Farm Bill Deal In Sight?

A Farm Bill deal is reportedly in the works; the good, the bad, and the ugly of Opportunity Zones; plus the news of the week ICYMI.

This week on Off-Kilter, with a Farm Bill deal on the horizon, Rebecca brings back Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, for an update on the nutrition assistance front — and a melodious send-off for soon-to-be-former speaker Paul Ryan, who’s yet again garnering undeserved praise as a supposed “poverty warrior” as news outlets mischaracterize his legacy in droves.

Next, Opportunity Zones: innovative strategy for funneling private investment into distressed communities, or giant tax loophole for wealthy corporations and investors? To break down the pros and cons about the initiative, Rebecca sits down with Gbenga Ajilore and Rejane Frederick, two experts at the Center for American Progress.

But first, Jeremy Slevin returns to catch us up on the news of the week in poverty and inequality in another edition of In Case You Missed It.

This week’s guests:

• Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America
• Gbenga Ajilore, senior economist, Center for American Progress
• Rejane Frederick, associate director, poverty to prosperity program, Center for American Progress
• Jeremy Slevin, director of antipoverty advocacy, Center for American Progress (and faithful sidekick)

For more on this week’s topics:

• Catch up on what we know so far about the bipartisan Senate Farm Bill deal via Jeff Stein in the Washington Post
• Read more from Gbenga and Rejane on how Amazon is poised to get rich off of Opportunity Zones — and how the initiative risks furthering “disaster capitalism”

For more on ICYMI topics:

• Get up to speed on the Wisconsin GOP’s power grab in this Vox explainer
• Read more on the GOP’s election fraud happening in North Carolina
• Meet the wealthy corporations that swore the GOP Tax Scam’s massive corporate tax cuts would help them create jobs — who are now perpetrating corporate layoffs
• Here’s the NELP study finding that since 2012, the fight for $15 movement has brought a whopping $68B in additional income to low-wage workers via state and local minimum wage increases
• And here’s the Pew study finding that in literally every state in the U.S., voters want the minimum wage to be higher than it is. (No wonder the Wisconsin and Michigan GOP legislatures — and the other NRA — are subverting democracy in their states.)
• Not only are we now denying asylum seekers, we’re now making them pay for the process

What we’re reading this week:

• Elena Hung and Katherine Perez are FIRE in the New York Times on Trump’s hateful public charge rule: Trump’s New Wall to Keep Out the Disabled
• NELP and EPI’s State Agenda for America’s Workers

This week’s transcript:

REBECCA VALLAS (HOST): Welcome to Off Kilter, the show about poverty, inequality, and everything they intersect with, powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. I’m Rebecca Vallas. This week on Off Kilter, with a Farm Bill deal on the horizon, I bring back Joel Berg of Hunger Free America, for an update on the nutrition assistance front and a melodious send-off for soon to be former Speaker Paul Ryan, who’s yet again garnering all kinds of undeserved praise as a supposed poverty warrior as news outlets mischaracterize his legacy in droves. Next, opportunity zones — innovative strategies for funneling private investments into distressed communities or giant tax loophole for wealthy corporations and investors? I sit down with Gbenga Ajilore and Rejane Frederick, two experts on opportunity zones at the Center for American Progress to get the skinny.

But first, Jeremy Slevin, the Slevinator, hi Jeremy.

JEREMY SLEVIN: Hello.

VALLAS: Hello. I’m sorry, I have to say it’s a nice sweater.

SLEVIN: Thank you.

VALLAS: Because it is.

SLEVIN: Well how else are we going to start the episode?

VALLAS: I mean if you hadn’t been wearing a sweater sometimes I’m out of options.

[LAUGHTER]

SLEVIN: We can’t put out the show.

VALLAS: I have to come up with a substantive topic and that’s just really, really hard to do. The time we tape in the evenings, I just checked off one of your boxes by the way.

SLEVIN: Yep, I won’t say what day it is.

VALLAS: Thank you Will for taking a picture of this week’s sweater. But Jeremy, it’s not just your sweater I want to talk about. It’s a friggin bad week for democracy and I feel like that’s where we really need to start and obviously a lot of attention right now, although not nearly enough relative to what is happening but being paid to Wisconsin and a massive, massive sour grapes Republican power grab in the wake of an election that didn’t make the Republican Party in that state particularly happy. What do we know right now?

SLEVIN: So the Wisconsin state senate today voted to restrict the incoming governor and attorney general’s power, both of whom are Democrats, both of whom recently defeated Republicans of course and this is the attempt essentially by the state’s Republicans to rewrite the state’s laws because they lost. And it will have a particular impact on low-income people. It will essentially require the governor to implement the state’s Medicaid waiver and require the state the stay on a lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act’s protections of preexisting conditions. Both of these were huge topics in the campaign. It’s not like they’re just doing this as an aside. This was literally the subject of the gubernatorial campaign and what the governor Tony Evers ran on. They would also require the governor to seek approval for basically any new policy regard Medicaid or food assistance, including seeking federal approval. And basically block the new governor’s flexibility in federal food programs like Summer Feeding or Food Share which is Wisconsin’s SNAP program.

And of course it’s not just the low income provisions. It’s restricting early voting in the state to undermine the state’s democracy. It’s allowing the legislature to hire private lawyers to undermine the role, historical role of the attorney general in the state. It is a massive, massive deal and this is not the first state where it’s happened, of course.

VALLAS: You mentioned the Medicaid piece, I feel like one of the things that’s not getting nearly enough attention within the context of this massive far reaching power grab is the healthcare piece of this. To be very clear, the incoming governor Tony Evers has stated and stated in the campaign his opposition to taking Medicaid away from jobless folks, something we also know a majority of the American people don’t want to see happen. And yet that is what this legislation will require him to do despite his having campaign against it and the people of the state agreeing with him by putting him in that seat. He doesn’t get to make that choice.

And you mentioned on the Affordable Care Act side as well, locking the state leadership into that lawsuit that attorneys general are continue to mount that would effectively gut the Affordable Care Act, specifically protections for preexisting conditions. So just a ton in this package that’s actually specifically targeting low-income Wisconsin folks as democracy gets subverted in this wholesale way. And it’s not just Wisconsin where we’re seeing something like this happen. We talked extensively last week about Michigan and now we’ve got updates on that front as well and they’re not a hell of a lot rosier.

SLEVIN: Right, similar attempts. The Republican legislature in Michigan is aiming to basically limited the authority of governor-elect Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat and the state’s attorney general and the secretary of state on campaign finance laws and other legal issues. All three of whom are women, a historical first for Michigan and now they’re having essentially the rug pulled out from under their power in the state.

VALLAS: And the rug pulled out from under the voters who made those decision and I sort of feel the need to take a step back here and just point out as much as we’re walking through specific provisions here, the big picture here is Republicans in these states weren’t happy with the outcome of the elections. The voters decided, they made their choices known and now Republicans are using lame duck sessions to effectively undercut the decisions the voters made at the ballot box and neuter the positions that now are going to be held by the opposing party. That’s not how democracy works. Does this basically make the case for doing away with lame duck sessions? Is that where we need to go here? The democracy is actually basically at a crossroads if this becomes the playbook when one party doesn’t like the outcome of an election.

