3689 - Senate Grills Trump Nominees; How Democrats Embraced Neoliberalism w/ Robert Kuttner

Summary

The Majority Report with Sam Seder — Episode 3689

Date: July 16, 2026
Host: Emma Vigeland (in for Sam Seder)
Main Guest: Robert Kuttner, co-founder/co-editor of The American Prospect; author of Notes for Next Time: Surviving Tyranny, Redeeming America
Major Segments: Senate Grills Trump Nominees; Democratic Embrace of Neoliberalism; House Vote on Israel Military Aid; Robert Kuttner Interview

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into two main political themes: the ongoing degradation of U.S. democratic institutions under Trump—including an intense Senate grilling of Trump’s latest nominees—and the Democratic Party’s historic and evolving embrace of neoliberalism. The latter is explored in a long-form interview with political economist and journalist Robert Kuttner. The episode also covers breaking news from Congress, including a significant (though unsuccessful) House Democratic revolt against military aid to Israel.

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Key Stories & Insights

1. Senate Grills Trump Intelligence Nominee (00:00–19:17)

Situation Recap

• Trump’s latest pick for Director of National Intelligence, Jay Clayton, appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
• Emma Vigeland contextualizes Clayton's nomination, noting he is considered “less controversial” than his predecessor, Tulsi Gabbard, but comes from a corporate law background with little national security experience.

Main Exchange: Ossoff vs. Clayton

• Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) repeatedly presses Clayton to honestly answer, “Who won the 2020 election?”
• Clayton dodges, refusing direct answers, instead giving evasive and circular responses.

Notable Exchange & Quote:

• (07:57) Jon Ossoff: “This is a job interview. We've established that you have an obligation to be honest and forthright with the committee. Who won the 2020 election?”
• (08:14) Jay Clayton (via Sam as voice): “Like I said, I'm not, I'm not going to get into that with you.”
• (09:11) Ossoff: “You refuse to answer a basic question about who won a presidential election, but you ask to lead America's intelligence community. Isn't it humiliating?”

Why It Matters

• The exchange highlights a disturbing litmus test for loyalty to Trump over basic democratic principles among his nominees.
• Emma Vigeland (10:04): “It’s just a simple test of your ability to not be a loyalist to Donald Trump and do your job faithfully. The problem is that you're literally being selected with that being the number one job requirement.”

Further Fallout

• Ossoff questions Clayton on his knowledge of Tulsi Gabbard’s presence at a controversial FBI raid on a Georgia election office, suggesting the DNI job is being weaponized for domestic electoral interference.
• Clayton’s evasiveness is repeatedly called out as a sign of political and professional unfitness.

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2. House Democrats' Major Shift on Israel Military Aid (19:17–29:54)

House Vote Recap

• Context: Amendment put forward by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) to block $3.3B in State Department aid to Israel.
• Vote: 103 Democrats (almost half the caucus) voted with Massie; only one Republican voted for (Massie himself); amendment failed 104–314.
• Significance: Just 37 Democrats voted this way two years ago—a dramatic shift reflecting party base pressure.

Notable Developments

• Unexpected Yes Votes: High-profile Democrats including Nancy Pelosi, Catherine Clark (House Minority Whip), and even some previously hawkish figures.
• Quote:
  Emma Vigeland (22:46): “Just yesterday, Nancy Pelosi voted against $3 billion in arms to Israel. There’s never been a more appropriate use of ‘that is Grandma.’...She can see where the winds are blowing.”

Polls & Public Pressure

• According to a new Washington Post/Ipsos poll:
  • 74% of Democrats want to reduce or end military support to Israel.
  • 40% want to end it entirely.
• Emma (26:59): “Within Democratic voters or Democratic-leaning voters, that is the consensus opinion at this point.”

Why It Matters

• The vote marks a historic turning point for mainstream Democratic opposition to unqualified military support for Israel, even as party leadership remains split.

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3. Interview: Robert Kuttner on Democrats, Neoliberalism, and Losing the Working Class (32:20–79:05)

Introduction

• Sam Seder interviews Robert Kuttner about his memoir and the broader historical trajectory of the Democratic Party from New Deal populism to corporate neoliberalism.

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Highlights by Topic

I. The New Deal Social Contract and Its Loss (34:48–39:01)

• Kuttner grew up directly benefiting from New Deal institutions (VA hospital, Social Security, public housing).
• Kuttner: “I was a New Dealer in my bones before I'd ever heard of FDR, because my lived experience was that of a package of things that helped my family stay in the lower middle class.”

II. Three-Act Tragedy: How Democrats Lost Their Way (40:59–54:51)

• Act 1: LBJ’s failure—Vietnam splits the coalition.
• Act 2: Carter wins after Watergate but governs as a conservative process liberal, pivots to deregulation and supply-side economics.
• Act 3: Clinton cements neoliberal direction, hiring Wall Street figures (Robert Rubin, Larry Summers), embraces free trade and weakens the New Deal foundation.
• Obama “bungled the moment history handed him to be Roosevelt yet again” by staffing up with the very architects of the 2008 crash.

Quote:
Kuttner (44:44): “Neoliberalism did not improve the rate of economic growth. It just made the rich richer and everybody else worse off.”

III. How the Narrative Turned—Tax Revolts and Prop 13 (54:51–62:55)

• Kuttner’s first book, “Revolt of the Haves”: Prop 13 in California and related anti-tax revolts were not simply a rejection of government but a response to badly managed, unfair taxation.
• Kuttner: “If Democrats had not bungled...they would have used state aid to cut property taxes. So it’s a classic case of what happens when Democrats bungle a genuine economic grievance: the right takes over.”

IV. Lessons from Senate Banking Committee: Redlining, Community Reinvestment (62:55–68:30)

• Kuttner’s time with Senator Proxmire led to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and Community Reinvestment Act—landmark laws to combat redlining.
• The persistent myth that these laws caused the 2008 crisis is baseless; the real issue was (deregulated) predatory lending.

V. Why Democrats Keep Losing the Politics (54:48–74:06)

• The “Wall Street wing” of the party “has all the money and that has an immense amount of influence.”
• Inclusion movements (LGBT rights, feminism, racial justice) were necessary but became harder without economic policies to support them.
• The rise of “process liberals” post-Watergate brought decorum but lacked redistributive ambition.

VI. The Path Forward: Rebuilding Radicalism (74:06–78:29)

• Restoring the New Deal–style contract requires “politics and policies at least as radical as Roosevelt.”
• Quote:
  Kuttner (77:30): “To be a liberal you need to be a radical at times. I have a line in the book where I say, I don’t think I’ve become more Marxian. I think the world has become more Marxian.”

VII. A Glimmer of Hope? (74:06–78:29)

• Kuttner is guardedly optimistic that US democracy will “probably survive Trump”—institutions are holding, the right is overextending, and there may be a Democratic wave in 2026.
• But even with electoral wins, truly transformative economic reform is “going to take some doing.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Emma Vigeland (17:55): “Will you help us steal an election?” — on the true test for Trump appointees.
• Sam Seder (46:38): “People may forget that his [Obama’s] attorney general Spitzer went after these bankers...they were all C students and they cheated at tennis.”
• Robert Kuttner (54:43): “If Democrats had not bungled that, they would have beaten it. They would have used state aid to cut property taxes. So it's a classic case of what happens when Democrats bungle a genuine economic grievance: the right takes over.”
• Sam Seder (68:30): “Maybe they weren’t just weak in holding the banks accountable. They were there providing a concierge service...”

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Timestamps by Major Segment

• 00:00–18:50: Opening headlines; context for Senate confirmation drama
• 07:55–09:45: Ossoff cross-examination of DNI nominee on 2020 election
• 11:58–15:35: Continued grilling on Gabbard, Georgia RAID, loyalty tests
• 17:55–19:17: Discussion of Trump loyalty, parallels to mafia-style control
• 19:17–29:54: House vote on Israel military aid; Democratic caucus divisions; polling on Israel support
• 32:20–39:01: Sam’s interview with Robert Kuttner opens; memoir context
• 40:59–54:51: Why and how Democrats embraced neoliberalism
• 54:51–62:55: Tax revolts, Prop 13, and lost opportunities
• 62:55–68:30: Senate Banking Committee, redlining, and consumer protection
• 74:06–78:29: Restoring New Deal radicalism in the modern era
• 79:35–88:00: Return to studio; wrap-up banter (transcript ends)

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Tone & Style

The episode deftly blends irreverent humor (“that is Grandma,” running gags, pop-culture riffs) with wonky, deeply informed policy discussion. The hosts and guests speak in the straightforward, occasionally sardonic register characteristic of left-progressive podcasting, but the central segments (esp. the Kuttner interview) are rich in historical context and analysis.

