issue: Politics

Charlotte Observer: How swing voters could swing – to Trump

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

David Lightman of The Charlotte Observer cited a PPI survey in his article on general election swing voters.

One survey in battlegrounds Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Ohio finds that swing voters are 21 percent of the electorate and voted for different parties in the last two elections, 2012 and 2014.

They largely call themselves independents (84 percent), have less college education than the broader electorate and include fewer African-Americans, the same percentage of Latinos and fewer liberals, according to the poll for the Progressive Policy Institute, a moderate Democratic-leaning research group. They are mostly concerned about the economy, and are more concerned with growth than fairness.”

Read the rest of the article at The Charlotte Observer.

Beware the Trump Inflation Balloon

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Since entering the presidential race, Donald Trump has been all over the economic map, with fantasy plans like getting Mexico to pay for a wall between the two countries.

But when Trump starts talking about how the U.S. never has to default because we “print the money,” he’s finally pointing to an economic strategy he could actually execute: The Trump ‘inflation balloon.’ If elected, Trump—the king of reneging on debt–would likely do everything he could to pump up the money supply. His goal: To create a rapid and unexpected inflationary surge that would transfer wealth from creditors to debtors.

Trump has already said that he would likely replace Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen, as well as auditing the Fed and running bigger deficits. Taken together, President Trump could engineer an inflationary spiral with little difficulty compared to fixing basic economic problems.

Unexpected inflation makes it easier for debtors to pay back debt, especially when interest rates are fixed and the debt is in the national currency. As a result, in the short-term, the Trump inflation balloon would temporarily help the United States, the world’s biggest debtor country, and hurt China, Germany, and Japan, all creditor nations.

However, history shows that a Trump inflation balloon would end disastrously, sending interest rates soaring, impoverishing the next generation, and potentially leading to global conflict.

Politically, progressives need to be wary of the Trump inflation balloon. The idea of higher inflation will appeal to millions of Americans who have seen their student debt and auto loans soar by 81% since 2007, while their wages have stagnated. To a new graduate struggling to pay back a fixed-rate student loan, a burst of inflation would seem mighty attractive right now.

To fight back, progressive candidates need to stress the importance of growth and innovation for reducing the burden of debt. Rising real wages, propelled by higher productivity, would raise living standards for today’s voters and their children without the need to borrow.

By contrast, a Trump inflation balloon would bring the U.S. back to the 1970s, a time when the misery index—the inflation rate plus the unemployment rate—was sky-high. That would be a disaster.

The Washington Post: Why Trump and Clinton should name their entire Cabinets right now

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Now that Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has announced Carly Fiorina as his vice presidential pick — an unusual move for a presidential candidate trailing in the polls and weeks out from his party’s convention — speculation will inevitably follow about who front-runners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump might select as running mates. Not only should they follow Cruz’s lead, they should go a step further and, well before Election Day, publicly name the individuals they’d appoint as Cabinet members.

That Cruz’s approach isn’t already the norm is a weakness in the way we choose our chief executive.

The American public deserves to have at least a sense, before ballots are cast, of those who would hold the most powerful positions within the next administration. This is particularly true for the departments of State, Treasury, Defense and Justice, whose leaders are invested with authority over many of the core activities of the country — everything from negotiating treaties to overseeing federal criminal investigations at the highest level.

But not just the big four: the secretary of Health and Human Services oversees the single-largest slice of total federal spending; and the need for a competent and experienced secretary of Homeland Security is self-evident in an era when border security and the threat of terrorism weigh on citizens’ minds. Even the seemingly smaller Cabinet portfolios can wield influence over major areas of public policy, including Energy, Transportation and Labor. And all Cabinet members, by statute, are in the line of succession to the presidency.

Continue reading at The Washington Post.

U.S. News: The Unpopular Winners

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI President Will Marshall was quoted in a piece from U.S. News & World Report on the unpopularity of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Clinton has a golden resume in conventional terms, having served as secretary of state, U.S. senator from New York and first lady when her husband Bill was president. She is intelligent, tough and level-headed, and knows how government works. But she doesn’t inspire much passion even among Democrats. However, Will Marshall, leader of the Progressive Policy Institute, told me, “Her emphasis on experience and steady leadership could be shown best against someone as volatile and unpredictable as Donald Trump.”

