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Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion - The missing middle class puts Democrats in a ‘big beautiful' bind
Sometimes, a one-vote margin seems like a landslide. That's how the 215-214 margin of victory in the House for the 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act' should have felt to many Democrats. From the moment of the bill's introduction, Democrats seemed unable to find their footing, resorting to calling it by less flattering names but not rallying the nation against it. In fact, the Democrats couldn't seem to figure out quite who they were trying to rally. If American democracy is to have a viable future, the Democratic Party needs to get its act together — and do it quickly. Its performance in the debate about President Trump's signature legislation was not a hopeful sign. As the Senate begins its consideration of the bill, Democrats will say, to borrow from one commentator, that it will lead to 'the largest upward transfer of wealth in American history.' Think of what New Deal Democrats, and their hero Franklin Delano Roosevelt, would have done with such a bill. They would have denounced it over and over again as the work of the 'plutocrats' or 'princes of property.' They would have been speaking to a solidly working-class base. That was then. But now the Democrats have themselves become, at least in part, the party of 'plutocrats' and 'princes of property.' As political scientist Sam Zacher reports, 'Beginning in the 1990s, the Democratic Party started winning increasing shares of rich, upper-middle income, high-income occupation, and stock-owning voters.' This shift was really evident in the 2024 presidential election. Last November, Kamala Harris received a higher share of the vote of people earning between $100,000 and $199,999 than did Donald Trump. That was also true among people making $200,000 or more. In fact, a majority of Americans with a net worth of at least $5 million were also in Harris's camp. On the other hand, she carried the group of people making under $30,000. Therein lies the problem. People in the lowest and highest income groups prioritize different issues. Satisfying members of one group may turn off the other. While the lowest-income voters tend to focus on kitchen table issues, people in the upper income brackets are 'post-materialists, prioritizing issues of identity and other social concerns over traditional economic matters.' That is why the Harris campaign elected to eschew populist and redistributionist themes. The former vice president was happy being shown in the company of celebrities and billionaires. At times, she seemed to be running to the right of Donald Trump, embracing patriotic fervor, gun ownership and the American dream. But given the shifting allegiance of working-class voters, she had a very difficult task to win the election. We saw that again in the messaging from House Democrats about 'The One Big Beautiful Bill Act.' The party of FDR was again in a real bind. Let's start with the simple fact that opposing it meant that Democrats could be accused of wanting to let Trump's 2017 tax bill expire. This, Republicans claimed, would increase taxes on millions of Americans. The second problem was that part of the Democratic base will be among the winners if the bill is signed into law. As USA Today notes, citing the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the bill 'would cut taxes on average by about $2,800 in 2026,' but '[m]ore than two-thirds of the total cuts would go to those with annual incomes of about $217,000 or more.' 'Those with incomes of $1.1 million or more,' it reported, 'would get nearly a fourth of the cuts.' Many of America's millionaires support the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, they are not particularly focused on the plight of those who will be the biggest losers if the president and his Republican allies get their way. The losers will be people at the other end of the income scale — and the other part of the Democratic coalition. 'Americans making about $17,000 to $51,000,' USA Today says, 'would lose about $700. Those with an income of less than $17,000 would lose more than $1,000 on average.' That would come from the deep cuts the House bill would make in the social safety net. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries got it right when he said that passage of the bill would 'cause millions of Americans to lose healthcare and food assistance.' Polls show that the vast majority of Democrats in the country oppose Trump's plan. But a party whose support is most heavily concentrated at the two extreme ends of the class divide would have to show great dexterity in bringing them together to oppose the Republican plan. Alas, such dexterity is in short supply in today's national Democratic Party. That is why it is not clear at the moment that it can stop the plan from being enacted into law. The party is, however, likely to try to use 'The One Big Beautiful Bill Act' as a rallying cry to try to win back the House of Representatives in the 2026 midterms. But by then the damage will have been done, and the prospects of undoing it will be bleak. Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