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For New Listeners

This episode is an accessible—if bracing—entry point for understanding how Democrats lost the working class, why the party’s core economic instincts atrophied in the neoliberal era, and how current events (like the Israel aid vote) reflect both the limits and potential of voter-driven party change. The ongoing crisis in executive branch appointees reflects the deeper rot of the Trump era—and the acute need for both substantive and process-based reforms going forward.

Transcript

[Emma Vigland]

You are listening to a free version of the Majority Report. Support this [e-mail] and get an extra hour of content daily.

[Sam Cedar]

The Majority Report with Sam Cedar.

[Emma Vigland]

It is Thursday, July 16, 2026. My name is Emma Vigland in for Sam Seder and this is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, Robert Kutner, co founder and co editor of the American Prospect and author of Notes for Next Time, Surviving Tyranny, Redeeming America, joins Sam, who recorded this conversation a little earlier to discuss how Democrats embraced neoliberalism. Also on the program, 103 Democrats and one Republican, Thomas Massie, vote to block over $3 billion in State Department aid to Israel. The Pentagon says it's looking at military options against Cuba, including thousands of U.S. troops. When has that gone wrong? Matt, History buff. By the way, US Military resources are very strained in Iran right now, so good luck. Trump is apparently unhappy with Hegseth over how the Iran war is going. You'll be shocked to hear that Hegseth was the most hawkish voice selling him on the efficacy of military action overriding the Joint Chiefs of Staff Staff.

[Sam Cedar]

So boring. Just wrap it up.

[Matt Bender]

God.

[Emma Vigland]

Iran says the US Launched an attack near a children's cancer hospital causing evacuations and that the US Is bombing closer to Tehran than ever before. Israel is also bombing Gaza again, killing at least five people overnight, including a little girl. A new ACLU and Human Rights Watch report on the East Montana ICE camp in Texas finds 90% of detainees report beatings and abuse. And in a Georgia facility, A Venezuelan man, 45 year old Jesus Manuel Arenas Silva, becomes the 22nd person to die in ICE custody this year. Trump is giving a speech tonight claiming that there was all this Chinese interference in the 2020 election. Apparently the stuff that everybody cares about. And speaking of China, there's a new Pew Global survey that finds that China is viewed more favorably than the United States. Why could that be? Todd Blanche had an incredible Freudian slip during his attorney General confirmation hearings, calling himself Trump's lawyer before quickly correcting himself. And lastly, air quality warnings hit 20 states as smoke from the Canadian wildfires spreads to the US all this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome to the show everybody. It's an Emmajority report Thursday. We've been getting some concerns about where Sam is. He's fine, he's fine. He will be back eventually, but this will probably be his longest absence from the Majority Report in quite some time. He is doing Hollywood things. I'm not sure we can reveal what he's doing, but he's. He's filming something that's okay to say.

[John Ossoff]

That is grandma.

[Emma Vigland]

And that is Grandma. I can't wait to play that for him. And him be completely confused by it. Unless he's seen the segment and is watching the show, which, you know, hopefully he's not, because we've been making fun of him.

[Matt Bender]

I think he does make a point to make sure to watch all of our PBD related content when he's out.

[Emma Vigland]

The most educational content that we put out. Yes. So yesterday there were. There were many hearings on Capitol Hill. It was a busy day. You had Todd Blanche's Attorney General confirmation hearing, which is kind of a bit of kayfabe, like he cannot get confirmed. And Trump's just going to keep him as Acting Attorney General for the foreseeable future, most likely. But we'll play maybe a clip in the fun half of Senator Kennedy, like throwing up a softball for him and asking Blanche if he was Trump's friend. And he responded, I'm Trump's lawyer and. Oh, sorry, I was. Was Trump's lawyer, you know, the guy that personally spoke to Ghislaine Maxwell and then transferred her to that cushy prison outside of traditional protocol for sex offenders. And suddenly she was very quiet about Trump's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

[Matt Bender]

Oh, is that part of the communications mistakes that were made, as JD Vance admitted on Joe Rogan? Oh, yeah, we made some mistakes in terms of how we communicated it. Like commute. Decaying the sentence.

[Emma Vigland]

Yes. Right, right. Communicating to her to keep quiet, to

[Matt Bender]

go walker dog in this, like, open air prison.

[Emma Vigland]

Yep. And then we have the Fed Chair testimony as well with the Senate Banking Committee. But what is really going viral here? Excuse me, I need to take a sip of water. The air quality is really.

[Matt Bender]

Yeah, it's crazy here. I don't know people actually, it's around the whole Northeast. Awful.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah. So there was the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings for Trump's pick for the Director of National Intelligence, replacing Tulsi Gabbard. When Tulsi Gabbard stepped aside, basically Bill Pulte became acting dni. And he is from. From like, a real estate background. He has no national intelligence experience. And so this pick here was considered to be less controversial. Jay Clayton, because he had worked at Sullivan and Cromwell. What is their association with. With the Deep State, by the way?

[Matt Bender]

I mean, I think going back to, like, The Panama Canal.

[Emma Vigland]

Exactly.

[Matt Bender]

Creation.

[Emma Vigland]

There is not a law firm that is more synonymous with like, like US intervention overseas and I mean the Dallas Banana Republic and the Dulles brothers. Right. So he's actually quite perfect for the deep state and he type of things

[Matt Bender]

that they have in their archives would be very interesting to.

[Emma Vigland]

Very interesting. But he was considered less controversial. He was a respected lawyer basically, as opposed to just a 38 year old real estate buddy from Florida who was the acting head of the acting Director of National Intelligence. And yet, despite his so called respectability and his so called lack of controversy as it, as it relates to other Trump nominees, he still cannot answer the central question, the test of your independence. Did Trump win the 2020 election? Who won the 2020 election? And John Ossoff, Senator from Georgia, just nails him here on this question and doesn't let up. Here is this moment yesterday from those hearings.

[John Ossoff]

2020 election.

[Sam Cedar]

You know, I'm not, I'm not going to do this with you.

[John Ossoff]

This is a job interview. We've established that you have an obligation, honest and forthright with the committee. Yes. You do have an obligation to be honest and forthright with the committee.

[Sam Cedar]

Yes.

[John Ossoff]

Who won the 2020 election?

[Sam Cedar]

Like I said, I'm not, I'm not going to get into that with you.

[John Ossoff]

But you do have an obligation to be honest and forthright with the committee.

[Sam Cedar]

Is anything that I just said not honest or forthright?

[John Ossoff]

Yes. You're not being honest or forthright. Who won the election?

[Sam Cedar]

I think I've answered the question. We can keep doing this.

[John Ossoff]

Well, we're going to keep doing it because you're not being honest and forthright.

[Sam Cedar]

I'm not going to engage in the theater.

[John Ossoff]

It's a simple question, Mr. Clayton. And I've asked who won the 2020 presidential election?

[Sam Cedar]

I've answered it.

[John Ossoff]

You're here asking for the support of senators to lead America's intelligence community. We've established that you have an obligation to be honest and forthright with this committee and with the American public. But you refuse to answer a simple matter of fact about the 2020 election. Is that right?

[Sam Cedar]

No, that's not right.

[John Ossoff]

Then answer the question. Who won the 2020 election?

[Sam Cedar]

I have answered the question.

[John Ossoff]

Answer it. What is your answer?

[Sam Cedar]

I've given you my answer.

[John Ossoff]

What is your answer? You refuse to answer a basic question about who won a presidential election, but you asked to lead America's intelligence community. Isn't it humiliating to be unable to answer this question, to have to indulge the President's delusions? We Know, you know, everybody in this room knows the truthful answer to that question. Why can you not give it?

[Sam Cedar]

I think I gave you the answer.

[John Ossoff]

Are you aware that Director Gabbard was present at the Fulton county raid in Georgia earlier this year?

[Emma Vigland]

All right, let's pause it for a second. We'll go back to that clip because it's also the next one that I wanted to hit on. Ossoff's whole testimony here, or questioning, rather, was quite effective. It's just a simple test of your ability to not be a loyalist for Donald Trump and do your job faithfully. The problem is that you are literally. He's literally being selected, with that being the number one job requirement. And it's when Ossoff here asks him about Tulsi Gabbard. This is also relevant for the reasons that I just said, because earlier this year, Tulsi Gabbard, who was at the time the Director of National Intelligence, was present at this FBI raid in Georgia, of the Fulton county voter rolls at this or at the elections office, she was the Director of National Intelligence. It's one, it's not a domestic law enforcement agency, but two, the implication of her presence at that raid would be that this has something to do with foreign interference. And so with Trump's address tonight where he's going to blame Chinese interference on, you know, him on the 2020 election results and is seemingly going to draw that comparison, essentially the claim that China is the reason that, I don't know the votes were switched, I will see what.

[Matt Bender]

He's off guard enough.

[Emma Vigland]

Right, Right. He's also claiming that they're illegitimate. This is quite relevant because it appears like the Director of National Intelligence, whoever, you know, if, if Clayton is. Is confirmed, is going to be involved in this completely nonsense investigation into Georgia's election results from 2020 that are the result of the delusions that he speaks about there. So it's quite relevant here. And here's the continuation of that questioning.

