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Big Money Equals Bad Politics
David Sirota Talks About How D.C. Lobbyists Have Kidnapped Our Government
Progressive political strategist David Sirota talks with Chief Editor Tim Brown about the organized subversion of American democracy at the hands of corporate bullies and the money-hungry politicians who let them get away with it. Then he gives us a reason to hope.
Common Sense Magazine caught up with David Sirota during a break at the Yearly Kos Convention in Chicago. He was there to participate in a discussion of issues affecting rural America and to share stories with fellow writers and members of the net-roots movement.
Here is the interview:
CSM: I wanted to ask you about your last book, Hostile Takeover. It's one of the best indictments of a corrupt political system I've ever read. I wanted to talk to you about some of the revelations in your book and get your thoughts on them.
Sirota: Thanks, I really appreciate it. What did you want to talk about?
CSM: Well, the first thing I wanted to cover was taxes. The standard pitch from corporations, politicians and right wing think tanks is that tax cuts are good for America. Whose America are they really talking about here? Who is getting the money?
Sirota: The term "tax cut" is a loaded term because it doesn't talk about who gets the tax cut. I mean, I can make an argument to you that, yes, tax cuts are really good for America, tax cuts that are progressive - ones that provide the most amount of benefit to the most amount of people. But "tax cuts" now means, unfortunately, giving tax cuts to a small handful of very wealthy people. There is no economic data to prove that is good for anybody other than the handful of people who receive them. And the idea that giving that small handful of people those tax cuts will somehow "trickle down" so that it's good for the economy just hasn't been borne out at all.
We have lived through six years of probably the most regressive tax policy in contemporary American history, and the economy is maybe okay at a macro level, but for the average person it's not better. In fact, it's probably worse, and that's why most people say they don't feel like their taxes have gone down and most people don't think the economy is working for them. I think progressives need to articulate that case. Instead of running away from the tax issue, they need to say that "conservative tax cuts" have resulted in higher taxes for most Americans.
CSM: You mentioned the "trickle down" theory, but there's another aspect of trickle down that rarely gets talked about. When the government cuts taxes at the Federal level how does that trickle down to the states?
Sirota: It drains the states of revenues. They would argue that by giving to the wealthy, they spend it to create jobs and those jobs create more tax revenue, but that's a laugh. It just hasn't happened. Here's the thing: If you believe in Keynesian economics, that the best way to fuel the economy is to stimulate it by putting more money into the economy - and most politicians believe that, even the tax cutters who say that if we cut taxes we'll infuse the economy with money - but there is nothing that says that giving that stimulus to a small handful of very wealthy people is a better stimulus than giving that money to the vast majority of Americans, whether through increased tax cuts or increased spending on social programs. I think there's more evidence that shows that the progressive tax cuts will be as good if not a far better way to stimulate the economy…
[Editor's note: One tenet of Keynesian (pronounced "Cain-sian") economics is that if the government spends money in the economy it will generate even more money. If you give more money to working people they will spend it to pay bills and for needed items, thereby stimulating the national economy. If you give it to the wealthiest people - supply-side free market liberalism - they will invest it. In a global economy this plays out badly for regular citizens because those investment dollars go into "emerging markets" like Indonesia and China where the wealthy can get a higher return on their investment because of lower wages in those countries. This robs the American economy of the money that would have been invested nationally to create jobs.]
CSM: I want to talk to you about so-called "free trade." NAFTA, CAFTA, you name an international trade agreement - they are heralded in the press as the panacea to our economic problems. While the overall economy seems to be generating profits, the regular worker is feeling more squeezed with every passing year. Where's the disconnect here? Are we just too lazy to compete? Is it our fault that we're not participating in the boom to our economy that Wall Street is seeing?
Sirota: No. It's not a coincidence that the barrage of free trade deals has happened at the same time that American workers wages are stagnating, that we are in the only time in history where corporate profits are rising, productivity is rising and workers wages are stagnant. What's going on is that workers no longer have the bargaining power to make sure that a better percentage of profits generated by the economy go to the workers. "Free trade" has stripped them of their bargaining power.
And it's very easy to understand. In earlier times the workers, whether they were in a union or not they could say, "we want better wages" to the boss and there were no policies and laws in place that helped the boss say, "No." Now we're in a situation where when workers say, "We want higher wages, we want more of a share of the economic assets that we're generating" we're in a time where the laws have been rigged through trade agreements to help the employer say, "No, and if you demand more we're gonna leave." We have tax laws that reward outsourcing; we have free trade agreements with countries that have no minimum wage, that have no environmental laws, and that have no human rights laws. And they incentivize companies to exploit worse and worse situations. Basically, we have a trade policy that allows countries to use bad behavior to create an economic comparative advantage. And that's very good for companies that want to cut costs, but it's very bad for workers.
