their campaign
to generate further tax cuts for the rich -- making the
Bush tax cuts permanent, further reducing the estate
tax, and allowing the wealthy to shift ever more of
their income into capital gains taxed at 15 percent.

The strategy has three parts:

The battle over the federal budget.

The first is being played out in the budget battle in
Washington. As they raise the alarm over deficit
spending and simultaneously squeeze popular middle-
class programs, Republicans want the majority of the
American public to view it all as a giant zero-sum game
among average Americans that some will have to lose.

The President has already fallen into the trap by
calling for budget cuts in programs the poor and
working class depend on -- assistance with home
heating, community services, college loans, and the
like.

In the coming showdown over Medicare and Social
Security, House budget chair Paul Ryan will push a
voucher system for Medicare and a partly-privatized
plan for Social Security -- both designed to attract
younger middle-class voters.

The assault on public employees

The second part of the Republican strategy is being
played out on the state level where public employees
are being blamed for state budget crises brought on by
plummeting revenues. Republicans view this as an
opportunity to gut public employee unions, starting
with teachers.

Wisconsin's Republican governor Scott Walker and his
GOP legislature are seeking to end almost all union
rights for teachers. Ohio's Republican governor John
Kasich is pushing a similar plan in Ohio through a
Republican-dominated legislature. New Jersey's
Republican governor Chris Christie is attempting the
same, telling a conservative conference Wednesday, "I'm
attacking the leadership of the union because they're
greedy, and they're selfish and they're self-
interested."

As I've noted, this demonizing of public employees is
premised on false data. Public employees don't earn
more than private-sector workers when you take account
of their education. To the contrary, over the last
fifteen years the pay of public-sector workers,
including teachers, has dropped relative to private-
sector employees with the same level of education -
even if you include health and retirement benefits.
Moreover, most public employees don't have generous
pensions. After a career with annual pay averaging less
than $45,000, the typical newly-retired public employee
receives a pension of $19,000 a year.

Bargaining rights for public employees haven't caused
state deficits to explode. Some states that deny their
employees bargaining rights, such as Nevada, North
Carolina, and Arizona, are running big deficits of over
30 percent of spending. Many states that give employees
bargaining rights -- Massachusetts, New Mexico, and
Montana -- have small deficits of less than 10 percent.

Republicans would rather go after teachers and other
public employees than have us look at the pay of Wall
Street traders, private-equity managers, and heads of
hedge funds -- many of whom wouldn't have their jobs
today were it not for the giant taxpayer-supported
bailout.

Last year, America's top thirteen hedge-fund managers
earned an average of $1 billion each. One of them took
home $5 billion. Much of their income is taxed as
capital gains -- at 15 percent -- due to a tax loophole
that Republican members of Congress have steadfastly
guarded.

If the earnings of those thirteen hedge-fund managers
were taxed as ordinary income, the revenues generated
would pay the salaries and benefits of over 5 million
teachers. Who is more valuable to our society --
thirteen hedge-fund managers or 5 million teachers?
Let's make the question even simpler. Who is more
valuable: One hedge fund manager or one teacher?

The Distortion of the Constitution

The third part of the Republican strategy is being
played out in the Supreme Court. It has politicized the
Court more than at any time in recent memory.

Last year a majority of the justices determined that
corporations have a right under the First Amendment to
provide unlimited amounts of money to political
candidates. Citizens United vs. the Federal Election
Commission is among the most patently political and
legally grotesque decisions of our highest court --
ranking right up there with Bush vs. Gore and Dred
Scott.

Among those who voted in the affirmative were Clarence
Thomas and Antonin Scalia. Both have become active
strategists in the Republican party.

A month ago, for example, Antonin Scalia met in a
closed-door session with Michele Bachmann's Tea Party
caucus -- something no justice concerned about
maintaining the appearance of impartiality would ever
have done.

Both Thomas and Scalia have participated in political
retreats organized and hosted by multi-billionaire
financier Charles Koch, a major contributor to the Tea
Party and other conservative organizations, and a
crusader for ending all limits on money in politics.
(Not incidentally, Thomas's wife is the founder of
Liberty Central, a Tea Party organization that has been
receiving unlimited corporate contributions due to the
Citizens United decision. On his obligatory financial
disclosure filings, Thomas has repeatedly failed to
list her sources of income over the last twenty years,
nor even to include his own four-day retreats courtesy
of Charles Koch.)

Some time this year or next, the Supreme Court will be
asked to consider whether the nation's new healthcare
law is constitutional. Watch your wallets.

The strategy as a whole

These three aspects of the Republican strategy -- a
federal budget battle to shrink government, focused on
programs the vast middle class depends on; state
efforts to undermine public employees, whom the middle
class depends on; and a Supreme Court dedicated to
bending the Constitution to enlarge and entrench the
political power of the wealthy -- fit perfectly
together.

They pit average working Americans against one another,
distract attention from the almost unprecedented
concentration of wealth and power at the top, and
conceal Republican plans to further enlarge and
entrench that wealth and power.

What is the Democratic strategy to counter this and
reclaim America for the rest of us?

    * Robert Reich, a professor of public policy at the
    University of California at Berkeley, was secretary
    of labor during the Clinton administration. He is
    also a blogger and the author of "Aftershock: The
    Next Economy and America's Future." More: Robert
    Reich

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