John Nichols | The Nation

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) 

The great debate in America is not about the “fiscal cliff” or the “debt ceiling” or the “sequester” or whatever other fantasy pops into Paul Ryan’s head when he’s not reading Ayn Rand.

The great debate in America is between austerity and growth.

And Tuesday’s State of the Union address is the right moment for President Obama to make a clean break with the austerity lie in combination with a firm embrace of the growth agenda that is needed.

Bill Clinton, who has emerged as something of an economic “explainer-in-chief” for the Obama administration, proposed as much in an address last week to congressional Democrats. “The debt problem can’t be solved right now by conventional austerity measures,” said the former president, who reminded his attentive listeners that “everybody that’s tried austerity in a time of no growth has wound up cutting revenues even more than they cut spending because you just get into the downward spiral and drag the country back into recession.”

Clinton is right. But he has only provided the president with the talking point. Obama will need more than that to counter the determined campaign of Ryan and the Republicans—along with the “Fix the Debt” astroturf scam promoted by free-spending CEOs—to advance their austerity agenda as part the of coming sequester and debt-ceiling debates. Ryan and the Republican proponents of austerity are for making deep cuts in order to balance budgets at any cost—except, of course, taxing their wealthy campaign donors. As such, they are more than ready to render cherished programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as well as vital services such as the Post Office, so dysfunctional that Americans will start thinking the unthinkable: that these programs should be privatized.

Unfortunately, austerity doesn’t work. Clinton says so. The Congressional Budget Office says so. Both The Economist and the Financial Times—not exactly left-wing rags—say so. Indeed, The Economist and the Financial Times decry European austerity schemes that have created high unemployment and economic instability. So it is appealing to suggest that Obama need only say “no” Tuesday tonight.

But “no”—or worse yet the compromise of “yes” and “no” that some Democrats entertain—is not a sufficient alternative to austerity.

As part of its campaign to get Obama to use his State of the Union address to oppose austerity, New York's Working Families Party says: "Truth be told, we need to expand our commitment to our fellow Americans."

That's the point. Simply opposing austerity is not enough. The president must present a specific growth agenda that has a goal of expanding job creation initiatives and strengthening families and communities.

That’s what key members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, led by caucus co-chairs Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) and Keith Ellison (D-MN), have provided.

Obama does not have to go all-in with the progressives to get the point across. But he should recognize the value of this outline for countering the fiscal fabulism of Ryan and the Ayn Randites who would make America a nasty and brutish place.

Arguing on behalf of the progressive “Balancing Act” proposal, Ellison says that America has already gone too far down the austerity path—not just at the federal level but in states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio, where Republican governors have attacked public services, public schools, public workers and (in Michigan’s case) private sector workers.

Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50!

“Almost $2 trillion has been cut over the past two years from teachers, firefighters, police officers, loans for college students, and infrastructure investments,” the congressman says of warped federal budget priorities. “The American people shouldn’t continue to pay the price for massive tax breaks for millionaires and billions of dollars in subsidies to oil companies.”

To that end, Ellison, Grijalva, Illinois Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, Washington Congressman Jim McDermott, New York Congresswoman Yvette Clarke and California's Jerry Nadler, Barbara Lee and Judy Chu have proposed the “Balancing Act” alternative to across-the- board cuts that would damage society and the economy.

The group’s “Balancing Act” legislation:

* cancels the across the board “sequester” budget cuts that are now looming

* achieves a fair and balanced approach to long-term deficit reduction that reduces the burden on working families

* finds needed revenues by requiring that multinational corporations pay their fair share of taxes

* makes $300 billion in judicious long-term cuts to Pentagon waste

* creates 1 million jobs nationwide by investing in infrastructure and teachers and putting money in consumers’ pockets

“We’ve cut non-defense budgets to the bone,” says Grijalva. “There are simply no major savings hiding in school lunch or nurse training programs. We need investments. The Beltway refusal to make job creation our number-one priority is a scandal, and the Balancing Act is the right way to fix it.”

