Let’s hope special counsel Robert Mueller gets to the bottom soon of Donald Trump’s strange dalliance with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The plot thickened last week as the GOP-led Senate narrowly rejected a Democratic bid to prevent the administration from lifting sanctions on Russian oligarch and Putin crony Oleg Deripaska, who also did business with Paul Manafort, Trump’s disgraced former campaign manager.
Once again, President Trump appears to be bending over backward to curry favor with Putin. His infinite tolerance of Russia’s interference in U.S. politics and its well-documented online “malign influence” campaign stands in weird contrast to his churlish behavior toward America’s actual friends.
Trump routinely denigrates America’s oldest and strongest allies in Europe as trade cheaters and security freeloaders. A small but telling example has recently come to light: The State Department last year quietly downgraded the diplomatic status of the Delegation of the European Union to the United States.
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.
This year concludes thesame way it began: with a partial shutdown of the federal government. There is no doubt that President Donald Trump is primarily responsible for this shutdown – less than two weeks ago, during a nationally televised meeting in the Oval Office, he explicitly said so himself.
“If we don’t get what we want,” said Trump, “I will shut down the government. And I’ll tell you what, I am proud to shut down the government for border security, [Sen. Chuck Schumer]… I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it … I will take the mantle of shutting down.”
Not a whole lot of wiggle room there: this is clearly a Trump Shutdown. But the president was bolstered by support from his allies in the House Republican Conference and their retiring leader, House Speaker Paul Ryan. While the Senate did its job andunanimously passeda continuing resolution that would have kept the government open and prevented the shutdown, Ryan refused to allow a vote on similar legislation, allowing the electorally-disgraced House Republican majority to create one last pointless budget crisis on its way out the door.
Republicans love to complain about “activist judges,” that is, until they find one willing to do their political bidding.
On Friday, members of the GOP hailed a ruling by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor striking down the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as unconstitutional. They didn’t seem to care that O’Connor had to use some highly questionable reasoning to arrive at that conclusion, which the Supreme Court rejected in 2012.
For his part, President Trump was delighted that a federal judge was able to do what he and the GOP-controlled Congress failed to do in 2017: kill Obamacare. “As I predicted all along, Obamacare has been struck down as an UNCONSTITUTIONAL disaster! Now Congress must pass a STRONG law that provides GREAT healthcare and protects pre-existing conditions,” he tweeted.
Others in the GOP also celebrated the decision over the weekend. In a tweet, Missouri Sen.-elect Josh Hawley, who signed onto the lawsuit as attorney general and spent his campaign telling voters he would protect preexisting conditions, called upon both parties to work together to protect those with preexisting conditions. Hawley did so despite knowing his lawsuit seeks to fully overturn those protections.
New Texas ruling is the latest example of Republican efforts to kill Obamacare. But while the GOP is winning on tactics, it’s losing hearts and minds.
What is the strongest political force driving America toward national health care? No, it’s not Sen. Bernie Sanders and his “Democratic Socialist” minions. It’s the Republican Party.
Hang on, don’t Republicans stand foursquare against a government takeover of the entire U.S. health care system? So they say. But the GOP’s pig-headed opposition to less drastic ways to make sure everyone has coverage is stimulating Americans’ appetite for a bigger government role in health care — and it will only be fueled by a federal judge’s ruling Friday night that theAffordable Care Act is unconstitutional.
In a recentpollcommissioned by the Progressive Policy Institute, for example, voters by a margin of 54 to 46 percent, including nearly half of Republicans, favored changing “the current health system so everyone gets health care through Medicare instead of through people’s place of work or instead of buying it directly.” A more general “new government health care program” drew even more support, including 52 percent of Republicans.
Such findings should be taken seriously, but not literally. When you present voters with facts about the astronomical cost of nationalizing health care —$32 trillion over 10 years— and tell them they’d have to give up their job-based health plans, their enthusiasm for a Medicare-for-all “single payer” scheme starts tomelt away.
Still, the public’s receptivity to more government intervention in health care markets shows that U.S. conservatives are losing ground on health care. And Republicans, the drivers behind the lawsuit in Texas, have only themselves to blame.
Emboldened by their new majority in the House of Representatives, Democrats are understandably eager to exercise their power.
Some House members believe the way to do that is with an aggressive, sharply partisan agenda aimed at both calling out President Trump for his egregious behavior and demanding immediate action on longshot legislation such as single-payer healthcare.
A new survey commissioned by the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) and conducted by Expedition Strategies suggests that’s a terrible idea. To win in 2020, Democrats should resist the urge to turn the House into the new headquarters of the anti-Trump resistance or to initiate battles over legislative priorities favored by party liberals that have no hope of passage.
