Robert Borosage Archive

“Promises made, Promises Kept” will be Donald Trump’s slogan as he campaigns “six or seven days a week” for Republicans this fall. During the 2016 election, Trump promised workers “more jobs and better wages,” that he would bring jobs back from abroad.

“Every policy decision we make must pass a simple test,” he said, “Does it create more jobs and better wages for Americans?”

Trump not only hasn’t delivered for workers; he’s joined the other side. It’s not an accident that workers in America have suffered stagnant wages and reduced benefits. It is the result of a systematic corporate campaign to crush unions, rig trading rules to benefit investors and undermine workers, and roll back public regulations and investments that benefit working people. Trump’s administration and the Republican Congress are doubling down on that assault.

Workers get a better share of the profits they help to produce when they can organize and bargain collectively. Union workers still enjoy better wages and benefits than non-union workers. When unions are strong, even non-union workers benefit. But under a decades-long relentless corporate assault, unions now represent only 11 percent of all workers and less than 7 percent of those in the private sector.

“Trade wars are good, and easy to win,” tweeted Donald Trump when he threatened to slap tariffs on China and other nations he accused of “assaulting our country” last month.

Stock traders were spooked as China promised to retaliate. Commentators across the political spectrum warned of job losses, price increases, economic peril, and trade wars.

Progressives like Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren showed more sense, praising Trump for challenging China’s mercantilist policies, as did Conor Lamb, the surprise Democratic victor in the House special election in Pennsylvania.

Just because Trump denounces our “lousy trade deals” doesn’t mean Democrats have to defend them.

In fact, a majority of House Democrats has led the opposition to our corporate trade policies. Democrats torpedoed Obama’s Trans Pacific Partnership, long before Trump became president. They’ve demanded the renegotiation of NAFTA, and the Korean Free Trade Accord.

Wages have been stagnant through two official “recoveries” in this century, under both Democratic and Republican presidents. This week, beneath the stock-market gyrations, the mechanics that shackle the average worker’s wages were exposed once more—not in Donald Trump’s White House or Paul Ryan’s Congress but in the supposedly apolitical operations of the Federal Reserve.

In today’s economy, with weak unions and large, multinational corporations, wages begin to stir only when the economy nears full employment. When labor is in demand, workers can push for better wages and benefits. Companies find themselves under pressure to raise pay in order to avoid losing good workers to competitors.

Yet the mere hint of rising wages creates warning flags at the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank. Corporations could pass on rising wages to consumers by raising prices, and rising prices could feed inflation. The Federal Reserve has the dual mandate of fostering the highest levels of employment and stable prices. The Fed governors have decided—arbitrarily—that steady 2 percent inflation is the target that they hope to sustain. They maintain, despite little evidence, that once inflation starts it can spiral out of control, so they assume that they must act preemptively to slow the economy by raising interest rates. In turn, the economy slows, workers lose jobs, their ability to demand wage hikes is reduced, and inflation is slowed.

Sweeping victories in last Tuesday’s elections provided a bracing tonic for Democrats. “In case there was any doubt,” tweeted former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau, “the Resistance is real.” Tuesday’s victories should buoy Democrats but not mislead them. The reaction to Trump is fierce, but not sufficient to consolidate a new ruling coalition that can make the changes we need.

Turnout in Virginia, which featured the marquee gubernatorial matchup on Election Day, was at presidential year levels. Democrats, people of color, and self-described liberals came out in large numbers. Women voted Democratic by large margins. The Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Ralph Northam—a charismatically challenged, eminently decent, experienced, establishment figure—didn’t light that fire. Middle class voters in the Virginia suburbs braved a driving rainstorm to deliver a stunning rebuke to Trump, and to the vile “Trumpism without Trump” campaign run by former Republican lobbyist Ed Gillespie.

Democrats won big down ballot as well, capturing fifteen seats in the House of Delegates and coming close to erasing the previous 32-seat Republican advantage in the state House completely. This represents the most sweeping shift in control of the state legislature since the Watergate era. Insurgents also won, including Democratic Socialist Lee Carter, who took out the Republican majority whip, and Danica Roem, the first transgender candidate to win a state legislative seat in the country.

Virginia was not alone. Democrats also took back the statehouse in New Jersey, won full control in Washington State, elected the first Democratic mayor of Manchester, New Hampshire, and Charlotte, North Carolina elected its first African American female mayor. In Maine, voters overwhelmingly voted to extend Medicaid under Obamacare.

