WA-08: Burner releases economic agenda

Poor Dave Reichert.

You almost have to feel sorry for the guy. First, Darcy Burner single-handedly changed the national framing around the Iraq debate by releasing the Responsible Plan to end the war. Before her, the debate was a "leave or stay" debate. Now it's a "leave responsibly or irresponsibly" debate.

(Side note: the latest evidence in how her action will probably help a dozen or so other house challengers get elected comes in the form of Rabbi Dennis Shulman (NJ-05) and his response to the DailyKos "Orange to Blue" program:

I oppose residual forces in Iraq – I support a rapid and responsible withdrawal under the guidance of military leaders tasked with structuring just that, the most rapid & responsible withdrawal of all American forces.

That's twice in a single sentence he echoes Darcy's framing of the issue. Note, too, how the framing has evolved beyond simply a responsible end to a "rapid and responsible" end, an even stronger framing. No wonder the right-wing hates evolution!)

As if that weren't enough to put Hairspray Dave on the ropes, now Darcy has released an equally thoughtful and cogent economic agenda designed to Put Middle Class Families First. This is a plan that seeks to answer the question of how we fix U.S. economic policy in ways that encourage and support the growth of the middle class.

As too many of us have become aware of first-hand, the "trickle down" mindset created by Ronald Reagan and pursued with a relentless lack of mercy by George Bush has done nothing but create misery and hardship for those of us who, not to put too fine a point on it, aren't rich.

It's class warfare. Countless Republican policy initiatives of the past 28 years have, as their underlying goal, to shift the costs of social infrastructure and services onto the backs of working Americans. Why? So their friends in big business don't have to pay for it, or so they can claim to be doing Americans a favor by cutting their taxes.

They never mention, of course, what people are going to lose out on because of that. And every time, it gets just a little bit harder for working Americans to afford their children's education, their mortgages, their health care, their food and fuel.

This should be obvious to any policy maker with a basic high-school grasp of economics. It strikes me as a shameful failing of our policy makers that it now takes an unelected candidate for the U.S. House to say what should have been said long ago: These policies are killing the middle class, they have to be fixed, and here's how to do it.

All I can say is God Bless Darcy Burner for having the intelligence and the outright moxie to do it.

First the Responsible Plan, and now the Putting Middle Class Families First plan. I look forward to seeing Darcy's newest plan shapes the national dialogue on economic issues and the middle class.

Ask yourself this: when was the last time Dave Reichert did anything which changed the way the nation thinks about any issue? That's right, never. No wonder Dave Reichert was rated less influential in his House seat than the non-voting House member from Guam. And now, once again, Darcy Burner has shown that he is also less influential than his unelected challenger.

You almost have to feel sorry for the guy.

Almost.