Tal­ly the 500,000 gov­ern­ment jobs Con­gress has cut since 2007, or the $1.5 tril­lion it has slashed from the fed­er­al bud­get since 2011, and it’s hard not to con­clude that the coun­try is in the midst of a bru­tal aus­ter­i­ty régime.

Caucus members are introducing bills that would bring a more rapid end to the war in Afghanistan and impose a transactions tax on Wall Street.

The March 1 sequester trig­gered anoth­er $85 bil­lion in fed­er­al cuts. But even that is unlike­ly to quench Washington’s thirst for aus­ter­i­ty. Intran­si­gent Repub­li­cans are insist­ing on more spend­ing cuts, while Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma and his Demo­c­ra­t­ic allies in Con­gress call for a ​“bal­anced approach” — cuts topped with tax­es. As is often the case with bud­get cuts in today’s polit­i­cal cli­mate, those with the least have the most to lose — the poor, the work­ing class and those on fixed incomes.

Are any Democ­rats on the Hill will­ing to draw a line in the sand and refuse fur­ther cuts? The answer may hinge on a cau­cus built more than two decades ago by some­one who is not, in fact, a Democrat.

An inde­pen­dent from Vermont

When Bernie Sanders (I‑Vt.) was first elect­ed to Con­gress in 1990, he was uncer­tain about the role he could play. As an inde­pen­dent with­out an imme­di­ate group of allies, the for­mer social­ist may­or of Burling­ton decid­ed to seek out like-mind­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­bers of the House — such as Reps. Lane Evans (Ill.) (at that time Sanders’ land­lord), Max­ine Waters (Calif.) and Ron Del­lums (Calif.), a mem­ber of Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of Amer­i­ca.

​“I thought that what we need­ed was a cau­cus that said ​‘We are stand­ing with the work­ing fam­i­lies of this coun­try,’” Sanders tells In These Times. ​“And that means we’re gonna fight for jobs. We’re gonna fight for health­care. For edu­ca­tion. We’re gonna fight for afford­able hous­ing. All of those issues that are rel­e­vant to the needs of low and mod­er­ate income Americans.”

The result­ing Con­gres­sion­al Pro­gres­sive Cau­cus (CPC) served as a forum for advanc­ing a social demo­c­ra­t­ic agen­da at a time when con­ven­tion­al wis­dom inside the Belt­way held that the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty need­ed to move to the cen­ter. As CPC mem­ber Neil Aber­crom­bie (D‑Hawaii) said at the time: ​“What we have to do is stop run­ning like Repub­li­cans and start run­ning like Democ­rats again.”

The cau­cus made its first splash in 1995 when it respond­ed to the Repub­li­cans’ Con­tract with Amer­i­ca with a pro­gres­sive alter­na­tive—a $63 bil­lion stim­u­lus pack­age that includ­ed increased spend­ing on edu­ca­tion and health pro­grams, infra­struc­ture improve­ment, and tax cuts for work­ing families.

With 72 mem­bers, today’s CPC is the largest Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus, and it is again propos­ing alter­na­tives in a city where the notion of bal­anc­ing the bud­get on the backs of those most in need is rarely chal­lenged. The CPC is also spear­head­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­si­tion to cuts in Social Secu­ri­ty, Medicare and Med­ic­aid. And in the cur­rent leg­isla­tive ses­sion, cau­cus mem­bers are intro­duc­ing bills that would bring a more rapid end to the war in Afghanistan, impose a trans­ac­tions tax on Wall Street traders to gen­er­ate bil­lions in rev­enue, take steps toward achiev­ing full employ­ment and amend the Con­sti­tu­tion to clar­i­fy that cor­po­ra­tions are not people.

​“The pro­gres­sive agen­da is the major­i­ty agen­da in Amer­i­ca,” Rep. Kei­th Elli­son (D‑Minn.), co-chair of the CPC since 2011, tells In These Times. ​“It’s just that because of the con­cen­tra­tion of mon­ey in pol­i­tics, Con­gress is not respon­sive to the major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans. They’re respon­sive to the mon­ey. And so when we side with the Amer­i­can peo­ple, it might not be the cen­ter of the Con­gress, but it’s the cen­ter of America.”

