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America’s Come Undone

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Book Review: Age of Fracture, by Daniel T. Rodgers

The Princeton Historian Daniel T. Rodgers has written a fascinating new book about how the U.S. has gone from being one big beacon of light to a thousand little points. The title gives it away. We are in an Age of Fracture. We’ve gone from shared sacrifice and shared identities to individual expression and diffuse identities. We’ve gone from limits to dreams; we’ve shed the confines of the past for the endless possibilities of future reinvention. The only problem is, it’s starting to look like we might now want the past back after all, and limits are starting to look more prudent.

The story begins in the Cold War, an era of asking what you could do for your country. History and tradition weighed heavily; big institutions dominated. “Dedication, courage, responsibility, self-scrutiny and sacrifice,” writes Rodgers, “these were the nouns that bore the burden of the Cold War presidential rhetoric.”

But by the time sunny Ronald Reagan was in the White House, the confining rhetoric of the Cold War was gone and “terms like ‘crisis,’ ‘peril’ and sacrifice slipped one by one out of Reagan’s major speeches like dried winter leaves.” (What can he say? The man likes his collections of representative words.) In Reagan’s speeches, the historian detects the new optimism of self-actualizing philosophy, and the (re?)-birth of an American faith that from three simple words – “We, The People” – anything was possible.

But Reagan may just be the transition’s most visible mouthpiece. The shift away from institutions to individuals was just as much the rage among intellectuals. First, most visibly, in economics: In the 1960s, Keynesian economics was the consensus view, with its focus on institutions and macro-level supply and demand. But then it proved unable to either explain or solve the stagflation of the 1970s, leading Daniel Bell to proclaim that, “nobody has any answers he is confident of.”

Enter the new microeconomics: the atomized market of millions of socially-detached, utility-maximizing individuals, owing nothing to society other than to make themselves happy. “In its very simplifications,” writes Rodgers “it filled a yearning for clarity that the older, more complex pictures of society could not.”

Like Reagan’s soaring rhetoric, the new faith in markets was a way to break free of limits. In contrast to the gray pessimism of planners and government bureaucrats who wanted people to live within their means, the new models bespoke a land of heroic entrepreneurs and innovators, of an America that could re-invent itself constantly from the bottom up.

Other social sciences tracked the trends in economics. In political science, models of rational choice, with their focus on individual utility, replaced the importance of larger institutional structures and forces. Everything now could be explained by examining the incentives of individuals as if they were independent from larger social institutions. Phrases like the “will of the people” became meaningless when complex models showed how impossible it actually was to usefully aggregate independent preferences.

In sociology, the guiding concept of power “grew less tangible, less material, more pervasive, more elusive, until, in some widespread readings of power, it became all but impossible to trace down.” Michel Foucault found power everywhere, and by doing so, effectively rendered it meaningless – for if it was everywhere, than who could pin it down? In anthropology, Clifford Geertz found “nothing but a play of texts.” Everything was performance and masks.

In more popular books, Alvin Toffler’s widely-read Future Shock proclaimed “The death of permanence.” John Naisbitt’s Megatrends promised the triumph of the individual in the new information age.

The politics of race and gender were likewise affected. On the subject of race, conservatives embraced the notion of a color-blind society, and race as a social construct. “In the ‘color-blind’ society project,” writes Rodgers. “Amnesia was a conscious strategy, undertaken in the conviction that the present’s dues to the past had already been fully paid.” Again, the same theme: the triumph of individualism came at the expense of the past. One could not have a world of endless new opportunities if one got bogged down with worries about history and obligations.

On gender, the breakdown was internal to the movement. A representative 1977 woman’s gathering in Houston fell apart when it became apparent there was no single woman’s experience everyone could agree on. The feminist scholar Judith Butler concluded in her landmark book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity: “There were only scripts, nothing outside or beyond them.” Postmodernism strikes again. If everything is socially constructed, nothing has a foundation.

“Choice, provisionality, and impermanence,” writes Rodgers. “A sense of the diffuse and penetrating, yet unstable powers of culture; an impatience with the backward pull of history – these were the emergent intellectual themes of the age.”

And yet by the late 1980s, one could also detect a backlash. In the academy, Allan Bloom railed against the nihilistic deconstruction of everything in The Closing of the American Mind. Conservative think tanks began looking to local communities as sources of civic republicanism. Evangelicals saw the church as the center that could and must hold.

“Conservative intellectuals by the end of the 1980s still yearned for a common culture,” wrote Rodgers. “They could half-remember and half-invent in their mind’s eye a more consensual age, when terms like ‘civil religion’ and the ‘American creed’ had been sociological commonplaces.”

But the great irony was that the new conservative embrace of the American tradition was itself a creative reinvention –a mythic golden age that only selectively drew on actual history.

In conservative legal scholarship, Rodgers writes: “The originalist argument tapped not a desire to go back to any actual past but a desire to escape altogether from time’s slipperiness – to locate a trap door through which one could reach beyond history and find a simpler place outside of it. Originalism’s appeal to the past was, like the economists’ modelings of time, profoundly ahistorical.”

As a document of intellectual history, Rodgers’ book is brilliant. Learned, wide-ranging, delightful to read, full of keen little insights (and epoch-defining bundles of nouns.) But it leaves open the question: is the fracture permanent? “One might reach nostalgically for a fragment of the past,” Rodgers concludes. “But the time that dominated late-twentieth-century social thought was now.”

One way to view politics is about the tension between the individual and the group. All the great political trade-offs – liberty vs. security, equality of opportunity vs. equality of outcome – are at root conflicts between the desires of individuals to do as they please and attempts by the group to keep individuals from doing so much of what they please that the group falls apart. Such a view takes history as civilizations as bouncing back and forth between the two poles: give people too little room for individual self-expression, and they’ll demand to be free. But give them too much room to do whatever they like and be whatever they want, and they’ll demand more order and group identity.

Rodgers leaves us at the moment in which a hunger for a rootedness in history seems to be growing. Have we gone as far as individualism will take us? And if so, what takes us back? Here’s a hypothesis: do the new social networking tools that increasingly dominate our lives restore the possibility of a new and different kind of collective identity? And am I the only one wondering this? Maybe I’d better post this review to Facebook, and see what other people think…

Stop Dithering on Colombia Free Trade Agreement

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

First on South Korea, now on Colombia, President Obama has been working assiduously to make trade agreements palatable to skeptics within his own party. By negotiating an “action plan” with Colombia on labor rights, he has removed any reasonable pretext for opposing a pact that has languished in Congress for five years.

It’s not clear, however, whether the anti-trade coalition of organized labor and Congressional liberals will take “yes” for an answer. Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), ranking Democrat on the powerful House Rules Committee, vowed Wednesday to continue blocking the treaty. The pact, negotiated by the Bush administration, “turns a blind eye to rampant human rights violations and anti-labor practices of Colombia, where merely joining a union or advocating for workers rights can be a death sentence,” she said.

