Schumer: Government Management Failures Contributed to Democrats’ Midterm Losses

Agency snafus played a role in the Democrats’ Election Day drubbing by giving Republicans ammunition for portraying government as ineffective, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a formal speech Tuesday telecast from the National Press Club.

The Democratic Policy Committee Chair laid out a strategy for his party to recapture the loyalty of the middle class and “embrace government, not run away from it.”

He portrayed the Republican gains of seats in both the Senate and House as a temporary swing resulting from his party’s failure to address the economic travails of the middle class that in the long run, he said, favor Democrats and an active, effective government.

“When the government failed to deliver on a string of noneconomic issues—the rollout of the Obamacare exchanges, the mishandling of the surge in border crossers, ineptitude at the [Veterans Affairs Department] and the government’s initial handling of the Ebola threat,” Schumer said, “people lost faith in the government’s ability to work, and then blamed the incumbent governing party, the Democrats, creating a Republican wave.”

Schumer resurrected past criticism of his own party for a decision in President Obama’s first year to make health care reform a priority over further efforts at job creation. “To aim a huge change in mandate at such a small percentage of the electorate made no political sense,” he said, noting that the uninsured constituted only 5 percent of the electorate.

Attempting health reform—which Schumer supported in principle--opened opportunities for the Tea Party and Republican leaders to “convince the average American that not only did Obamacare not work for them, not only would a parade of horribles emerge, but they turned Obamacare into a general metaphor and falsely convinced the electorate that government couldn’t work anywhere,” said Schumer, who will continue in the new Senate on the Democratic leadership.

He additionally blamed the losses on a “cascade” of unexpected issues, “the VA, the invaders at the White House, the border, Ebola and ISIS, all fueled by an unrelenting and sensationalist media that exaggerated hype and emphasized the negativity of these events.”

Schumer also criticized his own party for refashioning the 2009 Recovery Act "to make the breadth of the stimulus so wide that funding seemed to be going to any number of pet programs and not just to things that would jump-start the economy.”

In his 50-minute speech dividing U.S. history into epochs, Schumer characterized as “pro-government” an era of active federal programs and middle-class growth beginning with President Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. That ended with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan with his philosophy that government is “the problem.” Soon, “Americans started to believe that the federal government had become bloated, sclerotic and ineffective,” Schumer said. Obama’s victory in 2008—amid a global financial crisis--restored conditions that allowed Obama “to govern on a pro-government mandate.”

In today’s polarized Washington, Schumer said, the most conservative Democrat, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, “believes more in government than the most liberal Senate Republican, Susan Collins of Maine.” But victory in the future will accrue to the party that appeals to a middle class that has lost ground in recent decades, the strategist said.

“Deep down, Americans are much more concerned with who government works for than its size or scope,” he added. “If we have another 10 years of middle-class decline, we will have… a sour, angry country where people of different backgrounds, races and economic levels no longer get along, with a government that few of us, left or right, will like.”

In response to a question, Schumer said he does not think the GOP in the next Congress will succeed in likely efforts to dramatically cut spending. “Cuts are no longer at the top of list because the deficit has come down,” as have health care costs in particular, he said. Republicans, being “enamored with the concept that only the private sector can solve America’s problems, will only be effective at fostering negative attitudes toward government.”

The Republicans’ immediate agenda, Schumer noted, focuses on approving the Keystone XL pipeline and repealing the Affordable Care Act revenue raiser called the Medical Devices Tax (a proposal that Schumer and a few other Democrats support). But hundreds of thousands more jobs would be created, Schumer asserted, through serious new spending on infrastructure and by boosting funding for the National Institutes of Health.

 “If people really don’t believe government can deliver, they’ll follow the Republican path,” he said. And “Republicans will continue to paint government as the enemy,  and the media will continue to highlight government failures because they make for better copy than government success.”

Schumer declined to be harsh on Obama for the recent array of agency missteps. “The world changes and things happen, we can’t prevent the world from changing,” he said. “The Obama administration has adapted well to the difficulties,” he added, citing the much improved response to Ebola, protections from which, he said, are now working well in his hometown of New York.