This just-in from the annals of Republican strategy

Read this Wonk Room piece for a good plain-English summary of Jon Kyl’s obstructionist tactics on nuclear issues to date.

Where Bergmann sees confusion and equivocation, I just see one facet of a larger Republican strategy to discredit and derail the president’s agenda. Kyl has ported many talking points from the health care debate to the START issue with little modification.

In July, the Post got its hands on the Republican health care talking points. A “key message point” was that the Administration was moving waaay too fast to resolve a problem as large and complex as health care (emphasis mine unless otherwise noted).

The Obama Experiment with our health could change everything we like about our health care — and our economy.

This big a risk, that risky an experiment is not something leaders on either side should rush through Congress in a few days or weeks.

Slow down, Mr. President. We can’t afford to get health care wrong.

President Obama is experimenting with America, too much, too soon, and too fast.

The Republican message on START is eerily similar: By working to get New START signed by December, the administration is playing fast and loose with US nuclear posture. A GOP memo on the START follow-on released in September warned

If the Administration can complete an agreement consistent with these principles and submit it with sufficient time for the Senate to complete a thorough review by the time START expires, then it is more likely to gain the two-thirds majority necessary for Senate consent.

And in June, Kyl warned the Administration in the pages of the Wall Street Journal that

Similarly, US desire to complete the negotiations quickly is resulting in too many concessions, particularly on missile defense: “…we may end up abandoning a needed defense of the U.S. and our European allies from the looming Iranian threat.

Other, frankly facile arguments include the length of the proposals themselves. Remember all that griping about a health care bill too long for most Americans to read? From the GOP memo, again:

Nine years and 700 pages later, the United States and Soviet Union signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty on July 31, 1991.

The Moscow Treaty is three pages long and came to pass after six months of negotiation.

The message comes through loud and clear: by negotiating a big bad arms control treaty, rather than a short and sweet one, the President only has himself to blame if the Senate fails to ratify the treaty. (A pettier blogger might point out that if the Moscow Treaty had been a little longer and included half the verification measures set to expire in four days, maybe Rose Gottemoeller wouldn’t have spent the bulk of the last few months in the belly of an airliner.)

Kyl, who as GOP whip has got his hands into most Senate business, thinks that by politicizing the arms control he can drag it and the president down more effectively than if he had to argue the treaty on its merits. This is where the parallels between the health care debate and START end, because while the White House has all hands on deck for health care, there has been woefully little high-level engagement of Congress on nuclear issues.

SORT notwithstanding, the Senate hasn’t ratified an honest-to-god treaty in years. If Obama hopes to accomplish any meaningful fraction of his disarmament agenda, he needs to start engaging and educating key senators and their staff. Indeed, he should have started a long time ago. But that hasn’t happened, and Kyl has moved in to fill the vacuum with half-truths, cheap-shots, and the lowest of low politics.

Brian

Filed under: Arms Control, Domestic , New START

Features of progressivism in the Obama era.

The conventional wisdom around town is that President Obama’s approval ratings are dropping and he is facing resistance because he “hasn’t done anything” with his presidency so far. This statement belies the fact that enormous amounts of progress have been made on what were historically very large issues; because this progress happened not to have ticker-tape legislation attached to it, it’s often overlooked. The occasion for these reflections is the recent extension of federal hate crime protections to gays and lesbians. While the Violent Crime Control and Enforcement Act of 1994 granted hate crime protections to victims of crime targeted at race, religion, and sex, sexual orientation was omitted until Thursday when it was attached as a rider to a defense appropriations bill. Of course, this is not how the Shepard Act should have passed, but pass it did. Those who remember the battles over hate crimes and thought crimes in Congress in the early nineties know that this is no marginal step. Jim DeMint knows it too, in his perverse way, saying “the bill was a ‘dangerous step’ toward thought crimes. He asked whether the bill would ’serve as a warning to people not to speak out too loudly about their religious views.’”

The broader point is that hate crimes legislation is sneaking in largely under the radar. This White House has proven extraordinarily deft at directing attention toward certain efforts, allowing them to pursue deep changes in areas that would otherwise have been controversial. Here’s a doozy: despite being the major cleavage during two years of campaigning for the Presidency (to say nothing of the campaign four years prior), withdrawal from Iraq is proceeding with hardly a hitch. American society is not engulfed by caustic battles over its efficacy or the future of Iraq or Middle East stability or a democracy agenda. Here are a couple more: the FCC has moved to codify net neutrality regulations (which Jon McCain is currently trying to roll back); the EPA has classified a broad range of carbon emissions as harmful pollutants, on the way to pursuing to stricter regulations on greenhouse gases; SCHIP was renewed; tough steps have been taken to end the use of torture by America’s armed services; new ethics regulations for White House employees were put in in place, as were new standards on transparency and the release of Presidential documents; the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act expanded funding for promising forms of alternative energy; and he has taken steps to roll back subsidies to large agribusiness firms. As always, PolitiFact.com maintains a list of Obama’s kept promises and failures, for those anxious for a deeper look.