[John Ossoff]

Gabbard was present at the Fulton county raid in Georgia earlier this year.

[Emma Vigland]

You.

[Sam Cedar]

You discussed that with me yesterday in your office.

[John Ossoff]

Are you aware that Director Gabbard was present at the Fulton county raid earlier this year?

[Sam Cedar]

You brought it to me. My.

[John Ossoff]

What is going on here? You've said at the beginning of this, you have an obligation to be honest and forthright with the committee. I'm asking a very simple question. Are you aware of a Director Gabb?

[Matt Bender]

What we're about to see now is, however, old man, what, 60? This guy about to act cute.

[Emma Vigland]

Oh, yeah.

[John Ossoff]

With the committee. I'm asking a very simple question. Are you aware that Director Gabbard was present at the Fulton county raid earlier this year? Yes or no? Are you aware?

[Sam Cedar]

I was.

[John Ossoff]

You won't answer that question.

[Sam Cedar]

I just said I was made aware of it by you yesterday.

[John Ossoff]

The first time you learned. But Director Gabbard was present at that raid was in my office yesterday.

[Sam Cedar]

It was the first time that in my recollection, I've thought about it recently. Was I aware of it before? What? What?

[Emma Vigland]

The first time in my recollection, I thought about it recently. I can't rule out the fact that I have had amnesia about the reports of the predecessor for the job that I'm trying to take over. Being present at the raid of Georgia's election offices.

[Matt Bender]

He can't admit that he knows about it. But also, if he admits that he doesn't know about it, it's like, why are you not competent to lead this office?

[Emma Vigland]

He's like, I don't. I just don't pay attention to the news. You know, I'm not. I'm nonpartisan. I'm more interested in baseball cards.

[Sam Cedar]

I'll lock in when I get the job.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah, right, Right. How hard can it be to learn all about politics? I'll cram it. I'll cram it.

[Robert Kutner]

Keep going.

[Sam Cedar]

You brought it to me, my going on here.

[John Ossoff]

You've said at the beginning of this. You have an obligation to be honest and forthright with the committee. I'm asking a very simple question. Are you aware that Director Gabbard was present at the Fulton county raid earlier this year? Yes or no? Are you aware?

[Sam Cedar]

I was.

[John Ossoff]

You won't answer that question.

[Sam Cedar]

I just said I was made aware of it by you yesterday.

[John Ossoff]

The first time you, Director Gabbard, was present at that raid was in my office yesterday.

[Sam Cedar]

It was the first time that in my recollection, I've thought about it recently. Now, was I aware of it before? What? I really appreciate that.

[John Ossoff]

What?

[Matt Bender]

Yeah.

[Brandon Sutton]

What?

[Sam Cedar]

I mean, you brought it to my attention yesterday. I had not.

[John Ossoff]

So you had not known.

[Brandon Sutton]

I had not.

[Sam Cedar]

I had not thought about it until you brought it to my thought about it.

[John Ossoff]

Answers lack credibility. Your testimony lacks credibility. You're being evasive, and you're not being candid or forthright, and everybody across the country is going to watch this and know that. Are you aware that former Director Grabber testified that her presence at the raid was, quote, requested by the president?

[Matt Bender]

You started following the same trail.

[Sam Cedar]

Not aware of that until now.

[Brandon Sutton]

Okay.

[John Ossoff]

You are now aware of that, yeah. Are you aware that members of this committee are already probing Director Gabbard's potential misconduct in this matter?

[Sam Cedar]

Not. I don't. I'm not privy.

[Emma Vigland]

I don't have wi.

[Sam Cedar]

Fi.

[John Ossoff]

Are you aware that the General Counsel and Deputy General Counsel of your office have already provided testimony to this committee regarding this matter? You told me that if the White House Chief of Staff or the President asks you to travel somewhere across the United States and oversee the execution of a domestic search warrant on a sensitive election facility, will you do it? Is that appropriate for the Director of National Intelligence?

[Sam Cedar]

That's a hypothetical.

[John Ossoff]

We all know it's not appropriate. Senator Ossoff, your National Intelligence. Will you answer the question?

[Matt Bender]

Time is hypothetically. Is it appropriate?

[John Ossoff]

Will you give him the opportunity to answer the question? Is this not material right now? Sir, Is it appropriate for the Director of National Intelligence to oversee the execution of domestic search warrants at sensitive election facilities? Yes or no?

[Sam Cedar]

I think you're asking me, as you just said in your first comment to

[John Ossoff]

me, yes or no, is it appropriate. No.

[Sam Cedar]

You are asking me to comment on a matter that you just said was under investigation.

[John Ossoff]

No, I'm asking.

[Sam Cedar]

Senator Ossoff, your time is expired.

[John Ossoff]

Disqualified.

[Sam Cedar]

Vice Chairman, do you have anything to add?

[Emma Vigland]

Well, Ossoff made the most of his time there. You would think that an esteemed lawyer from Sullivan and Cromwell would be a little bit better in this cross examination because we looked this up before the show. Ossoff is not a lawyer like Ossoff just schooled him in cross examination.

[Matt Bender]

It's crazy to be from Sullivan and Cromwell. And that's like me, if I got home late and it's like. Right, you said 10 o'. Clock. It's like it's 10:20. Like. Yeah, their clock said it was earlier.

[Emma Vigland]

So it just. It's astonishing. The Director of National Intelligence, this is a role that has, you know, increased in prominence since, you know, the turn of the 21st century as well. But prior to that, it's more when the powers of the Executive branch and have been expanded. The Director of National Intelligence has also expanded in its powers. And it's a shadowy role that is certainly not supposed to be involved in on the ground, domestic law enforcement operations, unless this is some sort of conspiracy to undermine our electoral process. And that's exactly what's happening right now. And so it doesn't necessarily matter what your resume is or the fact that you may have some New York lawyer friends that think that you're a smart guy. It matters what the job Requirements are and what is being asked of you or demanded of you by this administration? And we know that this is essentially a test of loyalty about. Well, one, the fact that senators are asking this of judicial nominees is relevant as well, because it's a test of their loyalty. But specifically about this case.

[Matt Bender]

Will you help us steal an election?

[Emma Vigland]

Yes. Given what Tulsi Gabbard was tasked with doing, Trump is going to task the next Director of National Intelligence with the same thing. And she was kind of thrown under the bus by Todd Blanche, who, as acting Attorney General as, because she was unable to, according to some reporting, after commissioning reports on the election results, come up with the answers that Trump wanted. And then she's out. You know, do you think that Clayton learned that lesson? Do you think that he knows that if he doesn't deliver on the President's delusions, as Ossoff said, that he'll be out of a job next? That is the lesson that was, that is being sent as Trump operates like a Mafia boss. So it, it's, it's, it's horrifying stuff. And so you know that that's essentially where we're at here.

[Matt Bender]

Yeah, a bunch of liars. And Trump's about to say some lies about China meddling in the election process, which they did not do at all. At all. And meanwhile, Trump and our State Department, in fact, is giving money to MAGA aligned groups in Eastern Europe, just openly.

[Emma Vigland]

Right.

[Matt Bender]

Imagine if China was doing that.

[Emma Vigland]

Well, now, now we're going to talk about a country that's actually interfering in our elections.

[Matt Bender]

Really briefly, I wonder which one you're talking about.

[Emma Vigland]

This interview with Robert Kutner. So just wanted to make sure we got this also in the first hour of the show because this is such an important story. Let's see. So yesterday, Thomas Massie, the Republican who was just ousted by record spending in a Congressional House primary, beating Jamaal Bowman's race and Cori Bush's race, with AIPAC pouring in as much money as possible into his primary. He lost. And he's the only Republican who voted for his own measure here. This amendment that Massie proposed would have halted around $3 billion, $3.3 billion in aid to Israel that would have gone through the State Department. It's the fiscal 2027 funding bill. And this amendment proposed a prohibition on funds from this bill being used by Israel. And the bulk of this money, of course, it's the foreign military financing program goes to Israel. So, as I mentioned, Massie was the only Republican to vote for his own amendment, but 103 Democrats voted with him as well. Now, it was obviously rejected. That's not enough. 104 to 314. So that's 103 Democrats plus Massie and 10 Democrats, cowardly Democrats voted present. So when you take that math, though, that's 103 Democrats out of 212 in the caucus and 10 voted present. So that's a very narrow plurality essentially of Democrats who voted yes, we need to block arms to Israel. In April 2024, only 37 Democrats voted to block arms to Israel. And at the time, of course, it's like, you know, the usual suspects of good progressives where, you know, had Kassar, Bowman and Bush at the time. Tlaib, AOC Raskin of Velasquez, Becca Belint and more. You know, I don't need to list all of them. You probably know who some of them are. Jayapal Khanna. So those were the democrats that the 37 in April 2024 who voted to block arms. And you see, just like we saw with the Senate vote on Bernie Sanders bill to block large bombs and bulldozers to Israel, how the Democratic Party is slowly responding to the sea change in the electorate and in the base on arms to Israel. And the 103 Democrats who voted for this amendment have some surprising names in it. Jake Ochenkloss. Isn't that shocking that Catherine Clark, the number two Democrat in the House, the House Minority Whip, Seth Moulton, who is as hawkish as it gets, but he's trying to defeat Ed Markey in the primary right now. And one mama bear, Nancy Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi has Grandma. There's never been a more appropriate use of that is Grandma. Because, like, she's a ruthless tactician and it was often for things that we really, really disagreed with. But unlike Hakeem Jeffries, she understands politics and was really good at keeping the caucus together and whipping votes and doing politics, even when it was about defeating the left within her own party. But she also can see where the winds are blowing. This is what she said seven years ago. And just yesterday, Nancy Pelosi voted against $3 billion in arms to Israel.

