Little noticed in the media circus surrounding the mere introduction of a non-binding Congressional resolution on the Green New Deal was the deletion of much-criticized and plainly unachievable mandates contained in previous GND versions.
Gone was the impossible diktat requiring 100% renewable energy for the entire economy by 2030. Missing was the politically suicidal and practically infeasible flat-out prohibition on fossil fuels in little more than a decade. Even extraneous language on guaranteed jobs in the resolution had been watered down from earlier texts, and would of course never be a legal requirement in actual climate legislation that passes Congress in any event.
In fact, the more extreme provisions in the GND have served largely to provide Trump and other Republican anti-climate action forces with irresistible political fodder. Republicans hope to scare the American people into opposing sensible climate actions by invoking GND extremism, and have already produced ads with these themes.
Congratulations on your election to the U.S. House of Representatives! In addition to winning your own race, you are part of something larger – the first wave of a progressive resurgence in U.S. politics.
The midterm elections gave U.S. voters their first opportunity to react to the way Donald Trump has conducted himself in America’s highest office. Their verdict was an emphatic thumbs down. That’s an encouraging sign that our democracy’s antibodies are working to suppress the populist virus of demagoguery and extremism.
Now that Democrats have reclaimed the people’s House, what should they do with it? Some are tempted to use it mainly as a platform for resisting Trump and airing “unapologetically progressive” ideas that have no chance of advancing before the 2020 elections. We here at the Progressive Policy Institute think that would be huge missed opportunity.
If the voters increasingly are disgusted with their dissembling and divisive president, they seem even more fed up with Washington’s tribalism and broken politics. For pragmatic progressives, the urgent matter at hand is not to impeach Trump or to embroil the House in multiple and endless investigations. It’s to show Democrats are determined to put the federal government back in the business of helping Americans solve their problems.
We think the House Democratic Class of 2018 should adopt this simple mantra: “Get things done.” Tackle the backlog of big national problems that Washington has ignored: exploding deficits and debt; run-down, second-rate infrastructure; soaring health and retirement costs; climate change and more. And yes, getting things done should include slamming the brakes on Trump’s reckless trade wars, blocking GOP efforts to strip Americans of health care, as well as repealing tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
PPI, a leading center for policy analysis and innovation, stands ready to help. We’re developing an extensive “Do Something” Agenda. Today, we are releasing the first in a series of concrete, actionable ideas designed expressly for Democrats who come to Washington to solve problems, not just to raise money and smite political enemies.
As you get settled into your new office, we’ll look for opportunities to acquaint you and your staff with these pragmatic, common-sense initiatives, and to discuss other ways we might be of service to you. That’s what we’re here for.
Regards,
Will Marshall President Progressive Policy Institute
First and foremost, it’s time for Congress to start doing its job on trade. A key step is enacting the Trade Authority Protection (TAP) Act. This balanced legislation would rein in Trump’s abuse of delegated trade powers, require greater presidential accountability, and enable Congress to nullify irresponsible tariffs and trade restrictions.
For the last two decades, different versions of net neutrality have bounced between Congress, the Federal Communications Commission, the courts – and most recently the states – but the issue remains unresolved.
It is time for Congress to solve this problem for good by enacting a strong, pro-consumer net neutrality law – an outcome that is politically possible even in this era of maximalist gridlock and deeply divided government, given the broad consensus that has formed around the vital issue of ensuring an open internet.
The number of large U.S. manufacturing facilities has dropped by more than a third since 2000, devastating many communities where factories were the lifeblood of the local economy.
One promising way to revive America’s manufacturing might is not by going big but by going small – and going local. Digitally-assisted manufacturing technologies, such as 3D printing, have the potential to launch a new generation of manufacturing startups producing customized, locally-designed goods in a way overseas mega-factories can’t match. To jumpstart this revolution, we need to provide local manufacturing entrepreneurs with access to the latest technologies to test out their ideas. The Grassroots Manufacturing Act would create federally-supported centers offering budding entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized firms access to the latest 3D printing and robotics equipment.
As many as 4.4 million U.S. jobs are going unfilled due to shortages of workers with the right skills. Many of these opportunities are in so-called “middle-skill” occupations, such as IT or advanced manufacturing, where workers need some sort of post-secondary credential but not a four-year degree.
Expanding access to high-quality career education and training is one way to help close this “skills gap.” Under current law, however, many students pursuing short-term career programs are ineligible for federal financial aid that could help them afford their education. Pell grants, for instance, are geared primarily toward traditional college, which means older and displaced workers – for whom college is neither practicable nor desirable – lose out. Broadening the scope of the Pell grant program to shorter-term, high-quality career education would help more Americans afford the chance to upgrade their skills and grow the number of highly trained workers U.S. businesses need.
