35 years and counting, Iowa group continues to demand more of government

More than three decades ago, five Catholic priests in Waterloo set forth on a mission to gather and promote the voices of ordinary people on social justice issues. Although there was only one year of funding available for the project, and only enough money for one paid staff member, the priests were convinced that Iowa communities needed the improvements that could be garnered when people organized around issues most important to them.

Members of Iowa CCI protest outside the governor's mansion last year.

Today, the organization now known as Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement or Iowa CCI, embraces more than 3,000 members who hail from 97 of Iowa’s 99 counties. They battle on issues of fairness, equality, democracy and justice in policy areas ranging from voter-owned clean elections to financial safety, from fair housing to protecting the environment.

“Iowa CCI is an organization that can be a vehicle for people to realize their dreams and their true potential. What we do is help create a culture of democracy in civic engagement. We are the outlet for people so that they can have a say on the issues that impact them,” said David Goodner, community organizer. “The government, because it is controlled by corporations and money, is not as responsive to the people as it should be. But we can help fill that void and that disconnect.”

The group has gotten lots of attention of late, as it was featured on the final broadcast of PBS’s Bill Moyers Journal in April.

“We are non-partisan. We’re independent. We are about building an independent, progressive infrastructure in the state of Iowa that transcends the political parties,” Goodner said. “We want to build political power by building up a grassroots infrastructure of boots on the ground.”

The current membership of Iowa CCI is diverse — inhabiting both rural and urban areas, aligning with a variety of political parties, appearing across the spectrum of socio-economic stations and affiliating with a wealth of religious and civic organizations. Although each member maintains his or her own reasoning for joining the group, there is a single thread, born of the tw0-decade-old Populist Reform movement, that ties them together.

“[Iowa CCI] gets together to challenge government,” said economist David Osterberg, founder and executive director of the Iowa Policy Project and a scheduled speaker at Iowa CCI’s annual convention Saturday. “Now, that is a good thing to do — an American thing to do. Sometimes what they do gets confused with this Tea Party movement. But what I’m going to talk about [at the convention], and what Iowa CCI is, is an organization that is fundamentally different from the tea party.”

The tea party movement, which began only last year, has garnered a great deal of coverage from local and national media for staging sometimes confrontational protests, especially during a congressional recess in the fall of 2009 and during the debate on health-care reform. Participants who have taken part in tea party protests have denounced nearly every government program or policy introduced since January 2009, and have also taken aim at government agencies and policies that have been in existence for decades.

“Populism is explicitly anti-corporate,” Goodner said. “If you look at the Populist movement throughout history, including here in Iowa where it very much rallied against the railroads and robber barons, it was very much anti-corporate. So, there is no such thing as right-wing populism. Tea partiers say that big government is the problem. Populists say that big business is the problem and that big government is not the problem — big business is the problem along with big money.”

Activists within the tea party movement often say that they are, in general, against anything big: Big government, big national deficits, big taxes and big business. The policies that most appear to outrage them, however, are policies that fail to protect or enhance capitalists interests. They warn that Socialism is taking over the true American values of capitalism and “free enterprise.”

“First of all, [Iowa CCI] cares about fairness in taxes. Second, they recognize that the government — when you have a disaster like the banking crisis or like what happened in 2008 in Cedar Rapids — that is exactly what government is for,” Osterberg said. “The tea party is so ideological that they recognize few things that the government should ever do. And, consequently, they are just always mad about any government spending on pretty much anything. So, is what the tea party people are doing this old American populist tradition? No, it isn’t. Not at all.”

This idea that government not only needs to tax and spend during a recession or a disaster, but that it has a responsibility to do so, will be the focus of Osterberg’s presentation to Iowa CCI members at the convention Saturday in Des Moines.

“My talk is general — in a way like the economics that I use to teach at Cornell College,” Osterberg said.

During times of crisis, Osterberg contends that one of the best things government can do is put money in the hands of individuals who will spend it through unemployment insurance benefits, food stamps and other programs that directly benefit the most poor within a community.

“For effectiveness, you want to make sure that money goes to the lowest income people — not because they are good or bad, but because they will automatically spend it,” he said.

Both during the aftermath of the 2008 floods in Cedar Rapids and during the national banking crisis, communities were faced with the problem that there was not enough consumer spending happening to keep the economy churning. In response, the City of Cedar Rapids asked the voters to approve a local option sales tax.

“That is certainly legitimate and, as an economist, the way that you’d analyze that is to determine who is paying the tax and who is benefiting from the proceeds,” Osterberg said. “The problem with local option sales taxes is that they are a terribly regressive tax. So, the poorer you are, the higher percentage of your income is paid toward the tax.

“Now, if the city takes that money and gives it away to a bunch of rich people, that would be a pretty awful way of doing things. That would not be very fair, and it would also not be very effective. The reason that government is getting involved in this is to take take taxes from people in general and then put it into spending that is going to make the economy recover. The worst thing you can do is use it to cut property taxes or cut income taxes or give it to people that aren’t going to spend it.”

Osterberg admits that such economic policy sounds “big ‘D’ Democratic,” but it is really just normal economics.

“Mark Zandi, who was the economic adviser to John McCain, would say the same thing,” he said. “If you want to make sure you are going to get your economy started again, you take tax money and you use it to increase unemployment benefits by $25 a week or you give it out in food stamps. You do that because you know that those people are going to spend it automatically. The worst thing you can do is tax cuts that are aimed at high-income people — the Bush tax cuts. That is the least effective [way to help the economy].”

In general, Osterberg believes that a plan to pay Cedar Rapids flood victims up to $10,000 out of the local option sales tax revenues for personal property reimbursement is a good idea, but he also knows that the devil is in the details.

“You say up to $10,000, but are you also saying that those who collect must own their own home? If so, you’d be discriminating against the lowest income people who still might have lost something, but don’t get any compensation,” he said.

“But bigger than that is this whole way of looking at the world. When do people pull together and say government is important and it can do things that we can’t do on our own? When do we acknowledge that it can save us when the normal workings of the economy fall apart? That’s what Iowa CCI people do and believe, and they should not be confused with the people who are getting so much publicity right now because they are mad at government. Don’t get me wrong, when I show up at a CCI meeting they are mad at government and often getting ready to go down to Des Moines and raise hell — but they are mad for much different reasons.”

In addition to Osterberg, participants in the Iowa CCI statewide convention will hear from George Goehl of National People’s Action, Ben Goldfarb of Wellstone Action and keynote speaker Chris Hayes of  The Nation magazine.