Continue the article at U.S. News.

The Daily Beast – Clinton’s Key: Never Mind the Bernie Bros, Here Come the Swing Voters

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The nominating contest grinds on, but the Acela primary set the stage for a general election faceoff between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Trump’s solid majorities mean that GOP voters, in their inscrutable wisdom, have spoken, choosing a political neophyte who’s never held any public office, has no discernable governing philosophy, and whose campaign consists mainly of bigoted outbursts and vicious personal attacks on anyone who gets in his way.

In contrast, the Democratic center seems to have held. Bernie Sanders’ call for an anti-capitalist “revolution” enthralled millenials, but his dream of turning America into a European-style welfare state—a colossal Denmark—struck out with black and Latino voters, and with women, who preferred the pragmatic Clinton.

What’s more, Clinton now has a cause that can galvanize a campaign that’s been criticized for lacking passion and inspiration—saving America from Donald Trump. Although some diehard Bernie Bros may decide to sit out the November election, she should have little difficulty uniting her party around the goal of keeping the billionaire bully out of the White House.

Continue reading at the Daily Beast.

Politico: Purple Reign?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

A PPI survey was one of the topics of discussion in Politico’s Morning Trade.

Veteran Democratic pollster Peter Brodnitz says there’s a big misconception about how voters view trade, noting a new Progressive Policy Institute poll that shows 65 percent of swing voters in four battleground states think manufacturing jobs have been lost to cheap labor competition overseas, not bad trade deals.

“There’s a very big difference between the perception of where the electorate is [on trade] and where the electorate actually is,” Brodnitz said. He added that respondents favored trade deals with strong labor and environmental standards.”

Read the rest of the article at Politico.

PPI Poll: Swing Voters In Swing States Hold Balance In 2016

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In this era of political polarization, it is tempting to assume the political center no longer exists. If this were true, it would certainly simplify things for political candidates and their strategists. They could stop worrying about how to persuade unaligned voters and concentrate exclusively on mobilizing their core partisans. However, this is not the case. As this new Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) poll by veteran Democratic pollster Peter Brodnitz shows, Swing voters exist, and they hold the balance of power in key 2016 battleground states. For Democrats especially, this survey yields a clear lesson: To hold the White House, recapture the Senate, and reduce the Republican House majority, candidates must craft messages that appeal beyond the party’s base to a substantial body of voters who are not in a fixed ideological camp.

This survey examined the outlook and attitudes of Swing voters in four critical Swing states: Florida, Ohio, Colorado, and Nevada. Constituting about a fifth of the electorate in those states, Swing voters come at today’s major challenges with a perspective different from that of either party. In general, they are less ideological, less partisan, and less angry than base voters. They are pragmatists who are focused mainly on economic growth and competitiveness.

Swing voters give low approval ratings to both parties in Congress, but slightly higher approval ratings to Democrats (32% approve, 59% disapprove), than to Republicans (28% approve, 65% disapprove). While Republicans give their own Members of Congress better marks than Democrats, Republicans in Congress are underwater among their own voters by eleven points (43% approve, 54% disapprove). Democrats, on the other hand, largely approve of the jobs their Members of Congress are doing (73% approve, 24% disapprove).

There is widespread agreement among battleground voters on a number of matters:

  • Most battleground voters rate the economy as fair or poor as opposed to excellent or good. They believe that improving the economy should be the priority, that moving jobs overseas is a key economic problem, and that increasing access to education and job training is essential.
  • Most of them also believe that America’s economy is still strong, and that if people work hard, they can get ahead.
  • Almost all believe it is essential that American companies can compete globally and that workers benefit from that competition and success.
  • While Democrats are the most likely to believe the United States is the strongest economic power in the world (81% agree), most Swing voters (58% agree) and Republicans (61%) hold this view.
  • Despite all the populist rhetoric deployed in both parties’ nominating contests, the voters we interviewed don’t seem particularly angry. Swing voters tend to be worried about the economy and Democrats tend to be optimistic, but few described themselves as angry.

