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Buying Time in Afghanistan

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

President Obama is taking heat for announcing troop withdrawals last night without clarifying U.S. war aims in Afghanistan. Yet his basic strategy couldn’t be clearer. It is to depart Afghanistan gradually – a fighting withdrawal – to maximize the odds that the Taliban won’t be able to take over once U.S. troops are gone.

It may not work, but it’s hard to see a better alternative. The United States can’t “win” this war in any conventional sense. We can’t defeat the Taliban, which unfortunately has an ethnic and popular base in Pashtun regions. We can’t afford nation-building in Afghanistan right now, even if we knew how to do it. We can’t make the central government fundamentally less corrupt and more effective in delivering basic services. The best we can do is to build and train Afghan security forces, bolster local resistance to the Taliban and degrade the insurgents’ military strength.

This course at least gives Afghans a fighting chance to keep the Taliban at bay without foreign help, and may reinforce efforts to find a political resolution to the conflict. Otherwise, the United States faces an unpalatable choice between getting out quickly and hoping for the best, or an endless military engagement to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a haven for Islamist militancy and terror plots.

The political media interpreted Obama’s decision to withdraw 10,000 troops as a bid to split the difference between a public that seems increasingly disenchanted with the war and U.S. military leaders, who believe we are making progress against the insurgency. In fact, the president’s purpose was to buy time for the U.S. military to continue its campaign to weaken the Taliban. Here’s the headline we should have seen: “Obama promises three more years of war.”

The president plans to draw down an additional 20,000 troops by next summer, but that will leave over 60,000 U.S. troops in the fight until 2014. He argued that his surge of 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan has succeeded in dislodging the Taliban from broad swaths of the south. Meanwhile, drone attacks have taken a heavy toll on al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in Pakistan, and of course U.S. forces finally caught up with Osama bin Laden. It wasn’t quite a “mission accomplished” moment, but Obama clearly believes these tactical gains justify a more deliberate withdrawal than many in his own party – and a growing band of restive Republicans – would like.

In a sense, Obama is applying the Iraq template to Afghanistan. His pledge during the campaign to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq by 2012 helped cool anti-war passions at home and give Gen. David Petraeus’s surge a chance to work. Likewise, by setting a date certain for an end to U.S. operations in Afghanistan, Obama buys time to build on the U.S. military’s hard-won successes.

The big difference, though, is that Iraq’s Sunnis turned against al Qaeda. The Taliban is an indigenous insurgency, not an imported conspiracy like al Qaeda. And the longer U.S. forces stay in Afghanistan, the more they risk triggering a broader and more nationalistic revolt against the latest foreign invader.

Obama is betting that we have a brief window of opportunity to wear down the still unpopular Taliban before that sort of transformation can take place, and before war-weary Americans give up on the Afghan mission. It’s not a bet that inspires confidence, but for now it’s the least-bad option.

Photo Credit: Dan Love

Presidential “Speeches”, A Comparison

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Yesterday, Jim Arkedis, director of PPI’s National Security Project, gave his take on what the president should say in his speech on the Afghanistan troop draw down. A day later, let’s compare the two to see if the president’s speech lived up to Arkedis’ hopes.

Key Similarities:

● The president prescribed a troop withdrawal plan that brought home all of the surge troops by the end of 2012 similar to Jim’s desired troop withdrawal.

● Both agreed on the need for a political solution as the pinnacle of a successful resolution to the Afghanistan conflict.

● The two argued the withdrawal in terms of recent U.S. accomplishments on the ground in Afghanistan.

● Finally, both understood that America’s role in Afghanistan is not as a nation builder but as facilitator of democracy.

The Big Differences:

● A grand strategy: the president’s speech was lacking on details on America’s grand strategy for the end of the war.

● The troop numbers: the extra 3,000 troops advocated by Obama and in a slightly shorter timeframe reverberates politically. It allows the president to say during the 2012 that America has returned more than just the surge troops but has made a down payment on returning all of our servicemen home by 2014.

● The president had a larger economic focus, bringing up the concept of nation building at home instead of abroad.

● Frankness on the Afghanistan: the president lightly glazed over the current reality of Afghan-U.S relations.

● The president delved into Pakistan and Libya, which Jim avoided.

● The president did not address the recent U.S Senate Foreign Relations Committee report that aid was not having a tangible impact on Afghanistan’s infrastructure.

 

Both the president and Arkedis agreed on the key concepts of an appropriate Afghanistan withdrawal. The troop totals were nearly similar, and both advocated for a more progressive internationalist view of American foreign policy, emphasizing a support for enabling democracy without verging on nation building.

A majority of the differences were explainable due to the president’s position in global politics. A harsh yet true statement by the president has a larger impact on foreign relations then the statement of a policy analyst. For example in the case of U.S-Afghan government relations, the president has properly taken the high road, while letting his subordinates like U.S Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry handle the harsher rhetoric.

The president’s position as a global leader, however, does not prevent him from being frank with the American people. A recognition by the president that currentaidmechanismsare not working would have been the honest route. Talking foreign aid reformation would not have been politically pretty but could have dovetailed into Obama’s focus on the economy without creating an inverse relationship between domestic on defense spending.

A lack of a grand strategy by the president was also disappointing. In his December 2009 speech, the president outlined specific goals he wished for our troops to meet during the surge. Achieving these goals was the cornerstone of his rationale for the levels of troop withdrawal. A similar approach in the president’s most recent speech would have been logical.