The good news for Democrats is that they enjoy a natural advantage heading into 2020. PPI’s study found that 48% of voters identify as Democrats or as independents who lean Democratic, while 39% said they are Republicans or lean Republican. The remaining 13% are true independents with no allegiance to either party.
WASHINGTON—Will Marshall, President of the Progressive Policy Institute, today released the following statement regarding the Democratic House leadership election:
“The Progressive Policy Institute does not endorse candidates in elections for Congressional leadership. Who should be the next House Speaker and occupy other top leadership posts is for the new Democratic majority to decide.
“Whatever the outcome, we believe Democrats will need new leaders with fresh ideas to preserve their fragile House majority and build a big tent coalition that can send Trump Republicans packing in 2020.
“Therefore, we want to commend those rising Democratic leaders who have stood up to call for a new direction for the party. Win or lose, leaders like Reps. Kathleen Rice, Seth Moulton, Tim Ryan, Kurt Schrader and others have done their party a service by sparking a vital debate that centers less on personalities than a choice between the status quo and radically pragmatic change.”
For years, partisans and ideologues have assured us that the political center is dead, so don’t bother making persuasive arguments to swing voters. Just get your base out, and may the most “energized” team win. The 2018 midterm elections, however, showed that the center’s demise has been greatly exaggerated.
The big story was the revolt of suburban voters, led by white, college-educated women, against President Trump’s polarizing populism. Their defection helped Democrats win the popular vote (again), score their biggest gains in the House of Representatives since 1974 and add a slew of new governors.
A national poll by the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) and Expedition Strategies taken on the eve of the midterm provides further evidence that America’s pragmatic center is resilient and bouncing back after two years of Trump’s bizarre presidency.
It suggests that our democracy’s firewalls against demagoguery and extremism are still intact and that Trump’s 2016 win may be an aberration, a detour rather than a fundamental realignment of U.S. politics.
In fact, our survey illuminates a new political landscape that is favorable to Democrats heading into the 2020 presidential election cycle.
National survey shows suburban voters repelled by President Trump’s divisive behavior, open to Democrats’ “Big Tent” approach
WASHINGTON —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.”
The following key findings from PPI’s survey provide some guideposts for how progressives can develop a winning agenda and message in 2020:
Moderates matter more than ever. Strong partisans of either stripe were a minority among our respondents – potential evidence that the nation may have hit “peak polarization” and is now on its way to a more rational equilibrium.
Americans want help, not handouts. Despite the strong economy, many Americans are anxious about their economic futures. Nevertheless, the vast majority of Americans do not see government’s job as rescuing them from these anxieties.
Voters are open to a bigger federal role in health care and are especially worried about drug prices – but the messages are mixed. Nearly half of respondents ranked health care as one of their top three concerns. High costs – especially prescription drug prices – and the fear of losing coverage were voters’ biggest worries.
Companies need to step it up on wages, but treating Big Business as the enemy is a mistake. Despite the unpopularity of some sectors, voters are not generally anti-business. Few voters, for instance, are worried about corporate monopolies.
Businesses are no longer getting a free pass when it comes to wages and worker treatment. Our survey found surprisingly strong support for government intervention to raise wages.
Nationalism is a failing strategy – perhaps even among Trump’s core supporters. Voters would like to see American companies succeed globally and don’t support closing our economy to foreign trade or Trump’s tariff wars. More broadly, voters would like to see the United States involved with the world rather than retreating inward.
The federal deficit could be the sleeper issue of 2020. Voters are very worried about government spending and debt. It ranked as their second biggest worry, behind drug prices, and fifth on the list of big problems they want Washington to tackle.
Don’t forget immigration. While immigration priority ranked relatively low for Democrats, it registered as the top-tier concern for Republicans and a major concern for independents. Immigration also looms large for non-college-educated whites, both men and women. The good news is that voters are far more nuanced in their views on immigration than President Trump.
Voters are pragmatists on energy and climate change. Green hostility to fossil fuel is an anti-jobs stance among moderate voters. Democrats can win on energy and climate issues – but only if they stop outsourcing their energy policy to green activists and avoid a false choice between fossil fuels and renewable energy.
Americans prefer a responsive local government over a centralized federal government that they deeply distrust. Voters across the political spectrum deeply distrust the federal government, both in its capacity and competence to get things done and on the question of whether it serves the interests of the public versus those of moneyed concerns.
While voters see state governments as much less captive to special interests than Washington, they otherwise tended to give the states similar grades. However, they express a strikingly high level of satisfaction in local government.
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.
On Tuesday, Democrats won control of the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislatures across the country thanks torecord-breaking turnout among young voters. Now it is time for newly elected Democrats to stand up for the interests of their constituents by supporting an economic agenda that funds America’s future.
