W-E-L-C-O-M-E B-A-C-K TO THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR!
The large blue letters run across the entire west-side entrance to the building. The sign was put together last night by the few remaining “essentials.”
Tom, the assistant secretaries, and I are shaking hands with bleary-eyed employees as they enter, offering them free coffee and donuts.
“Good morning, and welcome back!”
“Good to see you!”
“Great to have you back!”
The returning workers seem to be in high spirits. But the prevailing mood is overwhelming relief rather than festivity.
Gingrich ended the siege because a public backlash was brewing, and because B gave him a face-saving way out—agreeing to come up with a plan to balance the budget in seven years, as measured by Congress’s own Budget Office rather than the White House’s OMB.
That means a cut of at least another twenty-five percent from the modest domestic spending that had been planned between now and 2002. We’re now well beyond cutting fat. Critical bones are being sacrificed. Forget new investments. Even to hold education and training steady with their level in the Bush administration (adjusted for inflation and a growing population) would require that everything else in the domestic discretionary budget be hacked by over a third. Since corporations will holler before giving up their welfare, and middle- and upper-income voters won’t part with their Medicare (especially now that B has vowed to protect it), what’s left to cut? Public welfare, food stamps, low-income housing, nutrition for poor children, mass transit, and everything else that keeps the bottom ten percent afloat.
My only hope is that this is an election year, and sometimes in an election the nation has a chance to rethink old debates in new ways and address large moral questions that have been avoided. It’s still possible for B to do so. I’m clinging to a small shred of hope that during the next ten months he realizes he has to have a mandate to govern in the second term, not simply win the election. He will talk about what needs to be done to avoid the further splitting of American society along class lines, and won’t do anything in the interim to make the situation worse. There is a strong moral case to be made. The hell with Dick Morris.
Memorandum to the President [on blank stationery]
From: RBR
Re: The underlying moral question this election year
The balanced-budget fight is now behind you. This allows you to reframe the central question, from “how much government?” to “how do we grow together once again?” In particular: How do we shift public spending (and tax subsidies) away from the wealthy and upper-middle class toward those who need it most? How do we make corporations more responsible to their employees and communities?
I know Dick Morris wants you to avoid all mention of those who are struggling in this economy—to deliver an upbeat economic message in order to woo the suburban “swing,” and to talk about family values in social terms rather than economic—but I think he’s wrong.
First, the people who are struggling hardest in the economy represent an army of potential voters. Many millions aren’t voting because they assume no one gives a damn about them. If they hear you responding directly to their needs, they’ll vote in droves.
Second, the suburban swing is also vulnerable to downsizing, “down-waging” and “down-benefiting.” They’re no strangers to economic insecurity. Watch the reaction Pat Buchanan is getting.
Third, and most basically: Americans don’t separate family values from economic values. After all, what’s more basic to a family than an adequate paycheck? Families in which each parent has to work fifty to eighty hours a week can’t raise kids properly. This is why your proposed minimum wage increase continues to get eighty percent approvals in Morris’s polls, even though the vast majority of Americans won’t benefit directly by it. It’s seen as the right thing to do. Similarly, this is why our anti-sweatshop campaign has galvanized support across the economic spectrum.
Most people are appalled when they see big, profitable companies fire thousands of their employees in order to temporarily jack up share prices and create windfalls for top executives. Americans always assumed that when companies did better, the people that work for them should do better, too. They’d have higher wages, better benefits, more job security. This was the implicit moral code that guided the economy for more than three decades after World War Two. It was reenforced by the unions, but it was enforced in the first instance by public expectations. It would have been considered unseemly for a company that was doing better to fail to share the good times with its employees. But that compact has come undone.
Don’t cede the moral high ground to the right wing. Conservative politicians and pundits routinely argue that movie studios and TV networks (and their advertisers) should avoid lewdness or violence, even though these dubious themes generate large audiences and fat profits. You should use their logic and apply it closer to home. What of a corporation’s duty to its employees and community?
The old implicit moral compact is more important now than ever. If the federal government is to do less because it has fewer resources, then the private sector will have to do more. Remember that cutting the deficit was never an end in itself; it was a means to an end. The ultimate goal was to increase both private and public investment in order to raise the living standards of all Americans. You’re on the way to eliminating the federal budget deficit in order to give the private sector more and cheaper capital to invest, so that the living standards of most Americans can improve. At least, that’s the theory But unless the private sector understands its responsibilities in turn, there’s no reason to suppose that the extra private investment will have the desired effect. Companies intent on maximizing returns to their shareholders might invest the extra dollars in production abroad, or in labor-saving equipment intended to reduce wages and cut jobs, or in mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures that result in mass layoffs.
This is where corporate responsibility comes in. The private sector must live up to its side of the bargain. Corporations have to invest in their workers’ skills and share the profits with them, and invest in their communities and hire and train the poor. And even when companies must downsize in order to stay in business, they have a responsibility to help all their stakeholders adapt—not just creditors and shareholders.
How to encourage such behavior? Exhortation alone won’t do the trick, because top executives are under constant pressure from Wall Street to maximize shareholder returns in the short run. Yet surely the mix of laws and rules now determining how and to whom companies are accountable can be altered. The corporation is, after all, a creation of law; it does not exist in nature. To take but one example: Why not reduce the corporate income tax on companies that met some specified minimum responsibility to their employees and communities, while raising it on those that didn’t? (Raising the corporate income tax is entirely justifiable on its own grounds. While the market value of publicly-held corporations has risen seven times since the early nineteen-eighties—in current dollars—revenues from corporate income taxes have increased just fifty percent.) Other changes could be made in securities laws, antitrust laws, and laws governing the flows of international capital, all designed to encourage corporate executives to respond to the interests of their employees and communities as well as their shareholders.
The other part of your unfinished agenda is to make sure the poor and near-poor aren’t unduly penalized as the budget comes into balance. Shift scarce federal resources out of corporate welfare and entitlements for the wealthy toward extra education and training for the poor and near-poor, funding for child nutrition, preschool care, day care after school, job training, job placement, and, in a pinch, public-service jobs for people leaving welfare, and good mass transit so people in jobless communities can get to where the jobs are. Don’t sign a welfare bill that hurts the poor; insist on one that gets them into jobs.
Use your bully pulpit. Make this election about the great moral challenge facing the nation, the unfinished agenda.
If “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap didn’t exist, I’d have to invent him. In less than two years as head of Scott Paper, he fired 11,000 employees (one-third of the workforce), slashed the research budget, moved the world headquarters from Philadelphia (where it was founded in 1879) to Boca Raton, Florida (where he has a $1.8 million house), eliminated all corporate gifts to charities, and barred managers from being involved in community affairs. Then he sold what was left of the company to Kimberly-Clark, which promptly announced it would cut 8,000 of the combined companies’ workforce and close Scott’s new headquarters in Boca Raton. For his labors, Dunlap has just walked off with a cool $100 million.
Chainsaw Al (he actually likes the sobriquet) is the poster boy for corporate irresponsibility, given his obsessive focus on short-term stock-market valuation at the expense of everything else. He boosted Scott’s share price, to be sure, but I doubt he added a penny of real value. He merely redistributed income from the employees and the community to Scott’s shareholders.
TED KOPPEL: Good evening.… If the current trends continue, we can expect to see the biggest businesses laying more people off at the same time that government is less able to provide additional support.… Joining me now from our Washington studios, Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and Albert Dunlap, former chairman and CEO of the Scott Paper Company. Mr. Dunlap, do you think that benign leadership is workable at a large company?
DUNLAP: Here, the reason to be in business is to make money for your shareholders. The shareholders own the company. They take all the risk. No company ever gives the shareholders their money back when they go bust, and you have an awesome responsibility to see that they get the proper return for their risk.
KOPPEL: Mr. Secretary, isn’t what’s good for business in the long run good for the American people?
REICH: Not necessarily, Ted. The stock market is soaring, but wages are stuck because people are scared to ask for a raise. They’re afraid they may lose their job, and they don’t have any bargaining leverage.… There are social consequences to all of this. It’s not just a matter of maximizing shareholder returns.
KOPPEL: Mr. Dunlap?
DUNLAP: Business is not a social experiment.… And you know, socialism has failed the world over, but yet we in America want to reinstitute socialism into our economic situation, and I think that’s dead wrong.
KOPPEL: Are you proposing some form of socialism here, Mr. Secretary?
REICH: I’m talking about corporate responsibility. Millions of Americans are trapped in the old economy. If the public sector can’t help them because it has to balance the budget, then the private sector is going to have to do more. Corporate responsibility extends beyond maximizing shareholder returns. There’s also a responsibility to employees and to communities.
DUNLAP: Number one, that is not the role of business.… And the last person that should arbitrate it is the government, the largest business in America with the worst balance sheet, the poorest management, services people don’t want, and a bloated cost structure.
