One on One With Rep. Jan Schakowsky: "We Are Not Helpless!"
by:
Alissa Bohling, Truthout | Interview
Rep. Jan Schakowsky's (D-Illinois) $227 billion jobs bill was more or
less dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled House. And while she's
proud to say it left its mark on the president's American Jobs Act,
that bill is stalled out in Congress. But in a wide-ranging interview
last month, Schakowsky insisted that a jobs bill must pass. In a
rhetorical landscape overrun with hyperbole, she claims that today's
political battles really are "epic," and she remains ambitious on every
front, from auditing the military to experiencing firsthand what it
means to rely on food stamps. In this conversation with Truthout,
Schakowsky envisions a not-so-distant future where food banks set up
shop on Capitol Hill, foreclosed homeowners trade their sadness for
anger like bankers trading credit default swaps, and the public comes
forward "with their hair on fire that ordinary people deserve better."
Alissa Bohling: As you promoted your jobs bill before
introducing it in Congress, you really emphasized that you were relying
on the American people to make it a reality. But you've also
acknowledged that a lot of people feel helpless right now with regard to
the economy. What would you say to the public, and especially to those
people who feel apathetic or disenfranchised, or perhaps are hesitant to
participate in something like a mass demonstration?
Rep. Jan Schakowsky: The reason I wanted to really
sell this bill even before the president introduced his, is that we are
not helpless in the face of this crisis, that there are things that we
can do.
We know the American people think that job creation is the number-one
priority. When asked, is it deficit reduction or jobs, overwhelmingly
the American people - Republicans, Democrats, even people who
self-identify as Tea Party - think that jobs are more important than
debt reduction.
I was on the Simpson-Bowles Commission, and the cuts that were proposed
did not go into effect until 2015, realizing that we have a fragile
economy and that budget cuts would exacerbate the problem, not help the
problem, as the Republicans like to say. And the American people get it,
they support that idea.
Republicans like to say, oh well, it's just public-sector jobs and
those aren't real jobs, and those don't really do anything to the
economy. Of course, that's just ridiculous - I don't even get that. One
of my Republican colleagues from Illinois said, on television, well the
government can make jobs, but only the private sector can create jobs.
What does that even mean? I said to him on television, "I don't even
know what you're talking about!"
AB: Do you think he was being disingenuous? It looks like the
same know-nothing strategy as saying taxing businesses slows job
creation, when there's strong evidence that's not the case. But we hear
these arguments over and over. Does anyone making them actually believe
them?
JS: I think there are some people there that are
believers, that are persistently sticking with this kind of trickle-down
idea that some of these individuals are job creators.
Let me give you an example of how false this notion is. When the
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) did not get funded because of the
Republicans, 4,000 FAA workers were furloughed, but 70,000
private-sector construction workers were laid off. Yes, the money came
from the federal government, but these are private sector workers who
were doing the construction programs. So, I don't know what they're
talking about.
This idea that we are not helpless, that we can put people to work, I
think makes total sense to the American people. These are very real
jobs, and they allow individuals to go out and be job creators.
And that's the difference in philosophy, too: that the job creators are
ordinary Americans with money in their pockets that allows them to go
out and buy things and be customers, and that what businesses need -
more than confidence, more than tax cuts - they need customers. That's
what the CEOs are saying, that's what the small businesses are saying,
"We need people to come and buy, and then we'll be able to hire more
people." So, that was the idea of my bill. I never saw it as a total
answer, but you know, 2.2 million more workers would, as the president
said about his bill, help to jumpstart the economy.
AB: And the bills, both yours and
Obama's, face a lot of resistance, especially on the issue of funding
them by raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations.
JS: Yes. They [the opposition] floated this idea - I
think they're still at it - of class warfare. But of course, what Barack
Obama is trying to do is stop this war on the middle class that has
been going on for decades. From 1983 to 2009, 80 percent of the increase
in income went to the top 5 percent, and the bottom 60 percent lost 7.5
percent in income. We've got the biggest income disparity in our
country since 1928, and when you've got a situation with the 400 richest
Americans having as much wealth as the bottom 150 million Americans,
which is about half the population - and that's the largest of any major
industrialized country - this is not good for our economy, and it's not
good for our democracy.
AB: So, if, as you say, the American people really get it, that
we need jobs and we don't really need to worry about the deficit at
this point, are they doing enough to put pressure on the president, to
put pressure on Congress, to follow these priorities that they've
indicated in polls and elsewhere?
