JULY/AUGUST 1996 · VOLUME 17 · NUMBERS 7 & 8
T H E I R M A S T E R S ' V O I C E
JULY/AUGUST 1996 · VOLUME 17 · NUMBERS 7 & 8
T H E I R M A S T E R S ' V O I C E
ENTRANCED BY THE STIRRING SLOGAN "Fight the Contract" and seduced by the
punching bag possibilities of Newt Gingrich and Jesse Helms, most liberals have
stopped asking themselves about the responsibility of Bill Clinton and the
Democrats for the nation's conservative political climate.
Nothing reveals the collapse of the liberals so well as the surrender of much of Washington's public interest crowd. These activists explain that the prospect of a Dole presidency is so repellent that they have no choice but to circle the wagons around Clinton. What do-good types do not talk about is how their own personal and institutional interests have allowed them to be seduced by the White House. Exiled during the Reagan/Bush years, public interest groups now find their leaders invited to White House briefings. And just as right-wing outfits like the Heritage Foundation are closely aligned to the Republicans, much of the public interest sector is firmly anchored to the Democrats. They have access to cabinet secretaries, and in some cases to the president himself. "When you suddenly have an opening to power and you've got friends running agencies, it becomes very hard to be critical," says one public interest watcher.
Clinton has always courted the public interest crowd and made sure to appoint large numbers to his administration. These included officials from, among other places, the National Low Income Housing Coalition, Planned Parenthood, the Consumer Federation of America, the Wilderness Society, the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and People for the American Way.
The pay-off of this "access" has been meager. While at Public Citizen's Congress Watch, Michael Waldman promoted campaign finance reform. As a special assistant to the President for policy coordination with an $85,000 per year salary, he has covered for his boss's fervid courtship of corporate money.
Before one big fundraising dinner at a Washington hotel, Waldman told the press, "While we're working to reform this campaign finance system, the Democratic Party is not going to unilaterally disarm." Then he went inside and joined Clinton and 2,000 well-heeled powerful interests for a pleasant meal of steak and salmon. The dinner raised $3.5 million for the Democratic National Committee.
Many public interest leaders have personal ties to administration officials. Marian Wright Edelman, head of the Children's Defense Fund and the nation's most revered advocate for the poor, is a close friend of Hillary Rodham Clinton and of Donna Shalala, head of the Department of Health and Human Services, both of whom previously chaired Edelman's board of directors.
During the Reagan years, Edelman was an outspoken critic of the nation's commander-in-chief, portraying him as a bitter foe of tots and orphans. With Clinton, Edelman has been remarkably restrained. She never criticized the President in public until late 1995, breaking her silence only after Clinton indicated he would support a GOP welfare bill that the administration's own numbers showed would push one million children into poverty.
The Children's Defense Fund did not return calls requesting comment on Edelman's posture toward Clinton.
On issue after issue, public interest groups have shilled for Clinton. Take the case of Citizen Action, which before Clinton took office championed a single payer health care system, based on the Canadian model. After Clinton came to town, Citizen Action, while professing to still support single payer in theory, quickly lined up behind the president's insurer-friendly health care reform bill.
This shift becomes easier to understand after learning of certain career moves made by Citizen Action personnel during the past few years. In early 1993, Citizen Action's Heather Booth took a job at the Democratic National Committee. Later that year, Citizen Action's Washington, D.C. director, Robert Brandon, left the group to form a private consulting firm, whose first client was the Democratic National Committee. Michael Podhorzer, who worked with the group for many years before moving on to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, is married to Carol Browner, Clinton's EPA chief and a former associate director of ... Citizen Action.
Ed Rothschild, public affairs director of Citizen Action, says, "We made a judgment [to back the Clinton plan] after fighting very hard for single payer, and getting only a few senators to sign on." He adds, "Our decision had nothing to do with Brandon and Booth working for the DNC."
Advocacy groups have also given Clinton a free ride in the Medicaid debate. Despite all the campaign rhetoric, the Clinton administration and the GOP proposals are not terribly divergent. The latest proposals from the Republicans call for spending cuts over the next six years of $72 billion while Clinton suggests Medicaid cuts of $59 billion.
Yet last December, the liberal group Families USA -- its head, Ron Pollack, was a campaign adviser to Clinton and its board is headed up by Phillipe Villers, a big Democratic Party donor -- rounded up dozens of signatures from public interest advocates for a letter praising the president for standing firm on Medicaid. The signers were rewarded with an invitation to the White House to watch Clinton's Saturday radio address and with a personal photo-op with their hero.
When asked why Clinton has been spared tough criticism, public interest groups bob and weave but provide no convincing explanation. Greg Marchildon of Families USA says that his organization "has pretty much been monitoring [the Republican-controlled] Congress because the president has made it clear that he won't sign any bill that weakens protection for the elderly and kids." Marchildon did not explain how cutting $59 billion from Medicaid would protect the elderly and kids.
-- Ken Silverstein