Having failed to repeal Obamacare, Republicans are turning to their true passion: cutting taxes and starving government of funds.

But, given the narrow margins and internal divisions of the Republican’s congressional majorities, particularly in the Senate, Democratic votes may well determine what, if anything, gets passed.

Democrats, their spines stiffened by a ferocious grass-roots mobilization, have demonstrated uncharacteristic unity in the early months of the Trump administration. But tax cuts — and the deep-pocketed lobbyists that push for them — are always hard for politicians to resist. Could this be the issue that divides the left?

Indeed, the three Democratic senators who dined with President Donald Trump this summer suggested just such a crack in party unity is possible.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) released a letter in August signed by all but three Democratic senators laying out principles for bipartisan cooperation: no tax breaks for the richest 1 percent; no increased burden on the middle class; tax reform passed by “regular order,” meaning through bipartisan Senate support; and the reforms must not sap the revenue needed to fund the government adequately.

The Republican tax plan is a lie. It’s being sold with the promise that the tax cut will create jobs and growth. In fact, the Republican tax cuts, if passed, will become the major obstacle to the very investments vital to generating good jobs and future economic growth.

Contrary to Donald Trump’s claims, the rich and big corporations will pocket the vast bulk of the tax cuts, not working people. The tax cuts won’t pay for themselves. They will increase the deficit. By 2027, one in four taxpayers will end up paying more. And for 80 percent of Americans, the tax cut they do get would be so small that it will go virtually unnoticed in most households. For example, the Tax Policy Center estimatesthat in 2027, the 27 million households with children and incomes under $75,000 will receive an average tax cut of all of $20 when the provisions are in full effect.

Americans get this. Fewer than one-third think they will end up paying less under the Republican plan, according to a new Politico/Morning Consult poll; about the same number think they’ll end up paying more. By a 41-28 margin, Americans know the rich will end up paying less, rather than more. Yet a plurality, 44 percent, thinks the tax cuts will have a “positive impact on the US economy,” while only 24 percent think the tax cuts will have a negative impact. The big lie still works.President Donald Trump argued that “our country and our economy cannot take off” without the tax cuts. Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, a true chickenhawk on deficits, now argues that the tax cuts are vital, even with greater deficits, because “we need to have the growth.” Yet there is simply no reason to believe the tax cuts will generate greater growth or more jobs.

The Labor Day parades are over. The bands have packed up. The muscular speeches celebrating workers are finished. The trash is getting collected from parks across the country. And now conservative politicians from Trump on down will revive their systematic efforts to weaken unions and undermine workers.

Trump – despite all the populist bunting that decorates his speeches – sustains the deeply entrenched Republican antipathy to organized workers. Their attack is relentless.

Trump’s budget calls for deep cuts in the Labor Department, eviscerating job training programs and cutting – by 40 percent – the agency that does research on workplace safety. It would eliminate the program that funds education of workers on how to avoid workplace hazards. It even savages money for mine safety enforcement for the miners Trump claims to love.

After crashing and burning in their quest to repeal Obamacare, Republicans have turned to their perennial passion: corporate and personal tax cuts. President Donald Trump has promised “the biggest tax cut in history,” and the GOP is ready to help him deliver.

According to early outlines of various Republican plans, the party will push for—wait for it—tax cuts skewed to the very rich along with deep cuts in corporate taxes. Trump wants the corporate tax rate to go from a nominal rate of 35 percent to 15 percent.

The Republican sales pitch invokes notions of magical tax-cut created growth, competitiveness, and other fantasies that will supposedly “cover” the cost of the tax cuts—or not.

The Trump administration has at times floated plans that would simply enact deficit-financed tax cuts for 10 or even 20 years, which would in turn put tremendous pressure on safety-net programs.

Congressional Democrats rolled out an economic agenda for the 2018 elections this week, and despite its bland title, “A Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future,” the overview document and agenda reflect the growing strength and influence of the populist movement in the Democratic Party.

At the same time, Our Revolution, the group growing out of the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign, the National Nurses Union, Fight for 15, People’s Action and others launched the “Summer of Progress,” an activist push to get at least half of the Democratic House members to endorse the “People’s Platform.” The contrast between the two documents reveals why the activist push is needed.

Both the People’s Platform and the Better Deal agenda are designed to offer a small number of bold, clear reforms to put before voters. The Better Deal agenda is focused on the economy; the People’s Platform includes broader issues.