The House Democrats who have the Balancing Act achieve their goals—which mirror the goals of the American people, as expressed in every major poll—by eliminating the impending “sequester” cuts (which would fall disproportionately on working families and Americans living in poverty) and replaces them with an equal amount of revenue by closing corporate and individual tax loopholes.

This, they explain, will created an equal overall cuts-to-revenue balance when looking at the budget beginning in 2011, when the Budget Control Act was passed. That will free up resources for the sort of job creation that will help families and communities while spurring the economic growth that will ultimately balance federal, state and local governments.

That’s the real alternative to austerity.

President Obama does not have to embrace the Balancing Act in its entirely. But he should make its basic premises part of his State of the Union Address, and his governing agenda.

The president, Democratic leaders in the Senate and House and responsible Republicans should recognize the importance of adopting those premises—not for political reasons, but because austerity doesn’t renew the economy or help people get jobs. Growth does.

Watch John Nichols break down Bill Clinton's recent speech to Congressional Democrats. 

(Flickr/Jeff Knezovich)

The proposal by the US Postal Service to end Saturday mail delivery—which can and should be blocked by Congress—poses a dramatic threat to the economic and social viability of rural communities and inner cities. The move endangers small businesses that rely on affordable, universal and regular service. And it threatens the elderly, the disabled and vulnerable Americans who count on the connections made through the mail—and with the letter carriers who deliver it.

But there is another threat contained in this wrongheaded plan to put the Postal Service out of commission from Friday to Monday. Cutting mail delivery would undermine democracy by making it harder for the tens of millions of Americans who vote by mail to continue to do so.

Though the numbers vary from state to state, it is now generally accepted that 20 percent of American voters—including First Lady Michelle Obama—are casting ballots by mail. The numbers have increased at an exponential rate in recent years. Most mail voters do so via traditional absentee ballots, although roughly 5 percent live in states that formally conduct elections using a vote-by-mail system. And the practice is expanding; next week in California, 44,000 vote-by-mail ballots will be mailed to voters in advance of a March special election for the State Senate.

In the weeks before presidential and congressional elections, tens of millions of ballots will move through the postal system, with the final period before an election seeing many days when the volume of mailed ballots exceeds a million. Weekend days are especially busy because that’s when working people can find the time to apply for, fill out and send in absentee ballots. It is also, election officials say, when family members of the elderly and the disabled are most free to help them access and complete ballots. Only those who do not understand the stresses on already over-taxed election systems would suggest that it does not matter to reduce the number of days when tens of millions of voters can obtain ballots and cast them.

This is not a matter of Democrats versus Republicans, or liberals versus conservatives. While Democrats have made significant inroads, there are still regions where Republicans maintain absentee-voting advantages.

This threat goes deeper, to democracy itself..

Taking Saturdays out of the rotation deals a serious blow to existing absentee and vote-by-mail operations, and reduces the likelihood that this voter-friendly approach will be expanded. One of the top election experts in the nation, Cook County Clerk David Orr, who runs elections in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs, has predicted that “mail [voting] will dramatically grow over a period of time.” But that will happen only if the postal service is reliable. That’s what is maddening about the proposed cut in Saturday delivery: with election officials looking to expand voting by mail as a response to long lines and other Election Day challenges, the reduction in service threatens the growth potential of the USPS at precisely the time when the postal service needs new volume and revenue.

Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50!

In Oregon, a pioneering vote-by-mail state, Secretary of State Kate Brown has been an outspoken critic of moves to cut postal services, arguing that eliminating Saturday delivery threatens to create delays, increase burdens of election workers and, ultimately, to “disenfranchise voters in Oregon.”

In Washington state, which has also moved to a vote-by-mail system, Secretary of State Kim Wyman has expressed disappointment in USPS for proposing the cut delivery days. Wyman is hustling to develop contingency plans that will have to be implemented if the cuts go through.

