Sen. Byron Dorgan’s New Book

Reckless: How Debt, Deregulation, and Dark Money Nearly Bankrupted America (And How We Can Fix It!),  by U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan Available: Zandbroz.
The United States Senate is an authoritative body. It behooves all Americans to pay attention to those who serve in the U.S. Senate and to the actions of this influential group. The U.S. Congress holds the purse strings, makes laws, and approves important nominations, including those for Supreme Court and the Cabinet. Along with the House of Representatives, the United States Senate is one of the most powerful, rule-creating assemblies in the world.

Why not, then, pay attention to those who regulate your lives and your businesses; the education of your children; the banks you keep your money in; the health care and social security many of you do, will, or might receive; the drugs your doctors administer; the fire arms you can or cannot own; the energy you consume; etcetera, etcetera. Enough of this list? Pay attention then, lest laws appear on the books that you don’t agree with. Pay attention lest your life should change in ways you never expected.

Byron Dorgan’s recently published book, Reckless: How Debt, Deregulation, and Dark Money Nearly Bankrupted America (And How We Can Fix It!),” offers significant insights into the mind, the temperament, the political philosophy, the record, and the suggestions of a powerful member of the U.S. Senate—with only 100 serving at any given moment, all senators are powerful!

The subject of Reckless is largely the current economic crisis, including the sub-prime mortgage scandal, though Dorgan also addresses health care concerns, American job loss, war issues, energy, and other topics. Engaging chapter titles include: “Tax That Guy Behind the Tree” and “Shining a Light on Dark Money.” The book opens with a synopsis of American economic life before the crisis and moves toward a chapter called “Hope” in which Dorgan calls on the US citizenry to rely on its “resilient spirit” as it moves as a collective to solve the current “serious challenges.”

Byron Dorgan was one of only eight U.S. Senators who voted against the 1999 Services Modernization Act, an act signed into law by Bill Clinton and supported (ironically)—way back then—by Obama’s current chief economic advisor, Larry Summers, and Clinton’s Secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin, along with majorities in both houses of Congress. This repeal of post-Depression-era regulation of financial institutions (the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act), according to Dorgan, “allowed the largest financial firms to create big holding companies and merge banking with the riskier activities in securities and real estate.” He sees the signing of this law as the current fiasco’s major precipitating event.

Dorgan dubs the nine years that followed, a period where “dark money” prevailed.  When the bill was being debated on the senate floor, Dorgan told other senators, “If you want to gamble, go to Las Vegas.” While Dorgan points a finger at Clinton and the federal government for deregulation, his additional beef is with “Wall Street”—the cheaters who “behaved like sweaty gamblers at the craps table.”

The book’s format is one of its helpful aspects. Chapters delineate specific economic, political, and social problems for which Dorgan outlines solutions. For example, regarding the financial mess, Dorgan makes end-of-chapter suggestions, such as: 1) “Regulate hedge fund trading and then regulate all trades in the futures markets,” 2) “Require large trader reports,” 3) “Increase margin requirements or enact strong position limits for speculators,” and so forth.

Whether readers agree or disagree with Dorgan’s prescriptive suggestions, Reckless is worth the price and the reading time, if only for those chapters which contain invaluable, cogent writing on the current financial crisis. Dorgan gives a step-by-step chronology of precipitous events and missteps in lay terms, a significant accomplishment.

In a section called “An Angry Old Man” Dorgan tells the story of a North Dakota man shouting “Our government is worthless” at a town hall meeting. Dorgan asks the fellow, “Do you have Medicare?” “Yup,” the man says, “I just had surgery with my Medicare plan.” The citizen’s surgery was successful, and Dorgan concludes: “Medicare is a government program. And it does work.”

Not many would argue against Medicare’s overall value to seniors, but Medicare’s enormous drain on the federal budget is currently being called into question by Democrats like President Obama, the General Accounting Office of the federal government, and many in both houses of Congress. Medicare waste and fraud is a huge federal problem according to Dorgan. In one state alone, he writes, “over 30% of Medicare claims submitted to the federal government for payment were fraudulent.” Not only is fraud rampant, but Medicare, by all accounts—including statements from the Congressional Budget Office on July 17, 2009—cannot be sustained at current funding levels if “significant reforms” are not implemented.

Dorgan says straight up that he believes that health care is “a basic right of every American.” “We need,” he insists, “some sort of a national health-care system in order to get the escalating costs under control.” He believes that along with twenty-eight industrialized nations already guaranteeing access to health care, the U.S. should provide “healthcare coverage for everyone” as a “right of citizenship.”

But he does not describe how providing national health coverage would reduce federal health care costs, a claim he solidly makes. He does not describe exactly what the national plan would look like, and as always, as Senator Conrad put it recently, “The devil is in the details.”