But I think the broader point stands: a great deal has been done, and very quickly. So why does the perception of inactivity persist? I actually think it has less to do with direction and misdirection of the public’s attention and more to do with the fact that many of these were the right steps and so have become unobjectionable, even obvious, fairly quickly. This is an enduring feature of progressivism: while most progressive initiatives are controversial when proposed, and mistaken initiatives rightly provoke backlash, well-conceived progressivism tends to become part of the fabric of our identity relatively quickly and thoroughgoing dissent fails to materialize. (Notice that it is not only progressivism that has this feature, but also some fiscal measures like tax cuts or subsidies; expansions of human rights, like hate crimes protections, are particularly felicitous examples.) This is not to say that Obama does not have tough fights ahead; what it does mean is that he has sequenced things in such a way that he could continue to progress on a number of fronts while fighting one top line progressive battle at a time. That’s just good politics, it’s good for the country, and it’s good for the world.

a.j.m.

Filed under: Domestic, Liberalism , hate crimes, human rights, progressivism

What more do you need to know?

Of course, tax policy is impossibly complex; the relationship between tax federal taxes and economic growth is difficult to pin down and subject to much debate. But even the most cursory look is enough to show that this is one of those impossible problems that actually has a simple cause and a simple solution. Compare the following.

The Times, 16 October—

At 10 percent of the gross domestic product, the 2009 deficit is the highest since the end of World War II, when it was 21.5 percent. At that level, it already has become a bigger economic and a political issue than any time since the late 1980s.

Leonhardt in the Times, 6 October—

[Bruce Bartlett's] conservatism starts with the idea that high taxes are no longer the problem, even if complaining about them still makes for good politics. This year, federal taxes are on pace to equal just 15 percent of gross domestic product. It is the lowest share since 1950.

What more do you need to know?

a.j.m.

Filed under: Domestic, Economics , Club Wagner, deficit, taxes

Values creep.

David Brooks’ new column is a little surreal. Lamenting the sorry state of personal and public finance in this country, Brooks pines for a time when our “country’s cultural monitors” were more interested in guiding Americans’ economic behavior than in fighting about prayer in the schools. Why “cultural monitors” should be guiding Americans’ economic behavior is not totally clear, but the conflation between the cultural and the economic pervades the piece: if we do need, as Brooks says, a “moral revival,” I’m not sure it should be aiming at a bump in the savings rate. I’m not really sure what an “economic value” is.

He’s not wrong about where we stand and that it needs fixing; I’m just saying. There’s a way to talk about these things, and I don’t like the implication that financial discipline is only an acceptable conservative issue if it’s about values. Moral decline is not the only sort of decline this country faces.

Update— You’ll never believe it. Krugman goes with “it’s not moral decay, it’s Republicans.“

a.j.m.

Filed under: Domestic, Economics , Brooks

The progressivism of the powerful.

The New York Times’ Green Inc. blog has been tracking an interesting trend lately: in the last couple of days, three major power utilities have withdrawn from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over that body’s opposition to climate change legislation. Pacific Gas & Electric was first, followed by New Mexico’s PNM, and, today, the major nuclear utility Exelon.

This is just the latest reminder not to assume the interests of domestic groups a priori, or assume that their commitment to their apparent material interests are intractable. Of course, these assumptions often hit the mark; but just as often they fail to pick up on countervailing material interests, longer-term interests, ideology, altruism, or other forces. More often than many people expect, progressive causes like environmental sustainability come to be seen as win, win, win, win issues; but other times, corporations are willing to take a small financial hit for a big boost in prestige. The rising number of LEED-certified buildings is one example. Another is the annual op-ed on one of the major pages by some wealthy altruist arguing that many of the well-to-do have no trouble consenting to higher taxes, and may even prefer them. Be careful out there: whether you’re a rationalist or an idealist, don’t assume against the progressivism of powerful actors.

a.j.m.

Filed under: Domestic, sustainability , positive sum

Heckling to win

I’m sure by now countless parallels have been drawn between Joe Wilson’s outburst, Democrats’ heckling of George Bush, and the institutionalized heckling of British politics in the Commons and elsewhere.

Both the cause of progressivism and American democracy as a whole would benefit from moving toward a Westminster-style political system. But the defense of Wilson’s outburst on the grounds that we should be more like the Brits is, I think, misguided. Obviously, it would be splitting hairs to suggest that Wilson’s outburst was out of line while maintaining that booing the President during the State of Union or hissing during the Prime Minister’s question time are fair game. I agree Newsweek’s John Barry that, on the whole, heckling can be a productive democratic activity. And I share Dana Goldstein’s sentiment that “more frequent, rowdier confrontations between the president and Congress…gives each party a chance to clarify its agenda while subjecting it to the critiques of the other.”

