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Bill Roberts has spent more than 10 years as a political organizer
for, among others, former presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche. He
also worked in Germany and Australia on political movements calling for
similar policies as LaRouche. |
Dr. Syed Taj and William Roberts will compete in the Tuesday, Aug. 7
primary election for the Democratic nomination for the 11th U.S. House
District, which represents Waterford, West Bloomfield, White Lake,
Commerce, Wolverine Lake, Walled Lake, Wixom, Milford, White Lake, and
Highland in the lakes area. U.S. representatives serve two-year terms
and are currently paid $174,000 annually.
The following are questions our staff recently posed to Roberts, and his responses to those questions.
BUDGET: As a member of Congress, you will help determine the
federal government’s budget, which this year is quickly approaching a
dubious milestone: The fourth consecutive year in which there are
deficits of $1 trillion or more. In addition, the federal debt is
nearing the $16 trillion mark. What spending priorities do you have, and
where would you cut back the country’s ledgers to get the U.S. on a
more sustainable fiscal path?
ROBERTS: Contrary to popular opinion, when
the Congressional Budget Office looked at the things that were
increasing the debt the most, it was largely things like the bailout of
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. No. 1, we should just scrap the bailout of
the toxic debts, scrap the bailout of the “too big to fail” banks with
the Glass-Steagle policy.
Right now, I think the amount of toxic obligations that have been
dumped on the federal government are to the tune of $30 trillion. Now,
in some portion, there is some amount of pure bailout that’s occurred
with the TARP (Toxic Asset Relief Program), but this can be scrapped.
This is the single-biggest expense that we don’t need to be making.
Certainly, harsh austerity, I don’t think is the way to get out of an
economic collapse. That’s the case in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s
California. At a certain point, austerity is going to collapse the
revenue base further.
There are some other things I can say about how I think we need a
system of public credit again in the way that Franklin Roosevelt
organized this, but I don’t think something like (U.S. Rep.) Paul Ryan’s
budget of things like slashing across the board and privatizing things
like Social Security or Medicaid is the way to go at all.
ECONOMY: Slowly but surely, signs of economic life are
emerging after years of a prolonged recession that devastated the
nation’s economy. Yet we still face employment of over 8 percent
nationally and 8.3 percent here in Michigan. What more needs to be done
to bring the American back to the thriving economy it once enjoyed?
ROBERTS: I think the economy is a lot worse
than what is usually presented when it’s discussed. The average
household over the last 10 or 12 years has lost 40 percent of its
wealth, its savings. Young people who become eligible to enter the
workforce, 80 percent of people who become eligible to enter the
workforce are simply not: They are either going to more community
college or taking care of grand-parents. But Baby Boomers are not
retiring and there is no work out there for young people.
I think construction workers have been out of work for more than two
years. If you look at the jobs that have been “created,” so-called,
those are mostly low-wage jobs, so the pay in to things like social
security programs isn’t there.
So we have to create the basis for employment of very highly-skilled
people — your manufacturing workforce, the skilled trades — and then
also create work for young people, which may not be the most skilled at
first because young people are largely not gaining productive skills
such as the machinists. Some of these skilled trades are not being
passed along that this area once was known for.
I think under a Civilian Conservation Core kind of program, young
people can have work that is useful for the country and also gain skills
maybe in night classes or something like that. But overall, if the
question is generally on how we are going to create an economic boom
again, I think we need to do three things.
We need to reinstate Glass-Steagle to end the hyper-inflationary
effect of bailouts to the private investment sector, while at the same
time protecting commercial banks. That will end the bailouts, it will
protect legitimate assets within our commercial banking system, but it
will also mean that there will be less assets within the system, and
probably not enough to launch a genuine economic recovery.
So this is where I would say we need to take a page from the American
system of political economy, historically, what Alexander Hamilton
developed as an idea, the idea of a National Bank. I think we should
bring back the idea of a national bank.
Shut down the (Federal Reserve). The Federal Reserve is bankrupt. But
we could re-establish a national bank, and return to the Congress its
constitutionally-mandated role of issuing long-term public credit. This
can be put directly into some shorter-term, but longer-term projects to
directly develop the physical economy of the territory of the country.
