House Speaker Nancy Pelsoi has consistently tyrannized the Medicare For All debate with one question: “how do you pay for that?” Yet Pelosi’s concern over ‘the deficit’ vanishes in other contexts, including her support for unchecked spending on the U.S.’ military empire.

Social spending reduces inequality. National security spending does the opposite. Yet for Speaker Pelosi, deficit politics apply only to the former. So while Pelosi subjects social programs to neoliberal austerity, the Speaker subsidizes U.S. military empire and the endless wars it produces. The Speaker’s selective use of ‘fiscal responsibility’ represents one of the clearest expressions of class warfare by Democratic and Republican leadership. Banishing this hypocrisy from political life will take time, but removing Pelosi can happen this November.

Welfare for warfare, austerity for healthcare

‘Paying for’ something in this context means either raising taxes or moving around funds within the existing budget. Of course, you can also ‘pay for’ something by adding to the deficit. But that’s not what the political establishment means when they ask the how do you pay for it question.[1]

While Speaker Pelosi invokes the deficit to shoot down programs that would save lives, she makes no mention of it when it comes to funding initiatives that take lives. Pelosi entered Congress in 1987. No wars since she assumed office have been ‘paid for.’ This includes the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars,[2] as well as the broader Global War on Terror, which is being waged in 80 countries.

Pelosi appears intent on further entrenching endless war as ‘politics as usual’. She voted against an amendment introduced by Rep. Barbara Lee in 2015 that would have blocked funds for the 2001 AUMF (H.Amdt. 482 to H.R.2685), the authorization that ‘legalizes’ the endless ‘global war on terror’. The Speaker again rejected an amendment offered by Lee in 2017 that would have repealed the 2001 AUMF entirely (H.Amdt. 1033 to H.R. 4909). 

Pelosi said nothing about the deficit when she opposed a war tax for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I am not in support of [a war tax],” Pelosi said. For social programs, however, the Speaker’s reverence for[1]  ‘the deficit’ returns. Pelosi has repeatedly invoked the pay-as-you-go provision (“PAYGO”), which functions as an austerity measure to limit social spending. Notwithstanding that military spending represents one of the largest deficit burdens, the Speaker’s vision of ‘fiscal responsibility’ remains limited to social programs.

‘Fiscal responsibility’

Speaker Pelosi insists that the Democratic Party is serious about ‘fiscal responsibility’, and she has linked that supposed virtue with proper national leadership. But at the same time, Pelosi has also supported the highly irresponsible status quo in which well over half of federal discretionary spending is sacrificed in the name of ‘national security.’ This distribution of public funds is obviously a problem in and of itself. But for someone who distinguishes herself from Republicans on the basis of ‘fiscal responsibility’, Pelosi’s voting record is unseemly: military spending is one of the largest contributors to the federal deficit, and the Department of Defense failed its first and only audit.

Pelosi voted for Trump’s first military budget (H.R. 2810) that poured money into Pentagon slush funds like the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account and the National Sea Based Deterrence Fund, the fraudulent F-35 fighter jet program, and authorized the purchase of a new nuclear cruise missile. So too did she support the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 (NDAA) that fueled corporate welfare in pretty much the same way (H.R. 5515). Most recently, Pelosi supported the authorization of the 2020 iteration (H.R. 2500), which ballooned the Department of Defense budget to $733 billion.

The Speaker’s commitment to corporate welfare for defense industry giants is beyond doubt. Pelosi voted against an amendment that would have reduced the DOD budget by a mere 1 percent (H.Amdt. 1034 to H.R. 4909). In 2018, Pelosi voted against an amendment that would have cut funding to the OCO slush fund, which recently surpassed $2 trillion in total expenses (H.Amdt. 635 to H.R. 5515). In 2016, Pelosi voted against an amendment (H.Amdt. 1206 to H.R. 5293) that would have prohibited the use of OCO funds for anything other than contingency operations, which was introduced by a Republican.[3]

If Speaker Pelosi is fiscally responsible, it is toward her corporate donors: specifically, her donors from the military-industrial complex. So far in the 2020 cycle, Pelosi has accepted $48,452 from the defense industry. Since 1989, the Speaker has taken in$359,893 from these publicly-subsidized firms.

Enforcing (social) order, at home and abroad

Pelosi’s track record befits the establishment’s tendency to place utmost importance on preserving hierarchy abroad (between states) and at home (between classes). While ostensibly a foreign policy issue, military spending is essentially a wealth inequality machine. So the Speaker’s endorsement of Trump-era defense budgets is a tacit endorsement of worsening inequality.

This is also evident in her behavior outside of Congress. Pelosi helped ensure that yet another Democrat with a disastrous foreign policy record would remain in office by endorsing and holding a DCCC fundraiser for conservative Democratic incumbent Henry Cuellar. The global working class would have benefitted from a victory by Cuellar’s primary challenger, Jessica Cisneros, but the same is true for the U.S. working class. While Cisneros sought to empower the working class, Cuellar voted with Trump nearly 70 percent of the time during the 115th Congress (last session), accepted campaign contributions from payday lenders and the fossil fuel lobby, and made history by being the first-ever congressional Democrat to receive reelection assistance from Americans for Prosperity Action, a super PAC bankrolled by billionaire Charles Koch. No member of Congress — Republican or Democrat — has received more money from for-profit prisons so far in the 2020 election cycle than Cuellar.

Moving forward (with Shahid Buttar)

Confronting — and ultimately replacing — the militarized, corporate ideology of the Democratic Party elites will require a mass movement organized around working-class interests. It will also require a better Congress. The November election between Nancy Pelosi and Shahid Buttar holds implications for the working class both within and beyond California’s 12th congressional district.

One of the key lessons of the current pandemic is that inequality kills. Speaker Pelosi’s performance is not just insufficient in this regard: her incumbency has actively contributed to worsening inequality. Buttar offers a promising alternative: a clear understanding of working-class security and a pathway for empowerment.

[1] Stephanie Kelton expertly lays out how easily ‘how do you pay for it’ slid from the realm of the sacred to the profane following the passage of the recent stimulus bills, here.

[2] “Political Parties at War” (2013) by Gustavo Flores-Macias and Sarah Kreps.

[3] Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s future Director of the Office of Management and Budget and White House Chief of Staff.