America’s massive health care industry faces three major challenges: how to cover everyone, reduce costs, and increase productivity. Telehealth – the use of technology to help treat patients remotely – may help address all three. Telehealth reduces the need for expensive real estate and enables providers to better leverage their current medical personnel to provide improved care to more people.
Despite its enormous potential, however, telehealth has hit legal snags over basic questions: who can practice it, what services can be delivered, and how it should be reimbursed. As is the case with any innovation, policymakers are looking to find the right balance between encouraging new technologies and protecting consumers – or, in this case, the health of patients.
Telehealth policy has come a long way in recent years, with major advances in the kinds of services that are delivered. Yet a simple change in Medicare policy could take the next step to increase access and encourage adoption of telehealth services. Currently, there are strict rules around where the patient and provider must be located at the time of service – these are known as “originating site” requirements – and patients are not allowed to be treated in their homes except in very special circumstances. To expand access to Telehealth, Congress could add the patient’s home as an originating site and allow Medicare beneficiaries in both urban and rural settings to access telehealth services in their homes.
As many as 41 million Americans live in “higher education deserts” – at least half an hour’s drive from the nearest college or university and with limited access to community college. Many of these deserts are in rural America, which is one reason so much of rural America is less prosperous than it deserves to be.
The lack of higher education access means fewer opportunities for going back to school or improving skills. A less educated workforce in turn means communities have a tougher time attracting businesses and creating new jobs. Congress should work to eradicate higher education deserts. In particular, it can encourage new models of higher education – such as “higher education centers” and virtual colleges – that can fill this gap and bring more opportunity to workers and their communities. Rural higher education innovation grants are one potential way to help states pilot new approaches.
Regulation plays a critical role in refereeing competition in a free market economy. But there’s a problem: Each year, Congress piles new rules upon old, creating a thick sludge of regulations – some obsolete, repetitive, and even contradictory – that weighs down citizens and businesses. In 2017, the Code of Federal Regulations swelled to a record 186,374 pages, up 19 percent from just a decade before. PPI proposes a Regulatory Improvement Commission (RIC), modeled on the highly successful Defense Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process for closing obsolete military installations. Like the BRAC process, the proposed RIC would examine old rules and present Congress with a package of recommendations for an up-or-down vote to eliminate or modify outdated rules.
Jumpstarting U.S. production and purchase of Electric Vehicles (EVs) would produce an unprecedented set of benefits, including cleaner air and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions; a resurgence of the U.S. auto industry and American manufacturing; the creation of millions of new, good, middle class manufacturing jobs; lower consumer costs for owning and operating vehicles; and the elimination of U.S. dependence on foreign oil. U.S. automakers are already moving toward EVs, but the pace of this transition is lagging behind our foreign competitors. A dramatic expansion of tax credits for EV purchases could go a long way toward boosting the U.S. EV industry as part of a broader agenda to promote the evolution of the transportation industry away from carbon-intensive fuels.
More American workers would benefit directly from economic growth if they had an ownership in the companies where they work. To help achieve this goal, Congress should encourage more companies to adopt employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), which provide opportunities for workers to participate in a company’s profits and share in its growth. Firms with ESOPs enjoy higher productivity growth and stronger resilience during downturns, and employees enjoy a direct stake in that growth. ESOP firms also generate higher levels of retirement savings for workers, thereby addressing another crucial priority for American workers.
Americans are fed up seeing corporate profits soaring even as their paychecks inch upward by comparison. Companies need stronger incentives to share their prosperity with workers – something the 2017 GOP tax package should have included.
Though President Donald Trump promised higher wages as one result of his corporate tax cuts, the biggest winners were executives and shareholders, not workers. Nevertheless, a growing number of firms are doing right by their workers, taking the high road as “triple-bottom line” concerns committed to worker welfare, environmental stewardship and responsible corporate governance. Many of these are so-called “benefit corporations,” legally chartered to pursue goals beyond maximizing profits and often “certified” as living up to their multiple missions. Congress should encourage more companies to follow this example. One way is to offer tax breaks only for high-road companies with a proven track record of good corporate citizenship, including better wages and benefits for their workers.