Most believe global competition – more than trade agreements – is the force driving away jobs. There is little support among Swing voters for ending trade agreements, and most believe the benefits of trade agreements outweigh the costs.

  • Almost all believe “most” Americans are not prepared for retirement.
  • Almost all believe increased investments in infrastructure, like roads and bridges, would improve the U.S. economy.

In general, Swing voters are attracted to new ideas for stimulating growth — regulatory improvement, low corporate taxes intended to increase competitiveness and keep jobs from moving overseas, and a robust career pathways system that’s always there to help workers acquire marketable skills.

 

Download “2016.04-PPI-Poll_Swing-Voters-in-Swing-States.pdf”

Financial Times: White House Countdown – Toilet talk

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The Financial Times referenced a PPI survey in an article about the American presidential primaries.

As the campaigns inch towards the general election, new polling suggests that the eventual Republican and Democratic nominees will have to perform some nimble adjustments to their policy messages if they are to successfully lure swing voters, my colleague Sam Fleming reports.

In interviews with swing voters in the four big swing states, Florida, Ohio, Colorado and Nevada, Peter Brodnitz, a Democratic pollster for the Progressive Policy Institute, found that despite the populist rhetoric, voters did not seem particularly angry about the economy. Worried, yes. Angry, no.”

Continue the article at The Financial Times.

McClatchy: Who will win over the voters who aren’t angry?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

A recent poll conducted by the PPI was cited in this McClatchy article on swing voters in the upcoming election.

Swing voters aren’t angry. But they’re tired of nasty, strident partisan rhetoric, and they don’t believe the economy is rigged against them.

Those are among the findings of a survey of swing voters in four states that are expected to be crucial to winning the November presidential election: Florida, Colorado, Nevada and Ohio.

The survey, conducted by Democratic pollster Peter Brodnitz for the Progressive Policy Institute, a center-left group that develops pro-growth ideas, illustrates how centrists crucial to a White House victory are not the voices being spotlighted throughout the primary season.”

Read the full article at McClatchy.

The Daily Beast: Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders Are Delusional on Trade Policy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In this campaign season of populist anger and demagoguery, bad ideas are bubbling to the surface like marsh gas. Among the worst is protectionism, which would wreak havoc on a U.S. economy that’s finally picking up steam.

Both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have seized on trade as a convenient scapegoat for the nation’s economic woes. There’s deep irony here. The popular frustrations on which they feed stem mainly from the productivity and wage slump America has experienced since 2000. Yet their proposed fix—shredding international treaties and walling off the U.S. economy—is a textbook formula for economic stagnation.

It’s a perfect negative feedback loop. And it won’t be the “one percent” who suffer if the populists get their way; it will be U.S. companies with global supply chains and millions of middle-class American workers and consumers.

Continue reading at The Daily Beast.

U.S. News & World Report: The Weapon Against Inequality That 2016 Forgot

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

If the democratic candidates are serious about combating inequality, they should start by embracing education reform.

For education reformers, the 2016 presidential primaries have been a wasteland. The Republican circus has produced many memorable moments, but few if any have touched on education.

Even on the Democratic side, education has been virtually invisible. The major issue is rising inequality, and public education has long been our society’s major instrument to combat that problem. Yet neither of the candidates has said anything positive about the one strategy that has made a real difference for low-income children: charter schools.

Reducing inequality without reforming our education system is probably impossible, because the tide is flowing so strongly in the opposite direction. Twenty-five years ago only a third of public school students were low-income (eligible for a free or reduced-price lunch). Today, for the first time since the data has been compiled, a majority are low income.

Read more at U.S. News & World Report.

CNN: America needs more than populist message

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

With Donald Trump and Ted Cruz locked in a bitter battle for the Republican nomination, the stakes in 2016 rise dramatically. The likely victory of either one of these deeply flawed candidates will give Democrats a chance not only to hold the White House, but also to realign U.S. politics. No wonder Republicans are panicking.

