Today the Senate found the spine that had turned to jelly in the House and passed a more humane stimulus bill. It included rebates for those of us on disability, Social Security and veterans’ disability benefits that the House refused to include. Last night the Senate came within one vote of over-riding a Republican attempt to stall an even more far-reaching bill that would have included an extension of unemployment benefits and increased subsidies for home heating costs. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama flew back to vote for the measure while John McCain cleverly dodged voting on it.
It was over a week ago the I learned that I would not be receiving one of the coveted Bush tax rebates, due to the stinginess of the Bush Administration and the spinelessness of the House Democrats. You see, I am on Social Security disability and for some bizarre reason, George Bush and Nancy Pelosi did not feel those of us living on disability deserved a tax rebate.
In fact the House did not give rebates to anyone living on Social Security. This was not only inhumane but stupid, since phones immediately began ringing off the hook in Washington as the powerful lobby of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) made its feelings known. To AARP’s credit it also included those of us on disability in their efforts. The size of this phone campaign says something about Representative Pelosi’s lack of leadership skills, since she angered one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington when she could have enlisted them to help include people on Social Security in the House bill.
Why Pelosi and the President would leave us out is beyond me. Their ostensible reason was that it would cost too much. So apparently those of us on Social Security disability are not worth much to Nancy Pelosi and George W. Bush. That’s too bad because we could be any of you, felled by an injury, an illness, a congenital condition. We are where we are through no fault of our own, but through having drawn a bad hand.
Of course, you would understand this a bit better if you read Nancy Pelosi’s financial disclosure form which shows she knows nothing of lives that I and others on Social Security must live. The form goes on with pages and pages of investments that clearly indicate Pelosi is a millionaire several times over. Here are some of the choice entries:
25 Point Lobos, Commercial property valued at $1-5 million
45 Belden Place, San Francisco, a four story commercial building valued at $1-5 million
820 Francis Drake Blvd., San Anselmo, commercial property valued again at that magic $1-5 million
Auberge du Soleil, a resort hotel valued at guess what?
Forty-Five Belden, an investment company valued again at $1-5 million
Nine Forty Five Battery, a real estate partnership and I don’t need to tell you the amount by now
This is someone who hasn’t a clue as to what it is like to live on a fixed income or what it is like to be disabled. All of us with disabilities wrestle with our sense of worth. I had always hoped to be able to provide for my son’s college education. That I could not has been very difficult to deal with. In short, I feel not only that I let him down but totally failed in my role as a father. Now Bush and Pelosi want rub it in and say I’m not worth much in their eyes either.
The real downer in all this is that the Senate bill as finally passed will cost $168 billion; Pelosi’s cost $161 billion. In other words, we are willing to rip-off seniors and the disabled for a paltry $7 billion. That’s a little less than the cost of ten days of the Iraq War. It is two million more than the nine million lost and unaccounted for by the war effort.
And God forbid we touch those millionaire’s tax cuts. Those who own places like 820 Francis Drake Blvd. or people who spend more on a bottle of wine than I receive in a year are going to get to keep their tax cuts, while I am denied a measly $600. Speaking of wine, according to Napa Valley online Pelosi and her husband also own two vineyards. This is America?
But make no mistake about it; something else is at work here that few have dared mention: this bill represents the first shot in what could develop into very messy intergenerational warfare. You can read it between the lines of the debate in the House with its references to working people. The House made a very conscious choice to exclude seniors and the disabled in favor of the younger generation.
Given what promises to become an increasingly tense debate over Social Security as the Baby Boomers age, we can expect more of these battles over the next twenty years. The fate of the older generation is a time bomb whose fuse has already been set in motion by the awful power of demographics. The health care and welfare of retirees will place an overwhelming burden on the younger generation who will face the double bind of having to take care of themselves and their parents.
That’s what this bill was all about and it only involved a relatively minor issue and a small amount of money. What will happen when the choice involves even more money and tougher trade-offs? This is why the action of the House is so significant, because for most of the last century the central idea of the Democratic Party has been that a major function of government is to keep the playing field level. If the Party abandons that principle then it will be tougher to make those decisions and the intergenerational warfare will become ugly.
Hoping to find some consolation in the debate, I opened the Congressional Record to read the remarks made about what I call the “Screw Seniors and Disabled Bill.” I had expected to find someone — one measly vote–who strenuously opposed this bill on behalf of seniors and the disabled. I found no one, not even the so-called candidate of principles, Dennis Kucinich, not the lion of the Civil Rights movement John Lewis, not the founder of the Congressional Black Caucus and self-styled “fighter for working people,” John Conyers, not the son of the man who spoke for disaffected and the excluded, Robert Kennedy, junior.