Of course, in today’s Con­gress, a left­wing cau­cus can only be so effec­tive. All CPC mem­bers, with the excep­tion of now-Sen. Bernie Sanders, are in the Repub­li­can-con­trolled House. This means that ambi­tious leg­isla­tive efforts — say, Rep. Jon Cony­ers’ (D‑Mich.) full employ­ment bill or his ​“Medicare-for-all” bill — are dead on arrival.

But some­times in Con­gress, vic­to­ry means stop­ping bad things from hap­pen­ing. And when left-lean­ing leg­is­la­tors are backed by an ener­gized base of out­side sup­port, such pro­phy­lac­tic vic­to­ries are more pos­si­ble. In ear­ly 2005, for instance, Pres­i­dent Bush, invig­o­rat­ed by his re-elec­tion and ben­e­fit­ing from Repub­li­can majori­ties in both cham­bers of Con­gress, announced plans to pri­va­tize Social Secu­ri­ty. That scheme failed thanks to an oppo­si­tion cam­paign that saw a rag-tag coali­tion of Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­bers of Con­gress, labor unions, think tanks like the Cam­paign for America’s Future and groups such as the AARP draw a line in the sand. Sim­i­lar­ly, pro­gres­sives in Con­gress today could beat back regres­sive leg­is­la­tion by join­ing forces with their allies in civ­il soci­ety. With aus­ter­i­ty bat­tles on the hori­zon, oppor­tu­ni­ties for sim­i­lar defen­sive col­lab­o­ra­tions await.

And that rais­es this ques­tion: Giv­en the bar­ri­ers to pass­ing the kind of sweep­ing pro­gres­sive leg­is­la­tion CPC mem­bers want, how effec­tive is the cau­cus that is called ​“the con­science of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty” at fight­ing for the val­ues it stands for?

​“If I had a dol­lar for every time any­one said to me, ​‘Nobody is say­ing any­thing about X, Y, Z,’ I’d have a mil­lion dol­lars,” says Elli­son. ​“The truth is mem­bers of the Pro­gres­sive Cau­cus are lead­ing on every pro­gres­sive issue in Amer­i­ca, but we need to break through the com­mu­ni­ca­tions gap.”

Get­ting that word out, how­ev­er, will require a change in polit­i­cal strat­e­gy, par­tic­u­lar­ly in how pro­gres­sive mem­bers of Con­gress and the broad­er pro­gres­sive move­ment sup­port and inter­act with each other.

Weak, or just patient?

A major test of the CPC’s polit­i­cal pow­er is on the hori­zon. As part of the fis­cal cliff nego­ti­a­tions in Decem­ber 2012, the White House expressed sup­port for a new for­mu­la to cal­cu­late cost-of-liv­ing increas­es for Social Secu­ri­ty ben­e­fits — what is known as the ​“chained con­sumer price index” or ​“chained CPI.” This for­mu­la would effec­tive­ly cut Social Secu­ri­ty ben­e­fits, hurt­ing in par­tic­u­lar those seniors who rely on Social Secu­ri­ty to pay all their bills. While chained CPI was not part of any deal to avert the March 1 sequester (since there was no deal), it is like­ly to be on the table in future nego­ti­a­tions. Alex Law­son, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the D.C.-based Social Secu­ri­ty Works, says he fears that chained CPI could come up as part of a ​“grand bar­gain” on deficit reduction.

​“The White House has gone out of its way to make sure that every­body knows that chained CPI is very much on the table,” Law­son said. ​“This isn’t some­thing the Repub­li­cans are putting on the table that the admin­is­tra­tion would have to reluc­tant­ly accept. This is being offered by the admin­is­tra­tion.” In the halls of Con­gress, the CPC leads the oppo­si­tion to chained CPI. On Feb­ru­ary 15, CPC Co-Chairs Elli­son and Rep. Raúl Gri­jal­va (D‑Ariz.) released a let­ter oppos­ing any cuts to Social Secu­ri­ty, Medicare or Med­ic­aid. Signed by 107 House Democ­rats, includ­ing a sub­stan­tial num­ber of non-CPC mem­bers, the let­ter has the sup­port of the major­i­ty of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus. How­ev­er, anoth­er group of rep­re­sen­ta­tives has drawn an even firmer line in the sand. In a sep­a­rate let­ter authored by Reps. Alan Grayson (D‑Fla.) and Mark Takano (D‑Calif.), 30 law­mak­ers, includ­ing 25 CPC mem­bers, have pledged to vote ​“no” on any bill that cuts any of the three programs.

