The Harvest of American Racism

Inside Tennessee’s plan to block-grant Medicaid; why market solutions fail to uplift distressed communities; and a look at the Son of Scalia, Trump’s latest nominee for Labor Secretary. Subscribe to Off-Kilter on iTunes.

Earlier this week, Tennessee became the first state to unveil a plan for block-granting Medicaid, following encouragement from the Trump administration earlier this year. Rebecca talks with Maura Calsyn, CAP’s managing director of health policy, for a look at what block-granting would do to the Medicaid program and why this latest flavor of health care sabotage is so dangerous.

Later in the show: a place-based program called “Opportunity Zones,” enacted as part of Trump’s tax law, continues to garner widespread attention among policymakers and elected officials, as a market-based tool for investing in high-poverty communities. But as Gbenga Ajilore, a senior economist at the Center for American Progress, argues in a new paper titled “The Harvest of American Racism: Why Distressed Communities Are Distressed,” the Opportunity Zones program — which aims to harness private sector investment to spur investment in distressed communities — will be doomed to fail because like other similar market-based strategies before it, it misses what created these distressed communities in the first place: structural racism.

And last but not least: who is Eugene Scalia, Trump’s latest nominee to head the Department of Labor? Rebecca talks with Rebecca Cokley, director of CAP’s Disability Justice Initiative for a sneak peak at the Son of Scalia’s terrifying record. (Yes, THAT Scalia.)

This week’s guests:

• Maura Calsyn, managing director of health policy, Center for American Progress (@maura_calsyn)
• Gbenga Ajilore, senior economist, Center for American Progress (@gbenga_ajilore)
• Rebecca Cokley, director, Disability Justice Initiative (@RebeccaCokley)

For more on this week’s topics:

• To read more on Tennessee’s plan to block-grant Medicaid, check out this Washington Post overview, plus Rebecca’s tweet thread.
• Read “The Harvest of American Racism: Why Distressed Communities Are Distressed,” by Gbenga Ajilore
• For more on the Son of Scalia’s terrifying record, check out this overview from the Economic Policy Institute

This week’s transcript:

♪ I work and get paid like minimum wage

sights to hit the class by the end of the day

hot from downtown into the hood where I stay

the only place I can afford ’cause my block ain’t saved

I spend most of my time working, trying to bring in…. ♪

REBECCA VALLAS (HOST): Welcome to Off-Kilter, powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. I’m Rebecca Vallas. This week on Off-Kilter, a program called Opportunity Zones continues to garner significant attention among policymakers and elected officials as a purported strategy for investing in high-poverty communities. But as Gbenga Ajilore, a senior economist at the Center for American Progress, argues in a new paper titled The Harvest Of American Racism, police-based policies that look to private sector investment to uplift distressed communities, such as Opportunity Zones, will continue to fail to achieve their stated goals because they fail to address the real underlying issue: structural racism. I sat down with Gbenga to learn more.

Later in the show, who is Eugene Scalia, Trump’s latest nominee to head the Department of Labor? I talk with Rebecca Cokley, director of CAP’s Disability Justice Initiative, for a sneak peek at the son of Scalia’s terrifying record. Yes, that Scalia.

But first, earlier this week, Tennessee became the first state to unveil a plan for block granting Medicaid following encouragement from the Trump administration earlier this year. So, I talked with Maura Calsyn, CAP’s managing director of health policy for a look at what block granting would do to the Medicaid program and why this latest flavor of health care sabotage is so incredibly dangerous.

Maura, thanks so much for taking the time to come back on the show.

MAURA CALSYN: Thanks for having me.

VALLAS: So, it feels incumbent on us before we get into Tennessee and the particulars of what’s been announced earlier this week, to sort of back up just a little bit and get wonky and unpack what is a block grant? We’ve talked a lot on this show over the years about block grants, but help us remember what is that type of a policy structure?

CALSYN: Sure. I think backing up even one step further, the current Medicare program — I’m sorry. The current Medicaid program — it’s a federal-state partnership. And under that program, the federal government commits to guaranteeing payment for all the medical services provided to a state’s population enrolled in the Medicaid plan, regardless of how expensive those pieces are and regardless of how many people are included and are then eligible for the program. What is really important and the key piece of block grants — or also we heard the term “per capita caps” a lot during the health care debate — is those are proposals to fundamentally alter that guarantee of federal assistance to states to help provide health care for their residents. So, a block grant program would cap the total federal spending for the program going to a state, and it would basically fix the federal funding at a level that policymakers decide is sufficient — which it never is — and then basically grow that according to inflation, which it never is enough. And then what they do with per capita caps, it’s a slight adjustment, is they basically give a little mini-block grant for each person enrolled. So, again, policymakers, usually those who are committed to undermining the program, will say x amount of money is sufficient for you to provide health care services whatever the person needs. And that’s going to be all the federal government’s going to give to the states going forward. So, it completely changes that guarantee of health services and a lot of flexibility for states, and caps federal funding.

VALLAS: So, basically, if I’m understanding you right, block granting is sort of a fancy word for converting a program that guarantees coverage to everyone who qualifies to a program that will effectively help fewer and fewer eligible people over time because that funding gets capped in a way that declines year over year.

CALSYN: Exactly. And it gets capped at a rate that’s completely insufficient. It basically transfers all the risk of higher health care costs and more sick people and environmental problems that cause health care problems, any sort of public disaster, from the federal government to the states, and more importantly, to low-income Americans.

VALLAS: Now, so basically, block granting then, it comes down to it’s kind of a backdoor strategy for making really deep cuts to a program without using the word “cut.”

CALSYN: Exactly. It’s not even a backdoor strategy. It was the key feature of the ACA repeal bills. So, not only did the ACA repeal bills two years ago undo Medicaid expansion, it took the existing Medicaid program and transferred it into either a block grant or per capita cap. The state would have to choose how it wanted to be harmed.

VALLAS: So, yet another example of the Trump administration sort of taking matters into its own hands and trying to decimate one of the key health care programs in this country because they didn’t get their way through legislation. This was a key feature, you’re saying, of health care repeal that didn’t happen legislatively.