But in communities across the country, local election officials are worried that it will be difficult to address the gap that would be created by the elimination of mail service on key weekends before local, state and national elections.

“Forget the ‘future of voting,’ as many want to discuss. The present is drying up…” argues Johnson County, Kansas, Election Commissioner Brian Newby. “Without Saturday postal delivery, Johnson County voters who get ballots issued on the last day allowed by law [the Friday before the election] will have no way to turn them around and know they were delivered by Tuesday. There likely will be others who will find they need the Saturday delivery 10 days before the election to get their ballot before going out of town the following Monday morning and now otherwise will be unable to vote in an election.”

Doug Chapin, the director of the Program for Excellence in Election Administration at the Hubert Humphrey School of Public Affairs speculates that election administrators may have to develop their own systems of secure drop boxes to manage the masses of mailed ballots. That will cause more expense, and raise the prospect of disenfranchisement—especially in Northern and Western states that have placed an emphasis on making it easier to vote. Notably, vote-by-mail states Oregon and Washington consistently rank among in the top five for turnout, along with states that have high levels of absentee voting, such as Wisconsin.

This is an issue where policy makers need to put the pieces together. Congress is addressing the issue of long lines at polling places. Eliminating postal services will not reduce lines on Election Day, it will increase them. And that’s a step in the wrong direction.

Take Action: Save the USPS!

The Pennsylvania state capitol building. (Flickr/Paul Vasiliades)

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus has been blunt about his determination to rig the Electoral College. So it should come as no surprise that, even after his partisan minions were "named and shamed" into distancing themselves from an initial strategy for gaming presidential politics, key Republicans have returned with another plan to make it possible for a GOP loser to "win" the 2016 presidential race. 

Thwarted in an effort to assign electoral votes based on the results from gerrymandered congressional districts, Republicans are now proposing a "proportional representation" plan that offers another avenue to assign substantial numbers of electoral votes to Republican nominees who lose key swing states such as Pennsylvania.

The proportional proposal—which Pennsylvania state Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, a top Republican closely allied with Governor Tom Corbett, says he will introduce in short order—sounds on the surface like a somewhat fairer approach. But, if implemented, it would put the “fix” in just as surely as the previous plan.

Indeed, a Pileggi spokesman admits, "The major goal remains the same..." 

It is the goal of rigging the rules to benefit future Republican presidential nominess that has always mattered most to Priebus and his allies.

The RNC chair and those aligned with him have never evidenced any great concern regarding specifics. They're concerned with gaining an illicit advantage for Republican presidential candidates who Priebus has essentially admitted are unlikely to win a fair fight under the existing rules.

In the arcane language of the permanent political insider, Priebus says: "states that have been consistently blue that are controlled red ought to be looking at" ways to alter rules for distributing electoral votes. Translation: In states where Democrats regularly win presidential races, Republicans should use their transitory control of governorships and state legislative chambers to grab as many electoral votes as they can.

Priebus initially talked up the idea of to having Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania abandon the current model of assigning electoral votes to the winner of the state and instead implement a model where the allotment would be based on the winners of congressional districts. That plan, which would have allowed the loser of the popular vote in many states to "win" most of the electoral votes, was such a blatant rip-off that shamed Republicans in Virginia, Florida, Wisconsin and other states abandoned it.

But they did not abandon the basic premise laid out by Priebus—that states that are "controlled red" by the Republicans should game the rules so that they are less "consistently blue" in presidential politics. They've just shifted strategy.

Under the plan now being entertained by Pennsylvania Republicans, electoral votes would be distributed based on the percentage of the vote received by the contenders. Had the plan been in place in 2012, President Obama, who won 52 percent of the Pennsylvania popular vote, would have gotten 11 or 12 electoral votes, while Republican Mitt Romney would have gotten 8 or 9.

