Netroots Part 1
This week, we take a trip to New Orleans for Netroots and chat with Joe Dinkin of the Working Families Party, Virginia State Delegate Danica Roem, and friend of the show Chad Bolt from Indivisible. Subscribe to Off-Kilter on iTunes.
This week Off-Kilter took a trip to New Orleans for Netroots Nation, which for more than a decade has been bringing together progressive leaders, candidates, grassroots activists and independent media once a year. For the first of two episodes featuring conversations from Netroots, this week Rebecca talks with Joe Dinkin, national campaign director for the Working Families Party, one of the lead sponsors of this year’s conference and a longtime Netroots goer.
Next up, Danica Roem, the first openly trans elected official in the Commonwealth of Virginia joins the show to talk how she’s kept her promises to her district and what’s up next.
And finally, Chad Bolt, associate director of policy at Indivisible (and a friend of the show) is keeping the tax cut conversation alive at Netroots. Rebecca and Chad talk this week’s news that the Trump administration is trying to bypass Congress to give millionaires and billionaires another $100 billion in tax cuts they don’t need.
This week’s guests:
- Joe Dinkin, National Campaign Director for Working Families Party
- Virginia House Delegate Danica Roem (D-13)
- Chad Bolt, Associate Director of Policy at Indivisible
For more on this week’s topics:
- Check out the Working Families Party list of endorsements for more info about the candidates Joe mentioned
- Keep up to date on Danica’s next steps with her Twitter feed
- Learn more about the $100 billion capital gains tax cut Trump wants to hand out to the rich
This week’s transcript:
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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. As you may have noticed from the sound of that second line, this week Off Kilter took a trip to New Orleans to Netroots Nation, which for more than a decade has been bringing together progressive leaders, candidates, grassroots activists and independent media once a year. We’re bringing you the first of two episodes featuring conversations from Netroots. This week I talk with Joe Dinkin, national campaign director for the Working Families Party, one of the lead sponsors of this year’s conference and a long time Netroots goer himself. Danica Roem, the first openly trans elected official in the commonwealth of Virginia and Chad Bolt, associate director of policy at Indivisible and a friend of the show who’s here talking tax at Netroots including next week’s news that the Trump administration is trying to bypass congress to give millionaires and billionaires another $100 billion in tax cuts that they don’t need. First up, my conversation with Joe.
So I’m walking through the halls at Netroots and I see my friend Joe Dinkin who’s the national campaign director at the Working Families Party. Joe, come on over.
JOE DINKIN: Hey Rebecca how are you?
VALLAS: Did that sound totally organic and real?
DINKIN: No it’s very casual.
VALLAS: Yeah it was almost like we didn’t plan that.
DINKIN: We didn’t even carry an audio setup on a big rig through four hallways looking for a quiet space.
VALLAS: And multiple producers to boot right, none of that happened.
DINKIN: It’s all behind the scenes.
VALLAS: Joe, it’s good to see you, I wish I saw you more often then every year at Netroots, we should do better. But tell folks what the Working Families Party is if they somehow don’t know.
DINKIN: Sure, the Working Families Party is a national political progressive organization that is recruiting, training and electing the next generation of progressive leaders all over the country. We believe in racial and economic and justice and we fight hard for the things we believe in. and we aspire to be the political home for every American that wants to see a society that’s built on compassion and solidarty and justice and not all of the different forms of oppression that we see today.
VALLAS: And you guys are one of the sponsors of this year’s Netroots Nation conference that also including have sponsored a second line that came through radio row earlier when I was taping, folks will get to hear lots of that in this week’s episode thanks to you guys but that was a really cool thing.
DINKIN: Thanks a lot, we’re also people who believe that we do this work because it’s principled but also because we have to have joy.
VALLAS: I appreciate that especially, in the moment that we are still apparently living in politically. It means a lot and I think it’s a part of the self-care conversation that often gets left out is actually trying to have fun and find joy.
DINKIN: Sure yeah, and I totally agree with that.
VALLAS: So Joe part of the reason I was excited to bump into you totally organically and without any planning to talk for this week’s episode was you’ve been to a lot of different Netroots conferences and a lot of folks around here are talking about alright, what’s going on this year, how is this year different from years in the past, what does it mean to be progressive in the era of Trump but also as we try to look ahead to the midterms and to 2020, how do you feel that this year at Netroots feels compared to the umpteen other Netroots conferences that you’ve gone to in the past?
DINKIN: I think that there’s a feeling of energy and electricity that seems to me connected to a wave of political insurgency that people are seeing candidates who look like us, candidates who are more diverse, who come from backgrounds in social movements and grassroots groups. Who in the era of Trump people with a lot of opportunities and leadership potential and skills have decided to dedicate themselves to the very urgent task of taking back our democracy and we’re seeing people connected to those social movements more than to the traditional structures of the Democratic Party, stepping up, learning the skills of democracy and really what we’re seeing is a grassroots democratic revival that has been very exciting and that kind of energy in infecting a space like this. I think you’re seeing at Netroots Nation a lot of interest in those kinds of candidates. One of my favorites of those kinds of candidates is Cynthia Nixon who is going to be speaking from the main stage in just a couple hours.
VALLAS: And I would love to hear you talk a little bit about how you feel Netroots has evolved over the years and I want to get back to some of those specific candidates because there’s a lot to talk about there, there’s a lot of candidates that folks are following who are really exciting right now and I think reflect an evolution of the progressive movement in really positive and exciting ways. But part of, folks were asking me before I was coming to Netroots this year, I know a number of people that I work with weren’t familiar with it. And they were saying what is Netroots? And I had to pause and say well, on the one hand I want to tell you it’s lefty summer camp, which I think is probably fair to say but there’s a lot more there and it’s actually changed a lot over the years since it’s origins back in the early aughts when it was Markos Moulitsas and other lefty bloggers who were trying to create community.
DINKIN: Sure yeah, so it started growing out of DailyKos as the founding creator of Netroots Nation. The first one was called the YearlyKos, so it was that connected to DailyKos. And it carried with it a lot of the character of the blogosphere of that era, which was politically savvy but also tended towards a older, whiter demographic and I think it always had a connection the left end of the Democratic Party and there were lots of grassroots activists who were always participating in it. But I think the set of kinds of issues that hear people talk about and the diversity of the participants has changed a lot. The other thing is it’s grown a lot since that early beginning. Some of the biggest names in politics show up to speak here, which wasn’t true. Which means that more people show up, which also has attracted more political vendors and consultants and people who have new strategies. And in a way that’s great because it exposes people who might be working on a campaign for the first time or thinking about running for school board themselves with what the tools are that they’re going to need to have to be able to raise small dollar money. But there’s more of the vendor types than there were at the start. But I think those vendors are often have stuff that people who are thinking about really engaging in this work in a serious way really contesting for power, there’s stuff you need to know.
