Catalyst

Privatization Gone Amok

President Bush’s reasons for vetoing SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program)  are yet another example of the corrosive effect of the current economic theory of market fundamentalism that dominates U.S. policy domestically and globally.  We heard it first from Ronald Reagan:  “Get government off our backs!”  It is consistently reinforced with the questionable premise that private enterprise is more efficient than the government.  It is the belief that market forces work best and to everyone’s benefit when government gets out of the way.  President Bush even resurrected the great bugaboo of the last century – creeping socialism – when he gave as one of his reasons that the bill goes “too far toward federalizing health care.”

Never mind the number of uninsured children who would be covered by this bill:  an additional 4 million children over the already 6.6 million children who are already enrolled in the program. And this number of enrollees does not include all children in poverty in the U.S., nor does it extend coverage to legal immigrant children.

Never mind that the program will not be federal, but is a joint program of the federal and state governments, that is state-run and managed.  The President also is concerned that SCHIP will siphon off some children who are currently insured by private health insurance companies.  The number is amorphous.  Never mind that the American Medical Association and trade associations for private insurance and drug companies support expanding SCHIP to cover more uninsured children.  Nor does he allude to the reality that a primarily market-based approach to providing health care to individuals in the U.S. has been neither efficient nor comprehensive as the some 48 million uninsured attest.

But SCHIP is not the only example we have of our flawed commitment to privatization as the headlines in newspapers continue to reveal.  The extensive use of private contract workers to manage many of the logistics of the horrific Iraq war is a reality too little known by U.S. citizens until yet another disaster happens, such as the killing of 17 Iraqis citizens by Blackwater Security Guards or the shooting of two Iraqi Christian women returning home from work by an Australian Security company. All in the employ, and therefore in the name of the U.S.  We are now hearing from military spokesmen that the private security guards are thwarting U.S. efforts to create trust among Iraqi citizens.

Then we are consistently informed that the private contractors who provide supplies to the troops have overcharged for the services, or the building contractors have extensive cost over-runs not to mention shoddy workmanship and buildings which are uninhabitable when finished.  The mammoth new U.S. Embassy in Iraq has postponed its opening indefinitely while a Kuwaiti contractor fixes a long list of problems.  This delay will cost another $144 million.  Our Iraq experience clearly shows that the private sector is not necessarily more efficient than government.  One of the main difficulties is the lack of oversight and accountability of the private sector.  Other obvious difficulties are that the private sector is a for-profit sector seeking all the profit it can possibly grab, and it appears that there is no cost too great for the U.S. taxpayers to pay to fund this war.  The cost is in the trillions and rising.   

The reconstruction of the U.S. Gulf Coast after Katrina illustrates the same gross failures of the government “getting off peoples’ backs and letting the market hold sway.”  The list is long and depressing and the people who have been harmed by this approach are numerous.  But someone is benefiting.

Isn’t it time that we raise our voices in protest and challenge this economic model that is demoralizing to people and depleting our resources to the benefit of a few?  Private enterprise has its merits, but it demands checks and balances.  The government has a responsibility to ensure the well-being and security of its citizens as well as being a good steward of our resources.  The drive toward privatization evades that responsibility and erodes our sense of social solidarity in addressing the needs and problems of our people and the peoples whose lives we impact, such as the people of Iraq.

Posted by Maria Riley, OP - Senior Advisor, Global Women's Project.

Millions Starving for Debt Cancellation

Tomorrow, October 2, the Center of Concern staff joins in the Jubilee Cancel Debt Fast.

Today, millions of men, women and children around the world are literally starving for debt cancellation.  The 2007 Jubilee Act (HR 2634) would provide expanded debt cancellation for many countries that were not included in the 2005 G8 agreement and need debt cancellation to address extreme poverty.  Moving the Jubilee Act through Congress is the central goal of this fall's Cancel Debt Fast, a rolling 40-day fast for debt cancellation that is taking place since September 6 until October 15, 2007.

Nearly halfway through the Cancel Debt Fast, we are already seeing concrete results:

• More than 10,000 individuals have already committed to fast for a day or more and to contact their Member of Congress;
• More than 50 organizations have promoted the fast – on the web or via e-mail to their members;
• 30 high profile authors, religious leaders, and political leaders including 4 Members of Congress and 2 former African presidents have joined the fast as “conveyors;” check out http://www.jubileeusa.org/cdfpressroom0/cdfleaders0.html;
• The fast has also garnered significant press attention including coverage in the Washington Post, Religion News Service, the Christian Post, Sojourners, and more.  Rev. David C. Duncombe has been fasting since September 1st and shared his thoughts in an op-ed in the Florida Sun-Sentinel on this past Saturday at http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/sfl-fasting22forumnbsep22,0,7922243.story);
• There is already movement in the House towards one of the main policy goals for the fast: the scheduling of a hearing on the Jubilee Act – likely to be in November; and
• One member of the Senate has already committed to reintroduce the Jubilee Act in the Senate.

