Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
Congressman John Larson speaks at a press conference outside the Capitol, June 25, 2019.
For a generation of Irish American men, John F. Kennedy symbolized all they might do and become in the United States. Journalist Pete Hamill, who learned of Kennedy’s death while visiting relatives in Belfast, wrote of feeling unsafe years later when his car broke down on a remote road in rural Mexico. Unsafe, that is, until he arrived at the nearest house and saw portraits of JFK and the Virgin of Guadalupe on the mud-brick wall. For Hamill, the martyred president served as a totem of protection in a distant land.
More than a half-century after Kennedy’s death, Representative John Larson—of Irish and Swedish ancestry, and Catholic like Kennedy—still wears JFK’s portrait on his lapel. The late president is presented on a dark background with a gold-tinted frame, a somber blend of hope and loss. We all navigate the world with our personal iconography.
Larson, a 71-year-old Democrat now in his 11th term, might seem to embody the Democratic establishment. He runs the Social Security subcommittee of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee—“low on the totem pole,” he tells me with politically incorrect modesty—and once chaired the House Democratic Caucus.
And yet, Larson may soon accomplish a goal considered impossible just a few short years ago: passing legislation in the House that would expand Social Security for the first time in more than half a century. Larson’s Social Security 2100 Act would raise and stabilize Social Security benefits, add anti-poverty measures, and restore it to actuarial balance for 75 years.
In a recent conversation about his Social Security expansion bill, I asked Larson what would happen if it passes but the Senate doesn’t take it up. Do you think the voters will elect a new Senate that would? He offers a suggestion in response:
“There’s no better way to end your article than that sentence right there: ‘If the Senate chooses not to take it up’—and I say this about climate change, about universal background checks, about Social Security—‘then maybe voters will want senators that will.’”
LARSON IS, IN HIS OWN WORDS, a product of “public housing, public education, and public service.” He was raised in a housing project, one of eight children. Even now, Larson retains some of the working-class locutions of his childhood—“so he says to me …” His father worked at arms manufacturer Pratt & Whitney for 37 years after coming home from World War II.
“Mother did an evening shift there, too,” he told me. “5 to 11 at night, doing secretarial and quality control work. She should’ve gone to college, but she thought it was patriotic to work at Pratt & Whitney during the war.”
Larson’s mother served on the board of education and city council in East Hartford, the manufacturing-heavy suburb of Hartford where he grew up. John followed her onto the local board and city council, before moving up to the Connecticut state Senate and then getting elected to the House.
Larson’s old-school in many ways. He talks about debt reduction. A hometown paper praises him because he’ll “work with Republicans.” His website notes that he won National Historical Park status for “Coltsville,” a theme park commemorating the Connecticut-based Colt arms company’s “legacy of American innovation and manufacturing.” (“It’s called a Peacemaker,” Steve Earle sang of the Colt .45 pistol, “but I never knew why.”)
But he’s no cutout centrist. He opposed the invasion of Iraq from the start; his website says he’s against “the policies of preemption and unilateralism.” He invited a delegation from his district’s impoverished 06120 Zip code to meet with Washington leaders. He’s been endorsed by the progressive Working Families Party. And he seemed unfazed when the new congressional Democrats of “the Squad,” including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, came to Congress with the help of red rose–bearing Democratic Socialists.
While many other old-line Democrats were fretting about their new colleagues, in fact, Larson was wooing them as co-sponsors. He recently joined with Ocasio-Cortez to make a video pitch for his Social Security 2100 Act.
Larson’s bill now has 208 co-sponsors, comprising most House Democrats and approaching the 218 needed to secure its passage. That’s impressive for any legislation that does more than name flower beds for Revolutionary War heroes. It’s even more striking, however, given recent history. President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner were negotiating to cut Social Security a few short years ago, reflecting a Beltway consensus nurtured by well-funded think tanks and large campaign donors. Obama included the “chained CPI,” a cost-of-living calculation that reduced benefits over time, in his proposed budget for fiscal year 2014.
So how, exactly, has Larson’s bill come so far?
The broader political climate has changed, of course, and a great deal of spade work was done by outside groups that made for expansion, rather than cuts, in social insurance. But Larson’s customer-centric attitude toward his peers certainly helped. To promote his bill, Larson printed up promotional leaflets for every Democratic House member, including the four new representatives who represented the young insurgent left. He made up some for Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee, too, and for any other Republicans who would meet with him. The leaflets show the member’s own name, as well as Larson’s, and list the advantages the bill will bring to their voters and communities.
