Archive for January, 2011
Our Brave Leaders
The Washington Post reports: “Obama has decided not to endorse his deficit commission’s recommendation to raise the retirement age, and otherwise reduce Social Security benefits, in Tuesday’s State of the Union address.”
When I read this, I thought of a song from Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
Brave Sir Robin ran away
Bravely ran away, away
When danger reared its ugly head
He bravely turned his tail and fled
Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about
And gallantly he chickened out
Bravely taking to his feet
He beat a very brave retreat
Bravest of the brave, Sir Robin.
In the movie, Sir Robin and the other knights are galloping along on horseback, except when you look closely you see that their aides are banging coconuts together only simulating the sounds of brave mounted knights.
Isn’t that what’s going on in Washington? A giant fiscal disaster looms over the nation, and our leaders are only simulating leadership. Republican leaders can’t name a single program that they would cut, and President Obama runs away from a reform to the nation’s most costly program that should be a no-brainer.
Rather than chasing the Holy Grail of “investment” spending, the president needs to sit down with his congressional knights at a roundtable and get the kingdom’s finances under control with major spending cuts.
RSC Silent on Farm Subsidies
Confirming my ongoing skepticism about the committment of self-identified fiscal conservatives, especially when it comes to cuts to programs that benefit their constituencies, Politico last night posted an excellent story about the Republican Study Committee’s silence on farm subsidies:
Net cash farm income for 2010 is projected to finish near $92.5 billion — a 41 percent increase even after subtracting payments from the government. Yet conservatives are almost tongue-tied, as seen last week with the Republican Study Committee’s proposal to eliminate relatively modest subsidies for an organic food growers program without mentioning the nearly $5 billion in much larger government direct payments to farm country — including to the home districts of many of the RSC’s members.
Indeed, 24 of the RSC’s estimated 165 members hail from the House Agriculture Committee, and total annual direct payments to their districts run more than $1.09 billion a year, according to a POLITICO review of data compiled by the Environmental Working Group.
Farm groups aren’t exactly in a rage to offer up their programs for reform, but the National Association of Wheat Growers at their winter board meeting last week gave us plenty of evidence, as if more were needed, that support for the status quo is solid. An interesting nuance is their argument that, if they do “contribute” to deficit reduction, they won’t be “giving” more than anyone else, thank you very much:
NAWG supports the policy that if federal agriculture programs are subject to budget cuts to achieve deficit reduction, then the same percentage of cut should apply to all federal government programs.
While I might think that almost all areas of the federal budget need be cut, I just don’t buy the argument that farm subsidies are no more damaging, and therefore shouldn’t be cut more, than any other areas of government intervention. The federal government, in my opinion, has a role to play in limited and defined areas of public life. I strongly disagree with the NAWG’s implication that farm subsidies are just as important/necessary as, say, public funding for national defense or for the control of infectious disease.
Opposition to ObamaCare Hits New High in Kaiser Family Foundation Poll
The following chart shows that ObamaCare‘s unfavorables reached 50 percent in the latest Kaiser Family Foundation poll. That’s higher than at any point since KFF started tracking ObamaCare’s unfavorables in January 2010. The KFF poll also found that opposition is much more intense than support; 19 percent view the law very favorably, while 34 percent view the law very unfavorably. Despite the availability of the these nuggets, KFF’S press release chose to deemphasize the surge: “Americans Remain Divided Over Health Reform With An Uptick In Public Opposition As GOP Ramped Up Repeal Campaign.”
Even more entertaining was this chart, which purports to show that Americans oppose defunding ObamaCare by nearly 2-to-1.
Dig a little deeper, though, and you’ll find that 16 percent of the public opposes defunding ObamaCare because they want to see the law flat-out repealed. A less-misleading pie chart would show that 33 percent approve of defunding, 16 percent say “don’t defund, just repeal” (total: 49 percent), and 46 percent disapprove of defunding ObamaCare.
Other findings include:
- 76 percent of the public oppose the individual mandate (and 55 percent oppose it even after hearing arguments for and against);
- 69 percent support cutting spending on ObamaCare’s coverage expansions;
- 60 percent believe ObamaCare will increase the deficit, while only 11 percent believe it will reduce the deficit;
- 52 percent support cutting Medicaid;
- 51 percent oppose ObamaCare’s employer mandate; and
- 51 percent oppose ObamaCare’s new taxes on over-the-counter medications for HSA, FSA, and HRA holders.