REICH: We’ve got to think of society as a whole. America isn’t simply a bunch of businesses. It’s a group of people. If businesses are highly profitable, they at least owe it to their employees to upgrade their skills. And if they’re downsizing, they have a responsibility to find their employees new jobs that pay as well.…
KOPPEL: Mr. Dunlap, Mr. Reich, thank you both very much indeed. I’ll be back in a moment.
Camera off, lights off. I rise out of my chair.
A studio technician unfastens the microphone and earpiece.
“I heard you just now,” he says. “Right on.”
“Thanks,” I respond, pulling up the cord from inside my shirt.
“This used to be a full-time job for me,” he continues. “But the network laid me off six months ago. Now they call me back when they need me. I work three jobs with no benefits. All the networks are the same.”
“That true for most employees?”
“Yup.” He begins winding the cord. “Almost no one on full-time payroll anymore. Camera crew, control room, makeup. We’re all freelance. Even a lot of the producers are freelance. Giant corporations are buying and selling networks like they’re playing cards. A few people at the top are making hundreds of millions. But the little guys like me don’t count.”
Chainsaw Al appears from around the corner. During the program, he and I talked into separate cameras from adjoining studios.
Dunlap is built like a tank. He was a boxer in college, and he still swaggers. His face is flushed.
“Who the hell are you to talk about working people?” he barks at me. I half expect him to land me one on the jaw. “I was brought up in a working-class family. You had a silver spoon in your mouth.”
I’m not ready for the blow. The unwritten rule of TV debates is that its over when the lights and cameras go off. “You don’t … know a thing … about me,” I stammer. “Both my parents worked six days a week.”
“That’s not what my researchers say,” he hisses.
“Then your researchers are incompetent. Fire them. You’ve fired everybody else.”
He bursts past me and out of the studio.
“The phrase is too inflammatory,” Rubin says.
We’re discussing my use of the term “corporate responsibility” over tea in his office in the Treasury, directly under the portrait of Alexander Hamilton. Rubin became Treasury Secretary when Bentsen left. He now sits precisely where Bentsen sat when I sparred with Bentsen. Rubin continues: “It’ll get a lot of business executives and Wall Street people very upset for no good reason. It suggests they haven’t been responsible.”
“That’s precisely why I want to use it. It describes reality,” I say.
“Look, I spent most of my life on Wall Street. I’ve dealt with executives of big businesses for several decades. I can tell you, you’re just asking for trouble.” When Rubin runs out of arguments, he uses his I was there and you weren’t trump card.
In fairness, he has a legitimate gripe. I publicly floated my idea to hike corporate taxes on profitable companies that lay off their workers without finding them equivalent jobs elsewhere, and to cut them on companies that upgrade their employees’ skills and share profits with them. B approved of the float, but I didn’t check in with Rubin. Like his predecessor, Rubin feels that labor secretaries should not be out there suggesting changes in tax laws on their own. But the conversation we’re having now isn’t about protocol or even about tax policy. It’s about choice of words. And both of us know the importance of words for framing public debate.
“Of course some people are going to be offended,” I respond. “If avoiding offense were the criterion of acceptable speech, we couldn’t say very much.” I glance up at Alexander Hamilton. He didn’t mince words.
Rubin shakes his head. “It sounds like you’re declaring class warfare.”
“Every time I criticize corporations or talk about income inequality in this country, Republicans accuse me of fomenting class warfare. Don’t you start.”
I’m feeling frustrated. I stand and begin walking around Rubin’s office. “The purpose is to involve the public in a national discussion about the role of the corporation. What better time to have this discussion than now? The stock market is going through the roof, half the paychecks in America are going nowhere, the gap between rich and poor is wider than in anyone’s memory. And the federal government is hamstrung to do anything about it because we’re balancing the budget precisely so corporations have more money to invest and grow.”
Rubin stays seated. “ ‘Corporate responsibility’ is as inflammatory as your phrase corporate welfare.’ ” He has hit another sore spot between us.
“ ‘Corporate welfare’ describes exactly what it is—handouts to companies,” I shoot back. “And if they don’t need the handouts, they shouldn’t get them.”
“But it got everyone riled up.”
“Everyone?” I sit back down next to him. “It got the Business Roundtable and the National Chamber of Commerce riled up. But even Republicans are using the term now. I heard Dole the other day calling for an end to ‘corporate welfare’ for broadcasters that get free space on the spectrum. Even John Kasich [Republican chairman of the House budget committee] says publicly that he’s aiming to do away with corporate welfare.’ The phrase has focused public opinion on the issue. And as a result, both parties are pledging to cut corporate welfare from the budget.”
“I profoundly disagree,” says Rubin. He is the only person in the administration who can profoundly disagree without raising his voice. “We could be making much more progress cutting this stuff out of the budget if you hadn’t got so many people so upset.”
“But if I hadn’t used the term ‘corporate welfare’ to start with, it wouldn’t have become an issue in the first place, and there’d be no pressure from the public to do anything about it.” I’m trying my best to profoundly disagree without raising my voice either. “That’s exactly my point about ‘corporate responsibility’ too.”
We’re at loggerheads. He knows he can’t force me to change my language. But I know that as long as he feels this strongly, I won’t be able to persuade B to adopt it.
I’m in the cart of a roller coaster, moving slowly up an almost vertical incline toward the summit. The cart is filled to my chest with little dolls—black-eyed, brown-eyed, blue-eyed.
The man sitting next to me is singing loudly and playing with one of the dolls, twisting its legs and arms, fiddling with its head. As we reach the summit he stops singing and turns to me. “Don’t worry,” he says. “It’s perfectly safe.”
It’s Chainsaw Al.
Suddenly we plunge almost vertically downward at three hundred miles an hour. I hold on for my life. Chainsaw Al cackles. Dolls fly out in every direction.
We round a bend at four hundred miles an hour. The cart barely stays on the tracks. Chainsaw opens the door on his side, and hundreds more dolls fly into the air. They scream in terror.
“Why are you doing that?” I yell.
“The cart’s too heavy,” he yells back. “Gotta get rid of them.”
We round the next bend at five hundred miles an hour. Chainsaw leans over to open the door on my side. I grab his arm. “Stop! They’ll be killed!”
“Rubbish!” he cackles. “They’re just dolls!”
He forces the door open, and thousands of other dolls fly into the air. But they no longer look like dolls. They’re tiny people, and a few of them cling desperately to my shirt, my hair, my ears.
“Stop it!” I yell
“It’s not my responsibility!” he yells back, plucking them off me and throwing them into the air. “This is The Hurler! They chose to ride it! What the hell do you know about working people?”
We take another plunge at six hundred miles an hour. Tiny screaming people-dolls now fill the air. I turn to the other men standing behind us. “YOU’VE GOT TO STOP HIM!”
Mr. Ono of Bridgestone shakes his head and shouts, “No worry! They all replaceable!”
Newt Gingrich shakes his head and hollers, “Let them go! Cut public investments! Cut welfare! Balance the budget on their backs!”
Dick Morris shakes his head and yells, “Let them go! They don’t count! They’re not the suburban swing!”
We round another bend at seven hundred miles an hour: The cart tips wildly. I can barely see for all the screaming people-dolls in the air. “LLOYD! LEON! BOB! DO SOMETHING!”
Bentsen shakes his head. “Sorry. We have to maintain the confidence of Wall Street.”
Panetta shakes his head. “Just move to the center!”
Rubin shakes his head. “You’re being inflammatory!”
The cart rounds another bend at eight hundred miles an hour. Suddenly it’s completely off the tracks. We’re high in the air. All the screaming people-dolls are gone.
“HELP! WE’RE GONNA’ CRASH!” I holler.
“We’ll do just fine,” says a soothing voice just behind me, “as long as we guard against inflation.” It’s Alan Greenspan.
I stand up in the cart and shout toward the people-dolls below. “WHERE’S THE PRESIDENT? HAVE YOU SEEN THE PRESIDENT?”
They point to another object in the sky.
It’s a large white cloud in the shape of B’s head. B is smiling benevolently.
“Bill! Bill! Thank heaven you’re here! Did you see what’s going on? All those tiny people! They’re down there, Bill!”
The cloud face seems to be still. But as I watch it, it begins to widen, spreading in all directions. B’s face becomes huge and his smile broadens. But as it widens it grows thinner and more transparent, and begins to fade.
I open my eyes. It’s 3 a.m.
Dick Morris is on the phone.
MORRIS: Clinton’s upbeat message is working with the swing. His numbers are rising.
ME: They’re rising because the public blames the Republicans for the shutdown and admires the President for standing up to them.
MORRIS: The swing blames the shutdown on both sides.
ME: The public isn’t upbeat, Dick. Look at the impact Buchanan is having in New Hampshire.
MORRIS: Buchanan won’t be the Republican nominee for president. And when he fades, economic anxiety will disappear.
ME: It’s a real issue. It won’t just disappear.
MORRIS: It’ll disappear from politics. And then it’ll disappear from the media. By the way, I tested your idea about corporate taxes and corporate responsibility. The swing liked it, seventy-four to twenty.
