Category: Uncategorized

Party in 2009 and 2010, Hangover in 2012

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

There are three big elections that pundits and politicos are looking at today: New Jersey and Virginia’s gubernatorial races, and New York’s 23rd congressional seat, which opened up when the administration tapped Republican John McHugh to be the Secretary of the Navy.

As Mark Halperin put it, analysts are turning the usual dictum on its head: “[T]oday, they’ll try to convince you, all politics is national.” Buckets of virtual ink have already been spilled prognosticating the results and explaining What It All Means. Everyone is pretty sure that it will be a big day for Republicans. Polls going into Election Day showed Republican Bob McDonnell heading for a big win in Virginia, while Republican Chris Christie held a slim lead over incumbent Jon Corzine in New Jersey.

But the race that’s been getting the lion’s share of attention is in New York. Doug Hoffman, a third-party candidate under the Conservative Party banner, looks poised to win over Democrat Bill Owens. The Republican candidate, moderate Dede Scozzafava, pulled out of the race a few days ago after it became clear that the party’s conservative base would not be voting for her. Underscoring how out of step she was with the Republican mainstream, Scozzafava then went on to endorse Owens.

Pundits and partisans have gone gaga trying to game out what a Hoffman victory, along with wins for McDonnell and Christie, spells for the GOP. While some conservatives have cautioned against overinterpreting the results, many have gone on to do so anyway. Jonah Goldberg, always a reliable fount of conservative CW, says, “Hoffman and McDonnell owe their success to the support of independents (the independents all of these people said wanted moderate, Democrat-lite policies) and to Republicans determined to stay true to conservative principles.”

But if that’s the lesson that conservatives draw from any GOP successes today, then that’s actually not a bad upside for progressives. Goldberg’s views underscore the delusion prevalent among many conservatives that Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh — and the values that they espouse — are embraced by the vast majority of Americans. True, there are signs of a conservative stirring, but two undeniable facts remain: moderates and liberals outnumber conservatives, and the Republican Party brand is still pretty toxic. If conservatives really want to bet that a hard-right turn is the best move to build a lasting majority, then progressives have no choice but to let them keep thinking it — and to make sure not to repeat the same mistake on their side.

In off-year and off-off-year elections, turnout is traditionally low and the edge normally goes to the more energized segment of the electorate. Hardcore conservatives have been frothing at the mouth for the last year, and this is the first time many of them get to vent their frustrations at the ballot box since Obama’s win. For that same reason, next year is looking promising for Republicans as well. But conservatives will learn the wrong lessons. They will see GOP gains in 2009 and 2010 as a referendum on a party that’s not conservative enough. They will continue to demand that the party veer further to the right, embrace the freak show, and throw more moderates like Scozzafava overboard. Then, when 2012 rolls around, a larger electorate will show up at the polls and find a Republican Party that’s painted itself into an ideological corner, snarling at anyone to the left of Sean Hannity.

According to The Atlantic‘s Marc Ambinder, this is exactly how the White House sees the state of play. Ambinder writes, “The more Republicans find their voice on the right, on what White House officials call the ‘Palin-Beck’ axis, the better Democrats will fare after 2010, when they still should have their majorities, when they should have a sleeve of accomplishments, when it becomes clear that Republicans are unwilling or unable to build a genuine coalition.”

Think of today and next year’s midterms as one big party for the Republican right. The hangover will hit in 2012.

The Taliban’s Ties to al Qaeda

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

President Obama’s decision on what to do next in Afghanistan turns on the answer to a basic question: How severe a threat does the Taliban pose to America?

Some commentators believe the answer is: very little. America’s real enemy, al Qaeda, is hiding out next door in Pakistan. The implication is that we can live with the Taliban as long as it doesn’t invite bin Laden and company back.

A corollary to this view is that both the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban are Pashtuns who have historically united to repel foreign invaders from their rugged heartland in the Hindu Kush. From this proposition it follows that, as New York Times columnist Nick Kristof recently argued, sending more western troops to Afghanistan will only provoke a wider nationalist uprising.

There’s undoubtedly some truth in that. But it ignores the Afghan Taliban’s roots in the madrassas. The Taliban is defined by its puritanical vision of Islam and determination to impose strict sharia law wherever it holds sway, from Afghanistan in the late 1990s to Swat Valley earlier this year.