Despite these generally sensible views, 68 percent believe that Congress can balance the budget without cutting Medicare.
Filed under: Cato Publications; General; Government and Politics; Health Care
Thirty Years of Deficit Disaster
The national debt has just passed $14 trillion. It’s approaching the so-called “debt limit” of $14.3 trillion, and members of Congress face a vote on raising the limit that doesn’t limit. President Obama will no doubt stress his commitment to reducing deficits in his speech tonight, but it’s unlikely that he will propose any actual budget cuts or any serious entitlement reforms. And we’re told that he will propose new spending on infrastructure, education, and research in the face of trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.
We’ve become so used to these stunning, incomprehensible, unfathomable levels of deficits and debt — and to the once-rare concept of trillions of dollars — that we forget how new all this debt is. In 1980, after 190 years of federal spending, the national debt was “only” $1 trillion. Now, just 30 years later, it’s sailing past $14 trillion.
Historian John Steele Gordon points out how unnecessary our situation is:
There have always been two reasons for adding to the national debt. One is to fight wars. The second is to counteract recessions. But while the national debt in 1982 was 35% of GDP, after a quarter century of nearly uninterrupted economic growth and the end of the Cold War the debt-to-GDP ratio has more than doubled.
It is hard to escape the idea that this happened only because Democrats and Republicans alike never said no to any significant interest group. Despite a genuine economic emergency, the stimulus bill is more about dispensing goodies to Democratic interest groups than stimulating the economy. Even Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) — no deficit hawk when his party is in the majority — called it “porky.”
Annual federal spending rose by a trillion dollars when Republicans controlled the government from 2001 to 2007. It has risen another trillion during the Bush-Obama response to the financial crisis. So spending every year is now twice what it was when Bill Clinton left office. Republicans and Democrats alike should be able to find wasteful, extravagant, and unnecessary programs to cut back or eliminate. They could find some of them here in this report by Chris Edwards.
Tea Partiers and other taxpayers should listen carefully tonight, to both speeches. Is either party prepared to require the government to live within its means? Or will both parties continue to spend with abandon and raise the “debt limit” every few months?
Tea Party Isn’t Mellowing GOP Militarism
Lindsay Graham isn’t alone when he imagines an emerging “isolationist wing” of the Republican Congress. Pundits have lately both lamented and celebrated the arrival of a Tea Party foreign policy, where deficit fears restrain military adventures and Pentagon spending.
I wish there were such a thing. My op-ed in yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer shows that there isn’t. I report there on research that I did (really research that intern Matt Fay did) on support among Republicans in the House and Senate for cutting defense spending and getting out of Afghanistan. I found little.
I also tested the idea that the Tea Party is restraining Republican militarism, by comparing the 101 freshmen that largely claim adherence to that movement to other Republican members. Freshmen are not more dovish than the rest, suggesting that the Tea Party reflects Republican politics more than it guides it. A post I put up yesterday on the National Interest‘s Skeptics blog illustrates this point with charts.
As Tad DeHaven notes, Congressional Republicans, including leaders in both Houses, have increasingly said that they would support defense cuts as part of a deficit reduction package. But those taking that position remain a minority of their party–fifteen percent by a generous accounting, comprising roughly equal fractions of new and old members. And the cuts that the minority of Republican want are likely to be cosmetic, trimming fat and chasing efficiencies, not taming the beast by taking on less missions and cutting force structure. For these reasons, it’s not surprising that the symbolic spending cut resolution up for a House vote Tuesday exempts the nearly two-thirds of domestic spending labeled as “security,” as I discussed in another Skeptics post.
GOP support for indefinite war in Afghanistan is stronger. Only ten Congressional Republicans are obviously against that war, and not one is a Senator or a freshman. That last bit bears repeating: none of the 101 new Republican members of the House and Senate are clearly against the war in Afghanistan.
The difference between new and old Republicans on these issues is that the new members are less likely to have firm positions. They got elected largely without expressing coherent views on defense issues. Since then, many seem to be reading the tea-leaves and keeping quiet about those matters. But they will soon be tied into positions as they justify votes. So the coming months are crucial in determining how a big chunk of Republicans vote for some time.
