Congress
The latest poll from Sienna College says that Julian Schreibman, the democrat vying for the 19th Congressional District seat in the House, replacing Maurice Hinchey, is only five points down to incumbent (although in a far different looking district now) Chris Gibson. That’s narrowed from 16 in a previous poll.
This race can be vexing to figure. Both visited our office, and we’ve watched them perform a couple of times around.
Schreibman’s campaign has consisted of shredding Gibson’s claims of being a moderate, as directed from Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee headquarters. Few locals dot the campaign staff. It’s been strictly as case of following the blueprint as dictated from above. Schreibman is a tepid speaker who has hewed strictly to the party line when discussing policy. His credentials are thin and his off-the-rack campaign has done little to inspire.
The Republican Gibson, who’s held the former 22nd Congressional District for one term, has charmed his way into the hearts of some local Democrats, who are vigorously advocating for him. He certainly sounded like a moderate when he met with us, telling how he was already on Grover Norquist’s bad side and that he had among the most bipartisan records in Congress. He voted for the first Ryan budget in Congress, one that would have turned Medicare into a voucher program, but against the second and now supports the bipartisan Cooper-LaTourette budget, based on the findings of the Simpson-Bowles panel (which include a mix of spending cuts and tax increases, the latter anathema to Gibson’s fellow House Republicans). His moderate side says, about Obamacare, “The president had the right idea, to drive down costs and expand access. I just don’t think that it’s going to live up to expectations.” Very tempered language, very reasonable. He’s wonkish about policy and advocates in a reasonable fashion for his views.
Yet, you can look at a Gibson video from 2010, when his district was decidedly more conservative in demographic — (https://district20ny.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/chris-gibson-for-congress-campaign-update-5042010-2/) — and hear a different guy…with the frothing language of the tea party coming from him, as he angrily called the health care plan an “abomination,” amid continual claims that our “freedoms” are being threatened. Quite a different performance.
Gibson, when push comes to shove, will toe the Republican line — which, in the past two years, has been solely obstructive toward any progress in government, sandbagging for primarily political reasons the recovery from the worst recession since the 1930s. It is a party that has lurched so far to the right that it now seems bent on returning America to the Gilded Age – a time of extreme income inequality, self-interest and boundless hunger for wealth and resources; a time before public education, unionized labor, environmental regulation, the G.I. Bill, rural electrification, Medicare, Medicaid, Federal Disaster Relief, the Voting Rights Act. The rich — now universally hailed as Randian “job-creators” — were doing just fine before these came along, and fought it every step of the way. They could afford the best medical care, sent their children to private schools, purchased vast country estates, and let everybody else fend for themselves. After all, if they were clever and hardworking, why were they so poor? (Sound familiar?) Democrats today are no longer trying to make progress but play defense on the gains of the last 100 years.
The GOP is moving right so fast its presidential nominee can’t keep up. Mitt Romney’s signature achievement as a governor was a law that required all Massachusetts citizens to purchase private health insurance. It was an idea plucked from right-wing think tanks. Now, less than a decade later, the idea is denounced as socialism; a government power-grab.
It’s absurd.
Four years ago Romney, along with John McCain, Newt Gingrich and other major Republicans, supported the scientific consensus on manmade climate change and asserted the moral imperative that we do something about it. Now, after four more years of extreme weather and the largest arctic snow melt in recorded history, he mocks it.
Poverty, health care and the environment are important issues, but this election is, after all, about the economy; specifically, the economy and the middle class. If Congressman Gibson supports anything in the realm of Simpson-Bowles, he’ll be violating his no-tax-hike pledge to Grover Norquist’s group and will cursed by the faithful as a RINO (Republican In Name Only). This is a party that, after eight years of wasteful war and entitlement spending, capped by a financial collapse caused by deregulation, claims it’s had a come-to-Jesus moment on spending. The new rule: we must balance the budget ASAP and taxes, though the lowest since before WWII, are the highest they can possibly be, so we need to slash spending on health care, education, research and infrastructure. Many sincerely believe that we should think of the country as a household that needs to tighten its belt. Yet this ignores both the lessons of history and present evidence. Interest rates are at rock-bottom. Other countries are paying us to hold onto their money. Countries that have tried austerity — like Britain — and those who have austerity thrust upon them — like Greece, Ireland and Spain — are sliding back into recession because that’s what happens when you fight a recession with austerity. In a household, you cut expenditures and your income doesn’t change so you make progress. As a country, when you cut expenditures, effectively your income falls too because GDP, the main indicator that corresponds to income in the metaphor, is a measurement of economic activity. If the private sector is spooked and the government is laying off cops and teachers, there’s going to be less economic activity — fewer cars, flat-screen televisions and homes purchased.
Actually, government must spend when private capital sits on the sidelines. Today, corporations are sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars. Giving those companies and the folks who run them more tax breaks isn’t going to make them hire people — demand for their services will. That demand comes not from the wealthy, who have a surplus income and invest much of it, but from the middle and lower classes, which spend nearly all they take in. Come up with jobs for them to do and they’ll spend their incomes. That’s how you fix unemployment and grow the economy. As the economy grows, inflation will pick up, making our debts relatively smaller. Interest rates will creep up. That will be the time to tighten our belts – when things are good. We won’t get there if someone doesn’t prime the pump.
It’s possible the GOP actually believes this because many Republicans are proposing big increases in the military budget while warning about job losses next year if automatic defense cuts go into effect. Apparently government doesn’t create jobs – unless it’s in defense.
Of course, the government can and does create jobs in all sectors of the economy. We shouldn’t restrict those jobs to making weapons – that’s not a recipe for a great nation.
That said, we’re sympathetic to the underlying belief of those on the right that a government-driven economy is inherently less dynamic, less innovative and more wasteful than one driven by free enterprise. The reason we must defend what government can do is because the current thinking seems to be that because government does not do everything well, it should do nothing at all. We’re more inclined to believe, as Churchill did, that the reason for government to do these things is not because it does them well, but because if it doesn’t do them, no one will.
Just as Grover Norquist desires in a president not an inspirational leader but someone who will carry out his agenda, in a congressman we require neither bravery, experience nor charisma, but someone who will stand up for the social contract. In 2012, with this House of Representatives, that person cannot be a member of the House Republican Caucus, and he certainly cannot have voted for slash-and-burn Ryan budget before he voted against it (the first was actually more extreme).
We wish Gibson the best and we know he’d continue to serve the public well if he’s defeated this week. If he wins, we hope he stands up to the ideologues and supports a budget solution that combines spending cuts with revenue.
But our choice for our voice in Congress is the democrat, Julian Schreibman.
