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The Bunning Blockade Ends

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY), who had held up Senate passage of a $10 billion short-term benefits extension for days, finally relented yesterday and allowed the measure to come for a vote. Bunning’s objection to unanimous consent to pass the package resulted in the elapsing of funding for a host of federal programs, including infrastructure projects, unemployment benefits, and Medicare payments.

The Kentucky senator, who is retiring after this year (with a helpful nudge from his fellow Republicans), had demanded that Democrats find offsets in the budget for the legislation. Democrats retorted that the bill was a short-term emergency measure that did not fall under “pay-go” rules. (Democrats, on a party-line vote, reinstituted “pay-as-you-go” rules in January.)

The Bunning blockade proved to be a heaven-sent illustration of Republican obstructionism and heartlessness. McClatchy came up with a handy graphic depicting its state-by-state effects:

Even as the blockade stretched over the first couple of days of this week – leaving about 1.2 million unemployed people high and dry, 2,000 Department of Transportation workers furloughed, and numerous projects halted – some of Bunning’s colleagues actually voiced their support for his actions. Sen. John Cornyn (TX) said:

It’s not fun to be accused of having no compassion for the people who are out of work, the people for who these benefits should be forthcoming, and I believe will be forthcoming. But somebody has to stand up, finally, and say enough is enough, no more inter-generational theft from our children and grandchildren by not meeting our responsibilities today.

Meanwhile, Sen. Jon Kyl (AZ), in response to Bunning’s filibuster of unemployment compensation, helpfully noted: “In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.” Even newly minted Sen. Scott Brown gave Bunning’s efforts a thumbs-up:

The perception in Massachusetts and other parts of the country is that Washington is broken. And if it takes one guy to get up and make a stand, to point out that we need a funding source to pay for everything that’s being pushed here, I think that speaks for itself.

Here’s the best part: Bunning, along with every Republican in the Senate, voted against “pay-as-you-go” legislation. Republicans had thundered that the pay-go bill was a political fig leaf and that Democrats weren’t really serious about budget sanity. Considering that previous pay-go rules elapsed in 2002 under the Republicans’ watch, and that they also presided over the ballooning of the deficit, I suppose they’re experts on the subject.

About Those “Green Shoots” of Moderation

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Yesterday I wrote about the conservative effort to convince the news media and others that crazy people were being kept under control by the Tea Party Movement and the Republican Party. There’s an even less credible media narrative kicking around that was pursued the same day by Janet Hook of the Los Angeles Times: Republican moderates are making a comeback!

If you understandably missed this development, here’s how Hook puts it:

With healthcare legislation mired in partisanship, “tea party” activists on the march and GOP leadership dominated by conservatives, Capitol Hill looks like a parched landscape for the withered moderate wing of the Republican Party.But green shoots are sprouting in Washington and on the campaign trail. A small band of Republican moderates in the Senate broke a logjam on jobs legislation. They added to their ranks with the arrival of another New England Republican, Scott Brown. And several moderate Republicans are in a good position to win Senate seats in November.

The article is loaded with qualifiers of this dubious proposition, but not enough of them. The jobs bill where “Republican moderates” — including Tea Party favorite Scott Brown — offered a few votes for cloture was a vastly watered-down $15 billion measure that included a payroll tax credit for employers long beloved of Republicans (indeed, that’s why it was in the bill). Once cloture was invoked, 13 GOPers voted for the bill, including such decidedly non-moderate senators as James Inhofe (OK), Richard Burr (NC) and Hatch (UT). Indeed, the only reason the bill was even controversial for Republicans is that it was offered by the Democratic leadership in lieu of a much more expensive and tax-cut laden bill worked out between Sens. Max Baucus (D-MT) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA)  that most Democrats intensely disliked. Anyone expecting this development to lead to an outbreak of bipartisanship or a breakdown of Republican obstruction is smoking crack.

Hook’s optimistic spin on “moderate Republican” prospects for election to the Senate is equally off-base. She cites Rep. Mark Kirk (IL), Rep. Mike Castle (DE), Gov. Charlie Crist (FL), former Rep. Tom Campbell (CA), and former Rep. Rob Simmons (CT) as potential additions to the “moderate” ranks. Kirk moved hard right to win his primary, and is running even with his Democratic opponent. Campbell is best known at present as the object of primary opponent Carly Fiorina’s cult favorite “demon sheep” web ad; I’d bet serious money he doesn’t win his primary, and the winner likely won’t beat Democrat Barbara Boxer, either. Simmons is struggling against a well-financed primary opponent, and is trailing Democrat Richard Blumenthal by double digits. Crist is political toast. I’ll grant that Castle is in good shape, and has a quite moderate record (so far). But even if Castle and Kirk win, their election would no more than offset the retirements of George Voinovich and Judd Gregg in the less-than-loudly-conservative ranks. And Hook also doesn’t mention that at least two GOP senators who occasionally cooperate with Democrats, Bob Bennett and John McCain, could get purged in primaries.

As for the forward-looking optimism of Hooks’ “green shoots” metaphor, it should be noted that Castle is 70 years old; Simmons is 67; Campbell is 56; Crist is 53; and Kirk is 50. Even by the geriatric standards of the Senate, this group ain’t exactly the wave of the future. They also don’t look much like America.

Sure, if the Republlican caucus in the Senate expands significantly this November, it is going to include a handful of members who don’t regularly howl at the moon about “socialism.” But any suggestion that the ancient tribe of moderate Republicans is much more than an anthropological curiosity these days is just not credible. It says a lot of the direction of the GOP that the early 2012 presidential favorite of “moderates” appears to be Mitt Romney, who spent the entire 2008 cycle campaigning as the “true conservative” in the race.