VALLAS: So you were starting to talk about Cynthia Nixon and there are a lot of folks who are coming to this conference who are some of the candidates that people are most excited about within the progressive movement and within the lefty-er wing of the Democratic Party. Would love to hear from you who you’re most excited about, what you expect them to be talking about here and what you think that they symbolize and reflect in terms of the evolution we’ve seen of the progressive movement in the past couple of decades.
DINKIN: There’s been, one place I think there’s really been a sea change from what Democratic politics looked like even twenty or fifteen years ago is how we talk about working class people and how we talk about poverty. I remember a lot of mainstream Democrats in the 90s try as hard as they could to stay away from the word ‘poor’, tried to stay away as hard as they could from ‘working class’ and ‘workers’, and frankly ‘unions’ and liked to talk about everything as what middle-class Americans needed and ended up leaving out a whole segment of society and frankly the segment of society whose needs are most left unmet when government doesn’t really work and building up a whole wing of the DLC era of the Democratic Party that ignored those concerns based on what I take as a political theory that poor people had to vote for Democrats because how are they going to vote for Republicans and at the same time Democrats could chase big money on Wall Street without alienating the Wall Street donors worrying about regulating Wall Street or taxing the rich and there’s this era where you try to leave the left behind unspoken. I feel like that’s not happening anymore. In the rhetoric of one of the most famous progressive stars of the moment is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who is proudly running as a Democratic Socialist and now the word ‘socialist’ is what gets most of the headlines because that’s such a departure from what the norms in American politics have been for the last 100 years.
VALLAS: Just like it did with Bernie Sanders, that was the thing that everyone wanted to talk about.
DINKIN: But when you ask her in these interviews what do you mean by socialism, she actually has a really clear and specific answer about what that means, and what she says is it means in a country as wealthy as ours, as modern as ours, no one should be too poor to live. She’s putting a huge piece of the central focus on the campaign on not just making the economy work for middle class working families but on what it takes to actually lift up the very bottom to give everybody, not just the ability to survive but actually to thrive.
VALLAS: And I want to jump in and reflect on the fact that what you just said and the words that she choose, they mark a real shift from what the traditional talking point we’ve heard from Democrats, and not just centrist Dems but a lot of Dems over the years has looked like. So it’s no longer no one who works full time should live in poverty, we all know that one, it’s no one in this country should live in poverty.
DINKIN: Right.
VALLAS: And there’s a real difference there.
DINKIN: Yeah, and I think a big piece of it comes from some of the still unresolved economic and political tensions that relate to the financial collapse in 2008. Where even as the economy is on paper expanding, a huge number of people of all races feel a tremendous amount of economic discomfort, a widening gap of economic inequality and as everything from health care to housing to higher education, costs rise at unimaginable rates and wages just are not keeping up. People feel like they could miss a mortgage payment or not be able to afford their next semester of college and end up poorer themselves. I think there’s an old saying in American politics that nobody’s poorer just they’re just currently the unlucky rich. And I think more people in America than ever before have realized how many of us are not so far removed from totally economic catastrophe whether it’s one health care problem, one missed mortgage payment, one layoff.
VALLAS: Part of what’s significant about Ocasio-Cortez and other candidates running on some of the most aggressive progressive, maybe a phrase I’m coining but that I like as I’m saying it platforms is that it’s not just about running on these platforms, it’s not the fact of running on them, it’s the fact of winning on them that has the potential to open people’s eyes to this not just being something that some people feel is the right thing to do but that it actually has the potential to be smart politics. Would love to hear you talk a little bit about other candidates that you feel are emblematic of this shift and is this something that’s bigger than a couple of candidates? Is this a shift that has the potential to really change the face of progressive politics in a way that helps us close the book on 1990s?
DINKIN: I think it’s really a remarkable shift. In the wake of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, you heard some national pundit say this is just one super diverse, super liberal district in New York City. But you also have people like Randy Bryce, the iron worker out of Wisconsin who is running in one of the most competitive districts in America that before he was running in it, nobody even thought was competitive. People thought that it would be a walk for Speaker of the House Paul Ryan to get into his 11th term in office on a platform of eviscerating and mutilating the poor. That’s basically what he stands for and Randy Bryce came in unashamed to talk about not just the lives of the poor, not just the need for union wages for people to be able to make a sustainable living, but also about the horrible failure of our immigration system, about criminal justice reform and mass incarceration and taking very bold and full throated progressive positions. Not only did that allow him to amass a huge base of grassroots small dollar dollars, it actually kicked Paul Ryan out of congress, which is, I’ve been involved in a lot of campaigns, in a lot of races, being part of a thing that leads Paul Ryan to retire, there’s few things that have made me feel better in my career, even knowing that Paul Ryan is going to end up with a 7 or 8 or 9 figure lobbying job in not too long —
VALLAS: Or as the head of American Enterprise Institute, something people —
DINKIN: Is that what people are saying?
VALLAS: Something people are also talking about, I don’t know if that’s a serious rumor but it’s something the interwebs is telling me is at least something people are talking about, I have to say it personally terrifies me given how much more time that would mean I would be spending with him.
DINKIN: Ooo, that’s a dark truth. I think it’s not just people who are running some of the flashiest campaigns that go viral on social media. We’re also seeing it in down ballot races all over the country. From people like immigrant rights organizer Julie Gonzales who’s just won a state legislative primary out of, what to the political establishment felt like out of nowhere in Denver a couple of weeks ago to races all over the country from New Mexico to Maryland to everywhere we’ve seen this dynamic play out. We’re seeing people running on a platform that actually sees the full humanity of a much bigger slice of our society, well guess what? People whose humanity we recognize are willing to come out and vote for you.
VALLAS: So let’s say that the great blue wave (emoji, emoji, emoji) actually comes to pass in November. Where do you want to see Democrats head if they do actually take back one or both chambers of congress? There’s a lot of talk and thinking about impeachment for obvious reasons but thinking about the policy agenda, what is H.R. 1, what do you want to see Dems take on and champion in the wake of wins that are fueled by incredibly progressive campaigns?
DINKIN: I think it creates a real demand, winning on that kind of message with those kinds of candidates should create a real demand to actually deliver on issues that will make life better for just huge numbers of poor working class and middle class people across America. So that includes things like a national $15 minimum wage, that includes health care for all, it includes legislation to make it easier to join and form unions, which are one of the best protectors of decent wages. But it also includes things that will undo some of the deep damage that’s been done to our democracy that will allow people to continue contesting for power, whether that’s same day voter registration or reversing the disenfranchisement of millions of formerly incarcerated people or public financing of campaigns so that you don’t have to be a million or you don’t have to go viral on social media to run for office not just by the dozens, but by the hundreds, candidates with that same set of values can run and win in cycles to come.