ME: See? That proves my point. Even your swing is concerned about these issues.
MORRIS: But then support disintegrated when we asked the next question—whether government should be deciding which corporations merit different levels of tax. The swing thought that meant too much government intervention, fifty-two to forty. So in the end it doesn’t work. I won’t be forwarding it to Clinton.
ME: I’ve already spoken with him about it. He likes the idea.
MORRIS: But he won’t be using it.
ME (after a pause to prevent myself from saying something insulting): Thanks, Dick.
MORRIS: You’re welcome. Bye.
ME: Oh, Dick?
MORRIS: Yes?
ME (through my teeth): Congratulations on the seven-year balanced budget.
MORRIS: We still have to get agreement on specifics. But that shouldn’t be too difficult.
ME (sarcastically): How are we coming on welfare?
MORRIS (cheerfully—he is tone-deaf to sarcasm): In a few months we’ll have a bill that Clinton signs.
ME: Thanks for keeping me apprised, Dick.
MORRIS: Don’t mention it. Bye.
There used to be a policy-making process in the White House. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but at least options were weighed. B received our various judgments about what was good for the nation.
Now we have Morris and his polls.
Pat Buchanan won New Hampshire, and suddenly the national media have discovered job insecurity and stagnant wages. It’s the cover issue on every newsweekly. The networks can’t get enough of it. The Times is planning a mammoth seven-part series. Even Bob Dole is now fretting openly about stagnant wages and profitable companies that lay off their workers. The Republicans have stopped talking about balancing the budget. It’s now jobs and wages.
Even the minimum wage is beginning to bubble up again on the Hill (several moderate Republicans have phoned me to express support). There’s renewed press interest in tax reforms to encourage “corporate responsibility” and cut “corporate welfare.” The media are primed and ready to focus on the overriding problem of inequality. All they need now is some indication B will make it a campaign issue.
This is the opening for B to get back to basics. Despite what Dick Morris says, B seems willing enough. He feels the pulse of the nation, and that pulse is now beating strongly about the themes I’ve been harping on for years. B and I spoke by phone a few days ago. Yes, he agrees, he’s been sounding far too rosy. Yes, he needs to place more emphasis on the problem of inequality. Yes, this is the perfect time to push for an increase in the minimum wage. Yes, we should emphasize corporate responsibility (I should continue to take the lead on this). Yes, yes, yes.
Every time I speak with him I feel confident he wants to focus on the large challenges ahead, not fritter away the election trying to appeal to the suburban swing. But then days or weeks later, after I talk with Morris, or review the text of a speech B is about to give, or read the text of a press interview with him, I begin to despair all over again. He agrees with me when we talk, but seems easily influenced by Morris and Morris’s pollsters, who whisper into his other ear, who listen to his monologues and tell him with their eyes and facial expressions what they think, which is the opposite of what I think.
I wander the corridors of the West Wing like an itinerant peddler, trying to sell the opportunity to people here who might be sympathetic, and who see B more regularly than I do and can whisper into the same ear I whisper into—George, Laura Tyson, Gene Sperling. I’m tempted to call Hillary, but she’s too close to the ear in question; I don’t want B to feel I’m plotting. This isn’t a conspiracy. It’s a campaign within a campaign.
The thought that there’s still hope energizes me. I run into Kitty as I’m making my rounds. “What’s got into you?” she asks.
“What d’ya mean?”
“You’re smiling.” She chuckles and runs off.
But I’ve got to work fast. The opportunity will be short-lived. Morris is right about one thing: Buchanan can’t last for long, and the moment his presidential bid stalls, the media will lose all interest in the wage problem. It will vanish as quickly as it appeared.
And Buchanan is hardly the ideal standard-bearer. He’s blaming the wage problem on immigrants, welfare mothers, foreign traders, NAFTA, and a conspiracy of international (Jewish?) money. This kind of right-wing xenophobia rears its ugly head whenever large numbers of working people feel economic stress, and the twentieth century has experienced enough of the horrors that can result. A similar scape-goating is beginning to appear in Europe, from Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the National Front in France, to the neo-Fascist National Alliance in Italy.
The stakes are high, but I’m feeling good.
Evidently, I’ve overdone it again.
Headline in this morning’s Post: Reich’s Responsibility Theme Irks Colleagues.
I call George. “What’s up?”
“Rubin is rip-shit.”
An hour later, in Leon’s office, with Rubin and Tyson:
“We’re a team, goddamn it,” Leon yells at me. “And we can’t have anyone going off on his own. The presidential election is less than eight months away.”
“The President approved it,” I say lamely.
“But what about the process? You went around it,” says Leon.
“What process? There isn’t any process anymore,” I say. “I checked with the President. You want me to check in with every member of the cabinet? The only process we have is Dick Morris. Should I check in with Dick Morris every time I’m planning to talk with the press?”
I’ve hit where it hurts. Leon doesn’t know how to respond. I promise him I’ll hew to the party line from now on, so long as he does what he can to make sure Morris isn’t the only one devising it.
Minutes later we’re in the White House press room announcing the new employment report that shows the economy adding eight million new jobs since January 1993. Rubin, Tyson, and I exude nothing but happiness and cheer. “The best economy in thirty years,” we say, almost in unison. We don’t mention that median wages remain flat, benefits are dropping, a third of the workforce is still losing ground, and the income gap is still widening. Dick Morris is writing the script.
QUESTION FROM THE PRESS: Mr. Secretary, are you being muzzled?
ME (smiling): Not at all.
QUESTION: One of your colleagues was quoted as saying you’re “off the reservation.” Are you?
ME (still smiling): Not as far as I know. I’m right here, and as you all know, the White House press room is smack at the center of the reservation. [Laughter.]
I’m in Philadelphia, with a few hours to spare between a speech to a labor union and some radio interviews. I’ll use the time to visit William Penn High School, a tough inner-city school. I hear the new principal is a dynamo.
Ellen Lipsky meets me at the entrance. She looks younger than I had imagined, perhaps mid-thirties, petite and Jewish, with curly dark hair. “Welcome to the real world!” she says, then smiles and extends her hand.
We walk inside. I’m overwhelmed by noise and concrete. Two thousand voices are talking, yelling, laughing, grunting, and the sounds seem to bounce off giant cinder blocks in every direction.
“It’s a bit crowded here,” Ellen explains as we wander. “But the real problem is the doors and walls.”
“Excuse me?” I have to walk right next to her to hear.
“Doors and walls,” she almost shouts. “The main structure is concrete, but most of the classrooms are separated by paper-thin walls. Noise goes right through them. And, as you can see, the classrooms don’t have doors.”
“Why’s that?” I ask, peering into one of the rooms. Students are standing, sitting, walking. Several have their heads down on their desks, seemingly asleep. The teacher is pacing, shouting. No one takes any notice of us.
“Security,” she says, simply.
“How can anyone learn in this racket?” I ask. We resume our walk.
“With extreme difficulty. But we’re making progress on the noise. And security is much better than it was.”
We pass several police officers patrolling the corridors.
“When I got here, it was more dangerous inside the school than outside. Now it’s safer inside than outside. That’s progress.” Ellen isn’t defensive or apologetic. In fact, she’s proud of what she’s achieving.
She tells me about various projects she has launched. Literacy. Vocational training. A day care center for the mothers.
“Mothers?” I pick up on the word.
“One thousand one hundred girls are enrolled here. Six hundred have babies. If we make it easy for a few of them to take their babies to school, they’ll attend more often.”
Almost all of the students at William Penn High School live in the housing projects surrounding the school. The school is one hundred percent black. Most families are on welfare.
“It’s a constant struggle to get them to come in in the morning—the girls and the boys. About half drop out by their junior year, but we’re making progress.” It’s her favorite phrase. “We’re working with the community. We’re getting across to parents and kids that if they leave here they’re doomed.” I can’t help wondering if most are “doomed” even if they graduate.
I ask her what she needs from the federal government. Her eyes light up. “All I ask is that we’re treated no worse than any other school in Pennsylvania.”
“No worse? I would have assumed higher aspirations,” I say.
“State funding for every district is frozen at last year’s level. That’s bad enough, but it’s just plain awful if you’re in a place like inner Philadelphia, where the population of poor is growing faster than most other places. It means the amount of resources we have per kid is actually going down.”
We’re now in her office, where it’s quieter. (At least her walls are soundproof.) She continues. “If they want to freeze the budget, they shouldn’t penalize the poorest districts. Give us the same amount of money per kid we got last year.”
“That’s the state. What about the feds?”
“I don’t care where the money comes from.” Ellen waves her arms in the air. “All I know is the money’s drying up. I’m trying a lot of experiments, but they’re all on a shoestring. My teachers here are dedicated, but for what they put up with they’re paid very little. I need money to fix the plumbing. I need money for books. The kids are using xeroxed pages. I even need money for chalk.”
“Some say the problem with urban schools isn’t money. Give parents a choice of where to send their kids—including private schools—and schools will improve because they have to in order to survive.”