These are people who once stood strong for the level playing field. Some of them like John Lewis even got their heads bashed in for their beliefs, so it pains me that none of them had the courage to stand up for seniors and the disabled. That not a single member of the Democratic Party had the guts to oppose the bill because it screws those of us who can not work, stands as the new low point in party history.
There were three timid souls who at least mentioned the Social Security issue–Representatives Stark, Lee and Van Hollen–but they did not change their votes. Stark gave the most impassioned speech:
Unfortunately, one important group was left out of this rebate. Millions of seniors receive their only income from Social Security. They do not have enough “earned income” to receive the refund check, yet they are among our most vulnerable. At a time when we are reaching out to accomplish the dual goals of stimulating the economy and providing relief for those most adversely affected, this omission is glaring.
But Nancy “I’m with You George” Pelosi offered her answer, which is startling in its lack of compassion.
So, it’s important that this bill not get overloaded. I have a full agenda of things I would like to have in the package, but we have to contain the price, and in doing so, you have to establish your priorities. And the priority we had was to put $28 billion in the hands of 35 million families who had never received a rebate or a child tax credit before, and to do it quickly. That was our priority. Because if you do, to do that, again, is true stimulus. All the other things, while worthy and important, again, we made a decision, because that’s where we could find our common ground. But if we heap too much on top of that package, it will then take us deeply into debt.
So this is the best the Democratic leader can do in explaining to millions of senior and disabled Americans why they were left out of the bill: “we have to contain the price.” This from the owner of a resort hotel? Well, let me tell you something Representative Pelosi, my life should be worth $600, but apparently you don’t think so. Your belief that we should balance the budget on the backs of those who are living on fixed incomes and unable to work is a moral outrage and an insult to Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and countless Democrats who fought for us for over 50 years. In fact here’s the ultimate irony of Pelosi’s bill: not even someone like FDR would qualify for a rebate since he was disabled.
But Pelosi’s moral failure did not stop there. After the close vote in the Senate last night Majority Leader Harry Reid wanted to continue the fight, but Pelosi stuck her nose into the debate and told the Senate to knock it off.
The retreat came after Pelosi sided with Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Pelosi urged the Senate to stop its infighting and pass the bill.
Here is what Pelosi said Thursday morning to justify her putting pressure on the Senate:
We are eagerly awaiting the decision of the Senate as to how they will go forward. … If they do not, we stand ready to do so. Decisions have to be made, and again we want this to be timely so that it makes a difference for people right away, targeted to those in the middle class, and those who wish to be in the middle class; and … [timely], so that people will use it.
There’s that word again, “middle class.” It is a word that as far as I know never passed from the lips of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman. I said it before, Pelosi is waging class warfare.
Pelosi’s intervention and the House bill truly came very close to ending of the idea of the level playing field that guided the Democrats for most of the twentieth century. Pelosi traded the Party’s most precious asset–its principles–for a few votes. The day of that vote, January 29, 2008 is a date that should be recorded as the day Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues tried to bury Bryan, Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy. After almost two decades of slowly caving in to the Republican Counterrevolution, the House Democrats finally reached a point where they no longer stood for anything other than getting votes.
But it doesn’t end there. The final moral and leadership bankruptcy of Nancy Pelosi was revealed by the shape of the final bill which as passed by both the House (H.R. 5140) and Senate DID include money for Social Security recipients and disabled veterans. I short. Pelosi gave away something she did not need to give away and what did she give it away for? A few votes? A chance to say she had cooperated with a bankrupt, lame-duck President? A chance to stand together with the “Boner” of the House John Boehner and announce a “bipartisan bill?” An irrational fear that the GOP might play the tax and spend game next November?
Morality aside, this was just plain inexcusable political incompetency. Clearly Pelosi cut Social Security recipients out of the bill without even touching base with the AARP, which is sort of like trying to slip through pro-life legislation and not talking with the National Organization for Women. When it comes to seniors and the disabled we are not on her Rolodex.
When the AARP began turning up the pressure and the Senate vowed to put those of us on Social Security in the stimulus package, Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which has monitored the stimulus debate, said:
Who’s going to vote against that?
He might start with Nancy Pelosi. Reid had the final word:
If we had listened to the House, 21.5 million seniors would have gotten nothing and 250,000 veterans and their widows would have been left behind.
Thank you, Senator Reid.
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