issue: Politics

Marshall for The Hill: How Trump Can Capitalize on Autocrats’ Setbacks

Posted on by Alex Terr

The defanging of Iran — chiefly by Israel, with a strong assist from President Trump and the U.S. Air Force — doesn’t just signal a dramatic power shift in the Middle East. It is also a setback to Iran’s senior partners in the anti-American axis — Russia and China.

Neither has offered their battered ally anything more than boilerplate denunciations of Israel and the U.S. for violating international law. For now, at least, the fearsome “Axis of Autocracies,” bent on disrupting the U.S.-led global order — China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — looks rather brittle.

Dictators rarely make reliable allies. Apart from coveting absolute power, each has little in common with other nations’ despots. Their pacts tend to be opportunistic and fleeting. Even as the tide of war turned against them, for instance, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan never found a way to align their strategic goals or military strategies.

Alliances between liberal democracies seem to have more tensile strength. That’s because they are bound together by shared political beliefs and institutions, not just common adversaries.

Even Trump, the arch-realist, may be stumbling into that reality.

Read more in The Hill.

The People Who Brought You Bill Clinton Want to Introduce You to the ‘Colorado Way’

Posted on by Alex Terr

“We tried moving to the left under Biden. … It really helped shrink the party’s appeal,” PPI president and founder Will Marshall told me a few days after the retreat. “What will work in a deep blue district is one thing. What will work in swing states and swing districts is something else altogether.”

PPI’s own polling and focus groups with non-college voters over the last three years showed a more moderate or even conservative outlook on issues like immigration or policing, Marshall explained. That’s why they went to Denver: Marshall and others at PPI believe the key to the party’s future success is to be found in the unique combination of libertarian ideals, progressive programs and pocketbook-focused governance that has become a hallmark of western liberalism. The pragmatic approach, they say, reflects the growing number of unaffiliated voters in the country.

PPI’s plan to take the strategy sessions national has a compelling pedigree: After Democrats’ dismal 1988 election showing — when George H. W. Bush beat Democrat Michael Dukakis with nearly 80 percent of the electoral college vote — PPI went to the American South looking for answers. Marshall and other PPI strategists held similar sessions that grew into the bones of the influential New Democratic movement. Involved in those strategic discussions was a little-known governor named Bill Clinton.

Read more in Politico.

Passage of ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ Renders Republican Deficit Hawks Extinct

Posted on by Alyssa Brown

Republicans have sent their “One Big Beautiful Bill” to President Trump’s desk and it’s hard to overstate the consequences. Not only will the bill be one of the most regressive transfers of wealth from society’s poorest to its richest in recent memory, but it will also add trillions of dollars to our national debt and hurt our economy. By passing this obscene budget-busting bill with near-unanimous support from their members in Congress, Republicans have proven that their party’s deficit hawks have gone extinct.

According to analysis from the Yale Budget Lab, the bill’s deep cuts to safety-net programs such as SNAP and Medicaid will reduce annual incomes for the bottom 20% of Americans by roughly $700 per person. But the savings from these cuts won’t be used to pay down the national debt or improve the programs for the people who need them most — rather, they will help offset tax cuts that will increase average after-tax incomes for individuals in the top 1% by roughly $30,000. The bill also guts pro-growth investments in the clean energy transition while propping up coal production and other conservative special interests with new giveaways, such as expansive new aid for wealthy farmers and large tax deductions for whaling boats.

Despite the bill’s large cuts, it would add roughly $4.1 trillion to the national debt over the next ten years.  Moreover, if ostensibly “temporary” policies in the bill are eventually made permanent without offset — as Republicans have made clear they had no trouble doing when writing this bill— the cost would swell to $5.5 trillion, making it more expensive than every COVID stimulus bill combined. This is not only the most expensive bill ever passed using the filibuster-proof reconciliation process, it is also the first one to permanently increase budget deficits outside the 10-year window. This unprecedented outcome was only possible because Senate Republicans effectively invoked the “nuclear option” to blow up budget enforcement mechanisms, which will open the floodgates for future Congresses to add trillions more to the national debt with barebones majorities.

The explosion of federal debt will have lasting consequences for Americans. In the short term, deficit spending by the federal government will increase by up to $632 billion in a single year, putting upward pressure on inflation rates that have remained stubbornly above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. Increased government borrowing will also put upward pressure on already elevated interest rates, making everything from mortgages to car loans more expensive for ordinary families. Over the long term, higher rates will make it more expensive for businesses to finance new investments, slowing innovation and job creation. The federal government already spends roughly a trillion dollars each year on interest payments – more than it spends on national defense or Medicare. Now those costs will grow even faster, putting them on track to rival Social Security as the single-largest line item in the federal budget within 20 years. Instead of being used to fund investments in America’s future, taxpayer dollars will be almost exclusively used to pay for previous obligations.

