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New CBO Report Highlights Republican Intransigence

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Last week, President Obama vented his frustration at Congressional Republicans for storming out of White House budget talks over raising the debt ceiling. Anyone who thinks the president overreacted should look to the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) latest budget forecast, which warns that the national debt is poised to spiral out of control.

Released on the same day GOP negotiators abandoned their post at the budget talks, CBO’s “Long-Term Budget Outlook” predicted that the debt will reach 100 percent of GDP in less than a decade, then zoom to twice the size of the U.S. economy by 2037. In other words, we are moving inexorably toward the unsustainable level of debt (about 150 percent of GDP) that has plunged Greece into crisis.

CBO’s grim forecast, said the fiscal hawks at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, “should erase any thoughts of waiting until after the election – or worse, until markets force our hand – to make the needed changes to our budget.” Such warnings, however, have fallen on deaf ears among Republicans, who refuse to even talk about debt reduction if it includes tax hikes.

GOP intransigence boosts the odds that Congress will fail to raise the debt ceiling by the August 2 deadline set by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. If that happens, the federal government would have to cut government programs drastically, or else risk defaulting debts to foreign creditors — “the first-ever failure by the United States to meet its commitments,” notes Geithner.

But even if the White House and House Republicans somehow strike a deal over the debt ceiling, the larger challenge of closing America’s enormous fiscal gap will remain. Before the Republicans quit the talks, the goal was to cut the debt by as much as $2 trillion over the next decade. The president’s Fiscal Commission, however, concluded that we need to close the gap by closer to $4 trillion. There’s no politically responsible or feasible way to get to that number by cutting government spending alone; that’s why tax revenues have to be on the table.

So do entitlements. The CBO report makes clear that we need a comprehensive deficit reduction plan that not only stabilizes and reduces the debt over the medium term, but also grapples with long-run spending on healthcare and Social Security. The CBO projects that by 2035, health care spending under both the baseline and alternative scenarios will grow 5.1 to 9.2 percent and 8.5 percent of GDP respectively. Similarly, the CBO expects Social Security to grow to from 4.8 to 6.1 percent of GDP under both scenarios.

President Obama is right: With the deadline for raising the debt limit only a month away, it’s time for an outbreak of fiscal sobriety in Washington. In truth, there is neither time nor political will to forge a comprehensive solution to America’s exploding debts before August 2. But lawmakers could put together a reasonable down payment that would include temperate cuts in domestic and defense spending; more tax revenues from closing backdoor spending through the tax code, such as oil and gas subsidies; and adoption of the “chained CPI” something I wrote about earlier, would lower spending growth on big entitlements like Social security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Either way, the debt ceiling must be raised, and a grand bargain on deficit reduction must be struck. So President Obama is right to reject the invitation from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to come hear Hill Republicans rehearse their undying opposition to raising taxes. We’re in the fiscal red zone now, and the time for posturing is behind us.

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Will Marshall Featured in the Washington Examiner

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

President of the Progressive Policy Institute Will Marshall was quoted in a weekend article of the Washington Examiner discussing possible Democratic reaction to a debt ceiling deal.

“The president’s display of exasperation was very revealing,” said Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute. “He feels like he’s already made concessions and he was met with utter intransigence. I don’t think he’s personally inclined — or has the political space — to make more.”

Read the full article here.

Campaign Finance Reformers Take Heart

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Being a campaign finance reformer in the era of Citizens United is good for job security and bad for one’s sense of personal achievement. Most people agree that the need for sweeping reform is greater than ever and most people fear that it’s harder than ever to achieve. “Most people” are right.

And as if Congress and the President were not a tough enough audience already in the era of billion-dollar, incumbent-dominated campaigns, the Supreme Court, by a narrow majority, has repeatedly shown an activist zeal for striking down hard-won reforms of the past. All that’s not to mention the perpetual partisan deadlock at the onetime election law watchdog, the FEC.

Which is why a week of back-to-back victories for campaign finance reform, however modest, is a step worth marking on the long road back to democratic accountability in America. In a pair of decisions each at the Supreme Court and FEC this week, existing campaign reforms were reaffirmed and a pathway to more comprehensive reforms in future was acknowledged by the Court.

