When your Dems are Republicans: A call for accountability
Much hay has been made about DC’s supposedly progressive new city council, but on a clear litmus test this week, a supermajority of the DC Council proved itself to be of a center-right, trickle-down, Republican bent.
The vote was on a pair of amendments submitted to the FY18 city budget by At-large Councilmember David Grosso. One amendment would delay new tax cuts for people bequeathing estates worth between $2 and $5 million; the other was a delay of new tax cuts for businesses worth more than $10 million. Delaying these tax cuts for the wealthy and big businesses would’ve created $30 million worth of FY18 revenue to fund DC’s plan to end homelessness, vouchers to house families from the 40,000-household waitlist (after no new vouchers were funded last year), education, child care and more. So: tax cuts for the rich, or life-saving social services for the poor. To take one example, a wide coalition of housing groups (Fair Budget Coalition) was calling for just $7 million of the city’s total $14 Billion budget to create about 500 new housing vouchers: 0.05% of the total budget.
The DC Council, — 11 Democrats and two Independents — voted 9–4 for the wealthy estate tax cut, and 10–3 for the big business tax cut. In both cases, the Council’s two Independents stood with the poor, and every vote for the rich was by Democrats.
This should be a wake-up call for DC’s progressive residents and groups. Groups like DC for Democracy, Jews United for Justice Campaign Fund and the local unions, which endorsed, canvassed, fundraised, and made significant differences to help candidates like Robert White (D-At-large), Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), Kenyan McDuffie (D-Ward 5), Mary Cheh (D- Ward 3) and Vince Gray (D-Ward 7 — endorsed by DC4D and unions, but not JUFJ). All five of those councilmembers took a look at DC’s wealth disparity and rapid displacement crisis, and sided with those who are already riding high. Just three of them could’ve swung the Council against Council Chairman Phil Mendelson’s (another endorsee of the groups) beloved tax cuts.
What will local groups do to show those councilmembers they’re paying attention, and won’t be taken advantage of? What will they do to create real accountability?
Robert White is a good case study. White presented as more progressive and reliable than his 2016 opponent, At-large Councilmember Vincent Orange, who was mercurial but helped pass a strong minimum wage increase. I think people saw what they wanted to see. When White talked about housing, he would lean on his multi-generational Washingtonian status and tell stories about family members of his who have been displaced. Few policy positions or specific commitments. Now that he’s a councilmember, we’ve seen him publicly argue from the dais that building more market rate housing will create more affordable housing — a sort of trickle-down for housing theory that all evidence contradicts. And on Tuesday, he spoke so strongly in support of tax cuts for the rich that our most conservative councilmember, Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) said it was the best speech he’d heard on the dais in years. Robert White then released a perversely argued public statement saying that going back on the plan to give rich people tax breaks, and putting that $30 million toward social services, would “put the very vulnerable residents we are talking about protecting at severe risk.”
For context: the regressive tax cuts Grosso sought to delay were part of a multi-year tax cut plan proposed by the Tax Revision Commission a few years ago, which staggered tax cuts worth hundreds of millions of dollars across income levels, over several years. (The Commission was headed by former Mayor Anthony Williams, who jump-started DC’s current development whirlwind, famously said he wanted to bring 100,000 new people to DC, while kickstarting the privatization and displacement of public housing and saying nothing on what he’d do to curb the displacement wrought by all his new development.) Defenders of the tax cuts debated yesterday said DC couldn’t possibly go back on its word.
However, they don’t seem to mind underfunding, and therefore reneging on DC’s other plan — the one to end homelessness. Every few years, the city scraps its old, underfunded plan to end homelessness, and makes a new one. This year, Muriel Bowser, Phil Mendelson, Robert White, Charles Allen, Anita Bonds, Kenyan McDuffie, Jack Evans, Vincent Gray, Mary Cheh, and Brandon Todd voted to keep their promise to rich people and break their promise to poor people — once again.
To their credit, DC4D and JUFJ were also vital in electing David Grosso (I-At-large), Elissa Silverman (I-At-large), Trayon White (D-Ward 8), and Brianne Nadeau (D-Ward 1), the four councilmembers who sided with poor people yesterday (though White voted against delaying the business tax cut, likely because he’s passionate about bringing much-needed grocery stores to Ward 8). Neither group supported Mayor Bowser, whose original budget was terrible for poor people — and the Council only gets to make marginal changes to the mayor’s budget. These are some of the better groups in DC, and they work hard — people should join them and make them even better. It’s also important to note that these groups are largely white, and in my view are working toward this, but could do more to be connected to the experiences and demands of groups organizing people of color.
Our executive office and city council are full of DINOs (Dems In Name Only) / moderate Republicans — so what’s to be done? The DC Democratic Party is clearly under the influence of neoliberals, sycophants and apologists for the wealthy, and needs to be infiltrated by people who are paying attention to DC politics and are (or are in relationship with) low-income people and people of color. Groups like DC4D, JUFJ and local unions need to figure out how to have powerful, edgy, and accountable relationships with these so-called progressive elected officials. Leftists need to start running strategically for local office — groups like Working Families Party DC have promised to do this but have not — and they need to name names in terms of who’s perpetuating these continued, unabated poverty crises. Organizers such as myself need to do a better job of engaging working people in these political processes that deeply affect their lives, and helping them tell their stories.
Underfunding life-saving services in favor of big business and the wealthy is supposed to be boilerplate Republican politics. DC, it’s the unapologetic politics of those who represent you, and those whose election victories swing on a few hundred or a few thousand votes. Let’s get out and do something about it.