Leading researchers today released areportfinding that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions rose by more than 3.4% in 2018, the first annual increase since 2006 and the largest rise in 20 years. This news comes both as President Trump continues to rollback greenhouse gas reduction policies for power plants, vehicles and other sectors—and as domestic climate change-related impacts, from hurricanes, floods, fires and sea-level rise, cost US consumers and taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
The data clearly show that additional measures will be needed to cut long-term US greenhouse gas emissions, above and beyond overturning Trump’s rollbacks of auto fuel efficiency rules and regulations on power plants emissions. These additional policies must include some combination of a zero-carbon energy standard for the electricity sector, renewed incentives to electrify the US vehicle sector, funding for clean energy technology breakthroughs, and the reduction of super greenhouse pollutants like methane and HFCs. In time, they will also require a carbon tax.
House Democrats are entirely aware of this imperative. Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone has indicated that he will take up a series of measures aimed at cutting US emissions, likely to include most importantly a zero-carbon energy standard that will require greater amounts of clean energy in the economy. Such a standard should include all types of zero-carbon electricity production, including not only wind, solar and hydro-power, but also nuclear generation and coal and natural gas with carbon capture.
House Democrats should also consider a series of tax and other measures aimed at dramatically speeding up the transition to electric vehicles by providing more robust and reliable consumer and industry incentives.
In addition, Democrats must advance a clean energy infrastructure plan that provides the charging stations necessary to support tens of millions of clean electric vehicles that will be appearing on American roads, and many other features aimed at using advanced technology to cut emissions, and increase energy efficiency in every sector. And the House Appropriations Committee must at least double funding for clean energy technology breakthroughs like large scale electricity storage that could be game changers, allowing the U.S. to deeply cut its domestic emissions while creating new jobs and lucrative export markets for American industry.
Three decades after a top climate scientist warned Congress of the dangers of global warming, greenhouse gas emissions keep rising and so do global temperatures.
Thirty years ago, a NASA scientist, James Hansen, told lawmakers at a Senate hearing that “global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause-and-effect relationship with the greenhouse effect.” He added that there “is only 1 percent chance of accidental warming of this magnitude.”
By that, he meant that humans were responsible.
His testimony made headlines around the United States and the world. But in the time since, greenhouse gas emissions, the global temperature average and cost of climate-related heat, wildfires, droughts, flooding and hurricanes have continued to rise.
This fall, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released an alarming report warning that if emissions continue to rise at their present rate, the atmosphere will warm up by as much as 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels by 2040, resulting in the flooding of coastlines, the killing of coral reefs worldwide, and more catastrophic droughts and wildfires.
To avoid this, greenhouse gas emissions would need to fall by nearly half from 2010 levels in the next 12 years and reach a net of zero by 2050. But in the United States, the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, President Trump continues to question the science of climate change, and his administration is rolling back emissions limits on power plants and fuel economy standards on cars and light trucks, while pushing to accelerate the use of fossil fuels. Other major nations around the world aren’t cutting emissions quickly enough, either.
So what has happened over the last 30 years? Progress has been made in fits and starts, but not nearly enough has been done to confront the planet-altering magnitude of what we have unleashed. Here’s a look at some of what has occurred:
The biggest takeaway from two weeks of climate negotiations in Poland is simple, if breathtaking: climate change is such a massive and existential issue that it can only be effectively dealt with by major nation heads of state, not just a collection of 195 environment ministers.
Yes, the basic rules for accounting, monitoring and verification of emissions were agreed to in Poland. These are important, so that all nations can judge whether other countries are on track to make emissions cuts as they have pledged. Ministers deserve real credit for delivering on this. But getting “the Paris rules” right, while necessary, does not begin the harder work of actually cutting emissions, and so is hardly sufficient progress to address the climate crisis, for two key reasons.
First, the largest emitting nations are not even close to on track to meet their Paris pledges. In fact, rather than falling, global CO2 emissions grew by 1.6 percent in 2017 and are projected to increase by 2.7 percent this year. The world’s largest emitter, China, saw its CO2 emissions grow by about 5 percent in 2018. And after steadily falling in previous years under President Obama, U.S. emissions are set to rise by 2.5 percent this year under President Trump. E.U. CO2 output did fall by about 1 percent this year, but rose in 2017 by an equal amount, and Indian emissions rose by more than 6 percent, as did emissions of many other countries.
Second, even if all the Paris emissions pledges were achieved, they would still push global average temperatures up at least 3.5 Celsius, far above even remotely safe levels. In fact, new science is showing us that temperatures that high will be catastrophic, leading to massive sea level rise, agricultural disruptions, more droughts, floods, fires, infectious disease and other extreme impacts.
Anew reportpublished by the Daily Beast earlier this week revealed how little President Trump cares about America’s future. When senior administration officials warned Trump about the nation’s growing and unsustainable national debt, the president reportedly expressed little interest in tackling the issue because it wouldn’t create a full-blown crisis until after he is gone from office.