Finally, the conflation of defense and domestic spending implied by the president’s decision to “to focus on nation building here at home” seems a bit troubling. Implying a choice between rebuilding America and securing it is a false choice: The United States should make crucial spending choices on security and domestic programs independent of one another.

 

The overarching themes of the president’s speech could largely have been predicted ahead of time, with news reports needling administration officials for the troop reduction totals. Political realities are understandable, and given the political landscape the president did a reasonable job in addressing the major issues, especially in terms of term withdrawal numbers and America’s role abroad. We hope that specifics on strategy and a clarification of the president’s domestic spending plan are presented in the upcoming round of interviews with administration officials.

Links to the president’s speech and Jim’s “speech”.

 

PPI Policy Brief: Is the FDA Strangling Innovation?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As the key gatekeeper for pharmaceutical and device innovation, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has a tough job. If it is too lenient, it will allow the sale of drugs and medical technology that could harm vulnerable Americans. Too tight, and the U.S. is being deprived of key innovations that could cut costs, increase health, and create jobs.

With this in mind, this paper addresses the question: Is the FDA unintentionally choking off cost-saving medical innovation? First, I discuss the difficulty of assessing whether the FDA is under-regulating or overregulating new drugs and devices, given the desire for safety. I then show how the FDA is clearly applying “too-high” standards in the case of one noninvasive device currently under consideration—MelaFind, a handheld computer vision system intended to help dermatologists decide which suspicious skin lesions should be biopsied for potential melanoma, a lifethreatening skin cancer. I then draw analogies to development of the early cell phones and personal computers.

Read the entire policy brief.

A New Approach to School Choice

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

“You’ve got to keep this country in the change business,” former President Bill Clinton urged a gathering of school reformers in Atlanta yesterday. It’s sound and timely advice progressives should heed, especially as a wave of reaction breaks over America’s two-decades- old experiment in public school choice.

Public charter schools, a form of school choice that Clinton championed as president, have come under fire from detractors who say they have failed to outperform traditional public schools. The right answer is to accelerate the growth of top charter operators and to shut down low-performing charters. And in keeping with Clinton’s admonition to stay the course of reform and experimentation, progressives should continue to look for ways to expand the concept of public school choice.

An intriguing example is New York’s innovative School of One, which offers a compelling model of choice within schools rather than choice among schools.

Founded by Joel Rose in 2009, the School of One is now the full-time math curriculum at three New York public middle schools serving 1,500 students.

The program operates in large spaces in each school to allow a variety of learning to occur, such as working in small groups or individually on laptops to complete lessons in the form of quizzes, games, and worksheets. When students arrive at school each day, they receive their “individual play lists” ­– their daily assignments to complete.

In essence, the School of One allows students to choose among a variety of ways of learning math depending on their unique abilities and interests. They might, for example, decide to work individually, with a peer, in groups, or with a teacher. The School of One eschews the traditional, one-size-fits-all approach to pedagogy in favor of differentiation and personalized instruction.

Students also take an assessment at the end of each day to determine if they are ready to move on to the next day’s assignment. Administrators analyze progress students are making on screens of their own and can monitor student achievement, as well as current progress via the student computer screens.

The School of One relies heavily on technology to adapt lessons to individual students. It incorporates popular tools that students already know and use daily. A 2009 study by Stanford Research Institute International (SRI) concluded that on average, students who learn by using online tools perform better than students who only learn one-on-one in a classroom setting.

The results have been impressive. According to the Educational Development Center, Inc. (EDC), there has been a twenty-eight percent rise in scores between pre-test and post-test for School of One 2009 summer school participants. Researchers also found that School of One students learned at a significantly higher rate — as much as seven times faster — than students with similar starting scores and demographic characteristics. In the 2010 Spring School Pilot, the New York City Department of Education’s Research and Policy Study Group (RPSG) estimated that School of One students learned at a rate fifty to sixty percent higher than those in traditional classrooms.

The School of One boasts a highly integrated and diverse student body in its three schools. For instance, M.S. 131 is comprised of eighty-one percent Asian, six percent Black and twelve percent Hispanic, I.S. 228 has thirty-four percent Asian, sixteen percent Black, twenty-three percent Hispanic and twenty-seven percent White students, and I.S. 339 has a student body of thirty-one percent Black and sixty-seven percent Hispanic students.

Arthur Levine, President of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation acknowledged, “New York City’s School of One may turn out to be the single most important experiment conducted in education so far. It is the future.”

Though the School of One has fostered remarkable gains among its students in a short amount of time, questions still remain. Is the model scalable for a larger group of students? How is the model different than the Montessori School model that has been around for a hundred years? Most important, even if the model is scalable and sustainable, can we afford it? The curriculum cost $1 million for the 2009 summer pilot program serving eighty students in one school. It is expected to rise to $13.3 million in 2012, when the program is anticipated to be used in 20 schools.

Perhaps some answers to these questions will surface as the program expands to four new sites in 2012. In any case, the School of One shows that New York city is, as Clinton put it, in the “change business” when it comes to lifting the quality of public education. Let’s hope other cities follow New York’s example.

Photo Credit: C.A. Muller

What the President Should Say on Afghanistan

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Here’s a message that President Obama would do well to tell to the American people tonight:

Good evening, my fellow Americans.

The last time I addressed you on Afghanistan in 2009 from West Point, it was to announce a new direction in that campaign. I appreciate that you might be getting tired of these kinds of speeches. Though our deployment in Iraq is winding down, America remains involved in two major war zones and a mission to protect Libya’s civilians.