If words like “moderate” have any real meaning, it’s not a word that should be applied to any major faction in today’s Republican Party.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Gang of Eight Isn’t Enough

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As an ex-intelligence guy, I’m particularly sensitive to intel’s uncomfortable place in American politics. Because the intelligence community is — by design — inherently secretive, it’s an easy punching bag for politicians looking to score cheap points because they know it can’t publicly respond. Who’s at fault for the Christmas Day bombing? Blame the intelligence community! Need to justify a hard line on Iran in the face of a lukewarm 2007 National Intelligence Estimate? Blame the intelligence community! Who should have stopped the Fort Hood tragedy?  … I think you know where I’m going.

The point is that though the intelligence community needs continued reform, in each of the above cases, it assumed an undue share of responsibility for each incident.

Naturally, then, I got a bit nervous reading that the Gang of Eight — the group of leading members of Congress who are regularly briefed on sensitive intelligence matters — is about to be widened. It follows that increasing Congress’s access to highly classified national security activities will lead to a greater risk of premature public disclosure for political motives.

However, Gang of Eight disclosure reform was necessary in the wake of the post-9/11 dual domestic eavesdropping and torture scandals. If in those cases the Bush administration had informed a wider congressional audience, perhaps the respective congressional oversight committees could have better done their jobs. Because what’s the point of having oversight if there’s nothing to oversee?

It appears as though this deal, which has been worked out but still needs to be passed in the intelligence authorization bill, strikes the right balance between politics, oversight, and national security. In broad strokes, the president would have to notify both intelligence committees that there had been an intelligence disclosure to the Gang of Eight, and provide the full committees with “general information on the content of the finding.” Of course, the devil is in the details — the White House’s interpretation of “general information” will probably differ from the Hill’s.

Even so, here’s the kicker: any one of the eight (theoretically acting on behalf of another committee member) could register opposition to the proposed intelligence operation with the Director of National Intelligence, thereby (hopefully) preempting unnecessary press disclosures.

The end result should create better oversight that pressures the intelligence community to remain within the law, while removing incentive for Congress to go public. Fingers crossed.

President Obama’s Letter: Setting up the Final Push

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The White House today released a letter from President Obama pointing a way forward for passing health care reform. True to the course that he set at the Blair House summit last week, he stressed the areas of agreement between the two parties, even as he acknowledged some unbridgeable differences.

A considerable portion of the letter — and the part that has gotten everyone’s attention — goes into detail about four GOP ideas that the president said he would like to see in any final package. The president writes:

1. Although the proposal I released last week included a comprehensive set of initiatives to combat fraud, waste, and abuse, Senator Coburn had an interesting suggestion that we engage medical professionals to conduct random undercover investigations of health care providers that receive reimbursements from Medicare, Medicaid, and other Federal programs.

2. My proposal also included a provision from the Senate health reform bill that authorizes funding to states for demonstrations of alternatives to resolving medical malpractice disputes, including health courts. Last Thursday, we discussed the provision in the bills cosponsored by Senators Coburn and Burr and Representatives Ryan and Nunes (S. 1099) that provides a similar program of grants to states for demonstration projects. Senator Enzi offered a similar proposal in a health insurance reform bill he sponsored in the last Congress. As we discussed, my Administration is already moving forward in funding demonstration projects through the Department of Health and Human Services, and Secretary Sebelius will be awarding $23 million for these grants in the near future. However, in order to advance our shared interest in incentivizing states to explore what works in this arena, I am open to including an appropriation of $50 million in my proposal for additional grants. Currently there is only an authorization, which does not guarantee that the grants will be funded.

3. At the meeting, Senator Grassley raised a concern, shared by many Democrats, that Medicaid reimbursements to doctors are inadequate in many states, and that if Medicaid is expanded to cover more people, we should consider increasing doctor reimbursement. I’m open to exploring ways to address this issue in a fiscally responsible manner.

4. Senator Barrasso raised a suggestion that we expand Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). I know many Republicans believe that HSAs, when used in conjunction with high-deductible health plans, are a good vehicle to encourage more cost-consciousness in consumers’ use of health care services. I believe that high-deductible health plans could be offered in the exchange under my proposal, and I’m open to including language to ensure that is clear. This could help to encourage more people to take advantage of HSAs.

None of those suggestions should surprise anyone who saw the summit or has been paying attention to the president on health care the last few months. Three of the four touch on cost control, which is also not a surprise considering that’s the one area that both sides agree needs to be addressed (although only one party seems to be willing to actually pass legislation to do something about it). As TNR’s Jonathan Cohn rightly points out, the fraud and Medicaid payment proposals should win Democratic support, while the other two might have more trouble.

The key part of the letter, however, comes at the end:

I also believe that piecemeal reform is not the best way to effectively reduce premiums, end the exclusion of people with pre-existing conditions or offer Americans the security of knowing that they will never lose coverage, even if they lose or change jobs.

The president, who is scheduled to speak tomorrow to chart his way forward for passing reform, here seems like he’s laying the groundwork for Congress to go down the path everyone has already discussed: passage by the House of the comprehensive bill that the Senate has passed, and a sidecar reconciliation bill to “fix” parts of the bill that House members find objectionable.

What’s important, too, is the language that he uses to justify the continued push. If cost control was the issue on which he could reach out to Republicans, coverage and affordability for ordinary families are the talking points as far as selling reform to the public and to the Democratic caucus. Ending exclusions based on pre-existing conditions, lowering out-of-pocket costs, keeping coverage even after losing your job: these are all hugely popular and marketable ideas. The Democrats have thus far done a poor job of explaining the kitchen-table benefits of reform. But those benefits are real, and they will redound to the benefit of the party who can make reform happen, something Obama seems to understand.