SLEVIN: Yeah, I mean I think you’re right to broaden it out and it happened in North Carolina in 2016. And I think we talk a lot about Trump’s threat to democracy and his subversion of democratic norms and what that means but I think what we’re seeing is A, it’s not just Trump. This is where the Republican Party is at. They are an anti “small-d” democratic party. They will subvert democracy to reach their ends, regardless of what you think about those ends, they are plainly anti-democratic. And we talk about how Trump is defying norms and the party is defying norms in many ways but we’re seeing that they’re willing to put those norm defying actions into law so that they are changing the law to subvert democracy long term. So I think there’s a lot of potential solutions, doing away with lame duck sessions is one, but there needs to be a similarly strong effort on the other side to protect Democracy when it’s under threat.

VALLAS: And you describe a little bit of what’s going on in Michigan. We also talked a lot about it, as I said, last week. Some of that is still playing out as we speak but we’re watching now just power being taken away from incoming leaders but also we’re watching actual choices that voters made at the ballot box on issues like paid sick leave, like minimum wage also being stripped away from them so that instead of being able to make choices at the ballot box the legislature is taking this exception and bizarre step of passing, and I should say Republicans in the legislature, passing the bills that they are now turning around and what’s happening this week is they’re actually repealing them or gutting them so that the voters never get a chance to decide through representative democracy, excuse me, I should say through direct access to democracy. This is what passes for “representative democracy” and I’ll putting that in massive, massive scare quotes because obviously it’s the opposite. Now North Carolina you just mentioned also huge news out of North Carolina in the past several days, it looks like we found the voter fraud that Republicans were really worried about. Oops, turns out they’re the ones committing it?

SLEVIN: Yes, that’s exactly right.

VALLAS: What do we know?

SLEVIN: So it’s being called the biggest case of election fraud and the fraud wasn’t on the part of the voters, it was on the part of the candidate potentially and consultants who worked for him. So in North Carolina’s [9th] district, the election board in North Carolina has not certified the results and people were wondering why. And it turns out as journalists dig deeper, that a Republican operative who was working for the candidate who supposed won, this Republican candidate Mark Harris, was paying people to quote, unquote “harvest ballots”. In effect, was paying people to collect absentee ballots and then could have tampered with them, could have faked statistics. They’re now looking into this person who’s been, who went to jail in the 90s for fraud, his name is Leslie McCrae Dowlessf and they found that historically on campaigns he has consulted on something like 96% or 98% of the absentee ballots in that country went for the Republican candidate. So we’re just at the beginning of uncovering what seems to bea very, very big scandal and the supposed margin of victory for Mark Harris was only 905 votes. So in a close election like this committing a crime like this can totally skew the results.

VALLAS: And meanwhile maybe I missed it but where’s the outrage from all the Republicans who were so obsessed with voter fraud. Funny, it seems like crickets.

SLEVIN: Right, there’s basically been no reaction or response from the Trump administration or Speaker Ryan, from local Republicans. In fact, Mark Harris, the Republican candidate is denying any involvement in this and demanding that the votes be certified without answering for why this consultant did this or where this came from. So I think there’s more to come, it’s a story we’ll be following closely.

VALLAS: Now moving onto the tax front, we also have some news this week starting to help fill out the picture about what’s happening in the wake of the Republican tax law that took effect earlier this year, one of the claims that we heard a lot from Trump and from Republicans championing the then bill that is now law was that it was going to result in an average pay increase of about $4,000 for middle class workers. We know that that hasn’t materialized and actually we’ve seen stagnant and even declining workers wages in the wake of that law taking effect. But now we’re actually seeing some more evidence of what’s happening on another front, another one of the big promises we heard out of Trump and out of Republicans championing the tax law was that it was going to create all these jobs. Oh my God was this a jobs bill and what were companies going to do with this massive corporate tax cut that they were going to get handed? They were going to pass it onto their workers not just through higher wages but through creating new jobs. Jeremy what are we now learning about whether that second promise holds as much water as the first?

SLEVIN: We’re learning it was a lie.

VALLAS: Don’t you love when I set you up like that?

SLEVIN: Yeah, that’s so much fun. [LAUGHTER] So of course earlier this month or late last month General Motors announced massive layoffs of 14,000 employees. They were not part of this coalition but looking further into how companies have reacted in the year since these tax cuts passed, they found that most of the companies that advocated for the tax cuts and claimed they would boost jobs have actually laid off employees.

VALLAS: Womp, womp.

SLEVIN: The biggest advocate was what was called the RATE coalition, the Reforming America’s Taxes Equitably coalition who spent millions of dollars, it was basically a who’s who of corporate America and ThinkProgress, our colleague Josh Israel reached out or looked into the employment practices of about half of these companies. And about half of them, or he looked into all of them and at least half of them have had massive layoff since the tax cut went into place.

VALLAS: Now correct me if I’m wrong, Jeremy but does that feel like the exact opposite of what they were claiming they were going to do with these tax cuts that they now have?

SLEVIN: That would be right Rebecca.

[LAUGHTER]

VALLAS: Sorry just wanted to get that clear there, the exact opposite of what they promised on jobs is what is actually happening now.

SLEVIN: Yes. And keep in mind, it’s not only in the wake of these tax cuts, it’s in a supposed favorable economy where the unemployment rate is low, although a lot of people are still looking for work, people are waiting patiently for wages to start ticking up. But it’s not a good economy. In a recession it would be more understandable, companies tighten belts. But the fact that in the wake of getting this giant corporate tax cut they are pocketing it and then laying off employees suggests what happens when you cut corporate tax cuts and add new incentives for companies to have lower taxes overseas which was a key part of the tax law.

VALLAS: Now the number of times I feel that there has been what should have been the death knell for the case for trickle-down economics is more than I can count. I feel like this should be another one of those moments and yet I can’t say I feel optimistic. So I’m sure we’ll still be having these conversations as we move forward in the weeks, months, and years ahead. But information to keep in mind as folks are assessing the credibility of the promises that were made about this tax law that remains the law of the land. So moving onto the minimum wage front, we also actually have two new studies out in just the past few days on the minimum wage, one of which tells us a lot about why we’re seeing massive subversion of democracy by Republicans in state legislatures like we were just talking about in Michigan. And that’s a study from Pew telling us about what voters want when it comes to the minimum wage. Spoiler; it’s that they should be higher.

SLEVIN: Yes. [LAUGHTER] Again, you spoiled it for me this time.

VALLAS: But I didn’t give the fun rub, it’s not just that it should be higher.

SLEVIN: So there was a survey of every state and how they view the minimum wage in their state. And in every single state voters think that the minimum wage should be higher. And often it’s, and this is in every state from Texas to Arkansas to typically blue states where the wage is higher like California or New York. Every state and it’s an average of two dollars higher residents think the minimum wage is too low. And we see this time and time again when it’s put to a vote such as it was in many states this cycle, raising the minimum wage always passes overwhelmingly and this is more evidence as to why states are having to subvert democracy or overturn local minimum wage ballot initiatives to stop their minimum wage from increasing, it’s because they’re incredibly popular.