Elli­son, who signed both let­ters, defends the CPC’s less strong­ly word­ed let­ter: ​“There’s no sep­a­ra­tion between me and Alan [Grayson] on this issue, but oth­er mem­bers want to see a more ful­ly fleshed out deal before they make a hard fast line on what they’re going to sup­port and what they won’t sup­port.” Gri­jal­va, who also signed both let­ters, echoes that sentiment.

Nev­er­the­less, it does not bode well that only 34 per­cent of CPC mem­bers have signed on to the Grayson let­ter. That sug­gests that some cau­cus mem­bers are pre­pared to vote for some form of ben­e­fit cuts. What’s more, the dis­crep­an­cy in num­bers between the two let­ters under­mines the bar­gain­ing pow­er of the sig­na­to­ries to the more mod­er­ate one. Con­se­quent­ly, when the White House, Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats nego­ti­ate the details of any poten­tial ​“grand bar­gain,” they might have rea­son to ques­tion the CPC’s oppo­si­tion to Social Secu­ri­ty cuts — par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the caucus’s track record.

In the sum­mer of 2009, when the so-called ​“pub­lic option” seemed like a pos­si­bil­i­ty for health­care reform, the then-co-chairs of the CPC, Gri­jal­va and Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D‑Calif.), sent a let­ter to the pres­i­dent say­ing that they would not vote for a bill that did not include a ​“robust pub­lic option.” The Demo­c­ra­t­ic-major­i­ty House did even­tu­al­ly pass a bill with a scaled-back pub­lic option in Novem­ber 2009. But in March 2010, when the Afford­able Care Act went back to the House after being stripped of any pub­lic option by the Sen­ate, every mem­ber of the CPC vot­ed in favor of it. The final bill passed by a slim 219 to 212, with the CPC cast­ing the decid­ing votes.

A senior Hill aide told In These Times that the way the Pro­gres­sive Cau­cus han­dled the health­care debate seri­ous­ly dam­aged its cred­i­bil­i­ty. The aide is wor­ried that when push comes to shove, CPC mem­bers may fall in line with the White House and the rest of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty by vot­ing for a bud­get that includes ben­e­fit cuts.

Cathy Hur­wit, chief of staff for long­time CPC mem­ber Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D‑Ill.), brush­es away con­cerns that the health­care debate dam­aged the CPC’s bar­gain­ing pow­er. ​“I think the cau­cus is tak­en very seri­ous­ly,” says Hur­wit. ​“Cau­cus mem­bers take posi­tions that they feel are the right ones to make. And I think vot­ing for Oba­macare was the right thing to do.”

Dave Swan­son, a co-founder of the anti-Iraq war coali­tion After Down­ing Street, points to the CPC’s oppo­si­tion to the Iraq War as anoth­er instance of its dam­aged cred­i­bil­i­ty. In 2007, the cau­cus said it would no longer vote for bills that includ­ed fund­ing for the war that wasn’t tied to troop with­draw­al — a pledge many CPC mem­bers abandoned.

​“You can under­stand why nobody takes [the CPC] seri­ous­ly — because they have this track record,” says Swan­son. ​“I cringe when [they] put out a tough state­ment or press release or pub­lic com­mit­ment to anything.”

Get­ting out of the House

But the CPC’s cur­rent lead­er­ship, as embod­ied in Elli­son and Gri­jal­va, pro­vides rea­son to believe the cau­cus can hold the line on Social Secu­ri­ty — or at least proac­tive­ly pur­sue pro­gres­sive prin­ci­ples. Both Gri­jal­va and Elli­son, who have served togeth­er since Jan­u­ary 2011, are com­mit­ted to build­ing inter-cau­cus uni­ty and — most sig­nif­i­cant­ly — nur­tur­ing con­nec­tions with the grass­roots of the pro­gres­sive movement.