Dorgan outlines the need for personal responsibility regarding individual health. “Get off the couch,” he says. He affirms what we know, that two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese, a number that far too high, according to Dorgan, who puts obesity in the same bad health practice as smoking. He, like most insurance companies and health care providers, is an advocate of illness prevention. “Preventative medicine requires two things,” he says, “exercise and regular check-ups.” Wisely, he suggests that all consumers of health care check each and every medical bill. Some fraud, he suggests, may be eliminated if patients pay attention to all medical charges and report discrepancies.

Some of his end of chapter suggestions for health care include 1) “putting the breaks on skyrocketing drug prices . . . by allowing Americans to buy FDA approved drugs from other countries; 2) emphasizing “well care” instead of “sick care” 3) taking soda pop machines and junk food machines out of public schools; 4) getting rid of television ads for drugs; 5) shaming state governments into spending tobacco settlement money on campaigns to keep kids from smoking.

Regarding writing style and logic, the author resorts, somewhat too often, to generalizations. These oversimplifications are the type that politicians and media pundits are so fond of. Dorgan’s generalizing includes phrases like, “It is not unusual to see the big interests pitted against the little guy.” But just who is the “little guy” and what are the “big interests?” To Dorgan, the “big interests” are “Big Oil” “Big Pharma” and “Big Media.” This is phraseology that drives thinking people crazy. What exactly is “Big Oil?” The reader might want to inquire: Does Dorgan prefer Little Oil?—small companies that would not have the financial reserves to produce multi-billion dollar refineries, or Little Oil that wouldn’t have the revenue for significant, sustained exploration and extraction? What level of Big Oil profit, for example, will it take to develop the Bakken formation in North Dakota?

But the real crux of using vague terms is the discounting of companies that provide essential services. Whether Exxon Mobil, Chevron, or BP Amoco, the value that these companies add to society is immeasurable. Big Oil provides for the general welfare of citizens. These are the companies that keep the populace warm and motoring to work. They even provide pensions and health care for employees. In addition, Big Oil companies provide share holders with stock profits. Imagine that at a time like this! In short, these companies provide jobs, heat homes, fuel transportation, and they do not deserve the shorthand demeaning terms that negate the good they do. Dorgan would be more intellectually convincing if he separated the Big Oil “ill-will” he perceives at every turn from the benefits these companies provide.

For a topical Big Pharma example, the H1N1 virus is circulating the globe. Deaths are being reported. It isn’t the Federal Government or the Congress of the United States that will be developing a possible life saving-vaccine; it is the work of Big Pharma, with the engines of delivery for the vaccine fueled by Big Oil.

And what, a reader might ask when encountering Dorgan’s insistence on increased federalization of health care and, at some levels, energy—what about Big Federalism—its cost in monetary terms and in terms of free-choice and free-enterprise? On the money side, the United States Congress has overspent the country into nearly 12 trillion dollars of debt. Much of this debt is owned by China, as Dorgan points out. By all accounts, this level of spending cannot be sustained, yet the 2010 federal budget has a projected deficit of 1.17 trillion dollars. Add that to the 2009 deficit of 1.75 trillion for a two-year deficit total of 2.92 trillion. To put this in perspective, in 2004, the total federal budget was approximately 2.32 trillion dollars. Dorgan stated in 2008, “Rampant borrowing in both the public and private sectors created risks that are bringing our economy close to collapse. This has to stop.” But the Congress continues its Reckless spending as Dorgan’s book is being reviewed, with no end to deficit spending in sight.

So, while talk of Big Oil looms in the forefront of Reckless, readers might want to ask Dorgan to flesh out his attachment to Big Federalism. Or for that matter, readers might ask why he hasn’t targeted Big Technology, or Big Hollywood, or Big Buffett or the profits of Big Fast Food, instead of picking on essential industries and services.

Dorgan excels at describing, in sufficient detail, the need for renewable energy and clean-coal options—including turning coal into a synthetic fuel that could be a substitute for natural gas. He also provides a comprehensive, textbook analysis of bio-fuels, solar energy, and new technology projects including research into the use of algae to produce biodiesel. He advocates additional oil exploration off the Gulf Coast, the West Coast, Alaska—but not ANWR—and, of course, in states like North Dakota.

It’s a rewarding experience to find oneself so up close and personal with a senator willing to put his views on the line. Readers are afforded the opportunity to agree, disagree, or remain neutral on the most pressing issues of our time.

The wide-ranging topics in Reckless and Dorgan’s masterful ability to identify and analyze significant national problems render this text useful, even necessary. The Senator has a little trouble taking off his partisan hat (and so does this reviewer, you might want to add )—but when he does, what follows is well-stated, well-argued prose.  He holds forth on dead-serious subjects with humor. Some might bristle at the “Aw Shucks” down-home quality of this North Dakota speaker, but this writer enjoys the authentic local flavor that the Senator captures so well. I’m guessing many of you will, too.

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