In fact, anti-union violence in Colombia has waned in recent years and there’s little evidence that the national government is implicated in it. Nonetheless, to allay Congressional criticism, Colombia pledges more vigorous action to protect union leaders as well as legal reforms to strengthen unions. Obama meets today at the White House with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos to formalize the plan.

The free trade deal would lower Colombia’s high tariffs on U.S. agricultural and manufactured goods. The International Trade Commission estimates the U.S. exports to Colombia would increase by $1 billion if the treaty is approved (Colombia’s GDP in 2010 was $283 billion, and has been growing solidly for years). As Washington struggles to cut trillion-dollar deficits, that may not seem like much. But boosting U.S. exports – Obama has pledged to double them – is integral to bringing unemployment rates down.

While Washington has dithered, other countries have rushed into the breach. Colombia has been signing trade agreements with countries in Europe and Asia, and China is now its second-largest trading partner. It’s a vivid illustration of how U.S. policymakers’ inability to forge consensus on opening foreign markets is undermining our global competitiveness.

The political case for the free trade pact is even stronger. Colombia is one of America’s closest partners in South America. In a region rife with populist demagogues – the loudest being Venezuela’s virulently anti-American Hugo Chavez – Colombia stands out for its steady march in a liberal democratic direction.

And for its resilience. Nearly engulfed by drug cartels and narco-terrorism in the 1990s, Colombia, with America’s help, managed to defeat them while also strengthening the rule of law. The United States invested $8 billion over a decade in Plan Colombia, which now offers Mexico a model for its struggle against hyper-violent drug gangs that have overwhelmed civil authorities and killed over 30,000 people in recent years.

Congress’s refusal to approve the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement is no way to treat a friend. It also puts the parochial interests of organized labor over the nation’s interest in opening markets to U.S. exports. The moderate House New Democrat Coalition has endorsed Obama’s efforts to smooth the way toward passage of the pact. It’s time for liberals to stop making excuses and let the deal get done.

Obama Needs a Stronger Veto Threat on EPA Regulations

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Brinksmanship is the name of the game in Washington this week. GOP leaders are publicly shifting away from negotiation tactics and turning to endgame spin strategy in advance of a government shutdown, while President Obama continues working to secure a deal without staking out an early position in the blame game that’s soon to follow.

A perfect example of the GOP’s unanswered offense in this game is the timing of votes in both houses this week to strip the EPA of its ability to move forward with new greenhouse-gas regulations. There has been no shortage of Republican proposals in both houses of Congress to do this for months, plus a handful of Senate Democrats who also support some version of stopping or delaying the EPA climate rules. But what better time to bring up a divisive issue with no hopes for compromise than in the last hours of an overheated budget standoff? Tactically speaking, it’s a reminder of why Republicans are always so much better at strategy and spin than Democrats, but it could also prove to be another example of how their ideological extremism eventually undermines their strategic successes.

Already the White House is playing defense, trying to calm environmentalists after rumors that the administration has been using the EPA’s authority as a bargaining chip to secure a budget deal and avoid a shutdown. On Tuesday, OMB issued a policy statement warning that if the House measure ever reaches the President’s desk, “his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.”

That’s fairly strong language for OMB bureaucrats to use, but it’s pretty pathetic as the only public response of the White House to direct attacks one of the most significant regulations issued by this administration. Much of the media coverage has interpreted the statement as a promise to veto the House bill, but it includes no such promise. As veto threats go, this one is half-hearted at best.

With the budget fight reaching a fever pitch and GOP leaders raising the stakes by bringing climate change into the game, it’s time for the President to take a side on this fight before votes are cast, not after.

President Obama should announce clearly and unequivocally that he will not sign any bill that delays, repeals, or compromises the EPA’s greenhouse-gas regulations, until Congress has passed legislation adopting some form of long-term national energy and climate strategy.

Here’s why: the EPA regulations are the last leverage he has left at this point to get any energy bill through Congress, and they may be one of the only political defenses he has post-shutdown for not reaching a budget deal with Republicans. Even entertaining the possibility of trading away EPA’s regulations for a budget deal is not only a loser’s hand in the short term, but it would be the end of any hopes he might have to move any meaningful energy agenda during his first term, and possibly his second.

For some presidents, calling for this type of statement and strong positioning might not be a big thing to ask for. But President Obama has shown consistently he prefers to lead from the rear, leaving the bloodshed to members on the front lines in Congress, many of whom are no longer around to fight after casting tough votes for last year’s energy bill. The administration’s reluctance to lead on climate and energy in 2010 gives congressional Democrats facing tough races little reason to think they will get any cover in 2012 for defending the EPA this year.

What’s more, President Obama faces two problems if he chooses to stand up more forcefully for the EPA’s regulations. His first problem is the perception Republicans are promoting that this is more simply more “job-killing” regulation heaped onto an already weak economy. That thinking has a number of vulnerable Democrats spooked, especially in the Senate, where a handful of moderates already co-sponsored a bill to delay the regulation for two years.

Obama’s second problem with trying to defend the EPA rules is that he has never strongly supported them up until now. The administration has soft-pedaled its commitment to the EPA rules from the beginning, presumably to use them for leverage to motivate industry opponents and their many representatives in Congress to support a less painful alternative, such as cap-and-trade. The fact that they did such a poor job of using that leverage to actually enact an alternative now leaves them stuck with regulations they have said they don’t want, and a Congress that doesn’t want them either, but also doesn’t want to give him a better alternative.

Anyone who thinks Obama will fall on his sword to protect the EPA rules in addition to passing an energy bill hasn’t listened to what he and his advisors have said about the rules for the last two years. You just need to look at the EPA’s official press release for its initial endangerment finding in December, 2009, which was supposed to explain why the regulations were so critical and necessary to mitigate the threat that greenhouse gases pose to public health and welfare. Instead, EPA pitched it as an unavoidable Plan B forced by a Supreme Court decision and Congress’s failure to act first:

President Obama and Administrator Jackson have publicly stated that they support a legislative solution to the problem of climate change and Congress’ efforts to pass comprehensive climate legislation. However, climate change is threatening public health and welfare, and it is critical that EPA fulfill its obligation to respond to the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that determined that greenhouse gases fit within the Clean Air Act definition of air pollutants. (link here)

If anything, the administration seems even less committed now to greenhouse gas regulations than it did then. Carbon emissions aren’t exactly at the top of President Obama’s list of talking points these days. In fact, his recent signals on energy policy appear deliberately calculated to move away from climate change positions altogether in favor of arguments for energy innovation, job growth in clean energy industries, and (as of last week’s speech at Georgetown) energy independence.

Obama made a bold attempt to reframe the energy debate in his State of the Union address, but not once in that speech did he reference climate change, cap-and-trade, the environment, or the EPA. His proposal for a new “clean energy standard” that moves us away from older fossil-fuel resources over the next 25 years has not picked up much energy of its own in Congress, and the President has yet to fill in the details of the proposal, leaving congressional leaders struggling to make sense of it on their own.