Elli­son sees the cau­cus not only as an umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion for left-lean­ing mem­bers on Capi­tol Hill and their allies, but ulti­mate­ly a leg­isla­tive pow­er­house in Washington.

​“His­tor­i­cal­ly the Blue Dog cau­cus [of con­ser­v­a­tive Democ­rats] has been able to par­lay their agen­da into action by threat­en­ing to vote with the Repub­li­cans,” says Elli­son. ​“Most peo­ple want to pro­tect Social Secu­ri­ty, Medicare, Med­ic­aid. Most peo­ple believe the min­i­mum wage should be much high­er. Most peo­ple believe that we should have sane, sen­si­ble con­trols on guns. The real chal­lenge is orga­niz­ing and mak­ing sure that pro­gres­sive Amer­i­ca, which is orga­nized, knows that there are at least [72] peo­ple in Con­gress who agree with them, who feel they’re right and are will­ing to fight for them.”

To this end, the CPC has been active like nev­er before.

In the sum­mer of 2011, CPC mem­bers, sup­port­ed by SEIU and Change to Win, went on a ​“Speak­out for Good Jobs Now” tour to eight cities. The cau­cus has plans to roll out a sim­i­lar jobs tour this year.

In each of the past three years, the CPC has orga­nized a sum­mit to build ties with the pro­gres­sive com­mu­ni­ty. The most recent event, in Jan­u­ary, was attend­ed by more than 100 orga­ni­za­tions, accord­ing to Charles Cham­ber­lain, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Pro­gres­sive Con­gress, a non-prof­it that pro­vides staff sup­port, orga­niz­ing assis­tance and con­sult­ing to the CPC. Orga­ni­za­tions attend­ing the sum­mit includ­ed SEIU, CWA, the AFL-CIO, the NAACP, Democ­ra­cy for Amer­i­ca, the Sier­ra Club and Green for All. Also par­tic­i­pat­ing was Pro­gres­sive Democ­rats of Amer­i­ca (PDA), a group that engages in what it calls an ​“inside-out­side” strat­e­gy to bridge the divide between social move­ments and sym­pa­thet­ic mem­bers of Congress.

Tim Car­pen­ter, PDA’s nation­al direc­tor, says that his organization’s rela­tion­ship with the cau­cus has improved under the caucus’s new lead­er­ship, which, in addi­tion to Elli­son and Gri­jal­va, includes CPC Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Brad Bau­man, who came on board in 2011.

In Decem­ber, PDA began host­ing month­ly round­table dis­cus­sions on Capi­tol Hill where cau­cus mem­bers and their staff meet with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from labor, peace, envi­ron­men­tal and oth­er pro­gres­sive groups to dis­cuss leg­is­la­tion and upcom­ing campaigns.

​“We want to imbue a sense of activism to the cau­cus,” says Bauman.

Car­pen­ter appre­ci­ates that. ​“Our role now is [to] grow the pro­gres­sive wing of the Pro­gres­sive Cau­cus and get those oth­er mem­bers of the CPC to step up,” says Car­pen­ter. ​“There are over 50 CPC mem­bers that still haven’t signed the Grayson let­ter on hold­ing the line on Social Secu­ri­ty. That’s uncon­scionable. … That num­ber should be much higher.”

Anoth­er key chal­lenge to the effec­tive­ness of the cau­cus — one that seems an inevitable result of being embed­ded with­in a larg­er polit­i­cal par­ty — is the lack of enforce­ment mech­a­nisms to ensure mem­bers work togeth­er. In the end, mem­bers sim­ply have more loy­al­ty to their par­ty than their cau­cus. CPC mem­bers do deduct a small por­tion of their salaries in order to pay the salary of the group’s exec­u­tive direc­tor, Bau­man, but beyond that, there are no for­mal­ized insti­tu­tion­al links that bind mem­bers togeth­er. The CPC can­not, for instance, kick out mem­bers for vot­ing a cer­tain way.

