Richard Kirsch

Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow
Roosevelt Institute Profile

Recent Posts by Richard Kirsch

  • Where There's a Will, There's a WPA: Stopping the Slow-Motion Jobs Disaster

    Apr 8, 2013Richard Kirsch

    We can create the political will to tackle the jobs crisis by advancing a progressive economic narrative.

    The question we must ask today, as we remember the Works Progress Administration is: why isn’t there the political will to take dramatic steps to address today’s jobs emergency?

    We can create the political will to tackle the jobs crisis by advancing a progressive economic narrative.

    The question we must ask today, as we remember the Works Progress Administration is: why isn’t there the political will to take dramatic steps to address today’s jobs emergency?

    Let’s start with the obvious; there was a far greater share of Americans unemployed in the Great Depression. In 1934, unemployment peaked at 24.9%.  One-out-of-four people officially out of work is much more of a crisis than one-out-of ten (9.6%), the peak in the current recession in 2010. The impact is even greater than two-and-a-half times, as such a huge drop in consumer spending means that marginal businesses able to survive 10% unemployment rates were swept away in the Depression. And during the Depression – much more than now – it was impossible not to know people whose lives had been devastated.

    The other obvious difference is that we have cushioned the impact on the unemployed through the establishment of New Deal programs, notably unemployment insurance, which is providing income to half of the more than 12 million people who have been laid off, and Social Security, which has helped older workers unable to find a job. In a broader sense, the bailout of the financial sector in 2009 was a lesson learned from the New Deal, stopping the Great Recession from becoming a second Great Depression.

    For most middle-class Americans, the Great Recession was not a sudden shock to a prosperous lifestyle. It was a deepening of a three-decade long trend of families seeing their incomes and lifestyles squeezed by stagnant wages and eroding benefits. Median household income increased in real terms by only 14% from 1972 to 2007.  During this period, the richest Americans captured most of the benefits of economic growth: their share of national pre-tax income of the top one-in-a thousand quadrupled from 3% to 12%. Much of the meager growth through 2007 was lost in the Great Recession; by 2011 median household income had dropped below 1996 levels.

    Of course, the Great Recession did real harm to tens of millions of Americans, as Wall Street took away their retirement savings and banks took away their homes. The more than 20 million who are out of work or working less than they would like feel the pain every day. However, most people whose homes were foreclosed are not on the streets, and the long-term unemployed are scraping by and aren’t in bread lines. Additionally, the retirement crisis — another slow-moving crisis — represents a long-term crippling of prospects rather than an immediate disaster.

    The New York Times coverage of Friday’s weak jobs report highlights the slow motion nature of today’s jobs crisis. The Times focused on a report by the National Employment Law Project, written by Roosevelt Institute Fellow Annette Bernhardt, that revealed most of the new jobs emerging from the Great Recession pay low wages. The Times article also highlighted the persistent growth in temporary jobs, and concluded with a quote from NELP Executive Director Christine Owens, underscoring the nature of today’s job crisis:

    “This seems to be a long-term sleeper crisis too, as we think about long-term unemployed workers who are in midlife and older workers who are likely dipping into retirement savings in order to stay afloat. We’re setting ourselves up for somewhere, 10 years down the road, when a lot of retirees who didn’t expect to live in poverty are going to be in poverty.”

    For those of us who understand that we do have a jobs emergency today — even if it is a slow-motion disaster — the question is, how do we create the political will to address the underlying crisis? The answer is to make jobs the central issue in the bigger story about the economy, so that the concerns of the unemployed are the same as the great majority of Americans who are employed.

    The economy and jobs remains by far the top issue of concern to Americans. As a March Pew Research poll found, “Despite substantial public awareness of recent gains in the stock market and rebounding real-estate values, the percentage saying economic conditions will get worse over the next year has risen to its highest point in nearly eight years.”

    We need to be consistently telling our story: the crushing of the middle class did not happen by accident. It is a result of decisions to cut taxes for the wealthy, stop investing in infrastructure, destroy the ability of unions to organize, saddle college students with huge debts, and deregulate Wall Street. We need to remind people that the stock market is at record levels because powerful corporations are making huge profits by cutting wages and benefits and shipping jobs overseas.