VALLAS: It’s been great talking with you Joe, we’ll go hang out in other ways I’m sure and turn the mics off so we can not talk about just the things that are for public consumption. I’m looking forward to that part of Netroots too but it’s great to catch up with you and thank you for everything that you guys are doing to support candidates who can really change the face of progressive politics.
DINKIN: Always a delight to talk to you on or off the record.
VALLAS: Don’t go away more Off Kilter after the break, I’m Rebecca Vallas.
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You’re listening to Off Kilter, I’m Rebecca Vallas, and I’m here at Netroots and was walking down the hall and bumped into somebody I’ve been hoping to bump into here and I just did and that is Danica Roem, who is a former journalist who became recently the first open transgender elected official in Virginia. Somebody that I’ve been really excited about. Danica, it’s awesome to meet you in person.
DANICA ROEM: It’s wonderful to meet you as well, thank you.
VALLAS: So for anyone, and you’d have to be living under a rock not to be familiar with who you are after you won in a highly publicized election. But for anyone who is not familiar with you, who are you and how did you end up in public office in Virginia?
ROEM: So my name is Danica Roem, I’m proudly the state delegate for the 13th district of the Virginia House of Delegates, representing the City of Manassas Park in its entirety as well as the Prince William County portions of Haymarket, Gainesville and my life long home of Manassas. I’m a 33 year old step mom and was the lead reporter of the Gainesville Times covering the greater Prince William County area from 2006 to 2015, so I authored more than 2,000 news stories about the greater Prince William County during that time. And I used to be the news editor of the Montgomery County Sentinel up in Montgomery County. I was also a staff writer for the Hotline, which is part of the National Journal in Washington D.C., covering federal politics there. So long story short with this, I had a long career of dealing with the public policy issues as a reporter that I’m now responsible for legislating on as a delegate. And reporters can make really good elected officials because who better knows the ins and outs of so many realms of public policy than your local scribe who has been having the pull people’s feet to the fire about this for their entire careers. And in my case, I knew that from being a life long resident of the district that I serve and from covering the district as a reporter, I knew that the most important issues to the people of the 13th district including fixing Route 28, fighting the Dominion power lines between Gainesville and Haymarket, expanding Medicaid to cover 3,800 uninsured of my constituents who earn up to 138% of the federal poverty line, raising teacher pay so it’s not the lowest in Northern Virginia. And because we just expanded Medicaid, we were able to secure $400 million to bring back home from the federal government and because of that, that freed up enough statement money for us to raise teacher pay 3% across the board. That’s a big deal for us and that means that right now at a time when the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority just two months ago allocated $124 million for Route 28 improvement, that’s the top three issues I ran on, fixing Route 28, expanding Medicaid, raising teacher pay, well Route 28 is now a work in progress, check and check on the other ones so off to a good start.
VALLAS: A lot in there and I want to get more deeply into some of those issues, in particular some of the infrastructure and transportation pieces because a lot of people don’t think about the connection between those issues and poverty and inequality and a big part of why you ran on those issues. What drove you to run for office in the first place?
ROEM: Well, I was asked. Like a lot of women, men will very typically take initiative to go run, this is what we know from the data, versus women are often asked, and so like a lot of other women I was asked to run. And I was asked by the Democratic nominee from the 2015 election Don Shaw, he asked me in an August 4th 2016 email, I didn’t respond to it but the next day I got a phone call from Delegate Rip Sullivan who was the recruiting chairman for the House Democratic Caucus and he said the same thing that Don said in his email which was hey, heard you live in the 13th and you would be a pretty good candidate. Have you considered running before and so I sat down and talked to them, I knew the public policy issues, I knew I was well qualified and I knew that I could win to be honest with you because Atif Qarni in 2013 came within 498 votes out of more than 78,000 votes cast in a very close election where he was the first Muslim to run for that seat. So I figured well if Atif could do that, and we’ve added more than 2,000 active registered voters to the voter rolls since then, most of whom live in the Democratic leaning 13th district, than yeah I should have a shot and well I did, and we won by 8 points.
VALLAS: So one of the reasons that a lot of people may know who you are is because your race was not without its fireworks and you had a particularly interesting candidate you were running against who was something of a Neanderthal in many ways and —
ROEM: I never insult my constituents.
VALLAS: My view, not yours, right, but when it comes to actually fighting for equality and for access and for the things that [folks who] generally listen to this show care about, your opponents was not somebody who was running on those types of priorities. And so there were I think a lot of folks who weren’t quite as confident as you were that you were going to win.
ROEM: Well then those people one, weren’t my constituents and second if you knew the district you knew that six out of the last seven statewide democrats prior to last year had won the district, Hillary Clinton had carried it by 14% and that simply put I had the message to win, I had the work ethic to win, my campaign knocked on more than 75,000 doors. And at the same time, the same doors that, I would leave the exact same hand written note at Bullrun Mobile Home Community Park on the eastern part of my district that I would leave at the McMansions over in Gainesville and that was, I would have the date, dear [first name], I’m so sorry I missed you. My name is Danica Roem, I’m the Democratic nominee for the 13th district for Virginia House of Delegates and I’d be honored to earn your vote November 7th, please vote November 7th at [name of precinct], warmly, Danica and my personal cell phone number.
VALLAS: Wow.
ROEM: Those folks at the mobile home park, they have just as much dignity as the people in Gainesville do too.
VALLAS: And you were leaving my personal cell number, that’s amazing.
ROEM: I still do. I still give it out to my constituents, yeah, and it’s the phone that’s sitting in my purse right now.
VALLAS: So talk to me about transportation and why that was such an important issue for your campaign.
ROEM: Sure. So my mother’s been commuting up and down the Route 28 corridor since 1979 to get to her job near Dulles International Airport and there weren’t buses or trains back then along the corridor and there still aren’t all these 39 years later. Meanwhile, through Centerville and Yorkshire, Centerville’s in the 40th district, Yorkshire’s in the 13th, we noticed that nothing of substance had changed whatsoever along the 28th corridor in that time, except for we got another traffic light. And I knew that if I ran a campaign that was inclusive and focused on those core quality of life issues, and it was based on very, very specific concrete solutions, this is what I’m campaigning on, replacing traffic lights with overpasses, roundabouts or anything else that we can do, that my constituents would see my plan, they would know here’s how much it’s going to cost, how I’m going to pay for it, what’s it going to look like, how am I going to get it done, what the time frame is going to be, and when I won I actually introduced legislation on that, HB 68, my alternative intersections bill.
