There have been some very interesting developments with the House Progressive Caucus and also with the Occupy Wall Street movement during the past day.
The House Progressive Caucus has reintroduced an updated version of their People's Budget proposal with updated messaging that looks to be aligned with Van Jones "Rebuild the American Dream" left grassroots movement and that makes use of the independent Occupy Wall Street movement's "We are the 99%" powerful meme. The name of the bill has been changed to incorporate that 99% meme.
It was reported that a meeting between the Progressive Caucus was scheduled for today with a "delegation" of Occupy Wall Street members from New York City to discuss a legislative agenda.
Earlier today a well known member of OWS who attends general assembly meetings and tweets messages about them live read a report about this meeting and questioned a RollCall reporter via Twitter about who the "delegation" was and who gave them authority to speak for the movement. Others got involved in the Twitter conversation. The meeting with the Progressive Caucus was apparently canceled at the last minute.
The Progressive Caucus made their announcement unveiling the new bill:
"Restore the American Dream for the 99% Act"
CPC Introduces Restore the American Dream for the 99% Act
The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) today introduced the Restore the American Dream for the 99% Act, which creates more than 5 million jobs in the next two years and saves more than $2 trillion over 10 years. The bill implements emergency job creation measures, establishes fair taxation rates, cuts wasteful weapons spending, ends our wars overseas, and strengthens Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
[ ... ]
The bill is a continuation of the work the CPC has done throughout the 112th Congress, beginning with its People’s Budget alternative in April. The Restore the American Dream for the 99 Percent Act incorporates policy proposals from the People’s Budget and represents the CPC’s most significant job creation legislation effort to date.
More information about the bill is in this PDF file at the Progressive caucus site. It looks like the original title was Restore the American Dream Act and the title was modified recently to add "for the 99%" at the end.
Terrance Heath, of
Campaign for America's Future, published an article about it today on their site. He links to another organization called
Change the Nation which has produced this visual aid that contrasts the programs of the Democrats and the Republicans. He also includes a link to a
petition at the MoveOn/Rebuild the Dream site in support of the bill.
Isaiah J. Poole, of Campaign for America's Future, says in a Huffington-Post article today that:
It is a direct answer to the economic anger at the heart of the Occupy movement.
He goes on to talk about the poison pills added by the Republican House to their legislation that extends the payroll tax holiday and unemployment benefits, and outlines the provisions of the new progressive policy in contrast.
The Progressive Caucus legislation offers a different choice. We can put people to work today building the foundation of the economy of the future, or allow the stubborn subservience of congressional conservatives to the 1 percent -- the right-wing billionaires and millionaires and the big corporations that boss Washington around -- to cause more economic pain, widen the gulf between the very wealthy and struggling workers, and fuel more Occupy movements.
David Dayen has a nice summary of what is included in this package:
Congressional Progressive Caucus Introduces “Restore the American Dream for the 99% Act”
• A Buy America provision for all government-contracted materials.
• The Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans would expire, saving $800 billion.
• Ending “unnecessary” weapons programs and other defense spending for $280 billion, and accelerating withdrawals from foreign wars to save $1.2 trillion.
• Canceling fossil fuel subsidies for the oil and gas industry.
• A financial speculation tax to capture $350 billion with a tiny 0.03% tax on all trades.
• Changing the payroll tax extension to a Making Work Pay refundable tax credit, similar to what was in the original Obama stimulus, and extending it for two years.
• Instituting a robust public option to compete in the exchanges with private insurance.
• Allowing Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies on the price of prescription drugs.
• Scrapping the Social Security payroll tax cap (with a donut hole between $106,800 and $250,000) to fully fund Social Security over the long term.
It looks like an excellent piece of legislation which includes many of the solutions that informed progressives have been discussing and promoting, some of them new policies and some that have been high on our list for years. As Dayens notes, this is message legislation that no one really expects to be passed on implemented in full "but it sets an important marker for the future."
