Jim McGovern, our congressman, was exasperated. The hour allotted for debate in the House last week was almost over, and he’d watched those rising in opposition to his resolution show photos of gang violence, recite statistics of drug overdoses, but totally ignore the resolution’s central question of whether Congress ought to have a say in our march to war with Venezuela. “All we’re saying here is let’s do our job,” said McGovern. “If you don’t want to do the job, I don’t know why the hell you’re here!”
Ultimately, the measure failed. All the Republican reps but independent-minded Don Bacon and Thomas Massie and a far less principled but suddenly on-the-outs-with-Trump Marjorie Taylor Greene voted against it. All but one Democrat — Henry Cuellar, the guy Trump just pardoned over money laundering and bribery charges — voted for it. There would be no hearings about the military strikes on drug boats, no administration testimony about the role of Venezuelan oil in influencing our goals, and no congressional debate at all about whether our efforts to overthrow Nicolás Maduro would prompt the Venezuelans to greet us as liberators or lead that country in to years of chaos.
So thanks to Congressman McGovern for pushing the issue, and I share his exasperation at all those Republicans who just get in line with “whatever you say, sir!” rather than assert their prerogative as a co-equal and responsible branch of government.
But here’s my own independent-mindedness: What about Jim McGovern? Is he and most of the other Democrats in Congress doing their job? I’m not talking about the resolution last week, but rather their willingness to ignore the massive national debt. When Congressman McGovern first entered Congress in January 1997, the debt was around $5.4 trillion. Now it’s over $38 trillion, a growth rate three-and-a-half times the rate of inflation, and $113,000 for every American citizen. The $1 trillion we’ll pay this year in interest on the debt is money that does not go to expanding health care, abating hunger, or to any public good or service that Democrats in general and progressive congressmen like Jim McGovern in particular have insisted are matters of fairness and decency.
Yes, congressman, these programs are matters of fairness and decency, but putting the costs of these programs today on the national credit card isn’t fair or decent to the next generation who gets stuck with the bill. Our legacy to them — among all the other consequences of ineffective governance that we’re sending their way — is hyperinflation or slashed social welfare programs in response to forced austerity. It isn’t fair, it isn’t decent, and it wasn’t inevitable.
And yes, the Republicans are just as irresponsible. They cut taxes with the ostensible idea that the IRS will reap more from a spurred economy than it will lose from the lower tax rates. It doesn’t. It has never come close. Every member of Congress must know this, but the vast majority of the Republicans have long shown their disregard of obvious truth (e.g., the 147 who voted against certifying Biden’s 2020 election win), and are too willing to put the broad interests of the country behind the narrow interests of party and donors.
It’s the same game with the Democrats. The health care bill they offered in the Senate in mid-December was theirs to write, but again said nothing but extend the enhanced subsidies passed in 2021 as a temporary Covid-era expediency. This is exactly what the Republicans voted down multiple times and was the cause of the longest government shutdown in history. The Democrats MUST have known that the Republicans would vote it down again, but the opportunity for partisan messaging was apparently more appealing than negotiating, compromising, and making progress to solve a real problem.
Being honest. Negotiating. Compromising. These are essential for responsibly reining in our national debt and for crafting any bill that can withstand the 60-vote cloture rule in the Senate or the two-thirds of Congress needed to override a presidential veto. They are the only way to solve real problems. The fight, fight, fight for the old parties is not going to get us there. Rather, we must stop fighting for them at all. Six months ago, I did just that. After being an active Democrat since I turned 18, I went to the Northampton city clerk’s office and reregistered as a member of the Forward Party.
Never heard of it? Well, I expect you will. For it is a home for those committed to integrity and truth; fairness and decency; and policies based on powerful arguments about the broad public good, and not on loud arguments by powerful players. It is a home for those who foremost want their elected officials to do their job: to give up the gridlock and get the hard things done. Not right. Not left. Forward.
Marc Warner is on the Executive Committee of the Massachusetts Forward Party. He lives in Northampton.