[Marxism] A New Day in DC?

[Louis Proyect]

Counterpunch, November 6, 2008
A New Day in DC? Not So Fast...
Now What?

By FRANK J. MENETREZ

Fans of the HBO series The Wire are familiar with the saga of the 
fictional Tommy Carcetti, a white politician who beats the racial odds 
and gets elected mayor in majority black Baltimore.  Carcetti is an 
ambitious and sincerely well-meaning liberal who really wants to create 
a “new day in Baltimore.”  But once in office, he puts personal 
ambition, party loyalty, and obedience to the powerful ahead of his 
ideals, and he consequently never achieves any genuine reform.

As the Obama administration unfolds over the next four years, life will 
probably imitate art in many ways.  Like Carcetti, Obama beat the racial 
odds, although unlike Carcetti, Obama comes from a racial group that has 
endured an appalling history of oppression in this country, which 
continues to this day.  Obama’s victory is consequently a watershed in 
American politics, and it should be enthusiastically celebrated for that 
reason alone.

Also like Carcetti, Obama appears to believe sincerely in some sort of 
liberal agenda.  But Obama’s legions of passionate supporters (as well 
as his wild-eyed detractors on the right) expect him to pursue, and not 
merely pay lip-service to, progressive policies.  That would include, 
but not be limited to, delivering on big-ticket items like getting US 
troops out of Iraq, enacting meaningful healthcare reform, pursuing a 
humane course in the Middle East conflict, and reregulating the 
financial markets to prevent a replay of this year’s crisis.

The grim reality, however, is that Obama (like Carcetti) will spend his 
first term campaigning for his second term, a campaign he actually began 
in his acceptance speech in Chicago on election night.   That means he 
will be busily cultivating the political “center,” just as he did 
throughout this year’s campaign when he voted for the FISA bill, voted 
for continued funding of the occupation of Iraq, voted for the 
disgraceful bank bailout (which economists from left to right condemned 
as a largely useless giveaway of taxpayer money), and delivered to AIPAC 
one of the most obscenely fawning speeches it has ever heard.  If he 
wins a second term, he’ll spend it shoring up the prospects of both the 
Democrats in Congress and his aspiring Democratic successor to the 
throne--again, by cultivating the “center.”

Obama will undoubtedly be better than Bush was and better than McCain 
would have been, and the differences matter.  But a realistic assessment 
of the scope of those differences is imperative.  Without it, people who 
really care about changing this country’s direction will end up counting 
on one man, Obama, instead of on themselves to bring about the change we 
need.  Those people will inevitably be disappointed.

The Differences Between Democrats and Republicans:  An Illustration

To appreciate the myriad ways in which the struggles between the haves 
and the have-nots play out in the workings of the federal government, 
and to see the limited range of differences between the Democratic and 
Republican approaches to many of those struggles, one needs to look at 
the details of federal statutes and regulations.  A single example will 
suffice.

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) is the federal law that provides for 
a minimum wage and a maximum workday and workweek.  As every wage worker 
knows, the maximum hours limits are enforced by the requirement of 
overtime pay:  An employer has to pay time-and-a-half for any hours 
worked beyond 8 per day or 40 per week.

Like most laws, the FLSA contains several exceptions.  In particular, 
“executive, administrative, and professional” employees are exempt from 
the wage and hour requirements.  The idea is that some white-collar 
workers are already sufficiently well-paid and/or sufficiently elevated 
in management that they don’t need the protection of a federal law.  If 
the CEO of a corporation ends up working 60-hour weeks, that’s his or 
her problem.  The federal government is not going to make the 
corporation pay time-and-a-half for those extra 20 hours.

But whom, exactly, does the exemption cover?  “Executive” (e.g., 
corporate CEOs and presidents) and “professional” (e.g., doctors and 
lawyers) are clear enough.  But who are “administrative” employees?  The 
short answer seems to be that administrative employees are supposed to 
be people who are relatively high up but aren’t exactly “executives,” 
such as the assistant to the CEO or maybe the head of human resources.

The longer answer is that “administrative” (like “executive” and 
“professional”) is defined by a complex set of regulations issued by the 
Secretary of Labor, who is a presidential appointee.  The relevant 
regulations were originally issued in the 1940s and remained essentially 
unchanged until the George W. Bush administration rewrote them.

Here’s how the regulatory definition of “administrative” worked before 
Bush:  The regulations specified two salary benchmarks, one low and one 
high, and two different tests, one hard and one easy, for who counts as 
an administrative employee.  If you were below the low salary benchmark, 
then you didn’t count as an administrative employee, no matter what kind 
of work you did.  If you were above the high salary benchmark, then you 
counted as an administrative employee if you passed the easy test, which 
consisted of a couple of requirements concerning the kind of work you do 
(e.g., that your work requires “the exercise of discretion and 
independent judgment”).  And if you were in between the two salary 
benchmarks, then you counted as an administrative employee if you passed 
the hard test, whose requirements were more numerous and demanding than 
the easy test’s.

