issue: Politics

Memo to President Biden: The Progressive Way to Ease Student Debt Burdens

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Note: In this brief, I use the term education debt, rather than student debt, since most affected borrowers are no longer students, and this category of debt affects a wide swath of society, not just students.          

After his inauguration on January 20, one of President Joe Biden’s first official acts was signing an executive order to extend the pandemic-related pause on student loan payments and interest, as well as to halt collection of student loans in default, through September 30. For millions of young Americans struggling to pay off college loans, the order will be a welcome down payment on Biden’s campaign promise to deliver major debt relief.

While campaigning for the presidency last spring, Biden unveiled a plan to forgive a minimum of $10,000 per borrower. The President’s advisers say the administration will submit a legislative proposal for debt relief to the new Congress. 

The case for relief is strong. Over the past four years, the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers have provided little in the way of help for struggling borrowers beyond the temporary pause on repayments. With young people struggling to keep their heads above water amid the Covid pandemic and recession, it is no surprise that Democratic policymakers are looking for ways to relieve their financial stress.  

In May 2020, House Democrats also called for $10,000 worth of education loan relief for “distressed” borrowers as part of their Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) bill. This category of borrowers included those with delinquent or defaulted loans, and others considered “financially distressed.” According to the U.S. Department of Education, as many as 20 percent of education loans are in default. This provision got caught up in partisan wrangling over the size and cost of the HEROES act, and was dropped from the compromise stimulus bill Congress passed in late December 2020. 

Since his victory last November, Biden has faced persistent calls from progressives to forgive education debt for the 45 million Americans who owe close to $1.6 trillion in loans. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer dramatically raised the bidding by urging Biden to take executive action to forgive up to $50,000 of federal education debt. Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Alma Adams (D-NC), and Maxine Waters (D-CA) introduced a companion resolution in the House in December 2020.  

Although popular on the left, such calls to “go big” have drawn a skeptical response from many independent analysts. “In sheer magnitude, canceling $50,000 in student debt would rank among the largest transfer programs in U.S. history,” notes the Brookings Institution’s Adam Looney. “At a cost slightly above $1 trillion, it would equal the total amount spent on cash welfare since 1980. And its largest effect would be to improve the finances of college-educated workers, who have already tended to be winners in an economy marked by ever-rising inequality.” 

President Biden likewise has expressed skepticism about the distributive impact of these proposals. He’s also told Congressional Democrats he would prefer a legislative fix to an easily reversible executive order – something that looks more likely after the January 5 Georgia runoffs flipped control of the Senate to his party.

Digging into the data on the demographics of Americans with education debt, it becomes clear that Biden’s approach isn’t just more affordable, it’s also more progressive and equitable. Approximately 48 percent of outstanding student loans are held by those with graduate degrees; that is double the share of those who owe loans and earned an Associate’s degree or less. In fact, slightly over a third of all education debt is concentrated in the highest income quartile – households making over $97,000 per year.

Without better targeting, debt relief would mostly benefit higher-income households, which hold a third of student loans and have greater ability to pay them back. A 2019 analysis by the Urban Institute finds that “forgiving larger amounts of debt would distribute a larger share of benefits to higher-income households, and reducing the amount of debt forgiven should increase the share of benefits going to lower-income households.” Based on this analysis, the $50,000 proposed by Sens. Warren and Schumer would have regressive effects and distribute relief to households at the top of the income scale. 

In contrast, Biden’s plan aims at lower-income borrowers who need debt relief the most. Relief in the amount of $10,000 per borrower would eliminate all debt for 37 percent of borrowers (16.3 million people) and cut in half debts owed by another 9.3 million borrowers at an estimated cost between $250-300 billion. These borrowers are disproportionately young and low-income, and include veterans, single parents, and those in a minority group. Two-thirds of borrowers that default on their payments owe a comparatively low average amount of $9,625. These borrowers also are less likely to repay their loans because they never completed their college degrees or earned only a certificate.

However, it’s not clear whether President Biden’s plan will include an income-based eligibility test to ensure that relief is concentrated on needy rather than affluent families. PPI recommends that the administration target its plan by phasing out relief for borrowers making over $125,000. This would address concerns that about the regressive nature of untargeted debt relief and substantially reduce the cost of the proposal. 

Perhaps most important, the President’s approach recognizes the limits of debt relief and leaves fiscal space for tackling the fundamental problem: America’s broken financing model for higher education. Over the past two decades, the cost of higher education has approximately doubled and ballooning tuition prices have forced students to borrow more to finance their education.

Although federal subsidies – chiefly grants and loans – tilt heavily toward college-going young people, college is not the only pathway to good jobs for young adults and U.S. workers. It’s true that the average college-educated worker reaps a lifetime premium of higher earnings in the labor market. But most Americans don’t go to college. As of 2019, 70.1 percent of Americans 25 and older had not earned a four-year degree, while just 29.9 percent earned a four-year degree or higher. Given his well-known empathy for the struggles of America’s working-class families, PPI recommends that the President pair debt relief with increased public investment in apprenticeships and work-based “career pathways” training programs that connect workers, including those coming out of high school, to well-paying careers.  

PPI has proposed a suite of ideas for how to expand career pathways to employment for millions of Americans including investments for a 10-fold increase in apprenticeships, creating incentives for partnering public and private programs that focus on transferable skills and credentials, and incentivizing private intermediaries who create “outsourced” apprenticeships programs. Although they are beyond the scope of this memo, PPI believes these and related ideas are crucial to ending the bias in federal policy toward college-bound youth. We hope the Biden administration will give high priority to investing more in building a robust system of work-based learning, career training, and apprenticeships for the majority of young Americans who don’t attend four-year colleges.