    We need to champion our vision of an economy driven by working families and the middle class. We need to show how we can rebuild the middle class by deciding together to provide “good jobs for everyone in America.” We should put forth a bold program, which addresses all three aspects for our vision:

    • Good Jobs. We can assure that every job – private and public – pays enough to support a family, with decent wages, health and retirement benefits, and family-friendly leave policies. That will mean new wage standards, such as a higher minimum wage and paid sick days; social insurance programs for paid family leave and retirements; and modernization of labor laws so workers can effectively organize unions again.
    • Jobs for Everyone. We can create tens of millions of jobs for our future. Jobs for a green economy of energy independence. Jobs to rebuild our infrastructure and create a new infrastructure for the information age. Jobs to educate our children and take care of our seniors. Government must both make direct job investments and pave the way for businesses to create good jobs.
    • Good Jobs in America. We can create good jobs in America by enacting fair trade and currency policies, as well as government purchase of American-made goods and an end to tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas.

    There are promising efforts already taking place to build a movement around these issues — efforts to innovate new approaches to organizing low-wage workers; campaigns to press for higher minimum wages and paid sick days; and local initiatives to create good paying green jobs. Progressives in Congress have put forth comprehensive jobs bills and President Obama is touring the country asking for investment in infrastructure.

    Building a movement that is big enough to address the jobs emergency will require tackling the basic tenants of our financialized, trickle-down economic paradigm. For everyday Americans, the stakes could not be higher. We have no choice but to build the political will to create a 21st century America that works for all of us. 

    Richard Kirsch is a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, a Senior Adviser to USAction, and the author of Fighting for Our Health. He was National Campaign Manager of Health Care for America Now during the legislative battle to pass reform.

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  • The Next Big Obamacare Battle: The Low-Wage Workers Who Get Left Out

    Apr 1, 2013Richard Kirsch

    Reformers should start building a coalition to push for expanding the bill and making it more affordable.

    Reformers should start building a coalition to push for expanding the bill and making it more affordable.

    The whining from some fast food chains that they won’t be able to afford paying for their employee’s health coverage under Obamacare have gotten a lot of press. But what is more troubling is the recent news that some big chains are concluding that the costs won’t be nearly as high as they had projected. The reason: their employees won’t be able to afford the health insurance and will instead pay a fine and remain uninsured. This fight is just the first battle in the coming war over Obamacare that will center around those who get left out. Big flaws in the bill will mean that many low-wage workers will be forced to choose between paying huge chunks of their income on premiums or on a penalty that leaves them with no coverage at all. Reformers should take note and get ready for the coming struggle.

    Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Wendy’s lowered its estimate of the cost of Obamacare for each of its restaurants by 80 percent, from $25,000 a store to $5,000. The hamburger chain figured that many of its full-time employees, who will be offered health insurance through the company, will turn down the coverage because, as the Journal reported, “they can get insurance through Medicaid or a family member, or because they prefer to pay the penalty for not having coverage.” That penalty starts at $95 a year, although it will go up to $695 by 2016.

    Wendy’s isn’t alone. Several other fast food chains have come up with similar estimates. One example is Popeyes, which figures that since only 5 percent of its employees have signed up for the high deductible plan now offered at a price of only $2.50 a week, few workers will choose to pay an estimated $25 a week for the improved coverage it will offer under Obamacare. While the new coverage required under the law will be far superior to the plan Popeyes now offers, with a good list of benefits, it will still include a steep deductible, particularly for a low-wage worker.

    The debate over fast food chains and their workers is revealing one of the biggest flaws in the Affordable Care Act. Many low-wage workers will be put in a very difficult position: pay a big chunk of their limited wages for health insurance that is costly to use, or pay a fine for the privilege of remaining uninsured. This is an example of how the debate around Obamacare is about to take a huge turn. Instead of partisan opponents fearmongering about the theoretical impact of the law, the new struggle will be around the actual experience of those Americans whom the law was written to protect: people who are uninsured because they can not afford coverage or are locked out of the system because they have a pre-existing health condition.

    Come January 2014, millions of people will get affordable health coverage for the first time. These will mostly be working people who do not get insurance on the job now but will become newly eligible for Medicaid or income-based tax-credits to buy insurance in the new health insurance marketplaces (“exchanges”). This will also include those who will no longer be turned down because of a pre-existing condition. The expansion of Medicaid – in states that give that the green light – and the income-based subsidies will create a huge new constituency for Obamacare that will oppose any attempts to roll back the law.