To seize the opportunity, however, Hillary Clinton will need to transcend the limits of a “populist” message based on identity politics, economic victimhood and redistribution. Thus far such themes have dominated the nomination battle with Sen. Bernie Sanders, but they won’t help Democrats forge a broader political coalition that includes suburban moderates, college-educated independents and many Republicans who are aghast at the prospect of branding the White House with a giant “T.”
Of course, with yet another caucus victory on Saturday, this time in Wyoming, Sanders will stay in the race, if only to keep tugging Clinton to the left. But Clinton needs to resist this ideological gravity, because Sanders’ left-wing populism is not an effective answer to the right-wing populism that Trump channels with such diabolic cunning.
Before the Bernie Bots clank into action, let me hasten to say I’m not positing moral equivalence between Sanders and Trump. Sanders is honest, principled and decent; Trump is, well, none of those things. But the lifelong socialist’s dream of turning America into a paternalistic, European-style welfare state isn’t the right prescription for what ails our country.
Continue reading at CNN.

Forbes: The Progressive Policy Institute’s Push to Cut Bureaucracy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Forbes contributor Jared Meyer recently interviewed PPI’s chief economic strategist Dr. Michael Mandel on regulatory reform and economic growth.

The Progressive Policy Institute recently released a report titled “Unleashing Innovation & Growth.” The report covers a comprehensive list of public policy topics, including reforming America’s growing level of federal regulation. In what follows, PPI’s chief economic strategist Michael Mandel explains why pro-growth regulatory policies offer an alternative to the populist sentiments that are influencing both sides of the political spectrum.”

Read the interview in its entirety at Forbes.

Bernie vs. Hillary: Who Is More Trustworthy?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The Washington Post just reviewed a recent dispute between the Sanders and Clinton campaigns and concluded that Sanders earned “three Pinnochios” for dishonesty. This raises broader questions as Bernie’s campaign goes negative.

Bernie has built a mythology that he is a uniquely honest politician, and he has traded on that brand myth to raise money. Now that he is using those funds to attack Hillary Clinton, progressives should consider the factual answers to three questions:

(1) Is Bernie a high-integrity politician, or does he have a history of making compromises when politically convenient?

(2) Do his budgets speak hard truths or promise falsehoods?

(3) Do well-informed, independent observers more frequently trust Bernie or Hillary?

Question #1: Does Bernie Show Courage When The Chips Are Down?

We all know that Bernie attacks Wall Street and the rich, and his attacks often have merit. But those attacks do not require political courage, as neither constituency matters to his campaigns in Vermont or nationally. So, how has Bernie’s integrity held up when his own political career was at stake? The facts are not kind, as Mother Jones recently explained. To take three examples:

Exhibit A: The National Rifle Association. In the largely rural state of Vermont, the left’s bête noire is the National Rifle Association. Did Bernie benefit from the NRA’s money, endorsements, and support? Yes. He had previously lost statewide office six times before the NRA decided to invest tens of thousands to elect him. Upon his election, Bernie reversed the gun-sense positions of his predecessor and voted against the Brady Bill five times.

Exhibit B: Going negative on Hillary. Bernie initially promised a campaign of ideas. He said would advance issues, forcing the party to respond to a substantive agenda of economic justice. He promised he would not attack Hillary personally in ways that might increase the likelihood of a GOP victory in the fall, because (in his words) Hillary would be a vastly better President than Trump or Cruz.

But then Bernie broke his promise. After Iowa and New Hampshire tantalized Bernie with the prospect he might actually win, and then large states such as Florida and Ohio dimmed his prospects, he and his campaign decided to go negative. Sanders is now using his campaign war chest to attack Hillary Clinton personally.

Exhibit C: Free college. When Bernie launched his presidential bid, he had a choice about what to emphasize. He decided to announce a $70 billion investment in education. The funny thing is that $70 billion is almost exactly the figure that would be necessary to fund universal, high-quality early childhood education for young children. Such a program would deliver enormous benefits for economic growth and social justice for all children.

Except … preschool children do not vote, and most families in need of preschool are too poor to give money to political campaigns. So instead,Bernie’s first major campaign pledge was free college. This is a $70 billion handout that would overwhelmingly go to the wealthier half of society (lower income families mostly do not send their kids to college, for reasons that often have little to do with tuition).