Recommendations for the Biden Administration

  • Draft legislation to provide $10,000 in immediate education debt forgiveness for those with an annual income of less than $125,000 per year. This will deliver relief for those at greatest risk of defaulting on their student loans, especially students from low-income and minority families. The estimated cost of President Biden’s plan is $250-300 billion, and it would eliminate all education debt for 37 percent of borrowers (16.3 million people) and cut in half debts owed by another 9.3 million borrowers. Our recommendation of an income-based eligibility test is expected to reduce the overall cost.
  • Continue giving borrowers a break on payments and interest by extending the pause on federal student loan payments for the duration of the pandemic and Covid recession. President Biden has extended the pause through September 30.
  • Make income-based repayment more accessible and generous for borrowers. Switching to a universal IBR system that is opt-out for new and existing loans, and which automatically re-enrolls borrowers, would make payments more manageable and automatically tied to income, decreasing the likelihood of default and missed payments. 
  • Modernize the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program to reward national or community service for our public servants by offering $10,000 of education debt relief for every year of service up to five years—after which the loan would be forgiven. This would include individuals with up to five years of prior service and automatically enroll workers in schools, government, and other nonprofit organizations. This would encourage workers to pursue careers in public service.
  • Accelerate attainment of credentials by making the process for earning college credit through Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB) programs, and college courses taken in high school at community colleges, more transparent and accessible, as PPI’s Paul Weinstein has argued.

Education Debt Has Led to a Social Crisis, Which the Pandemic Has Made Worse

Those who have borrowed for degrees are more likely to be lower-income, Black, and less likely to have generational wealth, making them more likely to default, which can lead to further worsening of poverty and the racial wealth gap. To understand why the proposal of $10,000 relief per borrower could have the most impact on lower-income families and those most struggling during the pandemic, it is worth digging into the demographics of who is behind on payments and what groups are holding the most debt:

  • According to the U.S. Department of Education, 20 percent of borrowers are in default, and a million more go into default each year. Two-thirds of borrowers who default never completed their college degrees or earned only a certificate and owe a comparatively low average amount of $9,625. Those who default include veterans, parents, and first-generation college students who are more financially vulnerable to default. Without a credential and with limited access to good jobs, borrowers are forced to default and, in doing so, accrue additional interest and fees on the principal loan. These borrowers are in no position to pay back their defaulted loans.

Default can have catastrophic implications for future access to credit, and result in garnished wages, seized tax refunds, and harm other measures of financial wealth. Given the age at which most of these borrowers took out loans, many begin their adulthood at an economic disadvantage. At this scale, the education debt crisis is not only hurting those who are struggling the most, but it is holding back an entire generation with negative implications for their children’s generation. The financial strain the pandemic has inflicted on workers will make it more difficult for defaulted borrowers to get back on track with payments.

Debt Relief: Down Payment on Reform

As the pandemic rages, and more Americans lose their jobs and businesses, short-term education debt relief can help our most vulnerable borrowers ride out the storm. But we also need longer-term, structural reforms aimed at driving down the tuition costs for both college and post-secondary skills training. 

Short-Term Relief and Considerations

The Trump administration implemented limited short-term relief for education debt by temporarily suspending loan payments through February 2021 on federal educational loans as of March 2020. Further short-term relief is desirable, in line with President Biden’s proposal for $10,000 of forgiveness. As one of his first actions in office, President Biden signed an executive order extending the pause on student loan payments and interest through September 30. Biden should continue to extend the pause as long as the Covid recession continues to place financial strain on borrowers.

Reviewing the data, education debt forgiveness targeted at borrowers with low incomes and the unemployed would have the greatest impact. However, some concerns remain over how policymakers can target relief to those who need it the most. Some experts have suggested that policymakers could isolate undergraduate debt from graduate school debt in order to prioritize these more needy borrowers. This would avoid regressive effects that could give a large portion of relief to those with graduate school debt, such as doctors and lawyers, that are in a better financial position to pay back their loans. At the $10,000 level, however, the Biden plan avoids many of the greatest concerns about the potential for regressive outcomes relevant to higher dollar per borrower proposals. Adding an income cap of $125,000 for borrowers will target relief for households who need it the most.

Following dramatic victories in the Jan. 5 Georgia run-off elections, Democrats have taken control of the Senate. This likely clears the way for legislation to provide debt relief, as President Biden prefers. Citing the need for action during the pandemic and recession, some Democrats have been urging him to use a provision in the Higher Education Act to sidestep legislation and cancel the balances of millions of Americans. That would likely trigger legal challenges, and Biden is right to first seek a legislative fix using budget reconciliation.  

Advisers of President Biden have suggested that education debt relief could be included in anticipated stimulus legislation aimed at pandemic relief. On the other hand, a legislative path for education debt relief could also take longer if additional relief legislation proves difficult to enact in the near term, a worthy consideration given the present economic crisis. 

More difficult to measure are the intangible or second-order benefits that education debt relief would bring to borrowers, especially those who have defaulted. Worries about their debt burdens undoubtedly affect their career choices, such as whether to pursue a public interest job, and their life choices, such as whether and when to buy a house or have a child. Those with significant education debt are more likely to experience depression and anxiety as a direct result of their debt, which can lead to mental health issues down the road. Mental health experts point to Millennials coming of age with slower economic growth than any other generation in history as part of the reason for why their mortality rates, driven by suicides and drug overdoses, have risen sharply since 2008. It is also difficult to capture the effect that education debt relief would have on rates of entrepreneurship in younger generations or how intergenerational wealth might change if millions were no longer in default and saddled with debt.

Long Term Solutions

Targeted education debt relief is only a temporary fix. There are several other policy solutions that would help address the education debt crisis.

Congress should also adopt Biden’s proposal to modernize income-based repayment (IBR), loans. Such programs calculate a borrower’s monthly payment based on their income and other factors, such as family size and location. Currently, borrowers must opt-in to IBR through a lengthy process. Automatically enrolling new borrowers and re-enrolling existing borrowers in IBR and tying their payments to their eligible income would streamline the process, as well as making it easier for existing borrowers to take advantage of the program. By making enrollment automatic for borrowers and the terms much simpler, it is estimated that on-time payments will rise and default rates should decrease on net. 