I am not optimistic that many will side with those of us that would like to vastly scale back our foreign policy. In the Skeptics post I explain why:
The GOP has been in the habit, probably since the 1970s, of out-hawking the Democrats and equating military aggressiveness with support for the military and American virtue. Whether that is winning political strategy I’m not sure (yes in 2004, no in 2008), but it is at least a powerful habit, reinforced by decades of neoconservative warbling, whose authors are now ensconced in the nation’s most prominent op-ed pages and think tanks.
Beyond that, military spending bestows its munificence in many districts, generating bipartisan support. But, on the left, the prospect of spending caps creates countervailing interests. Caps force defenders of other domestic spending to be dovish on defense. Health care’s cost competes with the Navy’s, especially under budget caps. That’s not as issue on the right.
The most important force keeping Republican fond of military adventure, however, is common to Democrats: international opportunity. We have expansive foreign policies because we can. Balancing is weak. The costs of adventurism are few and diffuse. For Europeans alive 100 years ago, foreign policy failures could bring conquest and mass death. Even successful wars would kill many sons and consume a considerable portion of societal wealth. For most Americans, especially since the draft ended, foreign policy disasters bring marginally higher tax rates. Ideologies justifying expansive policies—liberal internationalism on the left, neoconservatism on the right—grow popular because they justify the behavior this structure allows.
Doves say that the United States cannot afford its foreign policy. The problem is that it can, even when recessions make the load a bit harder to bear. Unsustainable things end. The United States can afford to do all sorts of foolish things.
Man Acquitted of Crimes Associated with Asserting His Rights
(HT: Techdirt) It is infuriating to watch the video Phil Mocek made while attempting to assert his legal rights at the airport. The good news is that he has been acquitted of the bogus charges brought against him, including disorderly conduct, concealing his identity, refusing to obey a police officer, and criminal trespass.
The video illustrates the knowledge, fortitude, and cool it takes to assert one’s rights. We owe our thanks to Mr. Mocek, who has helped to educate the TSA and society in general about the law that applies at the airport.
Perhaps he can further the educational process by bringing an action under 42 U.S.C. §1983 for violation of his civil rights under color of law. The Transporation Security Administration’s training programs might improve, or Congress might pay attention to the constitutional black hole they have created in airports—if it costs enough to threaten their earmark money.
“… your month, or even your year”
At one time or another over the past two decades, most school choice supporters have felt like the subject of the “Friends” theme song; that it hasn’t been their day, their week, their month, or even their year.
Things are different now. For one thing, choice programs have proliferated and grown over time, more are being introduced this year than perhaps ever before. And for another, well, this IS their week: the first national School Choice Week.
Events are being held all over the country to celebrate the idea that families should be able to easily choose the best schools for their kids, and that schools should have to compete for the privilege of serving them.
Here at Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom, we’re dipping into the future to see what it holds. How are large scale public/private school choice programs working out in countries that have had them for two or three decades? To find out, we’ve invited the founder of the largest private school chain in Sweden and a Chilean economist researching his own nation’s program to share their experiences and findings on Friday at noon.
Given how alien for-profit k-12 schooling appears to most Americans, imagine the reaction Peje Emilsson got in 1999 when he proposed founding a chain of for-profit schools in Sweden. Already the founder of a multinational communications firm, Peje broached the idea with some of his nation’s top entrepreneurs and economists. If you’d like to find out what they had to say, and how his idea has turned out in practice, you won’t get another chance any time soon. Hope you can join us on Friday — to register for free, click here!
GOP Conservatives Propose Spending Cuts
Last week the conservative House Republican Study Committee released its Spending Reduction Act of 2011, which would cut federal spending by $2.5 trillion over the next ten years. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) will introduce it in the Senate.
The vast majority of the savings, $2.3 trillion, would come from freezing non-defense discretionary spending at fiscal 2006 levels over the next ten years. The rest would come from cutting the federal civilian workforce, privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, repealing the state Medicaid FMAP increase, repealing remaining stimulus funds, and immediately reducing non-security discretionary spending to fiscal 2008 levels.
Of the $2.3 trillion over 10 years that would be saved by freezing nondefense discretionary spending at fiscal 2006 levels, only $330 billion in savings are actually specified, or about $33 billion annually. That’s only about 5 percent of nondefense discretionary spending, and nondefense discretionary spending only accounts for about 17 percent of total federal spending.