​“There were times when mem­bers couldn’t vote with the cau­cus,” says for­mer Rep. Pete Stark (D‑Calif.), a mem­ber of the CPC from the mid-1990s until he left Con­gress in Jan­u­ary after los­ing his bid for re-elec­tion. ​“There were oth­ers who didn’t want to go against the Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­er­ship, and so, you nev­er have 100 per­cent. You had no way to enforce it, oth­er than peo­ple pres­sur­ing oth­er mem­bers. It was a good group of friends, who had a like mind on a vari­ety of issues, but beyond that, there was no enforce­ment mechanism.”

Elli­son acknowl­edges that the lack of such a mech­a­nism pos­es ​“a chal­lenge.” But, he says, dur­ing the 112th Con­gress the CPC fos­tered uni­ty by hold­ing ​“mini-fil­i­busters” in which CPC mem­bers took to the floor of the House to speak against Repub­li­can efforts to gut Medicare and oppose job creation.

Those mini-fil­i­busters — an attempt to move the debate left­ward and estab­lish CPC’s mark on Con­gress — demon­strate that the CPC can flex its mus­cle using tra­di­tion­al leg­isla­tive tac­tics. (The mini-fil­i­busters are avail­able on the Pro­gres­sive Cau­cus YouTube channel.)

From sym­bol to substance

In the con­text of a debt-obsessed Con­gress, in recent years the cau­cus is best known for its bud­get pro­pos­als — the People’s Bud­get for FY2012 and the Bud­get for All for FY2013. Accord­ing to Gri­jal­va, these efforts have both increased the caucus’s over­all vis­i­bil­i­ty and built sol­i­dar­i­ty among cau­cus mem­bers as their staffs work togeth­er to craft and defend a com­mon fis­cal vision — an exer­cise in coop­er­a­tion that harkens back to 1995 and the CPC’s oppo­si­tion to the Con­tract with America.

Indeed, the CPC’s bud­gets have stood in marked con­trast to the oth­er bud­get pro­pos­als on the table — not only the ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive bud­gets of Rep. Paul Ryan (R‑Wis.) that dis­man­tle the social safe­ty net, but also the tech­no­crat­ic, neolib­er­al bud­gets of the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. For exam­ple, the CPC’s 2012 Bud­get for All advo­cat­ed tax­ing all cap­i­tal gains, imple­ment­ing a more pro­gres­sive tax code, slash­ing mil­i­tary spend­ing, and elim­i­nat­ing cor­po­rate wel­fare for oil, gas and coal com­pa­nies — all pro­pos­als that have pop­u­lar support.

​“For a while, the Pro­gres­sive Cau­cus had built a rep­u­ta­tion for being the con­science of Con­gress,” says Gri­jal­va, who was elect­ed in 2002. ​“For lead­ing the sym­bol­ic fight, whether it was [oppos­ing] fund­ing for the war [or] talk­ing about issues that were not polit­i­cal­ly in vogue and nobody want­ed to talk about. … I think [the bud­get] allowed us now to be more than just those good, nice, smart left­ies that are always gonna say the right thing — some­body who’s proac­tive­ly propos­ing an alter­na­tive, even to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Caucus.”

Those bud­gets, while they may not have much of an imme­di­ate impact on fis­cal votes in Con­gress, ulti­mate­ly boost the vis­i­bil­i­ty and legit­i­ma­cy of the cau­cus in the long run. For one, the bud­gets send a strong mes­sage to the rest of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty that there is a sec­tion of the par­ty with a marked­ly dif­fer­ent eco­nom­ic agen­da than the one shared by the Pres­i­dent and many in Con­gress. They also allow the CPC to build part­ner­ships with out­side groups that work to craft and pro­mote those pro­pos­als. Final­ly, the CPC is build­ing a rep­u­ta­tion among the pub­lic at large as the only real oppo­nent of aus­ter­i­ty in Wash­ing­ton. If the CPC can con­tin­ue to make those part­ner­ships and get out its mes­sage, more Democ­rats may, even­tu­al­ly, feel like they have to join.