Both documents are grounded in the populist analysis of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.  The Better Deal argues that Americans “believe the rules of the economy are rigged against them” by “special interests, lobbyists and large corporations In the last two elections. Both argue that Democrats must be clearer about what they are for.

Donald Trump has ginned up a continuous din in his first four months as president, with each outrage or grotesquerie immediately followed by another.

Amid the furors, it is easy to lose track of the key standard by which Trump will be judged by his key voters: his oft-repeated campaign pledge that “the American worker will finally have a president who will protect them and fight for them.” 

These pledges have continued since Trump became president. He told the Conservative Political Action Conference that “the forgotten men and women of America will be forgotten no longer.”

In the flood of reviews of Trump’s first 100 days, which focused heavily on his scandals and gaffes, few noted that he failed on this measure.

The working people who were crucial to Trump’s victory may not be impressed by more evidence that he’s a scoundrel. Most of them considered him a scoundrel when they voted for him. Their hope was that he might be their scoundrel, in contrast to the “corrupted politicians” and “failed political elite” that he railed against.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus released “The People’s Budget” this week, which it dubs a “roadmap for the resistance.” Maybe the mere mention of a federal budget plan makes your eyes glaze over, but the “People’s Budget” is a dramatic document.

Representative Mark Pocan of Wisconsin at a press conference for the “People’s Budget” on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, May 2, 2017. (Photo via Congressional Progressive Caucus)

It presents a compelling alternative to Donald Trump’s “skinny budget.” Unlike Trump’s fanciful promises, it offers a sensible path out of the hole that we are in. Its values and priorities reflect those of the majority of Americans. The Progressive Caucus frames its budget around the central challenge of our time: how to make this economy work for working people, and redress the savage inequality that is undermining our democracy. It offers a strategy to get there, and a budget framed to support that strategy.

Not surprisingly, this makes it an outlier in the beltway debate.

The June jobs report – a cheery 287,000 new jobs, with unemployment ticking up to 4.9 percent – is cause for both relief and concern.

The relief is that jobs creation picked up after the slowdown of April (revised upward to 144,000) and May (revised downward to 11,000). Even subtracting the 35,000 jobs “created” by striking Verizon workers returning to work, the June report suggests an economy that is continuing to grow and generate jobs.

The continuing concern is the pace of that growth. Jobs creation is slowing, down from a monthly average of 229,000 last year, to 196,000 in the first quarter, and now to 147,000 in the second quarter. Yet over 15 million people are still in need of full-time work. The percentage of Americans of working age who are employed or looking for work is at 62.7 percent, still below pre-Great Recession levels. Average hourly wages ticked up by 2 cents in June, and wage growth remains slow – 2.6 percent over the past year – far below the levels associated with previous recoveries.

This is the last jobs report before the political conventions formally kick off the presidential campaign (which already feels like a recurring and unending nightmare). For Clinton and Democrats, the report provides some relief that the economy isn’t slowing dramatically. For Donald Trump and the Republicans, it provides continued evidence that the economy isn’t soaring. Working families are likely to continue to wonder when they will begin to share in the recovery.

Texas populist Jim Hightower will present the Democratic Party platform committee with a Bernie Sanders-sponsored amendment to the draft platform when it meets in Orlando this Friday and Saturday. It will read:

It is the policy of the Democratic Party that the Trans-Pacific Partnership should not get a vote in the lame duck session of Congress and beyond.

This should be a no-brainer. All of the Democratic candidates for the presidential nomination were opposed to the TPP trade deal, as of course is Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.

The Clinton campaign has emphasized that there is “no daylight between Senator Sanders and Secretary Clinton on TPP.” Were that true, the 187-member platform committee would pass the amendment unanimously. But in the drafting committee, the Clinton delegates and most of the Democratic National Committee delegates voted against similar language and instead forced through language that states only that “there are a diversity of views in the party” on the TPP and reaffirms that any trade deal “must protect workers and the environment.”

Say what? Democrats are a big tent. There is a “diversity of views” on many issues. That does not keep the party majority from taking a clear stand in the platform. The primary reason offered to mute opposition to the TPP was that the platform should not “embarrass” President Obama, who appears intent on forcing a vote on the TPP in the lame-duck session. But President Obama isn’t on the Democratic ticket, and many of the other policies of the platform diverge from his agenda. His apparent insistence that the platform remain neutral on the TPP will surely be used by Trump to prove that Clinton’s stated opposition is a lie. That will add to doubts already widespread given the support she and her husband gave to NAFTA and other trade accords, including initially the TPP itself.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Wednesday departed from the running exchange of insults with Donald Trump to present her strategy to create an economy “that works for everyone, not just those at the top.”

