Progressive change halted by institutions by Ben Fritz

At a time when even preserving what is progressive about the status quo is a major challenge, it is natural for liberals to be pissed at the sellout centrists we campaigned for and helped vote into office. Watching our supposedly Democratic President propose balancing the budget in seven years while cutting taxes and not touching military funding, or seeing half the Democrats in Congress voting for the Republicans' draconian welfare reform bill of last year, is enough to make a liberal want to retch. However, while I'm always the first one to join my fellow liberals in bashing President Clinton or House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt as the institutionalized sellouts that they are, this type of thinking not only does nothing to effect real change, but it is based on very simplistic perceptions of how our government works. It is all too typical of liberals that we (myself included) spend our time complaining about how our political leaders continue to fail us by not reflecting our values exactly(one amazingly annoying example: an ongoing argument in The Nation about whether Vermont's Bernie Sanders, the only Socialist in Congress, is a true liberal), rather than focusing on the institutions that, by their nature, fight against progressive change at every step. Liberals make a major mistake in concentrating their efforts on legislation that comes up in Congress, rather than seeing what comes before and after each bill - we must be concerned with how we get the politicians we have and how their policies are put into action. Although campaign finance is hot right now, news coverage doesn't get at the heart of the problem. The media, political analysts, and most people don't realize just how insidious and antidemocratic the American method of financing campaigns is. Although proposals to limit soft money and ban foreign contributions are a positive step forward, they don't even begin to approach the fundamental change that is needed to restore the voters' sovereignty. If we want real democracy, we must remember what the term truly means and take on all political contributors who try to distort it under the false mask of "freedom of expression." It has been documented by organizations like Common Cause that campaign contributors get a return on their money through Congressional action; political scientist Thomas Ferguson was even able to write an entire book on the premise that one can predict a politician's votes merely by analyzing the make-up of his or her contributors. Businessmen didn't get to where they are by giving away money. In fact, investing in politicians is one of the best values out there, and campaign contributors know it. True campaign finance reform would institute public funding of all campaigns and either limit contributions to a level most people can afford or totally eliminate them. Unfortunately, this is still considered a radical idea by those in Congress who we need to pass the reform, but who benefit from the status quo. It is a difficult battle that would probably require amending the Constitution, but if we truly believe that democracy is based on one person-one vote, not one dollar-one vote, it is a battle that must be fought. Politicians will never be responsive to the voters until votes count more than the dollars needed for the next campaign ad. Even if politicians were passing more progressive legislation, however, our government still would not implement progressive policy. As William Greider demonstrates so well in Who Will Tell the People?, the bureaucratic agencies of the government charged with implementing and enforcing the law are very often in bed with or impeded by the very firms they are charged with regulating. The Superfund program, for example, has been a disaster for many years due to industrial groups' use of lawsuits and other measures to make the EPA totally impotent. When constant battles in court over every regulation and interpretation occupy a governmental agency, there are few resources left to actually do the work the agency is charged with in the first place. As progressives focus on how politicians are failing to pass the legislation we want, conservatives have used legal maneuverings and the spread of disinformation to keep the laws we have on the books from being enforced. This not only prevents effective regulation from taking place, it also contributes to the public's growing feeling that government is fundamentally flawed and cannot do the work it has taken on already, let alone do more. Until liberals take on the Right in the courts, the Washington political culture (where business-funded "studies" often become accepted fact), and the public sphere, any progressive policies we do pass will fall victim to the conservative perversion of government's ability to regulate. Finally, liberals must consider what government has the power to actually control. Consider economic policy, an area where progressives are constantly pushing for stronger or more fair growth but are not willing to take on the institutions that have the most control. While we on the Left push for federal and state budgets with fairer tax codes and more public investments (surely worthy goals), the unelected Governors of the Federal Reserve board have the power to affect the economy much more than any federal or state budget. The Fed's power to regulate interest rates and the money supply has a profound impact on the nation's rate of economic growth and inflation rate. The decisions of the Fed on how much economic growth or inflation is "acceptable" affects the prices we all pay and the incomes we all receive at jobs that might or might not exist, depending on the Fed's actions. Given that most of the Fed's governors come from the banking and finance industries, it should come as no surprise that inflation, which is of great concern to those with big investments in the bond market, consistently takes precedence over unemployment reduction, which is of concern only to those of us who actually work for a living. The challenge to progressives clearly is not only to change fiscal policy, but to go after the Fed and work for reform that would make the policies of the Fed reflect the economic interests of most Americans. These are just a few examples of the many insidious ways in which our democracy is undermined on a daily basis. Liberals' failure to take on these fundamental problems leaves us constantly complaining about leaders who don't make the changes we want. When we allow a few people to dominate the selection of candidates, enforcement of laws, and sphere of influence of our government, we give up on our progressive values. Although good, moral leaders could greatly improve the state of our union, they will always be working against a system that does not have the interests of most Americans in mind. Until liberals focus less on the failure of our leaders and more on the failure of our political and economic institutions, we will never see true progressive change take place.

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