First, in a long-awaited Supreme Court decision Monday on public funding, a 5-4 majority struck down a narrow provision of Arizona’s landmark Clean Elections law, which the “triggered” matching funds to publicly funded candidates who are outspent by private money. On the surface, this may seem like a defeat, but — crucially — the Court’s ruling left unquestioned the constitutionality of public funding writ large. In fact, Chief Justice Roberts, in his majority opinion, even went out of his way to say that nothing in the narrow decision should be interpreted as foreclosing public funding.

While the majority’s wrongheaded decision in the Arizona case will cause some consternation for reformers in that state, simple fixes to the “trigger” provision are available and more than a dozen other public funding states and municipalities remain uneffected. More important still, the push for public funding of federal elections is, if anything, bolstered by the Court’s conclusion that reforms cherishing and expanding free speech–rather than more incremental, limits-based reforms–is the clear path forward.

In a second fortuitous act this week, the Supreme Court denied cert in a separate public funding challenge to Connecticut’s model Citizens Election Program. In refusing to take the case, the high court cemented a lower court ruling upholding the constitutionality of a system that has seen three-quarters of state legislators and all statewide officials elected without accepting a dime in special interest money.

Downtown at the FEC, a pair of decisions on Thursday provided surprising reinforcement to existing campaign finance regulations. First, in a rare unanimous decision, the three Republican and three Democratic Commissioners denied a request from the new crop of partisan “Super PACs” to allow political candidates to raise unlimited funds on behalf of such entities, which are supposed to remain independent of federal candidates under existing law. The decision averted a major new loophole in the McCain-Feingold ban on solicitation of unlimited soft money by candidates and officeholders on behalf of the parties. While far from sufficient to stem the tide of unlimited corporate and union “independent” spending in elections, the decision amounts to an unusual show of respect for existing law from an otherwise impotent and highly partisan FEC.

Finally, in a second rare show of bipartisan agreement, the FEC granted comedian Stephen Colbert a narrow media exemption in response to his high-profile request, allowing him to promote his Super PAC only on his show. The decision averts a major potential loophole, whereby media corporations could have granted unlimited in-kind support to politician-pundits who appear regularly on the air. Instead, it upholds the century-old ban on direct corporate contributions to candidate campaigns.

To be sure, campaign finance reform will not be won through occasional concessions at the Supreme Court or the FEC. It will take a movement of the American people demanding change from Congress. But when those bodies which interpret and enforce the law are respectful of its meaning and intent, and mindful of the directions it must take, patriots and reformers take heart.

Photo Credit: thelastminute

The Drop Out Crisis and Teen Pregnancy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Graduation season is upon us, but the approximately 1.3 million high school students who dropped out this year won’t be hearing “Pomp and Circumstance.” These dropouts are disproportionately black and Hispanic, and overwhelmingly poor. Since failing to finish school contributes mightily to poverty and inequality in America, increasing high school graduation rates should be an urgent national priority.

Why do so many poor kids drop out? Some dwell on low expectations and a lack of motivation among kids who struggle to learn, get frustrated and eventually give up. But lately researchers have drawn attention to an under-appreciated reason that students drop out: pregnancy. Among dropouts, 30 percent of girls cite pregnancy or parenthood as a key reason they left school. According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, only 51 percent of teen moms earn a high school diploma compared to 89 percent of female students who did not give birth as a teen. The picture is even worse for the youngest mothers: just 38 percent of teen girls who have a child before they turn 18 have a high school diploma. For these teens, the task of balancing their education and a baby proved impossible.

Focusing on curbing the teen pregnancy problem will most certainly put a dent in the number of school dropouts. While teen pregnancy often causes students to drop out, being engaged in school can reduce instances of teen pregnancy. Teens who stay in school and are academically involved are less likely to get pregnant than their peers who aren’t as engaged. In other words, dropping out also increases the chances that a teen will get pregnant.

Unplanned pregnancy and childbearing are also implicated in the failure of many young women to finish their college education. Research shows that 61 percent of women who have children in community college don’t finish their degree, and less than two percent of teen mothers who have a baby before age 18 get a college degree by age 30.

