Damian Dovarganes/AP Photo
U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), takes pictures with supporters after addressing members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, in Burbank, California, on Feb. 11, 2023.
With Rep. Barbara Lee’s announcement on Monday for the open U.S. Senate seat in California, the race now includes three of the state’s House representatives: Lee, Rep. Katie Porter, and Rep. Adam Schiff. Affiliation with the Congressional Progressive Caucus seems to be an asset in the race—Lee is a former co-chair, Porter is a former deputy chair, and according to Politico Schiff is attempting to join the caucus in his 23rd year in Congress.
Schiff’s spokesperson told Politico that the CPC is “where his voting record has been” and “where his natural home is.” However, for his first two decades in Congress, Schiff has lived in the home of the conservative Blue Dog Caucus (where he had a leadership role at one point but since left) and the centrist New Democrat Coalition (where he is still a member).
Though it may be surprising, it is not unusual for House Democrats to be simultaneously members of the ideologically opposed Progressive Caucus and New Democrat Coalition. Seventeen members have dual memberships, including a Progressive Caucus vice chair-at-large (Rep. Donald Norcross of New Jersey) and a deputy whip (Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas). Schiff’s office did not respond to a question about whether he would maintain membership in both caucuses. The Progressive Caucus declined to comment about the Schiff application.
Schiff, who is known for his lead role in the impeachment of Donald Trump and his chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee (before being thrown off the panel by Republicans this year), is attempting an image makeover as he seeks to represent one of the nation’s bluest states, with backing from the Democratic establishment. He has recently endorsed Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, and rejected corporate PAC money (after taking millions from corporations over the past decade).
But when Schiff says that his past voting record aligns with the CPC, Lee and Porter can contest that claim. An analysis of his votes in Congress shows that Schiff has opposed numerous progressive measures that represent the caucus mainstream.
That includes several votes against the CPC People’s Budget, which contains virtually all of the caucus’s priorities. For many years, the People’s Budget would get a vote as a substitute amendment to the House budget resolution, as a litmus test for where members of the Democratic caucus stood.
In October 2017, Schiff opposed the People’s Budget for fiscal year 2018, despite it winning the support of more than half of all House Democrats that year. He also opposed the People’s Budget for fiscal year 2016, fiscal year 2015, fiscal year 2014, fiscal year 2013, and fiscal year 2012. (There was no budget resolution vote for fiscal year 2017 or fiscal year 2019, and the CPC has not introduced People’s Budgets since.)
Lee voted for the People’s Budget every year it was introduced; Porter, elected in 2018, has never had the opportunity. Only five current members of the 100-member Progressive Caucus who were in Congress at the time voted against the budget resolution for FY 2018, according to a Prospect review.
The fear is that Schiff’s record, including numerous anti-worker votes and hoards of industry money, may indicate that at certain moments he will slip back to old habits.
Interestingly, the last People’s Budget, introduced for fiscal year 2019, contains many of the issues that now reflect the overwhelming consensus of the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress. It included a large-scale infrastructure program that strengthened “Made in America” provisions, investments in high-speed broadband, prescription drug price reforms, higher subsidies for the Affordable Care Act exchanges, expansions to the Child Tax Credit, and significant investments in clean energy, all of which passed in either the American Rescue Plan, the bipartisan infrastructure law, or the Inflation Reduction Act. (The Chid Tax Credit expansion was temporary.) These were all present in the budget resolution that Schiff voted against six years ago.
Schiff’s office did not respond to questions from the Prospect about whether he still opposes the CPC People’s Budget or why he opposed it at the time. But his application for CPC membership, despite these and other votes, represents such a change in his ideological posture that some progressive writers and thinkers find it untrustworthy.
Another member with a more conservative voting record in the House who vowed to be a progressive in the Senate was Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and she has mostly lived up to that vow. More recently, however, she has performed constituent service for a home-state industry by adopting a pro-business crypto agenda and hiring a former crypto lawyer as her chief counsel for finance. The fear is that Schiff’s record, including numerous anti-worker votes and hoards of industry money, may indicate that at certain moments he will slip back to old habits.
Critics have highlighted Schiff’s record of supporting military power and clandestine surveillance. Early in his House career, he voted for the Patriot Act and the Iraq war authorization, and later voted for every pro-surveillance measure, such as the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 and the USA Freedom Act of 2015. In 2015, Schiff publicly endorsed the Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen, joining with then-House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). “The military action by Saudi Arabia and its partners was necessitated by the illegal action of the Houthi rebels and their Iranian backers,” Schiff said then in a statement.