7 hours ago
- Business
- The Hill
The missing middle class puts Democrats in a ‘big beautiful' bind
Sometimes, a one-vote margin seems like a landslide. That's how the 215-214 margin of victory in the House for the 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act' should have felt to many Democrats. From the moment of the bill's introduction, Democrats seemed unable to find their footing, resorting to calling it by less flattering names but not rallying the nation against it. In fact, the Democrats couldn't seem to figure out quite who they were trying to rally. If American democracy is to have a viable future, the Democratic Party needs to get its act together — and do it quickly. Its performance in the debate about President Trump's signature legislation was not a hopeful sign. As the Senate begins its consideration of the bill, Democrats will say, to borrow from one commentator, that it will lead to 'the largest upward transfer of wealth in American history.' Think of what New Deal Democrats, and their hero Franklin Delano Roosevelt, would have done with such a bill. They would have denounced it over and over again as the work of the 'plutocrats' or 'princes of property.' They would have been speaking to a solidly working-class base. That was then. But now the Democrats have themselves become, at least in part, the party of 'plutocrats' and 'princes of property.' As political scientist Sam Zacher reports, 'Beginning in the 1990s, the Democratic Party started winning increasing shares of rich, upper-middle income, high-income occupation, and stock-owning voters.' This shift was really evident in the 2024 presidential election. Last November, Kamala Harris received a higher share of the vote of people earning between $100,000 and $199,999 than did Donald Trump. That was also true among people making $200,000 or more. In fact, a majority of Americans with a net worth of at least $5 million were also in Harris's camp. On the other hand, she carried the group of people making under $30,000. Therein lies the problem. People in the lowest and highest income groups prioritize different issues. Satisfying members of one group may turn off the other. While the lowest-income voters tend to focus on kitchen table issues, people in the upper income brackets are 'post-materialists, prioritizing issues of identity and other social concerns over traditional economic matters.' That is why the Harris campaign elected to eschew populist and redistributionist themes. The former vice president was happy being shown in the company of celebrities and billionaires. At times, she seemed to be running to the right of Donald Trump, embracing patriotic fervor, gun ownership and the American dream. But given the shifting allegiance of working-class voters, she had a very difficult task to win the election. We saw that again in the messaging from House Democrats about 'The One Big Beautiful Bill Act.' The party of FDR was again in a real bind. Let's start with the simple fact that opposing it meant that Democrats could be accused of wanting to let Trump's 2017 tax bill expire. This, Republicans claimed, would increase taxes on millions of Americans. The second problem was that part of the Democratic base will be among the winners if the bill is signed into law. As USA Today notes, citing the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the bill 'would cut taxes on average by about $2,800 in 2026,' but '[m]ore than two-thirds of the total cuts would go to those with annual incomes of about $217,000 or more.' 'Those with incomes of $1.1 million or more,' it reported, 'would get nearly a fourth of the cuts.' Many of America's millionaires support the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, they are not particularly focused on the plight of those who will be the biggest losers if the president and his Republican allies get their way. The losers will be people at the other end of the income scale — and the other part of the Democratic coalition. 'Americans making about $17,000 to $51,000,' USA Today says, 'would lose about $700. Those with an income of less than $17,000 would lose more than $1,000 on average.' That would come from the deep cuts the House bill would make in the social safety net. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries got it right when he said that passage of the bill would 'cause millions of Americans to lose healthcare and food assistance.' Polls show that the vast majority of Democrats in the country oppose Trump's plan. But a party whose support is most heavily concentrated at the two extreme ends of the class divide would have to show great dexterity in bringing them together to oppose the Republican plan. Alas, such dexterity is in short supply in today's national Democratic Party. That is why it is not clear at the moment that it can stop the plan from being enacted into law. The party is, however, likely to try to use 'The One Big Beautiful Bill Act' as a rallying cry to try to win back the House of Representatives in the 2026 midterms. But by then the damage will have been done, and the prospects of undoing it will be bleak. Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.