The problem, from the standpoint of U.S. safety, is that the Taliban’s Islamist outlook (as well as the bonds forged in the 1980s struggle against Soviet invaders) engenders strong solidarity with al Qaeda. In a fascinating article in Foreign Affairs, Barbara Elias dissects the Taliban-al Qaeda relationship:

The Taliban cannot surrender bin Laden without also surrendering their existing identity as a vessel for an obdurate and uncompromising version of political Islam. Their legitimacy rests not on their governing skills, popular support, or territorial control, but on their claim to represent what they perceive as sharia rule. This means upholding the image that they are guided entirely by Islamic principles; as such, they cannot make concession to, or earnestly negotiate with, secular states.

What this suggests, of course, is that a Taliban restoration in Afghanistan could easily lead to al Qaeda’s return. It also means, according to Elias, that the Taliban probably can’t be split or co-opted the way Sunni insurgents in Iraq were.

Recall that Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar ignored U.S. demands (punctuated by the Clinton administration’s ineffectual missile strike in 1998) to expel Osama bin Laden and his Arab co-conspirators. Even on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, he refused, saying, “We cannot do that. If we did, it means we are not Muslims…that Islam is finished. If we were afraid of attack, we could have surrendered him the last time were threatened and attacked. So America can hit us again.”

In other words, protecting al Qaeda was more important to Taliban leaders in 2001 than holding onto power. What has changed? After eight more years of joint struggle against the U.S., how likely is it that a triumphant Taliban would bar anti-American terror groups from setting up training camps in Afghanistan?

Meanwhile, Howard Altman reports on The Daily Beast that al Qaeda picked its number three man, Mustafa abu al-Yazid, to be its chief in Afghanistan. “And in that role, he has built new and potentially deadly ties to the Taliban – forging alliances that may greatly complicate the Obama administration’s decisions about what to do in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Altman writes.

That’s exactly right. We need to learn more about the ties and mutual interests that bind the Afghan Taliban and what’s left of al Qaeda. But these reports underline the danger to U.S. security of blithely assuming that the Taliban would never again play host to America’s sworn enemies. That’s not a risk progressives should be prepared to take.

This item is cross posted at The Huffington Post.

Slow Train Coming

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Everybody knows that, as with health care, the U.S. rail system lags well behind that of other developed countries. But did you know that our current trains are also slower than the trains we had in the 1940s?

After accounting for speed-restricted curves, snail-like crawls through junctions, stops for opposing trains, and other obstacles thrown in their path, Amtrak trains average no better than 50 m.p.h. between terminals—and much less if unscheduled delays are counted. The result is that train service is slower today than it was in the 1940s, when “streamliners” touted for their speed—such as the Super Chief, 20th Century Limited, Denver Zephyr, and Hiawatha—routinely topped 90 to 100 m.p.h. between station stops. [emphasis added]

Not only can our trains not compete with the rest of the world’s – they can’t even compete with those from 70 years ago!

Make no mistake: the global comparisons are pretty grim as well. In Japan and Europe, high-speed trains have been a part of the transit landscape for decades. China is on pace to build 8,000 miles of high-speed railways by 2020. Meanwhile, as Mark Reutter points out in an article for the Wilson Center, Amtrak’s “high speed” line, the Acela Express along the Northeast Corridor, doesn’t even qualify as high-speed by international standards, averaging only 67 mph between Boston and New York and 77 mph south of New York. By contrast, the train between Madrid and Barcelona averages 146 miles mph along the 386-mile route.

For far too long, rail has been the neglected child of our transportation policy. In the last 50 years, the federal government has invested $1.3 trillion in highways, $473 billion in aviation, and a paltry $53 billion in passenger rail.

This year, the Obama administration announced that it will allocate $8 billion in grants to states from the stimulus package toward building a high-speed rail system. Though much more needs to be done – federal, state, and private actors all have a stake in this – the investment is a good first step. Here’s hoping it jumpstarts a rail renaissance that will finally get us moving again – first back to the 1940s, then into the 21st century and beyond.

Could Nuclear Be the Key to Passing a Climate Bill?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The Washington Post reports today that prospects for passing climate change legislation in the Senate — coming up for committee debate on Tuesday — look increasingly dicey as Democrats remain deeply divided on the issue. Democratic senators from the South, Midwest, and Rocky Mountains are balking at the bill’s impact on industry and consumers, while few Republicans are willing to stick out their necks for a bipartisan vote on climate change. But slim hopes for an across-the-aisle deal still exist:

So Democratic leaders, with the support of the Obama administration, are trying to sway at least half a dozen Republicans by offering amendments to speed along their top priority: building nuclear power plants.

Many people have long viewed nuclear energy with suspicion, with cost, safety, and nuclear waste at the top of the list of objections. But the fact is that it will take a long time to scale up the production of renewable energy sources like solar and wind power. It will take just as long to rebuild our transmission grid to deliver that power to all parts of the country. And efficiency alone is not enough to address the climate issue — we need a source of clean power even as we try to develop our renewable energy industry and modernize our grid.

