Category: Uncategorized

PPI LAUNCHES ONLINE HOME FOR PRAGMATIC PROGRESSIVES

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

ProgressiveFix.com offers an alternative to polarized online debate

WASHINGTON, DC – Amid mounting public frustration with America’s deadlocked political system and an increasingly polarized discourse, the Progressive Policy Institute launches ProgressiveFix.com.

“The time is ripe for the first true online home for the progressive center,” said Will Marshall, president of PPI. “We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a lasting majority, but only if progressives govern effectively.”

ProgressiveFix.com offers a new platform to advance innovative ideas for progressive reform that will also serve as a gathering place for pragmatic progressives.

Progressive Fix is the new face of a think tank that, over the past two decades, has helped to modernize and reshape the progressive agenda. Called “Bill Clinton’s idea mill” in the previous decade, PPI generated many pioneering policy ideas including national service, work-based social policy and public charter schools.

ProgressiveFix.com will feature blog posts, policy memos, reports and book reviews from an eclectic mix of established names and rising stars in the progressive community. Among the bylines that will grace the site in the coming weeks include Ed Kilgore, Jagdish Bhagwati, William Galston, Jeremy Rosner, Elaine Kamarck, Clay Risen, Scott Winship and David Rothkopf.

“Building a sustainable progressivism will require tempering ideological passion with pragmatism, expanding, not narrowing our appeal to the electorate and standing up to special interests, even on our own side,” said Marshall.

PPI and ProgressiveFix.com will stand for a focused agenda that:

  • Promotes a progressive national security strategy
  • Champions economic entrepreneurship and innovation
  • Makes America the world’s leader in clean energy
  • Modernizes our infrastructure
  • Restores fiscal responsibility
  • Reforms public education to ensure equal opportunity for every child

For more information, visit www.progressivefix.com or contact Steven Chlapecka by email schlapecka@ppionline.org or via phone 202.525.3931.

# # #

The Morning After Health Care Reform: A Progressive Fiscal Wake-Up Call

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Regardless of whether health care reform is ultimately signed into law — and momentum makes it increasingly likely, if far from certain — the historic passage of the House bill constitutes a remarkable legislative accomplishment. More than that, however, the bill would give millions of Americans health security. Under the status quo, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 19 percent of Americans will be uninsured in 2019. The House bill would reduce that figure to six percent (see Table 3). It’s an achievement progressives should cheer.

That said, I’ve heard and read a number of critiques of the House and Senate bills that give reason for concern as well. Tellingly, these critiques have almost all come from outside the progressive community. The intra-progressive health care reform debate — make that the absence of a debate — has revealed a depressing with-us-or-against-us mindset that we like to think is only a conservative malady. But if health care reform is enacted in the coming months, progressives will need to focus sincerely on a problem to which they have paid only lip service over the last few months, one that reform is sure to exacerbate: the perilous fiscal health of the federal government.

The Grim Deficit Outlook

I know — it’s soooo 1995 to worry about such things. But we face a serious problem, and despite the promises of reform advocates, the legislation being considered is not going to make it less severe. CBO projects the 2009 deficit to be 11.2 percent of GDP, which will put the federal debt held by the public at 53.8 percent of GDP (see Tables 1-2 and 1-6). Not since 1945 has the deficit been this big (see Table 1.2). Not since 1955 has the federal debt been so large (see Table 7.1). And all that understates the magnitude of the problem. If you take into account the net liabilities incurred in the federal government’s takeover of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GM, and Chrysler, and the bank assets purchased as part of TARP, things look far worse — we could potentially be understating deficits over the next 10 years by as much as 80 percent.

Assume for the moment that health care reform does not pass. Deficits actually won’t look quite so bad in two or three years, but they will increase steadily thereafter (see Figure 1-2). Under realistic assumptions, the national debt will continue growing as a share of GDP — to roughly 100 percent by 2022 (assuming no losses on those recently purchased financial assets). That is worth restating: our current path will cause the federal debt to be as large as the entire annual output of the U.S. economy within a dozen years (see Figure 1-3). That hasn’t happened since World War II (Table 7.1). And while the national debt was roughly cut in half over the dozen years following the war, after 2022 the national debt would increase at an accelerating rate.

Now the first person to say that health care reform is deficit reduction gets a smack to the head. Yes, the growth in deficits and the debt over the long run anticipated by these projections will be due to rising health costs (see Figure 4-1). And yes, in addition to expanding insurance coverage, cost control has been widely cited as an objective for health care reform. The problem is, the bills under consideration have ended up not taking cost control seriously.