It is still unclear whether President Obama believes his clean energy standard or any of the proposals he mentioned last week would be sufficient steps toward carbon reduction to justify trading away the EPA’s regulatory authority over greenhouse gases. It’s even less clear whether all of those things together would be enough for environmentalists to even entertain the thought such a trade might happen.

Presumably, the comprehensive energy bill that passed the House last year would have been a strong enough substitute, but Waxman and Markey are not committee chairmen anymore. GOP members in the House have turned back time and aggressively attacked the science behind global warming, forcing advocates to invest more in defending the EPA’s actions, which may make it harder for the President to make a deal that undermines those actions.

Regardless of what hopes environmental groups may have for moving forward on clean energy while defending the EPA at the same time, it may be necessary to put everything on the table if we want any forward movement on energy policy in the foreseeable future.

But for now, what’s important is there is no such movement to be seen yet. So whatever type of climate or energy bill might justify regulatory horse trading, now is the time for talking about it. Given the state of the budget mess and the absence of political will to tackle energy legislation, now is the time for backing up bold speeches with firm conviction.

The American Electorate and the Budget Battle

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As the budget negotiations grind to a halt, it’s helpful to keep in mind two important characteristics of the American electorate.

The first is that voters tend to like compromise. In poll after poll, solid majorities of voters say they prefer leaders who compromise over those who stick to their guns. The latest Pew poll is typical: by 55 percent to 36 percent, voters say it is important to compromise on the budget as opposed to standing by principles, even if it means a government shutdown.

The poll is also typical in finding that Democrats are significantly more likely to favor compromise (69 percent do) than Republicans (only 43 percent do). And Tea Partiers, not surprisingly are the most intransigent (only 26 percent favor compromise).

Of course, the same poll found that voters would blame the two sides about equally, with Democrats blaming Republicans and Republicans blaming Obama, with independents split, presumably also along partisan-leaning lines (since most independents are closet partisans). So neither side has a clear advantage right now. Opinion seems to be pretty much solidified along partisan lines.

While it’s not clear Democrats have an advantage on being the party of compromise right now, presumably that will change if a government shutdown does occur and Tea Partiers celebrate and proclaim that their principled stand forced this. This will, of course, help the Democrats.

The second characteristic is that Americans tend to be symbolic conservatives, but operational liberals. What this means in practice is that when government is discussed in the abstract (like, say, in a number) people want less of it. But when it’s discussed in the specific (like, say, any actual program) people like it.

Consider the polling: When asked, 64 percent of Americans think “federal spending and the budget deficit” is a problem that they worry “a great deal” about. But a recent Pew poll found not a single budgetary area in which a majority of voters would favor a decrease, and only two federal programs in which more respondents favored a decrease in spending than an increase: Global poverty assistance (45 percent for a decrease, 21 percent for an increase) and unemployment assistance (28 percent for a decrease, 27 percent for an increase). Cuts to these two line items get you nowhere near $61 billion.

Presumably, Democrats should by now have found a sympathetic, sensible program that Republicans wanted to cut, and let that program stand in for Republicans heartlessness. But I don’t know: Maybe they don’t see that much worth aggressively and publicly defending in the $28 billion that separates them and the Republicans. And in an argument about how much to cut Government (in the abstract), the public is probably going to come down on the side of MORE.

Of course, the larger problem here is that we’re still talking about small potatoes. The federal budget is $3.5 trillion. That means we’re talking here about cutting it by either one or two percent here. That’s because this debate is all about non-military discretionary spending, which is only 13 percent of the overall budget. It remains frustrating to see this lack of context in the way the budget showdown keeps getting reported.

The UN Flexes Its Muscles in Cote D’Ivoire: What Does it Mean?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Not much has been made of the truly stunning events unfolding in Cote D’Ivoire over the past 48 hours. Laurent Gbagbo, the ex-president who lost last year’s vote but refuses to cede power, is on the verge of giving up the post in favor of Alassane Ouattara, the rightful victor.

Gbagbo has held his country hostage for nearly four months, as forces loyal to him had hunkered down in Abidjan, the commercial capital. But Outtara massed his own army, and in recent days made a strong push essentially pinning down Gbagbo’s forces in the city.

Everyone from the UN to the African Union to international NGOs and the ghost of Elizabeth Taylor acknowledges that Ouattara is president-elect, so there’s no question about taking sides, despite legitimate concern that Outtara’s forces could commit crimes against civilians. To that end, on March 30, the United Nations Security Council unanimously approved Resolution 1975, which among other things, authorizes UN and the French forces supporting them to use “all necessary means … to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence… including to prevent the use of heavy weapons.”

Last night and under this mandate, UN and French forces hit the presidential palace as well as other strategic military sites around Abidjan. The pressure has apparently brought Gbagbo to the verge of ceding power, despite somewhat conflicting reports.

In the process, we’ve learned two important things about the UN: First is that the United Nations is beginning to take its “responsibility to protect” (R2P) — an international norm adopted in 2009 that obliges the international community to act in the face of humanitarian crises — quite seriously. R2P grew out of the UN’s non-intervention in the Rawandan genocide of 1994; one of its principal pillars is that the international community is compelled to take timely action to protect civilians when a state is failing to protect its population. Cote D’Ivoire is just the second potential atrocity since R2P was established (Libya was the first) that the UN has had the opportunity to act. So far, it’s 2 for 2.

It’s remarkable that Resolution 1975 passed by the Security Council by a 15-0 margin, just weeks after a very similar Resolution 1973 passed by a comparatively difficult 10-0 vote (with five abstentions) authorizing the same “all necessary measures” to protect civilians in Libya. What compelled Russia, China, Brazil, Germany, and India to vote with the Ivoirian resolution while abstaining from the Libyan version just weeks earlier is somewhat of a mystery.

Most likely, the different vote tallies are due to a simple fact: no two situations are exactly alike and major international decisions aren’t made in a vacuum. Certainly Moscow and Beijing in particular didn’t wake up last week and decide they were liberal interventionists comfortable authorizing force to advance democracy. Perhaps the difference was in a certified election result in Cote D’Ivoire, while no election had taken place in Libya?

Second, the limited UN/French military operations in Cote D’Ivoire should underwrite the UN’s confidence that it can act with apparently effective results without more than American moral support. As any as one million Ivoirians may have be displaced by this conflict, and preventing needless harm to them is a testament to the international community’s potential as an effective arbiter.

Why Obama Shouldn’t Play it Safe in 2012

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

So, surprise, surprise, Barack Obama is officially running for re-election in 2012. As someone who knocked on doors in 2008, I watched the official 2012 announcement video with some eagerness, hoping to be inspired anew. Perhaps he would say something akin to his 2007 speech in Springfield, which launched his then long shot campaign with stirring calls to purpose.