VALLAS: Just to clarify and repeat, not to clarify, to repeat because I feel this is just so powerful, the finding here. In literally every state in this country the state’s residents believe that their state minimum wage should be higher than it is currently, every state in this country, red, blue, purple alike. And there was another finding in this study that I also found fascinating that actually looked at the interaction between minimum wage policy and democracy and that finding was that the gap between was a state’s residents thing the minimum wage should be and what it current is is smaller in states that have access to direct democracy, things like ballot measures, compared with states where it’s all representative democracy and we were just talking about how well that works in places like Michigan where we’re watching leaders in that state’s legislature not represented the wishes of the voters but actually act to take away their access to making the decisions. So a lot there that I think helps paint the picture of why we’re watching this new playbook unfold championed by Republicans in states across this country but also backed by the National Restaurant Association as we talked about last week.

SLEVIN: I think, one more point on this, it’s consistent with what we see time and time again is that surveys of legislators and policymakers, we find that legislators always think that the interests of campaign donors and wealthy business interests is more aligned with voters than it really is. So we’re seeing this massive discount between what voters think the minimum wage should be and what it actually is partly because the people at the top are out of touch because they listen to their donors more than they actually hearing from their voters or listening to their voters at least.

VALLAS: Now the other study out in the past several days on the minimum wage comes to us from the National Employment Law Project, our friends over at NELP. And it has to do with the Fight for $15.

SLEVIN: So they did a comprehensive study on the results of the Fight for $15 and how much it has helped workers. And they found since 2012, which is I think the apex of when the Fight for $15 kicked off, it has resulted in $68 billion in raises for workers and helped 22 million low wage workers throughout the country. And as a result has massive reduced income inequality.

VALLAS: I have nothing more to say, it’s awesome, it’s amazing, huge wins across the board where we’ve seen them, a lot more states continuing to try to follow suit and also this is exactly what Republicans in so many states and also the National Restaurant Association are afraid of is wages continuing to go up and additional income in the hands of really hard working folks that’s having to come through their paychecks.

SLEVIN: One more thing to add on that, that amount, $68 billion is 14 times larger than the last raise workers got when the federal minimum wage was raised. And I think it lends some credence to argument that federal minimum wage should be raised to $15 now that we have a new Democratic congress.

VALLAS: And yet it’s been stuck for a decade because Republicans in congress have not allowed that to be a serious conversation and will be interesting to see if the Democratic house wants to force a vote on the minimum wage because it is so popular and would be a great opportunity to show a little bit of where Republicans in congress stand and whose side they’re on. So we’re running out of time Jeremy because that’s what we do well when we get together. But we would be remiss if we didn’t mention a particularly horrific piece of news that broke on the immigration front and that has to do with asylum.

SLEVIN: Yeah, so asylum is the process, it’s protected under international human rights law, it comes up a lot in the Trump administration and on this show where people who are feeling violence or human rights violations can enter the country legally. They are protected in international law, it’s something that Trump has tried to undermine. Now the Trump administration according to a report from “Buzzfeed” is trying to charge people, refugees, applying for asylum, trying to charge them a fee to get into the country. And they are trying, the amount is $50, middle to upper income people may say oh, what’s $50 to have a new life? Well if you’re fleeing violence and don’t have a lot of money, that could be a lot of money. Also it could be a violation of human rights law because you’re protected entry, entry into a country is protected. So to punish people and charge people money who are risking their lives, it’s just the latest in a line of many horrific human rights abuses from the Trump administration.

VALLAS: So Slevs, I feel like we need a piece of good news in here because I don’t want to end on that note and I want to plug a couple of things that we’re reading but none of them are good news particularly.

[LAUGHTER]

SLEVIN: So skip to the good news.

[LAUGHTER]

VALLAS: In the spirit of good news, that’s exactly what I’m doing. That’s literally what I’m doing. So skipping to the good news this week, comes to us in the form of some of the selections of who’s going to be in leadership in the new Democratic house.

SLEVIN: The election was just last week for Democratic leadership. Of course, Nancy Pelosi was reelected, she still has to be voted on on the house floor by the full chamber. But other folks who got into leadership, I think the most notable is Barbara Lee who had originally run for Democratic caucus chair but was then given a position overseeing the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, which shapes the policy and the proposals for the next congress. Representative Lee of course is one of the most stalwart champions of inequality issues and poverty issues in the congress.

VALLAS: B. Lee we love you, I’d love to have you back on the show to talk about your priorities heading into the next congress but such a thrill to see her joining the leadership team and also joining Rosa DeLauro, another stalwart champion, a fighter for working families and especially in the hunger space. So a hell of a team that is leading up that Democratic Steering and Policy Committee now. So in the last couple of minutes that we don’t have Jeremy. Because we’re so out of minutes.

[LAUGHTER]

SLEVIN: Are we going to go back to bad news?

VALLAS: Well I feel like we would be remiss if we didn’t and I’m going to get this in as part of what we’re reading here, but we would be remiss if we didn’t give folks a reminder that December 10th is the deadline for public comments for the public charge rule, which we know is a backdoor attack on our family based immigration system. The what we’re reading plug that I’ll give here is a couple of friends of the shoe, Elena Hung, co-founder of Little Lobbyists and Katherine Perez who is the executive director of the National Coalition for Latinxs with Disabilities have a powerhole fire emoji, fire emoji, [🔥 🔥] op-ed in The New York Times and in particular what the rule would mean for people with disabilities. So just a plug there, obviously links as always on our nerdy syllabus page. But wanted to fold that in with that friendly reminder for anyone who has not yet gotten their comments in, you can go to protectingimmigrantfamilies.org and everything is really easily laid out there. Thanks to our friends at the Protecting Immigrant Families Coalition, so go ahead, get your thoughts in, the administration is legally obligated to read every single comment that they receive so it really can make a difference and don’t miss your chance. Jeremy do you have news you want to share?

SLEVIN: Oh is it on me?

VALLAS: I feel like it is, it’s your news.

SLEVIN: Well, I’ll share it. Well I guess I have one more episode left unless I can find a way to come back. I’ll be leaving at the beginning of next year, I’m going to be going back to Capitol Hill to work for a new exciting member of congress, I will miss the show and the listenership very much but I’m excited to do some work, working directly to implement these policies and the Democratic congress.

VALLAS: I’m going to hold you to that because I’m sending you every bill we want your member to introduce but I can’t tell you how much we’re going to miss you and we’ll do a goodbye party formally on this show when we’re actually saying goodbye on this show so I’m not going to get emotional yet. But thought that folks could use a little bit a lead time to get emotionally prepared for the great loss that they are about to experience. So don’t go away, more Off Kilter after the break, talking to Joel Berg about what we know on the farm bill deal and the ongoing threats to nutrition assistance that this administration is not letting up on even though they have not gotten their way in congress. Don’t go away.