And for good reason, since real cost control under the delivery and insurance systems favored by reform advocates would have proved either too expensive or too intrusive to pass. Alternative systems, such as those envisioned by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), might have been able to control expenditures through progressive cost sharing. (Under Wyden’s proposal, individuals would be subsidized on a sliding scale for the purchase of insurance from among plans that compete on price, with incentives for them to choose more cost-efficient coverage.) But the supposed savings in the House and Senate bills are fictions that reform supporters have been complicit in spreading.

The Illusion of Cost Control

Consider the House bill. The CBO has to take the provisions in the bill at face value, even if they are highly unlikely to ever be implemented. Revenue to pay for the $1.052 trillion dollar gross cost of the insurance expansions comes from a number of sources. Roughly $460 billion would come from raising taxes on those with an adjusted gross income of $500,000 (individual) or $1 million (joint). At least $240 billion would be raised from Medicare cuts to providers (perhaps closer to $300 billion), about $170 billion would come from penalties assessed on individuals and employers for not complying with mandates, and $170 billion would come from reducing payments to managed care plans under Medicare. These and other changes would reduce the deficit over 10 years by $109 billion and could reduce the deficit slightly over the following 10 years.

Now, here’s where advocates — columnists, bloggers, even think tank researchers and economists — have drifted imperceptibly from pontificating to shilling. Put aside the strong likelihood that the Medicare provider cuts are dialed way back (if they are not, the administration’s own Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services predicts that many providers will stop accepting Medicare patients). Put aside the fact that the “doc fix” to reverse most of the provider cuts that were already legislated for coming years will add $210 billion over this same 10-year period when it is passed. The bill’s purported deficit reduction of $109 billion is about two percent of the accumulated deficits from 2010 to 2019 (see Table 1-2). In other words, the House bill would barely make a dent in future deficits under the rosiest of interpretations — and is actually likely to increase rather than decrease them taking into account the anticipated adjustments.

What about the Senate bill? Harry Reid’s mash-up awaits CBO’s final word, but the Baucus bill would cover fewer people and therefore be slightly cheaper than the House bill. The bill’s insurance provisions have a gross cost of $829 billion over 10 years, paid for by a tax on high-premium private health plans (about $200 billion), Medicare provider cuts (about $160 billion), and Medicare managed-care cuts (about $120 billion).

Here, it’s worth noting the sloppiness of some reform proponents’ arguments over the wisdom of pursuing such an ambitious program despite yawning deficits. In a recession, they have argued, we cannot worry about deficits — greater spending is just what is needed to stimulate the economy. With the return of growth, we will have little problem dealing with deficits later.

But the Baucus bill’s 10-year deficit reduction of $81 billion would be achieved by spending essentially nothing in the first four years (from 2010 to 2013). Needless to say, if we still need federal economic stimulus in 2013, we will have bigger problems than deficits.

The effect on deficits is basically neutral for the following six years (see Table 1). Nevertheless, CBO does estimate that the Baucus bill would continue to produce small savings in the second 10 years. Of course, if the Senate follows the path the House is taking, it will include a “doc fix” that will wipe out even these dubious savings.

Why Progressives Should Care About Costs

Meanwhile, all of the magic bullets (the “game changers”) that progressives trumpeted, from the public option to comparative effectiveness research, to IT improvements, to a Medicare Commission that would propose cuts would produce negligible savings in the foreseeable future, according to CBO.

There were “strong” versions of several of these proposals that could have produced cost savings, but they proved too strong for legislators to risk their jobs for. What progressives will get out of health care reform instead is what most really wanted: near-universal coverage.

A worthy goal, no doubt. But if progressives fail to get serious about fiscal responsibility, the consequences — whether in the form of another financial crisis, slow or stalled economic growth, or political abandonment by the sons and daughters of the Perot voters — could undo much of the good that may yet come out of health care reform. Think it has been hard to pass reform? Try raising taxes dramatically to protect it down the road.

Is Reid Wobbling on the “Cadillac Plan” Tax?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

A New York Times editorial today threw its support behind a health reform provision that we’ve backed in the past: an excise tax on so-called Cadillac plans. But the Times‘ endorsement came on a weekend when prospects for the tax seemed to dim.

On Thursday, it was reported that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV) was considering raising the Medicare payroll tax on workers earning $250,000 or more to help pay for health care reform. According to one report, the idea being floated is a half-percent increase in the tax, to raise some $40 billion to $50 billion over 10 years. Another idea is to extend the payroll tax to capital gains and dividends from high-income earners.

Why the decision to tap into a new funding source for the reform package? One reason could be an effort to hike the Senate’s stingier (compared to the House bill’s) subsidies for low-income people. But a likelier reason could be, as the Times reported, an effort by Reid to cut back, if not outright eliminate, one of the Senate’s main financing sources, the excise tax.