“I want to win that next battle – for justice and opportunity,” he said in 2007. “ I want to win that next battle – for better schools, and better jobs, and health care for all. I want us to take up the unfinished business of perfecting our union, and building a better America.”

But Obama doesn’t even appear in the 2012 video, a two-minute montage of five “volunteers” talking in the most remarkably content-free generalities: “There’s too much that is fundamentally important” says a white man from North Carolina, who later admits, “I don’t agree with Obama on everything” (though he does trust and respect him).

“There are many things on the table that need to be addressed,” says a Latino mom, who wants the best for her children, and for Obama to be the person who addresses, you know, things. An African-American woman reminds us that the President has a job to do, so we’ll have to get inspired ourselves. Fade to blue: “It begins with us,” reads the text.

Yes, I understand what Obama is doing. He’s trying to re-capture what made the 2008 campaign work, which was a propulsive sense of “we” – volunteers caught up in the story of Obama and all he could do. And he could get away with the vagueness of “Hope” and “Change” because all he needed to be then was the anti-Bush. And so I hoped: Here was a real intellectual who will not only take the challenges of governing seriously, but who could also stirringly articulate a national vision of coming together to solve hard problems.

Now, as the 2012 campaign season kicks off, Obama is clearly playing it safe. The fundamentals are on his side. The Republican field is weak; the economy is moving back in the right direction; his poll numbers are decent; demographic shifts are expanding his base of supporters. And Obama’s not one to veer from the cautious path. Especially not at this early stage.

But here’s the thing. In 2008, conservatism was discredited. Heck, even McCain wanted to be the candidate of change. In 2011, conservatism is flourishing again, reinvigorated by the Tea Party. And conservatives are telling a compelling about the American spirit, and the way in which it can be regenerated if only we can get rid of that awful greedy leech responsible for everything that’s gone wrong for the last however many years: Big Government. Moreover, the coalition that Obama put together in 2008 looks decidedly weaker now.

Presidential campaigns can be defining moments. There is no other opportunity for a political figure to speak so often and so loudly to the American people about what we stand for as a nation, to define the moment and define the basis for leadership in it. And yet, most incumbent presidents waste this moment, because they just want to play it safe. They figure, I’ll get re-elected, and then, then I’ll finally be free to offer a true vision, to lead this time for real without actually having to worry about re-election.

Except, second terms rarely offer the opportunity for that defining moment. And they especially don’t offer that opportunity if the campaign hasn’t paved the ground for it, hasn’t prepared the public and made the case. As Irving Kristol once put it: “What rules the world is ideas, because ideas define the way reality is perceived.”

I’m sure the Obama campaign people will come up with some wonderful poll-tested cognitive scientist-approved campaign slogan for 2012 and then repeat it ad infinitum. But in doing so, here’s what I ask: please, please don’t squander this opportunity. Please come up with a message and a story that makes an affirmative case for lasting progressive values of pragmatic experimentation and solving hard problems through collective means. Challenge the Tea Party memes. Reclaim history, reclaim the Founders, reclaim the meaning of American Exceptionalism. These are more than just things on the table. They are the way we understand and make sense of present day events.

One Cheer For the Ryan Plan

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As progressives pounce on Rep. Paul Ryan’s new budget proposal, they should also give the man a little credit. The plan he unveiled today is a daring attempt to define an actual conservative governing philosophy. That’s a big improvement on the reactionary and crotchety anti-government platitudes served up by the Tea Party.

And while progressives will rightly reject Ryan’s overall plan as draconian and unfair, they ought to keep an open mind about some of its most audacious elements, especially his ideas for controlling public health care spending.

For better or worse, the House Budget Committee Chairman has produced a coherent vision for limited government. It would sharply cut domestic spending, returning it to 2008 levels, reduce federal deficits by more than $4 trillion over the next decade, and hold federal spending below 20 percent of gross domestic product. It would further roll back the state and buttress “individual responsibility” by repealing Obamacare.

Ryan embraces President Obama’s Fiscal Commission proposal to cut tax expenditures and use the proceeds to bring the top individual and corporate income tax rate down to 25 percent. But unlike the commission’s approach, which commits a chunk of the savings to deficit reduction, Ryan makes his revenue neutral in obeisance to the Prime Ideological Imperative of today’s GOP: taxes must never, on any account, be raised.

Ryan’s most controversial proposals are also his most intriguing. In what he describes as a continuation of the bipartisan welfare reforms of the 1990s, he would convert Medicaid, which provides health insurance to poor families, into a block grant. Currently its costs are shared by the federal and state governments. As critics like Ezra Klein point out, a block grant is a device to limit federal health spending, shifting costs to states and individuals. It’s true that a block grant alone doesn’t constitute “reform” of Medicaid. But in tandem with reforms in health care delivery, especially efforts to move from fee-for-service to capitated “accountable care organizations,” a block grant could dampen inflationary pressures and protect taxpayers against the automatic and unsustainable growth of public health care spending.

Similarly, Ryan proposes to control Medicare costs by replacing open-ended subsidies with a “premium support” model. Under this approach – essentially a voucher, despite Ryan’s denials – Washington would give Medicare recipients a set amount (varying according to income and health status) they could use to buy insurance from competing private plans. Although Republicans wrongly assume that competition alone will drive down health costs – again, changing incentives to focus medical spending on the value rather than the volume of care is the key — premium support at least puts a governor on the engine of mandatory public health care spending, the main driver of America’s debt crisis.

Some liberals undoubtedly will see it as a plot to destroy Medicare. But recall that a bipartisan Medicare reform commission President Bill Clinton created in 1998 came close to embracing premium support. It’s also been endorsed by leading Democrats, including former CBO chief Alice Rivlin, and is part of the Rivlin-Domenici deficit reduction plan. In fact, as part of a more comprehensive strategy to contain health care costs, a Medicaid block grant and premium support for Medicare could serve a progressive purpose, by preventing rapid entitlement spending growth from squeezing vital public investments in children and families, scientific research, infrastructure and a clean environment.

On Social Security, Rep. Ryan disappointingly punts, proving no bolder than the White House. And as certified fiscal hawk David Walker points out, the Ryan plan does not include substantial savings in defense spending, and raises not a penny in new revenues to help the nation whittle down its enormous debts.

In other words, it’s an unbalanced plan, morally and politically, that gives the Pentagon and the wealthy a pass, and concentrates the pain of deficit reduction on middle and low-income families. The Fiscal Commission’s approach, broadly endorsed by 32 Republican and 32 Democrats Senators – if not yet by Obama himself – is infinitely preferable as a starting point for a serious debate.

Nonetheless, the Ryan plan puts conservatives’ ideological cards on the table and helps clarify the trade offs that must be made to strike a bipartisan deal. And it contains some ideas for ensuring that public budgets aren’t swamped by runaway health costs – ideas that progressives ought not to reject out of hand.