JS: At this point, what we need to do is rally around
the president's bill. The question is, are we putting enough pressure on
the Republicans, who insist on calling rich people the job creators,
and their jobs program is deregulating everything. We're about to have a
debate on it right now, on clean air, clean water. This is really Dirty
Air Week, because they want to just get rid of all those regulations,
set the companies free to do everything they want. And that's what we do
a lot in the Energy and Commerce Committee, is fight against the
deregulation, putting all kinds of toxic pollutants into the air and
water.
AB: And the same strategy that is used on the environment is
being used on the jobs front: anything that's bad for corporations is
then turned around and portrayed as being bad for the economy as a
whole, most often by Republicans and sometimes Democrats, too. How do
you battle against that kind of strategy? You've fought it on military
funding, as well, for example.
JS: I guess it depends what you mean, where to battle.
They have a majority right now in the House of Representatives. We're
passing all kinds of junk right now. And this bill, called the
Transparency in Regulatory Analysis of Impacts on the Nation (TRAIN)
Act, which basically gets rid of regulations on toxins and on clean air,
it's going to pass. [It did.]
There's no way to win those battles right now in the House of
Representatives, so the battlefield is really out in the public. And
once again, the public does not accept their formula, that you have to
choose health or jobs, that it's one or the other. The American people
want both, quite rightly.
And of course, as Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator
Lisa Jackson testified today, there's a huge amount of jobs created when
you have regulations that require pollution control because it develops
a whole new industry that helps with compliance. Their whole argument
right now is a jobs argument, when Lisa Jackson comes in, that the EPA
is a job-killer. And again, I don't think people buy that. The polling
data says they don't buy that.
These are epic battles right now, really. Politicians always like to
say that the next election is the most important ever. But this one
really is about - as the president said - what we're dealing with now is
really about the heart and soul of our country. If we can just mobilize
around the things that most Americans believe, and in forceful and
clear and repeated kind of messaging, tell the truth - because we're
going to be up against well-funded lies.
AB: Citizens United and ALEC changed everything.
JS: It changed everything, and it completely coincides
with the shifting of wealth to he wealthiest. They're not just putting
it under the mattress. They have succeeded, through policy changes, to
become the wealthiest, and now they're using their wealth to seal the
deal. Now they're spending it on television, and calling President Obama
everything from anti-Israel to anti-jobs to anti-Medicare, and it
matters not if it has a shred of truth in it - they just keep repeating
it and repeating it.
AB: What is morale like among the Democrats when the battle is often a losing one at this point?
JS: In the House, that's certainly true. A lot of the
worst of what the Republicans do doesn't see the light of day in the
Senate. You know, they're definitely making some progress legislatively,
because of the last election. But I expect that the public opinion tide
is going to turn, now that the president is out and about in the
country, making a strong populist argument that is really about the
middle class.
AB: Although he's still calling for cuts to entitlement programs as well, which isn't terribly populist.
JS: Well, except that, you know, he's not talking any
longer about raising the age of Medicare. Social Security, as you
noticed, was not part of the proposal - which it shouldn't have been,
because it has nothing to do with the deficit. He issued a veto threat,
which is unusual when you make an announcement of a proposal, that if we
don't see significant revenue increases, then he certainly has no
intention of doing anything at all with Medicare; we hope that will be
true with Medicaid as well. And so, you know, I feel like this president
- how can I put this? He reads all these studies, he pays attention to
data-based conclusions and analysis, and I feel like we have an
opportunity to make the case on specific Medicaid and Medicare
proposals.
Look, and Democrats, we're not entirely against - I'd be more than
happy to have Medicare, for example, negotiate with the drug companies
for lower prices. That would reduce the cost of Medicare. There are ways
to make these programs more efficient. We can't turn a blind eye to
good ideas either, just because it's in the realm of Medicare and
Medicaid. What we want to prevent is cuts in benefits.
AB: The military budget is now under more scrutiny than ever,
and you've been a big critic of private contractors, through your Stop
Outsourcing Security Act and other means. Now that it's been shown in
the public record that private contractors create a climate of impunity
in war and also inflate the cost of waging war in general, do you think
that issue will make its way into the supercommittee as they look for
places to cut?
JS: I really hope so. You know, God bless the Project
on Government Oversight (POGO) for doing a study to show what I've
thought for a long time, that private contracting is really not
cost-effective, on top of jeopardizing our mission and undermining our
values as a country. I'm happy that the president is looking at $1
trillion in savings as we end combat troops in Iraq and wind down the
war in Afghanistan, but I am concerned about what that means in terms of
contractor presence, and making sure that we can really realize those
savings.
AB: Because you think when the troops come out, contractors will go in?