If the payroll tax hike ends up replacing the excise tax, it would be an unfortunate development for reform. For months now, some powerful Democratic constituencies have been putting pressure on lawmakers to drop the idea. HCAN, a progressive health reform advocacy group, has come out swinging against it; the AFL-CIO has been running ads like this to scare the public and Congress.

But far from a tax that unfairly targets the middle class, the excise tax on high-cost health plans would actually be progressive. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, the “thresholds for the proposed excise tax are sufficiently high that most health insurance plans would not be affected.” Moreover, such a tax would go some way toward bending the proverbial cost curve:

The proposed excise tax would make a major contribution to slowing the growth of health care costs by discouraging insurers from offering, and firms from purchasing, extremely generous health insurance coverage that can encourage excess health care utilization. That, in turn, would reduce incentives for excessive health care spending.

As employers seek out cheaper, more efficient health plans, the savings then get converted into higher wages for employees. Indeed, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, of the $201 billion in increased revenue the excise tax would bring, only $38 billion would come from the excise tax itself — the rest would come from increased payroll and income taxes from the higher wages and salaries that employees would be paid.

While an increase or expansion of the payroll tax for high-income earners might yield some new and badly needed funds for reform, it would not be a sustainable source, what with health cost inflation growing at a far faster rate than payrolls and the taxes levied on them. The fact is that the excise tax on high-cost health plans simply produces too many good outcomes — revenue generation, cost reduction, wage increases — for progressives to pass up, let alone oppose.

Growing Pains: Scaling Up the Nation’s Best Charter Schools

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The last decade has seen a tremendous boom in charter schools. Charter management organizations (CMOs) have played an increasingly important role in state and national efforts to bring reform to the toughest educational environments. But as a new report from Education Sector points out, CMOs have expanded more slowly and required more resources than supporters had hoped. Ed Sector proposes a series of recommendations to policy makers for CMOs to realize their full potential, including: lifting artificial caps on the number of charter schools that can operate; prioritizing funding for states with level fiscal playing fields for charter schools; standardizing data collection requirements across charter schools; and requiring states to have accountability systems for charter school authorizers.

Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

A new report jointly produced by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation and the Breakthrough Institute compares the U.S.’s competitiveness on the clean energy front with China, Japan, and South Korea. What they found confirms what others have written about of late: that the U.S. is now lagging in the innovation game it once ruled. According to the study, public investments in clean energy in those countries far outpace U.S. investments. If the gap persists, the U.S. will find itself importing the overwhelming majority of the clean energy technologies it deploys, from wind turbines and high-speed-rail materials to solar cells and nuclear-plant equipment. It’s a troubling survey that underscores how much ground the U.S. needs to make up to become a world leader in innovation and green energy.

Explaining Afghanistan Better

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Eugene Robinson is a wonderful writer with whom I quite often agree.

But if such a talented, astute observer of the American political landscape hasn’t deciphered why we’re in Afghanistan, and that those costs are worth bearing, then the White House better prepare for an all-out charm offensive once the strategy and troop-level decisions have been made.

In Robinson’s most recent column, he laments:

Sending more troops will mean more coffins arriving at Dover, more funerals at Arlington, more stress and hardship for military families. It would be wrong to demand such sacrifice in the absence of military goals that are clear, achievable and worthwhile.

And what goals in Afghanistan remotely satisfy those criteria?

[…]

As long as our goals in Afghanistan remain as elusive as they are now, Obama shouldn’t be sending troops. He should be bringing them out.

As I’ve argued countless times, though America has long since grown tired of the seemingly endless wars, there are — and will continue to be — compelling national security reasons to remain in Afghanistan and adopt much of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy.

However, that’s not the point of my post. Rather, it’s that I expect the White House to soon announce another deployment of some 30,000+ troops to Afghanistan. President Obama must be prepared to explain our security interests as he sends more Americans into harm’s way. Distracted, I imagine, by the endless health care debate, the president must soon do a better job of selling the public on his administration’s latest controversial decision.

America and the World: We’re #40!

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

“Not long ago, America’s global leadership in technology innovation was taken as a given,” writes Stephen Ezell in the fall issue of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. Those days are over. In the past decade, America’s competitors have caught up and, in many cases, passed the U.S. Ezell suggests one culprit: all but alone among the world’s top economies, the U.S. does not have a national innovation policy. Ezell makes the case for a comprehensive innovation strategy, seeing in the current economic crisis an opportunity to enshrine innovation as the engine of renewed economic growth.