The Republican Civil War: Your Guide to This Year’s Primaries

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

All across the country, Republicans are fantasizing about a gigantic electoral tide that will sweep out deeply entrenched Democratic incumbents this November. In their telling, this deep-red surge will be so forceful as to dislodge even legislators who don’t look vulnerable now, securing GOP control of both houses of Congress.

But could this scenario really come to pass? That will depend, in part, on what type of Republican Party the Democrats are running against in the fall.

Hence the importance of this year’s Republican civil war. In a string of GOP primary elections stretching from now until September, the future ideological composition of the elephant party hangs in the balance. Many of these primaries pit self-consciously hard-core conservatives, often aligned with the Tea Party movement, against “establishment” candidates — some who are incumbents, and some who are simply vulnerable to being labeled “RINOs” or “squishes” for expressing insufficiently ferocious conservative views.

Below is your guide to this year’s most important ideologically-freighted GOP primaries and their consequences. Confining ourselves just to statewide races, let’s take them in chronological order:

TEXAS, MARCH 2: Today’s showdown is in Texas, where “establishment” Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is challenging conservative incumbent Governor Rick Perry. Perry, who won only 39 percent of the vote in a four-candidate race in 2006, spent much of the last year cozying up to Tea Party activists and occasionally going over the brink into talk of secession. He seemed to have the race against the Washington-tainted Hutchinson well in hand, until a third GOP candidate, libertarian/Tea Party favorite Debra Medina, started to surge in the polls early this year.

Medina’s candidacy once threatened to knock Perry into a runoff or even displace Hutchison from the second spot. But then Medina went on “Glenn Beck” and expressed openness to the possibility that the federal government was involved in the 9/11 attacks. Still, it’s not clear Perry will clear 50 percent. An expensive and potentially divisive runoff would weaken him against the Democratic candidate, Houston Mayor Bill White, who looks quite competitive in early polling.

INDIANA, MAY 4: In the Hoosier State, right-wingers are flaying each other. Former Senator Dan Coats, a relatively conservative figure with strong “establishment” support, faces three even more conservative rivals in the race to succeed Evan Bayh. Coats is a longtime favorite of religious conservatives and an early member of the evangelical conservative network which author Jeff Sharlet dubs “The Family.” He’s secured early endorsements from D.C.-based conservative leaders Mike Pence and James Bopp (an RNC member who authored both the “Socialist Democrat Party” and “litmus test” resolutions). But his Beltway support has created a backlash in Indiana, and some Second Amendment fans recall that Coats voted for the Brady Bill and the assault-weapons ban. Coats is also smarting from revelations that he’s been registered to vote in Virginia since leaving the Senate, and working in Washington as a lobbyist for banks, equity firms, and even foreign governments (his firm represented—yikes—Yemen).

With the vote coming so soon, hard-core conservatives probably won’t have time to unite behind an alternative; some favor Tea Party-oriented state senator Marlin Stutzman, while others are sticking with a old-timey right-wing warhorse, former Representative John Hostetler. But if they do, and Coats loses, it will probably spur a headlong national panic among “establishment” Republicans, even well-credentialed conservatives who haven’t quite joined the tea partiers. Indiana Democrats have managed to recruit a strong Senate nominee in Rep. Brad Ellsworth, who might hold onto Bayh’s Senate seat.

UTAH, MAY 8: Utah Senator Bob Bennett, the bipartisan dealmaker, is in trouble. He voted for TARP, he has been a high-visibility user of earmarks, and, worse yet, he co-sponsored a universal health-reform bill with Democratic Senator Ron Wyden. So right-wingers want his head. Bennett’s defeat has become an obsession of influential conservative blogger Erick Erickson of Red State, and the Club for Growth, the big bully of economic conservatism, has attacked Newt Gingrich for speaking on his behalf.

Bennett’s first test will come on May 8, when delegates to Utah’s state GOP convention will vote on a Senate nominee. If he fails to get 60 percent, he’ll be pushed into a June 22 primary. Bennett faces three potentially credible right-wing challengers, but the “comer” seems to be Mike Lee, a former law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito, who has been endorsed by Dick Armey’s powerful FreedomWorks organization. Since this is Utah, there is no Democrat in sight who is strong enough to exploit such a right-wing “purge.” Bennett’s defeat would only make the Republican Party more conservative, and provide another object lesson to any GOP-er thinking about cosponsoring major legislation with a Democrat.

Bennett’s first test will come on May 8, when delegates to Utah’s state GOP convention will vote on a Senate nominee. If he fails to get 60 percent, he’ll be pushed into a June 22 primary. Bennett faces three potentially credible right-wing challengers, but the “comer” seems to be Mike Lee, a former law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito, who has been endorsed by Dick Armey’s powerful FreedomWorks organization. Since this is Utah, there is no Democrat in sight who is strong enough to exploit such a right-wing “purge.” Bennett’s defeat would only make the Republican Party more conservative, and provide another object lesson to any GOP-er thinking about cosponsoring major legislation with a Democrat.

KENTUCKY, MAY 18: Kentuckians will choose a nominee to replace crotchety conservative Senator Jim Bunning, who, as of this writing, has succeeded in temporarily killing unemployment insurance and COBRA health care benefits in order to protest federal spending. This Republican primary matches conservative Secretary of State Trey Grayson against Rand (son of Ron) Paul. Paul has surprised Grayson’s establishment allies—a list that includes Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell—by surging to a sizable lead. A conspiracy theory-addled ophthalmologist with no political experience, Paul rivals Florida’s Marco Rubio as a Tea Party favorite—which is why Grayson decided to go after him from the right, hitting Paul for wavering on the need for federal action to ban abortion. But Rand has obtained cover on the social conservative front from a champion of anti-abortion politics, Sarah Palin, who endorsed Rand last month. The upshot for Democrats is that one of their candidates, Lieutenant Governor Dan Mongiardo or Attorney General Jack Conway, could have a decent shot at taking over a Republican seat.

