Category: Uncategorized

The Strange Republican Cuts to National Security

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As a progressive who strongly believes in a “whole of government” approach to ensuring the nation’s security, I cheered when the Obama administration’s 2010 National Security Strategy included this paragraph:

To succeed, we must update, balance, and integrate all of the tools of American power and work with our allies and partners to do the same. Our military must maintain its conventional superiority … We must invest in diplomacy and development capabilities and institutions in a way that complements and reinforces our global partners. Our intelligence capabilities must continuously evolve to identify and characterize conventional and asymmetric threats and provide timely insight. And we must integrate our approach to homeland security with our broader national security approach.

That attitude goes a long way to rectifying the wrongs of the Bush administration’s philosophy, one that saw too many problems as nails, and too many solutions as a hammer. The results were obvious: squandered resources, an exhausted military, lost international credibility, and, ultimately, less security.

It’s clear that Republicans still haven’t gotten this message. In this year’s continuing resolution, they’ve voted to cut some of those whole-of-government resources that are vital to strengthening our security. Here’s a list of cuts, taken from the just-passed continuing resolution, and compiled by my friends at the Truman National Security Project that fundamentally weakens our crucial non-military national security tools:

House Republican Cuts to National Security Priorities

in 2/19 Continuing Resolution for FY2011

Compiled from: Program cuts in the FY2011 Continuing Resolution, 2/14/2011, House Appropriations Committee. Analysis of HR1. 2/15/2011, Senate Appropriations Committee. Checked against Statement by Congressman Rogers on HR1, 2/19/2011, House Appropriations Committee for amendments which passed. Cuts are to FY2010 Enacted.

Contact: David Solimini, Communications Director. dave@trumanproject.org or 757-876-0295.

National Security & Ongoing Wars

·         National Security Council. Cut the President’s principle advisors on national security issues by $600,000. [Program cuts in the FY2011 Continuing Resolution]

·         Counterinsurgency funding. Cut USAID by $121m (9% cut), which will halt new civilian programs in Afghanistan and Pakistan that are necessary for the counterinsurgency strategy to work. These programs were called for by US military commanders. [Analysis of HR1].

·         Iraq transition, Afghanistan/Pakistan operations. Cut State Department operations by $1.2b (12%), meaning the transition from military to civilian responsibility in Iraq, and State operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, will be put in jeopardy. [Analysis of HR1].

·         Border Security. Cut funding for border fencing and border protection technology, as well as its related infrastructure, by $350m. [Program cuts in the FY2011 Continuing Resolution]

·         Democracy promotion. Cut the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which provides assistance to countries which meet government improvement goals, by $315m. Cut Development Assistance by $746m. [Program cuts in the FY2011 Continuing Resolution]

·         International First Responders. Cut, by $103m, the Civilian Stabilization Initiative, which trains civilians to reconstruct and stabilize war torn, disaster ridden, and unstable countries, to prevent future conflict. Cut International Disaster Assistance by $415m, and the Complex Crisis Fund by $50. [Program cuts in the FY2011 Continuing Resolution]

·         Starvation Prevention/Weak State Stabilization. Cut Food For Peace, which delivers bags of food stamped “USA” to the people of weak and failing states, by $687. Program details. [Program cuts in the FY2011 Continuing Resolution].

Terrorism Prevention

·         Transportation security. Cut transit security grants by more than 66 percent. In the last 7 years, there were over 1,300 terrorist attacks on trains, subways, and busses, killing or injuring over 18,000 people. [Analysis of HR1.] Also cut: Transportation Security Administration Threat Assessment funding by $9m. [Program cuts in the FY2011 Continuing Resolution]

·         Port security & Container Screening. Cut port security grants by 66 percent. [Analysis of HR1.] Also cut $61m in international container inspections. Container shipping is the most likely way a weapon of mass destruction could be brought into the country. [Program cuts in the FY2011 Continuing Resolution]

Nuclear Terrorism

·         Domestic Nuclear Attack Prevention. Cut, by $31m, the office which detects attempts to import, possess, store, develop, or transport nuclear or radiological material for use against the Nation. [Analysis of HR1] [Program cuts in the FY2011 Continuing Resolution] [Program details]

·         Nuclear materials security. Cut nuclear non-proliferation funding by $97m. This will prevent the US from removing hundreds of pounds of highly enriched uranium, which terrorists could use to build nuclear devices, from unsecure facilities in several countries around the world. [Analysis of HR1]

·         Weapons of Mass Destruction Training. Cut, by 51 percent, funding for first responder weapons of mass destruction training, which means that more than 46,000 first responders will not being trained in FY 2011. [Analysis of HR1]

Veterans Benefits

·         Homeless veterans. Terminated the Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing Program, the aim of which is to end veteran homelessness in 5 years. There were more than 130,000 homeless veterans in 2009. The VASH program provided housing vouchers for them. [Analysis of HR1] [Local Story, CT]

·         Veterans long term care. Cut Long Term Care facilities at the Department of Veterans Affairs by $15m. [Program info.] [Program cuts in the FY2011 Continuing Resolution]

Gov. Scott’s Plan for Florida: Let Them Eat Highways

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In rejecting $2.4 billion in federal funds for high-speed rail in Florida yesterday, Gov. Rick Scott came up with a great idea to solve the state’s burgeoning traffic problems – more highways!

At the same time he was denouncing fast trains as wasteful government spending at a hastily arranged press conference, he was imploring U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to funnel billions of federal dollars into new road projects.