Clinton presented herself as a populist progressive. The measure of our economy, she argued, is “how much incomes rise for hardworking families. How many children are lifted out of poverty? How many Americans can find good jobs that support a middle class life…jobs that provide a sense of dignity and pride?”

To achieve that, she called for “five ambitious goals” for the federal government. Clearly, the “era of big government is over” is over.

First, public investment: “the biggest investment in new good paying jobs since World War II.” Second, investment in education, with emphasis on “debt free college” or training for all (and some relief for those already burdened with student debt). Third, new rules to encourage companies to share profits with their employees, and ship fewer profits and jobs abroad, including opposition to bad trade deals like the Trans Pacific Partnership. Fourth, progressive tax reform requiring “Wall Street, corporations and the superrich to pay their fair of taxes.” Fifth, “put families first,” with a broad range of reforms to lift the floor under workers including raising the minimum wage, paid family sick days and vacation days, and predictable scheduling. And to achieve all this, curbing the influence of big money in politics: “I will fight hard to end the stranglehold that the wealthy and special interests have on so much of our government….”

Hillary Clinton became the “presumptive nominee” of the Democratic Party Tuesday night, and will be the first woman ever to win the presidential nomination of a major party.

Clinton won primaries in New Jersey, New Mexico and California, the large states at issue. She will finish the primary season having won a majority of the votes cast, a majority of the primaries contested, and a majority of the pledged delegates.

In a clear statement – largely distorted by the media – Bernie Sanders vowed to keep building the movement for change, designating the defeat of Donald Trump as the vital next step.

The Presumptive Nominee

Clinton’s pledged delegates will not provide the majority needed to win the nomination because superdelegates constitute 15 percent of the convention votes and have the right to change their minds up until they cast their votes at the convention. With polls showing Sanders running much stronger against Donald Trump, he has every right to lobby those delegates to vote for him.

Tax day. In the District of Columbia, the main post office stays open until midnight. Taxpayers who waited until the last moment line up to get a receipt showing they filed on time. America’s civic ritual.

But not everyone participates. America’s major corporations – Apple, Pfizer, Microsoft, Citigroup – have stashed a stunning $2.4 trillion abroad in order to avoid paying an estimated $700 billion in taxes.

Under American tax law, multinationals earning profits abroad get a credit for the taxes they must pay to a foreign country. They are supposed to pay the difference between those taxes and the U.S. rate. Congress passed a loophole in the law called “deferral.” They can defer paying taxes on profits earned abroad until they return the money to the U.S.

This doesn’t make much sense. Why would Congress want to give companies an incentive to ship jobs and plants abroad to earn profits outside the U.S.? And, of course, the whole thing is rigged. Companies routinely cook their books to record profits as earned in tax havens abroad. Plus, the money doesn’t really stay there. It’s on the books as foreign profits for accounting purposes, but it’s in American banks, and circulates in our economy. The corporations can borrow against those profits if they need money for investment at home, or for buying back stock to boost CEO bonuses. Of course, deferral is just one of many loopholes.

The largest employer of low-wage workers in America is the federal government. U.S. government contractors employ over two million workers in jobs that pay too little – $12.00 an hour or less – to support a family. Contract workers – organizing under the banner of Good Jobs Nation – have walked off of their jobs repeatedly in protest, demanding a living wage and the right to a union.

This Monday, on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s death, this movement will gain a powerful ally. Led by Jim Winkler, general secretary of the National Council of Churches and Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of the Catholic social justice lobby NETWORK, an interfaith coalition of religious leaders is issuing a call for “moral action on the economy.” They will seek to meet with presidential candidates, asking each to pledge that, if elected, he or she would issue an executive order to reward model employers “that pay a living wage of at least $15.00 an hour, provide decent benefits and allow workers to organize without retaliation.”

The movement for living wages is taking off. The federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 for nearly seven years. Unable to provide for their families, fast food and other low-wage workers began to demonstrate, even at risk of losing their jobs. “Fight for 15” – the demand for a $15.00 an hour minimum wage and the right to a union – swept across the country. And is beginning to win.