Race to the Top Begins

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The Department of Education today released the final application for its Race to the Top Fund after a period of public comment and revisions. With the release, the department officially parts the curtain on an ambitious education initiative, one that may well prove to be the closest the Obama reform agenda comes to an unqualified success.

The seriousness with which the administration takes education policy can be seen in gestures substantive – Race to the Top – and symbolic, such as the decision to mark the anniversary of President Obama’s election with an education event in Wisconsin.

The department’s rules for Race to the Top offer states a guideline on how best to steer their education policy. At stake: a $4.35 billion pool of funds that the department will award to states based on their performance in more than 30 criteria. Of that $350 million goes to states to create common-standard assessments. The remaining $4 billion will be up for grabs.

The program’s assessment process involves scoring states in a detailed system that goes up to 500 points. The department’s thinking on reform can be gleaned from the breakdown of scores. Under the rubric of “Great Teachers and Leaders,” the department plans on awarding up to 138 points, 28% of the total, more than any category. That category breaks down into subcategories, with points awarded for measuring student growth, developing evaluation systems, and using evaluations to inform key decisions, among other measures. The message is clear: student improvement and teacher excellence are at the heart of reform.

The other category that receives a large share of the points — 25% — is dubbed “State Success Factors,” which enumerates the ways in which states can present to the department their comprehensive vision for reform. The section asks states to articulate its plans for reform, prove its capacity to carry it out, and enlist the support of school districts. Joanne Weiss, the director of the Race to the Top program, explained in an interview with Education Week that the category aimed to encourage states to really think through their reform strategy. “It became clear that a lot of states were treating [the criteria] as a checklist. There was no big picture,” Weiss said. “Now this is where they build their case.”

The key now is the judging process. The department will select 125 judges from 1,400 applicants to go through and grade the state applications. As the Eduwonk blog points out, “If they’re not strong and keenly attuned to change and reform then this initiative won’t succeed.” Here’s hoping that the department applies the same rigor to that process as it wants the states to apply to theirs.

Ambassador Eikenberry and the Afghan Strategy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Someone — possibly the White House’s man in Kabul himself — seems to be making life tough for U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry. After expressing objections about the Karzai government’s endemic corruption and reliability as a partner, Eikenberry put his thoughts into writing, which then ended up in the low-profile pages of the Washington Post and New York Times.

Yikes.

My first reaction was that Eikenberry leaked the memos himself to publicly turn the screws on Afghani President Hamid Karzai. After all, the only real leverage the Obama administration has right now is to take its football and go home. Impressing that possibility on Karzai as part of the public debate may compel el presidente to make an actual — rather than window-dressing — effort to clean up his act.

Andrew Exum at Abu Muqawama worries that the leak will undercut any sort of credibility Eikenberry had with Karzai. I don’t think that’s true — I’m sure the anti-corruption message was loud and clear, if previously made behind closed doors.

Furthermore, the administration is reportedly leaning towards a counterinsurgency strategy that aims to protect 10-12 major population centers throughout the country. In theory, this means working more with regional governments, tribal leaders, and local warlords in a plausible attempt to bypass Kabul and marginalize Karzai.

Regardless, Eikenberry’s objections underscores for President Obama that an exit strategy should be a more concrete part of the deployment plan. If the Way Out wasn’t included in the strategy thus far, then Eikenberry’s contributions should end up as a net positive.

Dispatches from the Republican Self-Immolation

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

First, from Maine, where a new poll shows that Sen. Olympia Snowe would get trounced in a Republican primary by a more conservative opponent. With the mob whipped up into a RINO-hunting frenzy, the party was willing to lose Arlen Specter, so why not Snowe as well?

Then word from South Carolina that the Charleston County Republican Party censured Sen. Lindsay Graham for his willingness to work with Democrats on climate change and other legislation. Let that sink in for a minute. This isn’t a GOP moderate, but someone whom National Journal ranked the 15th most conservative lawmaker in the Senate — apparently, 14 slots too low for the Republicans of Charleston. As we’ve said here before, if that’s the way Republicans want to run their party, then we progressives have no choice but to step back and let them.

But all is not lost for Republicans. First there were the victories in New Jersey and Virginia last week. This week a new Gallup poll showed that independents now break 52 percent-30 percent in favor of the generic Republican candidate if the midterms were held today.

The new poll should worry Democrats. But the real danger lies in what it might make Democrats do — namely, nothing. It may be tempting to forget the agenda, sit tight, and ride out the storm, but Democrats shouldn’t let the dismal numbers cow them into paralysis, particularly on health care reform. The worst thing that can happen is that nothing happens on health reform. Preserving the status quo on health care would mean disaster for our country’s fiscal future. For Democrats, failure to come through with the end goal in sight will depress the base and convince independents that congressional Democrats can’t get anything done — a surefire formula for electoral disaster.