CALSYN: Absolutely. And basically, when that didn’t happen, the Trump administration said well, we don’t care what Congress said. We are going to try to have states do this anyway. So, earlier this year, the Trump administration put out basically a pleading to states basically saying you all want to undermine your Medicaid programs? Come to us, and we will approve these things.

The other kind of key wonky part before we get to the real-world impacts is the Medicaid program, like I said, is a federal-state partnership. There are a lot of federal rules that protect patients and protect the program, program integrity, make sure that, for example, managed care companies act OK when they’re administering these programs. States can ask to waive those. So, it’s called a waiver, and you’ll hear us use that term a lot. And the waiver authority, so, basically, states go to the federal government and say, hey, we really want to try to experiment with this thing. And the federal government will either grant or deny a waiver. So, that’s what we saw this week is Tennessee put together its waiver to try to change its program.

VALLAS: So, let’s get into some of those real-world impacts. And a lot of this, this is not you speculating. We actually have a lot of estimates and analysis that come to us from the health care debate from a couple of years ago because, as you said, block granting Medicaid was one of the centerpieces of that Republican plan. And so, we have a lot in the way of rich analysis that helps us understand what would happen if we actually start to see states block grant their Medicaid programs. Tell us a little bit of the scary story of what will happen if this comes to pass.

CALSYN: Well, with each state — And I think it’s also important to realize that we’re talking about Tennessee right now. But it’s really a national story because it is another attempt that works with all of Trump’s sabotage, as you said. So, I do think that as people are listening, it’s important for people to not just think OK, this is Tennessee. I don’t live there. But it really has, it shows the direction that the Trump administration really wants to take our health care system. So, Tennessee has asked the federal government to basically give them a set some, lump sum, based on the number of people who are enrolled in the program for certain services. So, basically, I mean we know why they’re doing this. But the state government of Tennessee is saying, give us less money, and we’ll figure it out. You can give us quote-unquote more flexibility. And whenever you hear “flexibility” in a health care debate, it really means flexibility to do very bad things. There’s already a ton of flexibility under the Medicaid statute to do good things. For example, Michigan has figured out a way to respond to the Flint crisis using Medicaid flexibility. So, whenever you hear “flexibility” in a state saying that they want to do these things like block granting, it just means they want flexibility to potentially cut enrollees, cut benefits, have way less oversight over managed care, so it just, it’s a real red herring.

VALLAS: So, what do we know about the Tennessee plan specifically?

CALSYN: The Tennessee plan has some interesting things. I mean the state obviously knows that it is going at risk, so it’s taking on more risk for higher health care costs. It is exempting drugs and the high cost of drugs from this waiver. So, the state has asked the federal government to still be on the hook for all of those costs. And the state is also exempting their own administrative costs. So, they’re basically saying, hey, if it’s going to cost us more money to administer this stuff, we still want to get our full federal amount there. It is, however, including all of the population, so it includes children, for example. And half of Tennessee’s children are enrolled in the program. So, it’s incredibly far-sweeping. It also has asked CMS to waive all of the managed care protections and oversight requirements that are included in a Medicaid statute. So, I think that they’re really asking the federal government to look the other way while they do a lot of harm.

VALLAS: Now, you made a really important point, which is people might be listening and going OK, it’s Tennessee. I’m not in Tennessee. This isn’t going to affect me. But as you noted, this actually really comes on the heels of the Trump administration saying, hey states, let’s do this, kind of like they did with their work reporting requirements where they kind of rolled out the red carpet last year and said, hey states, take Medicaid away from people who can’t meet a certain number of work hours or can’t find steady work. You know, we’ll approve you to do that for the first time in the Medicaid program’s history if you apply to us to do that. So, similar mechanism that sort of is playing out here in a similar playbook. But one of the pieces of analysis that came out of the health care debate that really put kind of a national perspective on the damage that block grants would do, it comes to us from the Urban Institute. And actually, the Urban Institute took a look at the House Republican proposal to block grant Medicaid and found that between 14 million and 21 million Americans would lose Medicaid if Medicaid were block granted nationwide. So, huge, huge impacts if we were to watch not just Tennessee but other states started to step up to the plate.

You started to talk about some of the specific populations who the state has decided not to exempt from this proposal, and children, right, are part of that, which is unbelievable and harrowing. But people with disabilities are also going to be a huge population that would be tremendously hurt. And I want to kind of dig into that because sometimes you hear folks like, say, Seema Verma, the director of Trump’s Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services who’s sort of at the helm of these kinds of policies say that these types of proposals, including block granting Medicaid, are really actually about helping people. She kind of dresses them up in puppies and rainbows language, and she often even talks about people with disabilities specifically as a group that’ll be helped by this kind of a policy. Is there any truth to that? And what do we know about what this type of policy will mean for specific groups?

CALSYN: No, I mean it is completely and totally false. Any claim that these types of cuts to the program benefit anybody other than a conservative policymaker who wants to limit federal or state spending on this program is just completely not being forthcoming with the public. We know that. You know…I’m actually almost at a loss right now to explain the damage to different populations. I mean to begin with, Medicaid serves a population that is very much high-risk. So, it includes low-income children. It includes pregnant women. It includes people with disabilities. And it’s a population that really needs, if anything, additional resources. And these proposals are really just ways to undermine the guarantee of coverage for these people and to really make the state be forced to make some really harmful decisions. You know, are we going to cover this benefit? Are we not going to cover that benefit? There’s just simply no way to respond to the health care needs of this group of people with less money.

VALLAS: Now, it’s not theoretical for us to sort of start to talk about what block granting does to a program. We have a history of actually conservatives seeking to block grant effective programs and turn them from guarantees into basically waitlists. And we’d be remiss if we didn’t lift up sort of the poster child example of block granting, which is the TANF Program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a program we’ve talked about a lot on this show over the years. Which is a block grant that replaced a program called Aid to Families with Dependent Children, AFDC, which had been a legal entitlement. And TANF, which has now been in place since the mid-1990s, people often refer to it as welfare reforms. Some people call it blowing a huge hole in our safety net, as Peter Edelman often describes what TANF did to the safety net. TANF is, in a lot of ways, really the sort of the canary in the coal mine when it comes to policymakers on the right seeking to block grant other effective programs. What do we know about what block granting has done to TANF and who it helps now compared to before?