VALLAS: So we just took a quick break for the most New Orleans reason ever, which was a second line just passed and we decided to go dance with it for a minute and get some pictures, so we did that.
ROEM: We have photo evidence that this happened, yes.
VALLAS: Also I’m sure people could hear it in the background as it was starting to interrupt you talking about transportation, which we should get back to.
ROEM: Yeah alright, so you had asked me about fixing Route 28, Route 28 and dealing with public infrastructure like that, especially transportation infrastructure, not only is it a quality of life issue, but at the same time when I’ve got a mom over in Single Hill precinct who lives in one of the apartments over there and she communtes all the way up to Tyson’s Corner for her job ad it takes her an hour and 45 minutes to come home each day, the cost of childcare if she’s late, it’s $5 a minute every minute that she’s late so if she gets caught up in traffic for half an hour, that’s $150 right there, that’s a day’s wage gone just for childcare. And so I look at this and I say ok, transportation isn’t just about how quickly you can get to places, it is about preserving quality of life and giving people access to their jobs, to their livelihoods in the first place, where in Prince William County, we were dealing early last year hearing about how some people in the Eastern end of the county would have to take buses for three and a half hours to get to Manassas to get to the courthouse, do whatever it is that they have to do there and they might be told come back in two weeks because they couldn’t pick up their documents that particular way and then they have to go all the way back, and at the same time, the staffers at the court house weren’t allowed to answer the phones. Well we changed that with one special election in April of last year and Jacqueline Smith has since allowed staffers to answer the phones and because we have new leadership within PRTC, we are going to make sure that we have much more reliable transit for more people because transportation can be a discrimination issue if it’s done maliciously or if it’s negligent for the communities that need it the most and there are those in Manassas, Manassas Park in particular who rely on this mass transit but then in Gainesville or Haymarket, we don’t even have a train in either Gainesville or Haymarket and the only bus circuit that we have in Gaineville, the last bus leaves at 6:38 AM. So if your kids are going to Gainesville Middle School where the bell rings at 8:05 or 8:10, how are you supposed to take the bus to get to your job over at the Pentagon or DC or wherever else? You’re not, and so at that point you’re stuck battling it out in traffic and when the toll lanes open, if we don’t have bus service by then, and we should have better bus service, then you have then taken away another public access lane for my constituents to use and at the same time you’re now having to pay again for a road that you’ve already paid for and frankly it’s my personal government view that public roadways should not be sold out for private profit.
VALLAS: Another issue that you ran on and that you mentioned up top and discussing what you’ve been part of working on since you joined the legislature is Medicaid expansion. Hugely exciting moment, especially in a time where we’re watching the Trump administration, we’re watching Republicans in congress continue unyieldingly to try to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, dismantle Medicaid, they’re still not done, the zombie law is back in many forms. Now Trump is trying to take matters into his own hands administratively as well to sabotage healthcare. So a really, really amazing moment to watch Virginia become as not quite a blue state, a state that was finally able to embrace Medicaid expansion, but it was a little bit of a compromise for some folks to swallow.
ROEM: It’s absolutely a compromise on both sides of the aisle here. On the one hand, you had 19 House Repulicans and 4 Republicans senators who crosses the aisle to join all the Democrats to vote for Medicaid expansion, and so for voting for Medicaid expansion for them, they’re taking a hit from their own flank and for them to be able to do it, they wanted the work requirement. Well, I don’t know a single Democrat who was campaigning for a work requirement because as we say all the time health care has to be a right, not a privilege and your basically, your ability to work, to have a job or just your employment situation in general should not determine whether or not you can see a doctor when you’re sick or to be able to see a doctor to prevent from getting sick in the first place or to just take care of your healthcare.
The way I see this is look, my caucus, we didn’t like the work requirement. And if I had the ability to repeal it today, I absolutely would. But the fact of the matter is Republicans had a 51 to 49 majority in the House of Delegates and a 21 to 19 which means that they control the committee that it came through and while we have a Democratic governor in Ralph Northam who’s able to negotiate well with them which is great, the fact of the matter remained that we were not going to be able to get just a clean slate Medicaid expansion because they had defeated it on a party line vote in the prior years, 66 to 34. I have a screenshot of that and I’ve got a photo from the day that we got Medicaid expansion passed this time. So this is one of the sort of things where we say yes, it is great that we got Medicaid expanded, no we don’t like the work requirement and at the same time if you want to change that, then let’s go win some more elections so we can have an even more progressive health care system in Virginia.
But at the same time, let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good here because this will do far, far, far more good to have Medicaid expansion and that will directly effect on January 1st, 3,800 of my working constituents who are earning up to 138% of the federal poverty line to begin with. They will now have access to quality, affordable health insurance. At the same time, we don’t stop there. It is a starting point, it is not the end of the converstion. As long as we remember that and we continue to legislate with that in mind, then that means that we are working in good faith to make health care as accessible to as many number of people as possible and make it as affordable to as many number of people as possible.
VALLAS: And is that something that you’re committed in the years ahead.
ROEM: Absolutely.
VALLAS: Is coming back and taking that next step of making sure that health care is not connected to how many hours you’re working that week.
ROEM: When I ran for office, it was to expand access to health insurance. It was not to restrict access to health insurance. This also goes not just for people who live in poverty and people who are slightly beyond that line, which is functional poverty as far as many of us consider anyway, but also LGBTQ healthcare has to be considered health care. It is not optional, this is us following our doctors orders. And that’s part of my platform as much as anything else was. I had a whole section on equality and I especially as a trans person understand what it’s like to be denied access my health insurance company covering my prescription for hormone replacement therapy. In 2014, I got an email from an intermediary from a third party saying that Care First was declining my coverage. That’s dehumanizing at best. And at the same time, I said ok well, I’m not going to let that get me down, I’m going to keep on fighting and making change and now I’m in a position to do that. And I think it’s really important for people to know when you come from that sort of background, you understand issues that are extremely important to different disenfranchised communities but at the same time, I should say and at the same time, and at the same time you understand that those big issues that unite the most number of people are also your priorities that you deal with.
So it’s not that I ever abandon poverty issues. It’s not that I abandon inequity or equality, I work those into my platform while I’m also working on traffic, jobs and schools.
VALLAS: In the last couple of minutes that I have with you because it’s a busy conference and there’s probably another second line coming, what is the significance in your view of being the first transgender elected official in Virginia and how are you using that platform to advance not just the broader agenda that you’re talking about but also to open some eyes within the legislature and the broader commonwealth?