The peculiar letter Scott sent to LaHood yesterday proposed a laundry list of major highway undertakings. Among them, expanding I-395 in Miami-Dade County, widening I-95 down the state’s southern spine, building a new bridge over Choctawhatchee Bay, and adding lanes to I-4 where the high-speed line was supposed to be built between Tampa and Orlando.

The fact that all these projects would cost considerably more than the rail line somehow escaped the governor’s request that he and LaHood “work together” to meet “the broad array of transportation needs in our state.”

There are many reasons why turning aside the chance to become the first state to realize high-speed rail’s promise is foolhardy (such as giving up thousands of construction jobs and boosting Florida’s tourism economy). But the bottom line is that Scott, who won election last November with Tea Party support, feels threatened by projects outside the box of the old car culture.

This same reflexive fear – mixed with bitter hatred of President Obama’s “stimulus spending,” especially if it might economically stimulate – has been consuming many rookie House Republicans, who are seeking to cancel all federal spending for high-speed rail in the 2011 budget.

In other words, high-speed rail has become the latest stage for the battle between progressives seeking to advance America’s competitiveness with strategic public investment and conservatives inveighing against non-defense government spending as “waste.”

Not all Republicans have swallowed the Kool Aid – Florida’s prior governor, Charlie Crist, was a firm backer of the Tampa-Orlando project, and John Mica (R-Fla), chairman of the powerful House Transportation Committee, yesterday denounced Scott’s decision as “a huge setback for the state of Florida.”

What Scott decries others enthusiastically endorse. The governors of California, New York, and Illinois greeted Scott’s announcement with delight, saying they’d gladly accept the money rejected by Florida to build 21st-century rail transportation in their state.

Overcoming the Obstacles to Charter School Growth

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

High-performing charter schools need to grow faster to serve more students, but to do so, they will have to overcome not just organizational obstacles but also significant political ones. That was the takeaway from a panel discussion on charter schools the Progressive Policy Institute held at the National Press Club today to launch a new PPI report: “Going Exponential: Speeding the Growth of High-Quality Charter Schools,” by Emily Ayscue Hassel, Bryan C. Hassel and Joe Ableidinger.

Bryan Hassel led off the panel by discussing his report, which begins from the premise that high-performing charter schools need to grow faster in order to serve more low-income children. “They only serve a tiny fraction of the students, only ten percent,” he said. “And the average number of schools being added annually is 1.3 schools. Only five CMOs [Charter Management Organizations] are planning to have more than 30 schools in their network by 2025. I don’t see a lot of prospects for serving millions of kids who need these schools.”

Hassel’s report focuses on urging leading CMOs to think big, and he distills nine lessons from high-growth organizations in the private sector that could apply to charters. On the panel he focused on four: generating cash flow, tackling talent scarcity, reaching customers where they are, and finding top leaders committed to growth.

To improve cash flow, he proposed a pay-for-performance scheme: “What if the best charters were paid more?” Hassel asked. “What if the top 10 percent received 10 percent more? Then they could invest in growth. And then we’d pay worse charter schools less, which would hasten the closing of the worst charter schools.”

To improve reach, Hassel proposed micro-reach and micro-chartering strategies: “How do you do more without having to find a facility?” Hassel said. “One idea is that policymakers could issue charters not just to whole schools but to individual teachers who want to serve 20-40 kids.”

Eva Moskowitz, CEO of Success Charter Network (who was featured in the documentary “Waiting for Superman”), applauded the goal of rapid growth. Success Charter Network has doubled in size every for the last four years, and will open up two more in the next year. “And I don’t die of exhaustion,” said Moskowitz, “I could keep going.”

And when she says exhaustion, she means exhaustion from the politics. “In our world it’s really hand-to-hand combat,” she said. “It’s the teachers’ union blockading students and preventing them from entering the school. We’re talking about having to ask police to come to usher our kids, five year olds, into the building” These politics, she noted, put real obstacles on growth.

Andrew Rotherham, partner at Bellwether Education Partners and former PPI colleague, echoed Hassel’s call for scaling up. “This field does not understand scale,” he said. “The only thing we consistently know how to scale is problems, bad ideas, and perverse incentives.”

Like Moskowitz, he also put a focus on politics. “We’ve done a poor job of using regulation and incentives,” he said. “Really there’s only one state, Michigan, that in meaningful ways incentivizes a process where good charter schools can replicate effectively.”

Rotherham noted that in many ways, top charter schools have grown beyond expectations. Once upon a time people predicted KIPP would never expand beyond two dozen schools (it is now at 100) and TFA would never expand beyond 500 core members (it now has 20,000 alums). But he also posed a question for future growth: “Do we need more CMOs or bigger CMOs? We talk about more-more-more, but what should it look like.”

R. Brooks Garber, vice president of federal advocacy for National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, added a note of caution to the rapid growth strategy. Quality control is important, he said. “It takes only one failure, and one failure would be the end of the brand. We open schools one grade at a time.” But he agreed that charter schools could be more strategic.

Hassel responded by suggesting that even if rapid expansion resulted in slightly reduced performance for top charter schools, it would still probably be better than the alternative – the continuation of inferior public or other charter schools.

All and all, the discussion highlighted the tensions between the aspirations of rapid growth and the substantial on-the-ground obstacles, both political and organizational. Everyone wants high-performing charters to grow faster. But it ain’t easy.