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program was introduced in 2007 as a way to reward workers who pursue public service by forgiving their federal student loans after 10 years if they make consistent payments and are an employee of a qualifying public service employer. Like IBR, the unnecessary complexity and difficulty of navigating the program has led to low enrollment and success in rewarding public servants. Automatically enrolling employees of qualifying employers would increase take-up and help reduce debt in a way that rewards work and service. The program should offer $10,000 of education debt relief for every year of service up to five years—with full forgiveness after five years. This would include individuals with up to five years of prior service in schools, government, and other nonprofit organizations.

To get at the root of the education debt problem, as President Biden has acknowledged, we need broad higher education reform and more pathways to good jobs beyond college. Periodic education debt relief should not become a band-aid solution for higher education’s broken financing system. Fully addressing these challenges is beyond the scope of this brief, but below are a few points to consider. 

Since the 1990s, the cost of higher education has approximately doubled and institutions have responded to declining state investment by passing off the cost to students through rising tuition prices. Told repeatedly that a college degree is the best pathway to the middle class, it’s little wonder that young Americans increasingly turned to loans to finance their education. For too many, however, the high price of going to college isn’t leading to jobs with earnings sufficient to propel them into the middle class and allow them to pay off their debts.

When considering how to create lasting reforms to higher education, the Biden administration should develop a plan for a systemic restructuring of higher education consisting of two parts: (a) creative ways to reduce college costs rather than expanding subsidies in an endless game of catchup; and (b) a big public investment in building a robust career ladders infrastructure of work-based learning as an alternative route to middle-income jobs.

Many progressives have been thinking creatively about how to tame the rising price of higher education in the longer term. For example, my PPI colleague Paul Weinstein proposes a set of imaginative reforms including leveraging direct federal spending on higher education to force institutions to cut tuition and fees by reducing “administrative bloat,” requiring faculty to teach more, thereby opening up additional spots for students, increasing tuition revenue, and, lastly, by moving U.S. colleges toward three-year bachelor’s degrees.

Conclusion

President Biden and Congressional Democrats have a rare opportunity to move fixing America’s broken higher education financing model to the center of the nation’s agenda. They should follow targeted education debt relief with bold progressive reforms aimed at two critical national goals: Lowering college costs and thereby reduce the need for borrowing, and boosting public  investment in the skills and career prospects of the majority of young Americans who do not get college degrees. 

A Day of Deliverance and Hope

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Presidential inaugurations are usually festive occasions in which Americans celebrate the orderly and peaceful transfer of power to new political leaders. With the coronavirus pandemic raging and thousands of troops on guard to deter violence by deranged followers of Donald Trump, that’s not exactly the mood in Washington today.

Overshadowed by these grotesque legacies of Trump’s presidency, the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris is a somber affair. Nonetheless, it’s a day of deliverance, and fresh hope, for America.

We are delivered from a pathological liar and demagogue who likely will go down in history as the most deformed character ever to occupy the White House. Our democracy has survived, though by an unnervingly narrow margin.

There will be much talk in the days ahead of healing, as there should be. President Biden wisely resists pressure from within his own party to govern in the same corrosive, zero-sum way that Trump and his Republican enablers have. The last thing America needs is for Democrats to join Republicans in fanning the flames of civil strife. 

But before there can be reconciliation, there must be truth and accountability. 

On Nov. 3, 2020, the American people fired President Trump. Psychologically unable to accept the peoples’ verdict, Trump concocted a myth of massive voter fraud and spent the next two months urging Republican election officials to falsify the election results. His seditious scheming culminated on Jan. 6, when a mob of supporters invaded the Capitol and threatened lawmakers certifying the 2020 vote. Five people died in the Trump riot. 

For this unprecedented assault on U.S. democracy from within, the House rightly impeached Trump for a second time. To drive home the gravity of his crime and uphold the authority of our Constitution, the Senate should swiftly convict him.

This is simple justice, not vengeance. It is a vital act of democratic self-preservation. 

And it’s crucial because if we are delivered today from Trump, we are not yet delivered from Trumpism. Americans should never forget his cowardly and disloyal accomplices, especially the eight Senate Republicans and 146 House Republicans who voted to reject the states’ certification of the electoral college vote. 

Most worrisome are the millions of Trump voters who apparently have swallowed his lies, not to mention the fanatics who subscribe to crackpot theories propagated by QAnon and alt-right sites that peddle hatred and call for armed insurrection. To counteract the online radicalization of the right, Congress should empanel a 9/11-style commission to study the election and its aftermath and report to the public what really happened.  

Ultimately, however, Republican leaders are going to have to rededicate themselves to dealing with facts, evidence and objective reality and purge their own ranks of extremists. We’ve never been fans of GOP Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, but his honesty about the Jan. 6 insurrection is a start. “The mob was fed by lies,” he told the Senate. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people.”

Finally, we’re grateful today to President Biden and Vice President Harris for making a convincing case to the American people for denying Trump a second term. We’re confident that they will restore experience, reason, honesty and decency to the White House after a ruinous four-year detour into delusional populism. 

And we’re hopeful that the ambitious agenda our new president has outlined – at once progressive and pragmatic – will make our democratic government work again. That’s the best recipe for bringing Americans together. 

PPI Applauds President-Elect Biden’s Ambitious Agenda to Get the Pandemic Under Control

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

America, it appears we have a real president again.

President-elect Joe Biden yesterday unveiled an ambitious agenda for getting the pandemic under control, helping jobless Americans recover through the Covid recession, throwing a lifeline to millions of small businesses, strengthening the safety net for our most vulnerable citizens, and opening public schools.