Why did Bernie prioritize college for some over preschool for all? Even if Bernie genuinely worried about college affordability, why didn’t he endorse policies that targeted low-income families (such as the policies promoted by President Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton)? The most plausible answer is not very flattering: to appeal to the wallets of middle-class campaign donors,Bernie Sanders disregarded the needs of the poor for political advantage.

Question #2: Do Bernie’s Budgets Convey Hard Truths or False Promises?

To convey a sense of honesty, Bernie trades in blunt ideas. “College will be free.” “Healthcare will be free.” “Other people — undeserving people—will pay for it.” The sum of these ideas appear in Bernie’s proposed budgets.

Sadly, you can find more climate scientists who reject climate change than credentialed economists who believe that Bernie’s budgets add up.

For example, the Sanders campaign has elevated the analytic work of Professor Gerald Friedman, who concluded that Sanders’ budgets work mathematically. To reach this conclusion, Friedman made aggressive assumptions about the U.S. growth rate under a Sanders presidency.

The credible economic reviews of Friedman’s analysis have been withering:

  • Jared Bernstein, who is friendly to Sanders and leads the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, cited several assumptions as “wishful thinking” in a conversation with the New York Times.
  • Obama’s former chair of his Council of Economic Advisors , Christina Romer, did a deep-dive analysis of Friedman’s work that revealed serious errors.
  • Austan Goolsbee, another former chair of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, wrote that “The numbers don’t remotely add up,” and that “they’ve evolved into magic flying puppies with winning Lotto tickets tied to their collars.”

Why does this matter? As liberal papers such as Slate Magazine and Mother Jones have explained, Bernie’s bad math is a form of dishonesty. His campaign is telling the entire country that we can have something for nothing. This demagoguery weakens America’s capacity for self-government and encourages apathy and anger, because the promises will not ever come true. Since Hillary Clinton chooses budgets that have a relationship with reality, she cannot offer as much. In other words, when Bernie claims that Hillary lacks ambition, the truth is that what she really lacks is reckless mendacity. As Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman wrote:

this controversy is an indication of a campaign, and perhaps a candidate, not ready for prime time. These claims for the Sanders program aren’t just implausible, they’re embarrassing to anyone remotely familiar with economic history (which says that raising long-run growth is very hard) and changing demography. They should have set alarm bells ringing, but obviously didn’t.

Question #3: Do Well Informed, Independent Observers Trust Bernie or Hillary More?

Bernie’s brand for honesty also comes from his claim that, by comparison, Clinton is not trustworthy. In this, he relies upon decades of Republican-led attacks on Hillary, ranging from Vincent Foster’s suicide to the terrorist attacks in Benghazi. But like those other artificial scandals, Bernie’s made-for-politics campaign of character assassination is false. Those who have carefully observed both candidates have concluded that Hillary is the more trustworthy.

A compelling recent example is the former executive editor of the New York Times, Jill Abramson, who has had a long career covering Hillary Clinton from an adversarial perspective. Abramson summarized her research in a column:

As an editor I’ve launched investigations into [Clinton’s] business dealings, her fundraising, her foundation and her marriage. As a reporter my stories stretch back to Whitewater. I’m not a favorite in Hillaryland. That makes what I want to say next surprising.

Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest and trustworthy.

The yardsticks I use for measuring a politician’s honesty are pretty simple. Ever since I was an investigative reporter covering the nexus of money and politics, I’ve looked for connections between money (including campaign donations, loans, Super Pac funds, speaking fees, foundation ties) and official actions. I’m on the lookout for lies, scrutinizing statements candidates make in the heat of an election.

… There are no instances I know of where Clinton was doing the bidding of a donor or benefactor.

