The Republicans, and Judd Gregg in particular, have handed the president a golden chance to make lemonade out of lemons. To do so, he has to enact some real change: put a progressive economist or political leader in charge of the renamed Department of Prosperity (formerly known as the Department of Commerce). Follow the argument here.
For too many years, we've just taken for granted that the Commerce Department is the bastion of business, a place run by "free market" advocates. Across the political spectrum, it's just an accepted norm that Commerce will carry the water for the corporate world, from issues like trade to patents to general economic development. The Commerce Secretary, in Republican and Democratic Administrations, has always had a much more prominent and influential voice in shaping economic policy than say the Labor Secretary--which has been a backwater for generations.
From the Department's website:
The historic mission of the Department is "to foster, promote, and develop the foreign and domestic commerce" of the United States.
And one of its key sub-missions...(I could barely contain a laugh on this one)
Promoting progressive domestic business policies and growth.
But, wait one second: why do we accept the idea that is up to the business community to decide the shape and character of our economy? And, in particular, why do we hand over the reigns of our economy to the "free market" advocates who push their agenda, among other places, from the Commerce perch?
Because they have done such a great job?
Hah.
I would hope that we can agree, across the political spectrum, that we measure the success of an economy by the prosperity enjoyed by broad numbers of the people. If "promoting progressive domestic business policies and growth" is the standard by which we judge our economic progress, the folks running Commerce for decades have been total failures--not because of some personal flaw or incompetence but simply because, Republicans or Democrats, they viewed their mission as doing the bidding of business, not doing the bidding of the people. "Prosperity" does not come just through "commerce", i.e., by stuff being made and traded, activity measured by things like the Gross Domestic Product.
Prosperity is achieved by looking at the real lives of the people.
Here is a graphic I use a lot in a presentation about the short-term and long-term reasons for the economic crisis facing workers (courtesy of the Economic Policy Institute and Change To Win). I think it is perhaps the most graphic, clear explanation of why we are where we are. It measures productivity versus wages:
Basically, the basic bargain was roughly this--if you worked hard and became more productive, you would see that sweat of the brow in your wages. And from the post-war era until the 1970s, that deal basically held--as you can see from the lines that are basically close together until the 1970s.
Then, the lines diverge--dramatically. You can see it yourself. If the lines had continued to track closely together as they did prior to the 1970s, the MINIMUM WAGE would be more than $19 an hour. THE MINIMUM WAGE!!!:
Let's add a few more stats to show how great a job the Commerce folks did in "promoting progressive domestic business policies and growth":
*24.5 all Americans earn poverty wages (9.60 or less)
*10 percent of all Americans—15 million Americans—earn 6.79 or less
*33.3 percent of African American works and 39.3 of Hispanic workers earn poverty wages.
*The share of our entire national income hoarded by the top one percent is, as of 2005, 21.8 percent. The last time it was that high was in 1928 (23.9)—just as the Great Depression was about to hit with its full fury.
*We accept poverty as a fact of life in this country—-partly because workers have not gotten the fair share of their hard work over the past three decades (in Republican and Democratic Administrations).
*At the recent new minimum wage of $6.55 an hour, if you worked every single day, 40 hours a week, with no vacations, no holidays, no health care and no pension, you would earn the grand sum of $13.624. The POVERTY LEVEL for a family of three is $17,600.
*47 million Americans have no health care and tens of millions more have inadequate or costly health care that can bankrupt them.
*Since 1978, the number of defined-benefit plans—-that means, pensions that give retirees a promised monthly amount—-plummeted from 128,041 plans covering some 41 percent of private-sector workers to only 26,000 today. It’s a Dog Food Retirement future for millions of people.
*And, of course, unionization has fallen dramatically--a direct result of an era of "promoting progressive domestic business policies and growth"
For that reason, I have to say I gave a big yawn to the hand-wringing about Judd Gregg's appointment to head Commerce. Oh, my god--A REPUBLICAN in the Cabinet...why, because appointing a "Democratic" Robert Rubin acolyte or say a different senator like say Mary Landrieu or Max Baucus would have made a bigger difference? Get real. Wake up.
So, here's my point. Mr. President, respectfully, "CHANGE" does not mean leaving the control over the economy in the hands of the people who have totally failed to bring prosperity to the people. "CHANGE" means turning the economy over to a new set of leaders who, first and foremost, see it as their mission to correct the abomination left to us by the "free marketeers".
As the first step, we should stop accepting the notion that the Department of Commerce is a rest stop and sub-office for every corporate lobbyist and "free market" advocate who comes to Washington.
Since the name is so linked to the culture, let's change the name of the Commerce Department to the "Department of Prosperity", which, in my view, more properly reflects what the economy should be about. Then let's put in charge a person who gets what prosperity really is. His or her success will be measured not just by the growth of GDP but by the rise in real wages of people, the promotion of real health care ("Medicare for All") for all Americans, and a real retirement for our seniors.
That's change we can believe in.