Nuclear is, of course, not the sole answer to our energy needs. But it’s looking like it might be the answer to our political deadlock on climate change legislation. Progressives might not like it, but they should keep in mind that the key is the cap. Getting that cap is the hardest part. Embracing nuclear energy to get one seems not just good policy but smart politics as well.

Health Reform Differences Narrow

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

At the beginning of this week on the health care front, one thing clear is that the differences between what the House and Senate are likely to vote on are not as large as everyone expected a few weeks ago. Harry Reid’s advancing a public option bill with (it appears) a state opt-out, and the House is going with a public option that will negotiate rates instead of pegging payments to Medicare. Had the Senate gone with a weak trigger or something like co-ops, or the House had insisted on the Medicare peg, it could have caused some very serious problems down the road.

However you happen to feel about the substance of these nuances, anything that steadily narrows the gaps between Senate and House Democrats is a step towards enactment of health reform this year. Or at least that’s how it looks to me from an internet cafe a very long way from Washington.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Final Score in Honduras: Obama 1, Republicans 0

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

News this morning is that after simmering for four months, the political crisis that has paralyzed Honduras is drawing to a close. In an agreement (English translation) between deposed President Mel Zelaya and de facto leader Roberto Micheletti’s representatives, Zelaya’s fate will be thrown to Congress. With the legislative body’s approval, Zelaya would be lame duck president in a government of national unity. Elections would go forward as planned at the end of November, with neither of the dueling presidents as candidate. To ensure the army doesn’t get involved in politics for the remainder of the campaign, control of the Armed Forces will be transferred to the national elections supervisor, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.

Now comes the follow through — making sure Zelaya serves out his term and steps down in favor of whomever the Honduran people elect in a month in a free and fair election, one in which neither side is pushing their thumb down on the scales. Then the new government should turn to the real matter at hand. Not pushing Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s agenda, not trying to suck up to the U.S., but bettering the lot of the people in the hemisphere’s fourth poorest country.

While both sides are claiming to be vindicated by the agreement, the real winners are obviously the Honduran people. The embargo of aid and disruption of relations with its neighbors had put the already poor country at a disadvantage, and the stubbornness of both sides was evidence that they were looking out for their own interests and not those of the Honduran people.

Another winner was the measured, responsible foreign policy of the Obama administration. Throughout the crisis, President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton and their team have been seen as the steady hands at the tiller. They looked to resolve the situation and respect the rule of law. The Obama team used political and economic pressure to bring both sides to the negotiating table; threat of continued ostracism kept them talking.

By contrast, Zelaya’s ostensible patron, Hugo Chávez, was proven to be ineffectual. Chávez threatened to invade, thinking that two wrongs would make a right in supporting Zelaya. But Chávez was all helpless bluster, eventually calling on Obama to solve the problem.

U.S. conservatives also did not do themselves any favors, with South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint and the editorial team at the Wall Street Journal standing out in particular. DeMint, who should have learned that South Carolina Republicans shouldn’t get involved in Latin American escapades, flew down to Tegucigalpa earlier this month and endorsed the coup government as “working hard to follow the rule of law” when it overthrew the democratically elected leader of Honduras at gunpoint.

But while it’s easy (and fun) to point out how conservatives were on the wrong side of the coup, there are deeper issues at stake. Writing last week in the Los Angeles Times, respected Latin America academic Abraham Lowenthal said:

What brings Honduras, and Central America more generally, back again and again to center stage in Washington debates on Latin America is not the strategic, security or economic importance of the region to the United States. On the contrary, it is precisely the minimal tangible significance of Central America to the United States in economic, political and military terms that allows U.S. policymakers of conflicting tendencies to indulge in grandstanding in framing policies toward that nearby and vulnerable region.

He’s right. The US needs to focus on Central America at a policy level. Crime is up significantly in the region, and — more alarmingly — is getting organized. Maras — originally street gangs started by El Savadorans both there and in the U.S. — have been evolving into regional cartels transporting drugs and flaunting the rule of law. Governments in Central America aren’t strong enough to face this threat, and there are troubling signs they are being co-opted both at the local and national level. The potential for narco-states exists in the region.