The Jubilee Act has been reintroduced, but it cannot be passed without your help.

You are still on time to join the Jubilee Cancel Debt Fast!

For more information on how to get involved, please visit www.jubileeusa.org.

For more information on the Jubilee Act, please visit http://www.jubileeusa.org/jubilee-act.html.

Posted by Aldo Caliari, Director of the Rethinking Bretton Woods Project, and Member of the Jubilee USA Coordinating Committee.

New Year Resolutions for the New Congress

What would you like to see as the New Year resolutions for the New Congress?  Now I know we are supposed to make New Year resolutions for ourselves, but my need for reform pales in the light of Congressional needs, so I have turned my attention to what I hope from Congress in the coming year.

First, I hope the New Congress governs.  That is simple enough.  Didn’t “We the People” elect them to do that?  And there are so many things that we want attended to in our country: global warming, energy policy, health care, a living wage (forget minimum), social security, education, declining employment and the decline of the middle-class–the list is very long.  We also want to see a foreign policy that truly reflects our best values and instincts and attends to the many truly troubling issues around our globe.  Of course, we want to see as quick a resolution to the Iraq quagmire as possible.  So Congress, please get to work and govern.

I also ask that they return democratic processes to the act of governing.  Transparency, ethics, following time-honored rules for committee participation and voting, control of the special interests, elimination of ear-marking and whatever else needs to be done to bring back civility, integrity and bipartisanship in governing.  I am tired of the small souled “I gotcha” attitude that has ruled our legislative process for too many years while neglecting the truly important needs of the country.

Second, I ask that Congress begin to dismantle those recent laws that have reduced the civil liberties and human rights of our own citizens and residents and of the “enemy combatants.”  It is with great grief that I, and many others, have witnessed the destruction of our civic soul by the use of legalized torture.  In the process we have lost whatever shreds of moral authority that we may have had in the world.  Rather than the power of ideals and values, we now rule by unrestricted military, economic and political force.

Third, I ask that Congress exercise its responsibility of oversight and accountability—especially in financial matters.  Weekly, more reports come out of the abuse of government contracts and the wasting of millions and billions of dollars in the fiasco of Iraq reconstruction and the rebuilding of the U.S. Gulf Coast well into two years after Katrina.  This is our, the people’s, money that is being squandered or siphoned off by corrupt “private contractors.”  Who is following up on those reports and fining those who are “ripping off” the Government?  The myth we have been fed is that the private sector is more efficient and less expensive than Government.  Let’s examine that myth and redirect our precious resources towards the needs of people—domestically and globally.

PS.  Don’t waste essential accountability hearings on the misuse of intelligence regarding WMDs in Iraq.  The country knows that story and is not interested in Congress again wasting its time.

That is the beginning of my wish list for 2007.  What are your wishes?

Posted by Maria Riley, OP, Coordinator, Engendering Economic and Social Justice Project.

Bloggers: Bigger Job Still Undone: VOTE OUT THE MYTH!

I was so outraged I shouted at my car radio. The interviewer on “All Things Considered” was asking Democratic Congressman Dave Obey what was going to happen to fiscal responsibility now that the Democrats, with their reputation for government spending, were taking over power from the Republicans. To add unbelievably shameless insult to injury, President Bush went on to warn the new Congress to be responsible in dealing with budget issues.

What planet have these people been living on?

Even the openly Republican Omaha World Herald in its lead editorial December 21^st noted that “the speed with which Republicans abandoned their historic devotion to spending restraint these past six years has been astounding. . . . Republicans ill-served the country by abandoning their support of budget restraint.” The editorial writers express surprise that the promise of a return to “woefully needed discipline in the wake of a fiscal process gone entirely off the rails” is coming from Democrats. And they sprinkle the editorial with a liberal dose of suspicious comments like “if the [Democrats] mean what they say.”

If the myth that the Republicans are the fiscally responsible party and the Democrats are the profligate spenders is allowed to stand unchallenged, the step toward responsible government made in this last election will be reversed all too soon

Every conscious or unconscious expression of that myth must be confronted immediately with the facts. For the last quarter century, not only have Republicans presided over the most blatant fiscal irresponsibility, they have let it be known that it was part of a deliberate strategy to “starve the beast” – to put the federal government in such terrible financial condition that it is rendered ineffective.