Bernie Sanders routed Hillary Clinton in three Western states on Saturday. He isn’t just winning; he’s winning with stunning percentages: Alaska 82-18; Hawaii 70-30; Washington 73-27. He’s taken five of six in the West, and chipped away Clinton’s lead in pledged delegates, trailing in pledged delegates by 1243 to 975.

The Clinton campaign, echoed by the talking heads, sought to discount the victories as “expected” from the “largely white and liberal” Pacific northwest. But just as Clinton’s victories in the South should not be dismissed because they were built on loyal African-American voters, Sanders’ victories shouldn’t be dismissed either. Liberals are Democrats, too.

Sanders remains an underdog, but he keeps surging and Clinton keeps sinking. Sanders has won 15 primaries and caucuses compared to Clinton’s 20, and he’s virtually tied four others (Iowa, Massachusetts, Missouri and Illinois). This from an unknown candidate who started at single digits in early polls. His crowds keep growing. The turnout in Washington was “huge,” state officials reported, nearly at the unprecedented levels of 2008. And he’s done this in spite of a mainstream media that can’t cover his campaign without dismissing it.

Sanders has now caught Clinton in the most recent poll of Democrats. He raised more money than she did in February (probably one reason the Clinton campaign didn’t blanche at sponsoring a $353,000-a-plate sit down with the Clooneys on April 15 in San Francisco. That number is not a misprint.)

Ten million people watched the Democratic debate on Sunday despite Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s best efforts to bury it on a holiday weekend night after the NFL playoffs. All three candidates had strong moments in a generally substantive debate. By the end, the exchanges between the two front-runners, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Rodham Clinton, clarified the choice they offer Democrats between change and continuity.

Clinton, the favorite, made a calculated decision to wrap herself tightly to Barack Obama. She praised his health care reforms and pledged to “defend and build on the Affordable Care Act” and to “make it work,” dismissing Sanders’ call for a Medicare-for-All plan as starting a “contentious debate.” She touted President Obama’s financial reforms as “one of the most important regulatory schemes we’ve had since the 1930s,” and promised to “defend President Obama for taking on Wall Street…and getting results.” She celebrated his economic record and promised to build on it. Naturally she defended his foreign policy record that she helped build as secretary of state.

Sanders, her fast-closing challenger, made his case for dramatic change from his first words in the debate:

As we look out at our country today, what the American people understand is we have an economy that’s rigged…We have a corrupt campaign finance system where millionaires and billionaires are spending extraordinary amounts of money to buy elections. This campaign is about a political revolution to not only elect the president, but to transform this country.”

The CNBC Republican presidential debate last night opened with a startling bolt of straight talk: “We are on the verge, perhaps, of picking someone who cannot do this job,” said Ohio Governor John Kasich, ignoring the inane moderator request that the candidates begin the debate by naming their biggest weakness.

“I’ve watched to see people say that we should dismantle Medicare and Medicaid and leave the senior citizens out – out in the – in the cold. I’ve heard them talk about deporting 10 or 11 [million ]– people here from this country out of this country, splitting families. I’ve heard about tax schemes that don’t add up, that put our kids in – in a deeper hole than they are today.”

Donald Trump sniffed dismissively: “[Kasich] was such a nice guy. And he said, oh, I’m never going to attack. But then his poll numbers tanked… And he got nasty.”

Straight talk never had a chance after that. Kasich began looking like the drunk railing at the end of the bar. And the debate veered into the wingnut fantasies about 10 percent flat taxes (Ted Cruz, Ben Carson), government so small “I can barely see it” (Rand Paul), corporations and markets that somehow self-regulate (virtually everyone), the liberal media and government as the root of all evil (unanimous).

It has come to this. In the last hours before a government shutdown, the Republican-led Congress passed a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government open for all of 72 more days (until December 11), with funding at current levels.

The CR did not include the right-wing’s most recent fixation – a cutoff of Planned Parenthood funding – so it passed with the votes of 186 Democrats and only 91 Republicans. That reality forced the resignation of Republican House Speaker John Boehner, removing the closest thing to adult supervision over the House Republican caucus. This is not the way to run a corner deli, much less a government.

The vote keeps the doors open but solves nothing. In December, the Congress will face another government shutdown, plus it will run into the expiration of the debt limit, enabling the wingnuts to threaten the good faith and credit of the United States government to achieve their obsessions – defunding Obamacare, ending Planned Parenthood’s support for women’s health care, gelding the Environmental Protection Agency or whatever. Meanwhile, the surface transportation bill – the minimum spending needed to sustain the trust fund that pays for repair of our highways – and the Export-Import Bank remain in limbo.