[Robert Kutner]

I have said to people when they

[John Ossoff]

asked me if this capital crumbled to

[Sam Cedar]

the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid. I don't even call it aid. Our cooperation with Israel, that's fundamental to who we. Fundamental to.

[Matt Bender]

To insane.

[Emma Vigland]

Turns out, not so much capital still standing despite the attempts of the January Sixers. And what's interesting is seeing Chuck Schumer sitting next to her grinning by the way, as she says that.

[Matt Bender]

Well, I've heard through like the theory of force the vote that if somebody votes for something it means they definitely truly want that to come true. Right. So this means Pelosi is an anti Zionist now.

[Emma Vigland]

I guess so. I guess so. It just is an indication of where things are, where voters are.

[Matt Bender]

This is such a liability like to oh, Detroit or Michigan though Haley Stevens voted, I wouldn't just note was not one of these hundred that voted was not exactly right.

[Emma Vigland]

Haley Stevens captured by AIPAC voted to continue sending arms to fund this genocidal rogue state. Here's the Washington Post Write up with some charts about where Democrats are on this development. A number of Democrats who have voiced support for Israel voted for the amendment, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Catherine Clark, the minority whip. We can put this up on the screen. In a statement, Clark, the number two House Democrat, said the status quo is not tenable. She added, we should not provide a blank check for military aid to any country that does not comply with U.S. law, interests and values. The Netanyahu government has failed to meet that standard. Public support for Israel has plummeted over the country's military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon, particularly among Democrats. Nearly three quarters of Democrats want to reduce or end military support for Israel. According to a Washington Post ipsis poll conducted July 8th to 13th, 40% of Democrats want to eliminate military support to Israel entirely, including 58% of very liberal Democrats. And you can see this chart here from the Washington Post where voters are Republicans. Still a majority of them support maintaining or increasing support for Israel.

[Matt Bender]

Only 13% of them. Even those psychos.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah. But for the Democrats, in terms of keeping at current levels and increasing like what is that, 2020.

[Matt Bender]

Have to do the math.

[Emma Vigland]

3, 24. But when you add ending military support and reducing support, that is 74% and still it's only half of the caucus. They're not where their own voters are.

[Matt Bender]

But Akeem Jeffries tells me there's good faith reasons why Democrats might disagree on this stuff and why so of course those 25%, they have good faith reasons that we must respect.

[Emma Vigland]

And check out this chart right below it because this also shows temporarily how things have changed. The share of registered voters saying the US is too supportive of Israel from January 2017 to now, you can see that obviously dramatically increase in terms of the total support there, including the just based on age.

[Matt Bender]

Yeah, the Republicans have started hating Israel as Trump's got into office.

[Emma Vigland]

Right, right. That top line there for 74% are Democrats leaning Democrats age 18 to 49. 74% say that the US is too supportive of Israel. And Democrats and Democratic leaners 50 and over, 64%. So there's, I mean, within Democratic voters or Democratic leaning voters. That is the consensus opinion at this point. And so the Democrats that voted against cutting aid to Israel, Matt mentioned it. Haley Stevens was one of those individuals. Hakeem Jeffries was one of those individuals as leader of the Democrats in the House. And there's still a long way to go, but this is a reminder that we should always continue to push. Always push. Call your representatives. It makes a difference. Change is not easy and it is way too sclerotic and slow, but it is making an impact. And it should also be a lesson for people who have been overly swayed by Republican aligned influencers on the Internet talking about Israel, that the political constituency that can actually change things is the one where that is on the Democratic side and it's the side that supports universal human rights. Not saying the Democratic Party does, but the voters that support this and, and have that as an ethic versus the isolationism on the right that doesn't have really right now any power base within elected, the elected Republican Party. So Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's now essentially an influencer herself, can go out on podcasts and say what they feel. That's great. But for right now, the Republican Party is in lockstep with Israel, save for Thomas Massie, who is about to be out of office. Right now, the path to ending support for Israel is going to go through the Democratic Party because of the voters, not because of the representatives, but because that is what the voters are going to continue to demand and it's not going to get any quieter. That's why Netanyahu and the Israeli government is so desperate right now to maintain support amongst Republicans because they already see that the die is cast and they're attempting to permanently, essentially integrate the US And Israeli militaries so that this question is not able to be answered Democratically.

[Matt Bender]

And I would just add a House divided cannot stand. And if the Democratic leadership treats this like not something to be welcome, but something to be fought against, it will destroy the party.

[Emma Vigland]

Exactly right. In a moment, you will hear Sam's interview with Robert Kutner. But first, a word from one of our favorite sponsors. I would like to thank ZOCDOC for sponsoring today's episode. Zocdoc, we've talked about this many Times is a one of like the easiest services that I can think of in terms of being able to use it for free. You could just go online to go to zocdoc, find appointments for a doctor that you need and you can see the calendar and their schedule. You don't have to deal with automated, you know, systems when you're calling into your doctor's office and oh, why is it closed on a Monday? For some reason you can't reach them, you're playing phone tag. You have to deal with a bunch of different people or just robots on the phone. ZocDoc takes away that hassle and it makes it easier for you to book doctor's appointments that you may have been putting off. I found my dentist through ZocDoc. I really like my dentist so that means that I'm going fairly regularly, which is good and so I just couldn't recommend it more highly. ZOCDOC really solves the most frustrating parts of the patient experience and say you have an emergency like Sam did with one of his crowns, he was able to find a dentist. On the other side of the country, Zocdoc is free to use. They have more than 150,000 providers with 200 plus specialties across all 50 states. And you're able to find someone if you want to filter by your insurance or we want to filter by specialty. ZocDoc makes that easy with its searchable system. Your health matters and taking care of yourself shouldn't be complicated. Find and book the right doctor with ZocDoc. Head to ZocDoc.com Majority to get started and check that appointment off your to do list. That's Zocdoc.com Majority Zocdoc.com Majority we'll put a link to this down below in the video and episode descriptions. Find and book the right [e-mail] Majority all right, quick break and when we come back, you'll be hearing Sam's interview with Robert Kutner.

[Brandon Sutton]

Foreign.

[Sam Cedar]

We are back. Sam Cedar on the Majority Report is a pleasure to welcome back to the program Bob Kutner. Robert Kutner is the co founder and current editor of the American Prospect. In 1986, Cutner founded the Economic Policy Institute. Currently serves on its executive committee. In addition to many other jobs in the media, also served in on the Senate Banking, Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban affairs and author of now his 14th book, which is a memoir, notes for Next Time, which is, I have to say, incredibly appropriate for this very moment. Bob Kutner, welcome to the show.

[Robert Kutner]

Thanks so much for having me.

[Sam Cedar]

And let me just also just like say, you know, this is a memoir, but one which really is a way in which to travel through American politics over the some odd 50 years, plus that you have been either writing about or directly involved. And I watched your interview with David Dayan, which folks can find on The American Prospect YouTube channel, which covered a lot of the sort of more personal aspects from your story. We'll touch on that a little bit. But I can't encourage people enough to go over to the American Prospect YouTube page and listen because really, just a fascinating life in the context of politics. One of my favorite stories was how you almost inadvertently joined the CIA or became. But I will leave that for a moment. Let's start back because for me, one of the things I want to focus on is your lessons from working on these committees in the Senate, because we're about to enter into a period where I think we're gonna have a lot of hearings by Democrats. It would be wonderful. They take the Senate, but at the very least we're gonna see it in the House. But before we get there, let's just talk just a little bit about your life. You grew up. Was it in Brooklyn or the Bronx?

[Robert Kutner]

Well, I was born in the Bronx.

[Sam Cedar]

Born in the Bronx. Ultimately your family moved to Scarsdale. Your father passed away when you were qu and you developed, I mean, a real, I guess, appreciation, a lived appreciation for the New Deal that was prominent in that era. Just briefly, tell us a little bit about that as I think it sets the tone for your politics.