She pauses before answering. Then she smiles wearily. “Look, any decent school is gonna have minimum standards, right?”
“Exactly.”
“That’s what makes the school attractive. Private schools, charter schools, parochial schools, alternative schools—they set limits. If a child is too violent, or too obstreperous, or too lazy, or repeatedly flunks courses, or is tardy too often, or simply won’t come to school, the kid is out, right?”
“I suppose it comes down to that.”
“So what happens to the kids that get dumped? The most troubled kids? The most difficult kids? The kids everyone gives up on? They don’t simply vanish from the earth. Where would they go? They would come to a place like this!” She extends her arms and hands, palms up. “That’s the dirty little secret of school choice. The kids who are dumped are dumped together with the other kids who are dumped. And the result would be more places like this, but even louder and more violent.”
Ellen rises from her chair, eyes flashing. “Sure! If I dumped the thirty percent of the kids here who take seventy percent of the time of every teacher, it might be very good for the other kids. But where am I gonna dump them? Society has already dumped them. Society has already dumped every kid in this school. I’m trying everything I can do to keep them, not dump them.”
It’s time for me to go. We walk back toward the entrance. The bell has sounded, and two thousand teenagers are now in the corridors, moving to their next class. They walk and jump and holler and joke, just like teenagers in every other high school I’ve ever visited. Except here, every one of them is black and very poor. And if the statistics hold true, only about a third of the boys will have legitimate jobs five or ten years from now. Two-thirds of them will be in prison or on probation or parole. Less than a third of the girls will be working, and most of the boys and girls who do get jobs will be paid at or near the minimum wage for their entire working lives.
Ellen Lipsky turns to shake my hand good-bye. “Thanks for coming by,” she says.
“I admire what you’re trying to do,” I say sincerely.
“And I admire what you and the President are trying to do.” She tilts her head and frowns. “What’s it really like in Washington?”
“Hard to explain. A lot of meetings, phone calls. Some days are wonderful, some absolutely terrible. A regular roller coaster.”
“Just like this place.” She laughs.
“No, not like this place at all.”
“What’s gonna happen to welfare?” she asks quietly.
“Dunno. The Republicans want to give it back to the states, require that states slash their welfare rolls, get everyone off within five years.”
She shakes her head.
I ask her, “What do you think? You told me almost half your girls had children of their own. When Americans think of welfare, they think of poor black teenagers with babies.”
“The welfare system is truly awful. But my girls aren’t having babies because they want welfare. And the answer isn’t to just cut them off. They’ve got to have jobs. They’ve got to be educated and trained for the jobs. They need day care for their kids.” She pauses and shakes her head again. “We’re just doing more of the same. We’re just dumping them.”
Ron Brown and I are representing the United States at this ministerial conference on jobs in industrialized nations. Like all such international conferences, it’s been scripted in advance by staffers who have eliminated anything remotely controversial. What a goddamn bore. Endless streams of vacuous verbiage are translated simultaneously into seven languages. While a German minister drones on for twenty minutes from his prepared text, I flip a switch to hear what his drivel sounds like in Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Italian, and French. Ron falls asleep in his chair. I gently poke him awake.
We should be talking about the Europeans’ suicidal mission to shrink public deficits quickly and maintain a tight money supply while suffering double-digit unemployment. If the United States is standing John Maynard Keynes on his head, Europe is burying his head in the sand.
The German Bundesbank is leading the backward charge, and the rest, fearing that Germany’s economic power will dominate Europe unless it’s safely cushioned within a “European community,” seem willing to follow it over the cliff. Germany’s fear of inflation has long historic roots, but the central bank is seeing a ghost. In Europe, as in the United States, inflation is dormant if not dead. Yet by keeping a tight rein on demand, Europe is slowing economic growth the same way Greenspan’s Fed is doing back home.
I tried raising the issue yesterday, but my spontaneity caused so much upset that an assistant to French President Chirac passed me a note (in exquisitely polite but unambiguous English) suggesting that I cease, lest I cause an “international embarrassment.” I think an “international embarrassment” is closely akin to a “loss of confidence on Wall Street.” It’s a condition that can’t be precisely defined, but everyone wants to avoid it, and the easiest way to do so is for me to shut up.
Beyond the business cycle, Europe is also experiencing the same split in the labor force we’re experiencing—and for the same reasons: Rapid technological advances, coupled with global trade and investment, are creating jobs for those with the best educations and connections, but also pushing the bottom half downward. Europe sets higher minimum wages and benefits than the United States and makes it harder for employers to fire their workers. So for the bottom half here, the split takes the form of widespread unemployment rather than a lot of lousy jobs. In Europe, the “Save-the-Jobs” party is dominant; in the United States, the “Let-’Em-Drowners” have the upper hand now. But the result is similar: The bottom half are still trapped.
Here, too, we could have an interesting discussion about how to make labor markets more flexible (as in the United States) while upgrading the technical skills of the bottom half (as in Germany and Japan). But no such luck. It might be interpreted as criticism of one country or another, and that could cause an international embarrassment.
So we sit here for most of three days, Ron dozing, me doodling and playing with the language switch. Occasionally we pass each other notes. “How are Clare and the kids?” he scrawls.
“Great. Wish I could have been with them this weekend instead of sitting here with these bores. How’s Alma?” I write back.
“Ditto on all counts,” is his response.
Some of our notes are about B and the pending campaign. “How much do you think he’s actually listening to Morris?” I write.
“Not as much as Morris thinks he is,” Ron responds, “Whatever Morris tells you, discount it by about seventy-five percent. As we get closer to the election, raise the discount rate.”
I laugh out loud. Several of the other ministers stare at me. I return to sobriety.
The most exciting moment of the conference occurs when all the nations represented here are supposed to agree to a “joint communiqué” on international labor standards—forbidding, for example, slave labor. It blandly states that the ministers “noted the importance of enhancing core labor standards around the world and examining the links between these standards and international trade.” Ron and I decide that we want to add the words “in appropriate forums” to the end of that sentence, suggesting that such an examination might in fact occur somewhere. The Germans and Brits are strongly opposed to our amendment. The Canadians and the French are willing to back us. The Japanese and Italians are keeping their powder dry.
Tensions mount. “The United States’s proposed amendment is totally unacceptable,” says one of the British ministers, indignantly. He puts his nose high in the air and gazes at the ornate ceiling, “Absolutely out of the question.”
“Britain is being ridiculous,” says Ron, undiplomatically. “Our words won’t force anyone to do anything.”
“We agree with Britain,” says the German minister through an interpreter. “Germany must not be put in the position of endorsing any specific linkage between labor standards and trade.”
“Specific?” I say, incredulously. “Specific? These are the vaguest words in diplomatic history.”
Britain is resolute. Germany won’t budge. The room is tense. It’s Britain and Germany against the United States, France, and Canada. You’d think we were on the brink of World War Three.
Ron and I negotiate furiously. It’s the only fun we’ve had in three days. We offer up a comma between our phrase and the rest of the sentence. The Brits and Germans won’t hear of it. How about a “potentially” before the word “appropriate”? They’re still immovable. We threaten not to sign anything. The French coax us back to the table. In the end, we all agree to a tortured circumlocution suggesting that perhaps there might be, under unspecified circumstances, some occasions when certain ministers might want to explore possible linkages between trade and labor standards, at least somewhere, maybe.
I’m flying back from Paris, dozing on and off, when the co-captain sits down in the empty seat next to me.
“Sorry to bother you,” he says. “But we’ve received some bad news. Secretary Brown’s plane has disappeared somewhere along the Dalmatian coast.”
I’m wide awake. I plead for more details. He says he’ll tell me as reports come in.
Oh my God.
Clare meets me at Logan Airport. We hug tight. She’s in tears. “I was so afraid,” she sobs. “We didn’t know for sure you were safe. Poor Alma.”
Rubin, Laura Tyson, and I watch the casket move past us. It’s a gray, drizzling day. Alma and their grown children follow behind. B and Hillary are behind them. B looks gray. There’s a round of cannon fire, and the casket is lowered into the ground.
From this hilltop I can see in the far distance most of official Washington: the Capitol at one end of the Mall, the Washington Monument and the White House behind it, major government office buildings. From here they seem like toy models. From here, most of what we do in them every day seems very little too.
Bob, Laura, and I walk arm in arm back to the parking lot in silence.
Adam and I are playing Ping-Pong in the basement. He’s walloping me. It didn’t use to be this way. What happened? He’s now a lanky fifteen-year-old with the wingspan of a jet airplane who’s better coordinated than I am or ever was. It’s a wonder I score any points at all.
I relish these moments, even when I’m getting clobbered. My weekends are compressed like squeezed oranges. I miss the pulp of daily life with the boys, the texture of their growing up.
Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping. He slays me again. “Good game, Dad.”
“I mean it. Your game is improving.” He smiles broadly. “You still have a lot of work to do on your backhand, though.”
“Go to hell.”
He laughs. We walk toward the basement stairs.
“Dad?” He stops.
