A HEARTBREAKING WEEK: I may have brought on this week’s Al Franken-based heartbreak by asking friends and family over the last few weeks which celebrities we would be most devastated to find out were serial sexual harassers. Popular answers included Lin Manuel Miranda, Barack Obama, Tom Hanks, Stephen Colbert, etc. But when I read Leann Tweeden’s account of being forcibly kissed by Franken during a skit rehearsal on a USO tour in 2006, and when I saw the horrific and puerile and humiliating photo of him reaching for her breasts while she was sleeping, I realized Franken was the politician at the top of my Please Don’t Be Awful list -- and the article was devastating. Franken is, in my view, one of the best senators we have: driven by the right intentions, smart, dogged, and effective. And seemingly feminist! He is great for women, having championed actual legislation that is actually useful for women (the ACA being the most important)! His writing is hilarious and clear and inspiring. And yet, not long ago, he intentionally humiliated a woman by reducing her to the sexual object of his “humor.” This is the sort of “humor” that men use constantly, and women are forced to laugh along or be thought of as a prude or a killjoy. I can’t count the number of times in my life I have been cast as a “feminazi” for calling out a joke like this -- or, just as frequently, the times I have stayed silent out of fear of being so labeled. I look at that photo and am filled with the familiar anger that we are expected to put up with being reduced to sex objects just to be in on the joke.
And yet. And yet. I am not sure what to do about Franken. I’m not sure he should be forced to resign. Part of my hesitation is surely partisan and political: I like Franken’s politics, and I want him to remain the effective senator he is. Would the answer be much clearer and simpler if he was a rabid right-winger who could be relied on to vote against the interests of women time and time again? Probably! But I’m not sure that’s the end of the story: That I may feel differently about a different politician’s fate doesn’t necessarily mean I am a hypocrite. Or maybe it does -- but it doesn’t make the answer to the resignation question automatically clear.
It seems clear to me that Franken is not the same as Trump and Roy Moore, and Harvey Weinstein. Those men are all predators. They have serially and repeatedly used whatever power they have to prey on women less powerful and/or whose livelihoods hang in their control. Franken, on the other hand, is at heart a prankster whose retrogressive sense of humor puts him in the company of, probably, all male comics, especially of the 1970s/80s era. He thought the photo would be funny, because he failed to consider Ms. Tweeden’s humiliation, meaning that he failed to take her full humanity into account. That’s bad. It’s really bad. But he is not a predator. Should “not a predator” be the bar we set for senators? I’m not sure. Still, the distinction seems, to me, important. It is not hypocritical to think Trump/Moore/Weinstein should be treated differently than Franken, because they are different. Instead of using his power to repeatedly prey on women, Franken is using what power he has to, as far as I can tell, fight for women’s rights and empower them politically.
The bottom line is that I really don’t know what should happen to Franken, even after spewing all these words. I appreciate his apology, which seems genuine and which Ms. Tweeden has accepted (it is notable that she has not called on him to resign). From reading his book, I get the sense (I hope?) that this has been a difficult week for him and that he is reevaluating his behavior. I wish I could link to other thoughtful things I’ve read on this but I haven’t seen much (I’m sure they exist and I have just missed them). I’d certainly be interested in hearing your thoughts!
PS. This post by Masha Gessen presents a far more cogent (and concise) analysis of this stuff. Read it!
WHERE WE STAND ON GOP TAX CUTS: A lot happened this week in the GOP’s efforts to effect a massive transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthiest individuals and corporations. Here’s a synopsis in disjointed form:
- The House voted on party lines to approve its millionaire’s tax cut this week. Here’s a good primer on what’s in it (though I quibble with the notion that reducing the number of brackets “simplifies” the tax code. The brackets have nothing to do with what makes taxes complicated.). One fun thing the House version includes is a special hammer to those quintessential plutocratic fat cats: grad students. It does this by taxing the tuition waivers schools provide to grad students (and some undergrads, especially residential advisors). So if a grad student is making $30,000 in income but getting a tuition waiver valued at $50,000, she would pay taxes on $80,000 of income. On the other hand, Ivanka won’t have to suffer the indignity of paying any tax on the hundreds of millions of dollars she will inherit at the end of her garbage father’s life. So that’s a plus. (The House bill also eliminates the deduction for the interest on college loans.)
- Now the Senate takes up its own version, which has a few changes, the most important of which is to finagle the numbers so that the math purports to conform to the budget reconciliation (i.e., add “only” $1.5 trillion to the deficit over the 10 year window, and $0 after 10 years). More on that below. But the bottom line is that, like the House version, the Senate bill overwhelmingly benefits the rich -- and harms less well-off Americans, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities finds: “Specifically, the bill boosts the average after-tax income of households with more than $1 million of income by about twice as much as most low- and middle-income groups, giving tax cuts to millionaires that average more than $48,000 apiece in 2027. At the same time, it raises taxes on 19.4 million households with incomes below $200,000 and leaves another 53.7 million households with virtually no tax change — which means that about 40 percent of households below $200,000 would see either no meaningful tax cut or a tax increase.”