PPI applauds the President-elect for stepping boldly into a total vacuum of leadership in Washington. His decision to “go big” with a $1.9 trillion package is just the jolt we need to galvanize national action and spur the sharing of resources to vaccinate Americans faster, protect the vulnerable and speed up economic recovery.

Above all, it’s a welcome sign that experience, honesty and compassion are returning to the White House after a four-year absence. In Joe Biden, Americans will once again have a leader who can make their government work for them.

The details of the Biden plan will be worked out in the weeks ahead. What follows are reactions by PPI policy analysts to its key proposals.

History tells us that Biden’s front-loaded $1.9 trillion fiscal stimulus plan is essential for helping the U.S. economy accelerate out of the Covid Recession and bring jobs back to millions of Americans.  Small businesses, especially, will benefit from the flow of money to poor and middle-class Americans. And if the country has to take on more deficits, this period of low interest rates is the perfect time.

The Biden plan does come with some important risks. We may be facing a weaker dollar down the road, which would lead to rising import prices and higher inflation. Nevertheless, those potential problems are worthwhile given the magnitude of the current crisis. – Dr. Michael Mandel, Chief Economic Strategist 

President-Elect Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan extends the 15% increase in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits and proposes additional $3 billion in funding for the Women, Infant and Children program, both programs are incredibly essential to supporting the more than 30 million adults and over 12 million children suffering from food insecurity in the United States.  The plan also includes $350 billion in aid to state and local governments which is critically needed during this economic downturn because many cities and local governments use those flexible dollars to support their anti-hunger initiatives including food pantries, senior nutrition and other nutrition programming.  – Crystal Swann, Senior Policy Fellow

The American Rescue Plan is ambitious and boldly prioritizes the needs of working families and those struggling the most during this Covid recession. PPI supports President-elect Biden’s call for an increase in the minimum wage to $15, with a phased approach that takes into account regional differences. The expansions of the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit will reduce child poverty by an estimated 50 percent and alleviate economic hardship for workers without children. The Rescue Plan also has critical support for housing and unemployment, provides funding for childcare, and extends paid family and sick leave for workers affected by the pandemic through September, expanding these benefits to cover an additional 100 million workers. We encourage Congress to move forward swiftly to provide this relief to the American people. – Veronica Goodman, Social Policy Director

It’s refreshing to see the Biden-Harris administration release a policy plan that meets the gravity of this moment. After 20 million Americans have been infected with and almost 400,000 Americans have died from Covid-19, it’s clear that we need policies that will stem the tide of the raging pandemic. A national vaccination effort as proposed by President-elect Joe Biden is the quickest way to get back to normal life and improve the economy.

I am pleased to see the incoming administration prioritize many good policies including increasing surveillance of virus mutations, using the National Guard and the Defense Production Act to support vaccination and testing efforts, and investing $20 billion dollars in the ‘last mile’ of vaccine distribution to get it into more people’s arms faster. While the darkest days of the pandemic may still lie ahead, the plan put forth by the Biden-Harris administration is the quickest way to end this pandemic once and for all. – Arielle Kane, Director of Health Care

President-elect Biden should be commended for offering an ambitious action plan to end the covid pandemic and save the American economy. If even a fraction of these new relief measures were enacted, they would cement the United States’ fiscal response to the pandemic recession as the largest in the world. PPI also applauds the president-elect’s commitment to pursue automatic triggers and stands ready to support those efforts however we can. Lawmakers should enact such mechanisms to provide economic support consistent with the real needs of our economy while preserving fiscal space for the next component of Biden’s recovery agenda. Building back better will require making unprecedented investments in infrastructure and scientific research to mitigate climate change and lay the foundation for long-term growth. – Ben Ritz, Director of the Center for Funding America’s Future

PODCAST: Congressman Conor Lamb Talks Impeachment, Energy with PPI

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI President Will Marshall welcomes Congressman Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania’s 17th District to the PPI Podcast, just days after Rep. Lamb’s dramatic floor speech following the insurrection in the Capitol, in which he lambasted Republicans for supporting the Trump lies that inspired the assault, plus his thoughts on impeaching the president again.

Rep. Lamb shares how he and Biden won their elections in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania, and the critical importance in that state of energy issues — including Biden’s opposition to a ban on natural gas drilling and a balanced approach on energy which helped him flip Pennsylvania back to blue.

The conversation shares the need for a new Democratic approach on energy and climate that recognizes that natural gas is speeding the deployment of renewable energy to the grid; and that our goal should be decarbonizing the economy, not abolishing fossil fuels precipitously, which would cost many Pennsylvania and other energy state workers their jobs and damage their economy.

Listen to the podcast here.

Who Let Trump Happen?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

President Trump’s misbegotten presidency crashed and burned yesterday with a treacherous assault on American democracy. It failed, as most of Trump’s half-baked schemes do. But now the country needs a reckoning with a Republican Party that let it happen.

Senator and soon-to-be Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) got it right last night: For Americans, January 6, 2021 is another day that will live in infamy. Our country was attacked not by a foreign power, but from within. The assailant was a lame-duck president the American people wisely fired last November.

I watched Trump harangue the mob he had summoned to Washington for his last-ditch effort to bully Congress into nullifying the 2020 election results. It was a performance worthy of a dictator: A farrago of big lies about his imagined “landslide” victory, paranoid attacks on his usual stock villains – the media, even Hillary Clinton – and threats to destroy the careers of “weak Republicans” who balked at his blatantly unconstitutional demand that Congress overrule the voters and award him a second term.

It was also an undisguised incitement to mob violence, with Trump promising to lead his supporters in a march up Capitol Hill. Actually, he retired to the White House to watch his handiwork on television. Waving Trump and Confederate flags, Trump supporters stormed America’s citadel of democracy, disrupting the certification vote, sending lawmakers into hiding, trashing the Capitol and raining obscenities and abuse on the police.

Trump lit the match, but he had plenty of accomplices. The shambolic MAGA insurrection would not have happened had not leading Republican politicians played along with Trump’s claims of having been cheated of reelection.