Do interviewers and editorial writers not remember that it was a Republican president 25 years ago who took the national debt that he had inherited from the previous 204 years and doubled it in two terms? Do they forget that it was Republicans who repudiated their own president, George H. W. Bush, when he tried to be fiscally responsible by raising taxes? Have they blotted out the fact that it was Democrat Bill Clinton who painfully restored fiscal discipline and handed a significant budget surplus to the incoming George W. Bush – who rapidly redistributed it to his wealthy base?

How many decades of blatantly contrary evidence does it take to deflate a myth like the one the Republican party and its media enablers – whether consciously or unconsciously – are promoting?

That myth has to be shown up for what it is and destroyed. It builds an unconscious foundation of false and destructive assumptions that have the power to control political decisions. It has already done far too much damage to too many people. Twenty-five years of living this lie is enough.

Posted by Jim Hug, SJ - President, Center of Concern.

Fiscal Responsibility--or Irresponsibility?

It's October now, autumn, and the fourth quarter of the year. Leaves are falling, and the air is crisp as the globe cools. But there are other, not altogether seasonal, changes in the air.

The Forbes 500 has been reduced to 400 in order, it seems, to establish a minimum wealth of $1 billion and eliminate anyone who is not a billionaire. The Federal minimum wage, though, remains at the same level ($5.15 per hour) for the ninth straight year, despite continuing inflation and six pay raises for Congress during that period. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has just released a report noting that the median earnings of full-time workers declined in 2005 by 1.8% ($774) for men and 1.3% ($427) for women. The Budget Center also reports that wages accounted for the smallest share of income since 1929 while corporate profits reached their highest level since 1950.

We have just entered a new fiscal year without a Federal budget and without a good deal of other legislation. Some things do not change, however; there is a kind of annual ritual with Congress scrambling to pass a ”continuing resolution” permitting government to spend in fiscal year 2007 at fiscal year 2006’s levels, but avoiding the appropriation of money to fund a new budget for the new fiscal year. And all this happens against the background of highly vocal devotion to fiscal responsibility, which everybody claims, but nobody has.

The Constitution vested the power to raise and spend money in the Congress, which was thought to be more representative of the people than the Executive Branch and more likely to act as a brake on the fiscal desires of executives and bureaucrats. As the years went by, however, and political parties became stronger, these relationships grew more and more complex and the problems more difficult to resolve. The inevitable pressure for reform and against deficits led eventually to passage of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, which now theoretically governs the process and the timetable for adopting the federal budget. (These three
senators are no longer in the Congress.)

Theoretically, because the budget timetable seems to work as long as the legislative action deals with the budget as a whole, as in passing the required budget resolution; but when money is to be made available, the required action becomes an appropriations bill which generally is far more controversial and vigorously argued than the overall budget. There are thirteen of these appropriations bills, which must be passed by both houses of Congress and signed into law before money can be spent. Each such bill is considered by a different committee of the House and the Senate; varying versions are passed by the two houses and must be reconciled before going to the White House.

When Congress adjourned on September 30, the House had passed twelve appropriations (all except Labor/HHS), but the Senate had passed only two (Defense and Homeland Security).; consequently, a continuing resolution was passed September 30, because no one wants to repeat the pain of September 1995, when Clinton let the executive agency doors close briefly.

When Congress reconvenes in a “Lame Duck” session on November 13, it will have to complete action on the budget, before its term ends, but will also have on its plate such matters as minimum wage increase, estate tax reduction, immigration reform, rescission powers to the President (like a line-item veto), offshore oil drilling, reforming lobbying practices, tightening port security, warrantless wiretaps, tax breaks for business, possible trade legislation, Defense policy, the fate of UN Ambassador John R. Bolton, exporting nuclear technology to India, and cuts in Medicare payments to doctors.

How any of these matters will be handled is unknown; possibly the only major step will be the annual “omnibus bill,” which includes everything not passed separately, plus the “pet projects” (like the famous Bridge to nowhere of last year) that the final tradeoffs include in a bill that everybody supports, but nobody reads.

The upcoming limping session also presents some unusual problems. During the final frenetic couple of weeks of the legislative session the more disciplined House of Representatives, having passed all but one of its appropriations bills, used the time to pass a flood of local legislation designed to give a boost to dozens of Republican Representatives who seem to be in danger of losing their seats. Did I mention this is campaign season?

Thus many voters can reward their members for such low-cost items as providing protection for Native American languages, preserving open space and farmland, and water planning. There are 165 of such bills to tug at the heartstrings of voters who my not realize that no money has been appropriated for any of them. They are on the books, however, in case there is a significant shift in the Congressional power structure as a result of the November 7 elections. After all, this is politics.

