HR 1

Yesterday, the For the People Act, or  HR1, a compendium of legislation reminiscent of FDR's Second Bill of Rights, passed in the House of Representatives.  All Democrats in the House voted for it; all Republicans voted against it.
Why does the latter not surprise me?  That fact, and the chart below, illustrate the cult of personality that the Republican Party has become.  Thankfully, freedom of information hasn't yet been cancelled by a Trump Executive Order.  Our chart came from a website that allows one to check, by date, every roll call vote in the House.

FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 118

(Democrats in roman; Republicans in italic; Independents underlined)

      H R 1      YEA-AND-NAY      8-Mar-2019      11:21 AM
      QUESTION:  On Passage
      BILL TITLE: For the People Act

	Yeas	Nays	PRES	NV
Democratic	234			1
Republican		193		4
Independent
TOTALS	234	193		5

Having passed the House, HR1 will now move to the Senate, where it will almost certainly die a quick death.  Even if the bill somehow manages to pass the Republican-dominated body and go on to Mr. Trump, he will certainly, and gleefully, veto it.  There's not a snowball's chance in Hades that there are, in the Senate, anywhere near the 67 votes needed to override that veto.

If that leaves you thinking Why did the House even bother?, here's one answer.  History affirms that Democrats, often in the face of blistering Republican opposition, have created and maintained most of the social safety net upon which so many of us rely.  Democrats did so as an acknowledgement that such creation and maintenance is part of the responsibility of government.

Let's look at it in more detail.  The Social Security Act was signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt on August 14, 1935. In addition to provisions for general welfare, the law created a social insurance program designed to provide to those 65 or older a continuing income. Social Security was followed, in 1965, by Medicare.  Regarding that latter bill, here's another illustrative table.

SENATE	YEA	NAY
Republicans	13	17
HOUSE	YEA	NAY
Democrats	237	48

To paraphrase Bennie Sisko,Republicans can stop an opinion from being voiced, but can't kill an idea ...

Socialism for the 1%

In the Thesaurus of the far right, the words liberal, progressive, and socialist are presented almost as synonyms for autocratic, dictatorial, or evil.  There are any number of counter-arguments; here's one that supports the title of this post.

In the deep-red, AKA Republican, state of Wyoming, the legislature passed a bill that flies in the face of a study done by the University of Wyoming.  That study evaluates coal versus natural gas versus renewables, and comes out heavily on the side of the latter two.  But the bill just passed provides taxpayer $$$ to support failing coal-fired power plants, even those which the industry itself has said need to be closed.

Like we said, socialism for the 1% - straight out of the Thesaurus of the far right ...

Breathe Easy

At least the Democratic Party, and its current crop of Presidential candidates, believes in the principles outlined in the Second Bill of Rights. Which means they believe in a minimum wage being also an adequate wage.

Of the 10 declared Democratic presidential candidates, all but one - John Hickenlooper – have, within the past year or more, advocated a minimum wage of $15.00.  Here’s a scorecard of sorts.

Supports $15.00 Minimum Wage?

Cory Booker

Pete Buttigieg

Joaquin Castro

Tulsi Gabbard

Kirsten Gillebrand

Jay Inslee

Amy Klobuchar

Bernie Sanders

Elizabeth Warren

Just curious – are there any Republicans, in whatever role in government, whose names could be added to our scorecard?

 

A Minimum Wage That's an Adequate Wage

Even after graduating from the University of Pittsburgh with a BA in Spanish and Russian and a 3.8 GPA, my first long-term job was as a bookkeeper in a retail clothing store.  That gig brought me $5.00 per hour.  Over several years, my hourly rate rose to the rich-beyond-the-dreams-of-avarice amount of $7.25.

That was the minimum wage in the late 1970s.  It still is.  Then, it was possible, with careful planning and constant attention, for one person to support himself or herself on such a wage.  That can’t happen today.