ROEM: I think one of the most important things that I’m able to us as an out and seated transgender legislator in Virginia and the only out elected official in Virginia among trans folks is to show other people and even show our own community that trans people who are well qualified, who have good ideas and are willing to work hard in campaigns and work hard while they’re in office make really good public servants just the same as anyone else because no matter what you look like, where you come from, how you worship if you do or who you love, you should be able to run this counry as much as anyone else. And you have every right to run this country just as much as anyone else does and that you need to bring your ideas to the table because this is your America and this is your country too and you have a responsibility within a democratic, representative democracy within a republic to run your government. And so let’s go do it. And when we do get into office, look what I’m about to focus on. Yes, I’m able to elevate trans voices and at the same time, women’s voices, and I’m advocating to make sure that kids in school have access to two hot meals a day without being shamed for it. I’ve got kids in my district who are being given alternative meals for lunch so that while other kids are getting lasagna they’re getting a cheese sandwich, not even grilled cheese.
And that to me says that I have the capacity for empathy and understanding to know that, I’ve had to overcome obstacles and barriers in my life so what can I do to help out other people in my community. And so you know what we did? Well, we got a bill passed to ban school officials from shaming students for carrying school lunch debts in the first place by making them, having to do chores to have lunch or a wristband or having an ‘X’ on their hand, that’s Delegate Patrick Hope’s bill, HB 50 and I was proudly the chief co-patron of that bill.
And at the same time I know that that’s also again a starting point. We have more work to do with that. And I can help take care of kids in school. I have a bill, a suicide prevention resolution because a constituent who outlived her son asked me to carry that. There’s so much that I can do as a good public servant while at the same time always saying I’m trans and, not trans but, trans and. Yes, I’m trans and I can talk to you all day about water infrastructure. If you ever want to know about the difference between duct tile iron pipes and why they’re better than cast iron pipes we can do this for a couple hours and we will maybe some other day.
VALLAS: I now know who to call.
ROEM: Now you know who to call, that’s right. And I think when I say it’s trans and, it’s like yes I’m trans and I’ve got a lot of good ideas for public policy on civil rights, as much as transportation as much as education. So let’s bring it all to the table and when you are a reporter, you have to know a lot about a lot to begin with and when you’re a legislator you have to know a lot about a lot. So my experience as a reporter is directly transferable to the role that I am in now. I think I can do a really good job for the people of the 13th district and continue to elevate their voices with my national platform right now. To make sure I’m the best state legislator that they need.
VALLAS: What’s next?
ROEM: What’s next, I’ve got a town hall coming up August 13th, over in Gainesville over at Piney Branch Elementary School for the people who live along the Rollins Fort Road corridor to deal with a lot of safety concerns that they have along that route and hopefully, even though I’m usually wildly opposed to traffic lights, to actual get traffic lights installed one particularly problematic intersection because a bunch of my constituents asked me to do that. I’ve got two other town halls coming up in Manassas about Route 28 specific issues, then we have the midterms to go win for state Senator Jennifer Wexton who is our democratic nominee in the 10th district and Vangie Williams who is our nominee in the 1st congressional district in Virginia because those are the two congressional candidates running to represent my constituents so I have to care about them, as well as reelect Senator Tim Kaine and taking care of our democrats in Manassas Park who are running for city council in this fall including, we’ve got two great candidate there and I was able to go to [INAUDIBLE]’s campaign kick off just two weekends ago and so I’m so excited to get back out there, keep knocking doors, keep making phone calls and go win elections for really good Democrats.
VALLAS: There’s a lot of folks here at Netroots who want to get a piece of you and take a selfie with you, I’ve been seeing it happen and so I want to let you get back to it. But Danica Roem, the first openly trans elected official in the state of Virginia, or the commonwealth of Virginia I should say, having lived there I know people get sensitive about that. It is so cool to have you on the show and it’s so cool to meet you in person.
ROEM: Thank you so much Rebecca.
VALLAS: 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. Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted this week that Democrats have what she called “Trump derangement syndrome”. Now there may be some truth to what she said, we can certainly talk about that, but what she was referring to was Democrats and progressives more broadly complaining about what she termed a booming economy that she’s giving her president Trump credit for. So I’m bringing in Chad Bolt, a friend of the show and policy guru of many, many things over at Indivisible.
CHAD BOLT: Hey Rebecca.
VALLAS: You’re already interrupting me trying to tell me I’m getting your title wrong? And I didn’t even try to get your title right, I just said ‘guru’. Honestly Chad, honestly.
BOLT: It just so happens that’s my official title.
VALLAS: Do they change it because I keep using that, did I make it stick?
BOLT: They heard, yeah.
VALLAS: Well I was going to say until you jumped in to correct your title or not correct your title that I’m bringing you back in to help unpack and do an explainer on the Trump economy, who it’s working for and who it’s not working for. So we’ve got a lot that’s come out in the last several weeks that helps answer those questions.
BOLT: Absolutely.
VALLAS: And Hi, Chad.
BOLT: Hey Rebecca, it’s good to be with you. Absolutely, I think there is a lot to identify with in terms of Trump derangement syndrome in that yeah I do have a little bit of it due to all the havoc that Trump is wreaking on our democracy everyday.
VALLAS: You still managed to sa that with a smile as I’m hearing you say that I’m like wow he looks really happy to despite all of this, I don’t know how you’ve managed to do it.
BOLT: Well look I’m back on Off Kilter, what’s not to love?
VALLAS: Good answer.
BOLT: But to answer your question, I think it’s important to understand the context in which Sarah Huckabee Sanders said this. We are on the heels of a gigantic tax bill giveaway that gave huge tax cuts to the rich and corporations that really tilted the economy even further in favor of the rich and away from the middle class. So that’s the context. We saw recent news that GDP growth, fairly high number this time around but remember that’s not the only measure of our economy and it certainly isn’t the most important measure to a worker.
VALLAS: I’m going to jump in just to say that I think part of what she’s responding to, part of what Trump has been openly crowing about, it’s GDP growth for sure, it’s also the jobs numbers every month. ‘X’ number of hundreds of thousands of new jobs created, it’s also the overall unemployment rate, which he keeps pointing to, which is around 3.8%, 3.9% unemployment right now. And so all those things on their face do sound really good and that’s I think why she’s looking at dems and saying really is this not enough for you but you’re pointing out these aren’t the only numbers we should be looking at.