I get it. We’ve been at war for nearly ten years, and we’re tired of it. Particularly in this time of economic difficulty, many are rightly asking tough questions: What are we doing there? Is America’s mission still keeping us safe as we spend billions of dollars every month? Can we come home now that we’ve killed Osama Bin Laden?

Back in December 2009, I argued that the state of our mission in Afghanistan was not well. We had the wrong strategy and not enough bodies on the ground to execute a strategy that fit the realities of the situation. That is why I announced a surge of 30,000 troops, bringing the American-lead coalition’s total deployment to approximately 132,000. I also promised during that speech that in July 2011–next month–our troops would start to come home. I am here tonight to make good on that promise.

Importantly, these forces were given a new mission in 2009: first and foremost, they were to protect Afghan civilians from the Taliban, which was designed to give the Afghan people the time and space to rebuild their country. This strategy has been successful in places, but less so in others.

At the time of the surge, the Taliban were on the verge of reasserting control over key areas of the country. I can report that we have undoubtedly reversed the Taliban’s momentum. We’ve made real security gains across significant parts of the country: the north and west regions are more stable, while volatility in the south and east. We’ve invested time, money, and effort into Khandahar, an important city of 800,000 in the southeast and traditional base of Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban. We’ve experienced marked security gains in Khandahar but, as in other areas of the country, we’re keenly aware that those gains remain fragile and reversible.

Furthermore, much of Afghanistan’s government is still a difficult partner. Corruption remains rampant, with officials, businesses and warlords are pocketing too many American taxpayer dollars that they shouldn’t. President Hamid Karzai continues to issue unhelpful statements, and proves time and time again that he’s hardly his country’s answer to George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. We understand that he’s playing to his domestic political audience most of the time, but the fact is that Americans have sacrificed too much in blood and treasure for the good of Afghanistan to be used as a punching bag by an ungrateful host.

Meanwhile, we continue to train Afghanistan’s security forces in hopes that they’ll assume many of America’s military duties. Afghan forces are increasing in size and competence but only in fits and starts. They’re frankly not quite ready yet.

Having taken all this into account, it is time to adjust our posture in Afghanistan again, and I’m not just talking about troop numbers. No doubt that headlines across the country will focus tomorrow on the number of withdrawing soldiers I’m about to announce. It’s crucial that we discuss not only how many will be left — an important factor that effects military families across the country — but what those that remain Afghanistan will do.

We know that the war in Afghanistan ends with a political solution. The United States leaves Afghanistan for good when its governing partners renounce violence towards the United States and each other, and agree to rule Afghanistan for its own sake. Throughout this process, I am keenly aware that it’s in America’s national security interest that Afghanistan never again become the base of operations for an attack against our country. As president, I will not hesitate to return large-scale forces to the region if I feel our security is threatened.

While searching for this political solution, we must also acknowledge that it’s highly unlikely that we will ever fully eradicate the Taliban or the remnants of al Qaeda. That is why this war ends with an agreement amongst Afghanistan’s tribes, ethnic groups, government, and yes, some weakened Taliban, to peaceably rule the country.

Based on the gains we’ve achieved in the last 18 months, I’m confident that we are putting ourselves, and Afghanistan’s government, in a strong position against the Taliban’s leadership. We’ve hit them hard, and they are reeling. Yes, we’ve killed Bin Laden, but that’s not the end of the road: we will continue to keep the American boot on the throats of al Qaeda and the Taliban through night raids and missile strikes.

Furthermore, we will continue to protect Afghanistan’s citizens in major cities and towns, like Khandahar and Kabul, by maintaining our current strategy in those places. We can sustain required manpower levels in those cities by withdrawing forces from areas that are reasonably safe. And we will redouble our training efforts and turn over patrols to competent Afghan security forces as fast as we can.

We will press for more aid money, sustainable development and government reform within Afghanistan’s governments. We are Afghanistan’s partner, but only so long as America’s money is spent more wisely than it has been.

I believe we can accomplish this mission by withdrawing 30,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2012. I reserve the right, as Commander-in-Chief, to reevaluate this decision if the United States’ major national security interests are threatened by a degradation of security conditions in Afghanistan.

This war has lasted too long and cost too much. With this new plan, I firmly believe we are doing right by America’s hardworking military, their families, our citizens, and our national interests.

Thank you.

Photo Credit: Isafmedia

Wingnut Watch: Pledging Politics

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Ideological litmus tests have always been a big feature of Wingnut World, with Americans for Tax Reform chief Grover Norquist’s “pledge” against support for tax increases being the most famous example. Grover’s pledge has been in the news lately, as Senate Republicans grappled with the question of whether a vote to kill tax incentives for ethanol development would run afoul of Norquist, who has always demanded that any revenue-enhancing action to close off a tax loophole be paired with a tax cut to make the action revenue-neutral.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has been trying to secure Republican support for revenue measures (but not tax rate increases) as part of a deficit deal. In a ploy that was almost certainly a direct challenge to Norquist’s authority in the GOP, Sen. Coburn organized a vote to end ethanol subsidies. With some Democratic support, Coburn prevailed in the Senate. But now House Republicans are dragging their feet on any parallel action on ethanol or other corporate tax subsidies, and Norquist is predicting that Coburn is leading the GOP down the road to out-and-out tax increases.

There’s no question that any Grand Bargain on the deficit will involve provisions opposed by Norquist, whether or not they go beyond “tax reform” proposals that offset revenue measures at least in part by rate cuts. What’s unclear is whether violations of Grover’s pledge will form the basis for primary challenges to violators in the future. The last high-profile backslider on the ATR pledge was George H.W. Bush, who in turn had won the 1988 presidential nomination in no small part because Bob Dole refused to sign it.