    But due to problems written into the Affordable Care Act, the news won’t all be good for many people who can’t get affordable coverage now. There are some for whom the coverage in the marketplaces will still be too costly because the subsidies are too stingy. For example, a single person who earns just $33,500 will be required to pay $258 a month in premiums, which is more than 9 percent of his or her gross income, for coverage. That’s a big chunk out of a moderate income and is more than twice as much as that person would pay under Massachusetts’s current, successful law. In fact, people who earn more than two times the federal poverty level would be required to pay premiums from 6.3 percent to 9.5 percent of their incomes. If those costs are out of their financial reach, the bleak alternative is to pay a fine for remaining uninsured. It’s true that the coverage will include good benefits, free preventive services, and a cap on out-of-pocket costs. But unless it is already paying high medical bills, that won’t help a working family pay a high premium. The millions who face this dilemma will not be happy to have to make the choice between premiums that will put a big squeeze on an already tight budget or paying a fine they can’t afford for no benefits at all.

    Which brings us to the second big group of people who will face this dilemma: low-wage workers who work more than 30 hours a week for a business that has 50 or more full-time employees. These employers can require employees to pay up to 9.5 percent of their incomes as premiums. The premiums are likely to be less for individuals; Popeyes estimates $1,200 a year, which would be similar to what has been found workable in Massachusetts. However, unlike in Massachusetts, the minimum coverage will have very high out-of-pocket costs, so workers will face high premiums for coverage that they can’t afford to use (although preventive care will be free). Furthermore, employers could decide to put more of the costs on to their workers, forcing them to choose between the premium and fines.

    The news is much worse for family coverage. The IRS ruled earlier this year that the 9.5 percent rule will apply to the cost of individual coverage, even if family coverage costs much more than this. Here is how the New York Times editorial board explained the impact, in an editorial titled, “A Cruel Blow to American Families”:

    A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that in 2012, employees’ annual share of insurance premiums averaged $951 for individual coverage and $4,316 for family coverage. Under the I.R.S. rule, such costs would be considered affordable for an employee with a household income of $35,000 a year — making the employee’s spouse and children ineligible for a public subsidy on a health exchange, even though that family would have to spend 12 percent of its income for the employer’s family plan.

    The Times goes on to report that between 2 million and 3.9 million spouses and children could lose access to affordable coverage because of the ruling. Those are millions of people for whom the law will be an empty promise.

    The major purpose of the Affordable Care Act was to make decent health coverage affordable to Americans, and the law’s success will depend on how well it does just that. Next year, many millions of now uninsured people will gain access, but there will be millions of others for whom the promise remains out of reach. In the toxic political atmosphere surrounding Obamacare, the people left out will take center stage.

    Republicans will seize on this situation to argue that the law is not working and use these people’s frustrations to portray the law as an expensive failure. The task for the champions of the ACA will be to unite those who are benefiting under Obamacare with those who will only benefit if the law is made more affordable. And since making coverage more affordable will take the government and, ideally, employers paying for more of the premiums, enacting the fixes will require a big political lift, particularly in the current Congress. Meeting this challenge will require organizing the winners and the losers to push for strengthening the law together.

    All of this will become an issue in the 2014 and 2016 elections. In this way, Obamacare will join Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid as perennial issues of public debate, with competing visions of the role of government in assuring the security and well-being of our citizens. It’s a fight that never ends. 

    Richard Kirsch is a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, a Senior Adviser to USAction, and the author of Fighting for Our Health. He was National Campaign Manager of Health Care for America Now during the legislative battle to pass reform.

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  • Paul Ryan’s Budget Would Kill Health Insurance Programs – and Thousands of Americans

    Mar 14, 2013Richard Kirsch

    Ryan's budget priorities expose a disregard for the fundamental right to a healthy life.

    I know you are not supposed to write in hyperbole, but sometimes the truth needs to be told. Paul Ryan’s budget, which kills Obamacare and cripples Medicare and Medicaid, would kill tens of thousands of people. Every year.

    Ryan's budget priorities expose a disregard for the fundamental right to a healthy life.

    I know you are not supposed to write in hyperbole, but sometimes the truth needs to be told. Paul Ryan’s budget, which kills Obamacare and cripples Medicare and Medicaid, would kill tens of thousands of people. Every year.

