Damage control

Joe Biden’s foreign policy platform is calamitous. He is adamant about maintaining record levels of military spending, was consistently and criminally wrong about Iraq, and has a decades-long record of empowering the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Whether he or Donald Trump wins the presidential election in November, Congress must constrain the president. It is now more important than ever for Congress to actually represent the working class.

As House Majority Leader, Maryland’s Steny Hoyer has a leadership position to do just that. He will not. Hoyer has an abysmal voting record on nearly every issue of significance to the working class. These votes are predictable. They reflect the policy preferences of Hoyer’s biggest corporate donors, to include the fossil fuel, pharmaceutical, and insurance industries. No surprise that Primaries For Progress labeled him as “consistently the worst member of Democratic leadership.”

Crucially, this atrocious record isn’t limited to domestic policy issues. Hoyer’s alignment with corporate interests in spite of considerable harm to the working class is equally clear in his foreign policy. Hoyer has consistently voted to squander taxpayer dollars for pointless, illegal, and open-ended wars. Hoyer has voted in favor of ballooning military spending and has opposed even modest efforts to rein in the Department of Defense’s slush fund. Hoyer is also among the members of Congress with the worst records on Palestine. Should he fall to the progressive challenger McKayla Wilkes in the June 2 primary, the working class at home and abroad will find much-needed respite from Hoyer’s class warfare. 

A lobbyist in office

On nearly every issue that matters to the working class, Hoyer sides with the corporate interests of his largest corporate supporters.

Consider the environment and climate change. Hoyer opposes the Green New Deal, and only 15 Democrats have a worse lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters. This is no surprise: fossil fuel energy donors contributed a staggering $366,000 to Hoyer’s campaign during the 2018 cycle alone.[1] Hoyer’s position as the second-highest-ranking Democrat suggests he represents the interests of ordinary Americans. He doesn’t. Hoyer refuses to support Medicare For All — despite the support of nearly 70 percent of Americans — and he opposed including the public option in the Affordable Care Act. This too comports with the interests of Hoyer’s top donors, among which are for-profit insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

Hoyer has a similar relationship to the military-industrial complex. Simultaneously, Hoyer has opposed accountability and oversight, while raking in corporate money from the manufacturing behemoths that profit from the US’s unfettered warmaking. In the election cycle before he became House Majority Leader, Hoyer took in over $200,000 from the defense industry. Hoyer has received $79,250 in defense industry contributions so far in the 2020 election cycle, including over $10,000 from Northrop Grumman, $10,000 from BAE Systems, $8,500 from Lockheed Martin, and $11,000 from Raytheon, which contributed $145,000 over Hoyer’s career.

The money these massive defense corporations lavish on members of Congress like Hoyer is predominantly US taxpayer money. A full 80 percent of Northrop Grumman’s 2018 ‘sales’ were to the US government. In effect, the absurd cycle of defense spending amounts to welfare for the one percent: In 2018, Northrop’s CEO took home $24.2 million in compensation.

However, this is not merely corporate welfare. Because defense contractor revenue comes almost entirely from public funds, by accepting contributions from the industry, Hoyer is effectively using taxpayer dollars for private gain. This is corrupt. And this corruption pays off for weapons manufacturers: Hoyer has voted for every single one of the Trump administration’s record-setting defense budgets.

Hoyer voted against an amendment (H.Amdt. 538 to H.R. 2500) to the House version of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that proposed making a small cut (less than $17 billion) to the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) budget, which recently surpassed $2 trillion in largely unnoticed, unaccountable expenses since 2001. He also voted against an amendment (H.Amdt. 529) to the same NDAA that would have prevented US public funds from being used to buy even more new nuclear weapons. For the 2019 NDAA, he voted against an amendment (H.Amdt 635 to H.R. 5515) that would have cut the OCO slush fund, and against an amendment to the 2018 NDAA (H.Amdt. 162 to H.R. 2810) that proposed cutting the defense budget by a mere 1 percent.[2]