The Most Important Question About Charter Schools

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Controversy rages over the overall contribution of charter schools to education reform. And while charter schools have produced mixed results, that is for a simple reason: not all charter schools are created equal.

Some charter schools do produce poor results. But other charter schools receive extraordinary results, turning around the lives of low-income children.

Rather than group all charter schools together and debate the wisdom of charter schools generally, here’s a better question to ask: How do we facilitate growth of the charter schools that work? How do we bring the effective teaching strategies from the most successful charter schools to more students?

That’s the question that Emily Ayscue Hassel, Bryan C. Hassel and Joe Ableidinger tackle in a new report for the Progressive Policy Institute, entitled “Going Exponential: Growing the Charter School Sector’s Best.”

The report outlines nine lessons from fast-growing organizations that can be applied to charter schools. You can read it here.

But the big lesson is simple:

Charter leaders who want to pursue exponential growth and funders who want to support them must become much more familiar with the rapid-growth strategies used in other sectors and apply them to education. In addition, policymakers must prioritize removing any barriers to growth by the best – while also creating new incentives and avenues for excellent programs to reach more children.

Bryan Hassel will be on hand tomorrow (Feb. 17) at the National Press Club, to discuss the paper, along with R. Brooks Garber of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, Eva Moskowitz of the Success Charter Network, and Andrew Rotherham of Bellwether Education Partners. For more details, click here.

EVENT — Going Exponential: Speeding the Growth of High-Quality Charter Schools

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Not all charter schools are good, but the best charters are providing high-quality education to disadvantaged children. The problem, according to a new study by the Progressive Policy Institute, is that America’s high-performing charter networks aren’t growing fast enough to meet public demand.

In Going Exponential: Growing the Charter School Sector’s Best, researchers Emily and Brian Hassel and Joe Ableidinger of Public Impact offer a practical guide for facilitating the rapid growth of the nation’s best charter school networks.

The report will be released tomorrow, Feb. 17, 2011 at 10 a.m. EST, with a public forum at the National Press Club that also features Eva Moskowitz of New York’s Success Charter Network, who was featured in the acclaimed documentary, Waiting for Superman. Also offering commentary will be Andy Rotherham of Bellwhether Education Partners and Brooks Garber of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Moderating the discussion will be PPI President Will Marshall.

“Charter leaders who want to pursue exponential growth and funders who want to support them must become much more familiar with the rapid-growth strategies used in other sectors and apply them to education,” write the authors. “In addition, policymakers must prioritize removing any barriers to growth by the best – while also creating new incentives and avenues for excellent programs to reach more children.”

While the top 10 percent of charter schools serve approximately 167,000 students a year, millions of low-income students continue to receive substandard education. The report outlines nine lessons from fast-growing organizations that can be applied to charter schools to ensure that every child who wants to attend a top-performing charter school will have that opportunity.

“Critics say charter schools don’t serve enough children to make a difference,” said PPI President Will Marshall. “This report takes that criticism to heart – and shows how faster growth about our best charters can make a huge difference in the lives of poor children.”

WHO

R. Brooks Garber, National Alliance for Public Charter Schools
Bryan Hassel, Public Impact
Eva Moskowitz, Success Charter Network
Andrew Rotherham, Bellwether Education Partners
Will Marshall, Progressive Policy Institute

WHEN

Thursday, Feb. 17, 2011

10–11:30 a.m.

WHERE

National Press Club — Bloomberg Room
529 14th St. NW
Washington, DC

MEDIA COVERAGE

The event is open to the press. All participants will be available to answer questions from the media. Please register in advance to Steven Chlapecka at 202.525.3931 or schlapecka@ppionline.org.

Wingnut Watch: Re-capping the CPAC Fireworks

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The 2011 Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) meeting in Washington over the weekend provided, as always, a sort of dysfunctional family picnic for the self-conscious Right, and an opportunity for a large cast of would-be 2012 presidential candidates to tug the forelock to The Movement and beat up on the godless socialist foe.

Aficionados of conservative ideological infighting had a lot of entertainment at this year’s CPAC. There was, as reported in last week’s Wingnut Watch, lots of maneuvering over participation in the conference, with the conservative gay organization GOProud and the conservative Muslim group Muslims for America serving as the big flashpoints.

While most CPAC attendees (and some not attending, such as Sarah Palin) more or less defended inclusion of GOProud, its leader, Chris Barron, did himself no favors by calling critics “bigots.” There are reports the group won’t be invited back next year. Similarly, Muslims for America’s patron, anti-tax commissar Grover Norquist, made few friends by calling critics of CPAC’s agenda “losers,” and promptly earned an anathema from Red State’s Erick Erickson, who called on conservatives to come up with a better venue for coordination than Norquist’s famous Wednesday meetings.

The most visible sign of ideological problems at CPAC involved, predictably, the Ron Paul brand of libertarians, who noisily heckled the presentation of a “Defender of the Constitution” award by Dick Cheney to Donald Rumsfeld. (Paulites might justly claim this was too much provocation for any libertarian to resist, and CPAC organizers really screwed up by scheduling the award just after a speech by Rand Paul.)

But the social conservative complaint that fiscal hawks, libertarians, and/or political pragmatists were trying to subordinate their agenda probably exposed a more serious problem for the Right, and also a source of considerable confusion about the much-envied role of the Tea Party Movement. Certainly those, most conspicuously Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, who have argued for a temporary suspension of any talk about cultural issues, are being touted by many observers as representing the Tea Partiers’ alleged single-minded focus on deficits, debts, and limited government.