    I have trouble with putting policy glosses on proposals that would deny health care coverage to millions of people and make care much more expensive to millions more. Because when more people lack health coverage, more people die. And when health costs prevent people from getting the care they need, they get more seriously ill.

    How many people are we talking about? Estimates of the number of people who will die because they are uninsured vary, from about 500 to 1,000 for every one million who lack coverage. Repealing Obamacare would block promised coverage for 32 million people, so that would mean somewhere from 16,000 to 32,000 each year who will die prematurely. Of course, since some Republican governors and legislatures are not implementing the expansion of Medicaid coverage in their states, some of those deaths are already on their hands.

    Which leads us to the Ryan plan for slashing Medicaid. He replaces a program that now entitles low-income people to health coverage with a block grant to states to spend however they want on health care for the poor. The federal government would save money by decreasing what it pays to state governments and states would get to do the dirty work of cutting people’s health care. That will mean fewer people on the program, higher out-of-pocket costs, or a reduction in coverage of medically necessary care. And more people dying who would have lived if they had kept their previous health coverage.

    In cutting Medicaid, Ryan is fulfilling the biggest concern that Republican governors say they have when they consider expanding Medicaid under Obamacare. A typical remark came from Arizona Governor Jan Brewer: “As I weighed this decision, I was troubled by the possibility that a future President and Congress may take steps to reduce federal matching rates, leaving states with a greater and greater share of health costs over time.”

    Everyone is familiar by now with Ryan’s proposal to replace Medicare with vouchers to buy private insurance. The Ryan voucher plan is not about controlling health care costs; instead, it is intended to shift costs from the federal government to the seniors and the disabled who are covered by Medicare. When people can’t afford the care they need – and the CBO reported that the first Ryan voucher plan would have doubled the already high cost of health care to seniors – they will get sicker.

    The parts of Obamacare that Ryan doesn’t repeal underscore his cynicism. Ryan would keep the $716 billion in Medicare spending reductions over a decade, which he railed against when he was running for vice president. In his debate with Joe Biden, Ryan called the Medicare changes a “piggybank” for Obamacare, which would cause hospitals and nursing homes to close and lead to seniors losing benefits. None of this is true, as Biden pointed out. So now Ryan is using that $716 billion in savings to help him reach his goal of balancing the federal budget instead of what those savings were intended for: increasing Medicare benefits under Obamacare and expanding coverage to millions of Americans.

    Remarkably, Ryan also keeps the other tax increases in Obamacare, some $1 trillion raised mostly from upper income taxpayers and various medical providers and insurers. Ryan is using money raised to provide life-saving health coverage to millions of people, taxes he and other Republicans railed against, to meet his fantasy target of balancing the budget in 10 years.

    I’ve grown tired of providing a veneer of respectability to people in power – people with good health insurance, coverage that provides them with access to the best medical care, and pays most of their bills – who deny their constituents a basic human right. Governors and state legislatures who won’t expand Medicaid even though the federal government will pay virtually all of the cost. Members of Congress whose health coverage is largely paid for by their constituents who still make political hay by demagoging against Obamacare.

    Fortunately for those whose lives are at risk, the Ryan budget is dead on arrival. But the debate about how to make the promise of Obamacare real is only just the beginning. States will continue to debate whether to expand Medicaid. And when Obamacare’s major provisions kick-in next January, there will be a new round of debates about whether families can afford the new coverage and whether employers and government should do more or less to assure that people get covered. What will not end is the real consequences in each of those decisions for people’s lives. 

    Richard Kirsch is a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, a Senior Adviser to USAction, and the author of Fighting for Our Health. He was National Campaign Manager of Health Care for America Now during the legislative battle to pass reform.

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  • States Saying No to Health Care Marketplaces is Good News

    Feb 26, 2013Richard Kirsch

    ObamaCare has a better chance at success if it's taken out of the hands of Republican governors who want to see it fail.

    The headlines – “Many States Say 'No' to Health Insurance Exchanges,” to take one example – make it seem like bad news. But it’s not. It is good news that half the states are refusing to have anything to do with the new health insurance marketplaces being set up under the Affordable Care Act.

    ObamaCare has a better chance at success if it's taken out of the hands of Republican governors who want to see it fail.

    The headlines – “Many States Say 'No' to Health Insurance Exchanges,” to take one example – make it seem like bad news. But it’s not. It is good news that half the states are refusing to have anything to do with the new health insurance marketplaces being set up under the Affordable Care Act.