“Hmm?” I look back. I swear he’s grown two inches since we came down to the basement.
“Could it have been you?” There’s a slight quiver in his voice.
“What d’ya mean?”
“On that plane … with Ron Brown.”
“No, no,” I say quickly. “We left Paris going in different directions.” I continue toward the stairs.
“Dad?” Adam doesn’t move.
“Yes?”
“The day it happened … they called me to the principal’s office. I didn’t know why they wanted me. The first thing they said was ‘There’s been a plane crash.’ The next thing they said was you were okay. But in the split second between … I thought you were gone.” Adam’s eyes are red.
I walk back to him and put my arm around his waist. “I’m fine, Adam. I’m fine.”
“I know.… But I really want you to come home, Dad.”
The three of them are lobbying more intensively for me to return. I realize now that Ron’s death may have been the catalyst. It’s not that Clare, Adam, or Sam actually believes I’ll perish in a plane crash if I stay on, or that my physical safety will be imperiled. I think Ron’s death is more a symbol of the everyday loss they experience as I work in Washington. It reminds them of the husband and father they’re missing. It somehow makes the prospect of my remaining in Washington for years to come more frightening.
B is comfortably ahead in the polls. Anything can happen between now and the election, of course, but there’s a good possibility he’ll be there for another four years and he’ll want me to be there with him. As much as I adore my family, I don’t think I can turn my back on another four years of being secretary of labor. Perhaps I flatter myself, but I think I’m needed in Washington. No one else around B is telling him what I’m telling him, or pushing the underdog’s agenda.
The latest Republican welfare bill is still a disgrace, almost as bad as the two B already vetoed. It cuts food stamps for working people, hurts disabled children, penalizes legal immigrants, and encourages states to throw people off the welfare rolls without giving them jobs. I hope to hell B has the courage to veto it again. The Republicans are playing a cynical game: Give B such a bad bill that if he signs he’ll split the Democrats; if he doesn’t sign, Republicans will claim during the election he’s not serious about reforming welfare.
Meanwhile, the minimum-wage bill is doing a bit better. House Republicans just barely fought off a Democratic effort to force a vote. Thirteen Republicans came over to our side. I’m trying to round up additional Republican support by phoning every potential prospect. I make the case for it in terms of good public policy and also explain why I believe the public is so supportive. Most of the time I get nowhere, but several Republicans are wavering, and a few have promised me their votes if and when it ever gets to the floor.
“Any chance a minimum-wage bill could pass in the House?” I ask Dick Gephardt just before we brief the press about it.
“The odds are still against it,” he says.
“Which would you prefer,” I ask, “a minimum-wage bill the President signs into law before the election, or the minimum-wage issue to clobber Republicans with during the election?”
“Let’s just say we need the minimum-wage issue as long as possible,” he says, breaking into a grin. The Democrats may be intending to play a political game with the minimum wage that’s as cynical as the Republicans’ game on welfare.
The broad public hates welfare but supports an increase in the minimum wage. I think there’s a connection. Most people I talk with around the country don’t believe in handouts to people who are able to work. But they do believe that anyone who’s working full-time should be earning enough to lift himself and his family out of poverty. And they think that anyone who wants and needs to work should have access to a full-time job. There’s also a broad consensus that nobody should be abused or forced to work in unsafe conditions. And most seem to believe that if a company is doing better, the people who work for it should do better too.
This is the moral core at the heart of capitalism. Contrary to economists and right-wing pundits who believe that average people are motivated entirely by selfishness, this moral core has broad appeal. It explains the overwhelming popularity of raising the minimum wage, even though the vast majority of those who support the raise won’t benefit from it (and might even have to pay a few pennies more for the products and services they buy in order to finance it). It also explains why the public is so outraged by the sweatshops we’ve uncovered, even though most of the people who work in them are immigrants—both legal and illegal. And it suggests why there was such a loud burst of public indignation against AT&T when it announced early this year its plan to lay off 40,000 employees and then gave its top executives big raises, and against other companies undertaking similar, although less massive layoffs.
We can build on this moral core, and make it the foundation for a broad-based political alliance of working people and the poor. B should tap into it to explain what’s wrong with the Republicans’ welfare plan, which fails to guarantee that someone losing welfare benefits will actually have a job. If decent people understood the plan for what it is, they’d be against it. They’d want B to continue to veto it.
Dick Morris seems to have convinced (or worn down) everyone in the White House, including, most importantly, B. The economic message for the campaign is to be nothing but happy talk. Laura and George are sounding like a gleeful song-and-dance team. Even Gene Sperling, my mentee, seems to be hallucinating on some blissful narcotic that blocks out almost half the population of the United States.
The April employment figures came out today, and they show a continuation of relatively low unemployment and respectable job growth. This is good news. But the darker side of the economy—increasing job insecurity, widening inequality—must not be mentioned. It will be hidden from view for the next six months. I can’t talk about it. I’m locked in the cabinet.
George catches me before the monthly press briefing. “Just try going a week without mentioning the word ‘anxiety,’ ” he says, grinning.
“Okay,” I say, as Rubin and I are about to troop out before the lights. “I’ll just use ‘hysteria’ instead.”
Rubin winces.
The House is scheduled to vote today on raising the minimum wage. I’m all over Capitol Hill, seeking to reassure uncertain Democrats and cajole wavering Republicans. Lobbyists for the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) and the National Retail Federation are just behind me, twisting arms in the opposite direction. I may have logic and fairness on my side, but they have campaign money. The NFIB was a prime mover in defeating B’s health-care plan, and they have all their big guns out today.
No economic emblem is more revered in the publics mind than “mom and pop” businesses struggling to make it against all odds. And no image is further from the true sources of the power of these self-styled “small business” lobbies. I grew up with a mom and pop who struggled six days a week—seven if you add every Sunday, when Dad tried to make all the accounts add up and pay the bills he was able to pay. But that was forty years ago. Their small, independent retail clothing shop on Main Street has been replaced by Wal-Mart and Kmart and other giant chains.
During the same interval, giant drugstore chains have replaced local pharmacists, and multinational fast-food businesses have replaced neighborhood coffee shops. The local grocer, innkeeper, and bookstore owner have met similar fates. Huge corporations now franchise their brand names and inventories, and keep tight control. All the noise in the popular press about the growing number of small manufacturing and service businesses in the economy to the contrary notwithstanding, a significant proportion of them are franchisees, and many of the others are dependent for their sales on a few giant companies that used to do the same work inside but now find it cheaper to contract out.
Much of the political clout of the “small-business lobbies” comes from these giant chains and from companies dependent on big business for their survival. National fast-food corporations, convenience stores, and mass retailers oppose any increase in the minimum wage because a significant percentage of their employees earn the minimum, or a wage near enough the minimum to be boosted by any such increase. The other major opponents are owners and operators of big office buildings, who don’t want to have to pay their janitors, elevator operators, and security guards a dime more than they do today. The combined firepower of all these industries on Congress is considerable.
Our side doesn’t have much political heft. There’s no National Association of Minimum-Wage Workers, and people who earn $4.25 an hour don’t have spare cash to donate to political action committees. Nor do they belong to labor unions. If they did, they’d be earning considerably more than the minimum wage. Organized labor is lobbying on their behalf nonetheless, partly for symbolic reasons. The proposed minimum-wage increase is popular with the public, and the AFL-CIO wants to be seen as on the side of the underdog. Moreover, before the real value of the minimum wage plummeted in the 1970s, union contracts were often based on multiples of it. Many rank-and-file union members still assume there’s a connection.
I spend most of the early afternoon with a small coalition of moderate Republican House members, who seem prepared to bolt their party and join us. Most of them represent working-class districts that easily could swing Democratic in November. Their jobs are on the line. I need their votes this afternoon, but I can’t offer them any deals for November. Even if they vote correctly today—in fact, even if their entire voting record on issues of importance to working people has been sterling—the Democratic party still will target their districts as good prospects for electing a Democrat and thus regaining control of the House. That’s how the game is played.
The vote nears. Remarkably, there’s a good possibility the bill will pass. I get word from Gephardt’s office that the business groups have now changed their strategy. They’re seeking an amendment that would exempt from the minimum-wage laws employees who are in their jobs less than six months. The lobbyists argue that because such employees often need extra attention and special training, businesses shouldn’t have to pay them higher wages. The point seems logical until you consider the effect of such an amendment. Minimum-wage workers change jobs every two years, on average. That means that at any given time about a quarter of them are in the first six months of a job. If the amendment were to pass, one-fourth of all workers now receiving the minimum wage would no longer get it. It’s a devious ploy.
After hours of frantic phoning and lobbying against the amendment, we accumulate enough votes to defeat it, but not several other amendments, which still reduce the number of employees eligible for the raise. In the end, the bill to raise the minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.15 passes the House, but with these impediments. It’s only a partial victory—an extraordinary one given where we started, but not a great gain over where we are now. I tell myself I should feel vindicated. But the heaviest lifting lies ahead, in the Senate.
“Who is Kathie Lee Gifford?” I ask.