A different pledge has also made a splash in Republican politics during the last week: a four-plank oath administered to presidential candidates by the hard-core anti-abortion group, the Susan B. Anthony List. Candidates pledge:

FIRST, to nominate to the U.S. federal bench judges who are committed to restraint and applying the original meaning of the Constitution, not legislating from the bench;

SECOND, to select only pro-life appointees for relevant Cabinet and Executive Branch positions, in particular the head of National Institutes of Health, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Health & Human Services;

THIRD, to advance pro-life legislation to permanently end all taxpayer funding of abortion in all domestic and international spending programs, and defund Planned Parenthood and all other contractors and recipients of federal funds with affiliates that perform or fund abortions;

FOURTH, advance and sign into law a Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act to protect unborn children who are capable of feeling pain from abortion.

The third and fourth planks reflect the current national anti-choice strategy – the fourth promotes a federal version of the laws recently enacted in several states banning abortions after 20 weeks on “fetal pain” grounds.

Five GOP presidential candidates—Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty and Rick Santorum—immediately signed the SBA pledge. Four—Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, Jon Huntsman and Gary Johnson—pointedly did not. Romney refused to sign on grounds that the planks on funding cutoffs and appointments are too broad. Cain rather strangely argued that no president should be pledged to interfere with congressional prerogatives by “advancing” legislation, while Huntsman seems to object to the whole idea of pledges. Bachmann and Santorum quickly attacked Romney’s failure to sign the pledge as another sign of his lack of commitment to the anti-choice cause, and Santorum has also gone after Huntsman.

Keep in mind that with the exception of minor candidate Gary Johnson, all of the Republican presidential candidates embrace a categorical anti-choice position that favors a total ban on abortions regardless of the stage of pregnancy and removal of the constitutionally-established limit on abortion restrictions involving the health of the pregnant woman. The SBA pledge is interesting in that it requires support for specific strategies to reach the agreed-upon goal of a return to the days when virtually all abortions were illegal, along with restrictions on contraceptive measures that right-to-lifers now consider equivalent to abortion.

Because these distinctions aren’t that well-known outside the ranks of anti-choice activism, it’s unclear what if any impact the SBA Pledge controversy will have on actual voters. But it could matter in those early states, such as Iowa and South Carolina, where social conservatives are especially strong. And the flap will certainly become another talking point in the effort to convince conservatives that Mitt Romney cannot be trusted.

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Sibling Rivalry: Federal Power Spat Over Libya

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Ron PaulBoth the House of Representatives and the president have shown that when it comes to Libya, NATO is not the only organization susceptible to bouts of friendly fire. A bipartisan group of ten congressmen sued the president last Wednesday for not getting Congressional approval of military action in Libya, thereby violating the War Powers Act of 1973. President Obama responded by stating that combat in Libya does not equate to the full-blown “hostilities” described in the Act, while simultaneously disregarding dissenting legal opinions from both the Pentagon and the Justice Department.

Amid this mess, there’s only one thing that’s clear: expending energy to politically posture over the War Powers Act has real costs. While both sides remained tied up in this debate, they remain distracted from our national objectives: ousting Qaddafi and, more broadly, keeping public discourse focused on the economy.

Three main issues undermine the Republican’s charge that the Obama administration has exceeded its brief vis-à-vis the War Powers Act: historical enforceability issues, potential political consequences, and questionable motives.

First, enforcement of the War Powers Act is difficult at best. While the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan received congressional support, presidential indifference to the Act has been historically bipartisan. Reagan invaded Grenada in technical violation of the War Powers Act, while Clinton received no congressional backing for the humanitarian intervention in Kosovo. Furthermore even legal precedent stands against enforcement: A District of Columbia appellate judge dismissed a similar War Powers Act suit over Clinton’s action in Kosovo, stating that the case was “nonjusticiable.”

Second, efforts like the one suggested by Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) to defund military action in Libya are futile at best. Despite their desire to protect the sanctity of legislative branch, representatives are wary of pitting a stand against executive overreach against depictions of betraying American troops abroad mid-mission.

And third, even leader Boehner’s position on the issue has been tumultuous at best. In 1999, Boehner called the War Powers Act “constitutionally-suspect” during the U.S intervention in the Balkans, noting that its implementation was “likely to tie the hands of future presidents.” The Majority Leader’s tenuous position on the issue only gives the impression that the congressman is willing to weaken future presidents in order to maximize present political gains.

At the same time though, it’s not clear why the president doesn’t want to play War Powers ball on Libya. In an editorial Friday, the Washington Post echoed similar sentiments on the president’s stance, while declaring that the vague nature of the law did not excuse Obama from abiding by it.

It seems as if the president is calculating that the cost-benefit analysis the situation favors a patient approach. By waiting for political realities to douse the House’s passions, the president avoids entangling himself in jurisdictional politics. While it is wise that the president is conserving the power of the bully pulpit for economic issues, political realities make a quick solution to the War Powers controversy a presidential necessity. A protracted War Powers debate plays right into the desired Republican narrative: the administration is distracted from focusing on jobs and the economy.

Furthermore, such a swift conclusion would not even require a public retraction of the president’s position. A bipartisan group in the Senate led by Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) is working on a non-binding resolution to validate the effort in Libya.