Mark Ribbing called for a special envoy to Mexico and the Caribbean. What we really need is a special envoy to Mexico and Central America to address the interrelated issues the isthmus faces: gangs, drugs, and illegal immigration. Additionally, that envoy needs resources to help fight these problems and not just be another talking head. While the previous administration pushed the Mérida Initiative as a “Plan Colombia” for our southern neighbor, we need a “Plan Mesoamerica” to help develop stronger institutions in the region that can stand up to illegal activity, whether it comes in fatigues, a tailored suit, or gang tattoos.

Conservatism Ascendant?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Conservative bloggers are crowing about a new Gallup poll showing that 40 percent of Americans describe their political views as conservative, topping moderates (36 percent) and liberals (20 percent). The findings represent a change from the 2005-2008 period, when moderates tied with conservatives as the most prevalent group.

There are other areas of concern here for progressives. For one thing, the number of independents describing themselves as conservative rose from 29 percent in 2008 to 35 percent. While political scientists have long warned that ideological self-identification surveys should be taken with a grain of salt — Americans, for the most part, don’t think of themselves in ideological terms — a breakdown of respondents’ views on different issues reflects the same movement. On government regulation of business, labor unions, gun rights, and several other issues, the public has also moved to the right, according to the Gallup poll.

There are several possible reasons for the shift. One, with Democrats in control of the White House and Congress, it’s perhaps inevitable that the uncommitted middle would lean toward checking progressive control of government. In addition, conservatives who may have been turned off by the disastrous Bush administration and drifted to the middle may be coming back home in the age of Obama.

Finally, one can’t overstate the media’s influence in shaping public opinion. Since day one, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and the right-wing noise machine have hammered the administration as unapologetically liberal (even Marxist!), a narrative that is now gospel among the conservative base — and perhaps influences independents as well. But the fact is that the president has been genuinely pragmatic, earnestly seeking common ground with the opposition party and urging caution and prudence on a whole host of issues. As Newsweek put it this week, he “governs like a cerebral consensus builder,” and he’s even taken a lot of grief from the lefty base because of it.

But we shouldn’t be too concerned about the Gallup poll — at least not yet. For one thing, its results are actually nothing blindingly new. Since 1992, Gallup’s results on its political ideology surveys have been generally consistent, with conservatives usually finishing in the 36 percent-40 percent range, moderates fluctuating from 36 percent-43 percent, and liberals ranging from 16 percent to 22 percent. Rather than signaling a new conservative backlash sparked by Barack Obama, as right-wing activists like to believe, the poll actually shows a swing within a narrow range. It’s not great, but it’s not catastrophic.

Another reason for comfort is that the Gallup survey comes on the heels of another poll that showed the GOP at its lowest favorability rating in a decade. Such has been the decline in the Republican Party’s fortunes that even during a year when the percentage of independents identifying themselves as conservative rose six percentage points, the GOP still can’t make any gains.

The lessons are obvious. One, even during a period of conservative resurgence, the Republican Party is still a broken brand. But progressives cannot continue to rely on Republican ineptitude and tone-deafness to keep them in power. We have to assume that the GOP will get its act together at some point and make a play for the middle. Which brings up the second lesson: this is a big country with a whole lot of interests, beliefs, and values to navigate and negotiate. Candidate Obama became President Obama because he understood that and made the tent bigger. It’s up to progressives to make sure that the tent remains big and welcoming.

Defense Authorization Bill a Good First Step

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In a February address to a joint session of Congress, President Obama promised to “cut Cold War weapons systems we don’t use.” By signing today’s $680 billion defense authorization bill, it’s remarkable at how well he succeeded.

Trimmed from the budget are more F-22 fighter jets, VH-71 presidential helicopters, and Air Force search-and-rescue helicopters. In short, we own an acceptable quantity and/or quality of these systems to achieve their stated missions, freeing money that could more efficiently be spent elsewhere. The simple message comes down to this: In the middle of two major military deployments, spending on weapons we don’t need makes America weaker because we’re short-changing those involved in our current fights.

The president has made a solid first step in breaking the iron triangle of defense contractors, Congress, and the Pentagon. However, the war is hardly over. If you want to dunk your head in a bucket of cold water, read Winslow Wheeler’s reality check:

In 30 years on Capitol Hill, I never saw Congress mangle the defense budget as badly as this year. Despite that, I see signs that we might be on the cusp of a change for the better.

This past week, as the Senate debated the Department of Defense (DOD) appropriations bill, a tiny bipartisan group of senators stood up to fix an important part of the gigantic mess in our defenses. This minuscule bunch lost at every turn when the votes were counted, but for the first time I can remember, senators revealed previously unrecognized aspects of their colleagues’ appalling pork-mongering — and took action against it. In the process, a few supremely powerful senators who have been corrupting the process were exposed as contemptible frauds. Now, if only the press would notice.

