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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

The Defense Budget Sleight of Hand That’s Costing You Billions

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Look, I get it. If you’re not a budget wonk, I can understand how you might not care about this stuff. But if you’re a progressive and you’re concerned about the Tea Party destroying the EPA for no good reason, then that’s reason to pay attention.

I’ve written a policy memo about something else that is crucial to understand if we want to even the discussion of getting Defense spending under control: it’s simply vital that we end the practice of supplemental war funding bills.

Wait! Wait! Don’t fall asleep. Seriously. We’ve wasted $200 billion over the last ten years through a little-discussed system of back-door Pentagon budgeting, which essentially funds the stuff on DoD’s wish list by falsely calling them “emergency war necessities.” Why, for example, did Congress give Don Rumsfeld an $11 billion slush fund to spend as he pleases without any Congressional oversight?

We have to end this systematic abuse of your taxpayer dollars — start reading here to find out how.

Read the policy memo

A Serious Man

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As political handicappers weigh the impact on next year’s elections of Senator Jim Webb’s decision not to seek a second term, this much is certain: His departure will leave the Senate a less interesting place.

Webb is an original: Annapolis graduate, decorated Marine veteran of Vietnam, acclaimed novelist, Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan and, following his improbable 2006 victory, Democratic Senator from Virginia.

Improbable not just because he started way behind, but also because he had previously been a Republican; because this erstwhile warrior rode a tide of anti-war sentiment to victory; and, because he is anything but a natural politician.  A private, self-contained man, Webb does not lust for the limelight or feed on public adoration.  He doesn’t like to press the flesh or ask fat cats for money. He is essentially a writer whose political model was the late intellectual-turned-legislator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

While marching to his own beat, Webb has quietly made his mark in the Senate over the past four years. He successfully pushed an expansion of G.I. Bill-style benefits for veterans, and drawn attention to an issue that isn’t on the nation’s political radar but should be: America’s overstuffed prisons and indiscriminate sentencing policies that lock up too many non-violent offenders. Following his own passions, Webb has specialized in foreign affairs, focusing especially on East Asia.

Also like Moynihan, Webb’s outlook has been shaped by a strong ethnic consciousness. Just as Moynihan drew on his Irish background in his studies of the ethnic melting pot, Webb, in Born Fighting and other books, has chronicled the Scots-Irish experience in America. Settled on the America frontier, Scots-Irish Protestants pushed relentlessly westward, battling Indians (and Mexicans) along the way. They form the core of a genuine warrior culture that, argues German writer Josef Joffe in Uberpower: the Imperial Temptation of America, has mostly disappeared from Europe but remains a key element of American exceptionalism.

Webb’s departure will be a significant political loss for Democrats, but not because it may put his Senate seat in jeopardy. More fundamentally, Webb is a rarity in today’s contemporary Democratic Party: a leader with an intuitive feel for the interests and values of white working class voters. Once the mainstay of the progressive New Deal coalition, their defection to the Republicans led to a generation of GOP ascendancy in national politics.

More than most Democrats, Webb has thought hard how about to win them back. He has chided his party for exhibiting anti-military attitudes, and for pushing economic policies that favor elites who profit from globalization to the detriment of working families, whose incomes have stagnated as good jobs have vanished over the last two decades. Bravely, he has taken on the “diversity” industry that promotes group preferences in hiring, government contracting and college admissions, even for recent female and minority immigrants who can by no stretch of the imagination be classified as victims of U.S. racism.

As it happens, the modern Democratic Party emerged under Andrew Jackson, America’s first Scots-Irish President. The “democracy” as it was often called was the party of ordinary people, while the Whigs represented economic and social elites. Much of middle America now feels estranged from the party of the people.

That’s an existential dilemma for progressives, not just a political problem. Jim Webb understands that, which is why I’m sorry to see him go.

The Coming Republican Crack-up

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

I am hardly surprised to read today’s news that the House Republican leadership is losing floor votes due to mini-revolts within the party. With 87 freshmen and a large contingent of Tea Party types who came to Washington with a head of steam and little loyalty to the Republican establishment, it always seemed dubious to me that anybody short of Joseph Stalin was going to be able to keep this coalition together. And you can say all the mean things you want about John Boehner; he is no Joseph Stalin.