Even Schiff’s rejection of the most recent People’s Budget in 2017 could be seen as part of his ongoing support for national security spending. That budget resolution would have prohibited expansion of U.S. combat troops in Syria and eliminated the Overseas Contingency Operation fund which has been described as a slush fund for the Pentagon to fund military activities. It would have also cut the base Pentagon budget, though more recently Schiff did vote for an amendment introduced by Barbara Lee in 2020 to reduce the military budget by 10 percent. Schiff’s criminal justice record, supporting anti-terrorism legislation and a “Blue Lives Matter” bill targeting crimes against law enforcement, has also received scrutiny.
But Schiff’s record on economic issues, particularly those affecting workers, has been less scrutinized. In addition to the multiple votes against the People’s Budget, he has taken a pro-employer side on numerous issues involving workers.
In his first term in Congress, Schiff voted to establish the Department of Homeland Security, and joined just 10 other Democrats in voting for an amendment to allow the president to prevent union organizing for department employees, including Transportation Security Administration personnel, on the grounds of “national security.” This measure was used consistently, including by President George W. Bush in 2008. It took two decades before the Biden administration granted full union rights to TSA personnel, including collective bargaining rights.
The same year, Schiff voted with the majority of Republicans and against an amendment authored by then-Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank that would have made companies ineligible for loan assistance if they laid off a greater percentage of their U.S. employees than their employees working abroad.
In 2007, Schiff voted for an amendment to the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) to remove a clause that would have prohibited employers from requiring that their employees be married. Two years later, Schiff voted to change the Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education (GIVE) Act to make it illegal for people engaged in national service like AmeriCorps or United Service Organizations (USO) from assisting or promoting union organizing, including even participating in the Constitutional right to protest.
In 2012, Schiff voted against another Democratic priority, a litmus test vote on a tax bill that would have instructed Congress to alter the tax code to include a more progressive rate structure and eliminate tax breaks that ship jobs overseas. Only ten Democrats voted against this nonbinding sense of the House motion; Schiff was one of them.
In 2017, Schiff voted for the Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act, a bill that emerged in the wake of claims about backlogs at Veterans Health Administration clinics. Ultimately the bill made it easier to fire VA personnel.
And between 2007 and 2011, Schiff voted for free trade agreements with Peru, Korea, and Panama which were criticized by Democrats and labor officials as benefiting corporations instead of U.S. workers. Schiff later changed his free trade stance, voting against trade promotion authority, a bill that set up a fast-track vote for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was never enacted.
Schiff’s Blue Dog past is most prominent in a 2005 speech on the House floor, where he demanded that Congress enact a “rainy-day” budget reserve. “A lack of revenue, uncontrolled spending and faulty planning have put our national debt so high that putting our fiscal house in order seems out of reach,” Schiff said in that speech. “The Blue Dog Coalition has put together a comprehensive 12-point plan to make needed reforms to our budget process, and one of these critical reforms is the creation of a rainy-day fund to set aside money for good times to pay for disasters, which we know will eventually come.”
Such a rainy-day fund would go even further than balancing the budget to create a surplus. Doing so almost certainly would require sweeping cuts to government agencies and benefit programs.
On the simple matter of supporting the basic priorities of the Progressive Caucus in a non-binding vote, Schiff has never passed the test.
Some critics of Schiff have praised his application for membership in the Progressive Caucus. “I was very disappointed when he joined the Blue Dogs & New Dems,” tweeted Howie Klein of the progressive campaign group Blue America. “He dumped the Blue Dogs & in the last few years he's evolved in a much more progressive direction. I've been suggesting he join the CPC.”
But a record spanning a couple decades of fiscal conservatism, military profligacy, and warrantless wiretapping does not match the interests of most Progressive Caucus members. While Schiff has altered that record to better fit the circumstances of running statewide in California, he can certainly not be said to demonstrate a longtime commitment to progressive issues.
That must be combined with a career of significant support from the defense, film/television, financial, telecom, and pharmaceutical industries. While Schiff has rejected corporate PAC money for this Senate cycle, he has yet to sign the “No Fossil Fuel Money” pledge, which would reject any contributions over $200 from fossil fuel companies or their employees.
It may be enough for Californians to see someone moving in their direction as a safe vote for their interests. Lee and Porter are making the case that they have longer track records on key issues like military spending and corporate greed. And on the simple matter of supporting the basic priorities of the Progressive Caucus in a non-binding vote—priorities which have become the goals of the entire Democratic caucus, up to and including the President—Schiff has never passed the test.