The nexus between getting pregnant and dropping out adds yet another example to the dismal catalog of social ills that stem from family breakdown and too-early childbearing. Within three years of having a child, about one-quarter of teen moms go on welfare. Children of teen mothers are more likely to suffer abuse, end up in prison, and drop out of high school. High school dropouts are also more likely to rely on welfare and have higher crime and incarceration rates.

While teen birth rates in the United States plummeted by 37 percent between 1991 and 2009, the dramatic decrease may have fed a premature sense of complacency about the issue. There was actually an uptick of teen pregnancies between 2005 and 2007, when the rate rose five percent. In any case, the teen pregnancy epidemic is far from over. In 2009, about 410,000 teen girls aged 15 to 19 gave birth with the majority being Hispanic or African-American. What’s more, America’s teen pregnancy rate is up to nine times higher than that of most developed nations.

Now some social analysts worry that funding for teen pregnancy prevention will be a casualty of budget-cutting fever in Washington. An especially frightening proposition given that teen pregnancy prevention is already dealing with a short stack. In 2010, Congress appropriated $110 million for evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention programs. Meanwhile, the U.S. spends, nationally, nearly $11 billion each year to remediate the social consequences of teen pregnancy.

Yet House Republicans tried to eliminate this modest $110 million investment for FY 2011.They also tried to cut funding entirely for Title X, which is instrumental in helping provide teens and low income women with contraceptives and reducing the number of unintended pregnancies, teen pregnancies, and abortions. If Republicans are really serious about reducing the deficit, they need to realize that investing in teen pregnancy prevention saves money over time and resist cutting this funding. Because of the overall decrease in teen pregnancy rates, taxpayers saved $8.4 billion in 2008 alone.

The school dropout crisis isn’t cheap either — if graduation rates don’t improve, dropouts will cost us $3 trillion over the next decade. Cutting funding for teen pregnancy prevention means more dropouts, which means losses in tax revenue and more spending on welfare, prison costs, and Medicaid, to name a few.

Progressives ought to “just say no” to GOP efforts to balance the budget on the backs of America’s most vulnerable families. In fact, we’ll save money over the long run by investing more in cost-effective teen pregnancy programs. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy has a list of such successful prevention programs here. Investing in them will pay double dividends, reducing both teen pregnancy and mitigating its related ills – including the drop out crisis.

Wingnut Watch: Bachmann’s Alternate Reality

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

For true connoisseurs of wingnuttery, there’s no one in elected office quite like Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.). Sure, her House colleague Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia is more regularly dopey, and her close friend Rep. Steve Smith of Iowa can be as shrill, but day in, day out, Bachmann exhibits the glowing heart of conservative extremism in all its forms with impressive consistency.

To some extent, Bachmann’s notoriety flows from her willingness to say outrageous things for which she has absolutely no evidence. The Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking service PolitiFact has rated 23 Bachmann statements since 2009. Sixteen were either “false” or “pants-on-fire” false. Another six were “half-true” or “barely true.” And that’s aside from her frequent gaffes, most notably her relocation of the Revolutionary War sites of Concord and Lexington from Massachusetts to New Hampshire, and her proud claim just yesterday that John Wayne hailed from her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa (as all Iowans are taught from birth, the Duke was from Winterset).

But what makes Bachmann most distinctive isn’t her fast-and-loose connection to facts, but the fierce ideology that underlies her interpretations of reality. She has staked a claim in her presidential candidacy of being the sole “constitutional conservative” in the field. That term is perhaps the mother of all wingnut dog whistles, connoting a belief that liberalism of any sort is not simply in error, but is fundamentally incompatible with the laws and traditions of the Republic, and indeed, with the Divine Plan for the nation and the universe, which requires absolute private property rights, the “right to life” for the unborn, and state recognition of absolute moral values as reflected in a conservative take on Christian scripture. It’s no accident that Bachmann first achieved national fame in 2008 for suggesting an investigation of Members of Congress to determine how many of them were “anti-American.” Instead of just a slip of the tongue, the remark reflects an intense counter-revolutionary conviction that extraordinary action is necessary to save America from the socialists and secularists who are consciously plotting its ruin. She is standing at the crossroads where the overlapping tribes of Tea Party folk and old-fashioned Christian Right activists meet, smiting the godless foe on behalf of the righteous.