Wheeler is referring to a new budgetary trick used by a group of senators — led Sens. Inouye (D-HI) and Cochran (R-MS) — to raid the “Operations and Maintenance” account, a little-noticed fund that pays for things like pilot training and basic equipment upkeep, to finance home-state weapons projects that even the military says it doesn’t want.

Reforming the weapons acquisition culture is like turning an aircraft carrier 180 degrees. The White House and Secretary Gates have started, but the next several Pentagon budgets will show us where we really are.

At the White House, Clean Tech Gets a Push

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

A room full of clean tech entrepreneurs likely would not have been found in the Bush White House. But on Wednesday, October 28, that’s just what you would have seen in a brand-new auditorium (so new that there was no sign for the entrance, and it felt sort of like walking into a warehouse) on the ground floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. On the heels of its announcement of a $3.4 billion investment in building a smart grid — leveraged to achieve $4.7 billion in private investments, totaling over $8 billion — the Obama administration hosted an “Energy and Climate Stakeholders Meeting.” The presenters included White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, and White House Climate Change Policy Director Carol Browner.

The meeting included an extraordinary, hour-long give-and-take with Chu, who admitted that he would rather be riding herd on DOE bureaucrats to try and get more money for programs to spur clean tech when “they have me doing meetings like this.” But it was said with a smile. He also told stories about crawling around in his attics — first in California, when he was a professor, and now in Chevy Chase — to find the weak spots in his insulation. The lesson? We need far stricter standards in retrofitting homes.

The level of enthusiasm among these administration A-listers was palpable. “We’re off and running!” Jarrett announced. Describing the attitude in Congress and the potential passage of carbon reduction legislation in the Senate, Browner said, “I’ve been in and out of D.C. for twenty years, and there’s sort of that tipping point that happens, where everyone who talks starts saying not ‘if’ but ‘when.'”

In describing $151 million in new grants at DOE’s elite ARPA-E unit for transformative energy research, Chu said, “We’re going to try and hit home runs, not just base hits,” citing, with geeky but endearing enthusiasm, a new program for all liquid metal batteries that can provide large-scale energy storage at 1/20th of the prior cost.

The room was rapt — which is perhaps what you’d expect from a hundred clean tech folks crowded into a spanking-new auditorium with a spanking-new administration. Change, indeed!

This item is cross-posted at The Huffington Post.

New Afghanistan Strategy in the Offing

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

It looks like the White House is circling in on a new strategy in Afghanistan that focuses on protecting major population centers like Kabul, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Herat, Jalalabad, and a few other large villages.

If endorsed, it would adopt the major elements of General McChrystal’s proposed counterinsurgency strategy, albeit on a more limited scale that perhaps acknowledges that 40,000 additional troops aren’t enough to effectively pacify the entire country. Or, as the New York Times put it:

At the heart of this strategy is the conclusion that the United States cannot completely eradicate the insurgency in a nation where the Taliban is an indigenous force — nor does it need to in order to protect American national security. Instead, the focus would be on preventing Al Qaeda from returning in force while containing and weakening the Taliban long enough to build Afghan security forces that would eventually take over the mission.

This strategy would certainly prevent the Taliban from regaining control of the country, thereby denying al Qaeda the petri dish it needs to reconstitute an ability to attack the U.S.

Furthermore, this is a realistic approach about what we can achieve, even with increased — but finite — resources. It may simply not be a sensible use of resources to deploy tens of thousands of American forces to Helmand, a massive southern province that has 20 percent of the land, but only three percent of the population.

However, the fundamental question is whether this strategy effectively cedes control over large swaths of the country to the Taliban where al Qaeda elements could re-enter and rebuild its abilities. One senior administration addressed that point, saying, “We are not talking about surrendering the rest of the country to the Taliban.”

But under this scenario in Helmand, field commanders would compensate for the lack of a full-time troop presence by keeping pressure on insurgents with drone strikes, aided by intelligence from local populations about pockets of Taliban. But by ceding control to the Taliban, we could be alienating the local population — the eyes and ears necessary to target the drones.

And finally, a potential side effect of protecting select urban areas is that as the only stable regions, they might be flooded by rural villagers that don’t want to live under the Taliban. Would this increase the burden on troops to the point that their presence has diminishing returns as the cities swell with refugees?

Consider me cautiously optimistic, but nervous.

Build This: A Real Infrastructure Policy for America

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Imagine boarding a sleek new bullet train and rocketing from Washington, D.C. to Richmond, VA in under an hour. Imagine creating thousands of durable new blue-collar jobs to build and maintain railways, construct and fine-tune railcars, and help design the electrical grid that would support high-speed rail. Imagine a new architecture for concentrating development around sophisticated new urban centers — and a hungry new customer for clean energy.