But no less prominent a figure as Rush Limbaugh has sought to identify the Tea Party Movement with social conservatives and indeed with anyone wanting an ideologically exclusive Republican Party:

Talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh, himself considered a conservative icon, blasted this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference for drowning out tea partiers and those concerned with social issues, lamenting, “That’s not the CPAC that I’ve always thought of or known.”

Saying he was concerned that “I might just drum myself out of a movement,” Limbaugh blamed the “ruling class” at CPAC for missing the message of the 2010 election, namely that there is “an unmistakable conservative ascendancy happening in this country,” evidenced most prominently in the tea-party movement….

Instead, Limbaugh said, CPAC seemed smitten with the idea of dumping traditionally conservative values in order to broaden the Republican Party’s tent.

“So you had a weird list of priorities and focus. I mean we had it all,” Limbaugh said. “We had GOProud, the gay conservatives. We had demands to legalize drugs, marijuana at CPAC. Most conservatives strongly oppose gay marriage and legalized pot.”

He continued, “The position of some people who spoke at CPAC: ‘Look, if you’re worried about immigration, stop it. We don’t want to be seen as racist. Stop talking about abortion, stop talking about the social issues, stop talking about all this. That’s only gonna hurt; we don’t need to deal with that in our party.’ This is what the ruling class guys were saying at CPAC.”

A conservative movement that can’t decide whether Mitch Daniels is the leader of the Tea Party Movement, or its deadliest “ruling class” enemy, has got some issues to sort out.

Ideological conflict aside, the role of CPAC as the first serious event in the Invisible Primary leading to the Republican presidential nomination was on full display this weekend, but produced no game-changing results.

The presidential straw poll held on the final day of the conference was easily won, for the second year in a row, by Ron Paul (whose collegiate admirers were out in force), an outcome that instantly devalued it as a indicator of future developments in the nominating process. Mitt Romney, whose PAC probably devoted more resources to the conference than anyone else’s, finished second, while every other name wound up in the low-to-mid single digits.

As for speechifying, there were some putative presidents who did better than others (though experts differed on “winners and losers”), but no real knockout punches or disasters. None of the longest shots (e.g., Herman Cain, John Bolton, Rick Santorum) did anything to vault themselves into serious contention.

Most candidates modestly met their most immediate needs. Tim Pawlenty showed he could give a fiery red-meat speech. Haley Barbour touted a right-wing record as governor of Mississippi (boasting of both Medicaid cuts and harassment of abortion providers), reminding listeners he’s a serious reactionary, not just a fundraiser. Mitt Romney stuck to tried-and-true conservative themes and showed once again he’s as smooth as Obama as a speaker. Mitch Daniels dealt with his “cultural issues truce” problem, and interestingly enough, did so by doubling down on his argument that fiscal issues, the “red menace” of our time, have to come first. Newt Gingrich showed he can still wow a live audience with his wonkery and one-liners.

It’s not really clear, however, that the no-shows (most notably Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee) lost anything by spending their weekend elsewhere.

We’ll soon see if the ideological fissures exposed by CPAC continue to widen or instead subside; the internal fights of the congressional GOP over legislative and budget priorities show all’s not well on that front.

Meanwhile, it’s finally fish-or-cut-bait time for GOP presidential candidates, or those who don’t already have near-universal name ID and some sort of history with Iowans. Newt Gingrich has said he’ll make up his mind whether to run by the end of February; John Thune seems to be on the same timetable. Haley Barbour and Mitch Daniels, both sitting governors, will wait until their current legislative sessions end in April. At present, you’d have to guess Gingrich and Barbour are in, while Thune and Daniels are out, though nobody knows for sure. And it’s anybody’s guess what Palin and Huckabee will do; the shape of the field will remain amorphous until those two figure out how they will spend their time in 2012.

The Coming Fight Over Foreign Assistance

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Above is my quick and dirty comparison of the coming fight over foreign assistance. In green is the amount already spent in 2010 on each of the discreet line items (I’ve chosen these four areas because they were directly comparable between the various proposed appropriations).

Here’s how to read the graph: The actual amount spent in 2010 by the USG on each line item is in green. In red is the amount Republicans want to cut back to for the remainder of FY2011, expiring on 30 September. And in blue is what the White House would like to spend in FY2012’s budget proposal.

Now, I understand that there’s a conversation to be had about fixing how we spend foreign assistance and what we should receive back from it. But this is a more basic philosophical disagreement about whether or not America should be a world leader, or whether we should disengage from the rest of the world. After all, at its best, foreign assistance buys soft power, something that has been in relatively short supply of late.

In light of that, it’s worth keeping in mind this quote from Joe Nye’s new book, The Future Power:

In general, the United States has not worked out an integrated plan for combining hard and soft power….Many official instruments of soft power – public diplomacy, broadcasting, exchange programs, development assistance, disaster relief, military-to-military contracts – are scattered around the government, and there is no overarching strategy or budget that even tries to integrate them with hard power into an overarching smart power strategy. The United States spends about five hundred times more on the military than it does on broadcasting and exchanges.

Photo Credit: Marines Haiti Relief

Going Exponential: Growing the Charter School Sector’s Best

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Public debate continues to rage about the role of public charter schools in education reform. Policymakers and philanthropists across the political spectrum – some with qualifications, others with none at all – have flocked to support charters as an alternative to district schools with stagnant learning outcomes. In response, critics of charters such as Diane Ravitch have decried “the myth that charter schools are the answer to our educational woes,” citing evidence that “there are twice as many failing charter schools as there are successful ones.”