As for her statements on issues, Politifact, a Pulitzer prize-winning fact-checking organization, gives Clinton the best truth-telling record of any of the 2016 presidential candidates. She beats Sanders and Kasich and crushes Cruz and Trump …

Surprised by Abramson’s conclusion? You shouldn’t be. All the remaining candidates have long histories of working with other human beings. Progressives in Burlington, black activists in Vermont, and Bernie’s former colleagues in the House and Senate describe Bernie as a self-promoter with narcissistic tendencies. Hillary, by contrast, has received large numbers of endorsements from political leaders in cities, states, and national governments all over the world. Why? Because, when the chips are down, those people trust Hillary, notwithstanding the decades-long attacks on her character.

Abramson’s column is consistent with the experiences of those who have worked with Hillary. Her caution, and her suspicion of the press, make her appear suspicious to the public, but no one who knows and works with Clinton closely walks away feeling that she is untrustworthy. If you talk with people who know her, you find that they praise her directness and integrity.

If Sanders had kept running a positive, issues-oriented campaign, he might have eventually won over African American, Hispanic, and female voters. If he’d done that, he might have won the nomination. But he stopped. He is no longer running a campaign to shape the Democratic Party. Those who fund his campaign are now doing Donald Trump’s dirty work with false attacks on Hillary’s character. It is time for Bernie’s donors to turn off the money.

Washington Examiner: Should we care less about inequality?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Jason Russell quotes PPI President Will Marshall on public opinion towards economic inequality and how it can change over time.

“If everybody else is rising then really, in this country, there isn’t a strong appetite for punishing wealth creators,” Will Marshall, president of the liberal Progressive Policy Institute, said Wednesday at an inequality discussion hosted by Economics21 at the Manhattan Institute (my last employer). “Nobody cared about inequality in the late ’90s because all groups were rising.”

Read the full article at the Washington Examiner.

Press Release: PPI Unveils New Blueprint for Shared Prosperity

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 15, 2016

Contact: Cody Tucker, 202-775-0106
or ctucker@ppionline.org

A Progressive Alternative to Populism

PPI Unveils New Blueprint for Shared Prosperity

WASHINGTON—The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) today released Unleashing Innovation and Growth: A Progressive Alternative to Populism, a new blueprint for renewing America’s economic dynamism.

The plan offers an array of creative proposals for accelerating the “digitization” of the physical economy; lowering regulatory obstacles to innovation and entrepreneurship; launching a new public works push; adopting pro-growth tax reform; grooming the world’s most talented workers; and enabling working families to escape poverty and build middle class wealth.

The blueprint also takes aim at the populist anger that has figured prominently in campaign 2016:

…[P]opulists do Americans no favors by claiming the economic game is hopelessly rigged against them, that the leaders they elect are incompetents, or that our democracy is rancid with corruption. None of these claims is true, and such demagoguery undermines public confidence in America’s boundless capacity for self-renewal. Populist anger fosters an ‘us versus them’ mentality that, by reinforcing political tribalism and social mistrust, can only make it harder to build consensus around economic initiatives that benefit all Americans.

“We believe progressives owe U.S. voters a hope-inspiring alternative to populist outrage and the false remedies of nativism, protectionism and democratic socialism,” writes Will Marshall, PPI President.

“I encourage anyone looking for optimistic ideas to create more jobs, wealth, and prosperity for hard working Americans to read PPI’s new report using innovation to spur growth,” said Congressman Ron Kind (D-Wis.), Chairman of the New Democrat Coalition. “This report is full of forward thinking policy initiatives that help grow the American economy.”

“In the midst of today’s populist uprising, it’s up to our leaders to recognize the real reasons why our economy isn’t working for everyone and to fight for effective solutions,” said Governor Jack Markell (D-Del.). “PPI’s blueprint gives policymakers a roadmap to create opportunity for all Americans by harnessing the unstoppable forces of globalization and technological innovation, while opposing the impractical, and sometimes dangerous, proposals offered by the political extremes.”

The anger on which populists feed is rooted in a real economic problem: America has been stuck in a slow growth trap since 2000. This long spell of economic stagnation has held down wages and living standards and shrunk the middle class. What the nation needs is a forward-looking plan for moving the U.S. economy into high gear. Instead, as the PPI blueprint notes, today’s populists peddle nostalgia for our country’s past industrial glory but offer few practical ideas for building new American prosperity in today’s global knowledge economy.