Read the rest of the piece here.

Trump vs. Democracy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

It’s scoundrel time in Washington.

Biden won the popular vote by more than 7 million votes, yet Trump persists in peddling QAnon-is style conspiracy theories about stolen votes, and claims laughably to have won by a landslide. The choice facing U.S. lawmakers today couldn’t be more simple or stark: Fantasy or reality, Trump or democracy?

Incredibly, scores of Republicans appear poised to endorse Trump’s blatant bid to steal what he couldn’t win honestly. The motives animating this squalid band of coup plotters vary.

Some are True Believers — Trump cultists addled by conspiracy theories and conditioned by right-wing propaganda to regard Democrats as mortal enemies rather than worthy political competitors.

Others are spineless hacks who find it expedient to bow to Trump rather than incur his wrath, be hounded by MAGA mobs, and face primary opponents.

Then there is the third and worst category — the opportunists. They know Biden won fair and square, but pander to Trump’s fanatical base by pretending there may be something to his delusional claims. Leading the cynics’ caucus are Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, who evidently want to run for president, and Sen. Ron Johnson, who seems intent on following in the footsteps of another Republican Senator from Wisconsin, Joe McCarthy.

Whatever their motives, all who side with Trump’s lies will betray the will of U.S. voters and break their oath to defend the Constitution. It’s a kind of sedition that should disqualify those who commit it from public service.

That’s why it’s important for citizens to watch what happens in Congress today, and take careful note of who stood up for American democracy and who didn’t.

This piece was also published on Medium. 

Trump’s crimes make Watergate look tame

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

President Trump has been caught on tape committing what would be considered a crime if you or I did it: pressuring public officials in Georgia to falsify the results of the 2020 presidential election. He urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes — the exact number Trump needs to exceed Joe Biden’s winning margin.

I followed Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal and impeachment proceedings intently as a college student. Trump’s push to nullify a democratic election and disenfranchise millions of U.S. voters is far more damaging to our country. Like Nixon, he must be held accountable so that his attempted putsch doesn’t set a precedent for future presidential losers.

Read the full piece here.

Republican Demands For Covid Relief Forced Some Bizarre Choices

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The nearly 5600-page omnibus government funding and covid relief bill passed by Congress yesterday was an undeniable win for the American people, providing much-needed relief for those most affected by the pandemic. In addition to preventing a government shutdown, the bill extended and expanded unemployment insurance; provided aid to restaurants, airlines, and other businesses heavily impacted by the pandemic; and provided robust funding for vaccine distribution to help end the pandemic sooner and get people back to work. It also included other important policy developments, such as a long-stalled proposal to limit surprise medical billing and investments to combat climate change. But an arbitrary demand from Republicans that the bill not exceed $1 trillion, combined with their monomaniacal focus on business tax cuts, resulted in some bizarre and unfortunate tradeoffs.

Read the full piece here.

2020: PPI’s Year-End Letter

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

There’s no getting around it: 2020 has been an annus horribilis for America. We’ve had to endure a deadly pandemic, a frozen economy, a corrupt president’s bid to void an election he lost, and deep racial and civil discord.

And yet our national fortunes seem to be changing. Coronavirus vaccines – developed in record time by U.S. drug companies – will soon be widely available. Next month, America gets a real president in Joe Biden, who will restore honesty and decency in the White House, along with a commitment to bring our country together rather than tear it apart.

I’m also happy to report that the Progressive Policy Institute is ending the year on a high note. We have roughly doubled in size, adding new policy analysts and projects that also have brought youth and diversity to our team. We are poised to play a more forceful role in advocating for the kind of radically pragmatic solutions Americans voted for in 2020 and to help the new administration deliver them. 

Let me touch on just a few of 2020’s highlights.

Throughout the primaries, PPI worked to illuminate the critical choices before U.S. voters. This included analysis and comparisons of the Democratic presidential candidates’ positions, as well as intensive surveys of public opinion in the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Our team also critiqued utopian demands from the sectarian left that repel swing voters in competitive districts and states. 

In March, as the coronavirus hit America, we turned swiftly to confront the crisis, which both revealed and exacerbated the nation’s deep racial and social inequities. For example, PPI began work on its ongoing Covid-19 chronology, which offers a definitive, step-by-step record of President Trump’s disastrous handling of the pandemic.     

Working remotely, PPI policy analysts have generated a prodigious output of policy reports, articles, op eds and blogs, podcasts and webinars, featuring creative ideas for containing the pandemic and mitigating the economic pain it’s caused. In late August, we published Building American Resilience, a compendium of bold ideas for spurring economic recovery and for making the private sector and government more resilient against future national emergencies. Our Reinventing America’s Schools team also produced a major report on the urgent challenge of keeping our children learning, remotely if necessary, during the pandemic. 

Also notable are three new projects PPI launched in 2020:

  • Center for New Liberalism. The center is an outgrowth of the Neoliberal Project, a virtual network of tens of thousands of young political activists and thinkers. With more than 60 chapters (including 12 overseas), the network provides a political home for young Americans who favor liberal rather than socialist solutions to the nation’s problems. 
  • Innovation Frontier Project. Building on PPI’s traditional strengths in innovation and entrepreneurship, this project aims at keeping America in the vanguard of scientific and technological progress. It’s run by two rising young economists, Alec Stapp and Caleb Watney, as well as PPI chief economic strategist Michael Mandel. The project plans to commission at least 20 research reports on public policies to encourage progress in such emerging fields as biotech, 5G and 6G networks, artificial intelligence, digitally enabled manufacturing and a 21st Century competition policy.
  • The Mosaic Project. The mission of the Mosaic Project is to raise the profile of women, including women of color, in national debates over economic and technology policy. It recruits classes of highly accomplished women to interaction with seasoned professionals in legislation, communications and dealing with new and old media. 