Kitty is incredulous. Maria and the other women at the helm of the Wage and Hour Division look at one another as if they’re in the presence of a visitor from another planet.
“Do you own a television?” Maria inquires with a smile.
“Yes, and I even watch it occasionally,” I answer defiantly.
“Kathie Lee is a talk-show host. Everyone in America knows who she is.”
“Not everyone. I don’t.”
They roar with laughter. I don’t see what’s so funny.
We’re meeting because Kathie Lee’s name is on a popular line of clothing, sold by Wal-Mart, which our investigators have traced to a New York sweatshop. Kathie Lee had no idea where her brand clothing was stitched together, because she only lent her name to the enterprise. But apparently she talks incessantly about family values on her daily TV show, and the press smells the sweet scent of celebrity hypocrisy.
“You should call her,” Maria suggests.
“To commiserate? Why? I’ve never even heard of her,” I say, provoking another round of laughs.
“To make a deal,” says Maria. “You offer her a way of saving face. She joins our No Sweat crusade and becomes a spokesman for corporate responsibility. In return, you praise her leadership and courage. It’s a win-win.”
The New York press corps is to the Washington press corps as barracuda are to sharks. Sharks are bigger and more dangerous when they go on a rampage. But barracuda are always hungry, their teeth are razor-sharp, and they’ll rip up your flesh in an instant.
Kathie Lee Gifford and I are standing on a small riser in front of a sea of New York barracuda in a trendy Manhattan bistro. I make a few banal remarks about the scourge of sweatshops. She explains how upset she was to discover her name on clothing made in them. And then the barracuda attack.
“Kathie Lee, didn’t you know they were made in sweatshops?”
“So stupid?”
“So rich and stupid?”
“How much do you earn on your clothing?”
“What do you do with all that money?”
“How can you touch that money, made with the blood and sweat of innocent people?”
She tries to respond, but the barracuda won’t let her.
Kathie Lee is a petite, attractive woman who wears a lot of makeup and seems to speak from the heart. She’s married to Frank Gifford, an aging former football star and sports commentator, who is huge and very protective of her. I had dinner with both of them last night in a swanky restaurant on the Upper East Side. They brought along a public-relations expert who specializes in rescuing celebrities from PR disasters like this. In Washington, he’d be known as a master of “spin control.” He instantly understood the deal I was proposing, and liked it: Rather than try to defend herself, Kathie Lee should go on the offensive against sweatshops and the major manufacturers and retailers that contract with them.
But now the barracuda are ripping her apart. I see Frank at the edge of the crowd, one fist cupped in the other hand, looking as if he’d like to murder several of them.
“Quiet.” I yell and put my hand in the air. “Q-U-I-E-T!”
The barracuda stop.
“Now, if you want to ask a question, raise your hand, and wait until I call on you,” I scold, stepping in front of Kathie Lee. “And how about some civility here? You heard what Kathie Lee Gifford said. She didn’t know her line of clothing was made in a sweatshop. And that’s not surprising. She wasn’t the manufacturer or the retailer. She didn’t have control over any large organization. You ought to be screaming at the big guys who are contracting with sweatshops every day. Kathie Lee has committed to helping us stamp out sweatshops.” I gesture toward her. “She’s gonna be educating consumers, and putting pressure on retailers and manufacturers. And for that she deserves a lot of credit.”
The barracuda are silenced. For the first time in my life, I feel … chivalrous. I have protected a maiden in distress. The sentiment is, I know, politically incorrect. Clare would not exactly approve. But it’s real, and it’s invigorating. Even Kathie Lee’s own giant football-player husband couldn’t pull off what I just did.
I wink at Frank. He smiles back.
The rest of the press conference is only slightly less ferocious.
Tonight’s evening news is brimming with it. Editors and producers across America are running with it. The event will fill tomorrows papers.
What exactly is the news? Not that Kathie Lee Gifford has joined the Labor Departments crusade against sweatshops. That’s merely the excuse for a story. The real story is that a famous celebrity has fallen, been publicly chastised and humiliated, and struggles to survive.
I remember the old newsman’s dictum about the only two stories in America: Oh, the wonder of it. Oh, the shame of it. Mere mortals are transformed into celebrities by virtue of the first story. But the ascension to such heights creates the potential for the second. Kathie Lee is but the latest example.
The American public now knows more about the shame of sweatshops, but it has been hooked to the shaming of Kathie Lee. And Kathie Lee’s celebrity will survive to the extent she hooks her story to the shame of sweatshops. It is a perfect symmetry.
The Senate votes this afternoon on whether to raise the minimum wage. The House bill added so many exceptions that the Senate version needs to be clean and strong in order to get a decent bill out of conference. We’ve got a fair chance. I’m pumped.
Moderate Republicans in the Senate are clearly uncomfortable with their leadership’s position, which marks progress. I’ve discovered that one of my most effective lobbying techniques is to debate right-wingers on every pugilistic TV show I can get myself invited to. Only a tiny fraction of the public ever watches these head-to-head combats, but official Washington doesn’t know that. They think the entire nation tunes in to C-Span, CNN, and their offshoots. So when Republican members see me on the tube, slashing a Visigoth who says America shouldn’t even have a minimum wage, they assume that all America is watching and making up its mind to vote Democratic in the fall. The thought gives them nightmares.
Senate Dems are now caucusing over lunch in an elegant, high-ceilinged meeting room near the Senate chamber. Tom Daschle, the minority leader, has asked me to give them a pep talk before the vote. The goal is to try to keep as many of them in the corral as possible. Some Southerners, like Dale Bumpers from Arkansas and Fritz Hollings from South Carolina, are wavering. Some senators from the western prairies—such as Jim Exon and Bob Kerrey from Nebraska—haven’t committed either. A minimum-wage hike isn’t exactly popular among conservative small businesses in these rural states or among the large national chains that have significant clout there. But if the Senate Dems don’t stay united, we haven’t got a prayer.
When I walk in, the senators applaud. That’s never happened before. I’ve met with them dozens of times during the last few years. Something strange is going on.
I begin by rehearsing the arguments: Adjusted for inflation, the value of the minimum wage is now at a forty-year low. The average minimum-wage worker brings home half of the family income. And so on. But the senators don’t seem interested. Their attention wanders. (The maximum attention span of a United States senator has been clocked at just under three minutes.) They begin talking among themselves. I end my remarks as quickly as I can.
Bumpers raises his hand. Daschle recognizes him. “Let me just say I’ve considered this issue very carefully. And you all can count me in.”
Applause.
Hillings: “No problem here. I’m in too.”
Exon: “It’s a tough call, but we’ve got to do this. I’m in.”
Kerrey: “Me too.”
And so on, through the South, through the Western prairies, through the mountains, through territories that Democrats barely held in 1994. Democratic senators who could never agree on anything when they controlled the Senate—who even took pride in their unruliness—are united.
It’s certainly not all my doing. Credit the AFL-CIO, which has been lobbying hard. Credit Ted Kennedy, the liberal lion of the Senate, who has variously strengthened and intimidated the faint of heart. Credit the soft-spoken Daschle, whose management-by-consensus style has disarmed apostates. Credit Bob Dole, Phil Gramm, Newt Gingrich, and Dick Armey, whose antics have drawn the Democrats together in common revulsion.
B deserves credit too. Although he hasn’t pushed very hard for it—there aren’t many minimum-wage workers in the suburban swing—he did favor it, and it was his decision to propose it formally last January that opened the door.
But I think there’s something else going on as well, more profound than the pulling and tugging that occurs over any piece of legislation. Eighty percent of the public wants the minimum wage to be raised because it’s the right thing to do. It’s not simply a matter of ninety cents extra per hour. It’s a matter of basic fairness. The stock market is soaring. Corporations are enjoying record profits. The people at the top have never had it so good. It’s only right that hard-working people at the bottom get a bit of a raise.
The debate over whether to increase the minimum wage is part of a larger debate over what we owe one another as members of the same society. If the Democratic party stands for anything, it’s the simple proposition that prosperity should be shared. This explains the electricity in the room when I entered, and the uncharacteristic display of Democratic unity.
The senators file out of the caucus room and into the chamber. The roll call begins. The votes mount up. I hold my breath.
The Democrats stay united. Moderate Republicans begin to join them. Within minutes, it’s clear that we’ll be over the top. Other Republicans decide to come over. As long as it’s going to pass anyway, they’d rather be counted as voting in favor.
Final tally: 76 in favor, 22 against, 2 abstentions.
I’m giddy. After four goddamn years of pushing—more than two of them pushing in the White House—I feel a wonderful sense of relief. Ten million American workers, most of them at the bottom of the heap, will now get a raise.
The Senate Dems are jubilant. The cloak room is all handshakes and backslaps. It’s the first major victory over the Republicans since they took control, on an issue against which Republicans had dug in their heels. The Dems fought back and won.
I walk back to the department, my feet barely touching the ground.