Granted, anyone who paid attention to the first two years of the Trump administration could tell that it doesn’t prioritize fiscal responsibility. Trump’s signature achievement thus far is package of partisan tax cuts that the Congressional Budget Office estimateswill add more than $2 trillionto the national debt over the next decade. And its 2018 budget proposal showed that enacting all the administration’s preferred policies would leave the debt significantly largerthan it would have been if President Obama’s final budget had been enacted.
Three stunningly dire climate change reports have emerged in the last month, including the UN “Emissions Gap” report released this week and the U.S. National Climate Assessment released last Friday. Together, they ring an alarm bell of historic proportions, and must serve as an unprecedented wake-up call to the U.S. and global leaders meeting in Poland next week for key UN climate negotiations.
Yet, even as exigent as they are, these studies still underestimate the risks of runaway, catastrophic climate change, which other reports have found. Simply put, the sum of the science finds that achieving near-term and deep emissions reductions has become manifestly urgent for the safety of nations around the world.
The United Nation’s “Emissions Gap” report out this week finds that the current emissions reduction pledges from all countries within the Paris Agreement, including the U.S., are far too weak to keep temperatures from increasing less than 2 degrees Celsius pre-industrial levels and provide even a modicum of climate protection. The report notes that the “original [global] level of ambition needs to be roughly tripled for the 2°C scenario and increased around fivefold for the 1.5°C scenario.”
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) today released a national opinion survey that highlights the surprising resilience of America’s pragmatic political center two years into Donald Trump’s deeply polarizing presidency. The poll reinforces a key takeaway from the 2018 midterm elections: Suburban voters – especially women – are repelled by the president’s racial and cultural demagoguery and are moving away from a Trump-dominated GOP.
“Our poll suggests that Donald Trump’s election in 2016 is more likely to be an aberration than any permanent shift in America’s political course,” said Anne Kim, PPI Director of Social and Domestic Policy and PPI President Will Marshall. “The defection of suburban voters creates a political landscape that favors Democrats in 2020 – if they stick to the ‘big tent’ approach that proved so effective in the midterm.”
The poll conducted by Pete Brodnitz at Expedition Strategies contains findings about what’s top of mind for voters, their ideological outlook and leanings, and their views on health care, trade, growth and inequality, the role of government, monopoly and competition, and other contentious issues.
“The agenda that could help Democrats sustain a governing majority, our poll suggests, is one that is progressive yet pragmatic—one that’s optimistic, aspirational and respects Americans’ beliefs in individual initiative and self-determination; one that broadens Americans’ opportunities for success in the private sector and strengthens the nation’s global economic role; one that demands more from business but doesn’t cross the line into stifling growth; and one that adopts a practical approach to big challenges such as immigration reform and climate change,” write Kim and Marshall.
“For Democrats to maintain and expand this near-majority advantage, they must craft a broadly appealing agenda that brings or keeps independents and less committed partisans—the majority of whom call themselves ‘moderate’—under the tent.”
By all accounts, House Democrats return to Washington this week to begin planning their priorities for 2019 in an aggressive frame of mind. But on climate change and energy issues, rather than simply responding to Trump’s latest provocation (like those regarding California wildfires), they must step back and take a strategic approach.
This means Democrats must have the discipline to subordinate all other considerations to the key goal of creating the political and policy conditions needed to enact landmark energy and climate legislation after 2020, when they may well win back the White House and Senate. Indeed, how they handle energy and climate in the next two years will play a critical role in determining whether they gain the power to act.
Despite bright spots in Nevada and several Governors races, the mid-term elections held some cautionary lessons. The defeat in Washington State of a carbon tax referendum and several other climate-related measures in Arizona and Colorado, along with apparent state-wide losses in “ground-zero” climate impacts states of Florida and Texas, should be sobering.
The politics of climate change are complex, even for voters already suffering from its impacts. Swing voters will not respond to far-left ideological crusades or simple-minded attempts to rigidly impose “best” climate policies from above. Such approaches have largely failed as political matter for nearly 30 years now.
In the last two years the U.S. has suffered from record hurricanes, rainfall, floods, wildfires and other disasters made worse by rising temperatures and sea levels. These extreme events, exacerbated by climate change, have cost thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars.
Now, as election day looms, the gross mishandling of these disasters is likely to exact a high political price on Donald Trump and other climate change-denying Republicans, helping to create a political blue wave that will swell Democratic numbers to a House majority, Florida’s Governorship, and other key prizes in the mid-terms.
There is political precedent for this. Recent history shows voters punish poor Presidential responses to natural disasters, and that such poor responses have a role in changing the public perception regarding the competence and characters of the ruling party.