Perhaps what is most remarkable is that this massive assault on our country’s fiscal integrity was only made possible by the people pretending to be its loudest defenders. For years, self-identified “deficit hawks” in the House GOP conference repeatedly called the deficit an “existential threat.” And even though they relied on completely fake growth assumptions to argue that $2.5 trillion of tax cuts would pay for themselves, these representatives insisted they would not support legislation that included any additional tax cuts without offset. They went so far as to get a commitment from House Speaker Mike Johnson that he would step down if he passed a bill that crossed this red line. Yet when the Senate sent them a bill that blatantly violated their agreement, these “fiscal hawks” quickly folded under pressure and rubber-stamped it.

Compare that to what happened just four years ago under the Biden administration. President Biden’s full “Build Back Better” agenda, while no model of fiscal responsibility, would have added less than $3 trillion to budget deficits over the first 10 years if it had been permanently enacted. Even though they used budget gimmicks to do it, Democratic deficit hawks in the House ensured the reconciliation bill advancing this agenda was scored as roughly deficit-neutral under traditional accounting. And when Democratic deficit hawks in the Senate forced party leaders to strip out those gimmicks, the bill eventually became something that actually reduced deficits. While deficit hawks may be endangered within the Congressional Democratic Party, today it is clear they are functionally extinct on the Republican side.

Deeper Dive: 

Fiscal Fact: 

As President Trump’s chaotic and destructive economic policies have shaken investor confidence in the first half of 2025, the U.S. dollar has lost over 10% of its value relative to foreign currencies — the worst such decline in more than 50 years. A weaker dollar results in more expensive imports, lower spending power when traveling internationally, and higher borrowing costs for both the American people and their government.

Other Fiscal News:

More from PPI and the Center for Funding America’s Future:

Senate Republicans Go Nuclear to Blow Up the National Debt

Posted on by Alyssa Brown

Senate Republicans on Monday took the dangerous step of “going nuclear” to pass their One Big Beautiful Bill in violation of the rules governing the filibuster-proof reconciliation process — and the fallout will add trillions of dollars to the national debt.

The reconciliation process, which was designed to fast-track policies needed to help Congress hit its budget targets, does not allow lawmakers to increase deficits outside the 10-year scoring window. These rules have always been enforced by measuring how enacting provisions in the legislation would affect the federal budget relative to a “current law baseline,” which is a scenario defined in statute and generally assumes laws are left unchanged. Senate rules require 60 votes to waive this restriction. 

Republicans couldn’t find a politically palatable way to pay for the trillions of dollars in tax cuts they wanted to make permanent, so they instead decided to make those tax cuts appear free by scoring against a “current policy” baseline, which assumes every policy in effect today is extended in perpetuity — even if the law as written would have them expire. But it gets worse: to enact new tax cuts without paying for them, Senate Republicans scheduled those provisions to expire within the 10-year window and scored them as temporary. The result is a Frankenstein scorekeeping system in which no consistent accounting is used, and legislation is assumed to cost whatever the majority wishes it did. 

While the Senate GOP’s “official” score of the bill using this Frankenstein accounting shows they would reduce deficits, traditional scoring against the current law baseline would show it adding more than $4 trillion to the deficit over 10 years (including higher interest payments) — and the cost would swell to $5.5 trillion if all the “temporary” provisions were made permanent. Notably, if the bill were measured in a way that treated the scheduled expirations of both new and existing policies consistently, it would violate the rules of reconciliation by permanently increasing deficits relative to either a current policy or a current law baseline. 

The Senate’s parliamentarian, who is responsible for interpreting the chamber’s rules, almost certainly would rule against the GOP’s attempt to use their Frankenstein score for enforcement purposes. Any effort to circumvent the parliamentarian’s official interpretation of the rules – whether by firing her, overruling her, or formally changing the 60-vote supermajority requirement with just 51 votes — would be invoking a “nuclear option” that fundamentally changes the character of the Senate. 

Senate Republicans insist they found an alternative to going nuclear by asserting the Senate Budget Committee chairman has unilateral authority to determine scores — something they argue Senate Democrats did in their 2022 budget resolution. But the two situations are not remotely the same: Senate Democrats used their authority to consistently assume discretionary spending for both the IRS and Head Start continued at baseline levels, when the original CBO score was inconsistent. Moreover, Democrats made sure the move was blessed by the parliamentarian ahead of time, whereas Republicans actively prevented the parliamentarian from making any ruling. 