BOLT: That’s exactly right. I think the most important measure of our economy, at least to a worker and their family is the wage that they’re making. And wages have been stagnant. They barely kept up with inflation, sometimes it’s exceeds inflation, sometimes it does not. That’s not to say that wages aren’t rising at all, we should point out for fans of this show that in places where wages are rising in many cases it’s because the state or locality raised the minimum wage. But otherwise wages are fairly stagnant and I think at the end of the day, that’s what’s most important to a worker and we just aren’t seeing movement on those numbers.
VALLAS: And we actually saw, correct me if I’m getting any of this wrong but I actually feel like the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is the one stop shop for a lot of these numbers and it’s a non-partisan component of the federal government. This is not some think tank putting these numbers out, it’s not the Center for American Progress, it’s the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
BOLT: This is the official source.
VALLAS: The official numbers, they have told us in the past several weeks that wages have actually been falling in real terms for a lot of workers. Whether those are production workers, whether those are non-supervisory workers, huge categories of workers in the labor forces are seeing their wages not even stay stagnant in some cases, it’s even a worse picture for a lot of folks.
BOLT: That’s exactly right, and I think it’s why when you hear Sarah Huckabee Sanders say the economy is booming, it just rings so hollow for so many people and Democrats I think hear that. They’re hearing families say my wages aren’t rising, I’m not getting ahead. And when Trump and Sarah Huckabee Sanders say that the economy is booming, it just falls flat.
VALLAS: We’ve talked a lot on this show in the past couple of months about other ways that we can be working at how to measure whether people are doing well and how well they’re doing in this economy if they’re not just the ga-jillionaires like Vern Buchanan who got to buy new yachts the day the tax law went into effect.
BOLT: He bought himself a yacht, I am curious to see whether he’ll deduct it.
VALLAS: Oh right, good point.
BOLT: Because yachts are eligible for the mortgage interest deduction.
VALLAS: Any interest in placing a bet here and now?
[LAUGHTER]
BOLT: Well yes, let’s do it.
VALLAS: OK, what do you bet?
[LAUGHTER]
BOLT: I bet, I’ll let you set the terms.
VALLAS: Why don’t we both bet yes because that’s the thing we both want to do.
[LAUGHTER]
BOLT: I think it’s a safe bet.
[LAUGHTER]
VALLAS: So if he surprises us then I guess what do we have to do? Do we have to like take a shot?
BOLT: Sounds good, next time I’m on Off Kilter you bring the wine.
VALLAS: You’re going to take a shot of wine?
BOLT: Sorry, that’s any episode of Off Kilter.
[LAUGHTER]
VALLAS: That’s true.
BOLT: This is not me taking a shot of wine, this is just me saying that Rebecca Vallas frequently drinks wine while taping Off Kilter.
VALLAS: I know people are shocked. They’re absolutely shocked to hear this. And also we should give a plug to —
BOLT: Jeremy Slevin?
[LAUGHTER]
VALLAS: Just because we miss him? That’s true, we are at Netroots having fun without him and he’s not here.
BOLT: Miss you, Jeremy.
VALLAS: We do miss you Jeremy and also because there’s not ‘In Case You Missed It’ this week, which people may have noticed. So lots of reasons to miss the Slevs, but I was going to give a shout out apart from to the Slevs, to the ‘Find Vern’s Yacht’ campaign.
BOLT: Love it.
VALLAS: So what’s the website there?
BOLT: I’m not sure, I have a feeling that we may find Vern’s yacht roughly around the same area as Betsy DeVos’s yacht.
VALLAS: That’s a great guess.
BOLT: I heard that that one had become unmoored at one point. So we may find them adrift somewhere together.
VALLAS: It’s Vernsyacht.com, I’ve pulled it up and it’s actually a contest to see who first spots the yacht. If you’re the first person to spot it and send a picture to Vernsyacht.com you can actually win $500. I love this.
BOLT: I love this, let’s get some photos of this yacht.
VALLAS: But a great, perfectly encapsulated what the tax law did, who it helped. But back to where we were going with this before I remembered the fabulous yacht, we’ve been talking a lot on this show for the last several months about other ways that you can evaluate who the economy is working for and how workers are doing in this economy. And some of the things that have come out that have shined a light on that include studies finding that nearly half of Americans are struggling to afford food and housing and health care. The Federal Reserve telling us that almost half of Americans don’t have even $400 in the bank. These are the kinds of things that together with the wage numbers that we were talking about really paint a much more dire picture of the economy than something that most workers would refer to as ‘booming’.
BOLT: Yeah, I completely agree. Especially that $400 statistic, there are so many Americans living in liquid asset poverty meaning they don’t have enough money, liquid savings in the bank to weather a financial emergency. But I think there’s also other things like families who feel like they can’t find affordable child care who somebody who’s out of work and is able to find job openings but feels like they don’t have the skills that match those job openings. There are a ton of other ways to measure a families’ well being that fall well outside of Trump and Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ characterization of booming.
VALLAS: So you mentioned the tax law being the broader context that we need to be looking at the Sarah Huckabee Sanders comment in, but they’re not done giving tax cuts to super rich people and that’s something that they’ve made, they Republicans and particularly Trump have made incredibly and painfully clear even just in the past week or so.
BOLT: Yeah, I just find it so absurd, this law when it was passed was extremely unpopular and yet it is the, it’s what Republicans just keep going back to again and again. Their appetite for tax cuts is just relentless. Two new developments on this front. One is that Kevin Brady, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, the committee in charge of tax announced that they are going for a second round of tax cuts and the bottom line there to know is that it’s just more of the first round skewed heavily, heavily towards the top. Things like locking in the lower rate for incomes at the top, it’s making permanent the larger exemption from the estate tax and a couple other things that just skew heavily to the rich. And then the other development we found out this week that the Treasury Department is exploring using their authority to make a significant change to the way capital gains are taxed.
VALLAS: And what are capital gains, Chad?
BOLT: Before we talk about indexing of capital gains –
[LAUGHTER]
VALLAS: Nothing wonky there.
BOLT: Let’s just first tackle OK, what is a capital gain? A capital gain is the increase in the value of an asset, like a stock for example. You have to pay income tax on it, at the time of sale that’s an important point that I’ll come back to later. So to give an easy example, Rebecca, let’s say you have an asset that you bought for $100. So in this example this is not Vern Buchanan’s yacht but you bought it for $100 and then some years later you sell it for $1,000; the income subject to capital gains taxes in $900, it’s the difference between what you sold it for and what you bought it for. The Trump proposal is to change how the difference is calculated to adjust for inflation. So you don’t actually subtract the actual price you paid, you use an inflation adjusted price, which in periods of inflation will always be higher. Say inflation was 20% between purchase and sale, that means the purchase price for tax purposes would be $120 instead of $100 and the income subject to tax would be $880 instead of $900. So now imagine this example, that was a lot of numbers I just threw at you, but imagine that true to scale.
