Democrats endorsing Right-Wing Tactic: “Pay-Go”
House leader Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats are vowing to abide by fiscally hawkish “pay as you go”. A rule that puts strong restraints on big legislative gains many progressive wanted to pursue in 2018 and 2020.
Pay as you go rules mean that rather than borrow money, the money has to come from somewhere else within the budget. What does this mean for the future?
According to Rep Raul Grijalva, who heads the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), “the Democrats would be foolish to adopt the fiscal restraints, especially in light of the Republicans’ newly adopted tax-reform law, which is estimated to add almost $2 trillion to the debt over the next decade.”
Grijalva continued, “The pay-go thing is an absurd idea now given the times and given what’s already been done to curry favor with corporate America,” Grijalva said.
Grijalva noted that “the Revenue losses created by the tax law are already squeezing federal programs favored by Democrats. Adopting pay go Rules on top of that, he argued, would only pinch them further. We’re going down a path that I think helped cause the Great Recession.”
Pay-Go sounds a lot like what the Neoliberals, like Reagan and Thatcher, pushed in the 1980–90s. Talking about reducing public spending on social services because they just don’t have the money for it. This is just a old right-wing talking point trying to do the “New Democrats” strategy of running to the right.
This another example of the Democrats running to the right and slapping progressives in the face. This is just the Establishment Democrats saying that America can’t have Tuition Free College, Single Payer Healthcare, A Federal Jobs Program, a Green New Deal, Federal Housing, rebuilding infrastructure and a 15 dollar minimum wage.
They don’t have enough money for anything the people want but they’re okay with a bloated military budget and just dumping 80 billion more into it. They have enough money to give to Wall Street for bailouts but they’ll never have enough to give for students to be able to afford college. The Democrats are getting ready to run in 2020 and lose because they are running on nothing and they refuse to change anything.
Maybe it’s times for “progressives” to start to realize that the Democrats are not the party of progressive change, they are the party of Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Big Business and the “second most enthusiastic Capitalist Party” in America. It’s time for Progressives and the Left to build a party for the People rather than work within one designed and set up for the Ruling Class.
Works Cited
Lillis, Mike. “Dem Leaders Embrace Pay-Go.” TheHill, The Hill, 6 June 2018, thehill.com/homenews/house/390898-dem-leaders-embrace-pay-go.