IOWA, JUNE 8: This gubernatorial primary has implications for 2012. The big question is whether social conservative hardliner Bob Vander Plaats—who was Mike Huckabee’s Iowa campaign chairman in 2008—can upset former Governor Terry Branstad, a venerable figure who led the state for 16 years before retiring in 1998 (and who has surrounded himself with Mitt Romney acolytes). Branstad, who has a big lead in early general election polls against incumbent Democrat Chet Culver, is no favorite of the right. One leading conservative group, the Iowa Family Policy Center, has pledged to sit out the general election if Branstad is the nominee. The Democrats’ candidate, Chet Culver, is in deep trouble if Branstad wins; but he’s running even or ahead of Vander Plaats in the polls.

ARIZONA, AUGUST 24: Former congressman and talk show host J.D. Hayworth is threatening John McCain, a pariah to many conservatives for championing of immigration reform, among other sins dating back to 2000. (McCain recently gave Hayworth a gift by claiming he had been “misled” by Bush administration officials about the basic purpose of TARP funds in 2008. Not a terribly credible assertion, and it recalls George Romney’s famously self-destructive statement that he was “brainwashed” into supporting the Vietnam War.) McCain will probably survive, given his longstanding popularity in Arizona and help from Sarah Palin. But there’s a wild card: If attorneys for the state Republican Party succeed in overturning Arizona’s open primary law, McCain could go down, providing a graphic illustration of the GOP’s rightward trend since 2008.

FLORIDA, AUGUST 24: McCain’s buddy, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, is sinking like a stone. He’s trailing national conservative superstar Marco Rubio in recent polls, with the trend lines pointing straight down. Conservatives aligned with state’s real power, Jeb Bush, never liked Crist. But he went from “squish” to “enemy” last year by supporting Obama’s economic stimulus, instead of attacking it and pocketing the cash. Crist, though, is benefiting from reports that Rubio allegedly used a state party credit card for personal purchases. But he’s probably toast, just like his famously tanned hide.

NEW HAMPSHIRE, SEPTEMBER 14: In New Hampshire, Attorney General Kelly Ayotte, a National Republican Senatorial Committee recruit of indistinct ideological character, will battle “true conservative” Ovide Lamontagne for the nomination to succeed retiring Senator Judd Gregg. An early poll put Lamontagne within nine points of Ayotte. If Lamontagne wins, he may lose to Democratic Representative Paul Hodes, who polls quite well in contrast.

In sum, the Democrats could well benefit from conservative victories in several of this year’s GOP primaries. But the larger impact of such purges may occur after November 2. By 2012, the economy will likely have improved and turnout patterns will be much more favorable to Democrats. Republicans, on the other hand, would be even more radical than they are today. At that point, an unimpressive Republican presidential field could become fatally weak if the nominating process is dominated by a herd of elephants stampeding to the right.

This item is cross-posted from The Democratic Strategist.

A Pretty Wild Mainstream

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

I don’t quite know exactly where this is coming from, but there’s clearly a media effort underway to show that the conservative movement and the Republican Party are reining in “the extremists” in their ranks, presumably in order to look all ready to govern.

Today’s Politico features a long piece by Kenneth Vogel detailing claims by various conservative and Tea Party spokesmen that the influence of “the fringe” has been grossly exaggerated by “the Left,” and that in fact unruly elements are being ignored or excluded by the Right’s grownups.

“Birthers,” Birchers and militia types, we are told, are being shown the door, and haven’t been that important to begin with, except in the propaganda of the Left.

The door-keepers in Vogel’s account, however, are not a group that would normally strike you as moderately-tempered unless the bar for political sanity is set very low. One is none other than Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation, who told Vogel that activists needed “to control the message and to prevent the tea party movement from being hijacked.” That’s interesting, since Phillips’ recent National Tea Party Convention featured a race-baiting keynote address by Tom Tancredo, another speech by “birther” advocate Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily, and a breakout panel headed by Christian Right extremist Roy Moore. Another is dirty-trickster and ACORN conspiracy theorist Andrew Breitbart, who is credited with disrepecting Farah at Phillips’ event. Still another is Erick Erickson of RedState, that ferocious advocate of strife against “squishes” and moderates of every variety.

If these folk want to keep “the Left” from talking about crazy people on the Right, they might want to make their policing a bit more rigorous than the occasional tip from the coach to stay on the political sidelines. “The Left” did not invent the cosponsorship of the recent Conservative Political Action Conference by the John Birch Society and the militia-friendly Oathkeepers. But more to the point, it’s a disturbing sign in intself that people like Phillips, Breitbart and Erickson are being treated as some sort of “mainstream,” where it’s perfectly normal to call President Obama a socialist, treat Democrats as presumptive traitors, and advocate an array of radical economic and social policies. All the “self-policing of the Right” narrative really shows is how far and fast conservatives have recently moved to what used to be thought of as “the fringe.” It’s cold comfort to learn there is ample frontier territory on the Right that’s well beyond that.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/heroiclife/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Why Does the Country Need an Air Force?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Okay, okay… simmer down there. Before you go accusing me of being a commie-loving freedom-hater, I’m not asking that question. But General Norton Schwartz, the Air Force’s Chief of Staff, is. He continues in the WaPo, “This is our year to look up and out…to ask big questions. Who are we? What are we doing for the nation’s defense?…Where is this grand institution headed?”