I would say the focus should be on things like water management
systems, large-scale flood control, and water management systems both to
deal with floods and also putting water into the dry areas of the
country in the southwest.
That’s something that the slate I’m part of, the LaRouche national
slate, has revived something called the North American Water and Power
Alliance, which was originally being considered during the presidency of
John F. Kennedy. This would provide the basis for about 4 million jobs
and the building of very large-scale reservoirs and water-moving
systems. But also, when you’re considering building something that
large, of the type of project Franklin Roosevelt did with the Tennessee
Valley Authority, except much larger.
One of the things that is going to create the demand for is large
material and equipment requirements, which would require an expansion of
the industrial base in the Rust Belt states. I think that type of
long-term approach to saying, “What are the physical needs of the
nation…” We’re not going to squeeze that out of the revenue base by
either increasing the taxes or cutting from other things to build these
things.
We’re going to back to having a credit system and then consider what
the wealth generation is going to be from building that in terms of
water and power, and issue the credit necessary to achieve that. That’s
what we did under John Quincy Adams, the infrastructure-building program
early in the nation’s history. (Abraham) Lincoln did something similar
to this with the greenbacks. Franklin Roosevelt took this approach with
the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. I think given the situation we
are in, we need that type of uniquely American credit system approach
which says the credit is going to be there for productive developments,
not for bailouts. That’s the way I’ve thought of what we need to do to
deal with the economy.
NATIONAL DEFENSE: It’s been over a decade since the terrorist
attacks of 9/11 and over a year since Navy SEALs killed Osama bin
Laden. Yet the country remains embroiled in a war in Afghanistan and
other conflicts in the Middle East to a lesser extent. What, if
anything, would you do differently in the realm of national defense and
protecting the country from terrorists? What are the threats from abroad
that concern you most, and why?
ROBERTS: One thing that I think has been a
complete wrong approach has been the idea that we need to overthrow
governments on the basis of a humanitarian intervention. This is
something I think that kind of comes out of the mind of (former British
prime minister) Tony Blair, who I understand is very close to President
Obama at this point.
There is an international framework for how to deal with countries if
we don’t like what their government is doing. But I don’t think, for
example, that we should be messing around in Syria right now. Our own
defense intelligence estimates say that Iran does not have a nuclear
weaponization program. Many other nations’ intelligence estimates say
that Iran does not have a nuclear weaponization program.
As the Russians have said and as our own top ranks of the military
have said, this policy of violating the sovereignty of other nations —
as we did in the case of Libya and as it appears we may be on the verge
of doing in Syria — could lead to larger regional wars, and even nuclear
wars, because we are getting into an area which is putting us into a
kind of conflict with countries like Russia, who are thermonuclear
powers.
Our military is very clear on the fact that we shouldn’t be doing
this, but we have some people who are pushing the envelope on this
thing, and it’s very dangerous. I would say that instead we should
cooperate with countries like Russia on development. They’ve extended
the hand of cooperation on building a connection across the Bering
Strait, for the development of Siberia, for the development of the
Arctic areas.
And they also proposed a strategic collaboration what they call “the
strategic defense of Earth,” which I think is a very good idea. We
should build up systems that would make nuclear weapons obsolete. And
this is something Lyndon LaRouche proposed in the 1980s.
Now the Russians are taking this up and proposing we collaborate on
this, but also extend it into developing our defense capability.
This may be more long-term, but if we are serious about defending the
human race, we need to consider the fact that there is a lot of
asteroids out there, some of which are very large, some of which have
come very close to the Earth recently, which we should be tracking and
figuring out how to defend the Earth from because we live in a solar
system.
I think we’ve reached a point in which going to war in any serious
way means bringing mankind to the brink of thermonuclear annihilation.
There’s very little room for that anymore, and we should really be
turning our defense questions to the issue of outer space more and more.
Afghanistan, it’s been a disaster. If we really wanted to cut off the
funding and the support infrastructure for terrorism, we should
annihilate the opium fields in Afghanistan because that’s the funding
base for these groups, for al-Qaeda and so forth.