Imagining high-speed rail in the U.S. has often just been the province of dreams. The idea has been bedeviled by various lobbying groups hostile to sustainable transportation, beset by internecine warfare between different states and federal agencies, and bereft of a long-term infrastructure policy. As one grizzled and skeptical railway executive told me at a conference held last week by the new U.S. High Speed Rail Association at the H.W. Marriott Hotel in Washington, D.C., “I attended my first high-speed rail conference thirty years ago.”

But these dreams are about to leave the ether and descend to earth, in the form of concrete, steel, and electrical lines, as the U.S., thanks to the Obama administration, prepares to invest $8 billion in actually building high-speed rail. On the heels of the administration’s announcement of $3.4 billion in grants to drive the creation of a “smart grid” in the country, the time is right to think about an infrastructure policy not just for next year but the next generation.

The U.S. High Speed Rail Association is a broad coalition of domestic and international partners working to drive American investment in high-speed rail. There’s good reason to think it’s an idea whose time has finally come, after eight years of the George W. Bush administration, during which federal funding for rail was essentially scaled to zero. The challenge will be to ensure that the initial $8 billion is not frittered away in a series of pork-barrel pilot projects, but instead becomes the first investment in the long-term infrastructure strategy the U.S. has been sorely lacking.

The organization estimates that a fully functioning, 17,000-mile, national high-speed rail system would cost at least $600 billion over 30 years. In his panel presentation, Gov. Ed Rendell (D) of Pennsylvania, a long-time advocate of high-speed rail, urged participants to take the long view on such an infrastructure investment. “We need a capital budget run through an infrastructure bank,” Rendell urged. “It’s the only way to do this.” Rendell emphasized that thousands of “tough, blue-collar work” would be created by high-speed rail, citing an estimate by a Pennsylvania steel plant that makes rail ties that its work force would triple if high-speed rail were to become reality.

John Krueger, a staff attorney with the U.S. Public Interest Group who advocates for new federal budget priorities on transportation, argued that grassroots public opinion will ultimately change our infrastructure policies. “Why high-speed rail?” he asked the conference. “It’s what the people want….The opposite of NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) is PIMBY—Please In My Backyard.” Over 220 states and localities have submitted applications for the $8 billion the Obama administration has allocated to high-speed rail. And in the budget request for 2010, the House of Representatives approved an additional $4 billion of high-speed rail funding, surpassing an initial administration request of only $1 billion.

Presenting on the second day of the conference, Norm Anderson, who heads the consulting group CG/LA Infrastructure, emphasized a series of gaps in the nation’s long-term infrastructure strategy. He highlighted the urgent need for a clear focus on the competitiveness and job creation dimensions of high-speed rail. With competitive nations such as China aggressively investing in high-speed rail, we risk losing our edge in technology, concentrated urban development, low-carbon transportation, and a stable employment base for thousands. Anderson also emphasized the need for a strong funding mechanism — the national infrastructure bank also advocated by Gov. Rendell — and a federal entity that would “own and understand” infrastructure, opening it to both competition and public-private partnerships.

Inspired by events such as the U.S. High Speed Rail Association conference and the Obama administration’s $8 billion commitment, the Progressive Policy Institute’s new E3 Initiative in the coming months will be developing and driving policy proposals on infrastructure and other areas central to rebuilding the nation’s economy around clean technology. It’s an exciting time — and we need to ensure that the excitement does not fade into a passing fancy, but rather leads to real steps that revitalize the U.S.’s economic dynamism.

This item is cross-posted at The Huffington Post.

At State, a New Budgeting Plan Takes Shape

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The State Department is involved in a massive project — the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review — that is designed to address a serious “funding imbalance” between the civilian and military institutions involved in American national security.

Says Anne-Marie Slaughter, Director of Policy and Planning at the State Department and in charge of the review:

“This is not an abstract planning exercise that goes into a report and sits on a shelf,” she said. “It’s a planning exercise that does connect to the budget, that’s very important, but the implications go far beyond the budget. The budget is the tool to implement what we’re going to come up with. This is really what I think secretaries of state should be doing, which is a kind of farsighted look into how the United States is going to implement its foreign policy agenda in the 21st century.”

It is designed to roughly model the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review, which similarly connects threats to strategies to resources to budgets.