The U.S. Supreme Court is about to get a look at the latest attempt by environmentalists and their political allies to bypass legislatures and use the courts to enact their climate-change agenda. So far, they have sued America’s energy producers in hopes of having judges, not regulators, set carbon emission limits and making energy producers pay for local infrastructure projects to deal with the impacts of climate change. As the Progressive Policy Institute hasexplained, selling fossil fuels is not illegal, and sensible people on both sides of the aisle have long agreed that these actions have no foundation in the law.
Indeed, this litigation has already percolated up to the U.S. Supreme Court once. In a unanimous ruling authored by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Court made it clear that Congress and the EPA, not the courts, are the appropriate branches of government to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Justice Ginsburg understood, as have otherprogressive legal scholars, that suing energy producers over climate change is not the proper way to set American energy policy, which must balance many factors including environmental concerns, energy independence, and affordability.
Amid the daily drama of President Trump’s tweets and scandals, it can be hard to focus on the most important issues for our future. An unfortunate consequence of this purposeful turmoil is that few serious solutions are being offered for addressing two of the greatest threats facing the United States: runaway climate change and unsustainable budget policies.
The resignation of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt may end his days of plundering the environment and public treasury, but the Trump administration will continue doing both even in his absence, risking long-term national well-being for temporary political benefits. It’s critical that Democrats offer credible alternatives, especially if they hope to inspire younger voters who will bear the burden of these problems, because we cannot afford to dither on either issue much longer.
We speak from experience. One of us is a baby boomer who has spent most of his career working on energy and climate policy; the other is a millennial focused on the federal budget. Although our two fields may seem unrelated, both these existential challenges require our generations to work together to solve.
The United States Conference of Mayors met in Boston last week, and a key topic was climate change. Mayors have been looking for ways to exert leadership on this issue, but one idea that should be tossed to the waste bin is suing America’s energy producers over so-called “climate change injuries.” These lawsuits, started by a handful of California mayors last summer, are orchestrated efforts to sue companies for doing nothing more than producing the energy we use every day. The litigation’s backers are actively recruiting mayors to file carbon copy lawsuits.
Progressives who care about climate change should not reflexively cheer or join this litigation. The lawsuits, the brainchild of a 2012 conference in La Jolla, California, of environmental activists and lawyers, are driven by private law firms. They seek to make energy companies pay for local infrastructure projects, such as sea walls. Let’s be real: Building a seawall around our coastline and making energy producers pay for it has as much to do with combatting climate change as Trump’s border wall has to do with illegal immigration — nothing but symbolism.
Earlier this month, President Trump ordered Energy Secretary Rick Perry to intervene in electricity markets to prop up failing coal power plants, falsely claiming the effort was needed to protect electricity grid reliability for national security reasons.
In truth, the action amounts only to a war on the working- and middle-class energy consumers Trump claims to care about, all to indulge his political fixation with “saving coal.”
Yet, this unprecedented intervention in electricity markets is only the latest Trump decision that would raise consumer energy costs and put taxpayers at risk.
Despite repeated and flagrant abuses of taxpayer trust and sweetheart deals from energy lobbyists, any of which would have doomed previous cabinet members, embattled Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt appears to still have the support of President Trump, even though White House aides are urging he be fired.
The president’s theory seems to be that Pruitt’s mission to dismantle environmental protections at EPA and investigations of him will fire up the right-wing base turnout in November.
This sounds like wishful thinking. It’s far more likely that headlines about Pruitt’s taxpayer abuses right up to election day will help mobilize college-educated suburban swing voters disgusted by the Trump’s administration’s ethical corruption and rejection of science in favor of polluters.
Leading pollsters say these are just the voters Republicans need to keep Congress. Losing them could be just enough to bring about a Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives, creating potentially inescapable entanglements for president himself.
President Trump met with auto industry executives at the White House on Friday, arguing for his planned rollback of fuel efficiency and emissions standards, and telling them he wanted them to build “millions more cars” in the United States.
Let’s assume they would. If they did, any cars they made would also be dirtier and more expensive for consumers to drive without the fuel efficiency and emissions rules that the president wants to discard.
How much more expensive? A draft proposal by the Trump administration that emerged in recent weeks would result in additional fuel costs of “$193 billion to $236 billion cumulatively between now and 2035” depending on oil prices, according to an analysis by the Rhodium Group, a research firm that examines the market impact of energy and climate policy.
And those higher gasoline costs are likely to hurt most the very families President Trump claims to care so much about — the ones living paycheck to paycheck.
telling them he wanted them to build “millions more cars” in the United States.