Yet few debate one fact about the charter sector: the existence of a subset of schools that induce extremely high academic progress and achievement by children who enter years behind, many of whom are poor and a disproportionate number of whom are racial minorities. These include both stand-alone schools and networks, typically operating under charter management organizations (“CMOs”). KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program), Achievement First, and Uncommon Schools are three examples of CMOs that blossomed from single schools into high-performing networks serving primarily disadvantaged children. They teach children the habits of high ambition, hard work, and allowing oneself no excuses – and in most cases they achieve far better results than other schools. Regardless of the overall success rate of charter schools, high-performing charter schools in high-poverty communities have shown us that it is possible for disadvantaged children to achieve at high levels.

While every child counts, the number of children served by the best charter schools is far too low. Millions of parents and children keenly feel the gap between the number of children these schools serve and the far greater number who need their services. Children’s educations are won and lost in the game of wooing top CMOs to cities and towns and again during admission lotteries.

How big is the gap between the need and supply? The charter sector as a whole served about 1.6 million children in the 2009-2010 school year. According to one study, about 17 percent of charter schools measurably outperform comparable district schools for similar children, disproportionately so for disadvantaged children. The top 17 percent of charter schools reached approximately 272,000 children in the 2009-10 school year.

This supply of top charter slots is woefully inadequate relative to the need:

• Nearly 50 million children are enrolled in K-12 education in the U.S., and almost 20 percent – nearly 10 million children – live in poverty.
• In communities with high rates of poverty, nearly half of high school students drop out.
• NAEP economic achievement gaps are large: In 2009, 16 percent of economically disadvantaged children were proficient in eighth grade reading on NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress), compared to 41 percent of their advantaged peers, with an even larger gap in math.
• Many low-income children who are performing at grade level are unquestionably capable of advanced work unavailable to them at their current schools but which is offered at the best charter schools.

Read the policy report

Egypt’s Lessons For Iran

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Democrats and Republicans showed admirable bipartisanship as President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton led the nation through the crisis in Egypt. It wasn’t exactly a return to an era when politics stopped at the water’s edge, but it was a fair-minded recognition that the administration had no great choices and limited control over the direction of the Cairo protests. Stuck between a multi-decade autocracy on one side and potentially pushing a country of 75 million Muslims to the Muslim Brotherhood’s virulent political Islam through our lack of support for the protestors on the other, the President and our political establishment steered a steady course.

I only bring up the thorny issue of Egypt to point out that, in comparison, the policies we should be pursuing on Iran this morning are no-brainers. As of yesterday there’s a very real possibility that the example of Egypt has reignited the Green Movement, and that the IRGC-dominated oligarchy is again in some peril. Riots have again broken out throughout the country. Tear gas and truncheon and electric batons are again being used openly against the protesters. Videos are again being uploaded to YouTube showing that the Basij have resorted to batons and bullets.

And now there are even rumors that the protesters in Tehran are trying to set up tents in the center of the city, modeled after the Egyptians in Tahrir Square, to establish a long-term protest bent on establishing a free society. The spectacle of Ahmadinejad cheering on the anti-Mubarak protesters while denying Iranian dissenters the right to march may have finally become too much for the average Iranian to stomach.

Here there are no hard choices about whether to pursue stability or change. All of our efforts should be exerted on the side of the protesters demanding a free Iran.  The risk that the regime will exploit western support for the protestors is a stale excuse for silence.  The brave young men and women risking their lives for change deserve better than caution or indifference.

Secretary Clinton and the administration have responded admirably thus far. Yesterday the Secretary personally expressed support for the protesters, insisting that they have a right to demand freedom “as part of their own birthright” and highlighting the Iranian regime’s hypocrisy. She committed the administration to “”very clearly and directly support[ing] the aspirations of the people who are in the streets.”

The current tone, which is exactly right, is a welcome contrast to the unseemly vacillation that marked the first days of the Green Revolution, when White House and State Department spokespeople refused to throw their weightbehind the protesters. That won us no good will from the Iranian regime and it risked alienating many of the freedom-loving Iranians with whom we should have been standing in solidarity.

The truth is that we have nothing to lose and much to gain by supporting the protesters. The conspiracy-wallowing regime in Tehran reflexively blames the United States, Israel, and Britain for domestic unrest. They’ve already tagged this round of protests as a foreign plot.

The administration deserves only praise for having figured out as much the first time around, and for immediately lending the protesters our full-throated support this time. The day after the mullahcracy falls will truly be a new day in the Middle East.

Like Secretary Clinton’s comments yesterday, President Obama’s remarks today are a good start.

Now is not the time to go silent or hedge our bets in support of those seeking freedom in Iran.

PPI EVENT – Going Exponential: Speeding the Growth of High-Quality Charter Schools

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Going Exponential: Speeding the Growth of High-Quality
Charter Schools

Featured Speakers:
R. Brooks Garber, National Alliance for Public Charter Schools
Bryan Hassel, Public Impact
Eva Moskowitz, Success Charter Network
Andrew Rotherham, Bellwether Education Partners

Moderator:
Will Marshall, President, Progressive Policy Institute

Date:
Thursday, Feb. 17,  2011
10 a.m.–11:30 a.m.