CALSYN: I mean it very much has undermined. I mean it has, as you said, it’s totally undermined the guarantee of that program to people. We know the people it’s hurt primarily are children, and it’s really increased the number of children in poverty. There’s simply not enough resources. And you see rates of extreme poverty also going up. And none of that’s surprising. You cut resources to a program, especially a program that is designed to help the most vulnerable people around us, and you cut funding for that, and it’s going to harm those people and make their situations even worse. And that’s what we’ll see with proposals such as the block grant.

And you know, it’s not just the block grant programs. I mean Seema Verma, who is Trump’s Medicare and Medicaid director, has also approved all sorts of damaging waivers. You talked about the work requirement waivers to basically force people to record that they’ve worked. And a federal judge has said that that is completely contrary to the Medicaid statute. And because it’s contrary to the Medicaid statute, that proposal can’t be put in place by a waiver. We’re also seeing her triy to do things like force people who cannot afford to pay premiums, who cannot afford to pay cost sharing when they go see a doctor, to include those in their Medicaid programs as well. So, those are all direct attempts to really undermine the guarantee that the Medicaid program has provided to people since it was enacted.

VALLAS: Back during the health care debate — which we’re very much still having, as this is evidence of; it’s just not happening within the halls of Congress — but back during 2017, kind of in the heat of the ACA repeal efforts by Trump and by Republicans in Congress, some advocates on the left took to calling Medicaid cuts like block grants “the real death panels.” And folks on the right said, man, that’s just really dramatic and histrionic, and let’s not use language like that. But it isn’t histrionic considering what we know about Medicaid and its literally lifesaving benefits. And actually, the Center for American Progress has done a lot of analysis itself, and you have led a lot of this, looking at what would happen if Medicaid block grants were to take effect compared to Medicaid expansion, for example, as a policy that actually promotes lifesaving benefits. What do we know about Medicaid as a program that, if it gets cut, will actually lead to unintended deaths?

CALSYN: We have a lot of research, unfortunately, going on right now because we have an experiment set up unintentionally between states that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and states have not. So, you can really take a look at the health outcomes and mortality in states that have expanded Medicaid and those that have not. And you can see that it not only helps avert deaths, it also increases treatment for people. Also, I mean putting aside some of the medical benefits, it also very much provides financial stability to a population that, that has providing more financial stability and less stress about medical bills in turn also can increase your health and your wellness. So, just it’s very far-ranging, and there’s very, very good data out that some of our colleagues put out that actually had state-level numbers for a lot of the deaths prevented. Pre-term births, I believe, was another one. And you can see how your state would benefit if you’re in a state that has not currently expanded Medicaid.

VALLAS: And we’ll link to that on our nerdy syllabus page so people can dig in and look at what it would mean for their states. One national figure that actually comes to us from the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan CBO, which had a full-time job on its hands analyzing all the Republican proposals to repeal health care back in 2017 and 2018. They found that more than 208,000 unnecessary deaths would occur by 2026 if the Senate Republican version of health care repeal had taken effect. And a big part of that was Medicaid block grants as well.

CALSYN: Yeah, and this talk about the research on Medicaid expansion, actually, both of us failed to say this earlier in the segment: not only is Tennessee proposing to block grant its Medicaid program, they’ve also refused — they continue to be 1 of 14 states that refuses — to cover people who are now entitled to coverage under the Affordable Care Act. And that is almost 250,000 people in Tennessee would gain Medicaid coverage. And it’s just…they’re not just sabotaging their own state program by not expanding the program. But I mean they’re really doubling down on the harm that they really want their their citizens to, not citizens, but their people to go through.

VALLAS: And I want to give a shout-out to our our former colleague, Rachel West, who is an economist on the poverty team until she she left us, sadly, to go work on the Hill where she’s doing great things now working with Congressman Bobby Scott on raising the minimum wage and other important priorities. But while she was here at CAP, she actually worked with you guys to do some analysis looking at Medicaid expansion and what it would mean in terms of literally saving lives. And you were just pointing out 14 states still refuse, including Tennessee, to expand their Medicaid programs. And her and the health team’s analysis found that if we were to actually see all of those states that have still stonewalled and refused to expand Medicaid make that decision, finally expand their Medicaid programs, it would save over 100,000 lives over the coming decade by contrast to what we’re seeing from this type of a proposal. So, really, lives are literally at stake as states make these types of decisions and as Trump continues his health care sabotage.

So, Maura, people listening are probably wondering OK, Tennessee has sort of unveiled its proposal and kind of sent its letter to the Trump administration to say, hey, let us do this. What comes next? What’s the process? And do we expect this to be approved.?

CALSYN: I would expect it to be approved. I would say I would expect the core features of the program to be, of the waiver, to be approved. You know, there might be some tinkering around the edges. There is going to be a 30-day comment period for the public. The places where there’s going to be available public meetings has not yet been announced, but that is certainly something that people should look out for who are in Tennessee. I think people who are outside of Tennessee really, keep a lookout for similar proposals coming out of your states. And then also, just remember that this is very much the vision that the Trump administration wants to bring to American health care. And they’ve said that these types of proposals are what they want to do if they win re-election in 2020. So, I think that just remembering that this is just one example of the harm that can come.

VALLAS: I’ve been speaking with Maura Calsyn. She’s the managing director of health policy at the Center for American Progress. And we’ll be linking to lots of stuff by her and her health colleagues on our nerdy syllabus page so that you can dig in lots more, including information if you’re in Tennessee on how to comment as part of that 30-day comment period. Maura, thanks so much for helping us dewonkify what’s going on in Tennessee and elsewhere.

CALSYN: Thank you.

