The Progressive Wing

Sen. Bernie Sanders announced he is running for president of the United States and called on Americans from all over the nation to join him in building a massive grassroots movement to win the Democratic primary, defeat Donald Trump, and enact an agenda that serves all people, not just the wealthy few.

Nina absolutely bought the fire!

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‘Historic’: House Approves War Powers Resolution to End US Complicity in Yemen

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a War Powers Resolution that would require President Trump to end U.S. military support for the ongoing Saudi-led war in Yemen.

The bill, H.J. Res. 37 introduced by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), passed in a 248-177 vote—mostly along party lines in the Democratic-controlled House—and will now head to the Senate where a version of the resolution last year, despite Republican control, passed in historic fashion. Read the full roll call here.

“Today is historic,” declared Khanna in statement. “This is the culmination of several years of legislative efforts to end our involvement in the Saudi war in Yemen. I’m encouraged by the direction people are pushing our party to take on foreign policy, promoting restraint and human rights and with the sense they want Congress to play a much larger role.”

Paul Kawika Martin, senior director for policy and political affairs at Peace Action, also celebrated the vote and characterized it, like the Senate vote last year, as historic.

“Building on last year’s Senate vote, the newly empowered House of Representatives just made history by voting to end U.S. support for the war in Yemen, marking the first time the House has successfully invoked the War Powers Act to direct the withdrawal of U.S. forces from an unauthorized war,” Martin said.

“Not only does this vote bolster hopes for a quicker end to the war and the resulting humanitarian crisis,” he added, “it also signals a timely resurgence in congressional oversight on war. The Senate will have to vote again to send this particular bill to the president’s desk, which it should do without delay, but Congress has now made its opposition to U.S. military involvement in Yemen crystal clear.”

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Diane Randall, executive secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), also hailed the vote and gave credit to the tireless work of campaigners.

“Today’s vote affirms the power of grassroots, pro-peace advocacy to turn the tide against war in Congress,” said Randall. “Ending the war that has led to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis is something we can achieve. Today’s vote demonstrates a bipartisan desire to do so.”

Thank you to all of the Win Without War activists who called, petitioned, and wrote to end U.S. involvement in the brutal and unconscionable war in #Yemen. We are honored to stand with you and ready for the next steps. https://t.co/IfCCzLYKot

— Win Without War (@WinWithoutWar) February 13, 2019

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Bernie Sanders Is About as Radical on Tax Policy as Teddy Roosevelt

he really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes.”

That’s what Teddy Roosevelt proposed in his agenda-setting “New Nationalism” speech from 1910, when he prodded the United States toward a fuller embrace of progressive reform. As a former president who was preparing to again bid for the position, Roosevelt opened a conversation about tax policy in order to frame a broader debate about at least some of the values that should guide American progress.

At the heart of Roosevelt’s agenda was a specific form of taxation. While progressive taxation in a general sense was desirable and necessary, Roosevelt was particularly enthusiastic about “another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective—a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.”

Teddy Roosevelt, it should be noted, was a Republican who possessed considerable wealth of his own. He was a flawed figure who let down the progressive cause at many turns and never matched the courageous domestic and foreign policy vision advanced by his rival for leadership of the progressive movement, Wisconsin Senator Robert M. La Follette. But Roosevelt recognized that taxing inherited wealth not merely to collect revenues but to preserve and extend democracy.

“The absence of effective state, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power,” he explained. “The prime need to is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise.”

Roosevelt’s critics may have characterized him as a radical, but he was never as radical (or as right) as La Follette. Roosevelt was, however, conscious of the threats posed to the American experiment by the rapid consolidation wealth and power. And he knew that progressive taxation could be used to address those threats.

Bernie Sanders knows this, as well. That’s why Sanders is proposing a progressive estate tax on the fortunes of the top 0.2 percent of Americans. The senator from Vermont’s newly introduced “For the 99.8% Act” would collect $2.2 trillion from 588 billionaires.

“At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, when the three richest Americans own more wealth than 160 million Americans, it is literally beyond belief that the Republican leadership wants to provide hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the top 0.2 percent,” argues Sanders. “Our bill does what the American people want by substantially increasing the estate tax on the wealthiest families in this country and dramatically reducing wealth inequality. From a moral, economic, and political perspective our nation will not thrive when so few have so much and so many have so little.”

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