The reckless policies of the current administration, and many of its predecessors, have slashed critical public investments that most benefit young Americans while simultaneously burying them and future generations under a mountain of debt. In a recent report, the Progressive Policy Institute documents these trends and explores how these reckless policies could drain America’s economic strength and seriously harm young Americans for decades if no action is taken to change course.
Although not quite the stinging rebuke that Democrats and Never-Trump Republicans were hoping for, the midterm elections show that President Trump’s strategy of maximum polarization has reached the point of diminishing political returns.
Trump predictably claimed victory, but in the real world Democrats won the popular vote again, by more than seven percentage points, captured the House of Representatives and added seven more governors, including one in the GOP bastion of Kansas. What’s more, the party generally prevailed not by swerving left, but by appealing to moderate and even conservative suburbanites, especially across the Midwest, who are repelled by Trump’s dark mastery of tribal politics.
These gains in the pragmatic center bode well for Democrats’ 2020 prospects. Midterm elections are rarely reliable predictors of what will happen in the next presidential election. But by revealing rising antipathy to Trump among college-educated white women and men, and confirming the wisdom of Democrats’ “big tent” strategy, the outcome shows the party the way to evict Trump from the White House.
As they contemplate next steps, here are four key conclusions about the 2018 midterm Democrats should keep in mind.
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.
Federalism – the division of sovereign authority among three separate levels of government (local, state and national) – is a distinctive feature of American democracy. The interplay between the three levels has profoundly shaped our country’s political, economic and social development.
During the 19th Century, progressive democrats like Jefferson and Jackson regarded the states as bulwarks of individual liberty, free enterprise and popular sovereignty. They resisted conservative attempts to establish a European-style central government, which they feared would be dominated by economic privilege.
Around the turn of the 20th century, however, the party they founded reversed course. Democrats increasingly saw centralizing political power in Washington as essential to tempering the social disruptions of industrialization, countering the growing economic power of corporations, and defending America in a dangerous world.
Now, in the 21st century, many progressives are questioning whether aggregating more power and resources in Washington is still the best way to achieve their ends. A key reason is that, with the federal government stalemated by extreme polarization, fiscal deadlock and bureaucratic bloat, the political initiative in America is increasingly shifting to other levels of government, especially to local and metro leaders.
Progressives and National Power
During the 20th Century, U.S. progressives helped to catalyze three great waves of political centralization:
The Progressive Era – As the century dawned, reformers in both parties warned that powerful new forces – industrialization, urbanization and the concentration of economic power in giant monopolies – were overwhelming the capacities of state governments. Woodrow Wilson orchestrated a remarkable flurry of progressive legislation that included the federal income tax, the Federal Reserve System, national child labor laws and tougher anti-trust regulations. Progressives also pushed successfully to increase popular participation in government, through primaries, referenda and initiatives, and direct election of U.S. Senators.
The New Deal – During the Depression, FDR promised “bold, persistent experimentation” to deal with the nation’s worst economic calamity. His New Deal expanded the scope of federal power dramatically, by launching huge public works and relief programs; regulating prices and wages; nationalizing income support and labor protections; establishing Social Security; and, multiplying federal agencies staffed by a new breed of college-educated technocrats. Washington also replaced laissez faire with Keynesian spending designed to manage the business cycle.
The Great Society – The nationalizing impulse intensified after World War II, reaching its peak in LBJ’s Great Society. This period of expansive liberalism saw the federal government assume responsibility for problems that had previously been left mainly to states and local authorities: racial injustice, poverty, illness, gender inequality, urban decay, educational inequity and pollution. Proliferating mandates and regulations vastly extended Washington’s reach and often made state and local governments seem like subsidiary arms of the federal government.
The assumption that underlay each of these waves – that nationalizing policy would best serve progressive purposes – was very often true. No one wants to go back to a time when giant monopolies crushed competition and bought state legislatures; when the doctrine of “states’ rights” sanctioned racial subordination; or when industries produced unsafe food and polluted our air and water with impunity.
But we live in a different world. Power today flows out of Washington. Urban America – centers of economic and social dysfunction a generation ago – has now become the nation’s prime catalyst for innovation. Brookings Institution scholars Bruce Katz and Jenifer Bradley have aptly dubbed this upsurge of local initiative and creativity the “metro revolution.” This phenomenon illustrates one of the great advantages of America’s flexible federalism: If one level of government stops working, the locus of public problem-solving shifts elsewhere.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) believes it is time to rethink the default assumption of progressive federalism as we’ve know it – that the arrow of progress always points toward centralizing power. Here are five reasons to think the arrow now points the other way:
First and most obvious is the political impasse in Washington. The inability of our national leaders to forge consensus or compromise, especially on the biggest challenges facing the country, has given rise to a new truism: the more dogmatic and polarized our politics, the less productive our government. That’s why political leaders who want to get things done are increasingly drawn to local government instead of Washington, where lawmakers are turning into fundraisers.