VALLAS: Wouldn’t be the first time.
[LAUGHTER]
BOLT: And it won’t be the last. So imagine that true to scale. It would have a lot more zeroes at the end, and in case anyboedy zoned out, I want to reel everybody back in because now I’m getting to the punch line. OK so this change that Trump wants to make would end up giving another $100 billion in tax cuts to the rich. That’s what this adds up to.
VALLAS: $100 billion with a ‘B’.
BOLT: With a ‘B’.
VALLAS: On top of the $1.9 trillion in tax cuts that were deficit financed that have already gone into effect.
BOLT: That’s exactly right, that we know pose a significant risk to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. So this change that the Trump administration wants to make to capital gains taxation, 86% of the benefits would go to the top 1% and that should probably sound familiar to you because after the tax law is fully phased in, 83% of its benefits would go to the top 1%. So this is just more and more of the same and it makes abundantly clear, now it could turn out that the Trump administration makes this change and a court steps in and says you’ve exceeded your executive authority to do this, you can’t actually do this. That would be consistent with a finding from the George H.W. Bush administration that the Treasury Department doesn’t have the authority to do this. But whether or not it happens it just makes abundantly clear who the Trump administration wants the economy to work for.
VALLAS: And what you just brought up, there was a lot there and I want to unpack some of it and also put it in broader context, what is $100 billion between friends, what could we do with that money, which is something I did a little bit of thinking about this week. But you also in helping to explain that just now made a really important point, which is this is the Trump administration considering bypassing congress to give $100 billion more in tax cuts to the wealthy by changing rules that it’s saying that it can change by fiat. So that’s how badly Trump is not done giving tax cuts to rich people. He’s ready to say look, I get that Republicans are in congress are saying they want to play ball with me and do more of this. I’m not even willing to wait for Kevin Brady and others to try to move those through congress, I’m going to try to do this myself with the power that I may or may not have.
BOLT: That’s exactly right, this is yet another benefit Trump wants to deliver to the rich. And if I can say one more thing about capital gains taxation.
VALLAS: I don’t know if you’re going to be able to restrict yourself to just one more thing Chad because until I saw you get talking about this I did not realize this is clearly the thing that gets you going more than anything. Who knew it was cap gains?
BOLT: I mean there’s some other things too, there’s bank regulation but for now we’ll stick to cap gains taxation. So it’s already the current tax is already such a problem on capital gains taxation. It already skews heavily to the rich and gives them a huge tax break because that’s in part because they’re taxed at a much lower rate than ordinary income. Capital gains taxes are no higher than 20%, that’s the top rate you can hit if you’re the very richest in this country. You’re exempt from capital gains taxation if you pass assets onto your heirs and the tax is only paid upon sale, unlike ordinary income, which obviously is taxed annually. From that alone, we lose $300 billion in revenue, just from those tax breaks. Trump wants to double down on that, make it $100 billion worse.
VALLAS: So it’s already a set of loopholes that super benefit the rich and in particular rich families. Part of what you were describing was the ability to pass on huge amounts of money to your rich children to make them even richer through things that get wonky like the step up and bases and other stuff. This is about saying you know what I think this system isn’t rigged enough, let’s rig it a little bit more.
BOLT: Yeah, and just to put the finest point on it we can, we already had a tax code that fueled economic inequality and the Trump administration and Republicans in congress have just made it so much worse.
VALLAS: So Chad, I wonder if you’re wondering like I am what might we be able to do with $100 billion if maybe we had slightly different values, right or wanted to help different people than Vern Buchanan and his very rich children.
BOLT: Rebecca, it’s like you have a tweet ready on this or something. Did you not earlier in this week say what we can spend $100 billion on doing?
VALLAS: So I do have a tweet Chad because you know I have a tweet and I’m looking at it. So what might we be able to do with $100 billion? And in many cases actually less than $100 billion. Well, since you asked we could I don’t know, end homelessness in America, maybe we could also end hunger in America altogether, maybe we could end child poverty in America? Or maybe we could insure high quality affordable child care and still have enough money left over to create universal pre-K for every child in America, I could go on and on. But these are just a few of the things that you could do with actually even less than $100 billion if you were thinking about we could make people’s lives better who don’t already have yachts.
BOLT: Yes, that’s exactly right. And I don’t want to dwell too much on the gloom and doom of the Trump administration and the Trump era because that’s so easy to do. So since we’re talking about what could be and what we could do, obviously the Democratic party and progressives generally just have a much different vision for how the tax code can work as part of the broader economy.
VALLAS: Chad, I’m glad that you’re bringing this up because in the last couple minutes that we have, a thing that I think a lot of people might be wondering is yeah, there’s been a lot of railing against the Trump tax law and there’s been a lot of talk by Democrats that we need to repeal and replace it, or the way you guys like to say repeal and replace means repeal the tax law and replace the Republicans who voted it in in the first place.
BOLT: Replace the member, repeal the tax law.
VALLAS: I love that, it’s a repeal and replace that I can get behind. But a lot of folks are wondering what does come next?
BOLT: Sure.
VALLAS: Do we actually get to a place of rolling back the tax law? Do we get to a place where we’re actually seeing parts of it repealed and replaced with other things. What do you think actually comes next and what are you hearing from Democrats about what they want to do?
BOLT: Sure, I want to say two things about this and the first is just to underscore, what was such a missed opportunity for Republicans to actually do something for working families as part of this latest tax bill. The most powerful anti-poverty tool that we have in the tax code is the Earned Income Tax credit. It promotes work, it helps families get ahead, save for emergencies, Republicans could have expanded that, either just in the dollar value in how much it helps families get further ahead or they could have expanded the population of tax filers who are eligible for it. They didn’t do anything like that.
VALLAS: And those happen to be by the way, bipartisan ideas, those are things that Speaker Paul Ryan, soon to be former speaker, ooh that gives me chills getting to say that. [LAUGHTER] Soon to be former Speaker Paul Ryan says that he wants to do. So these are not just progressive ideas.
BOLT: That’s exactly right and there are bill filed in congress to do this with a lot of support that so far haven’t gone anywhere but were left out of the tax bill like I said. But if we’re able to have the blue wave crash on DC this November things could really start changing in the house.
VALLAS: Do you know that every time you say that these blue wave emojis pop up over your head in the air? It’s the weirdest thing.
BOLT: Well OK, speaking of the blue wave, this is the other thing that I want to say. We at Indivisible we’re really excited about the set of endorsements that we’ve made in congressional races this year. This is part of our 435 program and we’re endorsing in every corner of this country. So deep red Ohio 6th where we’ve endorsed Shauna Roberts to some deeper blue contests that have a bunch of Democrats running in them. And one thing that candidates do to get our national Indivisible endorsement is fill out a candidate questionnaire. And I’m really proud of the tax questions that we’ve got included.
