"For progressives, hope is in the states," declares Tim McFeeley, executive director of the Center for Policy Alternatives (CPA), a national policy group that works with a network of liberally-oriented state legislators.
Adds Bernie Horn, the CPA's policy director: "From Jan. 1 to April 15, there have been three times more progressive bills passed in 2005 than in 2004. Some of this is a release of frustration from the 2004 election!"
The list offered in evidence lacks blockbuster moves: no state, for example, shifted its tax system to give low-income taxpayers a better break. And a check of state legislatures reveals no shortage of anti-tax sentiment, efforts to restrict abortion rights and the like.
But as an example of the newfound gumption on the left, the CPA cites Maryland, where the General Assembly under Democrat control boldly dispatched a parade of progressive bills to the desk of Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich, daring him to wield his veto.
Among the Maryland measures: a dollar increase in the state's minimum wage, a discount prescription drug plan opposed by drug manufacturers, and a commission to study disparities in pay between men and women, whites and minorities.
The Maryland legislators also overrode Ehrlich's veto of a bill eliminating a special tax loophole that enriched HMOs. And then they nixed the governor's top priority: slot machine gambling to feed state coffers.
In New Jersey, progressives cheered when the Legislature agreed to increase the minimum wage to $7.15 an hour. New Mexico and Kentucky made it easier for small businesses to provide health insurance for their employees.
In Montana, where Democrats staged a resurgence in last November's elections, the Legislature voted for an $80 million increase in K-12 education spending, passed a ban on smoking in all public buildings and offered tax credits to small businesses that offer health insurance to their workers.
New Mexico legislators authorized $20 million in bonds to finance cost-saving, energy-efficient equipment in such public buildings as schools; the bonds will be paid off by actual energy savings realized. Illinois voted to give unemployment benefits to workers locked out of their jobs because of a labor dispute. The unicameral Nebraska Legislature, voting 36-11, overrode Republican Gov. Dave Heineman's veto of legislation automatically restoring felons' right to vote two years after they complete their sentences.
With numerous "red" states included on the progressive bill list, McFeeley claims there's "a role-reversal for state legislators -- progressives advocating a form of 'states' rights' as a backlash against the right-wing federal agenda" and "offering powerful ammunition for future national political battles."
That assumes, of course, the progressive agenda doesn't raise the ire of conservative-oriented groups like the powerful American Legislative Exchange Council and others fighting state spending and regulation.
Still unknown, for example, is the political shakeout of the new effort to stop big employers such as Wal-Mart from tapping the states' fiscally stressed Medicaid systems to cover health care of their low-wage, inadequately insured employees. Disclosure bills are pending in 27 states, strongly backed by the AFL-CIO, which is angered by Wal-Mart's continued total success in resisting unionization.
Maryland is once more a step ahead with new legislation requiring companies with 10,000 or more employees to spend at least 8 percent of payroll helping workers purchase health care, or put money into a state fund for the uninsured.
In Florida, where Medicaid is consuming 25 percent of the state budget, The St. Petersburg Times reports that taxpayers "may be double-subsidizing low-wage employment" by first granting incentives to companies to create jobs, then underwriting their workers' health care.
But the new ideas bubbling up from the states don't stop with economic issues. They also touch emotional areas reminiscent of the 2004 ballot clashes over gay marriage. Connecticut, for example, this year became the second state, and New Jersey the third, to legalize same-sex domestic partnerships.
In New Jersey, sexual assault survivors must now be given information about emergency contraception and, on request, a "morning after" pill. Illinois passed a bill banning discrimination against gay, lesbian and bisexual people in housing and employment. Maryland will let unmarried and same-sex couples make end-of-life health decisions for their partners.
So where's the country really headed -- toward the moralistic conservatism of the current Republican president and Congress, or what appears to be a more populist and socially liberal orientation of so many state governments?
Maybe the 2004 election results told us more than we noticed. The Republicans won a national victory -- but surely not an overwhelming one. Simultaneously, Democrats inched to a razor-thin majority in the nationwide division of state legislative seats. Before the election, Republicans controlled both houses of 21 state legislatures, the Democrats 17, with 11 split. After the election, each party controlled 20 legislatures, with nine
split.
The bottom line: as a nation, we remain deeply divided. With media attention overwhelmingly on Washington, we're easily missing half the story.
Neal Peirce's e-mail address is nrp@citistates.com.
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