Reform and Its Discontents

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

It has become fashionable among some progressives to lambast the administration and congressional Democrats for the slow pace and incremental approach they have taken in trying to pass health reform legislation. (For a nice sampling, check out some of the posts and comments at Open Left.)

Ezra Klein highlights one emblematic strain among progressive critics, pointing to a piece by Marcia Angell, an M.D. and senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School, in the Huffington Post. Angell, a single-payer supporter, writes, “Is the House bill better than nothing? I don’t think so…. I would rather see us do nothing now, and have a better chance of trying again later and then doing it right.”

Klein offers a sensible counter-argument:

The idea that a high-profile failure in a moment where a liberal Democrat occupies the White House and Democrats hold 60 seats in the Senate for the first time since the 1970s will encourage a more ambitious success later does not track with the history of this issue, nor with the political incentives that future actors are likely to face. If even Obama’s modest effort proves too ambitious for the political system, the result is likely to be a retreat towards even more modest efforts in the future, as has happened in the past.

Among some progressives, there is a kind of denial about the nature of American reform. They fail to grasp that change, when it has come, has happened incrementally and evolutionarily. The New Republic’s John Judis touched on this yesterday when he pointed out that Social Security, that progressive landmark, was in fact less imposing an edifice when initially constructed in 1935:

That act, when it passed, was a bare shell of what it became in the 1950s after amendment. Benefits were nugatory. And most important, coverage was denied to wide swaths of the workforce, including farm laborers.

Why farm laborers? Well, because Franklin Roosevelt and liberal Democrats needed the vote of racist Southern Democrats who wanted to deny benefits to blacks, most of whom were farm laborers.

To believe that failure on reform today would only lead to a more progressive reform effort tomorrow is delusional, plain and simple. As TNR’s Jon Cohn argues, “You could plausibly claim that the reforms on the table today are more or less what moderate Republicans were proposing under Clinton, just as the Clinton reforms were not that far removed from what Nixon himself wanted in the early 70s.”

And yet for far too many progressives, a failure to perfect health reform now would constitute a defeat of epic proportions. This is why when Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), a single-payer advocate, voted “No” on the House health bill, he received hardly any reproofs from the netroots (Angell praised him), even as they went after other dissenting Dems. (One blogger for Open Left, Mike Lux, did lambast Kucinich – and was then promptly pushed around in his post’s comments section.)

After 70 years of trying to achieve universal health care, progressives are as close as they’ve ever been to that goal. It’s not perfect. It’s not pretty. But let’s not let the perverse allure of being sanctimonious in defeat – an addiction that plagues too many on our side – derail the best shot we have at improving the lives of millions of Americans.

Fort Hood and the Terrorism Question

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Was the attack on Fort Hood terrorism?

Politicians like Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) are being careful not to call terrorism outright, but are beginning to raise the issue.

Addressing the issue of Nidal Hasan’s relationship with a former Virginia-based imam Anwar al-Aulaqi, Hoekstra said, “For me, the number of times that this guy tried to reach out to the imam was significant.” Hoekstra added, “Al-Qaeda and radical jihadists use the Internet to spread radical jihadism….So how much of [Hasan’s] lashing out is a result of…his access to radical messages on the Internet and the ability to interact?”

“I believe that the responses from Aulaqi were maybe pretty innocent,” Hoekstra continued. “But the very fact that he’s sent e-mail…to this guy and got responses would be quite a concern to me.”

While I was tempted to make fun of Hoekstra (“He sent an email?!?!?! You’re right, Congressman, it must be a plot!”), after reading Aulaqi’s post-incident statement praising Hasan’s actions, it’s clear that there is enough cause for concern to warrant a discussion. Aulaqi’s words are pretty chilling: “The only way a Muslim could Islamically justify serving as a soldier in the U.S. Army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal.”

However, based on what we know now, the available evidence suggests that the Fort Hood tragedy was a case of a very sick man who reacted violently to his impending deployment to Afghanistan. In other words, it was not terrorism.

Depending on if you ask the State Department, E.U., or United Nations, definitions of the term will slightly vary. However, all definitions agree that terrorism’s aim is “to provoke a state of terror in the general public or in a group of persons or particular persons, intimidate a population to compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.” (UN Security Council Resolution 1566, 2004)

On balance, Hasan’s case does not meet this standard.

While you could argue that Hasan’s attack was motivated by a 2007 speech where he recommended Muslims should be released from military service as conscientious objectors, that “policy” recommendation was more reflective of his growing objections, mental confusion, and discomfort as a Muslim in the American military. It was personal, not political.