The problem is that largely we’ve had allies that have protected that
source of funding, such as the British. The British have occupied this
area of Afghanistan where they opium is being grown and have said that
their policy is “Let it go.” If we were serious about cutting off
funding, we would identify the British as bring one of the areas that
has harbored the most terrorist groups.
If you look at London, London has been the center — and actually
serves as the headquarters — for a number of top terrorist organizations
that are on our State Department list as groups banned from organizing
in the United States. (They are) headquartered and raise funds in London
or London suburbs. That whole question of the problem that we are still
dealing with with Britain, and the British Empire in particular, as an
oligarchy, as being committed to geopolitical games that threaten us.
SCN: So you’re saying that the British are allowing the opium
fields in Afghanistan to continue essentially producing money that
funds al-Qaeda. When we talk about threats from abroad, is Britain in
that? Would Britain be considered a threat from abroad based on that
logic?
ROBERTS: If we are strict about this idea
that we consider certain nations as harboring terrorists, who allow
terrorist organizations to fund-raise in their country and recruit, we
would have to identify Britain, Great Britain, the United Kingom… if we
were strict about that assessment, we would have to consider Great
Britain to be a state which harbors terrorist groups which are on our
list of banned groups, yeah.
BIPARTISANSHIP: Rancor between the two major political
parties is seemingly at an all-time high when there are serious issues
for the country to tackle, leaving hopes dim that major things can be
accomplished in a bipartisan, cooperative way. Explain how you would go
about working with the other side of the aisle on critical issues facing
our nation. Tell us one thing you would be willing to compromise on
with the other side of the political aisle. What’s one issue on which
your party’s platform should more closely resemble that of the other
political party?
ROBERTS: As you know, I’m a Democrat, and
I’m sort of an old-school Democrat, despite the fact that I’m young. But
I’m someone who puts principle above party. That should be pretty
obvious by the fact that I’ve called for the impeachment of President
Barack Obama for repeated constitutional violations. I’ve come under
attack.
The Democratic Party here has attacked me for that position, but I
think it’s principled. I actually decided to run for Congress right
after the last Congressional election because I saw a situation where
some of the better Democrats who didn’t like Obama’s policies and didn’t
really like the Affordable Care Act didn’t fight him on it. A lot of
them were voted out and replaced with Tea Party people, so I said this
is a total mess. If we don’t have people standing up for principle, and
fighting within their own party for principle, this country is going to
become more and more insane politically.
If there is a solution presented to this economic crisis, (a
solution) which clearly can create many jobs, I think that’s what people
will tend to actually unify around, and a lot of this other
divisiveness that’s occurred — because I think there’s been a lack of
any real economic solutions — can dissipate. In dire economic times, if
there’s no solution presented, I think what tends to dominate are wedge
issues which split people apart from one another. But I don’t think it’s
a big problem if there’s a real bipartisan fight that’s waged to defend
the American population. I think that can bring together a lot of the
better people in either party around a common solution.
SCN: Can you expand a little bit upon what constitutional
issues are the grievances that are the basis for an impeachment? Let’s
say articles of impeachment come up in Congress and you’re sitting there
with the other 434 members. Would you support that?
ROBERTS: I would bring up articles of
impeachment against the president. I would note that there actually are
resolutions in both the House and the Senate right now, which are not
bills of impeachment, but they do lay out the grounds for impeachment of
a president who violates the strict authority that’s been given to the
Congress to authorize aggressive wars, as was the case in Libya.
There’s Walter Jones, a Republican from North Carolina in the U.S.
House of Representatives, has put forward HCR 107, that makes that
statement that says that a president who launches an aggressive war
without coming to the Congress, that it is the sentiment of the Congress
that that constitutes high crimes and misdemeanors and is an
impeachable offense. There’s a similar type of resolution on the Senate
side by Jim Webb, a Democrat from Virginia.
But I’d say in addition to that, there’s probably more things that
this president should be impeached for than any other president I can
think of. There’s been a vast expansion of the predator drone program
which has been used to assassinate American citizens without any sort of
due process.
This president signed into law the National Defense Authorization
Act, which says that any American citizen can be picked up off the
street and detained indefinetely by the U.S. military, essentially an
act of the president. That’s a complete suspension of due process.
