When Your Political "Capital" Is Crumbling Like Carthage

by Trapper John

Man, things are tough all over for the Bushies.  Indictments, an unending river of blood from Iraq, indictments, SEC investigations, indictments, complete failure of Social Security privatization, indictments, a Supreme Court nominee with a long face not unlike that of Caligula's horse, indictments -- and now, party discipline is falling apart to the degree that Bush can't even achieve the undisputed Republican Prime Objective -- exploiting American workers:

Bowing to pressure from a united Democratic front, a small group of members of his own party, the religious community, and the labor movement, President Bush announced today he would reverse the decision he made in September to remove wage protections for construction workers in the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina. 

After Katrina, the President suspended the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act, which requires federal contractors to pay at least the prevailing wage to construction workers in a local area.  The president’s action, which was widely denounced, followed requests from right-wing activists and Republican members of Congress who exploited Katrina to achieve a long-sought ideological agenda item. 

Representative George Miller (D-CA), the senior Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, led the effort in the House to force Bush to rescind his Gulf Coast wage cut.   

“President Bush finally realized that his Gulf Coast wage cut was a bad idea that hurt the workers and their families affected by Katrina,” said Miller. “But let me be clear – the President is backing down today only because he had no other choice.

“The President’s wage cut was just another example of his incompetence as a leader in a time of crisis and of his constant need reward the private agenda’s of his special special-interest friends rather than attend to the needs of all the people affected by this storm.”

The President’s wage cut was facing a congressional showdown as early as next week because of a Joint Resolution Miller recently introduced that would have forced the House to vote by early November on whether or not to allow the wage cut to stand. Miller said that Democratic action – coupled with pressure from some members of the President’s own party – left the President no option but to reverse his own mistake.

This is huge.  Not only did the suspension of Davis-Bacon undercut already low prevailing wages for Gulf Coast workers, but it also eliminated the requirement for federal contractors to file certified payroll records -- meaning that Haliburton, Fluor, Bechtel, and other fave GOP contributors would have untold opportunities for waste, fraud, and abuse.   (Just like those fine folks at Unisys, who just "overbilled the [TSA]  for as much as 171,000 hours of labor and overtime" -- in part, probably, because they had no certified payroll requirements.)  The justifiably proud Representative Miller, who, along with some savvy work from the AFL-CIO's political department, brought 38 Republicans firmly on board against Bush's inhumane move, has a "Timeline of a Presidential Retreat" posted on his committee's website.

About 50 weeks ago, George W. Bush was bragging about how he was gonna use all that political capital to get his agenda through.  How different are things today?  If you're a second-term Republican president, you know that you're in trouble when you can't even help out your profiteering friends at Haliburton and fuck over workers.  If you're not capable of that most basic of GOP obligations, what can you do right?

Comments

[RonK, Seattle]

Hoorah! In terms of political capital, this sounds like a margin call on a major hedge fund.

[Meteor Blades]

Fitzmas cake may not yet have arrived, but we're already getting gobs of icing. I'd love to be a fly on the wall right about now when Laura and Dubya are talking about his day went.

About that Carthage image: I've studied the Punic Wars in great detail and visited modernday Carthage on more than one occasion. Except for Roman limestone "cannon-balls," the outlines of the old Carthaginian harbor, and the infamous Tophet cemetery where the ashes and bones of sacrificed children were buried. there's not much left of the old city. The Romans did, indeed, not leave one stone atop another when they sacked the place. If only we could take that as metaphor for what we do to the cabal that has done so much damage our nation and our future over the past five years.

[DHinMI]

I agree, this is huge. There probably are some, but off the top of my head I can't think of any other example where the administration had to so clearly reverse course from a policy already implemented because of Dems leading a charge and getting a sizable contingent of Repubs who, at least on the single issue in dispute, chose to be both reasonable and resolute. Kudos to George Miller, one of the most underrated members of the House of Representatives, and kudos to the savvy people in labor who made this happen.

As Trapper John recently made clear to me, the members of most building trades unions (other than the Laborers and probably the Carpenters) weren't going to be severely affected by the repeal of Davis Bacon, because their members were still covered by their union contracts, and it would be hard to get skilled tradesmen (like electricians, masons, plumbers and ironworkers) down to Louisiana and Mississippi unless they paid the prevailing wage; there just isn't a huge reserve of available skilled tradesmen who will work for peanuts. But this is an example of labor doing the right thing for long-term strategic reasons, and because it's the right policy for the entire country. The bigger immediate issue was transparency, and by resuming Davis-Bacon rules, it will be damn hard for contractors to defraud the government by concealing it and claiming (without documentation) that the extra money was paid in employee salaries.

And this is definitely a case where the good policy was the good politics.

[michael72]

this is very good news for a number of reasons. it's a clear victory for the workers, most importantly. a good victory also for the democrats who have stuck together on this issue. and also they've made alliance with some moderate republicans. this making alliances with the moderates is going to be critical in the days and months to come; that's how you beat the white house from now on.

[jonnybutter]

Yeah, good on Miller, and not for the first time. We just have to claw some of this shit (also eg The Nuclear Option) back, even if Bush is still president, which he probably will be, to some kinda extent, for 3 more years (a mere 36 months!).

[guile]

nice, comfy place you got here :)..

[DHinMI]

Michael72: I agree, now is the time to embolden the moderate Repubs to work with the Dems, especially if we get control back of either or both chambers in 2007.

[DHinMI]

quile: glad you like it. Stick around, make yourself comfortable.