So as not to compromise his current position, the president should actively support the Senate resolution to ensure its passing. Even though the resolution would likely die on arrival in the House, and therefore not satisfy the legal requirements of the War Powers Act, it provides the president with the opportunity of congressional approval for military action in Libya. Senate approval gives Obama the platform to transcend bickering over constitutional authority and argue that America needs to focus on getting rid of our deficit and Qaddafi. The McCain-Kerry resolution provides the congressional support necessary to move beyond the War Powers Act spat and onto more pressing priorities.

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

PPI President to Discuss Future of Nuclear Power

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, today will join policy makers and experts at the Special Summit on New Nuclear Energy, sponsored by the United States Nuclear Infrastructure Council, to discuss the state of the global “Nuclear Renaissance.” Marshall will contribute to a roundtable discussion with Ricardo Perez, Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Jacques Besnainou, Areva North America, and Ganpat Mani, ConverDyn, on the future of nuclear energy in the United States. The summit agenda can be viewed at https://www.nuclearinfrastructure.org/summit2011agenda.php.

For more information, please contact Steven Chlapecka at schlapecka@ppionline.org, 202.525.3931 (office), or 202.556.1752 (cell).

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Bundling Appointments

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In the era of big money, it is a familiar, if sobering, theme in modern presidential administrations, and this week President Obama’s administration took its turn.

A report published this week by iWatch news details the nearly 200 “bundlers” – individuals who channel multiple large donations to particular candidates – from President Obama’s 2008 campaign who have subsequently taken jobs or advisory roles in the administration.

True to form, White House spokesman Eric Shultz was quick to defend administration’s appointments, saying that all appointees “have sterling academic credentials, years of public services and private sector experience that make them eminently qualified for the positions to which they were appointed”.

This is probably true, in part because many of those qualities are what put people in the position to persuade wealthy friends and contacts to make donations in the first place. However, the appointment of bundlers today, as in past administrations, is worrisome for three reasons. Such appointments create at least the appearance that selections for executive positions may not be made on merit alone, undermining the public’s confidence in government, and they also narrow the pool of talent that the administration is likely to call upon in making their final decisions.

Regardless of the number of highly talented and qualified individuals Mr. Schultz can point out, public doubt inevitably lingers over such appointments. The American Foreign Service Association has long raised concerns over the appointment of campaign bundlers as ambassadors. Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia and career diplomat Thomas Pickering told iWatch that individuals could “multiply their chances” of gaining diplomatic appointments by bundling campaign contributions. Indeed, 24 ambassadors appointed by the administration were campaign bundlers, fourteen of whom raised at least $500,000 for the campaign.

It is likely that the prevalence of bundlers in certain positions within the administration narrows the field from which candidates are drawn. Half of those raising $200,000 or more for President Obama in 2008 were appointed to some role in the administration and fully 80 percent of those raising $500,000 or more were appointed. It is hard to imagine that when comparing candidates of similar qualification, the total money raised does not play a role, not least because the president will rely on many of these same people to raise money for his next campaign.

A narrower pool of talent means that those who supported former opponents are less likely to be appointed. Bi-partisan appointments, beyond a few high-profile exceptions, are even less likely. This is damaging at a time when finding common ground is vital to making major decisions about the challenges we face.

There is a solution to this problem; voluntary public funding of elections would allow candidates to raise money from a much broader base of public support. That would enable presidents to make appointments of talented and loyal supporters without doubts being raised as to whether such appointments were traded for financial support. It would also encourage the administration to cast its net more widely for the best available talent, perhaps even across the aisle. Such a change has to be good for our democracy.

Photo Credit: Enoch Lai

Three Responses To U.S. Cap And Trade Troubles

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

It’s been a bad month for cap and trade.

Governor Chris Christie has decided to pull New Jersey out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the Northeast’s carbon cap-and-trade program. New Hampshire’s legislature has also voted to leave, though the governor may veto the bill. Other states are considering their positions. As states leave RGGI and its market gets smaller, the advantages of linking up diminish, eroding its economic and political viability. Meanwhile, California’s attempt to implement cap and trade is under attack from the left and, as a result, has hit procedural roadblocks. These events have come as a surprise to many who follow this sort of thing—but are they important? Maybe. Three reactions are possible.

1) Despair (Cap and trade gets a knife in the back to match the one in the front)

 

RGGI and California’s AB32 are reminders that once, not so long ago, climate change was politically relevant and the best policy for avoiding it—pricing carbon—appeared not only possible but inevitable. RGGI and Europe’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) are the only carbon cap-and-trade programs of any size anywhere in the world. (New Zealand also has a nascent scheme.) RGGI, to date, has survived the political tides that turned cap and trade into “cap and tax” and likely make any new carbon policy impossible in this country. In short, the states would carry the torch until, one day, Washington wakes up. It would be depressing irony, this story goes, if those state programs should die not by outside political force but by suicide.

2) Indifference (“Wait…New Jersey had a carbon policy?”)

 

Another view is that you can talk all you want about “carrying the torch” without changing the fact that RGGI was and is a mere drop in the bucket. Its goals were always modest, and emissions caps were set so high that allowances never had any real value. If it weren’t for price floors, they would have been worthless. The program didn’t result in enough emissions cuts to be regionally relevant, much less have an effect on the climate problem. RGGI hasn’t had political success either. It’s chosen form—cap and trade—has become much less popular since the program started. If RGGI was supposed to show the country that cap and trade could work and wasn’t so scary after all, it’s either failed or nobody was paying attention in the first place. When and if pricing carbon becomes politically plausible again in Washington, it will be because politics and national public opinion have changed, not because New Jersey lit the way. The programs don’t seem to have had any effect internationally, either—they aren’t touted by U.S. climate negotiators and seem to have had no persuasive power during climate talks.