[Robert Kutner]

Frozen. Shall I just keep talking?

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, go ahead. Did you hear my question?

[Robert Kutner]

I did, yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

Okay. Yeah, go ahead.

[Robert Kutner]

Let me just take a moment to locate that origin story, if you will, in the context of the sweep of what I'm trying to do in the book, because it's directly related. One of the three key points I make in the book is that the deal that my generation had was a better social contract, if you will, than anything that has been offered before or since. And that we lost it. I talk about why we lost it and I talk about how we might get it back. And the punchline is it will take a politics and a set of policies at least as radical as what FDR gave us to get anything like the social contract my generation had back for our children and grandchildren. And I grew up moderate income housing project in the Bronx called Parkchester. And you know, my parents thought they had died and gone to heaven. They spent the Depression very rough time in A series of small, cramped apartments in Queens and Parkchester was developed with Taxabay and public subsidies. And then when my father got sick, I was eight years old, my mother and I began having very adult conversations. What would happen if he died? And he was getting wonderful medical care thanks to the new VA hospital. And my mother said, no, we won't lose the house because of something called Social Security. And when you put together Social Security built with government help and the VA and Park Chester, Social Security, Park Chester, the va. As I say in the book, I was a new Dealer in my bones before I'd ever heard of fdr, because my lived experience was that of a package of things that helped my family stay in the kind of lower middle class. And then of course, being a poor kid in a rich town, my parents and my grandfather had bought a little 900 square foot house just inside the Scarsdale line so that I could attend a good school. And being around rich kids as a kid from a family with no money, that also honed my sense of social class. And then I went to Oberlin in the sort of hopeful part of the 60s. So all of this kind of formed my politics, but I think that was a very hopeful time. And I guess one of the things I try to explore via my own life odyssey is how could we have had such a good deal for most working people? And then how did we lose it? What did the Democratic Party do wrong? Beginning with Carter and Clinton and then Obama and the influence of the corporate Democrats, the Wall Street Democrats, Robert Rubin, and really screwing it up and getting in bed with Wall street to the point where working families no longer saw the Democratic Party as their champion. And that began the road to Trump. What happened? How do we get that back? And that's a lot of what I talk about. And I'll get to Senator Proxmire and the Banking Committee in a moment, if you like.

[Sam Cedar]

Yes, I would. I'm really interested in that and the implications of the things that you worked on and how they resonated. But let's talk a little bit about just a little bit more about your life in terms of how it gave you this perspective on what the Democrats did wrong. Because you were also a journalist for a long time and it led you ultimately, I mean, following your stint with Proxmire, you set up the Economic Policy Institute or one of the three Founders, and then you also went on to co found the American Prospect. So you had an awareness of both, like what needed to happen on a policy level, but also what needed to happen on a journalistic level in terms of sort of. Right, that ship. But from your perspective as a journalist prior to that, what was it that. And I guess also in terms of your government service, how did that turn happen? Like what, what create. Because for, for, you know, we had a 30 year Democratic majority in the House. We in the 50s and 60s, we had a 90% top tax rate for people making over approximately 470,000 DOL that time, maybe close to $3 million today. How did it, how did we lose sight as a country of what was working? Because that was, I mean obviously we needed to emancipate women, we needed to emancipate black people, we needed to move in, you know, in terms of the social emancipation. But how did we get, how did we lose in that process providing materially for our people?

[Robert Kutner]

So that's a lot of what the book talks about. And I was involved in this both as a protagonist and as a journalist. So it's a tragedy in three acts, right? So act one is Johnson and the war. So Johnson has a majority almost as big as FDR's. And if you go back to 1964, Johnson wins in a landslide. He has almost 2 to 1 majorities in Congress. And he is poised to launch the unfinished business of the New Deal. And the attempt to extend American democracy to black people would have been a heavy lift in any case. But he sets out on that road very heroically. And then of course he blows it all on Vietnam. And the tragedy of Vietnam is not just that it distracted attention from the unfinished business of the New Deal, but that it split the Democratic coalition both politically and culturally, the hippies and the hard hats, and lets Nixon become President. And the Democratic coalition in a sense never really recovers from that catastrophe. So that's act one of the tragedy then. A miracle of miracles, Nixon blows it all on Watergate. And one of the things I did in my journalistic life, I was part of the Watergate team at the Washington Post. I had a front row seat for that miracle of miracles, not only does Nixon get impeached and is forced to leave office, but 1976, we elect a Democratic president and Jimmy Carter, thanks to the Watergate, Congress has a very big working majority. Oh boy, here we get a do over. When does history ever give you do over? But Carter turns out to be the most conservative Democrat since Grover Cleveland. He's sort of a process liberal, despite having a big majority in Congress. Name any kind of landmark legislation you can credit to Jimmy Carter. Zip, zero, labor law, Reform? No, not interested. Any of the important pieces of unfinished business that he might have enacted. That's not who he is. So you have another failed presidency. And worse, Carter begins to turn to neoliberalism. He decides, hey, we need deregulation. We need privatization, we need supply side economics. The first supply side bills, tax cuts for the rich, are not passed under Reagan. They're passed under Jimmy Carter. And then that begins a succession of neoliberal presidents, of whom the worst was Bill Clinton. And Clinton hires Bob Rubin and Larry Summers. He hires Wall street to run the economy by and for Wall Street. He buys into the ideology of budget balance. And even worse, when after a few years, it all blows up in 2008, and Barack Obama, who really hadn't quite expected to be the nominee, realizes, oh, my God, I'm going to be the nominee. And I wrote a book about this, the only book I ever wrote that ended up on the bestseller list called Obama's Challenge. And It's June of 2008. He's got two people working for him, two and a half people, his entire economic team, one of whom is a really good guy named Dan Torullo, a progressive. And Obama gives a speech at Cooper Union that March or April, talking about all the things that are wrong with Wall street that need to be cleaned up. The speech is drafted by Torullo. And then in June, when he realizes that he's going to be the nominee, all the financial heavy hitters in the party go to Obama and they say, hey, look, you've got to bring in the A team. Well, who's the A team? Well, the A team is Bob Rubin's proteges and Larry Summers and Rahm Emanuel and all of the people who bought the financial deregulation, brought the financial deregulation that caused the collapse of 2008. He brings them in to fix it. Summer's advice is we don't need a big stimulus to deficit reduction. So the recession drags on and on and on, and that leads directly to Trump. So you have three Democrats who gratuitously embrace neoliberalism because that's where the big money is. Rubin starts out as a fundraiser. He ends up becoming an advisor. He ends up being an ideologue. And of course, he comes from Wall Street. He goes back to Wall street when they repeal the Glass Steagall act so that you can have an investment bank merge with a commercial bank known in some circles as the Citigroup Enabling Act. He becomes a top executive, Citigroup. So the whole thing is corrupt. It's a wasted opportunity. Obama is a magnificent human being. He's a person without a whiff of scandal attached to him. He's eloquent, but he bungles like Johnson with different dynamics a moment that history hands him to be Roosevelt yet again. And so my question is, how in the hell are we going to get this back?

[Sam Cedar]

Well, two questions before we get to that. And I should say I had been appearing on Elliot Spitzer's program back in 2010. This is after he had to resign from governorship. But people may forget that his attorney general, he went after these bankers very, very hard. And I suspect that they were involved in helping expose his visiting of prostitutes, which caused his resignation. But he told me at one point, he said, I asked him, how is it that Obama is so enthralled by these people being the Reubenites, as it were? Because many people voted for Obama thinking that they were going to get away from Rubenite. And he said, you know, he, he didn't understand. He thinks these guys are masters of the universe. Spitzer said, I went to Princeton with these guys. I know they're all C students and they cheated tennis was his comment. But how is it that, I mean, how did Carter, this is what I'm like, I understand that like Clinton came in and I remember that election very clearly and I didn't start, I missed voting for Mondale against Reagan by a number of weeks at that time. But how did, what was going on that a conservative like Carter won the Democratic nomination? Did he project a populism because he was a peanut farmer and aw shucks. And people sort of projected onto him an economic populism. What, what was it?