Meanwhile, we are beefing up our communications and outreach capacities to work more closely with our elected friends and allies on Capitol Hill, in local and state government, and in the incoming Biden administration. Over 30-plus years, in fact, PPI has never been in a stronger position to craft innovation ideas and solutions for pragmatic progressives determined to make American democracy work again. 

As we celebrate our good fortune after a difficult year of loss and sacrifice, we’re mindful of the crucial part that great friends and supporters like you have played in our success. We thank you and wish you and your families a very happy holiday! 

 

 

Analysis of Election Results in Pennsylvania

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In gas-producing counties in Pennsylvania, Joe Biden gained enough votes over Hillary Clinton alone to wrest the state from Donald Trump. He improved on Clinton’s margin in these counties by three points (Biden -15 / Clinton -18), counties that represent 40% of the state.

In our pre-election polling in these Pennsylvania extraction counties, even as Trump held an eleven-point lead in them, voters wanted Biden’s “middle ground” energy policy.

Our September poll showed that:

These voters take climate change seriously and want to transition to renewable energy, just like Joe Biden.

  • Most (69%) voters in these gas-producing counties believe that climate change is a very serious or somewhat serious problem.
  • People see fossil fuels as a bridge to renewable energy, not a permanent solution. Which of these comes closer to your view?

 

  • The United States should use some fossil fuels as a bridge to renewable energy sources but work to eliminate it: 55%

  • The United States should continue to use fossil fuels for the foreseeable future: 29%

  • The United States should immediately transition to 100 percent renewable energy: 11%

 

They don’t want to immediately move away from natural gas.

  • 80% support an energy plan that includes a role for both gas and renewable energy,
  • They strongly oppose “an immediate ban on all natural-gas extraction in the United States” (19% support / 77% oppose) and “an immediate ban on all fracking in the United States” (32% support / 64% oppose).
  • 83% call natural gas a “big jobs provider in Pennsylvania”

These voters mostly didn’t buy Trump’s argument that Biden was “anti-energy”.

  • Only 48% of voters agreed that “Joe Biden is just like the liberal socialists in his party who want to pass the job-killing Green New Deal, kill the energy industry in our state, and drive up energy costs”.
  • After hearing Joe Biden’s actual energy policy—that he wants to “continue to use natural gas, he does not support an immediate ban on natural gas or fracking, and that he will pass a law to guarantee that we only use energy sources that do not contribute to climate change by the year 2050”— voters said they support it on balance (50% support / 46% oppose).

 

 

 

Progressive Policy Institute commissioned ALG Research to conduct this poll to assess the electoral landscape in Pennsylvania and understand voters’ attitudes towards energy policy and climate change. The survey consisted of N=500 likely 2020 general election voters in Pennsylvania, and it included an oversample in gas-producing counties which meant we interviewed 317 people in those counties. The overall margin of error is + 4.4% and in gas-producing counties is +5.5%.

Find the full poll results by clicking here. 

Trump Presidency Ends With One Last Threat Of A Government Shutdown

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

It was perhaps the most fitting end for a presidency plagued by crisis and mismanagement: the federal government spent the weekend racing to prevent one final shutdown under the administration of President Donald Trump. Fortunately, it seems unlikely that we will face another government shutdown for the next two years with Democrats retaining control of the House of Representatives and competent dealmaker Joe Biden ascending to the presidency in January. Simply keeping the lights on is the lowest of low bars for our elected leaders to clear, but the transition to an administration that will have no trouble doing so is a welcome one.

Read the full piece here.

Trump Raids Medicare To Swing an Election He Already Lost

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Refusing to accept that the election is over, President Trump is moving forward with one of the most desperate gambits from his campaign: raiding Medicare to give 39 million seniors a $200 prescription drug card. Fortunately, Trump’s plan to bypass Congress and act by executive order did not come to fruition before the election. But this week, it cleared a regulatory roadblock and the administration says it will start sending the cards before the end of the month.

The idea is probably illegal, because the Constitution gives Congress alone the power to spend money. It is certainly bad policy, because it cuts into Medicare’s finances to pay for a blatant vote-buying scheme. That makes no sense now that the election is behind us, but then, little that Donald Trump has done or said since he lost decisively on Nov. 3 makes sense.

Before it finishes its work, the lame-duck Congress should act to protect Medicare by killing Trump’s effort to usurp its power of the purse. For Republicans in the Senate, the opportunity to reject this political maneuver will test whether they recognize the election is over, and with it the reckless rule-breaking of the Trump administration.

Trump’s proposal would send 39 million seniors $200 cards, similar in appearance to credit cards, that they could use to buy prescription drugs. Like many things Trump does, this plan may be illegal. The Constitution gives Congress alone the power to spend money, but Congress has not authorized this program or appropriated any money towards it. Congressional Democrats have rightfully asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether the program is legal.

Administration officials claim the President can authorize the cards without Congress through an existing “testing” program meant to find more efficient ways to administer Medicare. The program will supposedly “test” whether the cards make seniors more likely to take their medicine on time, but it will not establish a control group or any other practices typical of an experiment. While tests of this kind are normally small in scale and cost-neutral, Trump’s plan would involve tens of millions of seniors and cost billions of dollars.

The much more likely explanation for Trump’s card plan is that it was a political effort to ingratiate himself with seniors. Trump’s own officials say he only added mention of the cards to his speech a few hours before he gave it because he felt the need to cram health care successes in before the election. The general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services sent an internal memo warning that the plan could draw legal challenges related to election law and advised the administration to get guidance from the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section, which handles elections-related offenses.

The plan’s political motivations are so glaring that they gummed up Trump’s initial attempts to accomplish it. A week before Trump’s announcement, pharmaceutical executives abandoned a deal between the Trump Administration and the industry that would have included similar cards because the executives believed the cards would make the deal look political.