Location:
National Press Club
529 14th St. NW
Bloomberg Room
Washington, DC

View map

If you have any questions, please contact 202-525-3926.

Register for this event.

Space is limited. RSVP required.


 

_____________________________________________________


The public charter school movement, hindered by major political and financial obstacles, has made slow and uneven progress over the last two decades. Its detractors charge that charters produce, on average, results no better than traditional public schools. Yet no one denies that there are many high-quality charters. As movingly described in documentaries such as Waiting for Superman, these schools are giving hope to poor families desperate for alternatives to the “drop-out factories” that plague many low-income communities.

Charter skeptics and enthusiasts, therefore, ought to be able to agree that it would be good for America’s neediest families have more high-performing charters schools. The question is how to spur such growth.

Please join us as PPI unveils a new study by Bryan Hassel, Emily Ayscue Hassel and Joe Ableidinger of Public Impact: Going Exponential: Growing the Charter School Sector’s Best. The report draws lessons from high-growth organizations in other sectors for charter school operators and management organizations and offers charter operators practical advice for how to scale up.

PPI is also proud to present three distinguished commentators: Eva Moskowitz, CEO of Success Charter Network in New York, Andy Rotherham, co-founder at Bellwether Education Partners and Brooks Garbor Vice President for Federal Advocacy of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Budgeting for a Fast Train Future

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

President Obama’s proposal to fund high-speed rail in the next surface transportation bill does more than boost the prospects that fast trains could be running in places like Florida and California by 2018. He calls on Congress to end its haphazard pork-barrel approach to building infrastructure.

In today’s 2012 budget plan, the president outlines a new template for federal transportation spending. He calls for strategic infrastructure spending that ends congressional earmarks that have resulted in the squandering of taxpayer money, and for consolidating many of the current funding streams for surface transportation into a unified “Transportation Trust Fund,” a proposal that echoes the recommendations of a recent PPI policy memo.

He challenges Congress to move “toward a cost-benefit analysis of large transportation projects” and to an “integrated national strategy” that harkens back to the original purpose of federal transportation spending – to defend America at the height of 1950s Cold War by building interstate highways.

Obama smartly frames today’s overarching issue not as a matter of simple budget cutting, but of helping business and labor compete in a global marketplace by modernizing infrastructure “in desperate need of repairs and upgrades.” The 2012 budget calls for $556 billion in transportation spending for the next six years, with about 10 percent going to high-speed rail and Amtrak’s existing train service, about 8 percent to mass transit and the remaining 82 percent for highway infrastructure improvement.

Now begins the raucous debate.

For one, Obama’s proposal will need to withstand the political strain of special interests vested in the “old ways” of funding highways from preset state formulas and congressional earmarks.

For another, House Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) has his own ideas: a six-year bill of only $250 billion (less than half of what Obama wants). A quarter of a trillion equals the amount of tax revenues expected from federal gas taxes.

The good news is that Mica understands that America needs better surface transportation, including selective high-speed rail. His solution is leveraging private capital with federal funds.

Getting high-speed rail into the dedicated funding scheme of the transportation bill is the essential first step to attract private capital. Mica knows this and will need to educate his colleagues to this basic fact of economic life.

Raising the 18.4 cents-per-gallon federal gas tax, which has remained unchanged since 1993, could help fund the $556 billion Obama proposes. This approach has been endorsed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, but faces congressional opposition because of the potential public blowback of higher taxes at the pump.

In short, winning approval for better transportation in the tricky crosswinds of a divided Congress and tax-phobic public is going to require the White House to stay laser-focused on the right track.

Obama’s Minimalist Budget

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

President Obama’s new budget is a highly tactical exercise in fiscal minimalism. It proposes just enough spending cuts to be plausible, while putting off the critical work of tax and entitlement reform. Its unspoken premise seems to be: Given the ax-wielding frenzy that grips House Republicans, the best the White House can do now is to frame the fiscal debate on terms favorable to progressives.

The President’s $3.7 trillion budget would trim federal deficits by just over $1 trillion over the next decade. To the chagrin of liberals, the budget proposes to reach this total through a formula of two-thirds spending cuts, one-third tax cuts, rather than a 50-50 split. Also, it limits military spending growth without cutting specific programs. Meanwhile, the blueprint freezes discretionary spending for five years, and cuts over 150 programs, for $25 billion in budget savings next year. In short, the toughest discipline falls on domestic spending, so expect howls of betrayal from the left.

For all that, however, the Obama proposal would still leave us with deficits over 3 percent of GDP in 2020, while doing nothing to brake the runaway growth of costs for Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security, which account for 40 percent of the budget. These costs, propelled by soaring health care prices and demographics, and growing automatically each year, are what drive our nation’s long-term debt crisis.

The new budget does stabilize the national debt, but at a level – 77 percent of GDP – that most economists believe is well above what’s good for our fiscal health. It’s getting panned by deficit hawks. “This budget fails to meet the Administration’s own fiscal target, it fails to tackle the largest problem areas of the budget, and it fails to bring the debt down to an acceptable level,” said Maya MacGuineas of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Over the weekend, GOP leaders lambasted Obama for not embracing the much more robust and comprehensive recommendations of his own Fiscal Commission. Its plan would cut deficits by $4 trillion by 2020, make big reductions in tax expenditures, and trim future Social Security and Medicare benefits for the well-off. Bear in mind that, even as they criticize the President’s fiscal pusillanimity, House Republicans have rejected the Fiscal Commission blueprint, oppose tax increases of any kind, and are engaged in an Alphonse-and-Gaston routine with the White House over who should go first on entitlement reform.