What’s more, it’s exactly what the State Department needs — with a budget hovering around $40 billion, or well less than 10 percent of the Pentagon’s, it’s quite fair to say that in 2009, Foggy Bottom is responsible for well more than 10 percent of the national security of the United States. Now it just needs the bureaucratic proof to justify that need to Congress. Et voila — the QDDR!

The Good Health Reform Idea That Everyone’s Ignoring

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Writing in The Hill’s Congress Blog, Joseph Minarik of the business group Committee for Economic Development brings up an idea that unfortunately has been largely passed over in the health care debate:

Short of starting over with a fundamentally different bill, CED believes that the most constructive change to the current legislation would be the “Free Choice” amendment of Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR).

The CED letter urges Congress to address the underlying problems in the healthcare system: the absence of choice and competition.  Today, 77 percent of private-sector employees with coverage have no choice of insurance carrier. The Finance Committee bill protects this monopoly, leaving 200 million Americans with no choice of health plan.  This system, without competition and without portable coverage for employees, would have the same fundamental problems that we have today.  The legislation in Congress therefore merely expands the status quo and makes its exploding costs even worse.

The disappearance of the Sen. Wyden’s Free Choice Act in the legislative wrangling over health care remains one of the more unfortunate turns in the whole process. The idea had bipartisan support, was well-liked by many progressives, and was genuinely transformative.

The Wyden amendment seeks to add that key element in the act’s title – choice – into the current legislation. Under the plan, employers are required to offer their employees a choice of either participating in the employer’s health benefits plan, or a voucher equal to the value of the employer plan that the worker can then use to purchase coverage in the health insurance exchange. Even better, if the employee can find a cheaper alternative on the exchange, she can keep the change from the voucher.

In the long run, this will have the effect of expanding the pool of enrollees in the health exchanges, maximizing efficiencies of scale, and slowly moving us away from the regressive, taxpayer-subsidized employer-based health system. Perhaps most obviously, it strengthens the consumer’s hand by giving her the freedom to decide what kind of plan she’d like, instead of having to go along with her employer’s plan (which – it should be made clear – she would still have the option of taking).

It might be too much to hope, but progressives in Congress should take another look at Wyden’s idea. Who knew expanding choice could be such a tough sell?

Labor and the Excise Tax on Insurers

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

From today’s The Hill comes word that the AFL-CIO has fired another volley across the bow of Senate Democrats on the issue of the excise tax for high-cost health plans:

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka warned Senate Democratic leaders not to include a tax on high-cost healthcare plans in a bill that is expected to reach the floor in coming days.

Trumka dismissed the notion that Democratic leaders could placate the powerful union by raising the threshold on plans that would be subject to the tax. Under the Senate Finance Committee’s bill, plans costing more than $8,000 for individuals and $21,000 for families would be hit with a 40 percent excise tax.

As others have pointed out, the tax-free status of employer-provided health benefits is a regressive relic that, in an ideal world, we would be jettisoning. Hardly an assault on that system, the Senate Finance Committee’s bill takes modest steps to chip away at it by levying an excise tax on insurers for so-called “Cadillac” plans. The tax would bring in about $200 billion through 2019, making it a vital source of funding for health care.

But labor remains unmoved. Trumka’s statement is only the latest salvo from the unions. In September, AFSCME President Gerald McEntee took to the pages of USA Today to argue against taxing high-cost insurance plans. The unions claim that any tax on such plans would harm middle-class families. Their concerns aren’t entirely unfounded. Middle-class workers in high-risk jobs or high-cost areas might meet the Finance Committee’s $21,000 threshold, making them subject to the tax. (The tax would be levied on insurers, but everyone acknowledges that it would get passed on to employees.) In addition, older workers are likelier to have high-cost plans, making them prone as well.

But a closer look at the Finance Committee’s bill shows that labor’s concerns are overblown. The legislation is studded with exceptions that aim to soften the blow to middle-class workers. For one thing, it sets the thresholds 20 percent higher in the most expensive third of states. In addition, workers in high-risk jobs or 55 and older have a higher cap.

Despite these exemptions, labor isn’t budging — and they have made their influence felt. Earlier this month, 154 House Democrats sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA) urging her “to reject proposals to enact an excise tax on high-cost insurance plans that could be potentially passed on to middle-class families.”

One of the striking things about the administration’s approach to policy has been its effort to include all the stakeholders on a given issue, and to urge them to make concessions for the sake of national interest. By making a stand on the excise tax, labor has shown a disappointing unwillingness to make sacrifices for the greater good. It would be a tragedy if reform floundered now because of the unions’ insistence on defending a regressive and unfair feature of our health care system.