Why Grumbling About GE’s Taxes Misses the Point

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Recent reports of GE’s artful dodge of U.S. income tax liability are the perfect curtain raisers for the annual tax filing ritual. Yet another example of the injustice of our tax code! Time for a flat tax! No more loopholes for fat cats! Put aside GE’s tax lawyers’ interpretation of the tax code. What is more important than the furor over the story is that it represents yet another missed opportunity for a rational debate and another lost chance to design tax policies to spur innovation, global competitiveness, and growth.

When it comes to tax policy, the left usually lumps the rich and corporations together as villains who should pay up. They argue the tax code is not progressive enough and one way to make it so is to go after the plutocratic moneyed interests.

Inadvertently, the left makes a legitimate point lumping wealthy individuals and corporations together. But it is not because corporations and wealthy individuals are two distinct entities with common traits. Rather it is because a corporation is individual people – some rich, some poor. A corporation is a legal construct but it actually an amalgamation of employees and shareholders bonded by a desire to take in more than what is spent producing whatever it provides to the market. When corporations benefit from tax cuts, guess who benefits. It is not a data file sitting in some computer in Delaware but investors, employees, and consumers.

As for progressivity, the left also makes a fair point as we have seen income disparity widen in the last 30 years. But we aren’t going to close income gaps by going after corporations. Rather we need to abolish the tax cuts on individual dividend payments instituted almost a decade and raise the top marginal rates on individual income to mid-1990s levels. But don’t shake down corporations. In today’s globalized, highly-competitive market, we can ill afford to raise money from companies facing competitors whose countries are cutting, not raising, corporate taxes.

The U.S. now has one of the highest effective corporate tax rates of any OECD company. In other words, not only is the rate U.S. corporations pay (on average 39 percent) high, but the actual rate they pay after deductions and credit is also extremely high, notwithstanding some individual companies who may not pay much in any particular year. The high corporate tax rate is not making our companies stronger and inducing domestic investment. Quite the opposite.

Meanwhile, many of those on the right and in the center have an almost messianic devotion to the notion of broadening the tax base and lowering rates by getting rid of a host of deductions, credits, and exemptions. For them, simplicity is the golden rule. They want to tax every company and every activity the same way. But as philosopher Alfred North Whitehead stated, “seek simplicity but distrust it.”

There’s a simple reason not to treat everything companies do the same: the impacts on jobs and growth are not the same. That’s why, for example, virtually every academic study on the issue finds that giving companies a tax credit for research and development they do here in the United States is good effective policy. It’s the same for tax credits for investment in new capital equipment and software. There’s also a good reason not to treat all industries the same.

The simple fact is that industries like grocery stores, electric utilities and car dealers do not compete globally while industries like steel, pharmaceuticals, and electronics do. While the former provide needed services if we raise their taxes they are not going to build fewer grocery stores, electric wires, or car dealerships. But if we raise the taxes of steel companies, drug companies and electronics companies they will do the rational thing that any company would do: move production to the nations that tax them less. Currently, the former industries pay significantly higher effective tax rates than the last three. And that is exactly how it should be. This is why many state’s tax code favors manufacturing and high tech firms. It’s why most countries’ tax code does the same thing. They realize that jobs depend on the health of their companies that are in competition with firms outside their borders.

So, as you get ready to file your taxes, don’t grumble about GE. Turn your anger toward a polarized, irrational, and tired debate in Washington that is aimed at leveraging votes instead of creating the kind of innovative, productive, and globally competitive economic activity that American workers so desperately need.

Wingnut Watch: How Much to Cut the Budget?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

This will be a very important week in determining exactly how much fiscal radicalism the Republican Party is going to be willing to embrace. The odds of a government shutdown over Fiscal Year 2011 appropriations remain relatively high, despite major Democratic concessions over the level of cuts. House Republicans remain under significant conservative activist pressure to refuse compromise either on the level of cuts or the appropriations riders Democrats are most likely to go to the mat to reject (e.g., decimation of EPA enforcement powers, defunding of Planned Parenthood).

Meanwhile, Rep. Paul Ryan is due to release the House GOP’s draft long-term budget resolution tomorrow, which is almost certain to include “entitlement reforms” that Democrats will heatedly oppose. One tactical consideration is whether hard-core conservatives want to “take their stand” and threaten highly irresponsible behavior over the appropriations measures (which would involve a government shutdown) or over the budget (which they have linked to a debt limit increase vote many are promising to oppose unless they get their way on “entitlement reform.”).

A closely related question is how far conservatives (including those considering a 2012 presidential run) go out on a limb with Ryan on specific entitlements. Intel on Ryan’s plan indicates he’s going to give Social Security a fairly wide berth. Medicaid is most likely to get a big, obvious ax, with a trillion dollars in savings over ten years being the figure heard most often, and conversion of the entitlement into a block grant to the states being the most likely mechanism. Medicare will be the most interesting subject, given recent Republican demagoguery on the alleged impact of health reform on Medicare benefits, and Ryan’s past identification with the idea of turning benefits into vouchers that would have to be spent on buying private health insurance and that will not keep up with actual costs. One guess is that Ryan will use terminology that avoids the “v word” and makes it appear he is simply offering Medicare beneficiaries more choices, which will boost competition and thus hold down costs (an interesting proposition in itself, since past private-sector options for Medicare beneficiaries have been far more expensive than the traditional government plan).

On both Medicaid and Medicare, expect conservatives to object emotionally to any description of what they are proposing as “cuts,” since levels of spending will rise, just not remotely as much. Democrats will then be under the burden of explaining the concept of “current services,” whereby changing population levels and rapidly rising health care costs make the same dollars buy fewer actual services over time. During the budget struggles of the 1990s, Democrats largely won that linguistic fight, at least on Medicare. But one factor that might play out differently arises from Ryan’s likely strategy of “grandfathering” everyone 55 years are older into the current system, and limiting major structural changes to younger Americans. That didn’t work for George W. Bush when he attempted the same tactic for selling partial privatization of Social Security in 2005, but could have some effect at a time of perceived austerity when demographic groups tend to look after their own interests.

A parallel question is how far Republicans go in stimulating Tea Party resentment of the poor and minorities in promoting destruction of Medicaid as an entitlement. Initially, they will almost certainly focus on the demands of Republican governors for “flexibility” in administering Medicaid, which actually means the power to reduce eligibility and benefits. But Democratic arguments that the most vulnerable Americans will be bearing the burden of budget cuts could well produce a Santelli-like backlash among hard-core conservatives who don’t have much sympathy for “looters” dependent on government benefits. There’s not much evidence such sentiments are broadly shared in the population, but they are visible enough on the Right as to find expression among House Republican freshmen.