[MUSIC]

You’re listening to Off Kilter, I’m Rebecca Vallas. Food assistance in the US has been in the GOP crosshairs since Trump and the current crop of congressional Republicans were sworn in last year. But is an end finally in sight? With a bipartisan farm bill deal reportedly in place in the senate, the answer for now seems to be maybe. To get caught up I’m thrilled to bring back Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, a good friend and a friend of the show. Joel, thanks so much for coming back on Off Kilter.

JOEL BERG: My pleasure.

VALLAS: So, I wanted to have you back because there’s some good news for a change it seems, still very much a developing story but it seems that there is a compromise on the Farm Bill, which listeners on this show will remember, this has been an active and live conversation for some time now in this congress with tremendous risks to the largest nutrition assistance program in this country, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. And we’re now hearing that the Senate appears to have struck a bipartisan deal that we’re told, based on media reports, does not have the kinds of damaging proposals that House Republicans were trying to use this farm bill as an opportunity to take a pound of flesh, a lot of pounds of flesh out of the SNAP program. So bring us up to speed a little bit. What do we know so far?

BERG: As of today, December 5th as best we know, there has been a compromised reached that basically deep sixes the massive cuts in SNAP proposed by the Republicans in the House. As you’ll recall, the House, by just a few votes passed a farm bill that would’ve taken away billions of dollars worth of food from millions of people. And it was a real bait and switch, they pitched it as though oh, we’re just adding work requirements. But it was actually work reporting requirements without any real job creation money in it. And much of the money that was taken out of the program had nothing at all to do with work requirements, it was reducing the flexibility of governors to better utilize the SNAP program to help working families. And so much of the money the House Republicans were proposing, taking out of grocery carts was actually coming from senior citizens, children, people with disabilities, veterans, and working people, not the able-bodied strapping young men they claim just don’t want to work.

VALLAS: Yeah, the Fox News image of the people who are being hurt.

BERG: The Senate bill neither added to SNAP nor cut SNAP. Now some people were jubilant they did that, I’m a tough advocate and I say any bill that doesn’t move us down the road towards ending hunger ultimately is a failure, but this far less of a failure than the failure that the House was proposing. So it is a victory of sorts. We prohibited probably something truly awful from happening. That being said, virtually no one has seen the language. I don’t know that the language is actually completed and in this town DC where we are the meaning of every syllable is vital and so we don’t believe it until we see it. They could have 300 pages of verbage and if a decimal point is in the wrong place or a semi-colon’s in the wrong place that could mean a few million people are going without food. But as best we know the massive cuts have been defeated for now.

VALLAS: So potentially really a large victory, and I’m going to call it that. I think your point is taken that if we’re not talking about actually increasing access to nutrition assistance or other kinds of bigger thing policies that are really going to make a dent in hunger. This isn’t a win in the sense of really moving the needle but it is a huge aversion of what could have been truly, truly damaging policy that would have dismantled food stamps.

BERG: Yes and the election was critical as well. We’re all non-partisan here but the fact of the matter is it was house Republicans who were pushing these cuts. Some of the people pushing them like John Faso of the Hudson River Valley of New York made it a campaign issue.

VALLAS: He actually ran on taking food away from people.

BERG: Yes, using very, very, very racist imagery and implying that everyone getting SNAP was a substance abuser. They had pictures in front of liquor stores, absolutely outrageous when you can’t use SNAP at a liquor store. And he lost, Congressman Dan Donovan of Staten Island, my hometown of New York City personally promised me and many other people were working on this issue that he’d vote against cuts and voted for them. And he lost, and so many of the people pushing for cuts lost their jobs and that side is not going to be in the majority in January. So assuming this compromise does hold and I think even if the House Republican re-negging on the deal there’s no way the Senate’s going to go along with this in the next few weeks, then at least for the next two years when Democrats have the House of Representatives you’re not going to see major cuts in SNAP I suspect. But it’s also unclear whether they’re going to physically be able to get this done in the next few weeks. The mechanics of governing, print a bill, have it so-called as we wonks say scored by the Congressional Budget Office, which in human talk means giving a cost to the bill. Having the exact same bill passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate and then signed by the President of the United States when we never know on any given minute what he’s going to do. So it’s still an open question even if the compromise holds whether they’re actually able to pull this off and pass a bill and whether the House rejects to so-called Hastert rule that the Republicans have had, that they need a majority of Republicans to support this. In my judgment it’s more likely for the bill to pass the House if they discard that rule. And assuming there are no SNAP cuts you probably get as many if not more Democratic votes for this farm bill than from the Republican side.

VALLAS: And for contrast, just to sort of remind people where we were before and what happened in the House when they took up their version of the farm bill, which would have taken food assistance away from some 2 million Americans in 1 million households, not a single Democrat in the House voted for that bill. And actually Republicans lost about a dozen of their own caucus. That is how draconian this proposal was and how controversial it was.

BERG: Well there were two votes. The first vote lost by 2 votes because they were pissed off about something else. And then on the second vote a few dozen Republicans voted against it. But a number of those votes against it were because the cuts weren’t draconian enough. Now in the Senate, a good third, not a single Democrat in the Senate voted for cuts but a third of Republicans in the Senate did vote against cuts in SNAP. Partially because they oppose cuts in SNAP and partially because they really, really, really wanted to pass a farm bill for the agricultural constituents including those getting corporate welfare and they were smart enough, some of the Senators, to know that if they included massive SNAP cuts it was just a non-starter in the Senate. So for whatever reason the Senate bill was far more moderate and even more Republicans were supporting the position that we should have no major cuts in nutrition assistance.

VALLAS: Now part of the reason, I’m glad you brought up the election and I want to say here for just a minute before we move onto this next part of the conversation.

BERG: We can celebrate a little in our non-partisan way.

VALLAS: Yeah and actually you’re having to be non-partisan and this show is a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund which does get to have a little bit of space.

BERG: OK then I can take a break from my role as CEO of Hunger Free America in the next five seconds will be me as a private citizen not representing my non-partisan, non-political organization and my private citizen answer would be woo-hoo we kicked their you-know-whats!

VALLAS: As your lawyer I’m really thrilled with all these caveats, Joel.

BERG: Right so for anyone recording this, I guess this is being recorded but the IRS, I’m very careful about that.

VALLAS: Our legal team will be so pleased. But I’m glad you brought up the election, actually because I feel like it’s often treated as just conventional wisdom that Social Security and Medicare are the so-called “third rails” of American politics. People know across party lines that if you talk about cutting those programs, you’ve got real political consequences that are potentially going to be brought to bear. Now does that ever stop, does that always stop Republicans from proposing a cut to these programs? Definitely not, we see it happen all the time. But it is something I see people understand that across party lines, Americans love these programs and don’t want to see them cut.