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. A place-based program called Opportunity Zones enacted as part of Trump’s tax law continues to garner widespread attention among policymakers and elected officials as a market-based tool for investing in high-poverty communities. But as Gbenga Ajilore, a senior economist at the Center for American Progress, argues in a new paper titled The Harvest Of American Racism, the Opportunity Zones model, which aims to harness private-sector investment to spur investment in distressed communities, will be doomed to fail. Because like other similar market-based strategies before it, it misses what created these distressed communities in the first place. And that’s structural racism. Gbenga, thanks so much for taking the time to come back on the show.

GBENGA AJILORE: Thank you for having me.

VALLAS: So, there’s a lot in there that I actually just said, and I really want to unpack all of that with you and the argument that’s sort of at the core of this recent paper that you just published. But I want to back up and first just make sure that people remember what Opportunities zones are. It’s been a minute since we had you on the show talking about OZs. So, remind us: what is this Opportunity Zones program?

AJILORE: So, the Opportunity Zones program is this capital-based program — came out of the tax cut and Jobs Act from December 2017 — where if you sold a lot of stocks and you have huge capital gains, you can reinvest that in these communities, specific census tracts that are designated as Opportunity Zones. And if you invest in those Opportunity Zones, then you get a decrease on your capital gains. And then any sort of gains that you make within these zones go tax free.

VALLAS: Now, you have written a lot of critiques about the Opportunity Zones model since it was unveiled as sort of one of the lesser visible pieces of the tax law. And we have not nearly enough time on this show to walk through all the different critiques of Opportunity Zones. But I do want to give you have a moment to sort of remind us why specifically that model is something that you’ve argued is basically a giant tax loophole for wealthy corporations.

AJILORE: The biggest problem is that it does nothing for existing residents. So, if you have capital gains, you going to put it into something that’s profitable like a luxury condominium. You build a luxury condominium, you rent it out at these high rents, existing residents are going to get pushed out into other places, and then you’re actually going to make money off of that. And it does nothing for the existing residents. That’s the key. None of this is going to actually help existing residents.

VALLAS: Now, I want to back up away from Opportunity Zones for a second because your paper, The harvest of American racism, is actually much broader than just about Opportunity Zones. It really likens Opportunity Zones to a whole thread of policymaking which includes other types of market solutions and which includes something called Promise Zones and another program before it called Empowerment Zones. Talk to me a little bit about what these have in common and how these kinds of place-based, market-driven solutions typically work.

AJILORE: So, with this economic development framework, what they say is that you have to put money into these areas and then let the market work, and that will boost incomes. It will boost jobs, job growth, and value for individuals. But the problem is that the money in these programs never go directly to these residents. They go to firms. They go to corporation. They go to existing landowners. And when you say that “let the market work,” you’re assuming that it’s actually going to quote-unquote trickle down to low-income individuals. And we just see that never happens because the key is, when we have these distressed communities, the market didn’t create these distressed communities. These were intentional policies that excluded black communities, brown communities, Native communities. And it just had the, it just forced them into these areas, and more importantly, denied access to resources that other people were able to have. So, when you say that the market’s going to solve this problem, you have to realize that the market didn’t create it. It was these intentional policies. And so, the way to think about it, the best way to think about it, is that you had these intentional racist policies create these communities. So, to reverse it, you have to have intentional anti-racist policies to get out of it. And these market-based solutions totally ignore that.

VALLAS: And that’s really the core argument of this paper that you just published. And so, you argue at the core that we need to be looking at the root causes of why distressed communities are in fact distressed. And you tell a little bit of history in this paper. You \take us back to the Civil Rights era and to something called the Kerner Commission, which was put in place by President Lyndon B. Johnson. What was the Kerner Commission, for folks who may not be familiar with that piece of history, and what did it find?

AJILORE: So, in the summer of 1967, there are multiple riots in a lot of cities, specifically Newark, Detroit, and Baltimore. And so, President Johnson wanted to look at the reasons why this occurred, so he put together a commission to kind of study this. And so, they came up, their first report came up and basically said that white people were the cause of this. So, they basically, they didn’t talk about structural racism per say, but they basically defined structural racism is what caused these problems. And in fact, the original title of that commission was The Harvest Of American Racism. However, Johnson didn’t like it, so he established a new commission to try to come up with a different answer. And they came up basically with the same answer. And that report kind of showed this is what happened. As so, it talked about a lot of problems of what they, back then, they called the ghetto, and how they created the ghetto. Now, Johnson, because he was worried about re-election in 1968, basically sat on this report. But if you read that report now, it sounds like something that could’ve been written yesterday.

VALLAS: Well, and that’s part of what you actually argue, and you’re someone who spends much of your time studying distressed communities. As an economist, you argue that more than half a century later, the problems identified by that report that LBJ basically shelved and rejected the recommendations of remain the same or even have actually been exacerbated over the years.

AJILORE: So, one clear example of that is during the riots in 1967, you had the National Guard come in. And so, you have these images of tanks and military people coming in. And in the report, they said these images are terrible, that we shouldn’t have police basically becoming militarized. Now at the time, there was no militarized police. But we fast forward 50 years later. We think about the riots in Ferguson, and what did we see? We saw police militarization. So, we actually went backwards from what their recommendations were. And there are many other examples like that.

VALLAS: Well, and go ahead and continue because you offer several in the paper.

AJILORE: So, in that example if you think about what’s happening in Flint Michigan that’s been how many years now that they don’t have clean water. And so, again, if this was Beverly Hills, if this was even in the Detroit area, something like Bloomfield Hills, you know that would be fixed in five minutes, but it’s been allowed to persist and continue. We think about some of the schools in Baltimore during the winter that they don’t have heat. And you know, it’s like how is that, how in that city, is that able to persist, and why is it in that community that the government’s not able to fix that? And so, these are just examples that in the Kerner Commission report they talked about happening, and 50 years later same thing is happening in these communities.

VALLAS: Now back to the root problem of structural racism, which was first sort of defined, as you said, in that Kerner Commission report even if they didn’t use that exact phrasing. What’s wrong from a policy perspective, and what’s too limited from a policy perspective with policies like Opportunity Zones that don’t take structural racism on head on? You actually write a lot in this paper about how from a nuts and bolts perspective, that that limitation will limit the effectiveness of capital investment in disadvantaged communities. How does that play out?