JS: I'm concerned about to what extent our uniformed
military will be replaced with civilians. One of the reasons I've been
so focused on these private contractors is that I think their presence
masks the real footprint and scope of the war. We don't even count them
when they're killed. We talk about troop numbers. We don't really talk
about, in a way that it penetrates, contractor numbers. Sometimes we've
had more contractors than uniformed military or blue badge
[intelligence] people.
AB: There is an audit going on at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) right now around a conflict of interest
regarding contract awards to a company that DARPA's director, Regina
Dugan, used to head. But aside from piecemeal audits like this, do you
think there will ever be an audit of the entire Pentagon, as you have
called for?
JS: The lack of knowledge even of how many contractors
there are, at the State Department, the Department of Defense, even the
United States Agency for International Development (USAID) - it's just
remarkable, how little visibility there is on those numbers. Any kind of
audit and oversight program is totally inadequate if it doesn't cover
these contractors. And I'm not saying that we need to go back to having
our military do KP duty, but I am saying that if KBR is providing meals,
then they ought not to rip off the taxpayer, and if they are fined,
they ought to pay for it, and we ought to have some criteria that if you
engage in misconduct often enough, that you are prohibited from getting
more contracts.
AB: Would you support contractors in any combat positions?
JS: No, I do not. There's going to be a report coming
out pretty soon dealing with what is inherently a government function,
and I'm looking forward to that. I absolutely would not. We cannot
outsource war.
AB: I have another question related to international conflict
for you because you've worked a lot on advocating for women. You're one
of the original cosponsors of the International Violence Against Women
Act (IVAWA), which has yet to be adopted after being introduced twice,
and it has a relatively modest price tag ...
JS: You know, I just talked today to Rep. Ted Poe
(R-Texas), and he sounded enthusiastic about reintroducing IVAWA in a
bipartisan way and getting to work on that.
I want to say one other thing about women, though. One of the reasons I
had a pretty diverse package of job creation corps in my jobs bill was
to make sure we had some gender balance in the kind of jobs we would
create. So, when I talk about a health care corps or a community corps,
or even teachers, I think it's really important, when we make direct
investments to create jobs, that gender balance be a consideration. I am
all for infrastructure investment. We need to rebuild our
infrastructure, but we also have to invest in human capital. I have a
child development corps in my bill, and those jobs are more likely to
have more women.
AB: So you think the infrastructure jobs will lean more toward men?
JS: I do. Jobs in the trades mostly today still are
men. The good thing in the president's bill is that there actually is
some money for training and money targeted toward getting more diverse
in those jobs. That's a good thing, and there are good organizations of
women in the trades that are pushing more women, but the reality is,
right now, that those kinds of construction jobs are very male. At the
beginning of this recession, men were the primary victims, but then it
started to hit public sector jobs and there were layoffs at the state
and local levels. Those public sector jobs have traditionally been more
diverse in terms of gender and race. And so, we're seeing now growing
numbers of unemployed among people of color and women. Much of my bill
goes to direct job creation by helping local government, so it can
directly help restore some of that work that went to minorities and
women.
AB: A question about a more personal experience you undertook
while also in your role as a legislator: In 2007, you lived on food
stamps for a week, and afterward you gave a pretty humble report back.
You spent most of a weekend eating only chicken soup ...
JS: I'm actually going to do that again at the end of
October. It'll be interesting to see. The amount of money has gone up,
but so have food prices. I don't know exactly what that dollar figure
is, but I'm going to do it a little differently this time. I'm going to
start in the produce section instead of ending up there after I spent
most of my money. We'll see what happens.
As artificial as doing it for a week may be, it was an indelible
experience for me. Now when I go to the grocery store, I watch people
actually weighing things before they get to the checkout, taking things
out of their baskets and putting them back on the shelves, and I realize
that shopping, for many people, is a very different experience than I
have been used to. I'm much more sensitive to that, and I see how hard
it is. And I have every advantage. I don't have little kids pulling at
my skirt and asking for strawberries, let alone snack foods, and I have a
kitchen where I can store food and cook food. I have transportation
that can take me to a grocery store. If I collect coupons from different
stores, I can actually drive from one to another and get things that
are cheaper. I have to remember now, I've got to start collecting
coupons.
AB: It must be unsettling at times to have an experience like
that over a short period of time and then go back to a position, as
you've described, of relative privilege, where you're responsible for
these policy decisions that are often most felt by the people who are
most vulnerable.
JS: I have to tell you, I don't feel a tremendous
personal separation. I feel like that is my primary constituency and my
primary obligation, and I seek out opportunities to connect with those
people in my district. I'm aware of my privileged position. I don't feel
a sense of, that I feel like some of the Republicans do, that somehow
they're deserving, that people who make a lot of money deserve to keep
it.