Nonetheless, the Commission’s Democratic co-chairman, Erskine Bowles, also expressed disappointment that the President hasn’t used its work as the point of departure for a serious push to restore fiscal stability in Washington. He accurately called the President’s proposal “nowhere near where they will have to go to resolve our fiscal nightmare.”

The administration apparently is calculating that its modest deficit-reduction proposal has several tactical advantages. First, it may better reflect the public’s actual appetite for fiscal restraint. The same polls that show strong public support for reining in public deficits also find majorities opposed to major program cuts. Second, and relatedly, the White House wants to contrast its moderate approach to GOP austerity zealots, who have launched a single-minded jihad against government spending. Once the public tumbles to the implications of the GOP’s demands for $100 billion in domestic program cuts now, Democrats reason, they will recoil and demand a more balanced approach that includes defense cuts and tax hikes.

That seems likely. Republicans have convinced themselves that most Americans share their goal of shrinking government by cutting off its credit card. “The country’s biggest challenge, domestically speaking, no doubt about it, is a debt crisis,” House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan said this weekend.

But progressives believe that Americans – especially the independents and moderates who abandoned Democrats in the midterm election – are even more concerned about the scarcity of good jobs and America’s eroding competitiveness. More than fiscal stringency, they are looking to their leaders for a hopeful plan to jumpstart the stalled U.S. job machine.

The President’s budget accordingly makes room for significant new public investments, especially in infrastructure, innovation, and education. He wants to spend $53 billion over the next six years on high speed rail, and invest $50 billion in capitalizing a National Infrastructure Bank. The GOP’s knee-jerk dismissal of such strategic investments as just more government waste is wrong as a matter of economics, and it leaves conservatives without a credible theory for how they would rekindle economic growth.

So maybe Obama is right to stand back and give Republicans all the fiscal rope they need to hang themselves from the tree of uncompromising budget austerity. But his Fiscal Commission, which labored diligently and successfully to find some fiscal common ground between the parties, especially on scaling back tax expenditures, deserves better from him. And sooner rather than later, the President will have to step up and lead on entitlement reform, a national imperative that can no longer be safely deferred.

End Separate War Spending

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

It’s federal budget season. Before you doze off, stick with me: there’s a deceptive budgetary maneuver that is costing you billions in defense dollars, forcing progressive members of Congress into uncomfortable votes on Iraq and Afghanistan, and defying every historical precedent in Pentagon budgeting.

This maneuver is the supplemental appropriation for war funding. Every year since the United States launched military operations in Afghanistan in response to the September 11th attacks, Congress has appropriated separate funds for unanticipated wartime costs in addition to the Pentagon’s baseline budget. In some years, only one extra war spending bill is approved; in 2010, two supplemental appropriations were passed.

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

The Department of Defense (DoD) is the unquestioned champion of discretionary spending—money the government chooses to spend, rather than is obliged to pay for entitlements like Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security. With more than $700 billion in discretionary funds available, the Pentagon far outpaces its nearest competition, the Department of Health and Human Services, at $80 billion.

Since 2001, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) estimates that Congress has approved $1.12 trillion in supplemental appropriations, 90 percent of which—$1.01 trillion—has been destined for the Department of Defense. One estimate is that Congress has no control over one-fifth of supplemental war spending; therefore, a rough calculation suggests that some $200 billion has been wasted in 10 years.

While those on the extreme left and in the Tea Party would like to see slashes in the Pentagon’s spending, what DoD’s budget really needs is not gutting, but a solid dose of discipline.

Read the policy memo

Can the Republicans Really Pull Off $100 Billion in Cuts?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Well, that was quick. Rather than risk a mutiny, House Republican leaders have agreed to now cut $100 billion from the $1.1 trillion federal budget, rather than their original plan of a mere $40 billion. The question is: Can they pull it off? And if they do, will they come to regret it?

Yesterday, I predicted a coming Republican crack-up based on the premise that the Young Turks of the Tea Party are out to take a stand (gosh darnit!) against big government, but it’s a stand that’s not compatible with the continued electoral success of the Republican Party. And the spending cuts are a perfect example.

Say Republican leaders are indeed serious about  cutting $100 billion. Where will they cut? A new Pew poll found 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). Neither of these are big ticket items.

The only other area that is close to even is Defense (30 percent for a decrease, 31 percent for an increase). Defense accounts for about half of discretionary spending. But I’m guessing a good percentage of those 31 percent who want to increase the military are solid Republican base voters.

So here’s the hard reality: There is some serious bloodlust going around Washington about cutting the budget, in part because there is some serious bloodlust about cutting the budget in the Tea Party base. But when it comes down to the actual programs that will get cut, the picture changes.

You see, 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, why would you go and cut my well-deserved Medicare benefits when you could be cutting federal salaries or aid to the poor? In fact, with the exception of federal pay and foreign aid or aid to the poor, it’s hard to find a single government program or funding source that any majority would support cutting.

Democrats, of course, know this, and are just waiting for Republicans to go wild with their proposed cuts – especially Senate Democrats, who will play the role of putting the pieces back together.