BERG: And it’s popular among some people on the far left as some on the far right to say there’s no difference between the two parties. And that’s just ridiculous. We’re not talking about the environment today but an old boss of mine, I ran two campaigns for, Coongressman Frank Palone is most likely who’s going to be chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee over the environment. He has a 100% voting record from the League of Environmental Voters, he’s replacing a Republican who I think has an 8% or 9% voting record. You see people like our friend Jim McGovern, one of the greatest anti-hunger champions in the country.

VALLAS: Amen.

BERG: He’s going to be chair of the House Rules Committee. And so you just look at not only the environment but issues like poverty, the Democrats are by no means perfect and I’m always going to keep pushing them but to have this false equivalency they’re the same when as you said, every single Democrat in the House of Representatives, even the most conservative one, even the one representing blue dog districts or swing districts voted against SNAP cuts. Every single Democrat in the Senate including arguably the most conservative, ones like Joe Manchin, voted against SNAP cuts. So there really are some core bedrock beliefs that are uniting both sides and frankly never has there been a clearer distinction between the two parties at any point in American history. because 40 years ago there used to be truly liberal Republicans like Jake Javits from New York and truly, truly, truly right wing Democrats from the South like Jamie Whitten who was a segregationist. Now those seats are Republican in the South and Democratic in the north. So I reject the whole ‘no labels’ thing because labels actually help you understand whether a bottle has poison or nutrients in it.

VALLAS: Part of the reason, wow that’s a hell of a way to put it Joel. But part of the reason that I bring this up is that I think as much as that conventional wisdom may be there when it comes to Social Security and Medicare and I think some people have started to group Medicaid with those programs after it became clear how popular Medicaid when it was Medicaid that saved the Affordable Care Act in a lot of ways during the health care fight. But I think a thing that people haven’t really ever viewed in those terms is SNAP and its popularity. And we can look at polling, CAP itself has done polling finding that two-thirds of Americans oppose cuts to nutrition assistance and that that cuts across party lines. It’s not just Democrats. It’s people. It’s humans in this country who don’t want to see this program cut.

BERG: And to criticize conservatives I will say there are a number of Democrats who voted for SNAP cuts I presume because they wanted to keep their seats. One was Claire McCaskill, she was the only Democrat in the Senate a few years ago to vote for an amendment authored by Jeff Sessions to slash SNAP. Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas, Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, former Democratic Senator from North Carolina all voted for SNAP cuts. They were in swing states and they lost anyway. And I would argue that standing up for principles is not only the right thing to do morally but smart politics. Even in the most agriculturally dependent congressional districts in the country, take a heavily agriculture district in Iowa or Kansas, more people in those districts are getting SNAP benefits, food stamps benefits, than getting agriculture subsidies. And so it’s just a wrong conventional wisdom and sometimes even Democratic political consultants who are overwhelmingly I must say, upper middle class white men or more than upper middle class, wealthy white men telling Democratic candidates oh stay away from this, they’ll think you’re too much for poor people or by implication non-white people even though most SNAP recipients are white. It’s just wrong morally but it’s also wrong politics. The people who attack SNAP many of them lost and people even in swing districts who stood up for SNAP like Antonio Delgado, the Democratic candidate who won against Faso, he stood up for SNAP. Not apologetically and he won. So it’s mistaken politically and morally to say you’re going to advance your political career on the backs of poor people.

VALLAS: And at the same time I think another conventional wisdom on the flip side even among democrats is that it’s impossible to argue against the conservative proposal of so-called work requirements, which as you were just describing before has nothing to do with anyone work, it’s just bureaucratic red tape to try to take benefits away from people dressed up in the language of work. So cuts in disguise, but I think what we saw here, and here you were, we’re talking about ever Democrat in the House voting against this bill because they knew it was about taking food out of the mouths of American families. Is that logic changing and are people starting to wake up to the fact that Americans don’t want to see those kinds of policies?

BERG: Perhaps but also people knew it was a bait and switch and knew it was hypocritical if the Republicans just lavished massive tax cuts on the wealthiest. I do think progressives need to be clear, we’re not against work and the people we represent, low-income people, they want living wage jobs more than everyone. And so I don’t think our counter should always be oh, we’re against work requirements. Our counter would be we’re for living wage jobs and the people who receive SNAP want living wage jobs. So if you’re serious about work let’s raise the minimum wage. If you’re serious about work, let’s have a jobs program. If you’re serious about work, let’s really bring broadband into rural America so rural America can enter more so the information economy. So I think we have to be careful not giving the false impression we or the people we represent are against work but the other side isn’t really for work. They’re for punishing people with the fake veneer of being for work. We’re for real jobs that pay real wages and we would thrilled if able bodied people no longer needed SNAP for themselves and their families because they earned enough to feed their families.

VALLAS: So pivoting away from Congress for a moment so we —

BERG: Oh thank goodness.

[LAUGHTER]

VALLAS: Right and I wish we could do that in more than a metaphorical way but hey they’re still here. So it’s great potentially that we might have this deal in place, we’ll see more as the language comes out, we’ll have a better sense of exactly what this deal does but assuming that we are actually potentially moving past the farm bill conversation as where we see Republicans trying to cut nutrition assistance in this country. We don’t really get to get the balloons out yet because there are other threats on the horizon literally materializing as we are speaking that also attack nutrition assistance but aren’t getting any attention.

BERG: Yes they are trying in the Trump administration to issue either regulations or rules or guidance to the states making it more difficult for able-bodied adults to continue to receive these benefits as I know you’ve discussed in the past, there’s an attack on immigrants, legal immigrants, the ability to get food and housing and healthcare. But let’s also keep in mind in the best economy in decades 40 million Americans suffer from food insecurity. That’s a wonkish term, 40 million Americans struggling against hunger. That’s bigger than the population of Texas and New England combined and it’s far higher than before the recession. So I’m on a tear now telling anyone who’s going to listen and many people won’t, we cannot accept mass deprivation as any sort of new normal just because our political system is screwed up. That doesn’t mean we accept this. It means we change the political system. If we were here 40 years ago talking about marriage equity and I was the head of Freedom to Marry, oh well, given this political environment is civil unions, I’d say poppycock. We’re going to mobilize the people most effected, convince people in the middle and then take away credibility from our opponents to build the movement necessary to make this happen. As you know Rebecca, we’re the only industrialized western country on the planet that has this level of poverty, that has this level of deep poverty, that has this level of hunger, that has this level of homelessness. It’s horrible for our economy, it’s horrible for our international competitiveness, it destroys our moral fabric, it’s absolutely unnecessary. If everyone just listened to 50 policy prescriptions you and I could wonk off in a row we could end this problem immediately. It’s entirely about political will and we don’t need to accept the politics of today as the politics of forever.

VALLAS: Now for anyone who has ever heard the old conservative trope that Democrats or progressives are just against proposals, we’re not for anything that often gets said in the poverty context. It’s oh, here we are opposing these proposals to change the safety net. Well obviously we’re opposing cuts that take food out of people’s mouths. But it’s also not that we’re just against things, we are, we have a whole agenda of things that we are for. And you’re actually one of the people who’s been the architect of a lot of those types of policy proposals especially in the hunger space. If we were having the national conversation around hunger that you wish we were having, what would it look like?