VALLAS: It’s a tough questionnaire, you guys are not letting folks get away with milquetoast agendas.
BOLT: No, that’s exactly right. I want and we all want candidates thinking about what a progressive tax code looks like. So in order to get the Indivisible endorsement, what almost all of our candidates have agreed to do is generally repeal the tax scam, raise taxes on the top 5% of households, they’ve agreed to implement some type of financial transaction tax and also lift the cap on income subject to the payroll tax so put Social Security in a better position. So those are obviously some small pieces of what we can do but I think they are important provisions of what would help build a progressive tax code in the future.
VALLAS: And I have to say really excited to see you guys not looking at something like I know, a big middle class tax cut as just the thing that Democrats can get away with saying they want to do on tax if there’s been a silver lining of this tax debate and boy am I stretching to find one because this has been a brutal thing to be part of and to watch wherein the American people have been incredibly clear about what they’ve wanted and they’ve watched government not work for them because of the rigged system and an administration and Republicans in congress that don’t particularly care what the people who elected them thing but rather are only responding to the needs and wishes of their donor class. But I think what we’ve seen if there is a silver lining of this tax debate is an evolution of what the progressive tax agenda looks like away from a time that was just, I know a big middle class tax cut is what will put on the table and to something that’s a much more robust and big picture agenda that has to do with restructuring the tax code itself to work for people who aren’t super rich already.
BOLT: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more and I’m actually glad that you used the phrase middle class tax cut because I wanted to remember to mention on this taping that the rhetoric trap that Republicans have laid out here, they are going to call their next round of tax cuts the middle class tax cut and that’s not what it is. This is about, and I mentioned it earlier, locking in the individual tax cuts that skew heavily to the top, the bigger exemption on the estate tax, the lower rates for top incomes, the things that skewed the first version of the tax bill so heavily to the rich in the first place, they’re going to call it the middle class tax cut bill. But what it’s really doing —
VALLAS: Because they’re smart and because they’re liars, that’s a two prong thing I just said there.
BOLT: That’s exactly right, bold statement but actually not bold at all because it couldn’t be more true.
VALLAS: Just factual.
BOLT: Couldn’t be more true. So I just want everyone listening not to fall into the rhetorical trap of thinking oh Republicans are coming back to pass another round of middle class tax cuts, that’s just not the bulk of what this effort is.
VALLAS: And one last thing I want to say while I still have you is people have been I think wondering, how has the tax law played out. We talked a little bit about the picture that workers are facing in this country of living paycheck to paycheck, not being able to afford the basics, watching their wages stagnant, but a lot of folks might still be wondering yeah, but didn’t the tax cut contribute to the strong economy that we’re seeing right even if it isn’t translating into gains for everybody through higher wages, what has the legacy of the tax law been? Is it going to pay for itself, which we know is what Trump promised and was his case for spending $1.9 trillion in blowing up the deficit in the first place, has this translated into anything that is good for people who aren’t buying those yachts?
BOLT: Well there’s a lot to unpack there. But one question you asked, is it going to pay for itself? And the answer so far seems to be absolutely not, in fact Donald Trump’s own management and budget direct Mick Mulvaney testified as such in a hearing on the house side. Congressman John Yarmouth asked about in the Trump administration’s new budget proposal for 2019 why are deficits so large? Is it caused by the tax bill and Mick Mulvaney essentially said yes. So the answer to the question is it going to pay for itself so far is no. And in terms of who it is benefited so far, we have seen an unprecedented level of stock buybacks which to cut to the chase is a way for companies to share wealth with their shareholders but it actually has no effect on workers wages and it has nothing to do with companies creating new jobs or giving their workers raises.
VALLAS: And an analysis actually came out this week from our friends at the Roosevelt Institute and the National Employment Law Project putting some numbers to what you just said, anyone who is wondering eh, stock buybacks, what does that mean, it sounds kind of wonky, yeah maybe it makes shareholders richer, well what NELP and the Roosevelt Institute found was that U.S. Corporation spent most of their profits, 60% of their profits in fact between 2015 and 2017 on stock buy backs, not paying their wages more and just back to what we were talking about before about the better world we could be living in if we weren’t all suffering national Trump derangement syndrome to steal back Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ term is that say take McDonalds, McDonalds could pay each of its’ 1.9 million workers almost $4,000 more per year with the money it spent during this period on stock buybacks. Starbucks could deliver a $7,000 raise per worker, Home Depot, Lowe’s, CVS, they could give every worker they employ of at least $18,000 a year. So just to provide the counter factual of what we could have seen if corporations were interested in taking the money they’ve gotten from the tax law and actually putting it into worker pay the way we were told by Republicans they were going to and how that was going to end up trickling down, trickle down not so much.
BOLT: Absolutely. The difference between how this tax bill was sold, the effects of this tax bill and what they actually are is just obscene. We’ve talked a lot about how it drives income inequality generally but I want to make sure we underscore just how much too that it fuels the racial wealth gap. Because the benefits of the tax bill are so skewed to the top incomes, well take a look at the demographic make up of those top incomes; it’s overwhelmingly white. And so white households are the main beneficiaries of this tax bill and this would come as no surprise to listeners of your show but a bill that congress passed and was signed into law by Donald Trump disproportionately leaves people of color behind.
VALLAS: Something that we’ve talked about in the past with Derrick Hamilton and Michael Linden, they’ve got a great piece on this called “The Hidden Rules of the Tax Law” which is over at Roosevelt and we’ll reup in our nerdy weekly syllabus so folks can find it. So Chad, we’re hanging out at Netroots and I feel like what we should probably do is stop taping and go start drinking. You down for that?
[LAUGHTER]
BOLT: I’m good with that, we can, the other thing we can do is prep for our panel on the tax bill tomorrow.
VALLAS: Oh yeah, maybe, can I just say I love that you, ever the optimist still call it a bill even though it became law.
[LAUGHTER]
BOLT: I know, I’m permanently when I’m not suffering from Trump derangement syndrome, I’m just permanent locked in the fall of 2017 unable to let go of the fight over the tax scam.
VALLAS: I’m there with you. Chad Bolt is a policy guru among many other things at Indivisible, he’s a friend of the show despite the fact that he still hasn’t watched any episodes of Seinfeld and that’s the only dig I’m going to get in at him about his taste in TV and movies. Chad, I’ll have you back soon, let’s go start drinking so we can prep for our tax panel, how’s that sound?
BOLT: Sounds good.
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.