Consider his life story: A second-generation Muslim-American, he joined the military probably more for what it offered (an education) than because of his conviction to serve. His faith grew, and he became more aware of objections to the military’s deployments, eventually hiring a lawyer and offering to repay tuition fees in return for a discharge.

As a psychiatrist, he was exposed to an endless parade of mentally and physically traumatized service members whose experiences no doubt reinforced Hasan’s objections to military service and deployment to a war zone, and placed him in a more fragile mental state.

All the while, he maintained communication with the former imam, Aulaqi (now based in Yemen), whose own (and possibly very different) motivations for hating the U.S. may have indeed influenced Hasan to “do something” about his upcoming deployment. While Congress will also surely question the FBI about what it knew about their communications, hindsight is 20/20, and the bureau’s assessment at the time – that the emails between Aulaqi and Hasan did not warrant an investigation – was appropriate given its finite resources.

But at the end of the day, Hasan acted alone, and was probably driven by being a Muslim-American in the military who was exposed to a series of encounters that degraded his emotional health. Closer to the 2007 tragedy at Virginia Tech, Hasan’s killing spree seems more the product of deep mental instability and personal anxieties that manifested themselves in the most horrific way possible.

On Health Reform, Cost Containment Remains the Missing Piece

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

President Obama’s push for health care reform has provoked so many political sideshows that it’s easy to lose track of the main plot. The most important debate – how to slow the inexorable growth of health care costs – has scarcely begun.

Instead, Democrats spent months wrangling over the public option, which is basically a proxy for the endless debate over the proper size and role of government. Now they are tussling over abortion, that hardy perennial of the culture wars. And the Senate may add immigration to the already combustible mix.

These are, of course, large and important issues in their own right. But they distract progressives from what health reform is really supposed to accomplish. What most Americans want is relief from constantly rising health care costs and the nagging fear that they could lose coverage altogether if they get sick or lose their job. The public also wants a system that leaves no one out, though polls show mounting worry about the cost of guaranteeing universal coverage.

The House bill passed last weekend passes the coverage test. Through a mix of insurance market reforms, public subsidies and a mandate on individuals to buy insurance, it extends coverage to 39 million Americans. That’s as close to universal coverage as we are likely to get, and by itself a major progressive achievement.

But it comes at a stiff price: $1.2 trillion over the next decade. At a time when the federal deficit has tripled in just a year, many Americans think that’s a lot of money to spend. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the House bill includes enough offsetting savings to pay for health reform without adding to deficits. To his credit, President Obama has vowed to veto a bill that isn’t deficit-neutral.

But if it doesn’t aggravate America’s short-term fiscal woes, the House bill fails to deal seriously with the long-term challenge of reducing the unsustainable pace at which health care costs grow each year. That is what drives premiums up for working Americans, helps to price U.S. businesses out of global competition, and escalates spending on Medicare and Medicaid.

Today’s New York Times reports on a “growing revolt” among some Democrats and prominent health care experts over the lack of strong cost controls in the House bill or others under consideration. “My assessment at this point is that the legislation is heavy on health and light on reform,” the Times quotes Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore) as saying. He’s exactly right.

As the action now shifts to the Senate, Wyden and pragmatic progressives need to insist on adding credible measures for “bending down” the health cost curve. The menu of plausible options includes a Medicare Commission with real powers to reduce payments for low-quality or ineffective health care, and strict limits on the federal government’s open-ended tax subsidy for employer paid health plans.

It goes without saying that real cost containment will meet resistance from powerful interests, from doctors to organized labor. Against that, Democrats must weigh the dismal prospect of a health care “reform” that merely makes a deeply flawed system bigger and more expensive, without changing the incentives and behaviors that lead to runaway medical inflation.

Rousing the Rising American Electorate

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

One of the big talking points about the election last week was that Democrats lost independent voters. But a new survey from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner reminds us that they weren’t the only ones the Democrats missed on election night.

The GQR survey of Virginia and New Jersey registered voters (not all of whom voted in the election) confirmed what Ed Kilgore posited the other day: that the story of the 2009 election was the poor turnout of the “Obama Coalition.”

GQR conducted the survey for Women’s Voices. Women Vote, an organization that focuses on political outreach to historically underrepresented groups in the electorate: unmarried women, younger voters, Latinos, and African Americans. GQR dubs this coalition the “Rising American Electorate” (RAE), a group that turned out in historic numbers last year for Barack Obama but trickled to the polls this year. The ones that did vote overwhelmingly chose Democrats Jon Corzine in New Jersey (by 25 points) and Creigh Deeds in Virginia (by 27 points). It’s just that there weren’t enough of them to win the election for Democrats.