Hindustan Times
7 hours ago
- Business
- Hindustan Times
DOGE lessons for the State capacity debate
After 130 days of wielding his chainsaw — hacking off 260,000 United States (US) federal workers who accounted for roughly 6% of the country's workforce by one estimate and wiping out entire agencies like USAID — Elon Musk has left Washington, DC. From an Indian perspective, I have observed Musk's Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE)'s attempt to eviscerate the administrative State with a combination of bewilderment, curiosity, and horror. Waste, Fraud, and Abuse, the DOGE mantra, are adjectives many in India have long reserved for our bureaucracy. But, it turns out that every society is disenchanted with its bureaucracy in its own way (with apologies to Leo Tolstoy). In America, liberals too are coming to terms with this disenchantment, seeking to replace what they consider an inefficient and unambitious State with one that delivers 'abundance'. Viewed from India, the contours of the US debate raise new questions about how State capacity gets built. More importantly, the situation in the US offers a cautionary tale on the paths we must not take. That these debates are taking place against the backdrop of creeping authoritarianism adds to the urgency of engaging with these ideas. DOGE's dystopian vision is well known. It seeks a hyper-privatised, techno-State run by algorithms to replace the 'fraud, waste, and abuse' of the deep State. Liberal voices are loosely cohering around the vision of an 'abundance' State, one that harks back to the New Deal infrastructure moment and builds in abundance for the 21st century — housing, clean energy, and innovation infrastructure, among others. The philosophical roots of the argument lie in the view that Democrats stopped investing in the supply side of the economy, focusing instead on the demand side through cash transfers and affordable care. Consequently, the American State underinvested in infrastructure and public services. The result was low-supply, overpriced essential goods and an economic environment of scarcity. As a political vision, abundance has been critiqued widely for its failure to engaged with societal power structures and furthering the politics of redistribution. But, from a State capacity perspective, abundance brings a new dimension to the debate. Scarcity, and the resulting low trust in government, the argument goes, has been produced by layers of laws, procedures, and what American political scientist Francis Fukuyama calls vetocracy (too many powerful actors blocking the government). Zoning laws and environmental protections are among the chief culprits, this view holds. Abundance envisages a government that builds by de-regulating bureaucracy. DOGE imagines a State running on the power of algorithms. Both sides of the debate raise critical questions on State capacity — which the Indian debate also should engage with. The efficiency trap: DOGE, abundance, and the latter's critics, all seek an efficient State. For DOGE, the algorithm is the Holy Grail. Abundance yearns for what public affairs researcher Marc J Dunkelman, in his book Why Nothing Works, calls the Hamiltonian impulse — a strong centralised government with the capacity to 'get things done' in contrast to the 'Jeffersonian impulse' that seeks to democratise State power through decentralisation and consensus building. Missing in this debate is a theory of State power. The State is assumed to be a benevolent actor. Against the looming reality of authoritarianism, this is naïve. DOGE is a cautionary tale on the misuse of efficiency as a value proposition to direct State power towards the pursuit of elite interests. In India too, efficiency concerns have opened the door to a deeply personalised style of strong-man, bulldozer politics. The one lesson from 130 days of DOGE is this: State capacity debates must guard against fetishising efficiency. The State as a firm: The efficiency trap traces its intellectual roots to New Public Management and its emphasis on private sector management practices for governments. At present, this has been replaced by a Silicon Valley inspired, start-up logic. The State is a logistics delivery firm powered by algorithms and the citizen is a consumer and distant spectator. At the other end of the aisle, abundance expresses a near exhaustion with the citizen. Too much participation and fracturing of power results in absurd realities: 50 town hall meetings for a housing project in San Francisco, for instance. Here, vetocracy impedes consensus building. In both views, the citizen-State relationship is transactional. Accountability and citizen rights are relegated to the margins. But the State is not a platform fulfilling orders. Effective delivery is about making trade-offs that balance equity, justice, and social stability. Without participatory guardrails, these trade-offs will rarely be made from the vantage of the ordinary citizen. One solution is in Dunkelman's framing of voice without veto. Eventually, the government has to stop listening and go about implementing, the argument goes. For the State capacity debate, the challenge lies in identifying the institutional mechanisms through which this fine balance between participation and vetocracy can be struck, with the citizen at the centre. Bureaucratic autonomy: DOGE's centralising vision seeks to rid itself of rules and procedures to make bureaucracy, as Musk posted in late February, 'subject to the will of the President'. Abundance seeks bureaucratic autonomy by de-regulating bureaucracy from procedural red tape, arguably the very tools of bureaucracy that preserve its autonomy, and empowering a Hamiltonian government to get things done. The dilemma at the heart of these differing visions is