​“Now we’re at a point where we’re not just the nec­es­sary con­science of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty in Con­gress, but we are a sig­nif­i­cant source of either sup­port or oppo­si­tion for a pro­pos­al,” says Gri­jal­va, con­fi­dent his 72-mem­ber vot­ing bloc will play a major role in any bud­get deal that goes before Congress.

The pro­gres­sive future

Look­ing ahead, the CPC is most like­ly to gain clout if Democ­rats regain con­trol of the House in the 2014 elec­tion, which would mean cau­cus mem­bers would become com­mit­tee chairs. But first, in spite of the opti­mistic talk of a future ​“per­ma­nent Demo­c­ra­t­ic major­i­ty,” the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty as a whole must over­come obsta­cles such as ger­ry­man­dered con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts and the more recent wave of vot­er ID restric­tions. The cau­cus would also ben­e­fit from the elec­tion of more pro­gres­sive Democ­rats, but that process has its own hur­dles. It takes mil­lions of dol­lars to seri­ous­ly com­pete in a con­gres­sion­al race, and unlike Repub­li­cans or those Democ­rats from the neolib­er­al wing of par­ty, pro­gres­sive Democ­rats have a lim­it­ed mon­e­tary base.

That mon­ey gap has ram­i­fi­ca­tions for pro­gres­sives inside Con­gress, as well. The infra­struc­ture sup­port­ing the pro­gres­sive wing of the par­ty pales in com­par­i­son to the hun­dred-mil­lion-dol­lar-plus bud­get of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion or the Tea Par­ty-bankrolling Free­dom Works, and indeed even the cor­po­rate-fund­ed Pro­gres­sive Pol­i­cy Insti­tute, the think tank of the now defunct Demo­c­ra­t­ic Lead­er­ship Coun­cil.

​“You need pro­gres­sive insti­tu­tions, clear­ly, which can both help to elect can­di­dates and also push the sys­tem as a whole more to the left. We have some of those insti­tu­tions,” said Michael Kazin, edi­tor of Dis­sent mag­a­zine and his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at George­town Uni­ver­si­ty. ​“The key­hole, of course, is orga­nized labor, which used to be essen­tial to this.”The gen­er­al polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment is thus far from hos­pitable. This is no secret on the Left. On the oth­er hand, what shouldn’t be under­es­ti­mat­ed is how crit­i­cal the next two years are for defend­ing the social safe­ty net and keep­ing a pro­gres­sive agen­da rel­e­vant on the nation­al lev­el. Gri­jal­va put it very sim­ply: ​“Any­thing in pol­i­tics in D.C. is about results; the abil­i­ty to get some­thing done or stop some­thing bad from happening.”

With aus­ter­i­ty loom­ing, the CPC will have plen­ty of chances to do the lat­ter in today’s Con­gress. The chained CPI debate could mark a major test of the caucus’s abil­i­ty to influ­ence nego­ti­a­tions and act as a cohe­sive vot­ing bloc. But even giv­en the unavoid­able real­i­ty of bud­get cuts, CPC mem­bers have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to influ­ence what’s tar­get­ed in a giv­en piece of leg­is­la­tion — for exam­ple, their insis­tence on slash­ing the Pentagon’s bloat­ed spend­ing could pay off, even if it’s ulti­mate­ly in a scaled-back fash­ion. And as the cau­cus con­tin­ues to take steps to build its clout and gain new mem­bers, it will con­tin­ue to have a big­ger voice in those ongo­ing nego­ti­a­tions and help dri­ve the bud­get debate to the left.

If the cau­cus lead­er­ship and mem­bers can man­age to do all of these things suc­cess­ful­ly — no short order — and the next two elec­tion results are favor­able to the Left, the Pro­gres­sive Cau­cus could be play­ing a dras­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent role in a future Con­gress. Instead of being forced to defend the gains of the 20th cen­tu­ry, it could actu­al­ly be advanc­ing a pro­gres­sive agen­da for the 21st.