The problem facing Democrats is how to motivate the RAE next year. Polls show that Obama is still well-liked personally and that his approval ratings are holding up, despite the nagging recession. But Obama isn’t up for election next year – Democrats are. And while the Republican base is fired up, the Democratic base shows no sign of rousing from its slumber. Couple that with signs that independents are starting to inch to the right and you have a recipe for a bad 2010 for Dems.

Why the U.S. Needs to Ratify a Free Trade Agreement with Colombia

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

A little over one year since his election, President Obama has been tepid at best on the issue of trade. The tariffs on Chinese tires, while not the administration’s finest hour, have not ignited the trade war its detractors feared. But in an era of economic uncertainty, the U.S. needs to reassert its global leadership on free trade. Ratifying a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Colombia would be a good first step.

In 2009, it’s not immediately obvious how to establish trade leadership. The Doha global free trade talks are dead in the water. While there are doubts about the benefits of bilateral trade deals (such as those expressed by Columbia University’s Jagdish Bhagwati), they are a more attainable goal. In his fiscal year 2010 proposal, President Obama said he would be consulting with Congress to try and ratify one or more FTAs, including the one negotiated with Colombia in 2006. Ratifying the Colombia FTA would not just be good economics – it would be good foreign policy.

On October 30, our ambassador signed a deal on the use of Colombian bases in Bogotá. The U.S. had long-standing counter-narcotics flights that were based out of Manta Air Base in Ecuador under an agreement that Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa refused to renew when it expired in July. The agreement with Colombia allows U.S. forces access to seven Colombian military bases for a decade to continue these flights. A ratified FTA also would be a natural complement to the Colombia bases deal. It would show the Colombian people that the U.S. is interested in more than just the narcotics war, but in their economic development as well.

It would also have the added bonus of showing actors like Correa that even if we don’t always see eye-to-eye on every issue, there is benefit to working with the U.S., rather than trying to score political points with hackneyed complaints about Yankee imperialism.

A Colombian FTA would also be a no-brainer economically. We already have effective free trade with Colombia. The Andean Trade Preferences and Drug Enforcement Act (ATPDEA) exempts over 6000 goods from Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia from tariff. The President has indicated he will extend ATPDEA for another year before it expires at the end of December. It’s a move that has broad bipartisan support — Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN) has even recommended ATPDEA be extended to cover Paraguay and Uruguay. But instead of kicking the can down the road another year, and extending what in 1992 was supposed to be a stop-gap act before the launch of a Free Trade Area of the Americas to an 18th year, the Obama administration and Congress should take the opportunity to ratify our FTA with Colombia.

Objections to the Colombia FTA come down to concerns that it will hurt labor and the environment in Colombia or cause job losses here in the U.S. Concerns about labor and the environment have been addressed in a protocol to the treaty adopting the “New Trade Policy Template.” This bipartisan agreement — negotiated between Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) and the Bush administration in 2007 — is made up of six parts covering progressive economic issues such as labor, environment, investment, government procurement, intellectual property, and port security. The job-loss issue is mitigated by the fact that Colombia is a tiny trade partner compared to the U.S., making up less than 1% of our total trade.

But while the costs of a free trade agreement are minimal, there are great benefits to be had. While the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is most often looked at through the prism of U.S.-Mexican economic relations, NAFTA’s greatest benefit has been the democracy dividend Mexico has paid out. When NAFTA was signed in 1992, Mexico had been under one-party rule for 60 years — within a decade, it had transformed into a vibrant democracy. The institutionalization of the rule of law by NAFTA was instrumental in making this happen. NAFTA also provided reassurance during the Tequila crisis of 1995.

Likewise, an FTA can provide Colombia with structural support as it strengthens its democracy. President Álvaro Uribe has accomplished much in his two terms in facing down the FARC guerrillas and drug-traffickers (in many cases now one and the same), but the consolidation of democracy in Colombia is not complete. While he is pursuing a third term in extensive consultation with the public and legislature, a third term does raise questions about democratic structures and the viability of institutions — not individuals — in the country. An FTA with Colombia would help consolidate those institutions more than continuing ATPDEA would.

Finally, an FTA would take some of the capriciousness out of U.S. foreign policy. Trade sanctions under FTA sanctions are caused by economic foul play or failure of democratic systems. Their application would send a strong signal encouraging the rule of law and economic fair play. Under the annual renewal of the ATPDEA, the application of sanctions could signal nothing more than political gamesmanship holding up congressional business.