Reframing Climate Change

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

A recently released Pew poll on Americans’ views on climate change should worry progressives. According to the survey, there has been a significant drop in the percentage of Americans who believe that there is proof that manmade global warming is happening. Also worrisome is the decline in the percentage of people who think that climate change is a “very serious” problem.

The poll of 1,500 Americans found that 57 percent of respondents think there is “solid evidence” that the Earth is warming, down from 71 percent in April 2008. It also found a startling drop in the number of people who think that global warming is “very serious,” from 44 percent in April 2008 to 35 percent today. Particularly striking is the fact that the declines have occurred across the partisan spectrum, with fewer Democrats, Republicans, and Independents all saying they see evidence for warming.

There are several reasons for the growing doubts about climate change. A major factor is media coverage of the issue. Even though climate change is settled science, the media continue to give a platform to skeptics, falsely giving the public the impression that there is no consensus on the issue. (Exhibit A: George Will, not only a marquee name at the Washington Post, but the most widely read syndicated columnist in America.)

Another is that the science itself is so complex that Americans are especially prone to misapprehensions. For instance, a study by academics Patrick J. Egan and Megan Mullin (PDF) found that, at least for less educated Americans, there is a significant relationship between local weather conditions and people’s views on global warming. In other words, during a cooler stretch of days in the summer, some respondents are more likely to think that global warming is not a serious problem. As scientists have pointed out, short-term shifts in weather patterns are irrelevant to the broader debate about climate change.

But a likelier explanation for public cooling on global warming is the state of the economy. Simply put, it’s harder to think about saving the planet when you’re scrambling to save your job. Progressives need to do a better job of framing climate change as less a crisis to be addressed than an opportunity to be exploited. While the Obama administration has sought to make the connection between environmental stewardship and economic recovery via its “green jobs” initiative, progressives have clearly not done enough to hammer home the message.

The shift from a fossil-fuel based economy to a greener, cleaner one is obviously necessary for us to avoid the massive consequences of climate change. But by forcing the economy to innovate – always America’s strongest suit – the transformation into a clean economy just might be the spark America needs to regain its dynamism. Too few Americans know or understand this – and, consequently, their commitment to addressing climate change is proving tenuous.

GOP Obstructionism Threatens the Courts

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

A recurring theme in the first year of the Obama administration has been the refusal of the Republican Party to work in good faith with President Obama and the Democratic Congress. A new article by Doug Kendall in Slate points out another area in which Republican obstructionism has wreaked havoc on not just Democratic plans but political norms as well:

The emerging Republican strategy is to hold these uncontroversial nominees hostage as pawns in the larger war over President Obama’s agenda and the direction of the federal judiciary. The Senate operates according to a set of arcane rules that allows a minority party to bring the institution to a halt if it chooses to do so. Most bills and nominations pass through the Senate with no debate and only a voice vote on the Senate floor. But this requires every senator to play along. By stonewalling on every nominee so far, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is requiring his counterpart, Sen. Reid, to negotiate, or devote precious floor time, for every judicial confirmation.

This is unprecedented and dangerous. There are already 95 vacancies on the federal bench at a time when there is bipartisan agreement that we need more judgeships. The last thing we need is for existing seats in overworked courts to go unfilled.

Even more important, Republican obstruction of uncontroversial nominees undermines the one part of the judicial confirmation process that was still working, until now. Well-qualified nominees who enjoy bipartisan support should be able to count on a fair and relatively smooth Senate confirmation process. This is critical because while they’re waiting, the careers of these nominees go on hold. Given the demands of the bench, and the gap between judicial salaries and what these candidates could earn in private practice, the nation is already lucky that top candidates are willing to serve. If we throw in an unpredictable and lengthy confirmation process, the quality of the federal bench—and the dispensation of justice—will unquestionably suffer.

As Kendall points out, while politics have always played a role in the judicial confirmation process, the extent to which Republicans have played it is unprecedented. When Democrats controlled Congress during the Bush administration, a large number of Bush’s nominees zipped through the proceedings. Uncontroversial nominees were treated as exactly that – qualified judges who deserved to be confirmed without political gamesmanship.

Contrast that with what Republicans have done so far. Only three of President Obama’s 22 lower court nominees have been confirmed, a staggeringly low number especially considering there are already 95 vacancies waiting to be filled.

The GOP obstruction of Obama’s judicial nominees underscores just how little compunction the Republican Party has about playing politics — exactly the kind of stance that got them booted from power. For every Olympia Snowe who votes her conscience and is willing to cross partisan lines to do so, there are, well, 39 others who march in rejectionist lockstep. The strategy may win them the devotion of the hardcore base, but it’s hardly a recipe for long-term success.