[Robert Kutner]

You know, so when Carter declared for the presidency and this is, this is the early spring of 1975 and I'm the junior man on the national staff at the Post and I draw the assignment of going to the press club for Carter's announcement. I'm the only national reporter there. And his name recognition, not his support, but his name recognition is 2%. Okay, so in the course of a year and a half, he wages the ultimate outsider campaign. And after Nixon is, and the so called Watergate class comes into office in January of 75, they're all process liberals. They're all let's clean up the ills that allowed Watergate to happen. And it's also a very weak field in 1976. And so people read their hopes onto Carter. He's an outsider, he's a peanut farmer, he's a southerner and he's an interesting character in that he represents the new South. He's a liberal on race, and Atlanta's the city that's too busy to hate. Remember that slogan? And so he's going to merge economic development and being a liberal on race and being a moderate on everything else. And he's going to get the community on his, the business community on his side. And that's the recipe that he commands to the country. And with the exception of Ramsey Clark, who we didn't quite realize how radical Ramsey Clark would turn out to be, and Ray Marshall, his labor secretary, his whole cabinet was fairly conservative. And even so, if it hadn't been for two things, he might have gotten reelected. I mean, he got very unlucky on the inflation, the OPEC inflation of the 70s, and he got even more unlucky with the Iranian hostage crisis, which still comes back to haunt us. But his failure then opens the door to Reagan. And I want to come back to why we founded the Prospect and epi. So if you think about what was going on in the 1980s, Reagan is president supply side economics. He's phenomenally popular deregulation. And the conventional wisdom at that point is, gee, the Democrats have a lot to learn from Reagan. The Democrats need to give up being economic populous, and they need to become more like Reagan. And so several of us who were saying, no, God damn it, Democrats need to be more plausible New Dealers. That's why we're getting killed. Working people don't trust the Democrats anymore. And Reagan is this sort of happy, sunny character. And so the first thing we did was we said, let's have an intellectually serious think tank that makes the case for progressive economics not with rhetoric, but with research and with data. And so we raised some money. We founded the Economic Policy Institute. The Economic Policy Institute has become a landmark institute. Every year. It publishes this State of Working America. It got famous for this iconic chart comparing the rate of productivity growth with the rate of worker wages. And up until the 70s, the two curves go in lockstep. And then it looks like an alligator's jaws where productivity goes through the roof and wages go flat. And then I think later in the decade, the same thing is happening with journals. The New Republic, otherwise known as the New Republic, is becoming more like the right wing, not just because Marty Peretz buys it, but because the conventional wisdom is, oh, we have a lot to learn from the Republicans. And Washington Monthly is formed to be an organ of neoliberalism. And so Paul Starr and Bob Reich and I said, no, man, we need to be more persuasive New Dealers for a different era rather than saying, oh, we're also going to move to the center. And so we founded the prospect. And you know, there's a chapter in my book called Winning the Arguments, Losing the Politics. And I think our arguments have been vindicated. Neoliberalism did not improve the rate of economic growth. It just made the rich richer and everybody else worse off. Corporate sponsored free trade was good for Wall street, was good for China, was bad for Americans in general. Deregulation was great for some industries. It was terrible for the whole ideal of managed capitalism. And so on, one intellectual argument after another, we've been vindicated. But we keep losing the politics and we keep losing the politics because the Wall street wing of the Democratic Party has all the money and that has an immense amount of influence. And I also think in fairness and we can get into a whole separate debate about this. I think bringing black people and women and LGBT people into the mainstream of America with all of the rights that that conveys would have been really tough under the best of circumstances. Now I, like a lot of other economic progressives, I think maybe our side overdid woke, but it was much, much harder than it needed to be because we fell down on the job of serving working people economically. That made everything else much more arduous. I will come back to Senator Proxmire

[Sam Cedar]

when you want me to in one moment because. And this will lead into it. I know you've written a book too about the tax revolt era and specifically Proposition 13 in California, my first book. And I grew up in Massachusetts and Massachusetts adopted, I think it was Prop 1.

[Robert Kutner]

Massachusetts had its own very. Prop 13.

[Sam Cedar]

Exactly. And I remember it very well because it was the year I was in high school and all of a sudden we had nothing. I mean the high schools were absolutely, I mean, I assume the elementary schools and the middle schools as well. But because this was property tax reform, our schools got particularly hit. What was the. In the country? I mean, because it feels like that anti tax sentiment was really exploited to open the door to neoliberalism in many respects and inject it. So what was happening at that time where there was this turn on taxes

[Robert Kutner]

because you're freezing again.

[Sam Cedar]

Oh, sorry. That's okay. I don't know if you heard that last, that question, but what was, what was the, what was happening at the time in terms of this turn against taxes?

[Robert Kutner]

Yeah, I should say I got my, I don't have a doctorate, I dropped out of a PhD program at Berkeley, because it was the 60s and I was restless. And I got my graduate education in political economy two ways. I got it working as the chief investigator for the Senate Banking committee in the 70s, and then I got it in the early 80s when I wrote my first book, which was called Revolt of the haves, which was a book about, gee, how did Proposition 13 happen to happen? And it's such an instructive story. And basically the story is this. In California in the 70s, you had a poisonous mix of inflation and a default by liberals to deal with the effect of inflation on property taxes. So here's what happened. Inflation is high in the 70s, anyway. It's particularly high in California, where housing prices are going through the roof. And unless the state legislature or the governor or some combination of both intervene to keep higher housing prices from translating mechanically into higher property taxes, property taxes are going to double and treble. That's what happened in 1976, 1977, 1978. Jerry Brown is governor. Jerry Brown, at that point, is hoping to run for president in 1980, and he's hoping to run for president, challenging Carter in the Democratic primaries as a progressive who's also a fiscal conservative. And the way he's going to claim that he's a fiscal conservative is he wants the state budget in California to show a huge surplus. And how does he do that? Well, the more property taxes go through the roof, the less Sacramento has to part with local aid, and so Sacramento can bank this big surplus. So instead of realizing what a time bomb these property taxes and the property tax increases were, Jerry Brown sits on that state surplus, and meanwhile, people are being taxed out of their homes. And this screwball who completely anticipates Trump, named Howard Jarvis, who nobody had taken seriously, comes out of nowhere, sponsors Proposition 13 to cut property taxes by over 6 billion. And Prop 13 wins almost 2 to 1. That's two years before Reagan is elected. And interestingly, that is taken as a turn against big government. It was not a turn against government. It was a turn against the unfair allocation of the tax burden. And if Democrats had not bungled that, they would have beaten it. They would have. They would have used state aid to cut property taxes. So it's a classic case of what happens when Democrats bungle a genuine economic grievance. The right takes over. The right articulates it. That prefigures Trump by about 50 years. It's the same story. And then it. Then it spreads like wildfire. It happens in state after state. Massachusetts, interestingly, we tried. I've been in Massachusetts since 1979. We tried four times to get tax reform. And the good guys finally did it a couple of years ago with a ballot initiative to tax millionaires. They added a tax bracket to the tax code. First time we've ever had a progressive tax in Massachusetts, but. But limited to billionaires. Now, you know what the governor did? The governor is kind of a centrist Democrat. She gave a lot of it back. And this produced windfalls for housing and transportation. And on the one hand, she took credit for it even though she was opposed to it. I mean, they had to go around the governor, around the legislature with a ballot initiative to get this thing passed. They had to pass it to twice because it was a constitutional amendment. She gives a lot of it back and then takes credit for the increased spending on transportation and housing. So, you know, this is the power of economic populism. And it's also the power of dropping the ball economically and letting the other side articulate grievances.

[Matt Bender]

Right.

[Sam Cedar]

Let's talk about your time on the Senate Committee on Banking and Housing and Urban Affairs. And you're working for Senator William Proxmire from Wisconsin. And this is what you attribute at least a big part of your political economy education to. And you work on the Community Reinvestment act, which ends up being a scapegoat in 2008 in many circles for the financial crisis again. I mean, it is like the ability of those neoliberal forces and Democrat and Republican, you know, just like lesser degrees, I guess, or a question of degree between the two of them. Their capacity to shape these narratives in the public is. There's just, you know, EPI is one of those ways in which I know that I, as a commentator have used resources from you guys for 20 some odd years now, pushing back on these narratives. But it's a, it's an uphill struggle because there's a lot more resources on the other side to create these sort of fictional things. Like we can get into why the Democrats never exploited Kansas after Art Laffer went there with Sam Brown back. But tell us what you learned on this committee also, both in terms of like, the political economy, but also in terms of like how hearings are supposed to function. Because to me, when we look to the, there's going to be so many challenges going forward, but at least in the short term, maximizing the value of hearings, it seems to me, is going to be the best opportunity for Democrats to reorient.