Four weeks in, and not everybody in the Republican caucus is going along with what was supposed to be routine vote to temporarily extend anti-terrorism provisions in the Patriot Act. Though surely the bigger issue is that the party’s most conservative members are demanding $100 billion in domestic cuts instead of the mere $40 billion originally planned. My prediction: this is but a preview of a coming internecine war within the Republican Party.

The reasons for this are straightforward. By taking back the House on the wave of the mad-as-hell Tea Party voters, Republicans got a radical faction that demanded and frankly expected something big and revolutionary to happen. And if they didn’t get that something big and revolutionary they would damn well yell and scream trying.

As I wrote back in November: “Good luck, Speaker Boehner: If you aren’t aggressive enough, you will lose the mad-as-hell Tea Party voters. But if you are too aggressive, you will lose the majority of independents who are worried you are going too far. And you’ll need to please both to keep your majority.”

Being minority leader is easy, especially in the House. The instructions are simple: Vote no. Always. Do everything you can to embarrass and undermine the majority party. And if you throw enough sand in the gears, you can successfully campaign on how ineffectual the majority party has been. Stay disciplined. You will have your chance.

Being majority leader is hard. Once your team is in power, everybody has their ideas about what they want to do, and everyone thinks it’s their turn now. Being majority leader is especially hard when a significant part of your caucus is backed by an angry base hungry for a purifying hot tub time machine journey back to 1789, when America was a small upstart nation of farmers and healthcare involved leeches.

I suspect what we are seeing is just the beginning of a coming crack-up. And a lot of this is going to be over spending cuts.

The main fault line is not hard to follow: Republican leaders like John Boehner have been around politics long enough to know that when you start cutting (or even threatening to cut) programs, people who benefit from those programs get upset. Really upset (see:  attempt to privatize Social Security).

But the Tea Party base is riled up, and whatever Republican leaders propose, they are always going to be convinced that MORE is needed. Here are some of what I take to be representative comments from a National Review article on how Republican leaders are trying to come around to the $100 billion in cuts:

“Slash? Considering the size of our current and projected debt, $100 billion is but a nick.”

“back to 2008 level is at least 500 billion in cuts. Promise is not kept”

“I smell a rat. It’s inconceivable that more money cannot be cut from this bloated budget.”

So, stay tuned. These folks are not motivated by practical or even political concerns. They are motivated by a kind of messianic ideology. These are the people who don’t believe in compromise. So once more, good luck Speaker Boehner. Though really, I don’t think even luck can save you now.

Wingnut Watch: What to Look For at the CPAC Meeting

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Tomorrow every wingnut’s attention will be on Washington, where the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) begins its annual meeting and vetting session for Republican presidential candidates. The three-day affair will end with a straw poll of attendees that becomes, for better or worse, a data point in the nominating process (last year’s straw poll was sort of ruined, according to most accounts, when Ron Paul’s college-aged supporters packed the room and won it for him). The significance of the event has probably been increased by the late-developing presidential field; this really does represent, as Michael Shear of the New York Times put it yesterday, the “starter’s pistol” for the 2012 cycle.

There’s always some maneuvering about who shows up and doesn’t show up, and who’s behind the scenes manipulating things, at CPAC meetings. But this year is kind of special in that there has been a sustained and ostensibly ideological effort to boycott the event from the right. It’s been organized by social conservatives who are unhappy that a gay conservative group—known as GOProud, which is distinct from the better-known Log Cabin Republicans in that it is more explicitly conservative on issues other than GLBT rights—has been allowed to become one of the meeting’s many sponsors.

More generally, elements of the Christian Right may be using this brouhaha to send a message that they will not accept subordination to those in the conservative movement who demand an exclusive focus on fiscal issues. Indeed, in addition to the GOProud’s inclusion, one of the grievances against CPAC among social conservatives is the very fact that Mitch Daniels has been given a featured speaking slot, presumably as a possible 2012 presidential candidate. Daniels has enraged the Cultural Right by calling for a “truce” in the culture wars, which from their point of view means a continuation of the GOP’s longstanding refusal to go beyond lip service on issues like abortion, gay rights and church-state separation.