- The most newsworthy difference is the Senate has decided to repeal Obamacare’s individual mandate. They want to do this because, with fewer people getting health insurance (because some will choose to go without it and others will be priced out with premium increases), the government will not have to pay as many subsidies, and will thus save money (money that can then be shoveled back into a tax cut for the rich). “The Congressional Budget Office currently estimates that eliminating Obamacare’s individual mandate will cause 13 million more people to become uninsured, and save the government $338 billion over 10 years.” The CBO also estimates that eliminating the mandate would drive premiums up an additional 10% over baseline. So the middle- and upper-middle-class families who do not qualify for government subsidies for their health care will be hit the hardest. Given that the CBPP estimates that the average family earning between $50,000 and $75,000 would save only about $750 on their taxes under the GOP plan, those savings would be all but wiped out by health insurance premium increases. You guys, this is simply insane.
- So, how does the Senate make the numbers work -- so that, on paper, the tax cuts do not explode the deficit past the 10-year window? Chait explains: “Their solution to this problem is to have all the individual tax cuts in their bill expire suddenly after 2025, while the corporate tax cuts — and the increase in individual income taxes — are permanent. On paper, they have passed a gigantic tax increase on most Americans after 2025. But Republicans can say it won’t take effect because Congress will vote to extend the tax cuts then. They are using a hypothetical future vote to get around the deficit neutrality requirement.” This is deeply cynical: Use 50 votes to get tax cuts for the rich and well-connected, and then demand the other party cooperate to prevent a tax hike on the rest of us in the future. “They are using a 50-vote bill to pass the things Republicans care about, and setting up other, 60-vote bills to fix them.” In other words, the GOP is depending on Democrats to defuse the time bombs they themselves have set.
- Oh and there’s this: The CBO warns that the tax cuts could trigger a $25 billion cut to Medicare. “It all comes down to the “pay-as-you-go,” or PAYGO, rule — a 2010 law that says all passed legislation cannot collectively increase the estimated national debt. In other words, if Republicans want to pass a tax cut, they have to pay for it with mandatory spending cuts — or, inversely, if Congress boosts funding for entitlement programs, it has to increase taxes. . . . There are ways Congress can get around this — namely by passing a law that wipes the scorecard clean for the year. But the politics of Republicans voting to undermine a deficit-management law won’t be easy.”
- Passage in the Senate will be tricky, as senators like Susan Collins and Bob Corker have intimated reluctance to vote for a bill that adds to the deficit and/or revokes the individual mandate and raises premiums. And also because it is not generous enough to rich business owners. Wait, what? Yep, Senator Ron Johnson objects that the bill is not a sweet enough deal for pass-through income: “I just have in my heart a real affinity for these owner-operated pass-throughs,” he said. Remember that the bill singles out these types of businesses (LLCs, etc) for a low rate that could allow wealthy individuals to simply reclassify themselves as pass-through entities and evade individual income taxes rates altogether. Johnson wants to lower those rates even more; since that would cost far more, Johnson says he wishes the budget had set the deficit limit at $2 or $3 trillion, rather than a measly $1.5 trillion. Yes -- the same senator who objected to Obama’s $1 trillion stimulus package to get us out of the greatest recession since the Great Depression because it added to the debt; the same senator who objected to Obama’s proposed budget because it would “increase the deficit by $128 billion [with a b]”; the same senator who squawked just last year that “the most significant threat to our national security is our debt,” calling it a “looming crisis” that “hangs over my evaluation of every other problem America must confront” -- that same senator now shrugs at the notion of a TWO OR THREE TRILLION DOLLAR DEFICIT in the name of cutting taxes on businesses. Jesus these people.
- Dylan Matthews lays out a variety of options the GOP could have used to cut everyone’s taxes, or to cut the corporate tax rate, all while complying with the Senate rules and not raising middle class taxes and imperiling health insurance for millions. His article is worth a read: This stuff is really not that hard! But they have instead chosen to prioritize moving quickly and in secret and rewarding their donor base above all else.
Endorsements:
- From my previous endorsements, you can imagine how devastated I was (and am) by the Franken news. So on Thursday evening I watched Jerry Seinfeld’s new stand-up show on Netflix, “Jerry Before Seinfeld.” I am specifically endorsing the first 5 minutes, which entail a lengthy grammar-based bit. And we all know grammar jokes are to political grief what a pint of Ben & Jerry’s is to heartbreak.
- Brian Buetler: “We are well-past the point at which it’s safe to say the Trump campaign did indeed collude with the Russians.”
- This exchange between Sherrod Brown and Orrin Hatch about the GOP’s tax cut for the rich. That Hatch has no actual answer other than to literally protest too much is revealing. (P.S. Sherrod Brown is definitely on my Please God Don’t Be An Asshole list, for sure, especially because I love his relationship with wife Connie Shultz.)
- This NYT deep dive on the disintegration of the New York City subway system. Every single sentence is enraging. It’s a must-read (especially for my New York readers).
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