[Robert Kutner]

So in very early 1975, Proxmire, who was a great Progressive, totally honorable, decent guy, nice guy, smart guy, becomes chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. And so he gets a bunch of staff slots. He's looking for a chief investigator, and he hires me, and I report for work. And the first thing that happens is the staff director hands me a folder called Redlining. And Proxmire had been the chairman of the Subcommittee on Consumer Affairs. He started working on redlining. Redlining, I think, as most of your listeners know, is the process by which banks, with the complicity of the fha, by the way, literally draw red lines around neighborhoods that are minority or that are deemed to be changing. And you can't get ordinary mortgage loans in those neighborhoods. And so a remarkable coalition of community groups. A lot of them are Alinsky organizers in the mode of Saul Alinsky, where local people really take the leadership on issues. And a number of community groups start saying, hey, look, the enemy is not black people. The enemy is banks. And a certain amount of racial change is normal, and we want to welcome black neighbors, but at a pace that is socially bearable so that it doesn't lead to panic selling on the part of white people. And so you have this amazing multiracial coalition doing research by going to recorders of deeds one transaction at a time, and looking at which banks are still lending in these old neighborhoods and which banks are pulling out deposits but not putting in loans. And so after about a week on the job, a delegation of about 20 of these amazing people, led by a woman named Gail Cincotta out of Chicago's west side, comes and meets with me and presents their research to me. And I said, wow, this is really impressive. What do you folks want? And they said, well, we want two things. First of all, we want federal legislation that would require banks to disclose by zip code or by census tract where they are making loans so that we don't have to do this research one transaction at a time. And secondly, we'd like Proxmire to hold hearings on this to expose some of the abuses. I said, wow, that's. That is really fantastic. And I was really even more impressed by the fact that this is a multiracial coalition. Now, this is 1975. This is less than a decade after Stokely Carmichael kicks whites out of the movement. Remember that? And there were not a lot of multiracial coalitions floating around in 1975. So I presented this to Proxmire and to my boss, the staff director, Ken McLean, and I said, yeah, this is great. Go for it. So I had, early in my career, I had worked in radio and television, but you want to produce for dramatic effect. We had four days of hearings, and we invited a number of these community groups to tell their stories. And we also invited a bunch of bankers so the Proxmark could beat up on them. And we also, we found two good guy bankers, one from Philadelphia, one from Chicago, who were committed to putting money back into the old neighborhoods. And then the grassroots groups did a huge amount of lobbying with other grassroots groups. And we caught the bankers kind of asleep at the switch. And we passed the Home Mortgage Disclosure act, requiring disclosure of lending by two votes in the Senate. And then we tacked it onto a must pass housing bill in the House and it becomes law. And then we said, hey, we got a cool coalition here. What else can we do? And then we come up with a Community Reinvestment act which provides that not only do banks have to disclose, but they have an affirmative obligation to seek out lending opportunities in old neighborhoods, in changing neighborhoods. And here's the crucial line which gives the lie to the slander of 2008. Consistent with sound lending standards. Consistent with sound lending standards. And so by 2008, the wise guys on Wall street had invented exploding subprime mortgages. If the bank regulators had followed the Community Reinvestment act, subprime mortgages would have been illegal. So quite apart from the charge that the Community Reinvestment act was somehow the culprit, it was the failure to enforce the Community Reinvestment act that caused the collapse of 2008. But because Obama and his people, Geithner, Tim Geithner, the treasury secretary, and Larry Summers, the top economic guy, were so weak in holding the banks accountable, that narrative took hold.

[Sam Cedar]

I mean, to be fair to them, maybe they weren't just weak and holding the banks accountable. They were there sort of providing a concierge service for the banks. And we should say, you know, I mean, I still remember the story that was retold by Barney Frank at the time that Paulson had said to him, I'm willing to go directly to the homeowners, but Obama's got to sign off on it. And according to Barney Frank, said Barney Frank, I mean, Obama, who was then president elect, said, there's only one president at a time, sort of allowing Bush to start the process of we're going to pay off the banks and hope they do right by the homeowners. That, of course, ended up, you know, with that and TARP and everything else ended up not working out in the way that they supposedly assumed it would.

[Robert Kutner]

Well, so Two stories. Barney Frank was chairman of the House Banking Committee and of course, the co sponsor of the Dodd Frank bill. But Rahm Emanuel, who was then chief of staff previously to Obama, previously had been the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Rahm saw the House Banking Committee as a chance for corporate Democrats to raise a lot of money from bankers. And he loaded Barney's committee up with so many corporate Democrats. The worst case just got reelected to Congress, by the way, Melissa Bean, that Barney didn't control his own committee. And so the Dodd Frank act was weaker than it might have been because there were so many corporate Democrats on the House Banking Committee. The other story is that as a condition of passing that bill, when Bush was still president, the Democrats insisted on having a Congressional oversight panel, and some obscure Harvard professor named Elizabeth Warren was named to be chairman of the oversight panel. That's how Warren came to prominence. And Warren and her deputy, Damon Silvers, who was the AFL CIO's chief guy on, on corporate finance, they became kind of Obama's loyal opposition. And as a condition of passing that aid, they insisted that $50 billion be set aside so that homeowners could get refinanced mortgages so that they wouldn't lose their homes. Geithner refused to spend most of the money. Most of that money reverted to the Treasury. I mean, if you look at who Obama ended up appointing, it's like Roosevelt had appointed Herbert Hoover's economic team. It's the people who caused the crisis were put in charge of economic policy for a supposed reform president.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah.

[Robert Kutner]

And that's how the right captured the narrative.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, I think so. And we see it time and time. And there was another Rubenite Froman, I think his name was John Froman, who was in charge of the trade. And I'm quite convinced that the TPP also damaged Hillary Clinton's chances in 2016. And just the fact that it was in the air was very helpful to Donald Trump.

[Robert Kutner]

Absolutely right.

[Sam Cedar]

We could go on and on in that respect. But let's just talk about looking forward, because you do say American democracy will probably survive Trump. And it's, you know, to the extent that we have an American democracy,

[Robert Kutner]

it

[Sam Cedar]

may be the case. I had a very interesting interview last week with a professor who's written that he perceives that from the beginning, more or less, we've had both an oligarchy and a democracy running concurrently. Building on the work of his name escapes me from Princeton, but. But that when any issue involving money essentially comes up, the wealthy win. And then for the rest of the issues, there's more or less democracy. But when we talk about sort of like broad structural stuff in terms of the economics. So when you say that process Democrats came in in the wake of Watergate, or I should say process liberals, one of my concerns, and it seems like there's been an attempt to, to have those return on some level. In many respects. Joe Biden was a, at least one as a process liberal. He did some things that I know that you and I both appreciate, some things that he did not. But leaving that aside, how do we get back on track and return to a sort of a New Deal disposition among Democrats where along fighting that process liberal impulse that would come in after what is probably the most corrupt presidency in the history of the country, or at least in modern era?

[Robert Kutner]

Well, okay, so just to be clear, you need both. You need all kinds of process reform and you need substantive progressivism because even if you get rid of the corruption and put big money back in its place, you then have to take that and run with it and get substantive progressivism so that ordinary people have a prospect of making a decent living. So you need both first. You got to get elected. You got to elect a president and a Democratic Congress in 2028. Now, what are the chances of that? So here's where the last couple of chapters of my book are both optimistic and not so optimistic. Here's the optimistic part. I think against all odds, democracy seems to be holding. Trump is overplaying his hand. The Iran war is a catastrophe. Republicans are beginning to defect. He's got this Hail Mary pass notion that if I can just get control of elections, then I can stage a kind of a coup. But I don't think the Senate's going to pass the SAVE act, even though he's won some court decisions on the most important court decisions, like birthright citizenship, like can he federalize the National Guard, like can he fire the Federal Reserve? He's lost some key decisions and the lower courts just are overruling his attempt to get control of elections by executive orders. And I think I wouldn't bet my life on it. But I think we're probably going to have reasonably honest elections this fall. And I think it's going to be a Democratic wave. Okay, that may be the good news. But if you look at the kind of social contract that my generation, and maybe to some extent, Sam, your generation, had debt free college, how's it that you can afford that builds equity over a lifetime, jobs that are not gigs that lead to careers, jobs that have decent pensions, not just gigs. How on earth do you recreate that social contract for children and grandchildren of people my age? And my punchline is, wow, that's going to take a politics and a set of policies at least as radical as Roosevelt. And I haven't seen one of these 2029 blueprints that goes far enough. I mean you take the case of health insurance, even if we had Medicare for all and we keep these for profit middlemen who are sucking money out of the health care system that would just add costs. And Obamacare as far as it went because it worked through private insurers, you're subsidizing an inefficient system. So to be a liberal you need to be a radical at times. And I have a line in the book where I say I don't think I've become more Marxian. I think the world has become more Marxian. And this is a society of extractive capitalism, the kind of capitalism that operated after World War II when were well regulated and entrepreneurs actually delivered real stuff that's gone. We have extractive capitalism. We have hedge funds and private equity and tech Bros and surveillance capitalism. And to get back a kind of social democratic economy that serves ordinary people is really going to take radical reforms. I don't know. Even if we get democracy back, even if we elect a president who's a Democrat and a Democratic Congress, you need a president who's both a visionary and a practical politician and that's going to take some doing.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, hope springs eternal, I guess. Bob Kevin has to indeed. The book is Notes for next time. Can't recommend it enough. Fascinating story. We barely scratched the surface of your really David day and said Zelig like life in terms of both politics and the journalism politics from both a journalist and a an economist and a working for the government. Bob Cutner, thanks so much for your time today. Really appreciate it.

[Robert Kutner]

Thanks for having. Thanks for having me.