That salesmanship struck me as the kind of thing a successful insurance representative might do. It is, as it turns out. Larson once co-owned a brokerage in East Hartford, not far from the capital of the insurance industry. He also taught history and coached football before working his way up the political ladder.
I tell Larson that I, too, have an insurance background and that my first thought on hearing about the leaflets was “That guy’s a broker.”
“Then you’ll love this one,” he replies. “I’ve done town halls at the Travelers, at the Cigna … and I say, ‘By the way, lemme ask you a question: have any of your other insurance premiums gone up since 1983?’ They laugh. They get it.” This refers to the fact that the basic structure of Social Security has not changed since the Reagan administration.
“We need to make adjustments, but we do it in small increments. We phase it in over 25 years. I forget who gave me that idea.” Larson pauses, thinks. “That’s why I put everybody else’s name on it. I didn’t come up with these ideas. We just galvanized ’em together in one bill.”
And the leaflets? Larson mentions Representative Conor Lamb, the Pittsburgh-area Democrat whose campaign paired his military service, prosecutor’s background, and aversion to gun control with pro-union rhetoric and support for Social Security.
“Conor Lamb, he says to me, ‘You put my name on this bill. It says it’s the Lamb/Larson bill.’ I say, ‘Conor, how many people in your district do you think even know who I am?’ To Mike Doyle, it’s the Doyle/Larson bill. The contact info says, ‘Call Mike Doyle’s office.’ And I say, ‘Well, people in your district aren’t going to call me.’
“So, you were saying, ‘How did you get how many people to sign on to your bill?’ That’s how.”
If face-to-face campaigning is “retail politics,” this is wholesale politics.
Larson notes that Social Security has helped people across the political spectrum.
“My dad died at age 63 of a massive heart attack. Paul Ryan’s father died. Richie Neal (Richard Neal, D-MA, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee) lost his father and his mother … People on the committee really do understand. But the Republicans feel, ‘Look, we still think the private sector’s the way to go. So, let’s continue on this mission of professing our love, but doing nothing.’”
You know, if you’re willing to give someone else the credit, you can do a lot more.
Larson adds, “One of the big problems with Social Security is that people don’t get emotional about it in a way that, if you look at it and study it, they should.”
I ask Larson about “theories of change,” a popular term on the left that asks the question: How will you actually get something done? Is this process a model for the future? He mentions Neal, who has drawn criticism from progressive Democrats over drug pricing and the pursuit of Trump’s tax documents.
“The guy that talks about that more than I do is Rich Neal, who says, ‘This is a model of how to put legislation together.’ You know, if you’re willing to give someone else the credit, you can do a lot more. Also, if the legislation is viewed as helping constituents—we sent out to every district how many people receive Social Security there, and on average it’s about 125,000 people. Those are real people, a lot of benefits, and a big economic impact.”
Larson’s no socialist, but that approach seems almost … comradely.
“One of the things I’m proud of in this bill,” he continues, “is that every progressive in the caucus supports it. And when you’re able to match the progressives with the Conor Lambs, then I think you have a formula that unites people.”
The bill still needs to work through a Ways and Means Committee markup. Does Larson think it’ll get a floor vote? “Yes.”
Any idea when? “No.” He laughs, and adds, “We’re hoping we get a vote before we adjourn for the Christmas holidays. It would be a great Christmas present.”
What else, I ask, does he want people to know about this bill?
“Watch how it continues to evolve. It’s gone from talking about this as not being an entitlement … to saying, ‘Oh, by the way, jeez, when you look at what people have to endure, including women and black males and when you look at the economic development side of this’ … The next push you’re gonna see from us is Social Security as a civil right, as a woman’s right, and as an economic development tool.”
And so, one November day, John Larson and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stood in front of a camera and made their pitch—guided, perhaps, by the icons of the red rose and the presidential martyr.
Some of us expect a radical future, as the planet keeps burning and inequality continues to soar. Surely there’s a place in that future for John Larson, a child of public housing, public education, and public service, an old-school Democrat whose Social Security bill stands a good chance of passing in the House. And if it does, what happens next?
If the Senate chooses not to take it up, maybe voters will want senators that will.