Just think about the gravity of those questions. The Air Forces’ FY2011 budget slides in at $170.8 billion, and if the AF’s top general is asking those types of existential questions, I’ll wager that there are quite a few nerves fraying down on contractor’s row in Crystal City.

At the end of the day, they’re good questions. Greg Jaffe’s article frames the tension right now in terms of the “old” Air Force (one whose hierarchy is predicated on daring pilots risking their lives in dog-fights) versus the “new” Air Force (that trains pilots to sit in air-conditioned trailers in Nevada and pilot drones in Afghanistan) as they are involved in America’s current military deployments.

It’s a fascinating juxtaposition to be sure, but I don’t think the article fully captures what’s at stake here. Instead, these questions cut to definitions of basic mission and competency. The Air Force will tell you that it has six core competencies: “air and space superiority; global attack; rapid global mobility; precision engagement; information superiority; agile combat support; and core values.” In the interest of brevity, I won’t get into a full discussion of each here, but rather direct you to the Air Forces’ whizbang of a website. However, if you read through the varying definitions of each core competency, it’s readily apparently why Gen. Schwartz is asking these questions. The USAF dominates the skies and no other country’s air wing could hope to compete with America’s for another 25 years. So “air superiority”? Check. “Global attack”? Ditto. “Combat Support”? Yup. On top of that, it’s not entirely clear whether the AF should be charged with missions like “information superiority” (that doesn’t fly, does it?) or “global mobility” (after all, you can move more stuff on the Navy’s back).

No better example of the AF’s mission conundrum might be the F-22 fighter jet, canceled last year. The F-22 was designed during the Cold War and designed to engage principally in air-to-air combat against a large nation-state air force. Tellingly, not a single one has flown over Iraq or Afghanistan since 2001. Since we already own 187 of them, we aren’t using them in our current deployments, and there isn’t a single air force out there that stands a chance of challenging the USAF’s “air superiority,” we didn’t need to buy any more. Gen. Schwartz and AF Secretary Michael Donley agreed.

It doesn’t seem anyone has great answer to these pressing questions, and I sure don’t either. But if Gen. Schwartz is willing to ask them, the public dialogue over the next year should be fascinating.

The High Court Dismisses the Uighurs’ Case

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

On March 23 the Supreme Court was set to hear Kiyemba v. Obama, the most significant case regarding Guantanamo Bay detainees since it decided that detainees had the ability to challenge their detention through use of the constitutional right of habeas corpus. The question before the court in Kiyemba was whether if a Gitmo detainee is granted release by a federal court through a habeas corpus challenge the executive branch must let him go him even if it meant releasing them into the United States. Today, the court decided to avoid answering that question and sent Kiyemba back to a lower federal court.

Here’s a brief background of the case. The detainees involved in Kiyemba are members of a Chinese ethnic minority called the Uighurs. U.S. forces captured them at a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan shortly after the beginning of operations there. The Uighurs were training to carry out terrorist attacks against China. They eventually ended up at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, and were held there for years despite the fact that they were not deemed to be enemy combatants. They were held because legal constraints prevented the U.S. from transferring them back to China due to the likelihood that they would be tortured — even executed — and the U.S. could not find another suitable country to accept them. The Uighurs filed the Kiyemba suit demanding they be set free even it if meant releasing them into the U.S.

The central issue in Kiyemba is this: What good is the right to challenge detention if there is not also a right to be released from incarceration? It seems logical that when a court decides that a prisoner is not being lawfully held, he is entitled to be released immediately. However, it is not so black and white with the Gitmo detainees.

There are serious concerns over releasing Gitmo detainees on U.S. soil. One is that a court could end up releasing a dangerous detainee because of shaky evidence that couldn’t be used for their prosecution. It has proven difficult for government attorneys to justify the continued detention of some detainees because evidence against them was classified, tainted by questionable interrogation techniques, rests with government operatives still overseas, or is based on questionable statements made by fellow detainees. This means that a dangerous detainee could actually be released into the U.S. because of a lack of reliable evidence to justify their detention.

Another legitimate concern is that even if a detainee was not a danger to the U.S. when they began their incarceration, they are now. As you can imagine, being wrongfully incarcerated by a country for years may lead to some pretty negative feelings toward that country – feelings that could be expressed violently.

Finally, there is the “not in my back yard” argument. No one is going to want former Gitmo detainees in their community. Even though a detainee may not be a legitimate security threat, a volatile situation could be created by citizens that are afraid of or angry at a detainee in their community.

Tackling difficult and complex issues is the Supreme Court’s most important job. Did the court punt on a major issue in this instance? Some might think so, but this case is different — the security concerns involving Gitmo detainees are very real and very serious.

The fact is that there are diplomatic solutions to the problem. In the Uighurs’ case, only five out of the original 22 Uighurs remain at Gitmo. The executive branch has been working hard to relocate them, and had recently persuaded Switzerland to take two of the men. In addition, the other detainees had been offered -– and refused – to be released to the island nation of Palau. The administration argued that those offers changed the circumstances under which the detainees’ challenge was brought in the first place -– an argument with which the court agreed.

By sending it back to the lower court, the Supreme Court forestalled having to rule on a difficult question. Indeed, if the remaining five Uighurs are released to another country, the judicial system will be able to avoid having to make a decision on the case. Once the Kiyemba case is resolved, the executive will have more time to relocate the remaining detainees at Gitmo, and hopefully will be able to right the constitutional ship through diplomatic efforts rather than by judicial order.

Short-Circuiting Ethics

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The House Ethics Committee investigation of House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) has gotten a lot of attention recently. But there’s a new development on the House ethics front that merits a closer look than it will probably receive, at least nationally.