There’s a secondary behind-the-scenes issue with CPAC that’s drawn less attention outside the fever swamps of right-wing internecine warfare: anger among Islamophobes at the inclusion of a group called Muslims for America, which noted neoconservative agitator Frank Gaffney has attacked as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood. This brouhaha in turn reflects long-standing hostility among some conservatives to the efforts of anti-tax commissar Grover Norquist, long a fixture at CPAC meetings, to legitimize Muslim-American organizations and convince Republicans to pursue Muslim voters.

Finally, some conservatives have always had issues with CPAC due to concerns over the alleged financial irregularities of David Keene, long-time head of the American Conservative Union, the primary sponsor of the event. It’s often hard to untangle the personal from the ideological in these disputes, but they both definitely exist.

In any event, eight significant conservative organizations have joined the boycott of this year’s CPAC conference, the most prominent being the Heritage Foundation and the Family Research Council. But the boycott hasn’t had much of an effect on the would-be presidents invited to speak. According to Slate’s Dave Weigel, no-shows by Sen. Jim DeMint and House Republican Study Committee chairman Jim Jordan may be partially attributable to sympathy for the boycott, and/or for the complaints of social conservatives that their agenda is being deep-sixed.

It’s also possible that the most notable no-shows, Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, are being influenced by it; it’s hard to say, though in an interview with Christian Right journalist David Brody, Palin seemed to be saying in her elliptical manner that she had no problem with GOProud’s inclusion in the conference. Palin has now found reason to skip four CPACs in a row, and some of her detractors say she simply does not want to speak without a hefty fee and an unchallenged spotlight.

Others have interpreted Huckabee’s and Palin’s decision to take a pass as indicating they really aren’t running for president in 2012. Influential Iowa Republican activist Craig Robinson took this tack in ranking the presidential candidates’ potential appeal in his state’s pivotal caucuses, refusing to list Huckabee and Palin as members of the potential field.

So background noise aside, what should astute observers look for at CPAC, particularly in the cattle-call series of “featured speeches” that begin with Michele Bachmann tomorrow and conclude with fiery Tea Party congressman Alan West of Florida on Saturday? Obviously the straw poll results—and the frantic efforts of the winner and the losers to spin them—will be of interest. The speeches may get tedious to non-conservatives; this is not a venue for truth-telling challenges to conservative shibboleths, and the smell of red meat will be overpowering. You can count on metronomic shout-outs to the power and the glory of the Tea Party Movement, and vast quantities of Obama-bashing.

Since no one can rival Michele Bachmann in appealing to the conservative id, I’d keep an eye on her speech, particularly since she’s playing with the idea of running for president (probably if Palin does not run), and could be formidable in Iowa. Similarly, a much longer long-shot for the presidency, John Bolton, could use his Saturday address to play off the news from Egypt and challenge both the administration and his fellow-conservatives to treat the disturbances in the Middle East as an Islamist threat to U.S. security.

But the most interesting speeches may be from presidential wannabes not known for their ability to get conservative crowds growling and roaring. Tim Pawlenty, for example, is putting together a credible Iowa campaign and seems to be every Republican’s second choice, but desperately needs to show he can fire up the troops. Mitt Romney (who won the CPAC straw poll at this point in the 2008 cycle) needs to recapture the mojo that made him the “true conservative” candidate four years ago, particularly now that he’s being generally depicted as representing what’s left of the moderate tradition in the GOP. Rick Santorum is a good bet to bring the grievances of the Christian Right into the open. Haley Barbour could really use a speech branding himself as something other than a former tobacco lobbyist who can raise large stacks of cash when he isn’t displaying an unfortunate nostalgia for the Old South.

It should be a good show, and an illustration of the hard-core Right’s emergence from the sidelines of Republican politics into the very center of power and attention.

Photo by Gage Skidmore