AJILORE: So, you think about what do these communities need? So, you think about grocery stores. You think about community centers. These projects are not profitable. And what the Opportunity Zone focuses on, what it encourages, is putting money into projects that are profitable because you have to hold the investment for 10 years. You’re looking for the highest return. So, 12 percent, 15 percent, 20 percent. Putting money into a grocery store is not profitable, and a lot of times you see community-oriented or co-ops are the ones that actually provide these grocery stores. And so, Opportunity Zones focuses primarily on the projects that make a lot of money. So, first of all, you’re going to have that money. If it does come in, it’s not going to be for these projects.

The other thing is because the way the communities are structured because of these intentional policies, any sort of project is not going to be profitable. And so, money might not even come into it. So, there’s over 8,700 census tracts that are designated as Opportunity Zones, but the money is only going to go to places like L.A., San Francisco, New York, all the quote-unquote hot markets. And so, even when you think about rural communities that are struggling, only 25 percent of the Opportunity Zones designated were rural communities. And so, you think about Native communities, think about Latinx communities in the Southwest: these places are not going to see the money. And that’s just the biggest problem.

VALLAS: And you actually point out that it may not even just be about communities in need not seeing the money that they so sorely need, but there’s actually a risk that capital investment may fund projects that don’t just fail to help existing residents but actually may price them out and lead to displacement.

AJILORE: And so, the biggest one is luxury condominiums because that’s what’s profitable. I mean you see it in cities now. In the absence of Opportunity Zones, a lot of these cities, a lot of people are being priced out even here in Washington D.C. And we see it in a lot of places, so now not only are we going to have gentrification occurring, you’re giving them a tax benefit for gentrification. And that’s the scary part.

VALLAS: There’s a really powerful quote that I want to read from your paper, which sums up a lot of what you’re talking about but which I’m going to ask you to unpack just a little bit further because there’s so much buried in here. You write that, “Capital cannot be the sole solution for distressed communities. The only goal of private capital is to maximize profit, not to uplift struggling communities or to improve the economic outcomes of their residents.” There’s a lot of sort of straightforward about what you write there, but help us understand what you’re arguing there.

AJILORE: So, what I’m arguing there is that in capitalism, money that goes into projects, it’s all about getting the highest return. It’s all about earning the most amount of money. And you see that in a lot of businesses. So, you see where businesses try to cut benefits or try to make sure — Like you think about Uber and Lyft. You know, the big thing in California with AB-5 where they said well, they’re not employees. Because if they’re employees, they have to provide benefits, work schedules, things that cut into profit. And so, businesses are always, you know, wealthy people are always going to try to find ways to maximize their profit. That’s the only thing that they care about. When we think about social welfare, we think about what’s best for individuals. It’s not about profit. It’s about what’s going to make their lives better. How are we going to make their lives materially better? And these are two separate goals and ideals. And so, when you’re creating some sort of economic development program, what you have to balance out is capital comes in, and you want to try to find profit. But then you’re thinking about individuals’ well-being. To this day, I don’t know of any program that’s able to marry both of those. So, if you’re going to have a program that’s going to uplift existing residents, the first thing that needs to happen is that you need to center those existing residents. Programs that are market-based center investors, center capital. And again, capital: only goal is to maximize profit.

VALLAS: What is the status of the Opportunity Zones program at this point? It’s sort of undergoing implementation as we speak?

AJILORE: It’s up and running. People are putting money into funds to invest. Funds are going into these communities, and they’re producing projects. The biggest concern and one of things that a lot of the critiques of it, is that there’s no transparency, and there’s no accountability. So, we don’t know what’s happening. So, a couple weeks ago, there was a article in the New York Times that caused a lot of kerfuffle because it had pointed out some projects that were kind of very much about being maximizing profit. And so, proponents of the Opportunity Zones were saying well, you’re cherry picking these programs or these little projects. But again, one of the things I want to really emphasize in this piece is that it doesn’t matter if we pick out these good projects or bad projects. Fundamentally, the premise is flawed. And because it doesn’t tackle structural racism, it’s never going to work.

VALLAS: Now, you argue — because you don’t just critique the market-based policies. You also offer what you hope to see as a policy agenda for policymakers and elected officials to embrace that is not a market mechanism, that’s not just some amount of private capital being funneled into distressed communities — you argue for intentional and deliberate government policies to remove barriers and support existing residents. What are the kinds of concrete policies that would seek to target structural racism in the ways that you hope to see us do?

AJILORE: So, when we think about distressed communities, one of the biggest reasons why we have them is because of housing policy. And so, over the 20th century, we had redlining, and we had contract leasing programs that put people at a disadvantage when it comes to housing policy. And so, in 1968, we had the Fair Housing Act that was passed that banned redlining, banned residential segregation. But the problem was it was never enforced. And so, there’s tools within the Fair Housing Act to be able to enforce anti-discrimination policy. And so, one of them is the Affirmatively [Fair] Financial Housing tool. And so, that is to make sure that people are able to get mortgages, people are able to be able to see the houses that they want. And so, one of things is that tackles that the biggest thing we need to tackle is housing. And so, we want to have housing equal to everybody no matter who they are, no matter where they’re from.

Another problem is you think about debt loads. It’s very difficult to get ahead, you know, you start a business, go to school, be able to pay housing bills when you have a huge debt. One of problems is that African-Americans and Latinx people face higher interest rates on all forms of debt. So, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is an institution that really tries to cut into credit discrimination. And so, those are the kind of barriers that harm people in these distressed communities. So, if we enforce these things, if we use it tools that we have out there to be able to break down these barriers, whether it’s in the housing market or in credit markets, that’s going to help people thrive, especially in these distressed communities.

VALLAS: And you close with a quote that I want to bring in here because it so powerfully wraps up so much of what you’ve been talking about. You hope for a, “Radical rethink of what economic development means, which in turn, would inform the development of a new framework for creating policies that ensures equitable economic development.” What does that rethink look like? How do we bring about a rethink of that kind of scale?