Bachmann’s extremism on specific issues reflects her zeal. She made her bones in Minnesota politics fighting for “traditional values” in school curricula and against recognition of same-sex unions. She has long exemplified the determination to purge her party of anyone who doesn’t share a hard-core conservative ideological outlook. She has eagerly embraced any number of peculiar conspiracy theories, including the claim that the Census is intended to give the community-organizing group ACORN sinister access to personal information about its enemies, and the suggestion that AmeriCorps is a Hitler-Youthish indoctrination program. She has flatly attributed the entire housing meltdown and financial crisis to poor and minority people who aren’t “creditworthy.” She was the first member of Congress to make total repeal of “ObamaCare” a precondition for any vote for any fiscal measure. It goes on and on.

Her personal background strongly reinforces her character as perhaps the most extremist politician to run a viable presidential campaign in recent memory. As a student at Oral Roberts University’s law school (subsequently relocated to Virginia to become part of Pat Robertson’s Regent University), one of Bachmann’s mentors was John Eidsmoe, a leading theoretician of neo-theocracy. Back in Minnesota, she and her husband (now the proprietor of a “Christian counseling” facility) founded a charter public school that immediately ran afoul of church-state separation principles. She is almost certainly the first candidate for president to have spent some time on the sidewalks outside abortion clinics protesting their existence.

So why my focus on Bachmann right now? Aside from the rave reviews she received for her performance in the first 2012 Republican presidential candidate debate in New Hampshire on June 13, Bachmann has vaulted to the front of the pack in Iowa, achieving a statistical tie with Mitt Romney in the first Des Moines Register poll of likely caucus-goers. Herman Cain, who had created some early buzz among the Tea Party faithful in Iowa, is now far behind Bachmann (at 10 percent, as opposed to her 22 percent and Romney’s 23 percent), and more importantly, Tim Pawlenty, who has devoted enormous resources to Iowa seeking to become the “conservative alternative to Romney”, is mired in sixth place at six percent.

With Romney having already announced he would not compete at the August 13 Iowa GOP Straw Poll, the table-setter for the Caucuses, Bachmann becomes the odds-on favorite to win that contest, which typically winnows the field. Pawlenty’s organizational strength in the state could still save him, or at least give him a respectable showing in the Straw Poll, but the intensity of Bachmann’s support—in a state where conservatives are uniquely obsessed with Bachmann’s signature issue of opposition to same-sex marriage—will make her formidable.

It’s unclear at this point which phenomenon is more remarkable: Bachmann’s sudden viability, or the fact that the entire field is taking positions similar to hers on the big issues. Either way, it continues to be a very good year to be a wingnut.

 

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Danger Will Robinson! GOP Actually Not Serious on Defense Cuts.

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In the GOP’s Establishment v. Tea Party battle, this round, at least, looks like it was won by the outsiders. And, so it seems, the Establishment looks to be fine with that.

After making a big political show last week of storming out of Vice President Joe Biden’s fiscal negotiations over taxes, Republican Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) appears to have made a decision: cutting the Pentagon’s budget is less sacrosanct to conservatives than raising revenue. Cantor has positioned himself firmly against tax increases while using the Tea Party’s focus on spending cuts as political cover to give the appearance that he’s willing to give ground on Defense spending. “Everything is on the table,” Cantor said when referring to Defense cuts, implicitly endorsing the position of Tea Party-backed freshman Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) who says we “can’t afford” this Republican “sacred cow” anymore.

Not so fast, my friends. Cantor is trying to have his cake and eat it, too, stipulating that any reduction in Defense “belongs in the appropriations process.” This handful of words goes a long way when you parse them. In short, there are two major problems with this caveat:

First, and in English, that means Cantor is willing to give a nod towards reducing Defense spending on paper and in the press, but knows full-well that Republicans in charge of the House Armed Services and Appropriations Committees can fight to reinstate cut programs on a case-by-case basis at a later date.