Much like protests and rallies, heckling by the general public pays dividends in visibility and solidarity. Heckling public figures can be a way to air out grievances while demonstrating that support for the speaker is weaker than the presence of a respectful audience might otherwise suggest. The louder the heckling, the less support s/he seems to command. For audiences that aren’t hand-picked and pre-screened, getting booed off the stage can be a powerful symbol.

Not all that hisses heckles. As the Guardian pointed out a few years ago, heckling is in a lot of ways qualitatively different from outright rudeness.

Anger has its place in political discourse, of course…But heckling is something else. At its best, it is almost a conspiracy between the heckler and the heckled, born out of mutual antagonism but mitigated by combative wit; a gamble, too, since neither player can be sure that he—it is usually a testosterone-charged he—will come off best.

Anger—constructive, impassioned, but angry political debate—deserves a greater role in American politics. All too often legitimate grievances get dismissed because they’re proffered by angry people using “angry,” “fiery,” or “shrill” rhetoric. Suffering is political, and it’s often enraging too.

For legislatures, however, heckling is plain and simple political theater. Subject the President to a weekly question-and-answer session with members of congress. That would give each party a means to draw contrasts and battle lines in ways that heckling can’t. As for heckling, I’m all for it. But Wilson’s outburst was just childish, wasn’t wit, wasn’t legitimate or accurate, and it wasn’t a boon for democracy.

—Brian

Filed under: Domestic, Practicing Politics, Symbolism

Principles of health care reform.

Jonathan Cohn, in the New Republic yesterday, writes another excellent article that succeeds in conveying what a weird amalgam the current health insurance proposal is. The guiding principles of the current debate are these: (a) reform should be as bipartisan as possible, (b) it should push as much insurance as possible through employers (the “you can keep the plan you’ve got” clause), and (c) it should be revenue-neutral. The difficulty, of course, is that both of these principles make for worse policy—fewer insured, less choice, higher costs, worse care.

Because we are trying to claw our way gradually up a continuum to a sustainable solution (single-payer health care, for example), we end up with this bizarre and universally suboptimal middle-ground. Take the case of the exchanges, which I’ve written about before. The current plan will establish a marketplace through which individuals could purchase insurance from both public and private providers; the exchanges are regulated, exclusion because of pre-existing condition is prohibited, subsidies are provided to low-income families entering the exchange, and so on. The trouble is that the current plan would prohibit any individual who currently receives coverage from their employer to enter the exchange. This makes employers unhappy because small businesses will have to provide costly health insurance; it gives consumers worse care because they’re prohibited from entering an efficient market that drives down costs if they so desire. And even if the exchange does attract a significant number of uninsured Americans, they may not have the benefit of a competitive public option now, or this public option will be made worse off.

The long and short of it is, the principles that Obama has put in place to guide the debate make for worse policy, no matter how much maneuvering is done within those guidelines. The guidelines, not just political opposition, prohibit reasonable options from rising tot he surface. Notice that there is a perfectly simple middle-ground between a single-payer plan and the current proposal: allow any American to enter the exchange or keep their current option as they please. Those who don’t want a public health care plan because they’re worried Obama is going to come into their homes and put a pillow over their children—just don’t switch. It would be difficult for those who do leave their employers’ plan, join the exchange, and opt for the public option to argue that they are being coerced simply because the government can offer better care. You will have ever liberals’ heartfelt condolences for being enticed into health. This is not even what many experts feel is the optimal solution, a single-payer plan; this is a simple adjustment to the current compromise that would provide better coverage.

So here is the point: more and more it seems like health care is not an issue that this polity can cope with adequately. There is too much vitriol, too much opposition, too much fascination with democratic procedure to accomplish anything worthwhile. The Democrats botched this thing from a start: you can’t fight hyperbolic fire with an ongoing negotiation. Health care reform is one of those things that should be negotiated by technocratic, bipartisan experts, behind closed doors, with access to every shred of information and data available to the American populace, and then voted on by congress, yes or no, in one fell swoop. Health insurance is not a point for compromise and posturing: health insurance is one of the basic duties of a civilized populace, and one the United States currently does not live up to. Health insurance should be expensive for its government, unabashedly successful, so capable it becomes transparent, and this accomplished by any reasonable political means necessary. Our government do what it takes to ensure that none of us have to think about health care again—because it is one of that scant handful of things a government must do for its people.

a.j.m.

Filed under: Domestic, Health, Practicing Politics , single-payer

Health care is a family value—the cost of giving birth.

President Obama’s press conference last night on the health care reform bill has everyone up in arms. And while I’d be happy to spend my life fighting this fight, I’m not the guy to do it. But I have learned a great deal that I didn’t know—including this.