Assume a full-time ob of 2000 hours a year, at $7.25 an hour.  Yearly gross income would therefore be $14,500.00.  Now, subtract expenses, like so:

Amount	Explanation
$14,500.00	Annual gross income
(10,800.00)	Rent, at $900.00 per month (typical for a small apartment in Delaware County PA)
$3,700.00	Balance after rent
(2,400.00)	Groceries at $200.00 per month (no eating out)
$1,300.00	Balance after groceries
(170.00)	Utilities (at rates typical in Delaware County PA)
$1,130.00	Balance after above
(1,440.00)	Commuting expenses (whether car- or public transport)
(310.00)	$310.00 per year in the red isn’t where anyone should want to be.

Before we move on, note that the estimates above do not take into account taxes or medical care.  We should also note that if the minimum wage were even $10.00 an hour, the person earning it would be $5190.00 in the black at the end of a given `12-month period, rather than a few hundred in the red, as the table below shows.

Amount	Explanation
$20,000.00	Annual gross income
(10,800.00)	Rent, at $900.00 per month (typical for a small apartment in Delaware County PA)
$9,300.00	Balance after rent
(2,400.00)	Groceries at $200.00 per month (no eating out)
$6,800.00	Balance after groceries
(170.00)	Utilities (at rates typical in Delaware County PA)
$6,630.00	Balance after above
(1,440.00)	Commuting expenses (whether car- or public transport)
$5130.00	A difference in someone’s pocket of over $5,400.00.

All of the declared Democratic candidates support some increase in the minimum wage.  In particular, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris have taken positions that are in keeping with the first point in the Second Bill of Rights – income sufficient to supporting decent housing, and adequate food, clothing, and leisure.

You Can't Know the Players

... without a scorecard.

To date, there are 11 declared, and at least as many probably-will-go-for-it, Democratic candidates for the Presidency.  The scorecard below offers links to the campaign sites of most of these.  (Information for the campaign web sites of John Hickenlooper and Amy Klobuchar was unavailable at the time of this writing.)

Take a look at the scorecard below; it's a first step to getting to know the candidates, and their policies, better.

Cory Booker	corybooker.com
Pete Buttigieg	peteforamerica.com
Julian Castro	julianforthefuture.com
Tulsi Gabbard	tulsi2020.com
Kirsten Gillibrand	kirstengillibrand.com
Kamala Harris	kamalaharris.org
Jay Inslee	jayinslee.com
Bernie Sanders	berniesanders.com
Elizabeth Warren	elizabethwarren.com

In upcoming posts, we'll correlate information gleaned from these sites to themes presented in the Second Bill of Rights, as a means of evaluating the progressive punch of that information.

Progressivism In Recent History

In 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his State of the Union address, proposed what he called a Second Bill of Rights.  Roosevelt suggested a need to guarantee, as a matter of politics and law akin to the Constitution and the original Bill of Rights, provision for:

• adequate employment that offered a living wage
• safe and sustainable housing
• medical care that would help ensure not only longevity but also quality of life
• some means of income for the elderly and disabled
• education that could contribute to upward social and economic mobility

Now, fast-forward to an event seminal to the Civil Rights movement, and to our democracy - the march from Selma, Alabama to the state capitol, Montgomery.   As the march crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, demonstrators were attacked with horses, billy clubs, and tear gas.  That assault, in which activists like Rep. John Lewis (D - GA) were beaten and seriously wounded, came to be known as Bloody Sunday.

Whatever the details of their individual policy positions, it's hard to imagine any of today's Democratic presidential candidates - folks like Pete Buttigieg, or Kamala Harris - having significant differences with the Second Bill, or the March to Montgomery.  It's much more likely they'd see those events as antecedents of today's progressive politics, and their own.

So, for the next several months if not longer, 15104 will track and cross-reference the similarities between the Second Bill, the Civil Rights movement, and policy proposals of Democratic presidential candidates.