one that Indian debates are all too familiar with — balancing bureaucratic discretion with accountability through procedures and decentralisation. At its core, the challenge of State capacity in the US and India is one of determining what level of government should perform what level of function and how best to distribute power within the State in ways that make the State responsive and effective. As this brief overview highlights, the global crisis of the administrative State is an opportunity for radical re-imagination of the State itself. But debates cannot afford to lose sight of normative concerns of democracy and citizenship. The quest for State capacity has to guard against the slippery slope of authoritarianism. Indeed, it should emerge as a bulwark against it. DOGE and Musk are the warning bells. Yamini Aiyar is senior visiting fellow, Brown University. The views expressed are personal.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Contributor: In this corrupt age, a new crypto law should leave no loopholes
Congress, its eye on a futuristic form of finance, is debating legislation that would legitimize stablecoins, a specific type of cryptocurrency linked to the U.S. dollar. But lawmakers eager to do the bidding of this new industry are ignoring the transformation of the American regulatory system and allegations of corruption in the second Trump administration. To the delight of Silicon Valley, Big Tech and Wall Street, within the next week or two the Senate appears poised to approve the GENIUS Act, a law that would give legal blessing to stablecoins. Despite the bitter partisan strife that defines American politics, about a dozen Democratic senators appear ready to lock arms with almost all Republicans to pass the legislation. Following the model since the New Deal created our modern independent financial regulators, the legislation would allow the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Treasury Department and others to draft the fine print to implement the bill. Their work will really matter, because stablecoins are, unlike cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, supposed to have real U.S. dollars behind them. Only regulators can ensure that. Legislation typically provides only a framework for regulatory action. And there was once great logic in Congress giving specialized regulators discretion to use their best judgment. But we're living in 2025. The very idea of properly regulating finance, new or old, is under siege by the current administration, rendering the old delegation to agencies all but useless. For generations financial market regulation relied on independent regulators, insulated from economic and political pressures, to protect the integrity of markets for investors without fear or favor. But President Trump — by undermining agency independence, firing some regulators, browbeating others and appointing sycophants — has ended that era. At the same time, Trump's deregulatory zealots have rescinded existing safeguards, purged agency staff and abandoned enforcement. Trump's men — crypto men — now run the regulators. The SEC head, Paul Atkins, ran a firm with an armada of crypto clients. The president's nominee for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a smaller crypto regulator, is Brian Quintenz, a lobbyist for Andreessen Horowitz, the pro-Trump venture capital firm that is neck-deep in cryptocurrency. Trump himself is now a crypto kingpin. Selling access to the president via Trump's memecoin, a collector token, has rightly drawn scathing criticism. But Trump's family vehicle, World Liberty Financial, has launched a stablecoin that may be vulnerable to foreign grift. A firm backed by the Abu Dhabi government is buying $2 billion worth of the token. And late last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission dropped a case against Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange that in 2023 admitted it turned a blind eye to money laundering and sanctions violations, days after Binance listed Trump's stablecoin for trading. These developments — the warping of independent regulators into docile creatures of industry, the cavalier abandonment of market and investor protection and Trump's determination to milk the presidency for money — demand a new legislative approach that specifically prescribes the regulatory guardrails necessary to realize the legislative goals. We have crossed a Rubicon, and now lawmakers must assume that regulators will simply acquiesce to industry and political forces. Today, Congress cannot simply write law as gauzy guidance; it must provide detailed and binding directives that force the regulators to actually do their jobs. Otherwise, the current Trump regulators will never establish the necessary safeguards the Senate envisions because tough measures could threaten not only the crypto industry but also the president's personal businesses. So far, Democrats in the Senate have settled for tweaks at a time when wholesale revision is needed. How will customers be protected? How will we thwart crime and money laundering using stablecoins, already a serious problem? Will Big Tech firms get to become banks by issuing stablecoins? Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has all but admitted the shortcomings of the legislation, noting that the Republican supporters refuse to allow 'reforms to govern how politicians can use these and other digital assets for their own personal profit.' But Schiff intends to vote for the bill, as do Democratic Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland. While they're trying to make laws for the future, their heads are stuck in the past, thinking of the time when regulators could be trusted. For our current era, members of Congress need to make sure cryptocurrency legislation contains clear, binding, prescriptive guardrails to defend the public interest and to fight mounting risk of corruption. Right now, the stablecoin legislation contains only window dressing. Without a fresh approach, Congress is simply legislating riches for crypto titans — and for Trump. Patrick Woodall is the managing director for policy at Americans for Financial Reform. If it's in the news right now, the L.A. Times' Opinion section covers it. Sign up for our weekly opinion newsletter. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