The fact that Republicans prevented the parliamentarian from weighing in before voting to break their own rules with a simple majority vote, rather than overruling her directly, is a distinction without a difference. Republicans have gone nuclear with their chicanery and destroyed the Senate’s budget enforcement mechanisms.

The fallout will radiate throughout fiscal policy for years to come. Not only will the national debt be up to $5.5 trillion larger 10 years from now than it would be without the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” but there will be little to stop future Congresses from doing the same thing that Republicans did this week: adding trillions more to the debt while claiming they are doing the opposite.

New PPI Report Asserts Democrats Must Reclaim Obama’s Vision of American Identity

Posted on by Alex Terr

WASHINGTON  —  A new report from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) warns that Democrats have strayed from former President Barack Obama’s unifying vision of American national identity — and paid a steep political price. In “How Democrats Have Lost Sight of Obama’s Vision of American National Identity,” PPI contributor Ian Reifowitz contends that the party’s embrace of identity-based rhetoric and policies has alienated working-class voters of all races while failing to deliver electoral gains among communities of color.

Reifowitz, a historian and longtime observer of Obama’s political philosophy, traces how the 44th president’s inclusive and aspirational message helped build a multiracial coalition and win decisive victories. By contrast, he argues, Democratic leaders in the post-Obama era — most notably during the Biden administration — have too often leaned into the race essentialist worldview popular among progressive academics and elite institutions, emphasizing division over universal solutions and common purpose.

“Barack Obama offered Democrats a winning formula: an inclusive patriotism rooted in both realism and hope,” said Reifowitz. “My report shows that abandoning that vision has not only weakened the party’s appeal to working- and middle-class voters — it’s also left a vacuum that demagogues are eager to fill. It’s time to reclaim the idea of America as a unifying force.”

The report details how this shift coincides with declining Democratic support among key demographic groups, including nonwhite and working-class voters, and critiques the left’s overreliance on divisive frameworks such as equity mandates, race-based preferences, and pessimistic historical narratives. Reifowitz calls for a return to a politics that balances acknowledgment of past injustices with belief in America’s capacity for renewal and unity.

The report reinforces the mission of PPI’s American Identity Project and follows the announcement earlier this week of a new advisory group co-chaired by former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers and New York Times columnist David Brooks. The project seeks to revitalize the civic traditions that sustain American democracy and promote unity in an age of polarization.

“We are proud to publish this splendid report as part of PPI’s larger effort to help Americans escape the thicket of racial identity politics that is so pronounced on both the left and right,” said Richard D. Kahenberg, Director of the American Identity Project. “Ian Reifowitz reminds us of how far many Democrats have moved away from Barack Obama’s powerful, unifying story of America, and the importance of reinvigorating that vision today.”

Read and download the report here.

 

Founded in 1989, PPI is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Find an expert and learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Follow us @PPI.

###

Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org

How Democrats Lost Sight of Obama’s Vision of National Identity

Posted on by Alyssa Brown

Roughly two decades ago, Barack Obama burst onto the national stage with an address at the 2004 Democratic Convention that captivated millions of Americans. He offered what became his most widely quoted line: “There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.”

Obama connected the language of American unity to progressive policy goals. He described his: “belief that we are connected as one people. If there’s a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandmother.”

The speech was not a one-off. I have carefully studied just about every word Barack Obama uttered or wrote in a public forum from the early 1990s through the end of his presidency, and most of the rest since. My book, Obama’s America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity, examined his deeply held concepts of America and Americanness. His soaring depiction of our country’s story in which we’ve committed terrible wrongs but drawn upon the founding documents to make remarkable progress resonated with enough Americans to elect and re-elect him to the presidency with commanding margins — a feat accomplished by none of the Democratic Party’s three subsequent presidential candidates.

It should be obvious that Donald Trump’s vision of America represents something like the antithesis of Obama’s. Where Obama sought to unite, Trump divides. As my coauthor and I demonstrate in a forthcoming book, Trump plays on racial stereotypes as a routine feature of his rhetoric. He labeled Mexican immigrants “murderers, child predators and bloodthirsty rapists and drug dealers.” He stated: “I think Islam hates us,” impugning people of an entire religion. He told America that Haitian migrants were eating their pets. And his Defense Secretary ordered the removal from the curriculum of U.S. military service academies any topic focusing on “race, gender or the darker moments of American history.” In large part, Trump rode racial divisiveness to the Republican nomination in 2016 and then to the presidency. For Obama, being divisive was one of the most shameful things a public figure could be. It was, in fact, the strongest criticism he leveled at his own leftwing former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, in his vitally important 2008 speech titled: “A More Perfect Union: Race, Politics, and Unifying Our Country.” Whereas Trump revels in “blood and soil” nationalism, Obama champions the idea of America.