Georgia Rep. Nathan Deal (R) resigned his seat today, supposedly so he could concentrate on his gubernatorial campaign. But as a conservative blogger in the Peach State immediately noted, this makes zero political sense except as a way to short-circuit an ethics investigation of a state contract held by Deal that was about to get underway:

Deal is giving up the turnout advantage for being the sitting Congressman while the vote for his replacement takes place. GA law calls for a special election to replace Deal, and assuming the special election clears the field for the general election, having an unopposed incumbent running in the 9th when the primary vote for Governor takes place is a major campaign disadvantage for Deal.So why would Deal take the hit on turnout?

The House Ethics Committee came down hard on Charlie Rangel last week. The next case up was to look at Deal’s use of his Congressional staff to protect a no-bid State contract here in Georgia. The House ethics committee was due to release their findings in this case any day. Deal’s resignation probably makes this go away.

So, Deal can campaign full time after tomorrow. If he’s no longer a member of Congress, he can’t be on the list of CREW’s most unethical Congressmen anymore.

This is interesting in no small part because Georgia’s crowded Republican gubernatorial primary primary has become something of a quagmire of ethics issues. State insurance commissioner John Oxendine, who has been the front-runner in the polls for many months, is battling a variety of ethics charges relating to his fundraising efforts among the insurance companies he is responsible for regulating. And several other candidates are struggling to overcome the perception of a cover-up of a recent sex-with-a-utility-lobbyist scandal that ultimately forced state House Speaker Glenn Richardson from office.

It probably doesn’t help that Richardson was replaced in the legislature in a special election last week by another Christian Right activist who has admitted an affair with his mother-in-law while his first wife was heavy with child.

The broader lesson is that Republicans are not exempt from the ongoing anti-government, anti-incumbent popular mood. While they certainly want to promote the idea that voters are only interested in punishing politicians who support economic stimulus funds or health care reform, there are other sins that do not bear exposure in the current climate. And wherever GOPers are entrenched in office, as they are in much of the Deep South, ethics problems are rarely too far beneath the surface.

Update: Deal’s resignation, currently slated to take affect on March 8, could affect the outcome of the expected razor-thin vote on health care reform, due to occur early in April. If nothing else, Deal’s action should offest the decision last week by Democratic Rep. Neil Abercrombie’s to resign his House seat for a gubernatorial campaign in Hawaii.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Health Care

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Regardless of the outcome of the Democratic health reform push, one point is obvious: at every turn, they lost the messaging battle to Republicans and the Tea Party. The latest reminder came this morning, as the umpteenth story on budget reconciliation came on the radio. These days, to talk about health care reform is to talk about process — exactly where the GOP wants the conversation to be.

Over the last few weeks, a new narrative has taken hold in health care news: that of a partisan Democratic Party determined to “ram” a bill through Congress. It’s a frame that the GOP has been relentless and disciplined in perpetuating. Some have even taken to calling it the “nuclear option,” which in its previous political incarnation was the name Trent Lott gave the Republican effort in 2005 to change filibuster rules for judicial nominations.

The “nuclear option” as shorthand for budget reconciliation is not only a misnomer, it’s flat-out misleading. Hardly unprecedented, budget reconciliation has been used 22 times since the process was established in 1974. As Jackie Calmes wrote in the New York Times last week, 16 of those times, it was the Republican Party that used it to “ram legislation through on a one-party vote” (at least that’s how House GOP Leader John Boehner describes its use today).

Moreover, reconciliation has been used several times to pass health care legislation. NPR’s Julie Rovner, who has done superb work on the health care story, pointed out that health care provisions ranging from COBRA (it even says so in the name — COBRA stands for Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act) to the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to changes in Medicare and Medicaid have come via reconciliation.

But efforts by reporters like Rovner notwithstanding, the Democrats have already lost this battle as the media have taken the GOP’s cue and fixated on process. The unwarranted magnification of reconciliation is not unlike the media frenzy over Sen. Ben Nelson’s “Cornhusker Kickback,” a bit of horse-trading that was hardly unusual in writing bills, but somehow became the equivalent of a legislative high crime by the time the GOP and the media were done with it.

More than any other piece of legislation in recent memory, health care reform has been debated, negotiated, and written under the unforgiving attention of the 24-hour cycle. This is as close a view as the American public has had to the sausage-making in Washington. They don’t like what they see. Republicans are well aware of this, and continue to point the spotlight on the frequently ugly process.

And so we are now at the current pass. One party has made unprecedented use of the filibuster to prevent anything from being done. The other party is now thinking of using a procedural tactic used nearly two dozen times since 1980, including to pass health care legislation, to break the impasse. While there certainly has been more attention on the abuse of the filibuster of late, that the use of reconciliation is even a story is a problem for Democrats. That Democrats are playing defense on a matter of process speaks volumes about their PR ineptitude, the Republicans’ messaging cohesion, and the media’s ongoing failure to go beyond stenography.

Two More Scooped Up in Zazi Case. Where Are Progressives?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Two men who were already in custody, Adis Medunjanin and Zarein Ahmedzay, were charged (along with Najibullah Zazi) in a plot to attack New York’s subway system. The plot was derailed by federal agents back in September, just days before it was set to be executed.

Details of the plot continued to emerge at the previously scheduled hearing for the two men Thursday when Jeffrey Knox, the assistant U.S. attorney, strongly implied that Medunjanin and Ahmedzay were two of the operatives in the “three coordinated suicide-bombing attacks on Manhattan subways during rush hour.” Knox added that the plot was undertaken at the direct command of al Qaeda’s central leadership. That’s a heavy charge, and I’m normally skeptical of prosecutors making grandiose assertions to attract press attention. But — bin Laden’s direction or no — the fact remains that this was a very real plot with very real consequences.