BERG: Number one we would make housing more affordable, the top cause of hunger in America now is people can’t afford housing and food. Two, we’d have a national minimum wage indexed to inflation, three we’d have a national jobs program that really guaranteed jobs for everyone, but really understand the unique problems of impoverished communities, urban, rural and suburban impoverished communities. And then specifically on the hunger side we would dramatically increase the SNAP program, the food stamps program. I’ve proposed combining access to SNAP with combining access to every other nutrition and anti-poverty program. Dramatically reducing bureaucracy which the Republicans say they’re for and allowing people to apply on a smart phone and manage their benefits on a smart phone. And then I’d make universal school meals free for every kid in public schools. I played very, very, very, very mediocre JV soccer. It won’t shock you to know I did better I did better on the public speaking teams than on the soccer team and yet my suburban school district gave me a free jersey regardless of my family income because they said a free jersey is important because sports is an integral part of your schooling. Why in the world we don’t think that way when it comes to food and we have this massive bureaucracy to distinguish between kids who are very poor and they get free meals, sort of poor and they get reduced price meals and not quite poor and they have supposed full price meals but that’s subsidized by the government is crazy. We could save billions of dollars at the school district level, at the state level and the national level if we got rid of all those ridiculous categories, got rid of all that ridiculous paperwork and just said when you show up to school in your first period classroom you get a full nutritious meal.

You do all those things I’ve ticked off, it would cost tens of billions of dollars but as CAP’s previously reported, this was years ago, we all need to update this but a few years ago CAP found that hunger costs our society $167.5 billion a year, $167.5 billion a year because hungry children don’t learn, hungry workers don’t work, hungry senior citizens don’t stay independent. And so if we could fix this problem for let’s say $50 billion and it costs us $167 billion, if you owned a house and there’s a hole in your roof and a handywoman or a handyman came to you and said I can fix that hole in your roof for $50 and I know it’s costing you $167 a year, wouldn’t you take the deal? Of course you take the deal and that’s the deal we should take in hunger. It will save our country far more than it would ever cost us to solve this problem. I met with a delegation of people from overseas, I won’t mention the country and I explained this to them, they were just flabbergasted that we didn’t do this. And then I explained but you understand the seas are rising, we’re doing nothing about global warming, this has nothing to do with whether we know what works.

Another thing I’d say as CAP and the Off Kilter broadcast is aware, that there are people paid a lot of money to lie about natural science and to sow the belief, there’s confusion or dissent within the scientific community about what causes global warming, what will solve global warming. What people don’t understand, there’s an army of people paid a few blocks from here, some people we know very well who are paid to basically lie about social science and basically paid to say we don’t know what causes poverty, goodness forbid we couldn’t possibly understand. We know what causes poverty, people don’t earn enough for all their expenses, next. And we know what solves it, give people more money to pay for their expenses or reduce the cost of stuff.

VALLAS: I love it, it’s the Ariana Grande treatment of policy issues, “thank you, next”.

BERG: Wait until my video comes out although I hope Pete Davidson doesn’t screw it up.

VALLAS: No –

[LAUGHTER]

BERG: That’s my one and only pop reference of the last decade.

VALLAS: I will savor it, I will savor it for a while. And for anyone who’s hearing this and still thinking yeah but all those things do cost money even if they save it in the long run, I find very little patience if any left for any of that kind of thinking in the wake of this tax law, given that the tax cuts that Republicans just gave to just the top 1%. I’m not talking about the overall something close to $2 trillion in tax cuts, just the tax cuts for the top 1% themselves actually cost more than the entire SNAP program, so just to put that in perspective I think we’ve got a little bit of space if we think differently on how we spend.

BERG: Absolutely, the average SNAP benefit is about $1.40 per meal. I once asked Senator Boozman, a Republican senator for Arkansas who strongly supported work requirements for SNAP, whether he would support work requirements for landowners who get farm subsidies that they may not actually work on the land. He said he didn’t understand the question. And I repeated the question; he said he still didn’t understand the question. The hypocrisy of micro focusing on the same percentage of the SNAP caseload who get microscopically small allotment of $1.40 per meal when ignoring people getting millions and millions and millions of corporate welfare really is stomach churning. Now I believe in an opportunity for all society and a responsibility for all society. I believe that able-bodied people who can work should work and you know who else believes that? Able-bodied low-income people so this is a whole false diversionary debate, a lot of it is imbued with race baiting and the false belief that the people getting help are overwhelmingly non-white when the largest number of people are white. But I hope that at least House Republicans having gotten a shellacking and hopefully Senate Republicans seeing that states like Pennsylvania and Colorado are electing progressive candidates understand that they either need to moderate or become extinct.

VALLAS: In the last minute or so that I have with you and I think it has to be a minute because I’ve already gotten hand signals that we’re talking for too long but Joel it’s hard not to talk to you for a long time.

BERG: It’s for me not to talk to me for a long time.

[LAUGHTER]

VALLAS: I don’t even know why I’m here, right? Paul Ryan, soon to be former Speaker Paul Ryan is on his way out.

BERG: [SINGING] For he’s a jolly unhelpful fellow, for he’s a jolly unhelpful fellow, he shafted poor people for decades, don’t let the door of the House hit you on the way out! [SPEAKING] That’s my retirement party for him.

[LAUGHTER]

VALLAS: I don’t know why I would say anything else. I bring it because on his way out there are so many folks in the mainstream media who are yet again giving him this legacy hue that’s about him as a poverty warrior.

BERG: It’s ridiculous, as you know.

VALLAS: What is your message to these people?

BERG: Paul Ryan’s proposals all would take food and money away from poor people. The idea that we’re going to solve hunger by taking away food from hungry people makes about as much sense as saying we’re going to solve drought by taking away water from people. It makes no sense at all. And it shows you the class bias among the media elites. If there was someone who claimed to be an environmentalist but their top policy prescriptions were opening more coal fire plants, no one in the media would say they’re environmentalists. That’s the poverty equivalent of what Paul Ryan’s been proposing. Taking away food from hungry people and only because editors and unfortunately too many reporters spend no time in the trenches actually talking to people in poverty, actually learning about these issues, could they even vaguely think about buying his party line that he’s an anti-poverty warrior. If Paul Ryan’s an anti-poverty warrior, I’m quiet and unassuming. [LAUGHTER] Dear listeners, I’m not.

VALLAS: I love that you felt the need to clarify that because Joel I think your point stands.

BERG: You can’t quite see my aggrevated facial expressions on a podcast. Trust me dear listeners, I’ve a face for radio and a voice for mime.

VALLAS: Joel Berg is the CEO of Hunger Free America, he comes back generously on this show to give us updates when there’s updates in the hunger space. Joel, thank you so much for coming back and always taking the time.

BERG: Thank you and I still think you should name the show “On Kilter” I think everyone else is “Off Kilter”.

[LAUGHTER]

VALLAS: We’ll take it under advisement. Don’t go away, more Off Kilter after the break, I’m Rebecca Vallas.