AJILORE: So, first is to not think about the market mechanism and not say, well, let the market work, and then everything will happen. We have to be intentional about our policies because 100 years ago, this country was intentional about their policies. And we think about the New Deal, and the New Deal did a lot of great things. It really pushed and really helped create the middle class. But it excluded African-Americans, it excluded Latinx people, it excluded Native people. And so, when we think about this radical rethink, it’s like OK, we can use that New Deal framework, but this without the racism. And so, that’s the kind of thing we nned to think about it. So, you think about the FHA, the Federal Housing Authority, loans or the G.I. Bill. You know, it’s like if you want to build up a middle class and you want to build up a middle class that includes everybody, let’s think about doing those programs again. So, just New Deal without the racism: that’s kind of radical rethink as opposed to going to the market mechanism and focusing on that.

VALLAS: New Deal without the racism. It has a nice ring to it. So, Gbenga, in the last few minutes that I have with you, you brought up housing policy and its sort of centrality in a lot of this conversation. There’s been a lot going on and a lot that’s been hotly debated in the housing policy space right now because of a huge move made by the state of California earlier this month in the form of a sweeping set of policies aimed at addressing the state’s sky-high housing costs. Now, you actually happen to be from California, so here I am talking about your home state. The package has been hotly debated, and that debate is going to continue to rage on. But a lot of that debate centers around rent control specifically, which was really at the core of what California has unveiled as its new housing plan. Now, a lot of folks might be hearing rent control and going, yeah! Rent control. That sounds great! Because rents are rising too much, and we need to keep them down to affordable levels. But there really is an active debate not just left versus right, but actually economists on both sides raising real questions about the pros and cons of rent control specifically. So, help us understand first what is it that California is moving forward? What is this big housing package that they’ve now unveiled? And then I’d really love to pick your brain a little bit about rent control?

AJILORE: So, the California plan is basically to try to limit the increase. So, they’re not forcing it to be at a certain level, but they say that you have annual increases of maybe up to five percent at most. And then also to try to make it harder for landlords to evict people. And so, one of the kind of things it’s trying to do is trying to, if you think about the thread the needle, as in we don’t want full-on rent control, but we also understand we have this problem with too-high rents. Now, in a past life, I was a economics professor. And so, in our basic micro principles class, one of the things we always talked about were price floors and price ceilings where you try to change the price from what happens in the market. And I know I spent most of this time criticizing the market mechanism, but as an economist, we do understand markets can work. And when you try to set prices other than what’s in equilibrium, it’s going to cause a lot of problems. So, one of the classic examples that we use is rent control where you say we’re trying to make sure rents are not too high. But the problem is that when you set a price, a rent below market rent, the supply is going to exceed the demand. And then you get the surplus. So, the problem then is that you have a select number of people who are able to get it, and so they are cheaper. But it’s going to be be a lot of people who don’t.

The other problem is that this may end up leading to corruption. So, we think about quote-unquote finder’s fee. You think about people who stay in their homes for longer than they would have or people who kind of pass it down from families to families and to try to get around it. And so, reason why this plan is interesting is because this is not full-on rent control trying to keep it low. It’s more about how do we balance it out? And so, the way to think about this issue is that this is one kind of plan towards it, but there needs to be more to really tackle this issue of higher rents.

VALLAS: And what is your appraisal of California’s approach here? You’re describing it as sort of a not-full-on rent control but a thread the needle approach. Do you, from your vantage point as an economist, and as you noted a former economics professor — people are all having massive PTSD right now thinking about supply and demand curves that they hoped that they wouldn’t have to remember. And sorry for that. We’re inflicting it upon you in this episode — but what is your appraisal of California’s plan? Have they threaded the needle sufficiently, or do you think that there may be unintended consequences here within the housing market?

AJILORE: It’s difficult to answer because you have to look at it in context because it’s not in a vacuum. Because in a vacuum, it would be concerning if this was doing that kind of plan. But one of the things you have to think about is what kind of housing is, first of all, is housing being built? Because the key is you want more housing built. But is it more single-family housing? Is it more apartments? Is it multi-units? And so, what you would hope to see is that in addition to this plan, that there’s some sort of plan tackling zoning laws that try to make more affordable housing, try to make more housing in general, so both affordable and just more in number, just increasing supply.

VALLAS: So, a lot to watch in the coming months as that plan moves forward and as we start to see evidence from what actually takes place as a result. Gbenga, you thought I was going to let you go, but there’s one thing I would be really remiss if I didn’t make you talk about, which is I read your piece for TalkPoverty about your summer going vegetarian with your son and how that took you to Burger King where you tasted the Impossible Burger, the Impossible Whopper. How does it taste?

AJILORE: It’s different from the Whopper. It’s OK. I actually prefer Beyond Burgers. So, one of the places that my son and I go to regularly is Bareburger where they have a whole vegan side of the menu. And so, one thing that I always get is the Beyond Burger. And he’s a big fan of the Teddy which is the Beyond hotdog. And so, I’m actually kind of a fan of vegan options. I remember about 20 years ago, they were starting to have these kind of like vegetarian burgers that were bean-based, and frankly, they were gross.

VALLAS: They were terrible.

AJILORE: And so, now with the more options it’s actually kind of nice. And even going to the supermarket, there’s a lot more options for vegan and vegetarian food that’s pretty good. And so, I’m happy with the trajectory of what’s happening with Beyond Foods and Impossible Foods.

VALLAS: But you point out in your TalkPoverty piece, the thing that hasn’t happened even though we’ve seen the increase in availability is the price is still really out of reach for a lot of folks, which means that you can only afford to make these kinds of healthy eating options if you have a fair amount of money.

AJILORE: Right. And so, hopefully you would see that with more entrants into the market, again more supply. Sorry to bring in that.

VALLAS: [laughs]

AJILORE: But you know, more supply coming in that there’s a lot of places like Nestlé and Tysons who are now trying to say, OK, let’s have some other options. And so, with increased supply and hopefully, and not to sound too conservative, but less regulation, [chuckles] you’d have to be able to have more entrants in the market. So, one of the things that, the reason why I talk about regulation is that there’s a number of companies that are trying to prevent these meatless options being in the meat section. That they’re trying to push for regulation to have them in a separate section, which won’t be good because what want to have is that when you go supermarket and you’re looking for meat chicken, you want to also have other meatless options as a part of that. And so, you want to have more of a free market when it comes to meatless options and plant-based meat alternatives.

