A Tenuous Balance: The Politics of Peace and Justice in a State of War
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Many progressives hoped for a new national direction under a Democrat-controlled Congress. For Quakers and other pacifists, the best shift would mean moving toward nonviolence, as well as restoring civil liberties, addressing global climate change, and making socially just investments in majorities over wealthy minorities.
Although this Congress has worked more and passed more substantive measures than its predecessors, it has fewer laws to show for it. The political terrain is rugged: narrow majorities which can rarely overcome ready vetoes, an Administration wedded to secrecy and defiance of subpoenas; ever-threatening charges of "soft on terrorism," and a Senate opposition that threatens to filibuster more often than any other in history.
As backdrop, a conservative Supreme Court shows little support for affirmative action, campaign finance restriction, women's reproductive rights, journalistic free speech, or health and labor protections.
Recognizing a rough Congressional work-in-progress, how are our goals faring?
War
Where the House has sometimes overwhelmingly passed nonbinding resolutions toward ending the Iraq war, the Senate has been stymied by opposition filibuster threats. A House resolution opposed permanent bases in Iraq. One important bipartisan resolution - pro-hibiting an attack on Iran without Congressional approval - failed.
The President regularly repeats, in any case, that he will not be bound by the will of Congress.
Farther from the public eye, the Friends Committee on National Legislation again successfully pushed Congress to stop the Administration's efforts to fund a new generation of nuclear "Reliable Replacement Warheads" and helped draft binding legislative language to enhance US diplomacy in Central and East Africa.
Investigations of defense contractors working in Iraq and Afghanistan are now underway, due to the Blackwater debacle. This could bring about real reforms, long overdue, to the enormous and largely unscrutinized industry of private, US-funded paramilitaries.
Congress has also been demanding greater accountability from the nation's intelligence agencies, for instance requiring the Department of Defense (for the first time) to create a database of its intelligence contracts.
Civil Liberties
Since 2001, the Executive has succeeded in expanding its powers with little interference from Congress. The President used legislative Signing Statements to challenge an unprecedented 1100 legislative measures and can now declare martial law in disasters or "any other condition," thanks to new exemptions to Posse Comitatus - the doctrine that bars the military from engaging in domestic law enforcement. The Senate defense spending bill rescinded this new power.
National security agencies use warrantless wiretaps, deny habeas corpus rights, conduct secret renditions and secret warrantless surveillance of citizens. The Department of Homeland Security planned to share data from spy satellites with domestic police but was stopped by Congress, at least temporarily.
Some of these activities were legalized by Congress, arguably relinquishing its powers through, for example, the Military Commission Act, expansion of the PATRIOT Act, and the hastily passed President's Protect America Act. This act, passed in the summer of 2007, authorizes unconstitutional warrantless wiretaps and expands the scope to any "persons" who are "reasonably believed" to be linked to overseas terrorists - without judicial oversight. The Protect America Act expires after six months, so activists can still urge Congressmembers to refuse to renew it.
The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division shifted prosecutions from racial and sex bias cases to cases against religious discrimination; replaced experienced litigators with "holy hires" (young graduates from fundamentalist law schools) and party activists, and adjudicated far fewer voting plan cases that deal with the dilution of black voter strength.
Many measures that are part of the PATRIOT Act are being brought to court. National Security Letters, which require organizations to secretly provide personal information about clients and customers without a warrant, were recently found unconstitutional, as they erode First Amendment rights and the constitutional separation of powers. A separate court found the PATRIOT Act's surveillance and search provisions in breach of the Fourth Amendment (not showing "probable cause") and separation of powers. Another court struck down an Executive Order that could prevent access to Presidential papers indefinitely as "an impermissible exercise of executive power."
The State Department's "terrorist watchlist," which criminalizes any "material support" to those listed, is being challenged in court as circumventing due process by placing groups on the list without specific charges and a hearing.
Asserting the Administration's weak compliance with a Supreme Court ruling against torture, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture is promoting legislation that reasserts the Geneva Convention assurance of humane treatment for all prisoners, prohibits the use of coerced testimony, and holds violators accountable.
A Senate bill restoring habeas corpus failed under a filibuster threat.
Energy
Major energy legislation is stalled by the conflicting interests of big players. At issue are corporate average fuel efficiency (CAFÉ) standards, renewable energy mandates for utilities, paring back large tax breaks for Big Oil, and investments in biofuels and nuclear power.
The UN is wary of the push for agribusiness-backed corn ethanol, pointing out its small net clean energy gain. Corn diversion is already raising food prices worldwide; it also brings long-term threats of deforestation and habitat destruction.
Nuclear power interests won a Senate bill change, expanding loan guarantees to reinsure their planned plants - which will lure Wall Street investors. House subsidies did not favor the nuclear industry.
Social Investments and Accountability
Congress passed spending bills that begin to shift national resources in more just directions, increasing funds for poor and working people, including a boost to the minimum wage. New funds include expansion of the State Child Health Insurance Program to millions more low-income kids (at press time, President Bush had vetoed this expansion and the House was preparing to vote on an override); national family planning programs (accompanied by the ineffectual Abstinence-only Education Program); child tax-credit extension to low-income families; and increased college grants for low-income students.
A new farm bill increases food stamp and food bank funds, first-ever subsidies for fruit and vegetable crops, but also continued subsidies to agribusiness crops.
The new Congress revived its oversight responsibilities, revealing waste, mismanagement, potential illegalities, and the thwarting of agency missions. As a result, it introduced remedial legislation.
The common denominator found among responsible protective agencies - FDA, EPA, CPSC, MSHA, OSHA, USDA, NRC - are instructions from a powerful White House unit, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, run by former industry lobbyists. Under this influence, agencies allowed voluntary compliance with mandatory rules, required less company reporting, dealt out lenient and delayed penalties, and suffered staff cuts preventing adequate inspections.
To remedy agencies' failures, Congress has given them more funds and staff positions, and stricter performance mandates. For example, the House is attempting to reverse current policy and allow overseas health clinics to receive US family planning funds even if they use their own funds to provide legal abortion services; current policy has led to clinic closures.
Federal scientists will have protection to report findings unhindered by political interference in reporting on certain issues that might challenge Administration positions on issues such as stem cell research, tobacco effects, abstinence-only sex education, and emergency contraception.
The Continuing Agenda
Despite revelations about the abuse of executive power, the Administration continues to expand the national security system and its momentum toward war, with Iraq spending to reach $800 billion by the end of 2008, while priming presumed allies with tens of billions to militarize complex problems in the Middle East, and quadrupling weapons sales to authoritarian states like Pakistan and Sudan.
Meanwhile, the conditions for war spread, as the government neglects human rights abuses, global climate change, the accelerating displacement of peoples, and growing health, education, and wealth gaps.
What will tip the balance toward peace and justice? The simple answer is to speak truth to power, to the press, and to the public, in strong voices through every medium and venue, now and in 2008.