I was the target of this whole right-wing thing recently. I was on the
Don Wade and Roma Show in Chicago, which is on WLS, which is a
right-wing radio station, and the question was, how much of my money do I
deserve to keep? And I made the case that you don't deserve to keep all
of it, that it's not so much deserving - everybody has to pay their
fair share for things like national security and fire departments and
things we decide to do together. And it was as if I had said something
controversial!
And I talk a lot about this crazy business of class warfare and about
the America that I grew up in, where the norm was that one person in a
family could get a good job, often a union job, and could live a
middle-class life. My father was a furniture salesman, my mother, after I
was older, went back to being a Chicago Public Schools teacher.
Everyone I knew went to public school, got a good education, and that
was the normal, people expected it. If you lost your job, you could go
out and get another one. You could buy a car, and you could save up and
buy a house.
We passed a health care bill that says 26-year-olds can stay on their
parents' policies, but in a way that's an admission of the fact that
young people no longer can expect to go out - if they can get a job - to
get health care. In a way, it's an admission of the failure of what's
going on in our economy right now. We have to raise expectations again. I
want to see people with their hair on fire that ordinary people deserve
better. Ninety percent of Americans having less wealth than half of one
percent of Americans: this is not good for our country; it's not good
for them.
AB: Some people would argue that in those better days you're
describing, certain groups, people of color and women especially, didn't
experience it that way.
JS: Yes, but you know, I'm reading about the Great
Migration from the South to the North. While it's absolutely true that
African-Americans were discriminated against when they came north, there
were still jobs in the post office, in the stockyards, in the steel
mills, that people could get, so they did live better than they did in
the South. There were jobs in the North. And it's true that women, after
the war, often had problems, so it was back in the kitchen. And it is
true that there was a lot of discrimination.
But it was also a time of the great compression of wealth. There was
not this kind of disparity in income like there is now - nothing like
it. And the wealthiest Americans were paying taxes at a much higher rate
than they pay now, and there was growth in the economy. I don't deny
that life was not great for various segments of our society, but,
overall, there was more opportunity.
AB: It was interesting looking at some of the early photographs
from the Wall Street protests to see how some of the protesters were
dressed, how they carried themselves, and then to see, next to them,
some of the bankers and other people going to work, not only very
dressed up in their suits, but wearing different expressions and
sometimes holding themselves in a very different way. The disparity can
be striking.
JS: I think people sense that in their bones, except
that there's a kind of resignation that has to be turned into anger. I
suggested to my food pantry people that maybe they do a food
distribution in front of Congressional offices and empower the people
who are getting food, to teach a lesson to policymakers. I think it has
the potential not only of enlightening some Congresspeople, but maybe
also changing the dynamic of that handout of food, that recipients
become protesters rather than victims.
AB: It does seem like there are a lot of angry people taking
the initiative to protest and so on, but some of them do appear to be
the usual suspects. Young, self-described anarchists, professional
activists. And there's a wait to see when the anger will become more
widespread, or whether it will.
JS: I go to these home foreclosure workshops. We
co-sponsor them with the state, and there's housing counselors and some
of the lenders are there, and these people come with their papers. Their
heads are down - they're depressed; they're not furious. I want them to
be furious. We bailed out the damn banks, and now those banks won't
help them.
AB: So what is keeping people from getting angry?
JS: I think we need to do some better organizing. I
think we also need to hold out real solutions and at least clarify what
the demands ought to be. Everyone cannot allow the American dream to
slip. That's what these people are experiencing, the American dream just
slipping through their fingers. They have to understand they are the
victims. The perpetrators, the banks, no one's going to jail, they're
getting their bonuses, and now they don't want to lend any money. They
don't want to refinance. They don't want to do anything for these
homeowners. The better response is to really get mad.
AB: It's going to be interesting to see what happens with the president's jobs bill. Although it was reported mid-September,
about a week after he made his proposal, that the calls were not coming
in to Congressional offices the way they were during the deficit talks.
JS: The president does need to get out there more with
the consistent message of calling legislators. I know that there is
organizing going on around town meetings the Republicans are having, and
that's really important. There has to be a cost to their obstructionist
behavior and to their incredible sticking up for the richest "job
creators" - we have to just blow that one apart. If that's the truth,
then where are the jobs? Because boy, they're sitting on $2 trillion.
The very idea that Bank of America and General Electric (GE) didn't pay
taxes ought to be enough to make people rise up.
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