The entire staff is in my office—Tom, Darla, Maria, Geri Palast, who heads the legislative-affairs staff, and everyone else who has been pushing for this, everyone who knows what it means. Even Kitty, who’s now on the White House staff, has come back for this one. They issue a collective cheer which turns into applause and hugs.
I stand on a chair and offer a toast: “To the Labor Department, the department of the American workforce, the department of the little people who work hard and most of the time get screwed. Today—against all odds—we won one for them.” More cheers.
Tonight I call Clare with the news.
“Congratulations, my love,” she says. “You did well. I’m proud of you.”
“And nobody believed it was possible, especially in this Congress, headed by these Republicans!” I crow.
“What’s going on?” Sam has picked up on the other line. I explain it to him. “Great going, Dad! You’re a hero!” he says instantly—Sam, the diplomat.
“You beat the pants off ’em, Dad!” Adam has taken over the phone from Clare. “Thata way to go!”
My heart aches to be with them, to share with them the stories of the past few frantic days leading up to the victory, to describe in detail what happened today, to prance around the living room and celebrate. But today is Monday, and I won’t see them until Friday night, and by then some of these memories will have faded, and much of the excitement will be gone.
The minimum-wage increase is safe. The final bill that emerged from conference eliminated most of the House amendments, so it’s a solid piece of legislation that will improve the lives of millions of people. It’s a remarkable victory. There was a nice event in the Rose Garden. But now the fight is over, and it probably won’t even figure in the fall campaign because, in the end, Republicans joined Democrats to pass the bill.
Today B may undo some of the good that was done then.
He’ll decide whether to sign the welfare bill. If he does, it will put a million more kids into poverty.
The morning is humid and drizzly, a typical Washington midsummer sauna. Several of us have been summoned to this meeting in the cabinet room. We’ve been waiting for B for forty-five minutes. I think he knows what he’s going to decide and doesn’t want to face us.
Almost two and a half years ago, we debated B’s own proposal for welfare reform in this same room. The idea then was to spend $2 billion a year more than the nation was spending on welfare in order to help move welfare recipients into decent jobs. The extra money would go for job training and child care. And if there were no jobs in the private sector, the money would finance public-service jobs.
But that proposal didn’t get far. B was focused on trying to pass health-care legislation, and, besides, he worried about how to justify spending $2 billion a year more on welfare when telling the public he was trying to end it.
So now we’re faced with a proposal to cut total welfare spending by about $9 billion a year, eliminate entirely the sixty-year-old guarantee to help the poor, turn over administration to the states, and cut off benefits after a certain time even if there’s no work to be had.
The Republicans have flipped the original proposal upside down. Instead of helping people into work, it’s about shoving them off welfare. Instead of it being a moral message about the value of work and community, it’s an exercise in budget austerity. We can’t afford to help legal immigrants. We can’t afford to provide food stamps to working families who need them in order to stay out of poverty. It’s more efficient to have the states protect poor women and children.
I look around the table at the other members of the cabinet and the White House staffers who have assembled for this meeting. No one looks happy to be here. The mood is tense and somber. How did we come to this? B didn’t stake out a firm position against the Republicans’ welfare bill early enough to give potential allies in the House and Senate sufficient cover or adequate assurance he’d be with them if they wanted to vote against it. So the initial bill was shaped by the Republicans, and their argument dominated the subsequent debate over it. They offered B two heinous versions, which he reluctantly vetoed, but they knew they had him cornered. And they probably knew that Morris was fulminating about the importance of taking welfare off the table before the fall campaign, so Dole couldn’t beat B over the head with it.
B and Al Gore enter the room and take their usual seats opposite one another at the middle of the long table. B speaks softly. I’ve learned that the more softly he speaks, the more determined he is to do something that those he’s speaking to won’t like. But he goes out of his way to say he hasn’t made up his mind and wants to hear from each of us.
We go around the table. Most of the cabinet is firmly against signing. Most of the political advisers are in favor. Dick Morris isn’t in the meeting, but he might as well be. I can hear his staccato-nasal voice: “The suburban swing! The suburban swing!” Yet the political advisers gathered here are careful to veil crass politics within a respectable patina of policy.
“Mr. President, four years ago you promised to end welfare as we know it, and this is as close as you’ll get to having a chance to reform the system.”
“The bill isn’t perfect, but the welfare system is rotten, so you should sign the bill and pledge to fix the bad parts when you’re reelected.”
“The Republicans would beat you over the head with your veto, but you have to do what’s right, what you’re comfortable with.”
Gore says he’ll reserve judgment (presumably until he’s alone with B so that he can tell him he’d be crazy to veto the bill and risk the upcoming election, not to mention the one after it). He advises B to go with his conscience.
It’s my turn, and I can’t think of anything to say except that the whole purpose of coming to Washington four years ago was to reverse the trend toward widening inequality in wealth and opportunity, and that signing this bill would violate everything we stood for. I don’t know if B is listening.
What I don’t say is this: You’re twenty points ahead in the polls, for chrissake. You don’t need to hurt people this way. You don’t need to settle for this piece of shit. Veto it, and explain to the public why you did. Explain that you want to get poor people into jobs, and that to do so requires money. Explain that without adequate skills or child care, there’s simply no way. And as long as Alan Greenspan and his Fed are intent on avoiding any whisper of inflation, there won’t be enough jobs to go around. So we’ll need public-service jobs. Make all this part of your campaign. That’s the whole point of being reelected, isn’t it? Why else do you want to be president? Simply to be president?
B says little, except that he hates the provisions in the Republican bill that cut food stamps and take benefits away from legal immigrants. He stands and thanks us for our advice, then leaves the room.
I walk out of the cabinet room, down the corridor, down a flight of stairs, and into the executive parking lot, where I always hang out to get the latest news. But today I know the latest news. I’m certain B has decided to sign the welfare bill, and I feel sick to my stomach.
There’s no point to winning reelection if it has to be done this way. Sure, two terms automatically earns you a chapter in American history books, and a decade is named after you. Win reelection and you’re considered to be among America’s successful presidents, as long as you don’t screw up. But none of this is enough to justify hurting vulnerable people. None of it is worth the price of a million more children in poverty.
The day is even muggier than when it began. I feel dizzy. I want to go to bed. I want to wake up with a knock at the door. I want to open it to find a tall, gangly sweet-faced twenty-two-year-old, holding a bowl of chicken soup in one hand and crackers in the other.
“Heard ya weren’t feeling too well,” he’ll drawl. “Chicken soup will cure anything. This ocean is terrible. Where I come from we don’t have anything like this.”
I’ll thank him, and we’ll laugh.
“Isn’t it amazing?” he’ll ask.
“What?”
“Being here, you and I … Did you ever think you and I would be here?”
A party convention like this is a pep rally of gargantuan proportions. The team assembles from all over the country to prepare for the big game, and then they whip themselves and everyone else into a fighting frenzy.
I had to convince myself to come. I’m not in the mood for a pep rally right now. I don’t know exactly what to be peppy about. Sure, I’m proud of what I’ve helped accomplish during the last four years—a higher minimum wage, Family and Medical Leave, school-to-work apprenticeships, one-stop job centers, and a somewhat more progressive income tax. And proud of what I’ve launched—the attack on sweatshops, pension reform, the campaign against corporate welfare. I’m glad we withstood last winter’s siege. We restored funding to its 1992 level for summer jobs for poor kids, and for others needing more education and training. But the deeper problem isn’t being addressed. In fact, it’s being worsened. The welfare bill is a disgrace. A disproportionate share of the budget cuts is falling on those least able to bear them. Even in this positive phase of the business cycle, a large percentage of the workforce is still treading water, or even sinking. Earnings continue to diverge. B isn’t talking about any of this. Instead, we pretend that happy days are here again.
Adam wanted to come to the convention with me, and his presence helps my mood. He follows me as I address the state caucuses over breakfast (Q: “How many breakfasts are we supposed to eat, Dad?” A: “None. We don’t have time.”), and the black and Hispanic and women’s caucuses over lunch (Q: “Can I eat now?” A: “No time. We’ll eat back in the hotel”), and the delegates during late-afternoon receptions (Q: “What are these weird little things?” A: “They’re called hors d’oeuvres.”).
He traipses after me on the crowded convention floor in the evening (Q: “Why are all these people here if they already know the ticket is Clinton-Gore?” A: “To have a big party.” Q: “So that’s what they mean by a political party?” A: “Exactly”). He even learns how to elbow his way to news reporters and their cameras (Q to them: “Would you like to have an interview with the Secretary of Labor? He’s right over here.” A: “No, thanks.”).
And he pads along to a few late-night events (Q: “When’s the George party?” A: “George who?”).
There are really three conventions going on simultaneously in and around this mammoth United Center. The first is the Democratic convention, which Adam and I are attending. It’s in the caucuses and delegate meetings and on the convention floor for five or six hours each night—a boisterous crowd of several thousand teachers, trade unionists, liberal do-gooders, and local Democratic pols from around the country, who care about helping underdogs in society and having fun while in Chicago. They’re troubled by the welfare bill and about the widening gap between rich and poor, but they’ve tacitly agreed not to have any of this spoil the party.