In the end, there are two likely scenarios. In one, Republican leaders hold to the Tea Party line, but play right into Democrats’ hands, demanding harsh cuts — and in the process they awaken all kinds of anxious voters who are now suddenly worried about protecting the programs that benefit them. In the other, Republicans compromise, but alienate the Tea Party contingent, leading to an internecine battle. Either way, it’s not gonna be a pretty scene for the GOP.

What Happens Next in Egypt?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

It’s hardly insightful to call the events unfolding in Cairo “astounding,” though of course they are. The people of Egypt have patiently waited until their sole unifying demand was met: that Hosni Mubarak be gone. Egyptians have won a great victory, and their dedication to that objective is a remarkable testament to their resolve in the face of a regime bent on winning the day with attempts to frustrate and provoke the masses. They didn’t take that bait, and a peaceful, truly popular revolution is set to reap tangible improvements in their daily lives.

Or are they?

The hard work now begins. A transition to democracy has begun, but who remains as Egypt’s temporary steward of power and the speed with which elections are held remain critical issues.

Now that the protesters’ main demand has been met, everything else is negotiable. Surely the masses will reject any attempt by Mubarak confidant and newly-installed Vice President Omar Suleiman to remain as the heir-apparent to his erstwhile mentor’s thrown.

Will Suleiman cede his powers to a transitional council of opposition leaders, current government officials, and military representatives? How would it be composed? What role would the Muslim Brotherhood – commanding some 25 percent public support and having kept their powder dry thus far – play?

Just as critically, when would elections be held? A snap vote would probably be too risky and would prevent a truly representative government from taking hold: Lacking a unifying candidate, chances are that Mohammed ElBaradei may very well win a presidential contest but with possibly well less than 50 percent of the vote.

On the parliamentary side, nothing speaks to the bankruptcy of American policy over the last 30 years than successive presidential administrations’ failures to establish working  relationships with civil society groups, opposition parties, and democratic institutions. Or to advocate for the creation of a healthy Egyptian middle class, one from which reasonable political parties could form. As it stands, a near-term vote would be a scramble of thousands of poorly-organized, patronage-based parties that results in an incoherent, ad hoc governing coalition (see: Iraq, minus the sectarianism).

A near-term vote would also be one in which the Muslim Brotherhood, as one of the few well-organized groups, is over represented. And though the Brotherhood is not the overt Iran-styled threat that the likes of John Bolton and Fox News would like to believe, there are serious, serious questions outstanding about its governing platforms, as my colleague Josh Block has highlighted.

Where does this leave the Obama administration? It must be said that the White House has publicly waffled too much as Mubarak’s stock rose and fell, though perhaps it was much more effective that we know in its private communications with the Egyptian military and Mubarak’s inner circle. President Obama has been on the right side of history, if a disturbing half-step behind it.

Now that Mubarak is gone, the White House can double-down and strongly advocate for the expansion of representative democracy and American interests, which need not come in conflict. The president should push for a temporary, representative transitional council to establish a process to lift the emergency law and rewrite the constitution; it’s clear that those in Tahrir Square didn’t remain outdoors for weeks to see Omar Suleiman or the Brotherhood execute a back-door power grab.

As for elections, the White House could back a delay. Perhaps a year would be appropriate under a representative transitional authority, giving political parties at least some reasonable time to organize.

And as for the wider region? President Obama should start today the process of enshrining American links with civil society groups, local NGOs, and opposition parties of all stripes. This means that groups like the National Endowment for Democracy, the National Democratic Institute, and International Republican Institute (to name but a few) absolutely must be fully funded in this year’s budget.

If Tea Partiers believe Glenn Beck’s mind-blowingly ill-informed doomsday scenario, funding NED would be a good place to start preventing it.

The New Centrism

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

I don’t do much politics, but I feel like I have to say something about the demise of the Democratic Leadership Council, which helped bring Bill Clinton to the Presidency in the early 1990s. A lot of writers have interpreted the end of the DLC as the end of centrism, and a sign that Washington has become completely polarized.

My take is different. To me, we’re moving into a new era of centrist ideas, based around the importance of innovation and investment, creative thinking about regulation and jobs, and a greater appreciation of a global economy built around cross-border collaboration rather than “you-me” economic nationalism.

Rather than the center disappearing, I think we’re going to start seeing both left and right start drawing on ‘new centrist’ ideas. Let me just give a few of them:

*The importance of innovation for driving economic and job growth. When businesses try and innovate, we should reward rather than punish them, especially given the innovation shortfall of the past decade.

*The need to  think about investment in broad terms, including human capital and knowledge capital. Our conventional economic statistics, which measure only physical investment, are giving us a misleading view of the economy.

*The need to understand the true nature of the long-term fiscal and entitlement problem: The long-term rise in medical spending is a total reflection of falling or flat productivity in the healthcare sector. If we can fix that–through a combination of techological advances and institutional change–we can in effect grow our way out of the entitlement problem.

*The importance of rising real wages for young educated workers as a sign of the health of the economy. Real wages for young college grads have been falling since 2000–we cannot operate a modern economy this way, because our young people can no longer afford to pay for the education they need.

*The need to find some way to lessen the burden of regulation without losing touch with our social values. We need a systematic process for examining the thousands of regulations and carefully adjusting or removing the ones that slow down growth, while protecting public health, safety, and the environment.

*The need to think about the global economy in terms of supply chains which cross national borders. The U.S. needs to make sure that we are part of global supply chains and that we are getting our fair share of the benefits.  And we need new measures of competitiveness that take account of the new world.

This piece is cross-posted at Mandel on Innovation and Growth