CSM: It drives American workers toward the bottom…
Sirota: Exactly. We're competing in a downward spiral with Mexican workers who are competing in a downward spiral with Chinese workers and our trade policy follows the domino effect. We had NAFTA and a lot of our jobs went to Mexico; we had China PNTR (Permanent Normal Trade Relations) and a lot of those jobs that left the United States then left Mexico for China. Now we're considering doing a deal with South Korea that has provisions to allow a North Korean Free Trade Zone.
CSM: What does that mean?
Sirota: We've gone from creating incentives for companies to take advantage of cheap labor in Mexico to take advantage of cheaper labor in China and now we're actually considering incentives to allow corporations to take advantage of slave labor.
CSM: I have a bigger question that gets to why our leaders allow this sort of thing to happen to their citizens and it's at the heart of your book: In short, if our politics is fueled by private money isn't that why we have this problem?
Sirota: Absolutely. We all know what the solution is: You have to provide resources to candidates to run for office and make sure that those resources don't come with the expectation of legislative favors. You've got to create a way for a candidate to run for office where they aren't compelled to be corrupt. I mean, a lot of these rank-and-file members of Congress, they probably in their hearts want to do the right thing, but they're in a system that literally incentivizes selling out.
CSM: So why is it so hard to reform the system?
Sirota: Because every politician that's been elected to Congress, or elected to anything, is a winner in the current system. So asking them to change the system which they have mastered is a very difficult task. That means that the only way the system is going to be changed is by a frontal challenge to power. It's not going to come from benevolence from our politicians; it's going to come because they are forced to change the system.
CSM: How do we do that?
I think that the way they are going to be forced to change the system is, well, we have an idea of how it happened in Connecticut most recently. They had a giant scandal with their Governor (John Rowland was convicted in 2005 of selling his office for free trips) and the Republicans got so scared (of a public backlash) that they dropped their opposition to public financing of elections. And I think that we're seeing more and more of these scandals. This week it's Ted Stevens, a couple of months ago it was Conrad Burns. I think there's momentum building to start punishing the political parties who get in the way of real reform.
CSM: So, it's going to take scandal before anything gets done?
Sirota: I think that's unfortunately true.
CSM: Well, they just passed the lobbying and ethics bill in the Senate regarding earmarks and gifts. What did you think about that?
Sirota: All that stuff is good, what I know of the bill. The big stuff is good - yes, earmarks should be more transparent; yes, lobbyists shouldn't be allowed to buy lawmakers dinner. All that stuff is fine, but the bill deliberately doesn't go to the source of the problem. The source of the problem is money coming into the system with the expectation of legislative favors.
A lobbyist's power doesn't come from his or her ability to buy a politician dinner. A lobbyist's access and power is directly related to how much that lobbyist can raise for the lawmaker they are trying to influence. The politician listens to the lobbyist only as much as that lobbyist can funnel campaign money to them. Now, while what happened in the Senate is good, they're good steps, they are in no way steps that even try to address the fundamental problem. So, there is a bad quality to that bill if it is used as an excuse to do nothing more.
CSM: So, are you for public financing of federal campaigns?
Sirota: Absolutely.
CSM: I know that you've been working on a new book. How's that coming along?
Sirota: It's been great. It's a much different book than Hostile Takeover. It's going to be much more of a narrative, a first-person story looking at many of the different ways that people are organizing in the face of the economic class war that is being waged on ordinary Americans…I've looked at progressives and I've looked at very conservative efforts. The theme is that under incredible economic stress people are starting to organize all sorts of different ways to fight back - and often not in traditional ways. In fact, the organizing going on across the political spectrum may seem to be different, but actually in many ways it's tied all together in a sense that even goes beyond economics. They are all similar in that it is rising up against what is seen as a corrupt establishment.
CSM: You have a working title for it?
Sirota: The working title is The Uprising. It is scheduled to be released in the spring of 2008.
CSM: Who is your favorite writer?
Sirota: Saul Alinsky. The book is called Rules for Radicals. You should check it out.
[Editor's Note: Rules for Radicals was written in 1971 by political organizer Saul Alinsky as a political primmer for the Have-Nots to take power back from the Haves. Click the link above for a list of his "rules".]
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David Sirota’s book Hostile Takeover is one of the best political primers available for the average citizen to understand exactly how our democratic
process has been deliberately corrupted by high-powered corporate lobbyists.
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David Sirota appears on The Colbert Report
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