Editor’s note: This commentary is by Wallace Roberts, an award-winning journalist who has also worked a teacher and as community organizer on social and economic justice issues. He most recently was the executive director of Common Cause of Vermont and is currently a Networking Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University and is writing a book, “You Don’t Want to Go There,” about the nursing home industry.
[I]’m writing to urge you to take a stronger stand on one of the most important issues of our time, economic justice.
I won’t take your time reciting the statistics. Gross inequality of income and wealth in America are beyond dispute and conceded by many conservatives.
Both of you have enough political support in this state to guarantee your re-election, regardless of your stand on almost any issue, until the day you choose to retire, yet you have taken no significant action to reduce the gross income inequality that has grown rapidly in the past few years.
I respect the work you have done on issues like renewable energy and ensuring the integrity of our judiciary, but with all due respect, issues like those, while they have staunch opponents, don’t take much backbone to advocate. Basically, you have risk-free jobs for life. To me that implies an obligation to fight for what’s right.
I’m sure you believe that a member of Congress has limited time and energy and must pick his issues carefully to maximize his chances of getting a few bills passed. That just doesn’t cut it with issues of fundamental fairness. People are desperate and crying out for help. But as countless surveys show, people are also angry with Congress’ failure to take meaningful action on the issues that are important to them.
Look at what some of your colleagues (who also have safe seats in Congress) are doing as reported recently in “In These Times”:
• Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) has championed the cause of fast-food workers demanding $15 an hour.
• Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) joined other legislative and civic leaders who lived on the minimum wage for a week in August to demonstrate the need to raise the pay floor from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour.
• In Hawaii, Sen. Brian Schatz, who was appointed to the Senate in 2012 to fill a vacancy, made inequality a central issue in his August primary race, arguing for expanding Social Security benefits. It paid off. He eked out a narrow win over his challenger.
And at least two challengers are basing their campaigns this fall in part on similar ideas.
• Alanna Hartzok of Pennsylvania is challenging Republican Rep. Bill Shuster by making inequality a central theme of her campaign. Hartzok argues for a “new economy” of worker ownership, decentralization and environmentalism.
• Arizona Democrat Ruben Gallego’s support for expanding Social Security and capping tuition hikes helped him beat his primary opponent by 12 points, all but securing him the seat in this heavily Democratic district.
The cause of economic justice would be significantly strengthened if you declared your support of and your willingness to work hard for issues like these. Having an entire state congressional delegation fighting for these issues would guarantee national publicity and raising their profile in the public consciousness. That publicity could also begin to change people’s mind about whether big government is a good thing.
I have a suggestion for where you can start and that is to hold hearing on the federal government’s welfare, education, anti-poverty and job training programs in light of the findings published in the new book, “Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much” by Sendhil Mullainathan, a behavioral economist, and Eldar Shafir, a psychologist.
Mullainathan and Shafir show that many of the problems faced by low-income people stem not from their poor attitudes or some inherent inability to do school work or learn useful skills but from the fact that their minds are so preoccupied with the problems created by their scarcity of money that they literally cannot think about anything else.
Through the use of ingenious research studies, Mullainathan and Shafir show that many of the problems faced by low-income people stem not from their poor attitudes or some inherent inability to do school work or learn useful skills but from the fact that their minds are so preoccupied with the problems created by their scarcity of money that they literally cannot think about anything else.
These findings show that the basic assumptions of our education, job training and other anti-poverty programs are just flat-out wrong. It’s no wonder that after 50 years of efforts that have cost tens of billions of dollars, no real progress has been made. In other words, it’s not the fault of poor people that they remain poor, it’s because the means we have been using to rectify that situation are fatally flawed.
Calling Mullainathan and Shafir to a public hearing to summarize their findings with regard to the poor and then asking the responsible federal officials to dispute, refute or concede the truth of these findings would be a great public service.
Phil Hoff had tremendous courage to stand up 50 years ago in his successful race for governor and espouse liberal values against 100 years of Republican rule in the state. That might have been just a flash in the pan were it not for the accident of history that brought hundreds of progressive activists to the state beginning in the late ’60s.
Your elections and re-elections owe their success to Phil and those activists who completely changed the character of the electorate. We are a progressive state, and we want our elected representatives to work hard on one of the fundamental tenants of progressivism, economic justice. Bernie shouldn’t have to do it all by himself.
It’s payback time, gentlemen.