What’s less obvious but equally important is that Democratic politicians — influenced by far-left academics — have in important ways departed from how the 44th president talks about our history and our national identity in the years since he left office. In fact, I have been astonished by how much influence the views of the academic left — views that depart significantly from Obama’s — have gained even among Democratic officials.

Read the full report.

Ainsley for the New York Times: A Progressive Future Depends on National Identity

Posted on by Alyssa Brown

When Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain stepped before a lectern at 10 Downing Street last month, he made clear how misguided he thought the country’s immigration policies had been. He described its recent approach as a “one-nation experiment in open borders” that Britons never voted for. In its place, he announced a slew of measures to toughen border controls, raise skill requirements for immigrants and effectively end mass migration.

All this is coming from Britain’s center-left Labour Party, which long favored openness toward migrants. That reflected Labour’s modern base of urban progressive voters. Higher immigration was economically advantageous for them, in particular by holding down prices, and it was consistent with their humanitarian worldview.

The trouble is, these views tend to be at odds with the views of many working-class voters. Those less affluent voters have questioned the impact of mass migration for years, worried about its impact on housing, public services, wages and communities. The response of urban progressives in Britain, as in other parts of Europe and the United States, has often been to denounce working-class voters as narrow-minded or racist. It should hardly be surprising that voters responded by switching their political allegiances. Immigration, more than any other issue, symbolizes the wedge between center-left parties and their traditional class base.

Keep reading in The New York Times. 

Ainsley on ABC Radio National: Lessons for Global Centre-Left Parties from Labor’s Win

Posted on by Max Sherrill

Centre-left parties the world over are lamenting the loss of their heartland, as low paid, working-class and non-graduate voters defect to the right.

Claire Ainsley was a key aide to the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and is now part of the Progressive Policy Institute, a US-based group with close links to the former US president Bill Clinton.  She’s been in Australia speaking to voters about Labor’s election victory.

Listen to the podcast episode.

Marshall for The Hill: Factory Jobs Aren’t the Future Working Americans Want

Posted on by Alex Terr

Undaunted by his predecessor’s failure to spark a manufacturing renaissance, President Trump also dreams of reindustrializing America. He won’t succeed either, because no president has the power to undo a half-century of post-industrial evolution.

Why have our two oldest presidents fixated on “bringing back” factory jobs? Both grew up in the ‘50s, when the United States bestrode a war-ravaged world like an industrial colossus. But the answer isn’t just nostalgia for a lost “golden age.”

There’s also a pervasive feeling that our country owes a promissory note to working families hit hard by deindustrialization. The disappearance of manufacturing jobs with decent pay and benefits — traditionally their ticket from high school to the middle class — has undermined their living standards and social standing.

Read more in The Hill. 

Marshall in Politico: ‘It’s a winner for him’: Dems work to turn LA debate from immigration to Trump’s executive powers

Posted on by Max Sherrill

For Democrats, it’s a concern rooted in Trump’s historic strength on immigration with voters not in Los Angeles, but watching on social media and TV in swing states and districts across the country.

“There’s a background and a history, and so that limits the sympathy of lots of fair-minded Americans watching this spectacle unfold,” said Will Marshall, founder of Progressive Policy Institute, a center-left think tank.

Read the full article in Politico.

Ainsley on The Spectator’s Coffee House Shots Podcast: Is Rachel Reeves’s Headroom Shrinking?

Posted on by Max Sherrill

There were clear winners and losers in Rachel Reeves’s spending review yesterday but some of her announcements around capital spending and investment saw her dubbed the ‘Klarna Chancellor’ by LBC’s Nick Ferrari for her ‘buy now, pay later’ approach. Clearly trying to shake off the accusations of being ‘austerity-lite’, Labour point to longer term decisions made yesterday, such as over energy policy and infrastructure. But will voters see much benefit in the short-term? And, with the news today that Britain’s GDP shrank by 0.3% in April, will the decisions Rachel Reeves have to make only get harder before the October budget?

Lucy Dunn speaks to Michael Simmons and Claire Ainsley, former director of policy to Keir Starmer and now at the Progressive Policy Institute.

Listen to the full podcast episode.