Throughout the appropriations and budget “crises,” the reaction of presidential candidates to ongoing events could be an aggravating factor, given the competitive pressure to express base-voter fury against Congress and conventional politicians and show “leadership” by saying outrageous but crowd-pleasing things. And by the same token, events in Washington could affect the lay of the land on the campaign trail quite a bit. It’s worth remembering that with one exception, no one among the likely presidential candidates is currently serving in Congress. And the one exception, Rep. Michele Bachmann, has staked out a permanent position of opposing any conceivable compromise with Democrats on any topic.

Speaking of the fiery Minnesotan, she’s finally beginning to get some attention in the mainstream media as something other than a gaffe machine and a cartoon character. First-quarter fundraising figures for the various proto-candidates’ leadership PACs showed her unexpectedly out in front, just ahead of Mitt Romney, having already raised over $2 million. Since she raised over $13 million for her 2010 House re-election campaign (more than Mike Huckabee raised for his entire 2008 presidential campaign), this was just a small indication of what she might ultimately raise if she does run for president.

Separate War Funding Still Makes No Sense

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

On Friday, I spent an hour or so with Senate staffers selling the merits of ending the war funding supplemental bills. We remain mired in the midst of budget negotiations, and my aim was to get Hill staff to keep in mind the bigger picture while they’re in the midst of scrutinizing every line-item.

As I state in the paper, as well as the op-ed in Politico that accompanied it, the goal of ending war funding bills is simple: as the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan have long been predictable (save the troop surge in Afghanistan, but even that isn’t a huge outlier), we should be paying for our military operations at the same time and with the same Congressional scrutiny as the rest of the Defense budget. Currently, we pass separate budgets to pay for what have become known as “Overseas Contingency Operations”, which essentially writes a blank check to the Pentagon, reduces Congressional oversight, and creates uncomfortable votes for Democrats.

The issue remains both valid and pressing. If policymakers want to demonstrate their fiscal chops in the current environment, I suggest a read. Here’s a excerpt:

Supplemental war funding appropriations are hardly new, beginning in World War II. When used correctly, the process serves as a vital tool that delivers timely funding to America’s fighting men and women. In the initial stages of combat, supplemental appropriations are extraordinarily useful in the face of the lengthy Congressional budget process, which does not allow for unanticipated military spending. Typically, the supplemental funds pay for pre-deployment costs, servicemembers’ transportation to the warzone, combat operations, equipment needs, and military construction. Without this tool, the Pentagon would essentially be forced to sacrifice long-term projects to meet immediate wartime needs.

Here’s the rub: Under the Bush administration, allegedly “emergency” supplemental appropriations for war costs became routine avenues for backdoor spending. Their opaque nature and lack of oversight have created a propensity to fund low-priority programs that has effectively eroded any sense of fiscal discipline at the Pentagon, bloating military spending. We must put an end to the practice.

Going Bananas

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

It’s spring and the sap is rising in Washington – especially among Tea Party militants. They seem determined to shut down the federal government, even if it means making the United States look like a plus-size banana republic.

House Speaker John Boehner has been trying to talk sense to his vast freshman class, but they are in no mood for compromise. Although Democrats have agreed to reduce current spending by $33 billion, the GOP’s fiscal fundamentalists won’t budge from the $61 billion in cuts they have already passed on a party-line vote.

Nor will they back off from a slew of nakedly partisan policy riders calculated to be radioactive to Democrats. These poison pill measures, for example, would cut funding for Planned Parenthood, bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating carbon emissions, and block implementation of parts of President Obama’s health care law.

The government will run out of money if no agreement is reached by midnight Friday. The prospect of government agencies shutting down and hundreds of thousands of federal workers being furloughed doesn’t faze Tea Partiers. Having drunk deep of their own strange infusions, they apparently believe the public shares their contempt for the federal government. More experienced GOP hands know better.

“Let’s all be honest, if you shut the government down, it’ll end up costing more than you save because you interrupt contracts. There are a lot of problems with the idea of shutting the government. It is not the goal. The goal is to cut spending,” Boehner warned at a news conference last week.

The economic costs of a shutdown, of course, aren’t the real issue. Behind closed doors, Boehner no doubt is reminding his caucus of the fierce public backlash against Congressional Republicans who forced two shutdowns in the mid-1990s. These battles energized Democrats and set the stage for Bill Clinton’s political resurgence and reelection in 1996.

All this is ancient history to Tea Partiers, who believe they won a public mandate in 2010 for a drastic and immediate fiscal retrenchment. But a more dispassionate reading of the midterm results suggests that the voters’ foremost concern was the economy’s poor performance. Yes, they also want to reduce federal deficits, but timing is crucial. With unemployment falling at last, GOP demands for austerity now are likely to strike many Americans as premature. Plus, what the public wants is for their elected leaders to pull together and tackle the nation’s economic and fiscal problems, not bring government to a grinding halt.

What’s more, House Republicans are fighting on the wrong battleground, haggling over discretionary spending programs that comprise only 13 percent of the federal budget. Slowing and eventually reversing today’s rapid run-up of public debt will require a combination of tax reform and constraints on the automatic spending growth of “mandatory” programs, chiefly Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan will introduce tomorrow a comprehensive debt reduction package along these lines. The Ryan plan is really radical: it would voucherize Medicare and turn Medicaid into a block grant. But at least it will focus the House on the real drivers of our fiscal crisis and realistic fixes.

Meanwhile, over in the Senate, there’s been a striking, bipartisan convergence around the idea that the comprehensive blueprint developed by the President’s Fiscal Commission should be the starting point for fiscal reform. Remarkably, 64 Senators (half from each party) endorsed that approach, as has the bipartisan “Gang of Six” led by Senators Mark Warner and Saxby Chambliss.

This is the main arena for serious action to restore fiscal stability in Washington. The sooner we move beyond the distracting “squirmish’ in the House, the better.

Most Manufacturing Industries Are Still Flat on Their Back

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

A new story from the Associated Press argues that there’s been a big productivity surge in the U.S., post-financial crisis. Paul Wiseman writes: (my emphasis added)

The reason is U.S. workers have become so productive that it’s harder for anyone without a job to get one.

Companies are producing and profiting more than when the recession began, despite fewer workers. They’re hiring again, but not fast enough to replace most of the 7.5 million jobs lost since the recession began.

Measured in growth, the American economy has outperformed those of Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan — every Group of 7 developed nation except Canada,

According to the conventional wisdom, as summarized by Wiseman, the U.S. has sailed through the crisis in better shape than our industrialized rivals. The conventional wisdom also says to the degree that we have a jobs problem, it’s because we are so good at boosting output and productivity.

Of course, this directly contradicts my recent post, where I argued that the apparent productivity gain from 2007-2009 was to a large extent the result of mismeasurement.

But now let me make a different point. Wiseman argues that companies are producing more than when the recession began.

I don’t think he’s right for most of manufacturing.

I’m going to show a series of charts for various manufacturing industries. These charts show shipments, adjusted for prices changes–’real’ shipments. Real shipments are a good measure of what actually comes out of the factory.