[Emma Vigland]

We are back folks. Hope you enjoyed that conversation between Sam and Robert Kutner. And we're gonna wrap up the free part of this show and head into the fun half soon. As a reminder this show relies on your support. JoinTheMajorityReport.com helps us survive and thrive. You can Im into the show. We'll read your IMs. Please do. It would be very helpful if you could become members. I don't know how to end these pitches in an artful way but that is grandma and we now have Brandon Sutton with us. Hello Brandon.

[Brandon Sutton]

That's right.

[Emma Vigland]

Hello Emma. Hello I'm Feeling so weird today with, like, the air quality. I don't know what's going on. I've got like, brain fog or something. It's so odd outside.

[Matt Bender]

Sort of permanently lightheaded.

[Emma Vigland]

Exactly. And slow. I'm like, are the words coming out of my mouth making sense? I'm not quite sure, but hard to

[Brandon Sutton]

enunciate too, because my throat's, like, swollen.

[Emma Vigland]

Exactly. It's bad over here. But what's happening on the disc course in lighter news?

[Brandon Sutton]

Oh, I don't know if it's in lighter news because we were covering the miasma that has engulfed the United States. I like to think that it's a metaphor for Trump's rule. Like he has this kind of like, toxic, spiritual, and now literal miasma that, like, just descends upon America. But we've been covering, and I think we need to catch back up on this, the ongoing case against Tyler Robinson, what's happening there, and how the right wing media sphere has been basically, I think, had another civil war over this particular case. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's Candace versus everybody. No, Candace versus the narrative. Right.

[Matt Bender]

Although her and Tucker still on the same side, or is that sort of like, where's Tucker at? I saw him say, like, he feels sorry for Trump the way he would feel sorry for any slave.

[Emma Vigland]

Oh, shut up. He has agency, you psycho.

[Brandon Sutton]

Tucker is an expert fence sitter. Like, of all the people who may be, like, true believers versus grifters, like, Tucker is a chameleon. And he has been his entire career, you know, on the right wing side. And so Tucker is like, grift maxing. And I think that he's managed to fence sit on the appropriate issues in such a way. I don't know what his, like, in detail opinions about the Tyler Robinson case are. I feel like he's barely touched it compared to people like Candace or even like Alex Jones more recently. And, you know, not the, you know, real Alex Jones, obviously the clone that has replaced him that we're, you know, also calling Alex Jones, obviously. Obviously we've been keeping up with that. So I would definitely recommend going over and joining the discourse because we are actually a little bit less than 900 subscribers away from 25,000 subscribers on YouTube.

[Sam Cedar]

You were growing at a clip.

[Brandon Sutton]

Here I am growing at a clip. Much like a newborn baby. I am getting larger every time you see me. Every time. Every time you go to buy me a new pair of shoes, you think to yourself, God damn, this little something's feet is getting bigger every time. And, you know, honestly, it's true. It's true. Soon they'll have to invent a whole new element to make a plaque for me for YouTube out of something radioactive. Brandonium.

[Emma Vigland]

Brandonium. Right. That does work, right? That has same subtlety as James Cameron's choice to call the the entity or like the resource that they're trying to get in Avatar. Unobtainium.

[Brandon Sutton]

I think subtlety is for losers. I think I would agree. Subtlety is for people who don't want to take responsibility for what they actually believe. I would never choose to be subtle. Use subtext, make hints, leave clues. You know that comes unfiltered. Unfiltered psychological warfare aimed at you and your community. So go over to the Discourse with Brandon on YouTube or Twitch and hit that like and subscribe button. Smash that bell that tells you when I'm on and just start plugging yourself into what's really going on.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah, tag, plug into the Matrix, folks, and subscribe to the Discourse. You are truly a gem, my friend. Matt Bender. Hello. Good to see you.

[Robert Kutner]

Hello.

[Sam Cedar]

Good to see you, too.

[Robert Kutner]

How you doing?

[Emma Vigland]

I'm doing all right. What's happening over on your show? Zuh.

[Robert Kutner]

Just tune into YouTube.com mattbinder and be wowed anytime you see something pop up or I go live because

[Emma Vigland]

the spontaneity is part of the fun. Matt Leck, what's happening with you?

[Matt Bender]

Yeah. Over on Left Reckoning, we talked Sam Karras about the Big Bend wall, which is only really making the contractors happy and scarring a pristine landscape. And also talk to Ishmael Johnson about the cost of youth sports in the wake of soccer commentator Alexi Lalas wondering who's going to pay for all this free soccer that we apparently need to compete at the highest level and we haven't paid for it, so now we can't. And tomorrow on the Jackman Show, Brendan James of Blowback Podcast talking about their series on Israel no Daylight, and the relationship between Israel and America.

[Emma Vigland]

All right, folks, we will see you in the fun half.

[Sam Cedar]

Okay, Emma, please.

[Emma Vigland]

Well, I just. I feel that my voice is sorely lacking on the Majority Report.

[Sam Cedar]

Wait, look, Sam is unpopular. I do deserve a vacation at Disney World, so. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome Emma to the show.

[Emma Vigland]

It is Thursday.

[Sam Cedar]

I think you need to take over. Yes, please. I'm. I'm going to pause you right there. Wait, what? You can't encourage Emma to live like this.

[Robert Kutner]

And I'll tell you why.

[Sam Cedar]

Someone's offered a tour Sushi and poker with the boys. Tour Sushi and poker with boys. Who was offered a tour.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

Sushi and poker with boys. What? Tour, sushi and poker.

[Emma Vigland]

Tim's upset.

[Sam Cedar]

Tour, sushi and poker with poop boys was offered with twerk Sushi and. Ah, that's what we call biz. Sushi and poker with toothpoise.

[Emma Vigland]

Right.

[Sam Cedar]

Twerk, sushi and.

[Emma Vigland]

Oh, we're gonna get demonetized.

[Sam Cedar]

I just think that what you did to Tim pool was mean.

[Emma Vigland]

Free speech.

[Sam Cedar]

That's not what we're about here. Look at how sad he's become now. You shouldn't even talk about it. I think you're right.

[Emma Vigland]

I probably am. I am in a certain way. But let's get to the meltdown here.

[Sam Cedar]

Sushi and poker with the boys. Oh, my God.

[Matt Bender]

Wow.

[Sam Cedar]

Sushi.

[Brandon Sutton]

I'm sorry.

[Sam Cedar]

I'm losing my mind. Someone's offered a tour. Sushi and poker with the boys. Logic. Sushi and poker with the boys. I think I'm like a little kid.

[Emma Vigland]

I think I'm like a little kid.

[Sam Cedar]

I think I'm like a kid. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. Add this debate 7,000 times. A little kid. I think I'm like. I don't care.

[Robert Kutner]

I don't care.

[Sam Cedar]

I'm losing my mind. Some people just don't understand. So I'm not trying to be a dick right now, but, like, I absolutely think the us should be combining me with a wife and kids.

[Emma Vigland]

That's not what we're talking about here. All right?

[Sam Cedar]

It's not a fun job. That's a real thing. That's got real thing. Willy Walker. That's a real thing.

[Emma Vigland]

To work.

[Sam Cedar]

That's a real thing. That's real thing. That's a real thing. That's real thing. Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Rogan has done it again.

[John Ossoff]

Offered.

[Sam Cedar]

That's a real thing.

[Brandon Sutton]

I think he might be blowing it out of proportion. Real thing.

[Sam Cedar]

That's boys offer. That's a real thing. Let's go, Joey. Sushi and poker with the boy. Take it easy. Dance work. Sushi and poker. Things have really gotten out of hand. Sushi and poker. Boys. Delusional sushi. You don't have a clue as to what's going on. Live YouTube.

[Emma Vigland]

Sam has, like, the weight of the world on his shoulders. Want to do this show anymore?

[Sam Cedar]

Anymore?

[Emma Vigland]

It was so much easier when the majority report was just you.

[Sam Cedar]

Let's change the subject.

[Brandon Sutton]

Rangers.

[Robert Kutner]

And Nick's doing great now.

[Matt Bender]

Shut it up.

[Emma Vigland]

Don't to want people saying reckless things.

[Robert Kutner]

On your program.

[Sam Cedar]

That's one of the most difficult parts about this show.

[Emma Vigland]

This is a pro killing podcast.

[Sam Cedar]

I'm thinking maybe it's time to bury the hatchet.

[Emma Vigland]

Left his best trump Violet Twerk.

[Sam Cedar]

Don't be foolish and don't tweet at me. And don't the way this all of these people love it.

[Emma Vigland]

That's where my heart is. So I wrote my honors thesis about it.

[Sam Cedar]

She wrote an honest thesis. I guess I should hand the main mic to you now you want to the right of the unformed policy.

[Emma Vigland]

We already formed Israel, dude. Are you against us?

[Sam Cedar]

That's a tougher question. I have an answer to God. Incredible theme song.

[John Ossoff]

I bumbler Emma Vinland.

[Sam Cedar]

Absolutely one of my favorite people, actually.

[John Ossoff]

Not just in the game, like, period.