    One of the biggest differences between the good version of ObamaCare passed by the House and the mediocre Senate version that became law was the question of whether the federal government or states would run the new health insurance marketplaces (called “exchanges” in the law). But resistance by Republican governors is leading to implementation of the law in a way that is much closer to the vision in the House bill.

    The new health marketplaces are the centerpiece of ObamaCare, the mechanisms through which people who don’t get health coverage at work but make too much for Medicaid will be able to purchase subsidized health coverage, even if they have a pre-existing condition. The marketplaces, which are projected to cover 12 million people in 2012 and 29 million by 2021, will also offer more affordable insurance plans to small businesses.

    The House legislation would have had the federal government run the marketplaces while allowing states the option of taking over if they could demonstrate the ability to do at least as good a job. Consumer advocates hoped that the result would be a good national marketplace, with some exemplary states demonstrating how to do an even better job at providing quality coverage and good access while controlling costs.

    But the Senate legislation, which became law, gave the primary responsibility to each state to set up a marketplace, with the federal government as backup. Advocates were not pleased for two reasons. The first was a concern that states would do a very minimal job of protecting consumers. The second worry was that states would fumble the complicated task of getting the exchanges up and running by October 1, 2013, when they are open for enrollment.

    In reality, the reluctance of so many Republican governors to cooperate with ObamaCare has led to the creation of a system that looks more like the House bill. The federal government will run the exchanges in 25 states and will have primary responsibility, in partnership with states, in seven more.

    The last thing consumers needed was for governors who want the ACA to fail – like Florida’s Rick Scott and Texas’s Rick Perry – to be in charge of the law’s implementation. We can be sure that governors in these states would do the minimum amount under the law to sign people up or to protect consumers from high-priced, poor-quality health insurance plans.

    On the other hand, some of the states that have decided to set up their own marketplaces are doing what the authors of the House law hoped: being models. Massachusetts, which has been running a marketplace since 2007, is the trailblazer. The state did an excellent job promoting health care coverage and making it easy to sign up, either online or in person. There are strict conflict-of-interest protections for the individuals who govern the marketplace. And they have only contracted with health insurance providers, including community providers, that offer quality coverage at a reasonable cost. As a result, premium inflation has been low.

    Several states look like they will follow the Massachusetts example, including California, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont (which is moving toward a single-payer plan in 2017). If these states prove successful in demonstrating that acting on behalf of individuals and small businesses results in better access at lower costs, the example is likely to be followed by other states and the federal government.

    The open question is how good a job the Federal Department of Health and Human Services will do running the marketplaces in 32 states. This year, HHS is setting its sights on the essentials. The top priority – no small challenge – is getting up and running by October 1st, when people and small businesses can start enrolling. Setting up online systems that account for the different plans and the varying Medicaid and Child Health Insurance eligibility rules in each state is daunting. Enrollment will only be available online, and plans will be easy to compare. However, there will be contracts with state-based groups to assist with outreach and enrollment. The feds say they will pay at least some attention to assuring that community health centers are included as providers by some insurers.

    For now, HHS is not implementing key measures to assure that quality health insurance is provided at the best possible cost. It has decided to wait four years until all health insurance plans must be fully accredited by quality assurance bodies. More significantly, it will not initially use its biggest tool, restricting access to the marketplaces to health insurance plans that meet quality standards at a reasonable cost. Most people in the health exchanges will have their costs capped at a percentage of their income, with the government picking up the difference. So limiting insurance plans to those that provide good value will be essential to keeping the system affordable to the government and resisting pressure to increase the cost to consumers.

    This October, three and a half years after the ACA was passed, consumers will start enrolling in the new marketplaces. At that point, the debate about ObamaCare will shift from theory to practice. It is vitally important that people learn about the new marketplaces and can readily comparison shop and qualify for income-based subsidies for coverage. There will be huge headaches in the process. But there will be a lot fewer problems than if every state in the union was doing this on its own. It’s good to have one instance where opposition to ObamaCare from the right is all for the best. 

    Richard Kirsch is a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, a Senior Adviser to USAction, and the author of Fighting for Our Health. He was National Campaign Manager of Health Care for America Now during the legislative battle to pass reform.

     

    Rick Perry image via Christopher Halloran / Shutterstock.com.