These charts are scaled to January 2007 =100. They are also not seasonally adjusted. We’re going to look at them and ask ourselves the question–is the industry producing more than when the recession began? (I do my comparison from JanFeb 2007 to JanFeb2011, to reduce the impact of seasonal variation)

Let’s start with chemicals. Is the industry producing more than when the recession began? No, since real shipments are down almost 13% over the past four years.

Next up is the plastic and rubber products industry. Producing more than when the recession began? No. Real shipments are down 21% over the past four years, and it’s not even clear that we are seeing signs of recovery now.

Next: Nonmetallic mineral products, which includes glass, cement, tile etc. Producing more than when the recession began? No. Real shipments are down almost 30%. And from the chart, there’s little sign of recovery, which is not surprising given the importance of construction as a market.

Now we come to primary metals–steel, aluminum and etc. Producing more than when the recession started? Almost! Real shipments are down only 3.5% and there appears to be a sustained improvement underway.

Our next contestant is not quite so lucky. Machinery is one of the key strengths of the U.S. economy, including everything from construction equipment to turbines to mining machinery. Unfortunately, when we ask ourselves the question if the industry is producing more than when the recession started, the answer is: No. Real shipments are down 14% over the past four years. What’s more, the data suggest that the industry is still at early 2009 levels, which is not the right place to be.

Next is the computer and electronics industry. Is this industry producing more than before the recession? This is the one case where the answer is unequivocally yes. According to the methodology I am using, real shipments are up 8% over the past four years, with a steady recovery since the bottom of the recession. A couple of caveats here, both directions. There’s reason to believe that this number might be understated, because it doesn’t take into full account the increased power of communications equipment. On the other hand, this industry depends on foreign components, so it is very susceptible to the mismeasurement problem I described in my post last week. Let’s call it a yes for growth, and move on.

Our next industry is electrical equipment, which includes appliances. Is it producing more than when the recession began? Hell, no. Real shipments are down almost 17% over the past four years, and there’s no sign of a real recovery in the data.

Now we come to the ever-important transportation industry–motor vehicles, airplanes, and all that good stuff. Is the industry producing more than 4 years ago? No. According to my methodology, real shipments are down 24% over the past four years. Now, I don’t intend to go to the wall on this exact number. Everyone has their favorite way of doing this. The Fed’s industrial production number pegs motor vehicle IP as down 18.7% and aerospace and other transportation IP as up 2.7%. Still, no matter which way you slice it, real shipments are down for the industry as a whole.

Just two more to go, furniture and miscellaneous. Not surprising, furniture is still licking its wounds from the housing collapse, with real shipments 24% below the level of four years ago

Finally we come to the miscellaneous category, which is actually kind of interesting because it includes medical equipment, as well as toys, sporting goods, and office supplies. Wiseman’s main example, a maker of pharmaceutical equipment, is probably in this category. Is this industry producing more than it was before the recession? Oh, an ever so barebones 0.6% gain. Really, the graph looks pretty much flat.

A couple of final notes. First, these results are roughly compatible with the Fed’s industrial production indices (the Fed’s number for growth in the computer and electronics industry is larger, for the reason I noted above).

Second, I eagerly await the BEA’s real value-added stats for 2010 to see how it matches up (coming out April 26). And then we can contrast these two very different views of the health of manufacturing and the economy as a whole.

Crossposted at Mandel on Innovation and Growth

Is the Tea Party Finally Boiling Over?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Maybe the Tea Party is finally starting to boil over, after all. According to CNN’s latest polling, 47 percent of the public now views the Tea Party unfavorably, a new high (up four points from December, and up 21 points from January 2010). By contrast only 32 percent now view the movement favorably, down five percent from December. Tea Party favorability had actually been pretty stable for the last year in the high 30s, so the recent downslide is significant.

Meanwhile, in Washington, House Speaker John Boehner appears increasingly willing to leave Tea Party demands for $100-billion-in-cuts-or-bust behind, and instead gamble that he can find enough moderate Democrats to support a shutdown-averting deal.

Tea Partiers are descending on the Capitol today to hold a “continuing revolution rally” to demand no surrender on the budget. Tea Party nation founder Judson Phillips wrote in an email to supporters that: “Boehner must go. The Tea Party must unite and make sure Boehner is replaced in the next election. Boehner is living proof of something I have said for a long time. It is not enough that we vote out bad leaders, we must replace them with good leaders.”

I hope Boehner’s stand will be a decisive moment: a solid break that begins the marginalization of the Tea Party as too-crazy-to-govern.

Presumably, Boehner the strategist understands a few things that the Tea Partiers do not.

First: that, if there is a government shutdown, Republicans are much more likely to get blamed, and nobody really wants a government shutdown.

Second: Many voters are symbolic conservatives in that they like to say they are for things like small government and fiscal discipline. But when it comes to specific government programs, well, they like those. As a recent Pew poll reminds us, there is not a single budgetary area in which a majority of voters would favor a decrease, and only two federal programs in which more respondents favored a decrease in spending than an increase: Global poverty assistance (45 percent for a decrease, 21 percent for an increase) and unemployment assistance (28 percent for a decrease, 27 percent for an increase). The only other program that at least 30 percent of voters support decreasing is military defense. (I’m still mystified with how this squares with the fact that 64 percent of Americans think “federal spending and the budget deficit” is a problem that they worry “a great deal” about, but that’s a rant for another time)

If Boehner can make a break with the Tea Party, it will presumably drive the Tea Party into over-boil (I envision more Boehner-must-go memes). And that’s good.

The more visibly extremist the Tea Party gets, the high the level of disapproval (I hope!). But even better, if they’ve declared war on Republican leadership, it means that Republican leadership now has a vested interest in casting them as unhelpful extremists. And this is the key.

So could this be the moment for some GOP leaders to re-discover a bit of courage in moderation and finally offer some real thought leadership that gives ordinary Republicans an alternative to the exasperating slash-and-burn anger that has dominated the dialogue for too long? I certainly hope so.

The Myth of the Productivity Surge?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Over at his blog, PPI chief economic strategist Michael Mandel has a fascinating and mammoth post tackling the question: “How much of the productivity surge of 2007-2009 was real?” The answer: Just about nothing.

“I estimate that the actual productivity gains in 2007-2009 may have been very close to zero,” writes Mandel “In addition, the drop in real GDP in this period was probably significantly larger than the numbers showed.”

He also explores some of the implications for economic policy. Mandel also replies to his critics here.

Beyond Sanction: The Next Iran Strategy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI has launched a new task force on human rights inside Iran. We’re proud to team up with Freedom House in this endeavor, and the project will be chaired by PPI Senior Fellow and frequent P-Fix contributor Josh Block and Andrew Apostolou, Senior Program Manager for Iran at FH. Yours truly will be a member of the group.