Second, fixing the problem in the appropriations process focuses solely on weapons systems, which are, after all, the things that get appropriated. But weapons systems are hardly the lone driver of the Defense budget’s exorbitant rise over the last decade. As I’ve detailed in a PPI Policy Memo, personnel costs are the somewhat hidden story of Defense spending, even though Secretary Gates has stated that military health-care costs are “eating the Defense Department alive.”

A serious reduction in the Pentagon’s budget would agree to both reducing personnel costs and making any weapons systems reductions part of a legally-enforceable deal between the parties. Cantor doesn’t seems prepared to do either.

Worse, some Democrats are falling for Cantor’s slight-of-hand. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) seemed ready to embrace Cantor’s apparent willingness to talk defense cuts, saying, “If we can get $100 billion from reducing unneeded military spending, that’s better than $100 billion in taxation.” The risk is that in Frank’s haste to cut military spending, he is signing up for a deal that the Republicans have no intention of keeping.

We must scrutinize the Defense budget as part of a realistic national deficit reduction plan. But let’s do it the right way: reductions in Defense spending must come from personnel as well as weapons, and be enforceable over the long term. Eric Cantor is disingenuous about serious cuts, and Barney Frank seems too eager to reduce military spending to get a realistic deal from Republicans.

Photo Credit: drp

A Republic, If We Can Keep It

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

While ordinary Americans celebrate the start of summer warm weather and bemoan the lack of progress on a deficit reduction deal in Congress, members of Congress themselves have been gearing up for the July 4th recess by engaging in a different sort of Washington pastime–by raising money.

The week before the July 4th recess has seen a flurry of congressional fundraising ahead of the upcoming June 30th quarterly deadline.

The National Republican Congressional Committee reports that GOP House members are scheduled to hold one hundred fundraisers before then with over 50 alone scheduled for this week. House Democrats are not far behind.

Republican fundraisers are bullish about the potential of their party to bring in the money principally because their party is now in the majority in the House. Roll Call cites one GOP fundraiser as saying that he expects incumbents to increase their fundraising by 40% this cycle.

Being out of power in the House has hindered Democratic fundraising. Democratic fundraiser Michael Fraioli told Roll Call, “Things have gotten harder, there is no question about it”. But Fraioli also maintained that fundraising possibilities are rising as expectations of the 2012 electoral prospects of House Democrat improve.

Data on campaign contributions from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics backs up the anecdotal evidence of the advantage that power gives in terms of fundraising.

The graph below shows total contributions to federal elections campaigns for each electoral cycle since 2000.

In each cycle the party that controlled the House raised the most in campaign contributions. The effect was reinforced when that party held other branches of government – for the Republicans during in the 2002, 2004 and 2006 cycles and for the Democrats in 2010.

What’s interesting about this fact is that the extended periods where a party has dominated fundraising coincide with times when the base of the opposition party seems to be most fired up. For example, the Republicans effortlessly out raised Democrats in election cycles when liberals were furious at George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. And in the 2010 cycle – with an ascendant Tea Party scornful of Barack Obama, healthcare reform, and economic stimulus dominating the headlines – Democrats raised $3 for every $2 raised by Republicans.

A logical explanation for this phenomenon can be found when we consider the source of money that actually funds campaigns. In 2008, less than half of one percent of Americans gave donations larger than $200 to federal candidates, yet these larger donations counted for over 80% of the total amount given. Over half of the money contributed came from individuals and PACs operating in just five industries: finance, lawyers and lobbyists, healthcare, communications, and energy and transport.

As the data and anecdotal evidence from fundraisers demonstrates, this giving particularly favors the party in power because it is they who make decisions which directly affect the interests of the groups that dominate giving to political campaigns. What’s more, analysis of the patterns of giving by individual industries and firms finds that most heavy hitters willingly give to both parties with little apparent regard for ideological bent – so long as the candidate and party is in power.

As members of Congress scramble around Washington this week to raise money, before returning to the voters that elected them; let’s mark the birth of American democracy on July 4th, by taking a good hard look at just who it is they’re representing.

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