VALLAS: Well, I have to say I’m actually looking forward to trying the Impossible Whopper. I haven’t had either the Impossible or the Beyond Burger yet, despite being something of a vegetarian at points myself. Which one is the one that looks like it bleeds?

AJILORE: It’s the impossible.

VALLAS: It is? So it is that one.

AJILORE: So, because sometimes I’ve had an Impossible Burger, and someone says, “How do you want it done?” And it’s kind of weird because it’s like, it’s not meat. So, but you can have it with pink, or you can have it medium-well. It’s strange.

VALLAS: I don’t know how I feel about that because I don’t particularly enjoy meat, and so I don’t know that I want a meat substitute that bleeds. But I guess I’ll have to judge for myself when I finally try it.

I’ve been speaking with Gbenga Ajilore. He’s a senior economist at the Center for American Progress, and his new paper is titled The Harvest Of American Racism: Why Distressed Communities Are Distressed. And we’ve got a link to that paper, as you knew we would, on our nerdy syllabus page. Gbenga, thanks so much for taking the time to come back on the show.

AJILORE: Thank you for having me.

VALLAS: Don’t go away more. Off-Kilter after the break. I’m Rebecca Vallas.

[hip hop music break]

You’re listening to Off-Kilter. I’m Rebecca Vallas. Last but not least this week, who is Eugene Scalia, a.k.a. the son of Scalia? Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Labor who is expected to see a hearing on his confirmation next week. I’m joined by my dear friend Rebecca Cokley, director of CAP’s Disability Justice Initiative who, among many others, has been digging into the labor nominee’s terrifying record when it comes to workers’ rights, consumer protections, and disability issues. Cokes, thanks so much for coming back on the show.

REBECCA COKLEY: Thank you for having me.

VALLAS: So, I’m going to get a few of the biographical details, the kind of boring stuff out of the way so folks have a sense of who this guy is on paper so that you can focus on some of the more fun stuff. And I should say really some of the terrifying stuff. Because his record is incredibly long and incredibly scary. So, a couple of the boring résumé details: Eugene Scalia is a graduate of the University of Chicago School of Law. He’s a partner at a D.C.-based law firm called Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher where he specializes in labor and employment law as well as administrative law. He’s an active member of the Federalist Society, which listeners are probably familiar, is an extremist right-wing legal group. And this is not actually his first nomination to something requiring federal confirmation. He was nominated back in 2001 by President George W. Bush to be Solicitor of Labor, and notably, his nomination was blocked back then because he was viewed as such an extremist when it came to his positions on worker health and worker safety. He did ended up actually getting installed through a recess appointment under W. because he wasn’t able to get it through the Senate. And then he ended up returning to his law firm at the beginning of 2003. The way the AFL-CIO has put it is that, “Scalia has spent a lifetime attacking the rights and dignity of working people, eroding labor rights, unraveling consumer protections, endangering Americans’ retirement security, and even blaming workers for their own deaths.” There’s a lot in there, and that’s why I brought you in to help shed some light on some of these cases and some of these positions that the Son of Scalia has taken over his career. So, Cokes, what do we know about this guy beyond sort of who he is on paper?

COKLEY: You know, I actually think calling him the Son of Scalia is inaccurate. I personally love referring to him as the Spawn of Scalia.

VALLAS: [laughs]

COKLEY: Because if we are, in fact, talking about the swamp, this gentle-, this creature dragged himself out of the swamp.

VALLAS: All right. So, not pulling any punches there, unsurprisingly.

COKLEY: You know and I think we really have to because, as you highlighted sort of the top line issues around him, there’s a certain sort of like masochistic joy with which he takes dismantling workplace protections, civil rights protections. It’s not, I mean, it is almost campy, the level of delight that he takes in blaming the woman who was killed by the whale at SeaWorld for her death, as opposed to the lack of workplace protections that should’ve been provided by the park.

VALLAS: And he was actually the lawyer in that case.

COKLEY: He was, in fact, the lawyer in that case. You know, when it comes to workplace safety, we know from the Office of Safety and Health Administration that roughly 2.8 million people a year either acquire illnesses or disabilities as a result of their jobs. And that number seems extremely high, but it was even higher before there was an Office of Safety and Health Act. You know, back in the day, they were talking about 11 per 100 workers in 1972 reported workplace injuries and illnesses to 2009, where only 3.6 per one hundred.

VALLAS: Do you mean like protections that help workers be safe, work?

COKLEY: Exactly. You know, things such as his record on health and safety is just completely abysmal. He’s been on the record saying that the government does not have a responsibility or even a primary role in ensuring that workplaces are safe. He made the argument that people who need to wear Hazmat suits or other protective equipment should have to provide those themselves, that it’s not the employer’s requirement to, in fact, provide those. Even moving forward, the development of ergonomic standards, the types of things that are set up in your workplace to prevent you from having repetitive injuries, he referred to them as quackery and represented the U.S. Chamber in the fight against the ergonomics rule. You know, he doesn’t believe that technology should be used to make it easier for workers to get jobs and keep those jobs safely. Which is just sort of beyond ridiculous.

Getting into the disability cases specifically —

VALLAS: Yeah, and this is the stuff that’s gotten a lot less attention, so I really want to hear what you’ve got to say here.

COKLEY: There’s a couple of different things. I mean we’re approaching the 30th anniversary of the ADA. We’ve already had to fix the FDA once following the Sutton trilogy of cases that tied into the regarded as provision of the ADA definition. And the fact that Scalia could end up as Secretary of Labor, where Labor as an agency plays such a pivotal role around disability employment, around workplace safety, around reasonable accommodations, and disability policy in general is terrifying to me. His belief that employees should not have access to accommodations, they should just work longer and harder versus being able to have specific software that might read to somebody who’s blind, be able to have the use of a sign language interpreter. You know, it obviously varies depending on the disability that a person has. But Scalia has made it more than evident, particularly in his ongoing defense of UPS, that accommodations should be determined solely by the employer if they want to. And that they are, in fact, generous to be able to do so.