[MUSIC]

You’re listening to Off Kilter, I’m Rebecca Vallas. Opportunity zones; listeners of the show may have heard the term but what exactly are they? A promising new bipartisan strategy for attracting private investment into poor communities or a giant new tax break for wealthy corporations in disguise? To break down the good, the bad, and the ugly or O-zones, I’m pleased to be joined by Gbenga Ajilore and Rejane Frederick, two experts at the Center for American Progress. Thanks to you both for joining the show.

REJANE FREDERICK: Thanks for having us.

GBENGA AJILORE: Pleasure to be here.

VALLAS: So I think before we get into any of the timely conversations and some of the reasons that opportunity zones are getting attention in the past couple of weeks, I want to take a big step back because I will confess, I don’t know a ton in this space and about opportunity zones and I bet a lot of other people who care about inequality might not know a ton either because it’s one of those Washington labels that you slap on something that actually is somewhat complex. So Gbenga I’m going to start with you, help us understand what are these opportunity zones, what is in current law right now?

AJILORE: So what’s in current law and what was actually part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is a program to have capital gains that are sitting on the sidelines as they say going into distressed communities to fund a lot of programs, housing, to help increase the number of jobs and to reduce poverty.

VALLAS: Now and Rejane to bring you in to add to this, this sounds like a really good thing, right? And so some people might be listening and going wait a second, was there something really great on poverty buried in this tax law that almost universally has been panned on the left because it’s just about Robin Hood in reverse. Is this something that we should be viewing as some kind of really good anti-poverty success that the Trump administration just brought about?

FREDERICK: Well it’s certainly been marketed as a great poverty alleviation initiative. I think as Gbenga just outlined the initiative and I have to emphasize this, it was passed a part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which I need to remind our listeners was passed in the dead of night last December. It was passed by all Republicans and so something that’s passed in the dead of night when many people are sleeping, that typically is a red flag, right? I know that what a lot of advocates and a lot of folks who are really learning about this initiative and has been a part of the process all along would really tell you is that there’s nothing currently within the structure of the initiative that would really ensure that it does alleviate poverty in the way that it says it does. And that is part of the conversation that Gbenga and I have been really involved in which is it says that it’s here to alleviate distressed, low-income communities by giving the revenue and giving the money that allows it to get access to resources and opportunities that communities have long been cut off of but again, a bill or a law that doesn’t specify community involvement wasn’t made in many ways with community at the table, should always give someone pause. And so as with any poverty alleviation work, it’s really hard, it has to be really intentional and it needs to be very specific and those are just things that we have not seen in the initiative.

VALLAS: So Gbenga, help us dig in a little bit here. It’s being marketed as this innovative market driven thing that’s all about using tax breaks to attract private investment into under-resourced communities. All of that sounds really good on its face and people might be hearing Rejane say eh, we should have some caution as we look at this and you might be going yeah but really why? And what do we know so far that gives us any levels of caution? What are the critiques that you’re hearing and actually you’re part of leveling them too.

AJILORE: I think one of the things that we want to mention is that this plan, the opportunity zone actually started out as the Investing in Opportunity Act that was co-sponsored by Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. And that was to push the poverty alleviation by bringing in capital to go to some [INAUDIBLE] projects. Then what happened was with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act it was snuck in there and some of the original reporting requirements, some performance metrics that were part of the bill were all stripped out. And that action brings up concern. The second concern is when you talk about money going into distressed communities the first thought always is gentrification with displacement because you’re thinking OK, these people are going to buy up low value housing, tear it down, put in luxury condos because that’s going to get the highest return. And so if you don’t put in the guard rails all that capital that’s coming in, those capital gains, all those funds that are coming in is looking for the highest return. And the highest return is not educational services, it’s not health services, it’s not fixing food deserts, it’s about housing, it’s about maybe certain businesses that are going to have the highest return. And so what the concern that we have and the concern that the community has is that the projects that’s going to be funded are not the projects that the community wants.

VALLAS: And Rejane that’s actually a lot of the work you’ve done over your time at the Center for American Progress is looking at how could we do this well so if this isn’t quite what we would do, is this something now that it is in current law that’s fixable? Are there changes that people are proposing to try to put in those kinds of guard rails? And is there a path to making this something that could be a tool for good?

FREDERICK: That’s certainly the conversation now that we are having and that folks all across the country are having. There are over 8,700 designated opportunity zone communities and it’s spans the gamut of rural communities that are located in in North Dakota, South Dakota to urban areas that are located in Washington D.C., there’s an article that Gbenga and I just recently released that really talked about the opportunity zones in Crystal City, Virginia and Long Island City, New York. And we ended up doing this column that really highlighted the fact that the area where Amazon’s second headquarters being located is located nearby opportunity zones. And so calling into question again, what Gbenga raised, which is Amazon, which is a very lucrative company, it’s bringing 25,000 employees. The average salary will roughly be around $150,000 for the people that Amazon will bring in, what is the impact on the community? And so I think we first have to call those important questions acknowledging that the history of past initiatives similar to opportunity zones really again resulted in benefiting the already well-off private investors. And very little of those benefits have gone to the communities that really needed it. And so the conversation that we’re having in terms of how do we make it better, the reality is this initiative is coming, it is taking place. There are already investments that are happening so how do we ensure that community is truly at the table and has a say and that there are good investors out there that really want their investment dollars to benefit the community but it has to be structured in such a specific and intentional way.

VALLAS: Now you mentioned Amazon and I’m really glad you brought that in because I feel like to help get concrete here, a lot of this probably is that I’m waving my hands, which doesn’t help people on radio, does it? They’re above my head. So a lot of the conversation around these kinds of issues happens up here where you can’t see my hands above my head but to bring it down to what’s understandable and concrete, let’s bring in Amazon. Amazon’s been getting tons of attention in the last couple of weeks because of some of the announcements about second headquarters of Amazon coming to Arlington, Virginia and Queens, New York. People are all crowing, a lot of people are crowing about this is this huge infusion of money into these are jobs are going to come from it and that’s its own conversation on a lot of levels. And something I’m sure we’ll come back to on this show. But you and Gbenga, and Gbenga I’m going to go to you next really have pointed out that actually now putting that Amazon news side by side with what we know about the flags that you’re raising with the opportunity zones concept as it has been operationalized in the law that it is part of. This could produce an unintended opportunity for Amazon to get real rich off of a tax break that’s supposed to help poor people. Gbenga, help draw that connection for us.