Hoyer may argue that this record speaks to his commitment to “our troops” — many of whom are working class — but his voting record demonstrates that the welfare of US military personnel is of little concern to him. Rather than bringing US troops home from these imperial disasters, Hoyer has consistently voted to continue funding endless war, including by keeping US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hoyer voted for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In 2007, he pushed to continue funding the war because he wanted the public to see that the Democrats “intend to support the troops that we’ve sent to Iraq.” In effect, Hoyer would rather be seen helping the troops instead of actually acting to keep them out of harm’s way. In Iraq the following year, more than 300 US soldiers died — as did 10,000 Iraqis. Hoyer continued to support desultory imperial overreach by voting against withdrawing troops from Iraq and Syria (Rep. McGovern’s H.Con.Res. 55) in 2015 and against an amendment to the 2017 NDAA (H.Amdt. 1036 to H.R. 4909) that would have removed language that called for expanding the scope of the US ‘mission’ in Afghanistan in 2016.

Representation for the occupation

Among the most odious of Hoyer’s missteps in foreign policymaking is his consistent, enthusiastic support for the state of Israel, while empowering its most flagrant abuses. Out of the 169 countries that have lobbied the United States since 2017, Israel ranks third in lobbying expenditures, yet few in Congress have represented Israeli interests more aggressively than Hoyer.  Israel continues to impose persistent occupation to dispossess native Palestinians, and has barred members of the US Congress from visiting. Rather than recoiling at these facts, for decades Hoyer has been a chaperone for the Israel lobby’s propaganda tour. He received over $100,000 in campaign contributions from pro-Israel groups for his 2018 reelection campaign, and appears on paceto surpass that total for the 2020 cycle. He is consistently among the leading recipients from this interest group. 

And it shows: Not only does Hoyer refuse to call Netanyahu what he is (a racist), he voted in favor of a resolution dismissing the reality of Israeli settlement-building that was passed unanimously by the United Nations (UNSC Res. 2334). Hoyer also praisedthe Obama administration’s ten-year, $38 billion Memorandum of Understanding with Israel, even though most Democratic voterssupport cutting aid to Israel. Like the Israel lobby, Hoyer is intent on shattering nonviolent resistance to the occupation. Hoyer voted in favor of legislation (H.Res. 246) that attempts to quash the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a form of nonviolent resistance against active, ongoing oppression. In effect, the legislation impinges First Amendment free-speech rights in the interest of shielding a foreign nation from legitimate public criticism.

The danger is not merely a war of words. By working in-sync with the Israel lobby, Hoyer brings us closer to war. Interest groups like AIPAC did not back the Iran war powers resolution to give the House constitutional authority over whether the US wages war against Iran. Rather, these groups focused on funding neoconservative think tanks that relentlessly urge war with Iran.[3] For his part, Hoyer’s ‘peace process’ proposal was literally written by AIPAC, and although he voted for the Iran Deal (begrudgingly), in 2017 he voted for new sanctions, in violation of the agreement.

Moving forward (with McKayla Wilkes) 

Working-class security lies at the intersection of domestic and foreign policy. Steny Hoyer has consistently shown that he does not grasp the actual threats that face the working class — or simply does not care. Whoever occupies the White House, we need a Congress that actually represents the working class. It is abundantly clear that Steny Hoyer does not.

It is precisely these factors that have boosted the campaign of Hoyer’s primary challenger, McKayla Wilkes. Wilkes has earned the endorsement of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, and her primary campaign has attracted considerable attention from grassroots organizations. In contrast to Hoyer, Wilkes makes the critical connection between justice for the working class at home and abroad. Fundamentally, domestic priorities, such as housing for all, criminal justice reform, and adequate funding to education serve the interests of the working class. Likewise, demilitarization of US foreign policy and support for the long-denied rights of Palesintians reject the hypocritical double standards of the bipartisan corporate elite, and instead focus on guaranteeing basic, fundamental rights.

Little wonder Hoyer refuses to debate Wilkes.

[1] The only member of Congress who took more money from the sector during the 2018 cycle was Frank Pallone, Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

[2] For the 2017 NDAA he did the same thing (H.Amdt. 1034 to H.R.4909).

[3] Pro-Israel groups also funded the PAC Democratic Majority for Israel, which spent over $1.4 million in attack ads against Sanders during in Iowa and Nevada.

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