Then there’s the financial convention, of which Adam and I get only occasional glimpses. It meets downtown in fancy dining rooms, exclusive cocktail parties, and in the skyboxes of the convention center—a sober group of corporate executives, partners in major law firms, Hollywood celebrities, and Wall Street investment bankers, who care about having access to power and conversing with B, Al Gore, and Hillary while in Chicago. Many of them don’t know what’s happening to the underdogs in our society, and even if they do, probably don’t lose a great deal of sleep over it.
And then there’s the prime-time convention, which Adam and I could have watched on television back in Boston. It occurs precisely between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. and involves a few celebrities and heroes, who are carefully scripted and choreographed. They speak from the stage of the convention center into television prompters, and thence to millions of homes around America. Their connection to Democratic politics is remote at best. But that’s the whole point. The prime-time convention isn’t supposed to be about Democratic politics. Tonight the prime-time convention stars the actor Christopher Reeve, followed by Reagan’s press aide Jim Brady. Reeve talks movingly about the importance of research into curing disabilities; Brady is equally moving about the importance of controlling handguns. These segments are produced and directed by Dick Morris and company, who seek to project stirring images into the living rooms of the suburban swing. No mention of the poor. No hint that inequality is widening. No suggestion that the wages and benefits of almost half the workforce are still stagnant or dropping while the rest of the economy is flourishing.
In fact, the three conventions have remarkably little to do with one another. They occur simultaneously, but it’s as if they occupy different dimensions of reality. Reeve speaks into the television cameras during the prime-time convention at the same time that thousands of delegates on the floor below him mingle during the Democratic convention, while in the skyboxes high above all of them, big donors feast on shrimp, lobster tails, and caviar in the financial convention. Participants in the prime-time convention are so caked in orange TV makeup they look unreal; participants in the Democratic convention come in all colors; participants in the financial convention are uniformly white.
Fifteen thousand reporters are here. They’re camped out in tents outside the convention center. I don’t know what they do all day. There’s nothing to report.
I’m enjoying the Democratic convention because I can make fiery speeches and the delegates appreciate them. (After one day here Adam knows my lines by heart. He stands unobtrusively in the back of the halls where I speak and lip-synchs the words.) Most of these delegates actually care about this stuff. Not many suburban swing voters here. Adam and I spend most of our time at the Democratic convention, although it’s the least important convention of the three. After all, B is already the nominee. The prime-time convention gives B free air-time on television to advertise his campaign, and the financial convention ensures ample paid airtime on television between now and Election Day.
My major role on the floor of the Democratic convention is to do what those people who wear Mickey Mouse and Goofy costumes do at Disneyland—pose for snapshots with my arm around delegates. “Mr. Secretary, would you mind if I took a quick shot of you and Edith?” Weeks later: “Edith, here you are with what’s-his-name, the little guy who’s Secretary of Labor!” I move from delegation to delegation, clasping hands and offering my body free of charge. I’m a character in the costume of a Clinton cabinet member.
All three conventions have been building to tonight’s climax, when B formally accepts the nomination.
Five days of this is plenty for any human being. If I have to pose for one more snapshot, I’ll snap. Even Adam is exhausted. I can’t help but wonder what he’ll take away from all this. Either he’ll become addicted to politics or he’ll be turned off it forever.
I’ve just finished giving another hell-fire speech, this one to the Hispanic caucus. They clap with as much enthusiasm as any group can muster after five days of listening to hell-fire speeches. Like other participants in the Democratic convention, they have the illusion of being at the center, when in fact the other two conventions are at the center and theirs is at the periphery. I wonder if I’m contributing to the illusion by coming here to speak to them.
Jesse Jackson is to follow me. He waits to step on the platform until I’ve stepped down. For a brief instant our heads are the same level, and he whispers directly in my ear.
“Did you hear about Morris?” he asks.
“No. What?” I steel myself to learn of another pander to the swing.
“Resigned. Gone.”
“Why?”
“Sex” is all Jackson has time to say before he’s up on the platform and I’m led away to my next caucus speech.
Morris? Sex? Somehow I’d never associated the two. Morris always seemed rather asexual, like computer software.
I find out later that a tabloid has evidence that during his trips to Washington to advise B Morris hired a prostitute, allowed her to listen in on phone calls between him and B, and showed her confidential documents. She sold her story to the rag, along with some photographs. And so he’s out.
The convention is buzzing. Fifteen thousand reporters are thanking heaven. They finally have something to write home about. And it has everything: sex, politics, intrigue, betrayal.
As I think about it, the betrayal is on many levels. Morris betrayed his wife. The prostitute betrayed Morris by selling the story. Morris betrayed B by letting her listen in on phone conversations.
This was supposed to be B’s big day—B’s acceptance speech, B’s coronation as the Democratic nominee for president. Morris wrote, produced, and directed this extravaganza for B. But now the headlines will be about Morris.
There’s a deeper betrayal, of course, which has been going on for some time now. It’s Morris’s betrayal of ideals. He has shaped the campaign around a mythical suburban swing concerned about crime, drugs, school uniforms, and V-chips rather than the economic trends pulling the nation apart. He insisted that B balance the budget and sign a welfare bill. He is Mephistopheles, the corrupter of all means to an end that is never fully realized; the ultimate betrayer.
When Morris’s smaller betrayals are revealed, he’s banished from the campaign. But his largest betrayal remains hidden, and it continues.
Morris notwithstanding, the United Center glitters in anticipation of B’s speech. By 9 p.m., the delegates on the floor are fired up. The executives and financiers in their skyboxes are mellow. The cameras and promoters are primed for prime time.
B walks out on the platform, and the Center explodes. All three conventions are focused on the man and what he is about to say. The cabinet stands on the far side of the speaker’s platform. I have a good view of the crowd below, the skyboxes above, the cameras and prompters. I strain my eyes to find Adam somewhere down there, but it’s impossible. I’m sure he’s enjoying the spectacle.
The TelePrompTer begins scrolling through the speech. B delivers it softly to the cameras, to the prime-time convention.
“… For four years now, to realize our vision we have pursued a simple but profound strategy: Opportunity for all. Responsibility from all. A strong American community.”
I can read what the prompter tells B to say seconds before he actually says it, which gives his actual words a kind of echo effect: Here come the 100,000 more police on the streets. Up next, the “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” law. In a moment, the shrinking federal government. Soon, the reduction of the deficit sixty percent, heading toward zero. Next, welfare.
“… The welfare reform law I signed last week is a chance for America to have a new beginning—to strike a new social bargain with the poor.… Now we have a responsibility—a moral obligation—to make sure the people we are requiring to work have the opportunity to work.…”
It’s the first time the words “poor” and “moral” have entered the prime-time convention this week. But who exactly is the “we” with the moral obligation to find work for those who don’t have it? Alan Greenspan? Chainsaw Al? Mr. Ono? American taxpayers?
Up next, the tax breaks for education beyond high school. Then the skill vouchers for the unemployed. The swing likes both of these. I take some pride in being their progenitor. And then other ideas scroll by, all of which have been successfully market-tested by Morris: a capital-gains tax cut for home owners who trade down, a tiny expansion of the Family and Medical Leave Act to cover parent-teacher conferences, a crackdown on the sale of cigarettes to minors, TV ratings and V-chips.
Morris’s pollsters have tested every phrase, every paragraph, even the order of the sentences and paragraphs. Or so he told me last week when I asked him about the speech. But who can trust what Morris says? As Ron Brown pointed out to me, seventy-five percent of what Morris says has to be discounted immediately, and the discount rate rises as the election draws closer.
The speech makes no mention of the minimum-wage victory, of progress against the scourge of sweatshops, of the widening gulf between the rich and everyone else, of the more than one in five of America’s children in poverty, of stagnant wages, of profitable companies firing their workers, of companies busting unions, of corporate welfare, of the implicit social compact that used to bind the nation together and is now in tatters.
None of this, it seems, would go down well with the swing.
And then, when it’s all over, a great cheer bellows up from the hall. Balloons drop—thousands of red, white, and blue balloons—followed by millions upon millions of bits of silver confetti, glittering and glowing in the light. The cheers turn to laughter and wild applause. Balloons and confetti fill the air. And then music: powerful, uplifting patriotic music.
The entire cabinet moves to the center of the platform, with B and Al Gore, and Hillary and Tipper, and White House staffers. Gene Sperling is here, George, Leon. We wave at the crowd, we shake hands, we hug. Even if the words were mundane, the production is truly inspiring.
The balloons and silver confetti continue to pour down, and the music grows even louder. I recognize the melody from the musical Les Misérables. Al Gore winks at me. “It’s one of my favorite songs!” he shouts, with a huge grin. It’s just the melody, not the lyrics. But I know the words. Does he?
Do you hear the people sing?
Sing the song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!
Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?
Then join in the fight that will give
You the right to be free!
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing the song of angry men?