President Trump has said he intends to get the $7.9 billion he will need for the cards from the Supplemental Medical Insurance Trust Fund, one of the two Medicare trust funds that pay for senior citizens’ health care. But Medicare does not have money to spare. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the net cost of Medicare will grow from 3.5 percent of gross domestic product this year year to 6 percent in just 30 years because the population is growing older and health care is becoming more expensive, drawing money away from other vital spending priorities. Medicare’s other trust fund is projected to run out of money by 2024 thanks to this budget crunch, which would automatically prompt payment cuts. Elected officials need to control Medicare spending growth, not add to it without addressing its driving forces.

Until this week, the program appeared unlikely to materialize before Trump left office. Administrators had to pull the plan together in very little time, and the effort to get guidance from the Department of Justice slowed the process down. More recently, the Special Interest Group for Inventory Information Approval System Standards (SIGIS), an industry organization that helps the Internal Revenue Service set standards for federal benefit cards, has said for weeks that limiting the cards’ use to prescription drugs was inconsistent with the standards it sets for other benefit cards. Health officials told Politico that without the group’s approval, the administration cannot mass produce working cards.

Yet after appeals from the Trump administration, SIGIS dropped its objections on Monday, for unclear reasons. Thanks to this surprising reversal, the administration plans start sending the cards to seniors by the end of this month.

Voters care about drug prices for good reason. Prices are higher in the United States than in other developed countries, and the costs of the most popular prescription drugs are growing by nearly 10 percent per year. But one-time payments from the government cannot solve a systemic problem such as the rising cost of lifesaving and life-improving drugs — they can only paper over it. Congress should keep fighting Trump on this plan so neither he nor any other President thinks they can finance political gifts by raiding Medicare’s coffers.

Carolina Postcard: Learning from Jimmy Carter and John McCain

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Watching Joe Biden prepare to take over the Presidency and Donald Trump try to overturn the election, it’s instructive to read two new books about politicians who represent the best of America: Jimmy Carter and John McCain.

They are two great men of great talents and, yes, great flaws. One a former President and one a two-time unsuccessful candidate for President. Both Navy men, graduates of Annapolis. Both veterans of the highs and lows of politics.

Their lives and legacies offer lessons about where we are today in America, how we got here and how we go forward.

“His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life,” by Jonathan Alter, Simon & Schuster.

Alter’s book, like most accounts, praises the good works Jimmy Carter has done and the modest life he has led in the 40 years since he left the Presidency. Alter is far more positive than most writers, though, in assessing Carter’s four years in the White House – and why they’re overlooked:

“Carter’s farsighted domestic and foreign policy achievements would be largely forgotten when he shrank in the job and lost the 1980 election.”

What achievements? Alter’s list: “the nation’s first comprehensive energy policy,” “historic accomplishments on the environment,” consumer protection, ethics laws, civil service reform, two new Cabinet departments (Energy and Education), appointing Blacks and women to key positions, ending inflation, cutting the deficit and the growth of the federal workforce, requiring banks to invest in low-income communities, legalizing craft breweries (!), deregulating airlines and trucking, increasing the defense budget, championing human rights and challenging the Soviet Union on dissidents, aiding Afghan rebels, ratifying the Panama Canal Treaty, establishing full diplomatic relations with China and persuading Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin to sign the Camp David Accords (“The Israelis and Egyptians have not fired a shot in anger in more than forty years.”)

And Carter appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the federal appeals court. She later said he “literally changed the complexion of the federal judiciary.”

Yet Carter is remembered more for his failures and shortcomings. Alter, a journalist himself, says “the aggressive post-Watergate press tended to assume the worst about him.”

Democrats controlled Congress those four years, but Carter often was at odds with them. Ted Kennedy challenged him on health care and for the nomination in 1980, crippling Carter’s reelection. In those days, too, Washington Democrats had a pronounced bias against Southern Democrats; I saw it while working for Governor Jim Hunt.

Carter hurt himself. For all the political skill he and his Georgia Mafia showed in coming from nowhere (literally, 0% in the polls) to win the 1976 election, Carter was far better at deciding what was the right thing to do than at persuading the public and other politicians it was right.

(A sidelight: The first U.S. Senator to endorse Carter in the 1976 primaries was a 33-year-old first-termer named Joe Biden. Forty-four years later, Carter’s Georgia helped put Biden in the White House.)

Alter offers a not-so-positive picture of Carter’s early record on race: “While a quiet progressive since his experience in the integrated Navy in the late 1940s, he failed to oppose racial discrimination in public until sworn in as governor of Georgia in 1971.”

Carter was from one of the most racist parts of rural Georgia. He clearly was uncomfortable with the violent and virulent segregation of that place and time, but he didn’t speak out forcefully against it.

Former Governor and Senator Terry Sanford, who fought racism and segregation in North Carolina in the 1960s, never forgave Carter for his 1970 campaign against Carl Sanders. Carter’s campaign attacked Sanders, an owner of the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks, with a picture of a Black player dousing Sanders with champagne in a post-game locker room celebration.

But Carter changed, and he changed America. He was dragged down by an economic crisis and the Iran hostage crisis. He, like Donald Trump, suffered the ignominy of being a one-term President.

Yet Carter – in his four years as President and in the four decades since – set a standard for decency, integrity and service to his country, a standard that all Presidents, and all Americans, can admire and emulate.

“The Luckiest Man: Life With John McCain,” by Mark Salter, Simon & Schuster.

Carter’s biography was written by a journalist, a trained skeptic and critic. McCain’s was written by a more sympathetic observer; Mark Salter was for 30 years McCain’s aide, advisor and confidante, as well as coauthor of seven books. But Salter has written a book that is both insightful and balanced.

We know the highlights of McCain’s life  – POW, congressman, senator, maverick, unsuccessful presidential candidate, cancer victim and, in a role McCain both rued and relished at the end of his life, foil to Donald Trump.

Salter fills in the story – the hard-partying Navy flier, son and grandson of admirals, who finished near the bottom of his class at Annapolis, leading only in demerits.