That’s a violation of the Fifth Amendment.
So there’s many things which this president (did) that I think
constitutes a real danger to the American people by his violation of
these aspects of the Constitution that were clearly put in place to
prevent the abuse of executive power.
On top of that, I don’t think there’s any reason why someone would
put a law such as the National Defense Authorization Act in place, to
have such sweeping powers given to the president, if they didn’t expect
that their policies were going to lead to civil disobedience and chaos. I
think Obama should be impeached immediately, and then the Democrats can
run someone different in the Democratic Convention who’s qualified.
HEALTH CARE: The U.S. Supreme Court is currently mulling the
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Regardless of what the high
court decides, what measures would you put in place to insure that
Americans get greater access to health care?
ROBERTS: I think the ObamaCare Act should
be overthrown. It should be thrown out. My sense of how our health care
system should be organized… I would support something along the lines of
John Conyers’ single-payer health care policy, but I think at the same
time, we should essentially ban HMOs. They are extremely inefficient,
and the bureaucratic costs of them are deadly.
We’re going to need, also, a revival of the Hill-Burton Act. If
you’re going to say that we are going to meet the needs of the
population so that people can have health care who need it, and it’s
going to be decent health care, then you also need the hospital beds,
you need the health infrastructure, as well.
We had a law that mandated a certain number of hospital beds
available per county, even up until the 1980s, and then when we got rid
of that, the assumption became that health care is now kind of a limited
resource. I think starting from the idea that health care should be a
limited resource that needs to be rationed, either privately or
publicly, is a horrible approach.
TOP ISSUES: What are the three most important issues to the
11th Congressional District at this time and how would you address them?
ROBERTS: I think the first thing is we have
to regain our sovereignty as a nation. Right now, we are not operating
completely as a sovereign nation that has control over our own economy. I
would just again reference the bailouts of the “too big to fail” banks.
Essentially the representatives of Wall Street and an international
banking cartel came to the Congress and told them what they were going
to do.
When you have a situation like that, that means that the government
is not really completely sovereign. Again, the way to solve that is to
reinstate Glass-Steagle, the 1933 banking act. It separates legitimate
assets from gambling debts that have been accrued. The advantage of
Glass-Steagle, as opposed to the Volker Rule of the Dodd-Frank bill, is
that once we do that, then we are no longer obligated to try to protect a
much larger swath of claimed financial assets.
As the original Glass-Steagle Act lays out, commercial banking will
be protected and we can issue credit as a soveirgn nation again. It
would also basically shut down the British Empire. It would bring to an
end this international system of central banks that are printing money
so fast right now that we are all going to be using our money as
wallpaper, as they did in 1933 Germany. That would be my No. 1 concern.
No. 2 would be that we are going to need to cooperate
internationally. We should be cooperating internationally along certain
long-range infrastructure development and scientific programs with other
nations, like Russia and China.
I guess tied up in both of those (issues) is the issue of jobs. A lot
of people need work right now. Millions upon millions of people need
work, and I think the only way that we are going to create the ability
for that work is if there are bills of credit made available for
industry and agriculture again. We’ve gone through a period of the myth
of a financial services economy in which there is a diminishing amount
of people who are actually working and producing anything. I think we
need to really think about how we are going to re-employ people in
industry and developing infrastructure again.
There is a strategic danger right now of getting into wars that we
can avoid, and I think we need to develop a war avoidance policy with
other nations.
WHY YOU? Why should voters choose you rather than your opponent?
ROBERTS: Because I have guts. I don’t do
things simply because they are politically pragmatic. I think that the
way that (John F.) Kennedy discusses in his book, “Profiles in Courage”…
there is a certain role for people in high elected office who will
perhaps compromise on certain issues, but won’t compromise on principle.
He goes through how, in the history of the United States, literally the
survival of this country depends on certain people who are willing to
go against their own party, or even sometimes against their own
constituents, if they really think that it’s a matter of absolute
principle and commitment to defending the principle of the nation.
These people have been responsible for saving this nation, and I
think you need some people like that, who will not just be a party hack
or will not just do things politically pragmatic. There’s hardly anyone
in Congress right now who thinks like that, and I do. That’s why I’m
running for office.
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