That looks like a more reasonable result than under the plan for allocating by congressional district results, which would have given Romney most of Pennsylvania's electoral votes despite Obama's popular vote win.

Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50!

But here's where things get tricky. If Pennsylvania and other swing states that tend to back Democrats move to the proportional model, while big states such as Texas and Georgia that have been voting Republican stick with a winner-take-all plan, they will lock in a national advantage for the Republicans. 

The Pennsylvania initiative may not be quite as "sweet" for Republicans as the initial Priebus plan. But if states that vote Democratic assign substantial numbers of their electoral votes to the Republican loser, while states that vote Republican make no such concession, it will be a lot easier to chart a course where a Republican nominee who is trounced in the national popular vote might still "win" the electoral vote and the presidency.

The necessary response from democracy advocates to the latest plan to rig the Electoral College is essentially the same as the response to the last scheme. 

The very fact that the rules for distributing electoral votes can be so easily rewritten to thwart the will of the people regarding the election of the president of the United States “should give us all pause,” explains FairVote's Rob Richie.

“The Election of the president should be a fair process where all American voters should have an equal ability to hold their president accountable,” says Richie. “It’s time for the nation to embrace one-person, one-vote elections and the ‘fair fight’ represented by a national popular vote. Let’s forever dismiss the potential of such electoral hooliganism and finally do what the overwhelming majorities of Americans have consistently preferred: make every vote equal with a national popular vote for president.”

That—not the Priebus plan, or the Pennsylvania variation—is what the people want.

Indeed, a Gallup poll taken January 8-9, 2013, found that 63 percent of Americans would support “doing away with the Electoral College and basing the election of the president on the total vote cast throughout the nation.”

The people are right.

Priebus and his pal in Pennsylvania are wrong.

Read John Nichols's takedown of Reince Priebus.

Tom Harkin. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Tom Harkin’s decision to retire from the Senate at the end of his current term will create an immeasurable void in the chamber where he has served for more than a quarter-century. A progressive populist with a history of defending organized labor, working farmers, public education and public services, the Iowan arrived in the Senate as a fighting FDR Democrat and he will leave as one.

As The Des Moines Register well recognized in its editorial on the Iowa Democrat’s decision to retire:

A variety of terms have been used to describe Harkin’s politics. He has been called a progressive or a populist from the prairie school. He is that but more: He was a close friend of the late Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone who used to say he belonged to the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, meaning he was not ashamed to be called a liberal. That’s the same wing of the party Harkin has represented without apology.

Actually, Harkin’s politics and his philosophy of government are rooted in the age of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, which swept in a historic change in the role of government in the affairs of the nation.

On a national political landscape that could use a good deal more of FDR’s ideological and political determination—especially in the updated and extended form that Harkin employed it—this is a retirement that will be felt by every American who recognizes that formation of a more perfect union requires the forging of a truly national, urban and rural progressive politics.

Harkin has for almost forty years, first as a member of the House and then as a senator, represented a swing state with a Republican governor, a Republican senator and a competitive streak in presidential politics. Yet, he has won, again and again, and by ever-expanding margins. Elected to the Senate in the same year that Ronald Reagan won his second term by a landslide both nationally and in Iowa, Harkin has repeatedly bucked Republican tides and prevailed when more moderate Democrats have been defeated. His electoral success confirms the progressive premise that voters are more likely to back a determined Democrat than a compromising centrist.

But there has always been more to Harkin than populist rhetoric and ideological clarity. He came to Congress to get things done: to end secret wars in Latin America, to keep family farmers on the land, to make workplaces safer and to enact the groundbreaking civil rights protections contained in the Americans With Disabilities Act. Many of his greatest legislative victories came when Republicans sat in the White House, most were enacted with Republican co-sponsorship.

Harkin has always understood something that only a few other progressives—Wellstone, Russ Feingold, Bernie Sanders—have ever really “got”: that it is not necessary to sacrifice principles when organizing coalitions of conscience across lines of party and ideology.