Shot down on his sixth combat mission over Vietnam, McCain endured more than five years of imprisonment, marked by mistreatment, solitary confinement and torture. He was one of the most resistant and resilient of the POWs.

You can’t read about what he endured without wondering about the character of a man running for Commander-in-Chief who said: “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

Maybe there was a higher justice at work when Arizona flipped dramatically this year and, with Georgia, helped elect Biden, one of McCain’s close friends in the Senate. His widow Cindy endorsed Biden.

Where Jimmy Carter was a son of Georgia, McCain had no ties to Arizona. Salter, who has the novelist’s eye for telling detail, writes that on one day – March 27, 1981 – McCain buried his father, retired from the Navy after 22 years and moved to Arizona, where he went to work for his father-in-law’s lucrative beer distributorship and began running for Congress.

During a campaign debate, an opponent called him a carpetbagger. McCain delivered one of the most political devastating counterpunches ever. “Listen, pal,” McCain began. He talked about growing up as a Navy brat, then serving around the world and then: “As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi.”

McCain won that election. In years to come, friends and foes alike would come to dread his acid tongue.

Throughout his career – he served two terms in the House and was elected to the Senate six times – McCain had an openness and candor that won him good press. But that did him no good in two ill-starred campaigns for President. In 2000, he got run over by the Bush machine. In 2008, he had the bad luck to run against charismatic, historic Barack Obama.

McCain brought no credit to himself with his confused and confounding response to the financial collapse of 2008. Even worse, he gave us Sarah Palin.

He redeemed himself in a gracious concession speech to Obama on Election Night. It’s worth watching on YouTube.

It was as a Senator that McCain made his mark on America. He was a relentless champion of campaign finance reform. He cast the decisive vote to save the Affordable Care Act.

Democrats fond of McCain forget he was a rock-ribbed Ronald Reagan conservative and a searing critic of what he believed to be President Obama’s shaky and uncertain record on defense and foreign policy.

Above all, McCain believed in “regular order,” the traditional operating rules of the Senate that emphasized compromise over confrontation. He bemoaned that the Senate was becoming like the House, a gladiators’ arena of winner-take-all partisan power plays and score-settling.

After Trump’s election in 2016, McCain inevitably became viewed as the anti-Trump. Salter held Trump in contempt, but he writes that “McCain seemed largely indifferent” to Trump’s Twitter attacks. He chastised Salter: “I don’t know why you let him get you so worked up. That’s not how you beat him.”

Salter says McCain “preferred instead to take on Trumpism…opposing Trump’s most noxious views, mainly his nativism and affinity for autocrats, and making the case for the international order founded on the values of free people and free markets.”

McCain once said that he and Trump were “very different people,” with different backgrounds and upbringing: “He was in the business of making money.” McCain added, “I was raised in a military family. I was raised in the concept and belief that duty, honor and country is the lodestar for the behavior that we have to exhibit every single day.”

Our Best

Jimmy Carter and John McCain, both Navy men and politicians, were otherwise very different: from different parts of the country, different backgrounds, different political parties and different philosophies.

But both were men of duty, honor and country. Both represented the best of America. Both gave their best to America.

Their stories remind us how truly great America can be.

The original piece can be found here. 

PODCAST: How One Tax Might Make Matters Worse

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Colin Mortimer, the Director of the Center for New Liberalism, is joined by two special guests. First is Adam Hartke, the co-owner of a music venue in Wichita, Kansas, and the co-chair of the advocacy committee at the National Independent Venues Association. We talk about what it has been like to be a music venue owner during this pandemic, suffering the brunt of the economic fallout. Second, PPI’s Chief Economic Strategist Michael Mandel comes on to talk about how an obscure tax cut that expires in December might make the recovery for music venues, bars, restaurants, brewers, and others even more difficult than it was already expected to be.

Listen here.

The Senate’s dereliction of duty: Republicans have the gall to call Joe Biden’s pick of Neera Tanden too partisan?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

When the history of Donald Trump’s sordid presidency is written, the Republican Senate’s grotesque dereliction of duty will merit a long chapter.

Even as Trump’s own attorney general admits there’s no evidence to support the president’s wild claims of widespread voter fraud, most Senate Republicans have stood mute as Trump schemes to steal a U.S. election in broad daylight.

Let’s pause to note the honorable exceptions to the general rule of Republican cowardice. Sens. Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski. Susan Collins, Ben Sasse and Bill Cassidy have acknowledged Joe Biden’s victory. Most of the rest, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have disingenuously supported Trump’s “right” to challenge the election results, thus lending credence to his lies without specifically endorsing them.

Rather than defend the integrity of America’s electoral system, these freedom-loving patriots have dummied up as Trump attempts to disenfranchise millions of U.S. voters. Yet they did manage to rouse their dormant sense of indignation this week in criticizing one of Biden’s choices for his administration — Neera Tanden — as “too partisan.”

Read the full piece here.

Let the littlest state lead us on COVID-19

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

With hospital beds filled and field hospitals scrambling to open, Gov. Gina Raimondo on Monday ordered Rhode Island to begin a two-week pause in an attempt to stop out-of-control coronavirus spread in her state. The governor ordered bars, gyms, movie theaters and the like closed — but she is keeping schools open.

Raimondo should be praised for recognizing what too many state and local leaders ignore: Hard data have proven, and America’s scientists have reached consensus, that students in classrooms are not significant spreaders of COVID-19.

One of the largest studies, led by Brown University economist Emily Oster PhD, analyzed in-school infection data from 47 states for two weeks at the end of September. Out of 200,000 students who returned to the classroom, just 0.13 percent tested positive for COVID-19. Positive tests for 63,000 staff clocked in at 0.24 percent. Cases nationwide have dramatically increased since then, but even in places that had low-positivity rates, schools remained closed while nonessential businesses welcomed customers — and likely contributed to community spread.