Curry declares climate change can boost American employment

Scott Benjamin

Former Clinton White House aide Bill Curry commends Democratic President-elect Joe Biden for preparing to tackle "the most urgent issue of our time -climate change – with a roster that he is “very, very happy with.”

“The United States was out front on information technology, but we are well behind and need to catch up on climate change issues,” said Curry of Farmington, who was the Democratic nominee for governor in 1994 and 2002.

Biden has appointed former Secretary of State John Kerry as the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy on Climate and former Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Gina McCarthy as the National Climate Advisor, both new positions.

“She is not a revolutionary, but she is smart and experienced,” Curry said of McCarthy, who served under former Gov. M. Jodi Rell (R-Brookfield) and later directed the federal Environmental Protection Agency under former Democratic President Barack Obama.

Curry declared, “The information technology expansion created trillions of dollars but did not create more jobs. In every other economic breakthrough you would lose a blacksmith but gain an auto manufacturer. This information technology change has been going on for 25 years and it has cost us jobs.”

“The climate change policies will create jobs in the solar industry and wind power and provide employment for displaced workers who can build a real life,” he explained in a phone interview. “This is the key.”

Reuters reported that “Biden wants the United States to rejoin the 2015 Paris Agreement to curb global emissions and reach net-zero emissions by 2050.” His “election pledges included a plan to apply a carbon adjustment fee against countries that fail to meet climate and environmental obligations.”

“It is about time,” Curry exclaimed.

Former Federal Communications Chairman Reed Hundt, who served on the transition teams for former President Bill Clinton and for Obama, was critical in his 2019 book, “A Crisis Wasted” (Rosetta Books, 370 pages) of Obama's record on climate change.

“In two terms Obama signed no major energy law,” he wrote. “Out of 100 million cars sold in the seven years from 2009 to 2016, not even a million were plug-ins. Greenhouse gas emissions in the United States were approximately the same every year from 2009 to 2016 and in 2016 were almost identical to the level in 1993” when Clinton took office.

Curry said even though the Republicans may continue to control the U.S. Senate following the two January 5 run-off elections in Georgia, and Democrats have only an 11-seat majority in the U.S. House, Biden can enact a blue-ribbon climate change program.

“Much of it will be done with state and local governments,” he said. “It also will be done with corporations and can be done through executive orders.”

“He also can probably get congressional approval for an infrastructure plan,” remarked Curry. “You are not going to see the Green New Deal any time soon, but you could have a Green market within two years with infrastructure improvements.”

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently stated that solar power is now “cheaper than fossil fuels.”

Curry said he also believes that Biden can make marked progress through executive orders in address ethics reform.

“Both Obama and [Republican President Donald] Trump said they were going to drain the swamp,” he remarked. “Neither of them did that.”

He said Biden should take action to address the revolving door for former members of Congress and former staff members to lobby on Capitol Hill; reduce the influence of lobbyists; and increase transparency.

Curry also said as is the case for many presidents, Biden will probably have the ability to address foreign policy with limited congressional intervention.

He said the 46th president’s platform should include a strengthening of alliances, a reform of the United Nations and “taking a look at how to improve” the World Trade Organization.

“With reforms on climate change, ethics and foreign policy, Biden could become a historic president,” said Curry, who is writing a book on Obama and the politics of populism.

In a recent Wall Street Journal column, former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) noted that Biden enters the White House with a Congress that is similar to the one that Clinton had after the 1994 midterm elections, which is when Curry, who had just lost his first bid for governor, joined the White House staff.

“If Republicans win the Georgia runoffs, American voters will have precluded the Biden administration from raising taxes, packing the courts, admitting Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia as states, and implementing a leftist agenda that would dramatically expand government,” wrote Gramm. “And while the president has regulatory authority, the courts and Congress have the power to check its excessive use.”

“Mr. Clinton worked with Republicans to balance the budget, cut taxes, limit the regulatory burden and reform welfare,” he stated. “Democrats and Republicans created one of the strongest postwar expansions and a budget surplus.”

Curry said that, “Third Way compromises are not sufficient. We never got the public option [on health care] or climate change during Obama’s administration.”

He said that U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky “is not interested in cooperation, he wants to defeat the Democrats. There is no sign that he will change.”

“Instead of seeking to negotiate with him, the better option for Biden is to persuade the public that your positions are better and outflank the Republicans,” Curry explained. “You started to see some movement in the Republicans when a poll showed that 78 percent of the voters wanted a $2,000 economic relief check.”

On another topic, The Wall Street Journal reported in November that the federal government appears to be on the hook for $435 billion in unpaid college student loan debt, a sum approaching the size of the losses by big banks during the 2007-2008 subprime mortgage crisis.

The New York Times reported in December that Biden “has endorsed canceling $10,000 in federal student debt per borrower through legislation.” However, the newspaper stated that Democratic congressional leaders were pressing for “up to $50,000 of debt relief per borrower, executed on Day 1 of his presidency.”

Curry said that while he was working as a domestic affairs aide for Clinton in 1994 and 1995 he spoke with the former president and with former Vice President Al Gore about legislation for tuition-free college. He said both of them were initially receptive but then dropped the idea after private colleges objected.

He acknowledged that the Democratic progressive faction has a platform that “will place a big bill in front of us” and the party "will have to determine which pieces are correct.”

Former Washington Post economics columnist Robert Samuelson wrote last August that a “rough estimate” indicated that it would cost $7.74 trillion over 10 years to “cover all the new benefits” in Biden’s proposals.

“His proposals, if adopted, would constitute the largest growth of government” since the Great Society legislation of the mid-1960s, Samuelson added.

Said Curry, “Biden will have to pick and choose.”

“But in the budget negotiations, we have two of the three legs in the president and a Democratic House,” he exclaimed. “With two out of three we should be able to get half a loaf.”

In Connecticut, Biden took more than 59 percent of the vote in November – including 79 percent in rural Salisbury and 61 percent in wealthy Greenwich, results that would have seemed unfathomable a generation ago.

Sacred Heart University Government Department Chairman Gary Rose told Patch.com that even some town councils in Republican enclaves have flipped to the Democrats in recent years making it is clear that Connecticut is no longer a swing state.

However, Curry said should not be complacent about their recent increased support among suburban voters in well-educated municipalities.

“As long as the Republicans adopt Trump’s policies, there will movement in a lot of suburban towns to voters going Democratic at the polls,” he explained. “But that could change.”

Additionally, Curry said Trump made inroads in 2016 and 2020 among working class voters in parts of Eastern Connecticut and the Naugatuck Valley.

He said that nationally, the Democratic Party has been “out of touch with the working class for a very long time as their economic opportunities, suicide rates and the opioid addiction rates worsened.”

“For example, Obama didn’t raise the minimum wage [in his first term] when he had the votes,” Curry said.

“[Former Democratic president] Lyndon Johnson took a record 61 percent of the popular vote in 1964,’ he said. “There is always going to be at least about 40 percent of the people who will vote Republican. Democrats may not get to 61 percent [Biden annexed 51.3 percent nationally], but we need to be closer to 60 percent. That means we make reforms that are universal so that they include the working class.”