OWS Members Schedule Meeting With Progressive Caucus
In
Dayen's article and yesterday's
Roll Call article, it was reported that ten members of the Occupy Wall Street movement from New York City had agreed to meet with the Progressive Caucus today to discuss the legislative priorities of OWS. Anyone who has been following OWS and is familiar with their governance would find this to be very curious. It reminded me of the "Demands Working Group" that was suddenly formed back in October. The group was formed at a general assembly at Zuccotti Park that was held at the same time that many of the members of the movement were at the Times Square protest. They quickly created a web site and a list of demands and met secretly with the
New York Times and gave them the list. This
caused an uproar since no one speaks for the movement without consensus.
Yesterday, Roll Call reported that they had obtained a copy of an email sent to members of the Progressive Caucus.
“This is the very first meeting of national occupy organizers and members to discuss specific legislation in the country,” the email to Members states.
The Roll Call article draws an equivalency between OWS and the Tea Party by saying that while OWS is not affiliated with any party, Democrats are embracing the movement "just as Republicans successfully channeled the energy behind the tea party movement for electoral success."
Dayens praises the movement for the influence they have had on the national conversation and reports that the meeting will be held today. He also said "it sounds like the kind of agenda an Occupier could support." The post was written this afternoon so I assume that the meeting was still on at that point. ThinkProgress also published a news flash at 10 a.m. EST this morning about it. At 7:01 p.m. tonight, Keith Olbermann tweeted about the meeting in a show promo and about an hour later he read a tweet from @GregMitch and tweeted again saying that the story had changed.
#ShowPlug 1: First Occupy/Political conference: Congressional Progressive Caucus to meet with #Occupy on legislation
So that changes the story :) RT @GregMitch Key story: 10 Occupyers about to meet with liberals in Congress; have t... tl.gd/en6jp8
Again, while the policies included in the bill probably would be favorable to a lot of occupiers, I could not understand why it would have come out of thin air like this since I had not heard about any "legislative agenda" passed by the NYC general assembly or any other general assemblies across the country. But there was a so called national assembly held last week during the week-long activism held at the National Mall, so I thought it was possible that this national assembly had agreed to something that was not reported widely.
Controversy Causes Meeting to be Canceled
At 6:34 p.m. EST, The Atlantic Wire
Rogue Occupiers Nearly Do the Unthinkable: Meet with Congress
On Twitter Tuesday, some Occupy organizers scorned the idea that those ten people could represent Occupy Wall Street. "Which #OWS group is meeting with lawmakers? your article gives impression it is an official delegation. it is not," tweeted Dicey Troop, who regularly tweets minutes from Occupy's general assemblies, in a message directed at Roll Call reporter Jessica Brady. "This maneuver is against consensus," he wrote later.
Indeed, Occupy never agreed to send the delegation in its General Assembly nor its Spokes Council, the two consensus-building units of the group, whose minutes are available online. "Anyone can say that they're working with Occupy Wall Street, but from what I understand OWS is against endorsing political candidates," Occupy spokesman Patrick Bruner said. The group's not endorsing legislation, either, though unofficial lists of "suggestions" have advocated for a return of the Glass-Segal Act and an end to corporate personhood, among others.
[ ... ]
Somebody's taking the reins in terms of representing the group to Congress. But the rest of Occupy's not ready for that yet.
DiceyTroop tweets:
@jessicalbrady which #OWS group is meeting with lawmakers? your article gives impression it is an official delegation. it is not.
@schleprock @anonaction @jessicalbrady right, exactly. and this story is exactly why. this maneuver is against consensus.
DiceyTroop retweeted this later:
RT @schleprock: @AnonAction @DiceyTroop @jessicalbrady No, not at all. Nobody needs my permission to do anything. Claiming to rep #ows = not cool, however
http://twitter.com/...
@schleprock tweets:
@DiceyTroop No shit. WHICH activists? And who the hell do they claim to represent?
So it is not clear yet who organized this unofficial delegation or who the members of the delegation were. I have not seen any names mentioned yet. The Twitter conversations seem to have happened around 1 p.m. EST and at some point after that the meeting was canceled.
Interesting.