After three significant arrests, I’ll restate the question I asked the other day: Where are progressives on this one? Yet again, we have a large-scale terrorist plot against a major American target that was successfully thwarted due to the good work and cooperation of our law enforcement and intelligence communities. The civilian court system has already gotten one guilty plea out of the ringleader (Zazi), and he’s continuing to provide intelligence. Progressives should be pounding their chests about a strong victory against a ruthless enemy.

But instead, as Greg Sargent at The Plum Line quotes one Democratic strategist saying, “We’re behaving like the President has a 30% approval rating. On these [national security] issues, Democrats inherently believe no one will believe our arguments” (a quote that admittedly was made before the Zazi guilty plea, though the sentiment still applies).

 

It’s time to snap out of it. I argued before that progressives have to respond to conservative attacks (if they’re brazen enough to criticize the Zazi case…wait a minute, I forgot who we’re dealing with here — of course they’re brazen enough), not on policy grounds, but with forceful rhetoric. National security is an emotional issue for Americans, not a policy one. Using the Zazi case to show our strength and smarts to contrast conservatives recklessness is an argument that continues to resonate. We’ve got great ammo — let’s use it.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/99887786@N00/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

All in on Health Reform

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

There’s something poignant about President Obama’s attempts to reason with congressional Republicans. He keeps hoping that facts, evidence, and logic somehow can penetrate the depleted-uranium armor of conservative ideology. As yesterday’s health summit showed, it hasn’t worked, but a public frustrated with Washington’s tribal politics will probably appreciate the effort anyway.

The summit nonetheless achieved its real purpose, which was not composing differences but illuminating the two parties’ starkly contrasting visions for health care reform so that the voters can make a real comparison. For the past year, Republicans have had the advantage of attacking (often dishonestly) Democrats’ plans without anyone paying much attention to what they have to offer.

The summit put them on the spot, and the clear answer was: not much. Here’s what we learned about what Republicans mean by reform:

First, they don’t much care about health care’s “have nots” – 45 million Americans without coverage. Sure, they favor a modest expansion of coverage to about three million people, but that only begs the question of why the lucky few and not everyone? The answer is that Republicans don’t really believe it’s government’s responsibility to make sure everyone can get access to affordable coverage.

Second, Republicans do care about restraining rising health care costs for those with coverage. But their preferred solutions — medical savings accounts, and allowing people to buy cheaper insurance policies out-of-state — are tilted toward the healthy. The former takes healthy people out of insurance pools, raising premiums for those who remain. The latter allows people to end-run state mandates on the medical services insurance companies must offer. That’s fine for healthy people who can get by with bare-bones coverage, but it doesn’t help the sick. In fact, Republicans generally oppose the insurance market reforms that would prevent companies from cherry-picking healthy customers or dropping people when they get sick.

Third, the GOP has no intention of helping Obama and the Democrats improve their plans, let alone pass them. They feel little pressure to do so, because they think they have the public on their side.

It’s true that polls show majorities are leery of the Democrats’ reform proposals, even if Americans still want Obama to “do something” about health care costs and coverage. Rather than crumble in the face of public skepticism, Obama adroitly used the summit to reframe the health care debate as a choice between action or inaction on one of the nation’s most vexing problems.

The spotlight now shifts to his party. Will liberals torpedo health reform because it doesn’t include the public option? Will moderates play it safe or take a risk for the larger good of their party and their country? Will health care reform be a casualty of that hardy perennial of the culture wars, abortion?

Can congressional Democrats, in short, summon the will and discipline to rise above their own centripetal forces and govern? It should be obvious that failure would reinforce the Republican narrative: the bill was misbegotten in the first place, an overly ambitious, big-government monster that couldn’t even pass muster with Democrats.

Obama has gone all in; now his party needs to follow.

Grumpy Old Party

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

If you are unemployed, or if you are one of the millions of people hanging on to cancelled employer-sponsored health insurance via COBRA, your life will take a turn for the more insecure on Sunday, thanks to Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY), who wants to make a symbolic gesture about federal spending. Bunning is refusing to let the Senate vote on totally noncontroversial extenders for these provisions, which will probably force a cloture vote and at least a week’s delay in restoring unemployment insurance and COBRA.

What makes this weird is that Bunning is taking this action not to secure any concessions on present or future legislation, but to express his grumpiness about something that’s already happened: Senate passage of the first chunk of jobs legislation by a 70-28 vote.

Now you have to appreciate that Bunning is a very angry old man. Never a very genial soul, he was pushed into retirement by his own party because it looked like he would be defeated even in a good Republican year, in part because he’s exhibited some signs of being a few bricks shy of a load. So he’s mad at his colleagues, and maybe even mad at his constituents, for their failure to let him serve in the Senate into his ninth decade of walking the earth.

The most appropriate response to Bunning’s grievances is probably the words the senator himself contemptuously uttered yesterday to Sens. Dick Durbin and Jeff Merkley when they cited the plight of the unemployed and soon-to-be-uninsured in asking him to let the extenders come to a vote: “Tough s__t!” The people he’s affecting with his little fit of pique have a lot more to complain about than Bunning, who’s largely wasted twelve years in the Senate being a grumpy old man. But he is a fitting symbol of the obstructionism of his party in Congress, which knows no bounds and feels no shame.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Does KIPP Get Results?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In education circles, the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), the nation’s largest charter management organization, is considered one of the great success stories in the charter school movement. But as Quick and the Ed’s Chad Aldeman points out, even though an observer of a KIPP classroom can immediately tell the difference, quantitative analyses of KIPP’s real-world effects have been sparse and low-level — which is why the National Bureau of Economic Research’s new study (PDF) of a KIPP charter school in Lynn, Massachusetts, the sole KIPP school in New England, is noteworthy.