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  • The Progressive Economic Narrative in Obama's State of the Union

    Feb 13, 2013Richard Kirsch

    President Obama has begun telling the right story about the economy. Now we need to make sure that story spreads.

    President Obama has begun telling the right story about the economy. Now we need to make sure that story spreads.

    Two years ago, frustrated by a conservative resurgence in the 2010 election, a group of progressive activists, economists, communicators, and pollsters came together to write a compelling story about our view of the economy (as Mike Lux relates). Our goal was to write a story that people could easily understand, based on our beliefs about how to create an economy that delivered broadly shared prosperity -- a story that could stand up against the right’s familiar recipe of free markets, limited government, and rugged individualism. The core of the story we developed in our progressive economic narrative (PEN) was: “The middle class is the engine of our economy. We build a large, prosperous middle class by decisions we make together.”

    So it was a milestone in our work to hear President Obama tell our story and use our language in his State of the Union address. The key line, delivered at the top of the speech and quoted in almost every news story, was “It is our generation’s task, then, to reignite the true engine of America’s economic growth: a rising, thriving middle class.”

    Taking another lesson from PEN, the president prefaced that quote with an explanation of what the economic problem is, focusing on how working families and the middle class have been crushed. In PEN we say, “American families are working harder and getting paid less, falling behind our parents' generation. Too many Americans can’t find good jobs and too many jobs don’t pay enough to support a family. Big corporations have cut our wages and benefits and shipped our jobs overseas.” Here’s the president’s version:

    But – we gather here knowing that there are millions of Americans whose hard work and dedication have not been rewarded. Our economy is adding jobs, but too many people still can’t find full-time employment. Corporate profits have skyrocketed to all-time highs, but for more than a decade, wages and incomes have barely budged. It is our generation’s task, then, to reignite the true engine of Americas economic growth: a rising, thriving middle class.

    When it came to describing how we build this middle-class engine, the president again used the same ideas frame laid out in PEN: “We build a large and prosperous middle class through the decisions we make together; investing in our people, expanding opportunity and security, paving the way for business to innovate, and to do business in ways that create prosperity and economic security for Americans.” The president’s agenda was based on these same concepts:

    • Invest in people through education (starting at Pre-K), skills we need for today’s jobs, affordable health care, and a secure retirement.
    • Pave the way for businesses through research, infrastructure, and green energy.
    • Do business in ways that create prosperity, with a higher minimum wage and pay equity for women.

    The president’s story contrasted sharply with Marco Rubio’s. Rubio also paid homage to the middle class, but he told the conservative tale:

    This opportunity – to make it to the middle class or beyond no matter where you start out in life – it isn’t bestowed on us from Washington. It comes from a vibrant free economy where people can risk their own money to open a business. And when they succeed, they hire more people, who in turn invest or spend the money they make, helping others start a business and create jobs. Presidents in both parties – from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan – have known that our free enterprise economy is the source of our middle class prosperity.

    So the fight is joined. For too long, progressives have not taken on the conservative story with our own narrative. As a result, even when people agree with us on specific issues, they still hold fast to the right’s definition of how to move the economy forward. We have, with the simple tale told by the president and in the progressive economic narrative, a very different story, an economy driven by working families and the middle class, which we create by decisions we make together, with our government as the catalyst.

    Our next task is to tell this same story over and over again in all of our communications. Repetition is key. People need to hear the story whenever we communicate on an economic issue. We give examples of how do to that on job quality, job creation, the federal fiscal mess, and health care at progressivenarrative.org.

    President Obama left out one part of the progressive economic narrative in his speech. As we say in PEN, “Our political system has been captured by the rich and powerful and corrupted by big money in politics. The issue is not the size of the government, it’s who the government works for – powerful corporations and the richest few, or all of us. We have to take our democracy back to ensure that our economy will work for all of us. ”

    That’s a story that politicians are reluctant to tell. As always, we need to lead and the leaders will follow. It is up to us to build an America and economy that works for all us. Clearly describing our vision of how to do that is a crucial element of building power that progressives overlooked for too long. We’re much closer when the president tells that story to the nation. It’s up to us to keep telling it every day.

    Richard Kirsch is a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, a Senior Adviser to USAction, and the author of Fighting for Our Health. He was National Campaign Manager of Health Care for America Now during the legislative battle to pass reform.

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