That sounds like a mess, and it is, but the basic idea is:  If you’re on 
the low end of the pay scale, you’re definitely not an administrative 
employee (and you are entitled to overtime pay).  If you’re in the 
middle of the pay scale, you’re sort of presumed not to be an 
administrative employee (so you still get overtime pay); you’ll only be 
considered an administrative employee if your work meets all of the 
requirements of a very demanding test.  But if you’re on the high end of 
the pay scale, then you’re sort of presumed to be an administrative 
employee (and you don’t get overtime pay); you’ll be considered an 
administrative employee as long as your work meets a small number of 
more easily satisfied requirements.

The catch in this convoluted system is that the salary benchmarks must 
be updated periodically to account for inflation.  Otherwise, eventually 
every office worker will be above the high benchmark and will be 
presumptively treated as an administrative employee, not entitled to 
overtime pay.  Of course, not every white-collar employee will pass the 
easy test--someone who does nothing but word processing or filing, for 
example, will not.  But the big picture is that if more people are 
subject to the easy test instead of the hard test, then more people will 
lose their right to overtime pay.

When George W. Bush took office in January 2001, the salary benchmarks 
had not been updated since the early 1970s, before the Carter 
presidency.  In eight years in the White House, Bill Clinton never 
touched them.  So when Clinton left office, the “high” benchmark that 
triggered the easy test was still $250 per week, just slightly above 
minimum wage.  ($250 per week is $6.25 per hour for 40 hours.  Minimum 
wage was $5.15 per hour at the end of Clinton’s second term.)  Again, 
what this means is that thanks to Clinton’s inaction, at the end of his 
presidency any white-collar worker making a little over minimum wage was 
treated, under the regulations, as the kind of big-shot administrator 
who is presumptively not entitled to overtime pay.

What did Bush do with all of this?  Made it worse, of course.  He 
eliminated the hard test altogether, but he kept the two-benchmark, 
two-test system.  The way it works now is:  Anyone below the low 
benchmark is not an administrative employee (same as before).  Anyone 
between the low benchmark and the high benchmark is subject to the easy 
test (this is new; the easy test used to apply only to people above the 
high benchmark).  And anyone above the high benchmark is subject to a 
new ultra-easy test.  Those are the basics, but Bush also threw in some 
other new regulations that look suspiciously like giveaways to his 
friends (e.g., special rules that make it easier for financial services 
and insurance companies to classify their employees as administrative, 
and thus to stiff them for overtime).

To show that he’s not completely insensitive to the plight of the 
working class, Bush also updated the salary benchmarks.  The new low 
benchmark is $455 per week, a huge jump from the Clinton-era low 
benchmark of $155 per week, and considerably higher than even the high 
benchmark under Clinton, which was $250 per week.  But just to put that 
in perspective:  At 50 weeks per year, the new low benchmark works out 
to $22,750 annually.  The official poverty line in the US for a family 
of four is $21,200.  So, putting it all together:  Under Bush, if you 
make a hair above poverty wages, then you’re subject to the easy test 
that was designed for (and 60 years ago was reserved for) the well-paid 
employees who presumptively don’t need the protection of federal wage 
and hour laws.

Was Bush worse than Clinton on this issue?  Yes--he eliminated the hard 
test altogether and devised a super-easy test for those above the high 
benchmark.  As inflation erodes those benchmarks over time, everyone 
will end up worse off.  But was Clinton good on this issue?  No, he was 
terrible.  He positively harmed workers by failing to update the 
benchmarks to keep pace with inflation.  In fact, under Clinton more 
workers were subjected to the easy test than under Bush, because 
Clinton’s high benchmark was lower the Bush’s low benchmark.

Finally, this is not an area in which Clinton’s defenders can argue that 
he failed to act because he was hamstrung by a Republican Congress.  The 
modification of the regulations is purely an executive matter; Congress 
isn’t involved.  In addition, no one can say this is just some arcane 
regulatory issue that wasn’t even on the Clinton administration’s radar, 
because it actually was.  When Clinton entered the White House, it had 
long been known that these regulations needed work.  The General 
Accounting Office prepared a report on the regulations, which was 
submitted to the Department of Labor in plenty of time for Clinton to 
act before leaving office.  Instead, he did nothing.

What Next?

Can we reasonably expect Obama to be better than Clinton was, on this or 
any other issue?  Probably not.

Will Obama get tough with Wall Street and reregulate the financial 
markets in the public interest?  Not likely.  Obama’s campaign got more 
money from banking and financial services than McCain’s (which ought to 
give those who call Obama a “socialist” something to think about).  And 
one of Obama’s chief economic advisers during the campaign was Robert 
Rubin, who as treasury secretary under Clinton was a key supporter of 
financial market deregulation, including Clinton’s repeal of the 
Glass-Steagall Act.  Post-election reports indicate that Lawrence 
Summers, Rubin’s successor at treasury under Clinton, is a frontrunner 
for the same position under Obama.  A campaign bankrolled by Wall Street 
and advised by Rubin, and a Treasury Department headed by Summers, do 
not look like a promising recipe for “change we need.”