As with other KIPP schools across the country, the Lynn school has a long school year that starts in August and includes some Saturdays, and a long school day running from 7:30 am to 5:00 pm. The school has a code of behavior that calls for orderly movement between classes and students to speak only when called upon. The curriculum puts a strong emphasis on basic reading and math skills.

The study was a quasi-experimental evaluation that compared students who attended KIPP with those who wanted to attend but couldn’t get in because of space restrictions. In Massachusetts, charter schools are required to hold a lottery for admission if a school is oversubscribed. Because KIPP Lynn’s enrollees are determined by a randomized lottery, the study was able estimate the causal effect of the program on achievement without the problem of selection bias — the idea that a charter school gets results by “skimming from the top” of a given demographic — tainting the results.

What did the researchers find? KIPP Lynn attendees registered Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) gains of about .12 standard deviations for each year that a student stayed in KIPP. For math, the gains were even larger at .35 standard deviations for each year. The results for limited English proficiency (KIPP Lynn has a high proportion of Hispanic students) and special education students were even more positive.

While it’s just one study for one school, the NBER analysis is a well-designed quasi-experiment that offers robust quantitative evidence for KIPP’s effectiveness. (Aldeman calls it “by far the most rigorous of all the evaluations thus far that specifically focus on KIPP.”) As the researchers point out, KIPP has a replicable model and runs similar schools across the country, and it’s not hard to imagine that KIPP has had similar effects at other sites. Of course, more studies like this are needed to measure KIPP’s results. But in the meantime, the NBER study should embolden charter proponents, who seek to bring demonstrably successful models to areas badly in need of alternatives for students willin and eager to learn.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mlleleela/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

Financial Regulation Is Good — But Consumer Financial Protection Is Better

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Paul Volcker, vanquisher of inflation in the early ’80s as chairman of the Federal Reserve System and now the chairman of President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, said, “[T]he most important financial innovation that I have seen the past 20 years is the automatic teller machine.” While he qualified the comment as a “wiseacre remark,” he stood by it, going on to say, “Indeed, it was quite good in the 1980s without credit-default swaps and without securitization and without CDOs.”

Our friend Bob Litan has a new report out from the Brookings Institution on the benefits from financial innovation over the past thirty years. The report is worth reading in full, but a quick summary of his findings is found in a chart at the beginning of the paper (condensed into one image by Kevin Drum):

Given attitudes like Volcker’s, it might be surprising to see so many “+”s, connoting relative benefits, relative to “-“s, connoting developments that did not improve that part of the economy. (“0” indicates the innovation was a wash.) But that is the reality of innovative financial instruments — they are, by and large, designed to be beneficial, but unmonitored can cause more harm than good. Innovations like credit scoring, collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), and inflation-protected Treasury bonds (TIPS) — all were developed since Volcker was Fed chair. But the benefits from these innovations (increased access to credit, which allows for consumption smoothing) can also lead to abuses of the system (crushing credit card debt, NINA mortgages, balloon payment mortgages) and asset bubbles. These abuses can be swept under the rug if the underlying assets in a CDO are not transparent, and that CDO is sold to an unsuspecting client by an investment bank trading desk.

The status quo is unsustainable, but attempts to ban some of these activities are problematic as well. Proclamations like the Volcker rule — limiting the scope of bank activity — are either too tightly defined to be effective or are so broad they throw out the above benefits with the bathwater. What would be better is to provide transparency in these activities — through clearing credit default swaps (CDS) and other derivatives on exchanges, providing credit terms in an easily understood manner upfront, and eliminating hidden fees — so that all involved know what they are getting into.

Litan also points out one key fact at the end of his paper: we’re not done with financial innovation. He argues that despite the headlines, not all innovation is bad, and there is more to come. He cites the work of Robert Schiller, the Yale professor who has pioneered work in housing price markets — designed to give homeowners protection they currently don’t have against a fall in the value of their home — and counter-cyclical tax policy, as an obvious source of financial innovation that is for the good.

But Litan concludes by noting that the market — not government — will continue to drive innovation, but “policymakers must be better prepared in the future than they were before the financial crisis to step in — first with disclosure standards and possibly later with more prescriptive rules” to prevent crises like the most recent one from happening again. The one area where he sees a more active government role is in consumer finance, an area in which a robust Consumer Financial Protection Agency will be key.

Walking Dead Incumbents

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

To distract myself from the intense desire to scream while listening to Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) speak at the health care summit, I read a fine post by Nate Silver that explodes the myth that incumbents who don’t hold a majority in early polls are already toasty if not toast. This myth is being used by Republicans to declare a lot of Democrats as walking dead long before campaigns actually develop. Turns out, though, the available evidence doesn’t support that proposition. Here’s Nate’s conclusion:

1) It is extremely common for an incumbent come back to win re-election while having less than 50 percent of the vote in early polls.2) In comparison to early polls, there is no demonstrable tendency for challengers to pick up a larger share of the undecided vote than incumbents.

3) Incumbents almost always get a larger share of the actual vote than they do in early polls (as do challengers). They do not “get what they get in the tracking”; they almost always get more.

4) However, the incumbent’s vote share in early polls may in fact be a better predictor of the final margin in the race than the opponent’s vote share. That is, it may be proper to focus more on the incumbent’s number than the opponent’s when evaluating such a poll — even though it is extremely improper to assume that the incumbent will not pick up any additional percentage of the vote.

Nate goes on to say that a much narrower version of the “50% incumbent rule,” which focuses on polls taken late in an election cycle, has more merit, but isn’t really a “rule” either. On the other hand, incumbents who register at above 50% in early polls do typically win. This ought to be kept in mind by Republicans who are fantasizing about a late “wave” that will sweep popular Democratic incumbents (and there are some) out of office.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.