Second is the cratering of public confidence in the federal government. Most Americans don’t trust Washington to do the right thing most of the time. This lack of confidence in the means by which progressives propose to solve the nation’s problems and help people get ahead is a huge obstacle. In contrast, 72% of Americans trust their local governments, making them more promising terrain for public activism.
Third, the federal government has lost its fiscal freedom. Today the cost of maintaining the government’s cumulative commitments exceeds expected tax revenues. With “mandatory” spending on entitlements relentlessly squeezing out space for new investments, U.S. officials in effect have slapped fiscal handcuffs on themselves. That squeeze will only intensify as America gets older. Says Emmanuel, “We’ve always said there’d be a day when all the federal government does is debt service, entitlements and defense. Well folks, that day is here.”
Fourth, after four generations of nationalizing policy, Washington really has gotten too big, too bureaucratic and too rule-bound. The federal government is mired in the sludge of duplicative, overlapping and outdated laws and regulations that have accumulated over decades. Saddled with industrial-era bureaucracies and colonized by powerful interest groups, the vast federal establishment today is better at protecting the programmatic status quo than at sparking progressive change.
Fifth, digital technology, networks and globalization have combined to attenuate Washington’s ability to manage the national economy so that it delivers mass prosperity. Even as they create an increasingly integrated global economy, these forces also seem to be driving political fragmentation around the world. The great sociologist Daniel Bell captured this dynamic nearly three decades ago:
The common problem, I believe, is this: the nation-state is becoming too small for the big problems of life, and too big for the small problems of life. It is too small for the big problems because there are no effective international mechanisms to deal with such things as capital flows, commodity imbalances, the loss of jobs, and the several demographic tidal waves that will be developing in the next twenty years. It is too big for the small problems because the flow of power to a national political center means that the center becomes increasingly unresponsive to the variety and diversity of local needs.
In short, there is a mismatch of scale.
Today’s borderless economy is organized around vibrant metro regions, not nation-states. U.S. metros today are making the key investments – in innovation, modern infrastructure and human capital – that are renewing our economy’s dynamism and ability to provide broadly shared prosperity. They are developing their unique assets and comparative advantages to find niches in the emerging global knowledge economy. What they need from Washington is not standardized, one-size-fits all policies that are oblivious to local realities, but the flexibility and resources to tackle the nation’s problems from the ground up.
For all these reasons, it’s time to redefine federalism for the 21st century. Instead of turning reflexively to Washington, progressives should push for a systematic decentralization of decisions and resources to the creative Mayors and metro leaders who are making local government an effective agent of economic and social progress.
This isn’t a matter of eviscerating the federal government, as many conservatives would like. Washington must continue to do the things it is best suited to do: set fiscal and monetary policy; invest in science and technology, infrastructure and career preparation; make the rules for immigration, environmental protection and other cross-border issues, and of course take the lead on diplomacy and defense.
Nor does progressive federalism mean a preference for states over Washington – in fact, metro leaders say state governments often put bigger obstacles in their way than the feds. The real question is, how can the states and the federal government enable and be better partners with local leaders? What practical steps should they take to empower metro leaders to do more of what they are already doing – spurring job and business creation; forging regional collaborations and public-private partnerships; unlocking private and civic investment in local infrastructure and housing; improving education and career training; making their communities healthier and safer; and, making local governments more efficient and responsive to the people they serve?
Led by a divisive and dissembling president, America appears to have arrived at peak polarization. At first glance, that would seem to favor Republicans, who dominate Washington and most state governments. But as next month’s midterm elections are likely to show, President Trump’s divide-and-conquer tactics are driving the GOP into a political box canyon.
His strategy is brutally simple: convince culturally insecure white Americans that they are losing “their” country to minorities, immigrants and politically correct liberals. Trump’s scare tactics enabled him to secure a victory in the Electoral College in 2016, despite losing the popular vote by nearly three million votes. Since then, however, he’s done nothing to expand his party’s appeal.
By doubling down on his fractious formula of nativism, white identity politics and America First nationalism, Trump has tightened his grip on blue-collar whites and evangelical Christians — and on Republican politicians terrified of getting crosswise with pro-Trump zealots. But Trump’s White House reality show appears to be hurting GOP candidates in some places, especially white-collar suburbs.
Polls show that Democrats are poised to claim many of the 25 GOP-held House Districts Hillary Clinton carried in 2016. In 21 of these mostly suburban districts,reportsThe Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein, Trump’s approval rating is an abysmal 38%. “Not only did a staggering 70% of college-educated white women in these districts disapprove of Trump’s performance, but so did 58% of college-educated white men, usually a reliable Republican constituency,” notes Brownstein.