Will Obama give us real healthcare reform?  Not likely.  Any meaningful 
reform of our healthcare system will require standing up to the 
insurance companies and other powerful industry players.  But Obama’s 
campaign got nearly twice as much money from the healthcare industry as 
McCain’s.  It is consequently unsurprising that Obama’s healthcare plan 
leaves our private health insurance system largely untouched, as 
analyses by organizations like Physicians for a National Health Program 
have shown.  Our private system costs far more and delivers far less 
than the public systems used in every other industrialized country, so 
the only reform that makes sense is to replace our private system with a 
public one.  Obama’s proposals don’t do that, and they don’t even 
constitute a significant step in that direction.  The best that can be 
said for Obama’s plan is that, unlike McCain’s, it probably won’t make 
things worse than they already are.  And here too, post-election reports 
are already saying that Obama’s purportedly ambitious healthcare agenda 
is “likely to be downsized or delayed.”

Will Obama get US troops out of Iraq?  Not likely.  A lot of ink was 
spilled during the campaign analyzing Obama’s various pronouncements on 
this issue, and I have little to add except to highlight two of the more 
telling passages in the voluminous public record.  First, Samantha 
Power, who was one of Obama’s foreign policy advisers until she resigned 
for having called Hillary Clinton a “monster,” stated in an interview 
with the BBC that Obama’s highly touted withdrawal plans were nothing 
more than a “best-case scenario.”  She added that once in the White 
House, Obama “will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted 
as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator.”

Second, in an interview last summer with Stars & Stripes, Obama was 
asked, “You’ve talked about a drawdown.  I don’t know how you envision 
the long-term presence in Iraq.  When you talk drawdown, are you talking 
eventually no troops in Iraq, or are you thinking something like Germany 
and Korea?”  Obama’s answer is worth quoting in full:

“What I’ve said is that we need a residual force to start with.  So, 
without putting a precise number or a precise time frame, I’ve set a 
series of missions that we’re going to have to continue to perform for a 
decent stretch of time.  We’re going to have to continue to provide 
logistical and intelligence support to the Iraqi military.  We’re going 
to have to continue to provide training to the Iraqi military.  We are 
going to have to continue to protect our diplomatic forces, our 
civilians on the ground in Iraq.  Our embassy, we’ve got to protect. 
And, I believe we’re going to have to continue to have a 
counter-terrorism strike force, if not directly inside of Iraq then 
certainly in the region, that can provide insurance against any 
resurgence of either Al Qaida activity inside of Iraq or serious, 
destabilizing violence inside of Iraq.  Those are all tasks that we’re 
still going to have to perform, and that means a certain number of 
troops.  What those troops would be to accomplish those missions, I 
would leave up to the commanders, or I would at least consult closely 
with commanders in order to achieve the goals.”

I realize that statements like these should not be taken too seriously. 
  Like any politician in the middle of a hard-fought campaign, Obama may 
have just been saying what he felt he needed to say to a particular 
constituency to pick up a few more votes, and it might prove nothing 
about what he will actually do in office.  But it does display the kind 
of rhetoric he knows is available to justify continuing the occupation 
under another name (“training,” “logistical and intelligence support,” 
“counter-terrorism strike force,” etc.).  It’s not clear from his answer 
that he’s committed to bringing a single US soldier home from Iraq.

Will Obama follow a humane course in the Middle East conflict?  Again, 
not likely.  Putting aside the AIPAC speech, all indications are that 
Obama’s Middle East policy will be more of the same.  Bill Clinton was 
the most pro-Israel president in history until Bush Jr. outdid him, and 
Obama’s foreign policy team includes Clinton’s secretary of state 
Madeleine Albright and Clinton’s top Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross. 
  During Israel’s massive assault on the civilian population of southern 
Lebanon in the summer of 2006, Obama was one of 61 cosponsors (including 
Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and liberal icons like Barbara Boxer and Ted 
Kennedy) of a Senate resolution expressing “steadfast support for the 
State of Israel” and supporting “Israel’s right of self-defense.” 
Moreover, as a black man, an alleged Muslim, a known associate of former 
terrorists, and so on, Obama will presumably feel more than the average 
amount of political pressure to demonstrate unequivocally that he is a 
good “friend of Israel,” just as Democratic politicians like Bill 
Clinton have so often supported reactionary “law and order” policies 
(like Clinton’s so-called Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act) 
to try to prove they’re not “soft on crime.”

All told, the outlook for a new day in America is poor.  The bottom line 
is this:  When you think Barack Obama, think Tommy Carcetti.  He 
probably has a good heart, but he is confronting a vast array of 
institutional forces aimed at preventing him or anyone else in power 
from doing the right thing.  To have any chance of getting the results 
we want out of his administration, we cannot just sit back and expect 
him to work his magic.  We must organize, agitate, and pursue 
independent initiatives (like ballot measures) to get what we want (like 
single-payer healthcare) at the state level.  And we must carefully 
scrutinize Obama’s every move and harass and harangue him relentlessly 
just as if he were John McCain or George Bush.  From the point of view 
of every American left of center, the principal advantage of Obama over 
McCain is that it is at least possible that he will listen to us.  We 
cannot let that advantage go to waste.

Frank J. Menetrez received his PhD in philosophy and JD from UCLA. He 
can be reached at frankmenetrez at yahoo.com.