We’re calling the task force Beyond Sanction: The Next Iran Strategy, a nod to the necessity of bringing fresh ideas and new life into the debate on how to handle Tehran. As Iran defiantly continues efforts to construct a nuclear device, it has become glaringly clear in the wake of the 2009 Tehran protests in response to the country’s sham presidential elections that the regime lacks popular legitimacy. In the context of recent upheavals across North Africa and the Middle East, it’s important to remember that the pro-democracy movement began not in Tunisia, but in Iran.

We did an official launch of the new project yesterday, and have received a fair amount of positive press. Ben Smith of Politico had the scoop, and we’ve also received attention in the Jerusalem Post, Commentary, and The Atlantic.

From The Atlantic’s write up:

Nuclear weapons and human rights are “separate issues, but they’re separate issues with regard to the same regime, so one of the things the task force is going to listen and come up with is … how do you raise those separate issues and when do you raise them that has a direct impact,” said Freedom House co-chair Andrew Apostolou on a conference call with reporters this morning. …

The point of the group is not to criticize the Obama administration, but to supply it with strategic options.”I think they’ve taken some actions that have been important,” Block said, referencing President Obama’s initial openness to engage Iran and his messages to the Iranian people on the Nowruz holiday.

The administration’s initial policy was an attempt “to test Iran and give Iran a chance to say we are serious about talking about our nuclear regime, and I think the Iranian response was loud and clear that [Iran was] not serous,” Apostolou said. “What are you supposed to do, after 30 years … the same thing?

“They gave it a try, and it didn’t work. It didn’t work, and now they’re casting around for ideas.”

Exactly.

Wingnut Watch: Iowa’s Cattle Calls and Conferences Continue, But is it Too Much Camp Christian?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Aside from rather predictable carping about the president’s handling of the military intervention in Libya, the wingnut world has been preoccupied the last week with an anticipatory sense of betrayal on federal spending and with sorting through its 2012 presidential options.

Conservative activists continue to pant for a government shutdown over FY 2012 appropriations, and are alarmed at any and all Republican efforts to avoid a shutdown via negotiations with the White House or congressional Democrats. News that Speaker John Boehner has begun talks with “moderate Democrats” in the House as a hedge against conservative defections on a compromise plan has spurred shrieks throughout the wingnut-o-sphere.

RedState’s Erick Erickson left no cliché undeployed in announcing that the GOP leadership had “no spine” and was so “scared of its own shadow” that it would “sell its soul, betray its base, and out-negotiate itself.” Conservative activists vary somewhat in their bottom lines; some are demanding no compromise on the policy riders aimed at Planned Parenthood, EPA and NPR; some want language crippling “ObamaCare;” some just want much deeper cuts, even though Democrats seem willing to reach the targets originally announced by House Republicans. Some want a separate deal on “entitlement reform” as part of the initial discussions on a long-term budget. And some will scream about any deal blessed by the America-hating socialist in the White House.

From a tactical point of view, of course, this conservative agitation will give Republican negotiators a bit of extra leverage, so long as the rank-and-file in the House doesn’t take it too seriously and sabotage any ultimate agreement.

Even as they keep a suspicious watch on their current representatives in government, conservatives are already avidly engaged in the 2012 presidential nomination contest, particularly in Iowa, where the whole game begins. There were two major Iowa events last weekend: a home-schoolers conference addressed by Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, and Herman Cain; and a cattle-call organized by Iowa’s own favorite wingnut, Rep. Steve King, which drew Bachmann, Cain, Newt Gingrich, Haley Barbour, and John Bolton. At the former event Bachmann touted her own history of homeschooling her kids (before setting up a “Christian school” with her husband) while Paul proposed a large tax credit for homeschoolers. It was not lost on anyone that homeschoolers were a significant part of the coalition that won the 2008 Iowa Caucuses for Mike Huckabee.

Steve King’s event produced an array of proto-candidate speeches. Bachmann and Cain gave all-red-meat addresses split between liberal-baiting and challenges to the audience to get ready for 2012 and ultimately for leadership of the country. Bolton stuck to foreign policy in his speech, while Barbour stuck mainly to economic and fiscal policy. Gingrich gave his standard stock speech. In what is likely to become a pattern for such events, Cain and Bachmann got far and away the strongest audience response. And King’s influence was validated by the appearance of not only the presidential candidates, but of national conservative titan Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). King is widely expected to endorse Bachmann, his closest colleague in Congress, if she ultimately makes the race.

The cavalcade of culturally conservative events in First-in-the-Nation Iowa is spurring some debate, there and nationally, about the extent to which other Republican voices are being marginalized. Doug Gross, who was the Republican gubernatorial nominee in Iowa in 2006 and ran Mitt Romney’s 2008 Caucus operation, complained to The New York Times:

We look like Camp Christian out here. If Iowa becomes some extraneous right-wing outpost, you have to question whether it is going to be a good place to vet your presidential candidates.

The observation earned Gross some seriously angry responses (the Iowa Republican’s Craig Robinson referred to him as “Mr. Irrelevant”). But it did get some non-Iowa analysts looking at the numbers to see if the “Camp Christian” rep of Iowa Caucus-goers was overblown. RealClearPolitics’ Erin McPike ran some numbers:

The strength of religious conservatives in Iowa, while formidable, may be somewhat overstated.

To be specific, add Romney’s 2008 results in Iowa (about 30,000 votes, or 25.2 percent) to Arizona Sen. John McCain’s (about 15,500 votes, or 13 percent) to former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson’s (16,000 votes or 13.4 percent) to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s (4000 votes or 3.4 percent), and the total is about 55 percent of the votes. Texas Rep. Ron Paul garnered a tenth of the votes. Compare that to winning Mike Huckabee’s winning share of some 41,000 votes, 34.4 percent of the vote.

The problem with this analysis is that in 2008 Mitt Romney was running as the “true conservative” candidate (he was ultimately endorsed by Jim DeMint, Paul Weyrich, Sean Hannity, Robert Bork, and many other hard-right figures) while Fred Thompson was the candidate of both Steve King and the National Right to Life Committee. Limiting “Camp Christian” to Huckabee caucus-goers misses a big part of the picture.

In any event, 2012 proto-candidates seem to be taking seriously the state’s reputation as a stomping ground for the Christian Right specifically and “movement conservatives” generally. King’s being treated like a senior statesman rather than a much-mocked crank. Romney’s giving the state a wide berth for the time being and trying to tamp down expectations. And if Mitch “Truce” Daniels is ultimately going to run, he certainly hasn’t shown his face in Iowa. Newt Gingrich probably did a very smart thing politically by getting one of his PACs to pour money into the successful 2010 effort to recall some of the judges responsible for the Iowa Supreme Court’s 2009 decision legalizing same-sex marriage. In a Caucus environment where evangelical fervor has a lot to do with the willingness to spend hours on an icy night standing up for a candidate, investing in the foot soldiers of the Christian Right makes a lot of sense.