1997 Mother Jones: DLC wanted Medicare, Social Security, education "in the new marketplace."

madfloridian

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Tue Aug-18-09 11:50 AM
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1997 Mother Jones: DLC wanted Medicare, Social Security, education "in the new marketplace."

They appear to have actively opposed the health care plan put forth by Bill Clinton and Hillary. They wanted Medicare and Social Security and education delivered into the "new marketplace."

In other words they wanted to privatize all of the above.

DLC President Al From is urging Clinton to undertake a "fundamental restructuring our biggest systems for delivering public benefits -- Medicare, Social Security, and public education, for openers." Similarly, Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), the DLC's think tank, argues for moving Medicare and Medicaid "into the new marketplace."

The then recently formed CAF (Campaign for America's Future) had something to say.

But Democrats are going to lock horns over this sort of DLC advice to the second Clinton administration. Roger Hickey, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future (CAF), a populist advocacy group launched last July, says Clinton won't swallow the privatization pill unless he forgets the reason he won the November election: "People want him to protect Medicare." But Hickey acknowledges that "there is going to be enormous elite pressure for a big comprehensive solution," and he says that without public pressure an "inside-the-Beltway pundit consensus" might prevail.

Here is some more from the 1997 issue of Mother Jones Magazine. It sounds so much like today...it was the same crossroads where we are now. The corporatization, the "new marketplace", has gone well in many areas, and there are indications it will continue. Education is just about done with Duncan at the wheel, and the words "universal savings accounts" have been used in regard to Social Security. There has been little mention of Medicare except in terms of cutting costs.

Democrats at the Crossroads

Mother Jones 1997

One Election, Two Interpretations

The predominant analysis in the media echoes the New Democrat view that Clinton won by pre-empting the right on such issues as crime, welfare reform, and a balanced budget. "Every time Dole tried to get cracking on an issue," Al From pointed out at a post-election DLC press conference, "he couldn't do it because the president had, in a sense, beat him there."

Al From was proud that we beat the Republicans to being Republicans before they could do it. That is just weird.

During 1995 and 1996, the New Democrats opposed the popular minimum wage increase. They also urged, in the words of DLC chair Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), an end to "the current system of unconditional government entitlements market-based system." Had Clinton taken such advice, the populist Democrats argue, he would not have trounced Dole in the election.

Ruy Teixeira of the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute points out that Dole and Clinton remained even in presidential polls for some time after Clinton embraced the balanced budget goal in June 1995. "Clinton did not pull away from Dole," says Teixeira, "until he joined with congressional Democrats in defense of Medicare and other popular programs and the Republicans made their disastrous decision to shut down the government. By December of 1995, Clinton was 10 points ahead and never looked back through his re-election."

I am seeing some of the same terms used today as were in this paragraph from 1997.

The New Democrats condemn bureaucracy and exhort Americans to be mutually responsible for one another. But why, then, does the DLC want the nation's most popular and administratively efficient public program, Social Security, to be partially diverted into millions of individual accounts managed by Wall Street brokers? By pursuing the breakup of unitary programs for Social Security and Medicare, the DLC is promoting social division, regulatory complexity, and a vast corporate subsidy -- rather than furthering the mutual responsibility, administrative simplification, and "end of corporate welfare" it claims to favor.

There was also a 1995 Time Magazine article in which some interesting words were said.

Al From himself embodies John Maynard Keynes' warning that the real difficulty in changing any enterprise lies not in developing new ideas but in escaping from old ones. "The problem for us and him," says From, "is that Clinton promised to be different. He's been that a bit, but the whole is less than the sum of the parts. The fundamental change he pledged hasn't come. We've been consistent in articulating the ideas he won on, but he hasn't been consistent in advancing them. We were at this before Clinton, and we'll be at it after he's gone, because a long-term majority will never be created around the interests represented by Jesse and the labor unions. Most people are politically homeless now. They're our target. We'll work to get Clinton to pursue us, but we're damn sure going to make it hard for him to catch us."

Which means what? "Al feels a loyalty to Clinton because he feels responsible for electing him," says Steinhardt. "But what we're planning is bigger than some psychological thing. We'll just have to see if Clinton buys our new stuff. If not, and someone else takes it on, then we'll probably fracture." Then Clinton will have even more trouble than he has already.

More from the article from TIME in 1995.

Clinton and the DLC in 1995

"Since his election," says DLC president Al From, "the President's campaign agenda hasn't been his first priority." A repeat of that performance is what many centrist boosters worry about most. Clinton's latest moves to the center, like his recent balanced-budget proposal, are viewed by the DLC as mere electoral tactics that may signify nothing at all about a second term's direction. "In '92 our ideas captured the country but not the party," says William Galston, who resigned recently as a White House aide to help develop what From calls a "third way." Since then, adds Galston, the tension within the Administration "has involved accommodating the liberal tendencies that still dominate the party and the centrist views the President ran on." That confusion is exactly what could doom Clinton, since many Americans still wonder what the President really believes in and what he will fight for.

The centrists don't want to go down with him. Explains Elaine Kamarck, a former PPI fellow currently working for Vice President Gore: "The DLC worries about dying off if the President's defeated. The battle for the party's soul will continue even if he wins. But if he loses, the liberals will claim that the dlc's centrist views were responsible and should be tossed aside entirely. The counterargument will be that just because the messenger proved imperfect, doesn't mean the message itself should be junked."

..."A full-fledged manifesto is due this fall, and if, as currently planned, it includes ideas like privatizing Social Security, it's unlikely that Clinton will have the nerve to sign on. At that point, says Galston, the group's new prescriptions will "be there for anyone to embrace."

The DLC was trying to privatize Social Security, Medicare, and education since 1995. In fact Al From even pushed for charter schools in 2000.

Al From called for charter schools in 2000. Now failed schools can be made charter schools.

The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) is now calling for reforms including school choice and merit pay for teachers.....America is a tale of two public school systems: one that works reasonably well, although it could certainly be better, and one that is by almost any standard a disaster," says From.

.."From argues that the public school system too often serves the interests of teachers and administrators at the expense of the students themselves. It is a "monopolistic" system that "offers a 'one-size-fits-hardly-anyone' model that strangles excellence and innovation" he says.

Characterizing charter schools as "oases of innovation," From writes, "The time has come to bring life to the rest of the desert-by introducing the same forces of choice and competition to every public school in America."

Under Duncan, Al From's dream is being realized.

This group is quieter now, but they have a huge voice in the administration. They still want Social Security, Medicare, and Education moved into the "new marketplace."

We need to be on guard.