3) Optimism (Playing the long game)

 

Michael Levi argues that there may be more positives than negatives in Gov. Christie’s announcement:

…in the course of rejecting RGGI, Christie embraced the reality of the climate problem. Last fall, he said he was skeptical that human-caused climate change was a real problem. In his withdrawal announcement, though, he made it pretty clear that he thought climate change was a serious matter. This is no small thing for a rising star in a party that has increasingly made climate denial a litmus test for its leadership.

 

Christie’s about-face on this issue makes former Minnesota Governor and GOP presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty’s recent turn in the opposite direction look like ham-handed pandering.

Just as with every other environmental issue, the U.S. will have a climate policy when the center-right accepts that one is necessary, and not before. RGGI is doing very little to change that. In other words, RGGI matters only if you care more about the tool (cap and trade) more than the problem (climate change). It is odd, though, that a deficit hawk like Christie would spike a revenue generator like RGGI. That does not bode well for those who think that a carbon tax is the key to a grand environmental-fiscal compromise.

Which of these three is right? Perhaps unsurprisingly, all three to some extent. Pricing carbon is the most effective climate policy—so it is troubling to see it lose ground. RGGI itself is largely irrelevant to both the science and politics of climate. And the long view matters most of all. If you want a meaningful federal climate policy, you are looking for one thing: a 60th vote in the Senate. Could that one day be Christie?

This item is cross-posted from Weathervane.

Photo Credit: Kirsten Spry

Wingnut Watch: Going Down the Rabbit Hole

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

It’s a nostrum of American politics that presidential candidates do best by first playing to the party base in competitive primaries, but then “moving to the center” to appeal to swing voters in close general elections. As a result, one of the strategic pitfalls for candidates is to go “too far” in the primaries in a way that makes “moving to the center” impossible.

Given the radicalization of the Republican Party by the Tea Party Movement (itself, I would argue, mostly a radicalized subset of the same old conservative “base” that has dominated the GOP for three decades), one of the big imponderables for the 2012 GOP field is how many general election risks they are willing to take to establish conservative bona fides in a very demanding and competitive environment for Wingnuttery. Last week we witnessed three examples of candidates going pretty far down the rabbit hole.

Most notably, Tim Pawlenty released an economic plan—a first in the field—which begged for mainstream media and “expert” mockery, but aligned T-Paw with an assortment of useful intra-party themes and pet rocks.

Do conservatives believe, to a theological degree, tax cuts for the wealthy will produce hyper-growth, generating revenues that largely pay for the tax cuts? Pawlenty promised to achieve growth levels exceeding anything in the go-go early 1980s or late 1990s, which is good, because it would take that kind of miracle to even come within shouting distance of the eleven trillion dollars in lost revenues his tax cuts would produce over ten years, according to the Tax Policy Center.

Do conservatives tend to think of federal budget deficits as caused by “waste, fraud and abuse” and excessive benefits for poor people? Well, T-Paw offered up a magic stew of symbolic, pain-free (to Republican voters) gestures in the direction of massive spending reductions, including a balanced budget amendment, vast new appropriations impoundment powers for the president, and implementation of the Lean Six Sigma process beloved of the management consultants of yesteryears.

Have conservatives recently lurched in the direction of Ron Paul’s monetary theories, redolent of the deflationary gold bugs of the late nineteenth century? Pawlenty’s plan lurches in that direction, too, raising alarums about “runaway inflation” and demanding the Fed do nothing but focus on fighting that phantom menace.

T-Paw’s not the only one using rather over-the-top methods to send up ideological flares. Michelle Bachmann is known primarily as a social conservative (her roots are definitely in the Christian Right) and as a partisan bomb-thrower, not as much a sober economic conservative. She addresses that perception by submitting to a public inquisition in the Wall Street Journal by self-appointed ideological commissar Stephen Moore (best known as founder of the Club for Growth):

Ms. Bachmann is best known for her conservative activism on issues like abortion, but what I want to talk about today is economics. When I ask who she reads on the subject, she responds that she admires the late Milton Friedman as well as Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams. “I’m also an Art Laffer fiend—we’re very close,” she adds. “And [Ludwig] von Mises. I love von Mises,” getting excited and rattling off some of his classics like “Human Action” and “Bureaucracy.” “When I go on vacation and I lay on the beach, I bring von Mises.”

Reading Austrian economics on the beach sounds pretty elitist to me, but it’s important for Bachmann to build her credibility in that area, regardless of how it all might sound to swing voters or just regular folks.

Herman Cain pulled a much easier stunt to gain attention as a wingnut zealot: promising not to sign any congressional bills that were longer than three pages. This rule, of course, would have made impossible most of the significant legislation in U.S. history, but that’s not important to a candidate trying to convey his populist contempt for the pointy-heads trying to pull a fast one via too-demanding reading material.

Exercises like this illustrate the extent to which the 2012 presidential field seems to think there’s very little risk in primary-season extremism; certainly no one among them is going to oppose it. During last night’s first major presidential candidate debate in New Hampshire, candidates were given every opportunity to point and hoot at the growth rate assumptions of Pawlenty’s economic plan, but no one would go there. In sharp contrast to debates in 2008, no one rolled their eyes when Ron Paul went off on one of his patented tirades on monetary policy. And no one spoke up for the proposition that just maybe there was some economic peril involved in taking debt limit legislation hostage.