AJILORE: So when we think about Amazon’s choice, they’re not looking for distressed communities. They’re looking for a place that has a high tax base, a lot of jobs, a lot of people who were going to get the kind of jobs, and so when they make that choice about those areas then you have to question well why is it going to be distressed communities? Now while Amazon choosing those areas and areas that are close to opportunity zones census tracts, while they may be able to benefit a lot of it is going to be hard for them to make that kind of benefit. But the key is the choice that Amazon made calls into question the choice of those opportunity zone census tracts. And so we think about that. And so in our piece we talked about a couple places where we question are these actually distressed communities? So one of the places was in Las Vegas the Oakland Raiders are going to be moving next year to Las Vegas and they’re building a new stadium. And as we know about stadiums, they’re also boondoggles that benefit from the area and the people locally do not benefit from that. And now that stadium is going to be smack dab in an opportunity zone. So you think about all the construction, all the businesses that are going to be there are going to be able to benefit from that tax break. Another one in Piney Hill, New Jersey is Trump’s golf course. And that golf course is smack dab in the middle of an opportunity zone.

VALLAS: I just want to pause and let folks take that in, right, like really, really?

AJILORE: Yeah it’s one of those things where when it first came out and the maps first came out you go through different places and then you see it and you have to do a double take because you’re like wait a minute, how does that work? Now the way it works is that there’s these definitions that you have to meet that either has to be able 20% poverty or below 80% of the median family income. So it has to be considered distressed. Couple about 5% of each state a governor could say if it’s contiguous next to a distressed community they could nominate them. So that means there are actually 245 census tracts that do not meet the definition of poverty or median family income. And so then the big concern there is that if these places are not actual distressed communities actually show potential for growth and gentrification then there’s nothing in the law that would say that money can’t go there.

VALLAS: So Amazon could be the tip of iceberg here. What we could be seeing if I’m understanding you correctly is a massive new loophole that’s just been written into the tax code.

AJILORE: Oh definitely, it’s very big. The money just has to go in those areas. And if it goes in those areas, in the funds and goes into those areas, then it doesn’t matter what the project that the money goes into. There’s no stipulation on the kind of projects that go into. And so when we’re talking about distressed communities, we’re talking about what they need and communities need different things. Education, it might be in a food desert, they might need jobs or they might be thinking about entrepreneurship and especially if you’re thinking about underrepresented groups and supporting them, those would be great projects. And in fact there’s a lot of cities, a lot of mayors, a lot of communities that are propping up these things that are saying OK, we have these kinds of projects that you should invest in and it’s going to really help our communities but there’s nothing in the law that says that these funds have to go to those.

VALLAS: Now staying with you for just a second Gbenga, another recent development that implicates opportunity zones — are people calling it o-zones? I feel like someone should call it o-zones?

AJILORE: O-zones, O.Z.

FREDERICK: Not “Oz” yet, I don’t think.

VALLAS: The O.Z., should we call it the O.Z.?

FREDERICK: The O.Z. That works.

VALLAS: Showing my age. So the O.Z. came up, I can’t even do that with a straight face. Opportunity zones came up also actually just in recent days in the context of a senate proposal that’s about helping natural disaster areas and what they’ve done with this proposal is to try to help these areas by designating them as opportunity zones. Gbenga, you’ve said that this opens up the potential risk of something that you called disaster capitalism.

AJILORE: Yeah when I first saw that I was completely shocked because there’s all these issues with the opportunity zone program and to then designate natural disaster areas as opportunity zones is extremely premature. And the problem is that you look at the area, we’re looking at counties, we’re looking at large regions versus smaller census tracts. So for example because of the fires these last couple weeks Los Angeles Country, which is huge, would be designated an opportunity zone.

VALLAS: The entire county.

AJILORE: The entire county because the natural disaster designation by FEMA are county based, so we have Ventura County, LA County, counties in northern California, in Florida, in North Carolina. So you have the whole area being designated as an opportunity zone. So you would think about the kind of money that would go, I mean think about the money that would go into Los Angeles County and the kind of projects that they’re going to want to fund if there’s no community guardrails. And so to add natural disasters as opportunity zones would be a disaster.

VALLAS: And for anyone who’s not familiar with the term ‘disaster capitalism’ which is not your term but what you’re applying here, what is that and what are the risks?

AJILORE: So disaster capitalism was coined by Naomi Klein talking about when there’s a natural disaster individuals will want to go in with the private market and push quote unquote, “market reforms”. So there’s some of that happening in Katrina about 10 years ago, New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina where a lot of schools were devastated because of the hurricane and so there are groups of people that came in and said OK, well we believe in charter schools, we don’t believe in public schools so they’re able to push this whole quote, unquote “educational reform” though charter schools. And then you think about when you have Puerto Rico, you say well we want to quote, unquote “revitalize” Puerto Rico but then come in with what you call free-market capitalism and it’s taking advantage of a natural disaster to push an agenda. And so the concerns with the natural disaster designation is that you’re going to have all these unrealized capital gains coming in and pushing an agenda. And so it’s not just like these individual census tract communities, now we’re talking about whole counties, whole regions where money in comes in and then totally changes the dynamic of the area.

VALLAS: So the potential for not just a massive new tax loophole that we’re already watching huge wealthy corporations figure out how to take advantage of but also the looming threat of disaster capitalism as you just described it. Rejane, bring us home in the last minute that we have, what is the policy agenda that you wish we were seeing actually carried out when it comes to helping economically distressed communities because obviously that is something we share as a goal, this just doesn’t seem to quite be the way.

FREDERICK: I think the number one thing that folks should always take away in terms of the policy that we actually want to see in place in any area is that those most directly effected needs to be at the table. They need to be not just at the table, they need to be in many ways driving the policy, driving the process and that’s just not what we saw with this initiative. The policy that we would like to see is very intentional about engaging people from the beginning to end. We really hope that people take away, at least from this first look at the way that the opportunity zones initiative was drafted and passed into law is that hastes makes waste. The ambiguity and the speed at which O.Z.’s were again drafted and passed as we see the preliminary signs is that it’s leading investors to search for the most profitable locations, not necessarily the most distressed or the most in need locations. And so really at this point the conversations now and the focus that we all should have is this initiative again is coming, how do we make it better? How do we ensure that community is at the table and that great investors that really want to invest in projects that will give them a good return on their money but that also benefits community can happen but you need again, to be intentional you have to engage community as meaningful partners and you really need to look at the tangible community benefit projects that are out there. Water sewage infrastructure investments, transportation, housing, not just any housing, because we know that a lot of the projects that will get funded as soon as this is unleashed in 2019 will likely be Class A luxury apartments. But affordable housing development, what does that look like? And really community has the answers and community is key.

VALLAS: So something a lot there to keep in mind and a lot for folks to have in their heads as they hear about opportunity zones in the weeks and months. Gbenga Ajilore is a senior economist at the Center for American Progress and Rejane Frederick is an Associate Director on the Poverty to Prosperity program also at the Center for American Progress. You can find both of their pieces explaining all of what they just talked about and lost more on our nerdy syllabus page because of course you can. Looking forward to having you both back very soon.

FREDERICK: Thank you for having us.

AJILORE: Thank you.

VALLAS: And that does it for this week’s episode of Off Kilter, powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. I’m your host, Rebecca Vallas, the show is produced each week by Will Urquhart. Find us on Facebook and Twitter @offkiltershow and you can find us on the airwaves on the Progressive Voices Network and the WeAct Radio Network or anytime as a podcast on iTunes. See you next week.