Economic Studies Program
The Brookings Institution

Brookings Institution Launches The Hamilton Project
April 5, 2006

The Brookings Institution today launched a new economic policy program: the Hamilton Project. This initiative will advance an economic strategy to restore America's promise of opportunity, prosperity and growth--and inject new policy options from leading thinkers across the country into the national economic debate.

[....]

At the Brookings launch event, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) and the Rev. Jim Wallis, a founder of Sojourners and author of God's Politics, participated in a discussion of the project's white paper, "An Economic Strategy to Advance Opportunity, Prosperity and Growth."

FAIR ("the national media watch group")

Extra! November/December 1998

Brookings
The Establishment's Think Tank
By Sam Husseini

To this day, Brookings is commonly, and inaccurately, dubbed "liberal" (e.g., Baltimore Sun, 8/9/98; Cincinnati Enquirer, 7/30/98; Dallas Morning News, 7/1/98; AP, 5/29/98). CBS News correspondent Bernard Goldberg even publicly chastised one of his colleagues for not tagging Brookings as "liberal" in his reporting (Wall Street Journal op-ed, 2/13/96). It's called "centrist" almost as often, but never "conservative," though that label would be more accurate than "liberal."

In fact, much of Brookings' top brass has come from Republican administrations. Its current president, Michael Armacost, was an undersecretary of state for the Reagan administration and ambassador to Japan under Bush. Brookings' president from 1977 to 1995, Bruce MacLaury, spent most of his career in the Federal Reserve, with a stint in the Nixon Treasury Department.

Endgame Report

November 2000 by George Draffan
The Corporate Consensus:
A Guide to the Institutions of Global Power
Part 2: Profiles in Corporate Power

Brookings board of trustees includes the corporate CEOs and directors of AT&T, Fremont Group (Bechtel), Booz Allen & Hamilton, Kissinger Associates, Human Genome Sciences, Inc., Johnson Capital Partners, State Farm, Aetna, Times Mirror, the Las Vegas Sun newspaper, Heinz Family Philanthropies, ARCO, Chase Manhattan, USAirways, Bank of America, Levi Strauss, as well as Robert S. McNamara (former president of the World Bank) and James D. Wolfensohn (the current president of the World Bank)...

The American Prospect
Friendly Takeover
Robert Kuttner | March 18, 2007

....So far, so good. But the Hamilton Project's actual program does not advocate serious new social outlay, nor does it have a kind word for unions, wage regulation, or social norms for trade. With the exception of one early paper by Jacob Hacker on "Universal Insurance," Hamilton proposals are basically budget-neutral. I asked Rubin what level of net new social outlay the project envisioned. He declined to say.

Last July, at a Hamilton Project public program, The Washington Post's Steve Pearlstein mischievously asked panelists Rubin, Altman, and Summers why not take a "time out" on further trade deals until Congress passes some of the social buffers that the project keeps endorsing in principle. "To a man, they recoiled at the idea," Pearlstein reported.

Calling this posture "a perfect example of how the Democrats have lost the instinct for the political jugular and the ability to use policy disputes to political advantage," Pearlstein added, "The idea here isn't to kill free trade. It's to take it hostage." Lately, many Democrats in Congress have indeed been trying harder to hold the next trade deal hostage to more social protections. If they fail, Rubin's counsel will have played a key role.

[....]

The small-bore programs advocated by Rubin and Hamilton offer little to economically stressed citizens. If Rubin is in charge of the Democratic economic program once again, the message will not rouse voters, because the policy will do next to nothing for the average American.

The Nation
What Kind of Economy?

by JAMES K. GALBRAITH
posted February 21, 2007

....But these advances come at a price, which will be exacted in two areas: the world trading system and domestic fiscal policy. Both of these are far more fundamental to the Hamilton mission than any particular social policy reform. Indeed, one purpose of the Hamilton Project, it seems clear, is to propose just enough creative social advances--such as wage insurance, better teacher pay and healthcare reform--so as to divert discussion from the bedrock commitments to free trade and a balanced budget.

Progressives shouldn't let this happen. And yet we have our own work to do: Our trade position is obsolete, and there is for now no clear progressive fiscal policy. We need to be talking trade and budgets, not simply because they are too important to bargain away, and not just to contest Rubin's worldview, but to build one of our own that is realistic, compelling and also serves larger purposes, including environmental survival and social justice.

On trade, the Hamiltonians favored the North American Free Trade Agreement, while most populists and progressives opposed it. This fight has been replayed endlessly, and it continues to color the arguments over the Central American Free Trade Agreement and the bilateral free-trade agreements now under negotiation. But as some NAFTA opponents, notably Jeff Faux, have recognized, it's time to get over it. Whether NAFTA created or cost jobs initially, the economies of Mexico and the United States are now about as integrated as they are going to get, and the effect is basically finished. As a result, Mexico's economy grew with ours in the late 1990s and went bust when ours did in 2001. Almost all discussion of outsourcing now focuses on China and India, two countries with whom we do not have, and will not get, free-trade agreements.

Z Magazine

February 2007
Volume 20 Number 2
The Obama Illusion
Presidential ambitions from the start

By Paul Street

....Never mind that Obama (consistent with Brooks's description of him) has lent his support to the aptly named Hamilton Project, formed by corporate-neoliberal Citigroup chair Robert Rubin and "other Wall Street Democrats" to counter populist rebellion against corporatist tendencies within the Democratic Party (David Sirota, "Mr. Obama Goes to Washington," the Nation, June 26). Or that he lent his politically influential and financially rewarding assistance to neoconservative pro-war Senator Joe Lieberman's ("D"-CT) struggle against the Democratic antiwar insurgent Ned Lamont. Or that Obama has supported other "mainstream Democrats" fighting antiwar progressives in primary races (see Alexander Cockburn, "Obama's Game," the Nation, April 24, 2006). Or that he criticized efforts to enact filibuster proceedings against reactionary Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.