What made this atmosphere most interesting is that it occurred in New Hampshire, the place in the early caucus-and-primary season that is supposedly least dominated by social or economic policy ultras and most open to a “moderate” like Jon Huntsman. Such terms as “moderate” really do have to be used sparingly, if at all with respect to the 2012 GOP field, as the candidates themselves would probably protest the title. For Republicans in 2012, truly, extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. The rest of us should get used to it; we’ll be hearing it in many debates.

Photo Credit: Grace Skidmore

Robert Lerman Featured in HousingWire Magazine

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Urban Institute Fellow Robert I. Lerman, author of the PPI policy memo “Homeownership Vouchers: A Plan to Reinvigorate the Economy While Helping Low-Income Families,” is featured in this month’s HousingWire magazine:

“It’s been three years since the housing market collapsed. Millions of people have lost their homes, millions more are underwater on their mortgages, and the banking system continues to hold billions of dollars in overvalued mortgages. The crash in housing constructions shows no sign of recovery. Sales of new single-family homes are down 80% from their 2005 peak. Jobs in homebuilding have dropped nearly a half. While economists know it’s next impossible for the economy to recover without a recovery in the housing sector, Washington has been unable to come up with a solution.

“Policymakers are missing an easy way to take the existing funding for low-income rental housing support and instead use it to help stabilize the housing market. The plan is simple: Create 1 million homeownership vouchers, patterned largely on the nation’s existing rent voucher program. Pay for it by phasing out the low-income housing tax credit.”

Read the policy memo on which the article is based.

Are We Overstating U.S. Growth?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Are recent U.S. productivity gains a statistical mirage? In a must-read column on Saturday, Washington Post reporter Steven Pearlstein explores the significance of what appear to be serious flaws in the government’s traditional measures of U.S. economic and competitive performance.

Pearlstein credits PPI’s chief economic strategist, Michael Mandel for uncovering this pervasive mismeasurement. Mandel notes that official government statistics do not account for the increased efficiency of global supply chains, and may in effect, give the United States credit for manufacturing productivity gains that occur abroad.

As Pearlstein notes, this would go a long way toward explaining a phenomenon that has baffled economists – the failure of U.S. wage growth to keep pace with what seem to be robust productivity gains:

“Economists also are discovering how the globalized supply chains of U.S. based-companies have led government statistical agencies to overstate the size and growth of the U.S. economy — and, along with it, the growth in labor productivity, particularly in manufacturing. The implication of this mismeasurement is that the decline in GDP during the recession was greater than originally thought and the growth since has been weaker, which perhaps helps to explain the disappointing jobs picture.

The source of this mismeasurement is rather technical, having to do with the price estimates for imported parts and material. If the prices of these “intermediate goods” were actually lower than assumed, and the volume higher, as economists now suspect, then the economic value that was added to them by American workers would have been overstated by the official GDP statistics.”

For more on the possible mismeasurement, check out this recent piece entitled “How much of the productivity surge of 2007-2009 was real?” from Mandel’s blog, Mandel on Innovation and Growth.

Continue to expect more from PPI and Michael Mandel on these topics in the coming weeks.

Photo Credit: Office of the Democratic Leader

Fix CPI, Reap Big Savings

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Erskine BowlesU.S. elected leaders are desperately searching for ways to reduce the nation’s colossal debt without casting career-damaging votes for hiking revenues and slashing spending. Policy-makers are now turning to a technical fix in how the government measures inflation not only to fight the deficit, but also to circumvent political backlash.

Currently, the Bureau of Labor Statistics accounts for changes in the cost of living through the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The traditional CPI measures the overall average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services. But there’s a hitch: many economists say CPI overstates inflation, resulting in higher cost-of-living adjustments for people who receive public benefits, especially Medicare and Social Security, while simultaneously increasing federal deficits unnecessarily.

The problem with the traditional CPI is its dubious assumption that consumers continue to purchase the same basket of goods regardless of relative prices. That is where the so-called “Chained CPI” comes in. Many economists believe it more accurately measures inflation by taking into account something called “consumer substitution bias.” Simply, what this means is that when the price of food or some other good rises, people will look for a cheaper alternative.

According to a new paper by The Moment of Truth Project, a bipartisan effort focused on overcoming the nation’s debt problem, switching to the Chained CPI would save the government serious money — $12 billion in Social Security, $33 billion in other federal retirement plans and $23 billion in deficit reduction from other areas of the budget. Chained CPI will conserve another $87 billion in a ten-year period, because it slows the growth of tax bracket thresholds and other factors. All told, using Chained CPI to gauge inflation and index the federal budget would reduce the deficit by $300 billion total over the next decade.

No wonder the switch to the Chained CPI has been endorsed by both the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform’s and the Domenici-Rivlin deficit reduction plans. The fiscal commission’s co-chairs, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, set up Moment of Truth to advocate for the Bowles-Simpson commission’s plan.

According to the authors of the Moment of Truth report, Adam Rosenberg and Marc Goldwein, Chained CPI can fully account for the substitution bias that arises from consumer behavior by using market baskets from two successive months. The combination of baskets creates a chaining effect that links price changes to shifts in consumption.

Even though it is a technical fix, Congress still needs to approve adopting Chained CPI. In today’s hyper partisan times, fixing the CPI would be a less painful way politically to reap budget savings while providing a more accurate understanding of how inflation changes consumer behavior.