A post on reddit yesterday said the following: My wife recently had a baby, this is the bill….

• Wife with previa placenta, c-section, 9 days hospital – $50k+

• Son 3 weeks immature, 3 weeks in NICU – $140K+

Welcome to American health care. I do have insurance so with that it will be about $20K out of pocket for me. And most importantly my son is now 5 weeks old and thriving.

A commenter to that post is well worth clicking through to read: a Canadian, his wife had a pre-existing condition that caused a doctor to recommend a cesarean-section, three weeks before the due date. He writes: “I paid for parking. I paid to get some photos of the ultrasound in a cutesy envelope, and I paid something like $10 or $15 so my wife would have a phone in the hospital room. I never saw a bill. I don’t know how much all this cost. I’d never think this is all that remarkable except that I keep hearing that it is.”

I’m quite young. It had never occurred to me that childbirth could cost so much money, but I believe it. What I don’t know is whether those kinds of costs are at all typical. The March of Dimes found in 2007 that the average cost of giving birth in the United States was about $8,000—$11,000 for c-section (the rates of which continue to rise). On average, private health care services paid for all but $500 or so of these costs. Now, this isn’t a median, so it’s difficult to know what the distribution of people is like within this, but clearly a large number of people pay quite a bit more.

My point is this—if you care about any recognizable notion of  ’family values’ you would never, ever condemn an inchoate family to years of debt while they are also trying to nourish, clothe, and teach their child. Universal, efficient, and public health care is a family value because it is a human value.

Imagine a young couple, not long out of college, newly married, with no or partial health insurance. The woman becomes pregnant a few years earlier than they expected, but they decide to go ahead anyway. There is no earthly reason why that couple should be exposed to that kind of liability for starting a family. Assuming the couple has an immaculately average experience, and leaving aside the cost of the nine-month pregnancy, there is no reason why they should have to foot a five figure bill, and perhaps a great deal more.

If Karl Rove were framing this, he’d say our health care system imposed a birth tax. If a liberal academician were framing it, she would point out that this situation is precisely the kind that Rawls had in mind in proposing a system of justice as fairness. No country cloaked in a veil of ignorance about their social, economic, and health conditions would consent to a system that exposed young couples to that kind of risk, for something as arbitrary and capricious as a pregnancy complication.

Health care is a family value because it is a human value; it should be an American’s right because it is a human right.

Filed under: Domestic, Health , health care, values

Arrest them all and let God sort it out

While Adam’s right that the problem with the purported rise in fraud, conflicts of interest, bribery, etc., is basically ethical, it’s worth emphasizing the liberal response must be fundamentally economic. This isn’t just because liberal governments aren’t in the business of deciding whether it’s moral to cheat: fraud and other forms of economic cheating usually have adverse effects on social welfare. I’m not saying all questions of morality manifest themselves in material externalities, but with these particular sins the proper response should be a mix of economic incentives and, more importantly, effective regulation. It’s not the sexiest solution, but it’s the only one that keeps the state from having to arbitrate shifting standards of good behavior while minimizing the externalities of what may be unethical behavior.

UPDATE—What got buried in the heart of this post was the point I intended on making in the first place, namely, that the moral ills of graft and theft distort markets and damage the expectations of members of society. The reason to punish and regulate fraud isn’t because it’s immoral, but because fraud makes society less prosperous. Transparency and fairness are implicit goods for many of us, but they should be top priorities of policy makers because people are better off when they’re not getting stolen from.

—Brian

Filed under: Domestic, Economics, Liberalism

Great new rules for green energy.

For years, green developers, politicians, and pundits have bemoaned America’s approach to incentivizing renewable energy projects. For years, the primary mechanism was a tax break on profits from approved renewable projects. There were two problems with this scheme: first, the financial incentive would not materialize until the projects began to generate revenue, which, for a large thermal solar plant could take years. The second problem is that the tax credit would persist for only a year at a time before it had to be renewed by congress, which set up an annual struggle and made fund-raising, planning, and development for new projects uncertain. Developers always had to be mindful of the possibility of what came to pass last year: the tax break lapsed and threw the renewables industry into disarray and then stagnation. Many green projects are tenuously financed: private capital is matched by some public funding and in any event the numbers are always very tight; the tax credit lapsing was enough to put hundreds of projects on hold.

Two days ago, the Energy Department issued new rules for incentivizing renewable energy development: ‘the government will pay up to 30 percent of the cost of renewable energy projects.’ The change was authorized under the stimulus bill; the first applications will be accepted around Aug. 1 for all projects that could begin construction this year or next. The rule solves both of the difficulties above, for now, and should be a major step toward stimulating a golden age for green development in this country.

Filed under: Domestic, sustainability , renewables