Fiscal responsibility, however, has to consider not only whether there is a budget, but also what is in it and whether it is in deficit. The U.S. national debt, whose ceiling was recently raised by Congress, is now $8.5 trillion; the estimate for the FY 2006 deficit (reduced from an earlier inflated OMB estimate) is just under $300 billion, which would be added to that total. There will be a strong push to bring in this budget with a surplus, but without affecting funds for the Iraq operation or rescinding or reducing any of the tax breaks for the wealthy that the Bush administration has already pushed through. 

Clearly it is better to live within our means and not to have deficits; but the moral question is, who pays? It depends on what stays in the budget and what gets cut. Should we be spending $500 billion so more Americans die in an unjust war in Iraq than died on 9/11, and sacrificing even more revenues to the majority party’s rich friends and supporters while the minimum wage remains static, the welfare rolls steadily increase, and the percentage of the population covered by health care decreases? Should we hide our trade-offs and pet projects for local constituents in omnibus bills or Christmas trees?

That is another, more complex matter. Meanwhile, it should be clear that neither the federal budget process nor its outcome promotes the common good of poor people here or elsewhere.

Posted by Martin McLaughlin

Adjunct Associate, Agribusiness Accountability Initiative

Author of the book World Food Security.

Common Good 911

“Nanny 911,” the cultic and often repetitious Fox TV show, drives home a central lesson every week: without a commitment to the common good in the family, chaos reigns, individual rights and needs, both children’s and parents’, are trampled upon and family dissolution is imminent.  The plots are simple and the weekly solution obvious.  A family in distress, with children out of control and parents at their wits end, calls in a very British Nanny to help.  The Nanny analyzes the problems, sets down a few rules to restore order and fairness, counsels the parents to set limits and stick with them, referees the changes for a few days and bids farewell to a family set on a course to happiness and peace.  A wonderful scenario that subtly teaches viewers the value of the common good as the foundation of all social (as well as economic and political) relationships and as an essential ingredient for the promotion social and global justice and peace.

Many politicians and activists have been increasing the rhetorical call for the common good during this election season.  But what does the term mean and more importantly what do people mean when they use the term.  Historically there are two ways the term has been defined.  The utilitarian definition of the common good as the “greatest good for the greatest number of people” accepts the exclusion of those who do not fit the category of “the greatest number.”  This is probably the root definition that many people subscribe to whether implicitly or explicitly because it fits so well with our U.S. ethic of individualism.

However, the tradition of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) has a more subtle and comprehensive definition of the common good, a definition that is shared by many faith traditions.  In CST, the common good represents the integral relationship between the individual person and the community in which that person lives.  The well-being of all individuals can only be guaranteed within the context of the well-being of the whole society.  The common good sustains a delicate balance between the rights of the individual and the well-being of society, insisting that all persons must benefit from the social goods that come from a well-ordered society.  A social order that privileges the few above the needs of the majority fails to promote the common good.  In this globalizing age, the need for a commitment to the common good must now include all dimensions of human and environmental relationships, from the local to the global.

What does all this theory say to us as we now learn from the Forbes magazine that being a millionaire is not longer enough to make the annual list of the top 400 wealthiest people in the  U.S.?  Only billionaires need apply.  What does all this theory say to us as we observe the number of gated and security-laden communities increasing exponentially in the U.S.?  What does this theory tell us in the face of our current fixation with national security which has invaded some of our enshrined values and constitutional rights?   What does this theory tell us when the 2005 U.S. Census report on “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the U.S.” indicates an increasing number of people are losing ground in our society even while Wall Street tells us the economy is booming?  Finally, what does this theory tell us about the growing number of impoverished people worldwide living on less than a dollar or two a day?

A simple answer:  The U.S. is failing to achieve the common good either at home or abroad and we are paying the price in local and global social unrest and violence; an unrest and violence that cannot be contained by legal and military means unless the roots causes are addressed.

Yes, the common good needs to be a central theme of this political season.   

But as citizens we need to challenge the candidates on their commitment to and understanding of the common good.   If the rhetoric is empty, it needs to be exposed.  If the agenda is “the greatest good for the greatest number,” the fallacies of that approach need to be challenged.  We need a commitment to shaping a common good that ensures the well-being of all individuals at home and abroad.  That kind of a world is created through legislating social and economic domestic and foreign policy built on a foundation of the common good for all.  We need our own “Common Good Nanny” to set our household on the way to order, fairness, happiness and peace.

Fortunately, a growing number of progressive faith-based initiatives have been launched to promote the common good in the coming elections.  They are a form of Common Good 911.  For more information and voter guides check the following:

Catholic Alliance for the Common Good - “Voting for the Common Good”

Catholic Democracy Institute - “Catholic Voting Project” 

Catholic Media Watch

Sojourners/Call to Renewal - “Voting for God’s Politics” 

Posted by Maria Riley, OP, Ph.D, Coordinator, Engendering Economic and Social Justice Project.