On a Good Night, A Discordant Note

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Some on the left have been going hard against Democrats for caving on the Stupak amendment in the health care reform bill the House passed on Saturday. The amendment, sponsored by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), prohibits federal funds from going to insurance companies that cover abortions in the health exchanges. Never mind that the House health bill, if it becomes law, would improve the lives of millions of Americans – the Stupak amendment is a stain that can never be erased, according to some in the blogosphere.

Digby, one of the left’s preeminent bloggers, saw the failure extending all the way to “the president himself [who], like many of his elite male cohort, often gives the impression that women’s rights are just another annoying special interest.”

In an earlier post, Digby waxed even more indignant about the Stupak amendment:

I suspect that the leadership decided that abortion was the least important thing they could throw to the slavering Blue Dogs to take home as a victory over the liberals in this debate. And they had to find a hippie to punch to make the thing acceptable to the villagers, so they decided to punch the desperate pregnant girl. She’s used to it.

Since the Republicans have made themselves irrelevant with their obstructionism the Democrats have decided that in order to further the president’s edict to change the tone and further bipartisanship they will just have to compromise with themselves.

Democrats everywhere will now be able to brag about furthering the Godly cause of forced pregnancy, while having also voted to pass health care.

Look, the Stupak amendment was an unfortunate concession to the pro-life faction in the Democratic caucus. I certainly don’t like it. But what would Digby have the Democratic leadership do? Refuse Stupak a vote and risk passage of the final bill? The leadership certainly didn’t think that that was worth the risk – Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) said today that reform “would’ve failed” without the compromise — and I don’t blame them.

Or perhaps Digby would rather that those Dems who voted for the Stupak amendment be expunged from the party. That would certainly cut down on the number of Democrats with whom Digby disagrees. It would also be a fast track to shrinking the Democratic tent – a tent that, thanks to the self-destruction of the GOP, now encompasses left and center. Digby has been an astute observer of a Republican Party that’s hell-bent on purifying itself into obscurity, and yet she sees no contradiction in her own views toward the Democratic coalition.

Would Digby prefer that progressives cast out all pro-lifers from our ranks? According to Gallup’s most recent poll on abortion attitudes, 47 percent of the public identify themselves as pro-life, while 46 percent identify themselves as pro-choice. A May 2009 Pew survey found that 46 percent said that abortion should be legal in all or most cases – the lowest figure since 1995 – and 44 percent said it should be illegal in all or most cases – the highest since 2001. Because Democrats now occupy the center as well as the left, many Americans who count themselves as pro-life now might consider themselves Democratic or at least lean that way because of other issues. Are we really prepared to tell half of the electorate that they’re not welcome because of that one issue alone?

The irony is that the blogosphere’s prescription of denying the existence of pro-lifers within the Democratic ranks probably contributed to the success of the Stupak amendment. Amy Sullivan, writing in Time’s Swampland blog, argues:

But it also seems clear that the Democratic leadership and White House dropped the ball on finding a compromise with pro-life Democrats. The deal reached late last night/early this morning in the Speaker’s office is not a compromise; it is in fact more than the Catholic bishops and Stupak himself asked for as late as mid-summer. The Speaker didn’t get rolled by crafty or stubborn members of her party, though. This was a predictable consequence of a high-handed approach to dealing with pro-life members of the Democratic caucus.

Despite the fact that anyone who has followed U.S. politics over the last thirty years could have told you that abortion would be a controversial aspect of health reform, no one tried to preemptively address the concerns of pro-life Democrats by sitting down with them early in the process. The White House didn’t reach out to some of the more good-faith players on the pro-life side until early September. And Pelosi didn’t sit down with Stupak until September 29. This despite the fact that 19 Democratic members sent her a letter in June expressing their concerns with abortion coverage in health reform.

In other words, you can ignore those who disagree with you, but it doesn’t make them disappear. In this case, it may even have come back to bite the leadership.

Make no mistake: progressives should stand for a woman’s right to choose, and Democrats should do all they can to kill the odious amendment in conference without endangering the end goal of reform. But to reduce the complicated work of politics into a with-us-or-against-us game is neither normatively nor politically desirable. The progressive rank-and-file have to realize that you make laws with the public you have, not the public you wish you had. Some in that public will have different, deeply held beliefs that might differ from yours and mine. With progressives now ascendant, we have to take into consideration the views of moderates, independents, and centrists in governing this often-unwieldy polity.

Some progressives like to believe that there is no such thing as the moderate middle — that a projection of brute liberal force will disabuse moderates of their milquetoast views and they’ll come to see the light. Forget the condescension inherent in that view. Try getting 218 votes with that attitude. If Speaker Pelosi had taken that approach on Saturday, I doubt these same bloggers would be congratulating her for losing health reform but at least standing her ground on a woman’s right to choose.