In this corrupt age, a new crypto law should leave no loopholes
Congress, its eye on a futuristic form of finance, is debating legislation that would legitimize stablecoins, a specific type of cryptocurrency linked to the U.S. dollar. But lawmakers eager to do the bidding of this new industry are ignoring the transformation of the American regulatory system and allegations of corruption in the second Trump administration. To the delight of Silicon Valley, Big Tech and Wall Street, within the next week or two the Senate appears poised to approve the GENIUS Act, a law that would give legal blessing to stablecoins. Despite the bitter partisan strife that defines American politics, about a dozen Democratic senators appear ready to lock arms with almost all Republicans to pass the legislation. Following the model since the New Deal created our modern independent financial regulators, the legislation would allow the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Treasury Department and others to draft the fine print to implement the bill. Their work will really matter, because stablecoins are, unlike cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, supposed to have real U.S. dollars behind them. Only regulators can ensure that. Legislation typically provides only a framework for regulatory action. And there was once great logic in Congress giving specialized regulators discretion to use their best judgment. But we're living in 2025. The very idea of properly regulating finance, new or old, is under siege by the current administration, rendering the old delegation to agencies all but useless. For generations financial market regulation relied on independent regulators, insulated from economic and political pressures, to protect the integrity of markets for investors without fear or favor. But President Trump — by undermining agency independence, firing some regulators, browbeating others and appointing sycophants — has ended that era. At the same time, Trump's deregulatory zealots have rescinded existing safeguards, purged agency staff and abandoned enforcement. Trump's men — crypto men — now run the regulators. The SEC head, Paul Atkins, ran a firm with an armada of crypto clients. The president's nominee for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a smaller crypto regulator, is Brian Quintenz, a lobbyist for Andreessen Horowitz, the pro-Trump venture capital firm that is neck-deep in cryptocurrency. Trump himself is now a crypto kingpin. Selling access to the president via Trump's memecoin, a collector token, has rightly drawn scathing criticism. But Trump's family vehicle, World Liberty Financial, has launched a stablecoin that may be vulnerable to foreign grift. A firm backed by the Abu Dhabi government is buying $2 billion worth of the token. And late last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission dropped a case against Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange that in 2023 admitted it turned a blind eye to money laundering and sanctions violations, days after Binance listed Trump's stablecoin for trading. These developments — the warping of independent regulators into docile creatures of industry, the cavalier abandonment of market and investor protection and Trump's determination to milk the presidency for money — demand a new legislative approach that specifically prescribes the regulatory guardrails necessary to realize the legislative goals. We have crossed a Rubicon, and now lawmakers must assume that regulators will simply acquiesce to industry and political forces. Today, Congress cannot simply write law as gauzy guidance; it must provide detailed and binding directives that force the regulators to actually do their jobs. Otherwise, the current Trump regulators will never establish the necessary safeguards the Senate envisions because tough measures could threaten not only the crypto industry but also the president's personal businesses. So far, Democrats in the Senate have settled for tweaks at a time when wholesale revision is needed. How will customers be protected? How will we thwart crime and money laundering using stablecoins, already a serious problem? Will Big Tech firms get to become banks by issuing stablecoins? Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has all but admitted the shortcomings of the legislation, noting that the Republican supporters refuse to allow 'reforms to govern how politicians can use these and other digital assets for their own personal profit.' But Schiff intends to vote for the bill, as do Democratic Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland. While they're trying to make laws for the future, their heads are stuck in the past, thinking of the time when regulators could be trusted. For our current era, members of Congress need to make sure cryptocurrency legislation contains clear, binding, prescriptive guardrails to defend the public interest and to fight mounting risk of corruption. Right now, the stablecoin legislation contains only window dressing. Without a fresh approach, Congress is simply legislating riches for crypto titans — and for Trump. Patrick Woodall is the managing director for policy at Americans for Financial Reform.