Before Boehner leaves his post and the Congress at the end of October, the leadership will join with the president to try to negotiate the top lines of a budget for the remainder of fiscal years 2016 and 2017 that would relieve the destructive, across-the-board cuts required from continuing sequestration mandates and find ways to pay for badly needed spending. Since Republicans refuse to consider new taxes, little relief is likely.

Chanting "$15.00 and a union," thousands of federal contract workers walked off their jobs yesterday, led by the Senate's cafeteria workers who serve Senators their food. They were joined by Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, and members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, led by Keith Ellison (D-Minn) and Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz). Sanders announced they were introducing legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $15.00 an hour. Sanders also reiterated his call on President Obama - joined in a formal letter by Elizabeth Warren and 18 other Senators -- to give preferential treatment to good jobs for employers in government contracting - employers who pay their workers a living wage, offer decent benefits like paid sick leave, and recognize the right to bargain collectively.

Action is long overdue. The Federal government is, as Demos reports, the largest low wage employer in the country. Senators - particularly the four running for president in addition to Sanders - ought to learn a bit about the lives of those who serve them every day.

Sontia Bailey, for example, is a cashier at the U.S. Capitol where Senators grab their coffee and granola. She earns $10.59 an hour, not enough to make ends meet. So she has a second job at fast food giant KFC which actually pays her more -- $11.00 per hour - than the contractor that runs the the Senate cafeteria does. As she puts it, "Colonel Sanders pays me more than Uncle Sam." She works 70 hours a week, Monday through Sunday, rising at 6:00 a.m. and getting back to sleep at 1:00 a.m. the next morning. When Jeb Bush suggests that workers have to learn to work "longer hours," she wonders what he can be thinking. The stress of working two jobs surely contributed directly to a recent miscarriage. "If I had just one good paying job," she writes, "I would be a mother today."

On a sunlit lawn in front of the nation’s Capitol yesterday, an impressive array of progressive legislators, union and civil rights leaders and public scholars lined up to sign onto New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “Progressive Agenda,” a brief platform on income inequality. De Blasio plans to add thousands more signatures while calling on candidates in both parties to join.

De Blasio’s bold initiative is not alone. In April, National People’s Alliance, USAction, the Alliance for a Just Society and the Campaign for America’s Future released the Populism 2015 Platform, promising to take it across the country. The Center for Community Change joined with civil rights and progressive groups to launch Putting Families First: Good Jobs for All. The Economic Policy Institute released its agenda on Raising Wages.

The Roosevelt Institute and the Center for American Progress offered more extensive analyses, the former a report by Joseph Stiglitz, “Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy,” and the latter a report of the Commission on Inclusive Prosperity, chaired by former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.

In the run-up to 2016 presidential race, press attention is sensibly focused on the money primary – the candidates strutting their stuff before deep-pocket donors who will decide which candidates get a real shot to compete with the already established leaders, Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton.

Overshadowed is the ideas primary – the competition to formulate a compelling message and agenda that appeals to voters. Hillary and Jeb have even postponed unveiling their ideas in order to focus on the money. But under the radar, in sharp contrast to the money primary, economic populism has become the coin of the realm in both parties. And on the Democratic side, populism is driving the ideas primary.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the only formally announced challenger to Clinton, is an unvarnished populist, seeking to rouse working Americans across lines of race and region against what he calls the “billionaire class.” But Sanders isn’t alone. Former senator Jim Webb of Virginia has a proud populist record – opposing corporate trade deals, warning of rising inequality, challenging the national security elite’s efforts to police the world. Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley is remaking himself into an economic populist, joining the opposition to President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. Clinton, the establishment champion, has put off the unveiling of her agenda, but has proclaimed herself the “champion” of “everyday people.” She has criticized soaring CEO pay, and has delivered forceful addresses for comprehensive immigration reform and against mass incarceration and the systematic racial bias of our criminal justice system.

“Patriotism,” as Samuel Johnson warned, “is the last refuge for a scoundrel.” As the administration has ratcheted up the pressure to pass fast track authority that will grease the skids for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)accords, it increasingly invokes national security as the central rationale for the treaty, with the president warning that “we must write the rules” or China will.

