Congressional Democrats targeted “old fashioned capitalism” in a new agenda announced Monday that they hope will lure in some of the voters who picked President Trump and the GOP in the 2016 election.
The “Better Deal” agenda regurgitates many of the old Democratic ideas of raising the minimum wage, increasing spending on infrastructure and penalizing companies that move overseas.
But it also emphasizes breaking up big companies such as airlines and cable companies and goes after the pharmaceutical industry with a requirement that companies “justify their prices” to consumers who are struggling to pay for medication.
“Old-fashioned capitalism has broken down to the detriment of consumers,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Monday at an event announcing the plan.
It would also add a tax incentive to small businesses that train workers, although it would require them to pay “a good wage” when that training is completed, Schumer said.
Democrats announced their agenda at an event in Virginia’s 10th Congressional District in Berryville, where the party believes it has a chance of defeating Rep. Barbara Comstock, a Republican, in 2018.
The proposal comes after months of introspection by the Democrats, who were shell-shocked by their losses in November and have so far served mostly as opposition to Trump and the GOP agenda. Democrats are in the minority in both the House and Senate and can do little to move their own legislation.
Schumer said he wants Democrats to show voters an agenda that appeals to people like the pair of union workers he sat beside at a recent Yankees game. The duo said they voted for President Trump but are now unsure of what he stands for or if he can accomplish the campaign promises that were aimed at people like them, Schumer recalled Monday.
“We Democrats can answer the call of millions of Americans like these folks I sat next to by offering them a better deal,” Schumer said.
The proposal is partly meant to help the party in 2018 when Democrats stand at least a slim chance of regaining power in Congress, although the election map is largely stacked against a takeover in either chamber.
Schumer said the agenda put forth by Democrats will serve as a potentially damaging contrast to the GOP, which is struggling to uphold major campaign promises such as tax reform and healthcare reform.
Democrats plan to offer amendments to legislation and to hold forums as well as go on the road to talk about their agenda, which in the coming weeks will include more specific proposals shaped by the feedback they hear from voters.
“Them being against things like this will hurt them in 2018,” Schumer said of the GOP’s likely opposition to the Democratic agenda. “But that is not what this is about.”
The party message on Monday took on a heightened anti-capitalism tone, signaling a shift to the left and the wing of the party represented by Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Monday’s announcement featured a fiery presentation Warren, who promised that if Democrats regain power they will “bust monopolies and restore competition in our markets,” including more aggressive enforcement of the nation’s antitrust laws and “tougher rules to tackle control of data,” a well as ensuring the continuation of the Consumer Financial Protection Board installed by President Obama.
President Trump, Warren said, “has stacked his administration with a who’s who of big time lobbyists and corporate executives.”
Rep. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., who heads the House Democrat fundraising arm, said the party message is focused on working class families.
“Voters and constituents want us to focus on them, to understand where they are,” Luján said. “And that their wages do not keep up with the standard of living.”