I think the UPS case where he argued that PTSD, herniated discs, depression, were they really disabilities are not? Even though there was ample documentation from these employers in that particular case. But he was able to, this case in particular around the individuals with multiple disabilities that were given the ability to sue as a class, Scalia was able to get the certification for their class action overturned and was quoted as saying that he was proud to have vacated the largest ADA class action lawsuit ever certified. And it just keeps going from there, you know.

And I think the case that everybody in the community is really talking about is the one of the woman with IBS.

VALLAS: This one gets really personal for me as someone who lives with a chronic illness that impacts my digestive system. When you shared this with me, I, I, you could’ve knocked me over with a feather. What happened there?

COKLEY: In the case with the woman with IBS, she had requested telework. She had tried multiple types of working schedules. And very early on in her career was seen as an extremely productive employee, had received multiple awards, multiple recognitions for her work. And what ended up happening was as her condition progressed, it became harder and harder for her to be in the workplace. Her condition became less predictable, which is really common for people with chronic illnesses. And so, she worked for Ford Motor Company, and she had requested to telework, which the company denied. She requested telework four days a week. Scalia instead highlighted that Ford had offered to move her cubicle closer to the bathroom to accommodate her, which she rejected. And then he was very irate that she had declined to consider — now this is where it gets outrageous — self-help steps such as using Depends — a product specifically designed for incontinence — and bringing multiple changes of clothes to the workplace. You know, ultimate the argument relied upon saying that she rejected an accommodation and that she rejected Ford’s offer of a transfer to another position.

But the fact that he told her that he thought it was reasonable that she should have to continue to relieve herself in front of her co-workers while wearing a diaper?

VALLAS: And then bring a change of to deal with it afterwards.

COKLEY: And then bring a change with it to deal with it afterwards. Is just beyond the pale. It’s just outrageous. And I think as chronic illnesses become more common conversation in mainstream society, and specifically, the stigma around having to do — I mean we in the disability community talk about it frequently. And shout out to Alice Wong and others — the stigma of having to do pee math or poop math. And what that means for somebody —

VALLAS: Explain that for anyone who doesn’t know that term.

COKLEY: Pee math or poop math is the math that you have to do if you’re a person that requires assistance with those functions — whether it be possibly using a catheter, wearing something like Depends, having personal assistance services help you use the bathroom — that you may have to do every morning to think about how you organize your day in such a way that you can use the bathroom when you know that you fundamentally need to, on a regular basis on a safe basis. And for a lot of folks, I have many, many friends who, because of how hard it is to get the services that they need, they cheat the pee math or the poop math. Like they might skip. They might not use the bathroom as much as they need to in order to be healthy.

VALLAS: Literally holding it in ways that can have adverse health effects because they don’t have any other option.

COKLEY: Definitely, I mean you see, I think the most common place that you can think about this is on the airlines where airplanes still don’t have wheelchair-accessible restrooms. And for so many folks who have a job that requires some travel or hey, they want to travel, they want to go to Disneyland with their kids, they want to do something. And the fact that they actually have to put their health on the line to be able to fulfill the essential functions in this case of a job, but any other type of thing that does not have an accessible restroom or they may not have the personal care attendants that they need to be able to go to the bathroom when they need to. You know, and to see Scalia’s challenge of this in such a dehumanizing way and to think about the fact that this person could be in charge of an agency that includes Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act, which is the requirements around federal contractors hiring people with disabilities. That includes the Office of Disability Employment Policy, which is the office where I got my start as part of their Youth Advisory Committee years ago. And the Office of Safety and Health Administration.

I almost imagine a more sick and demented version of Scrooge McDuck going into a legislative money bin and doing the backstroke because he can destroy these very protections that he’s been adamant that he’s wanted to destroy since the beginning.

VALLAS: And the Economic Policy Institute, our friends over there, uncovered a Bloomberg Businessweek profile on Scalia some time ago that really sums this up pretty well. That profile read Suing The government? Call Scalia. So I think we know where this guy stands in particularly terrifying ways. We expect him nonetheless to be confirmed, is that right, Cokes? Is there anything that folks should be aware of that they can do to take action to perhaps lessen that likelihood?

COKLEY: Our colleagues over at NELP, the National Employment Law Project, they have a petition on their website. And I would say definitely watch the hearing. The hearing is going to be a very important one to watch. It’s not going to be an easy one to watch, I don’t suspect. We have heard from multiple Hill offices that are really interested in raising up these disability cases because of how egregious and just how slimy they are, to go back to the swamp metaphor. And I don’t see…. [sighs] I wish I could see a strategy around it or through it or beyond it, and I really don’t see one.

VALLAS: Well, thank you for coming in scaring the pants off of me is as you often do, Cokes. But just there’s so much in here that hasn’t gotten nearly enough attention about his record when it comes to disability and health in particular. So, if the Son of Scalia ends up being confirmed, I guess a lot of us can expect to spend our work lives sitting in diapers. And that’s maybe the note to end on if you remember nothing else about this man.

Rebecca Cokley is the director of Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress and has spent some time in the past couple of weeks digging into the Son of Scalia, or should I say the Spawn of Scalia’s, terrifying record when it comes to workers’ safety, workers’ health, consumer protections, and so much more. And we’ll have a number of links on our nerdy syllabus page where you can dig in more to that terrifying record. Cokes, thanks so much for taking the time to come back on the show even if you were terrifying.

COKLEY: Thank you so much.

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 by Will Urquhart and David Ballard. Find us on Facebook and Twitter @offkiltershow, and you can find us on the airwaves on the Progressive Voices Network and the We Act Radio Network or anytime as a podcast on iTunes. See you next week.

♪ I want freedom (freedom)

Freedom (freedom)

Now, I don’t know where it’s at

But it’s calling me back

I feel my spirit is revealing,

And now we just trynta get freedom (freedom)

What we talkin’ bout…. ♪