Photo Credit: Medill DC

More Speech: Living with Citizens United

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As if the damage to fair and accountable campaigns in Citizens United was not enough, a decision this week in the Federal District Court of Virginia raises the daunting prospect that the Supreme Court’s logic in favor of corporate speech can be extended to a second, more direct, form of political participation: contributions to political candidates. The verdict of the case, United States v. William Danielczyk Jr. & Eugene Biagi, found that Virginian corporations could legally donate directly to Virginian Congressional candidates. It goes one step beyond the Citizens United verdict that permitted campaign donations from corporations to political action committees and run advertisements impacting campaigns, but not the candidates themselves. (Before Citizens United, corporations had previously been unable to financially support political candidates and had been restricted in their political spending.) This latest ruling directly challenges more than a century of settled campaign law.

That corporate contributions will now become the norm is far from certain or even likely; nevertheless, the prospect of making campaign reforms in a judicial environment that is hostile to restrictions on spending invites more focus on alternative means to promote plurality and fairness in our democracy.

In Danielczyk & Biagi, Judge James Cacheris of the Virginia District Court this week upheld his earlier ruling that “the flat ban on corporate contributions [to candidates] is unconstitutional”, while clarifying that this decision was limited to the case’s particular circumstances. However, if other judges adverse to reform embrace Cacheris’ reasoning, then their combined opinion could have widespread implications.

Central to Cacheris’ decision is his reaffirmation of Citizens United: “the First Amendment does not allow political speech restrictions based on a speaker’s corporate identity”. Current caps on individual contributions are supposedly sufficient to avoid the risk or appearance of quid pro quo arrangements, which provide a historical basis for some restrictions on speech under the landmark Buckley v. Valeo decision in 1976. Given the inability of the law to discriminate between individuals and corporations, the Danielczyk decision states that if the Buckley v. Valeo contribution limits are sufficient for individuals, then they must be equally sufficient for corporations.

The Virginian court’s argument is open to a number of challenges, particularly over its implicit assumption that allowing corporate, in addition to individual, donations to candidates will not increase the risk of quid pro quo arrangements. A more ominous possibility however remains that Citizens United has opened the floodgates against laws that prohibit indirect corporate spending or candidate contributions in elections.

There remains at least one avenue for meaningful reform available to democracy advocates: offering significant public funds matching small donations to qualifying candidates. This type of systematic reform is not subject to the same legal challenges and would do more to promote a plural and open democracy than previous reforms focused on capping spending.

An example currently before Congress is the Fair Elections Now Act, which would for Congressional race donations of $100 or less, provide $5 for every $1 raised by candidates. Participating candidates must accept limits on the size of donations they are able to receive.

Such reforms would not limit the donations that corporations can offer, but rather encourage candidates to turn down such offers in order to qualify for matching funds. It doesn’t limit free speech, but rather offers a more speech alternative.

Research by Americans for Campaign Reform suggests that such measures would allow candidates relying on small contributions to be competitive, even against those candidates backed by large corporate war chests. The relationship between money spent and votes gained is strong up until about the $1 million mark in the average House race, a level at which most candidates can establish their name and get their message out to prospective voters. After that spending threshold, there is little correlation between spending and votes.

Public funding would enable more candidates to get over this crucial threshold without requiring support, whether it is direct or indirect, from private interests. The presence of such candidates would in itself create a strong argument against politicians accepting large contributions, and so reduce the role of money in politics. Overturning the century-long ban on direct corporate contributions to candidates is indeed a worrying sign and one that directly violates the Supreme Court’s recent findings; but the avenues for meaningful reform are far from closed.

Photo Credit: TalkMediaNews

Grading KIPP–Continued

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

School childrenThe KIPP Charter School network is widely hailed as among the nation’s most effective, so naturally charter skeptics are always looking for chinks in its armor. Among the most thoughtful of those skeptics is the Century Foundation’s Richard Kahlenberg. In a recent blog post, Kahlenberg cites this eye-catching statistic: only 33 percent of middle school KIPP graduates go on to receive a degree from a four-year college.

That sounds low, but of course the relevant question is, compared to what? According to the same source Kahlenberg cited, about 75 percent of students who graduate from suburban schools get a college degree. But among low-income students in high poverty districts, only 8.3 percent graduate from college. That’s the only valid comparison, since KIPP operates almost exclusively in such districts and overwhelming educates poor, minority students.

More than 85 percent of KIPP students have gone to college, as opposed to 40 percent of low-income students nationwide. KIPP reports that more than 90 percent of its students outperform their district counterparts on standardized tests.

Kahlenberg maintains, while KIPP has impressive statistics on attrition and high school graduation rates, the model continues to fall short in overcoming poverty and segregation. This may be true, but KIPP’s mission is not to combat poverty. Instead, the network is “dedicated to preparing students in underserved communities for success in college and in life.”

The KIPP network’s goal is to see 75 percent of its students graduate from college, essentially matching the performance of students from high-performing suburban schools. This would be a staggering achievement. It’s fair to ask how KIPP plans to more than double its college completion rate. But it’s unfair to demand miracles from an organization that has existed for just 17 years, and only recently opened its doors in 2004 to elementary and high schools.

This is relevant because KIPP, like many other charters, does not have a vast array of data to work with and only graduated its first class of high school students in 2008 from Houston High School. It’s worth noting that the data KIPP and outsiders rely on comes from middle school students served by KIPP ten years ago, most of whom have not attended a KIPP school since eighth grade.

Finally, Kahlenberg and other skeptics discount KIPP’s successes on the grounds that its schools benefit from a selection bias, in that only the most motivated low-income families try to get their kids into KIPP. This claim, while controversial, is contested by KIPP and certainly merits further study. In the meantime, progressives ought to embrace and support KIPP’s efforts to build on its undeniable successes in educating low-income kids.

Photo credit: Neighborhood Centers