Unleashing Innovation and Growth seeks to fill this vacuum in the presidential campaign, offering bold ideas for unleashing the collective ingenuity of the American people—harnessing disruptive change, raising skills, lowering tax and regulatory barriers to individual initiative and creativity, and experimenting with innovative ways to rebuild middle class wealth and enable more Americans to exit poverty.

Summary of Key Proposals

Unleash Innovation
• Spread innovation across the economy: Adopt a new “Innovation Platform” aimed at stimulating public and private investment in new ideas and enterprises, and at diffusing innovation across the entire economy.
• Improve the regulatory climate for innovation: Tackle the mounting costs of regulatory accumulation, the constant layering of new rules atop old ones; Make systemic changes to regulatory agencies to make promoting investment, innovation and new enterprises part of their core mission; Rein in occupational licensing requirements that screen out many low-income entrepreneurs; Lift outdated restrictions on lending to small business; give businesses incentives to offer more flexible work, including paid leave.
• Innovate our way to clean growth: Implement a more innovative energy strategy that simultaneously advances two vital interests: powering economic growth and assuring a healthy environment; Recognize that, for the foreseeable future, the U.S. and the world will have to tap all fuels—renewable, nuclear, and fossil—to meet growing energy demand and sustain global economic growth; Institute a nationwide carbon tax to curb greenhouse emissions while driving investment to clean and efficient energy.
• Democratize trade: Sell more of America’s highly competitive exports to a growing global middle class; promote the free flow of data across global borders; support innovative trade agreements, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), that lift labor, environment and human rights standards in developing countries and enable more Americans to benefit from trade; Seize new opportunities for U.S. small businesses and entrepreneurs to use low-cost digital platforms to tap into global growth.

Align Fiscal Policy with Innovation and Growth
• Embrace pro-growth tax reform: Advocate for a dramatic shift from income to consumption taxes to stimulate investment in productive economic activities rather than those favored by the current tax code; Close loopholes that benefit special interests and dramatically simplify taxes for most Americans; Raise enough money to cut corporate income taxes down to globally competitive levels, and reduce taxes that penalize innovation and hiring.
• Modernize public works: Accurately measure the true economic impact of infrastructure spending; open infrastructure markets to private capital; define a strategic role for Washington through a national infrastructure bank; impose firm deadlines on project approvals and licensing process.

Groom the World’s Most Talented Workers
• Reinvent public school: Champion new models of school governance that enable more school autonomy and innovation, more customized learning, rigorous standards, and genuine accountability and results.
• Create new pathways into middle class jobs: Create a more promising approach to “career pathways” by combining classroom training and work experience through a sequence of jobs, within or across firms in an industry, and a sequence of credentials that signal their growing skill levels.
• Cut college costs for everyone: Rein in costs and decrease debt by encouraging colleges to offer three-year degrees rather than the traditional four-year program and focus policies on competency, rather than credit hours.

Build Middle Class Wealth
• Narrow the wealth gap with universal pensions: Champion “universal pension” accounts that would enable all workers to save for retirement, navigate the maze of tax-favored retirement plans, and take their pensions with them when changing jobs.
• Help families save for homeownership: Tackle the twin problems of declining homeownership and souring housing costs for both owners and renters by creating a new, tax-preferred mechanism for down payment savings—“Home K”—to lower obstacles to homeownership, like tight credit and down payment requirements, for first-time homebuyers and to promote savings.

Fight Poverty with Empowerment
• Empower people with smart phones: Use modern technology to cut through bureaucratic barriers to government safety net programs, consolidate benefit streams, enable people living in poverty more access to the information they need, and apply online for social supports; Encourage federal, state, and local governments to create online H.O.P.E. (Health, Opportunity, and Personal Empowerment) accounts and action plans.
• Expand housing choices for low-income Americans: Convert some federal rent subsidies into incentives for homeownership to relieve the burden on low-income families of high housing costs and reduce the waiting list for subsidized housing, without raising taxes or adding to the federal deficit.

Download Unleashing Innovation and Growth: A Progressive Alternative to Populism.