For Harkin, the key word has been “conscience.”

Harkin has consistently clung to an old faith in what politics could and should be. He speaks of morality, of right and wrong. And his colleagues know he is serious; so serious that they often put aside cynicism and cooperate to accomplish that which—and the ADA is a classic example of this—few thought possible.

Harkin could compromise. He was proud if those compromises advanced the common good. If they went awry, he was usually the first talk about it. When Harkin cast a wrong vote—and he did sometimes—it tore at him. But he has rarely suffered in silence. He voted for the 2002 resolution that became President Bush’s excuse for a war of whim in Iraq, but by 2003 he was declaring: “I made a mistake, and I wouldn’t do it again.” He bluntly said that Bush “misled Congress and got his war…a pre-emptive war that has ended in disaster.”

By 2004, Harkin was an enthusiastic, and because of his Iowa prominence, essential backer of Howard Dean’s anti-war campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Harkin would eventually become one of the loudest congressional critics of the war, and of the Bush administration’s abuses of power, joining with Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold in a lonely effort to censure the president. When Bush nominated the noxious John Negroponte to serve as US ambassador to Iraq, the Iowan broke not just with the administration but with fellow Democrats to vote against a man who had been linked to human rights abuses in Honduras two decades earlier. Harkin battled, essentially alone, to hold Negroponte to account.

The senator came full circle in the 2004 debate over Negroponte’s nomination.

Harkin’s first big fight on Capitol Hill, as a young congressman from a competitive district representing rural Iowa, was to demand that the entire thrust of US foreign policy be altered.

Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50!

As a young congressional aide in 1970, Harkin had played a critical role in exposing South Vietnam’s abusive treatment of prisoners, who were held in so-called “tiger cages.” Horrified by mounting evidence of US support for right-wing coups, murderous dictators and torture states in southern Asia and Latin America, Harkin in 1975 proposed an amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act that prohibited the United States from providing economic aid to any country determined to be engaged gross human rights violations unless. The only exception was a provision that permitted allocation of US funds if could be proved that the money who directly benefit the most impoverished citizens.

The amendment, which passed with relative ease, became Section 116 of the Foreign Assistance Act, which declared: “No assistance may be provided under this part to the government of any country which engages in consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, including torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, prolonged detention without charges, or other flagrant denial of the right to life, liberty, and the security of person, unless such assistance will directly benefit the needy people in such country.”

Presidents and their congressional allies invariably circumvented human rights responsibilities, to Harkin’s great frustration. As a new US senator in the mid-1980s, he joined another new senator, John Kerry of Massachusetts, in seeking to expose and end the Reagan administration’s support for right-wing dictators and death squads in Latin America. Others softened in their stances, but not Harkin. When Bush nominated Negroponte for the Iraqi ambassadorship, the senator from Iowa took to the floor of the chamber and recounted the dark history of the nominee’s “service” as Ronald Reagan’s administration gave lawless support to death squads and paramilitary murderers. Harkin accused the nominee of lying to Congress and the American people about circumstances on the ground in Honduras in the early 1980s—where 184 people, including an American priest, “disappeared” while Negroponte was ambassador to Honduras.

“Ambassador Negroponte turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the human rights abuses in Honduras,” Harkin thundered. “To send Mr. Negroponte to Iraq would send entirely the wrong message at this time.”

For Tom Harkin, it was not enough to amend the laws of the land to defend human rights. It was necessary to hold to account those who circumvented those laws.

It was a conscience call. A moral duty. And for Tom Harkin, this has always been the point of being a senator.

For those of us who know Harkin, and his record, this is our source of regret at the news of his decision to retire. He has surely given a full measure of service. But his kind is rare, too rare, in a Congress that will be deeply diminished by his departure.

Chuck Hagel is also no favorite of foreign policy hawks, John Nichols writes.