Ryan for Newsweek: Trump Policies Hurt Workers in America’s Heartland. Democrats Have to Say So

Posted on by Alex Terr

The Democratic Party faces a whole mess of problems today. But if its post-2024 shortcomings could be reduced to any single thing, it would be this: We’ve become more concerned with those who shower before work than after. Many of the Biden administration’s priorities—forgiving student debt, banning exports of cleaner natural gas, placating protesters chanting about the “patriarchy”—made us look like tribunes of the nation’s liberal elite. No matter the pains we took to verbalize our love for the working class, our actions spoke louder than our words.

Now, I don’t doubt that many Democrats are eager to win back the working-class voters we’ve lost over the last decade. But, as many of my colleagues and friends agreed at a recent conference organized by the Progressive Policy Institute in Denver—titled “New Directions for Democrats”—our party’s failure to focus on issues that directly affect working-class voters opened the door for MAGAism. To win those voters back, we will need to focus anew on the guys who return home from work drenched in sweat, and the women who stagger back from their hospital shifts burdened by exhaustion. That means changes in both our style and our substance.

Too often, we try to skirt the hard work that entails by focusing exclusively on President Donald Trump. I don’t care for him any more than the next guy—but the hard truth is that we’ll never make inroads by ranting against the “oligarchy” alone. Instead, we need to make clear what the Trump administration is doing to undermine the working-class American Dream. The specters of fascism, racism, xenophobia, and transphobia might draw crowds to rallies, but if we’re going to reconnect with working-class voters, we need to make their cause our primary concern. And begins by highlighting how Donald Trump is affecting their communities directly.

Read more in Newsweek.

Kahlenberg for DC Journal: Counterpoint: Young Americans Would Not Rally Around Our Nation, But Don’t Blame Them

Posted on by Alex Terr

As we approach Memorial Day, it is sobering to recognize that today’s young people are unlikely to respond as enthusiastically to a call to serve their country as members of the World War II generation did 80 years ago. Young people do not exhibit the high levels of patriotism and commitment to democracy found among earlier generations. However, I don’t blame young people.

Each generation must be taught, by word and deed, the genius of American democracy, and those of us who are older have failed to do so.

During World War II, Americans rallied around Franklin D. Roosevelt’s call to make America the “Arsenal of Democracy,” providing war materials to confront Adolf Hitler. Young men and women ultimately came forward to serve in U.S. military forces that would change history by defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

Today, pride in America and belief in democracy are much lower among young people than among older Americans. In a 2023 Gallup poll, only 18 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds said they were “extremely proud to be American,” compared with 50 percent of adults over 55.

Read more in DC Journal. 

Marshall for The Hill: Economic Populism From Both Parties Fails Working Americans

Posted on by Max Sherrill

President Trump’s startling win in 2016 ushered in a new era of economic populism. Ever since, both parties have been vying to offer a new economic deal to blue-collar Americans, whose earning power had been declining for decades.

They could use a new deal. According to the Federal Reserve, real median earnings for non-college workers fell 14 percent over the past 40 years, while those for workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher have grown by 14 percent.

Opportunity in America looks very different to people on opposite sides of the diploma divide. Whereas non-college workers contend with downward mobility, the highly educated rise into tonier precincts of upper-middle-class affluence.

This disparity disfigures our society, and populists across the political spectrum are right to want to redress it. Unfortunately, they have proved better at posturing as working-class tribunes than at tangibly improving their lives.

Keep reading in The Hill.

Ainsley for Re:State: The Case for Remaking the State

Posted on by Max Sherrill

PPI’s Claire Ainsley contributed to this essay collection on remaking the modern state for Re:State, a UK public services think tank.

The question of remaking the State is fundamental to the fight for democracy versus authoritarianism. Increasing numbers of citizens in developed democracies are starting to question the foundation of modern liberal democracy, as they continue to be expected to fund a state that they are becoming less sure is serving them.

This is particularly acute amongst younger people, the perhaps unexpected audience the right-wing populists are gaining traction with, who seek to exploit people’s discontent with a settlement
they are unconvinced works in their favour. If we are to inspire the next generation that this world is theirs and that we have to take shared responsibility for running it, then we have to think radically and urgently about what and who our State is for. Simply defending the status quo or proposing limited fixes just isn’t sufficient for the rupture that is occurring between those for whom the existing order works, and the many for Re:Think: Bold ideas to remake the State Re:Imagining the State whom it doesn’t.

We could start by fronting up what happened during the Covid-19 pandemic. The only explanation I can find for how little we want to talk about it now, to address the failings and learn from them, is that it is easier to bury the memory of a trauma than to relive it. But like all traumas, they find a way to resurface. An emotional long Covid is present in our classrooms and care homes, in the public services that are the State’s frontline, and in the people who rely on them most.

Read the full essay on Page 7-8 of Re:State.