Even the administration’s own figures suggest there will be little economic benefit from the accords – and those estimates have always slighted the cost in jobs and wages at home. The hype now exceeds all limits. We keep hearing about the 95 percent of consumers that live outside the U.S., as if this treaty were about them. But the treaty excludes the major population centers of Asia – China, India, Indonesia. 550 million of the 750 million included are in the Americas, not in Asia, most of whom we already have agreements with. And the Asian Pacific Economic Council, established at America’s behest, already includes all of the major countries, including China and Russia, and aims to move to free trade by 2020.

For the treaty to make a major contribution to changing our failed trade policies – which even President Obama admits haven’t lived up to the hype – it would have to deal with currency manipulation. But that reality is explicitly not on the table.

The race for the Democratic nomination for president was transformed today as populist stalwart Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders announced his candidacy.

The mainstream media immediately focused on the horse race – assessing Sanders’ standing in the polls (low), money prowess (small), and name recognition (little). Sanders is not young, not a pretty face, not easy.

But in a populist moment, Sanders is the real deal. He has fought on the side of working people for decades. He has been one of the few consistent champions that working people have had as the rules were rigged against them. He was against the corporate trade deals from the beginning. He fought against the tax breaks for the rich and the corporate tax havens. He stood up to save Social Security and Medicare from privatization and grand bargains. He has championed universal health care as a right, taking on the insurance companies and the pharmaceuticals. He opposed Iraq from the first lie. He has been a consistent champion for action on green jobs to meet the challenge of climate change. No one has been a greater or more impassioned opponent of the corruption of our democracy by big money.

A populist energy is building in America, and beginning to drive the debate in the Democratic Party. It’s escalating both in the battle of ideas and in action on the ground. It’s starting to propel change at the state and local level, and challenge the limits of the debate at the national level.

Movements grow when workaday people make themselves subjects of history. We saw that with Occupy Wall Street that swept across the country. The Dreamers and extraordinary mobilizations of Latinos transformed the immigration debate. #BlackLivesMatter and the demonstrations after Ferguson put our criminal injustice system onto the agenda. The largest demonstration of this century came as activists marched in New York City protesting the lack of action on catastrophic climate change.

On April 15, low-wage workers will walk out of their jobs in cities across the country – and the world – in the “Fight for 15,” an effort supported by over 2,000 organizations, demanding a $15 an hour minimum wage and a union. Fast-food workers will be joined by restaurant workers and by college associates, skycaps and airport baggage workers, all struggling with poverty jobs.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus unveiled its fiscal 2016 “People’s Budget: A Raise For America” one day after House Republicans released their “A Balanced Budget for a Stronger America” proposal. The CPC touted a $1.9 trillion investment in America’s future and over 8 million new jobs. The House Republicans bragged about cutting $5 trillion over 10 years. The sharp contrast between the two reflect stark differences in values and ideology – and a basic choice of whether government will serve the many or the few.

The Republican budget is rightly scorned as a fantasy, a dishonest, Orwellian document, packed with magic asterisks and budget sleight of hand. But what is interesting is what Republicans claim that they value.

The debate over fast-track trade authority – designed to grease the tracks for a vote on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) accords still in negotiation – ought to be the occasion for a fundamental review of our global economic strategy.

We know that it is broken. We’ve racked up unprecedented deficits year after year. The unsustainable imbalances contributed directly to the bubble and bust that blew up the global economy. We’ve watched good jobs shipped abroad, devastating America’s manufacturing prowess. We’ve seen workers’ wages decline and inequality grow to new extremes. Doing more of the same and expecting a different result is the very definition of insanity. Clearly, a comprehensive review is long overdue.

Instead, as the debate over fast track heats up, it has already degenerated into a demeaning ritualistic debate, with the lobbyists for fast track recycling the same arguments, often the same phrases, that have been trotted out for every trade debate since President Bill Clinton peddled NAFTA. Who are we going to believe? Their shopworn promises or our own lying eyes?

Polls show Democrats want a contest, not a coronation, for their presidential nomination. The press yearns for a primary contest, if only to have something to cover. A raft of reasons are floated for why a challenge would be useful, most of them spurious.

Hillary Clinton doesn’t need a contest to get her campaign shipshape. She’s already been central to three presidential campaigns, as underdog, incumbent and, disastrously, overwhelming favorite. She has every high-priced operative in the party. If she doesn’t know how to put together a campaign by now, an upstart challenger won’t help.