The RSC targeted an array of small and silly programs such as $17 million in subsidies for the International Fund for Ireland. They would eliminate mohair subsides saving $1 million, but that’s tiny compared to the needed termination of all farm subsidies. And proposing to eliminate “duplicative education programs” is fine, but the Department of Education doesn’t need house cleaning — it needs to be cleaned out.
The plan does include some good cuts that have been proposed at Downsizing Government:
- Amtrak subsidies
- Community Development Fund
- Department of Commerce business subsidies
- High-speed rail subsidies
- Economic Development Administration
- Some transit subsidies
- Some energy subsidies
However, most of the RSC’s savings are generated by a largely amorphous promise to keep domestic spending flat for years to come at 2006 levels. Unfortunately, this evades the needed national conversation on closing down major agencies and departments.
Another disappointment with the RSC plan is that there are no proposed cuts for the Department of Defense. That could be a major political error as more and more conservatives have been coming to the conclusion that it needs to be downsized. And by failing to include the Pentagon, any chance of support by congressional Democrats is killed.
Will the Tea Party Fade Away?
POLITICO Arena asks a second question today:
In three states over the weekend — New Hampshire, Washington, and Arizona — Tea Party candidates beat establishment candidates for state GOP party chairmanships. Does this signal that the Tea Party may not be fading away anytime soon or, as Harry Reid predicted, that as soon as the economy improves, “the tea party will disappear.”
My response:
It is not too much to say that if the Tea Party fades away, the country will fade away with it, because the out-of-control deficits and debt and the underlying unconstitutionalism that gave rise to those cancers and to the Tea Party itself have proven intractable for business-as-usual Republicans and Democrats alike. Far from a transitory focus on the economy, the Tea Party’s concern is systemic: It goes to the very foundations of the nation. Heaven help us if it fades.
Liberate NPR
TownHall.com has launched a petition to eliminate taxpayer subsidies to NPR. They call it the “Defund NPR” petition, but that title suggests that everyone, not just Congress, should stop funding NPR. That may appeal to many of the petition’s signers, but the petition’s text only calls for an end to government funding. ”Liberate NPR” would be a better title.
Justice Scalia Speaks to the Congressional Tea Party Caucus
Today POLITICO Arena asks:
Is there anything inappropriate about Justice Scalia’s speaking about the Constitution before Rep. Michele Bachmann’s Tea Party Caucus, as the New York Times editorial board suggests? Is it time to drop the fiction of a judicial monastery with justices detached from the political process?
My response:
There is nothing inappropriate about Justice Scalia’s speaking today before the congressional Tea Party Caucus — or any other group, for that matter, that is well within the mainstream of American politics. As POLITICO reports, Rep. Bachmann’s event is open to all members of Congress, and several Democrats have said they’ll attend.
The complaint by the editorial board of The New York Times – that “the Tea Party epitomizes the kind of organization no justice should speak to” –reflects nothing more than that corner’s refusal to accept the legitimacy of the Tea Party, notwithstanding last November’s elections. When the board goes on to condemn the Tea Party’s “well-known and extreme point of view about the Constitution,” it might better direct its wrath at James Madison. After all, as the principal author of the Constitution, he’s the Framer who promised in Federalist 45 that the powers of the new government would be “few and defined” — the “extreme” view the Times editorialists regularly condemn.
In deciding cases, judges and justices need to be detached from politics, of course: They belong to the “non-political branch.” But that hardly precludes them from talking about the Constitution in political contexts. If anything, it is the Congress that needs to be more attentive to the Constitution its members take an oath to uphold. That, in fact, is the root of our problem today. And we have the Tea Party to thank for noticing it.
Just Call Me ‘Liar of the Year’
It would appear that I am the Liar of the Year.
The fact-checking journalists at PolitiFact.com gave their 2010 Lie of the Year award to the notion that ObamaCare is “a government takeover of health care,” and in 2009 gave the same award to Sarah Palin’s “death panels” claim. But as I explain in my latest column for Kaiser Health News, the fact-checkers left out a few facts. Read the column to find out what PolitiFact missed. Here’s my conclusion:
From my vantage point, the evidence shows that ObamaCare is a government takeover of health care, and Sarah Palin’s “death panels” claim was essentially true. If that makes me Liar of the Year, so be it.
But another way to look at it is this: PolitiFact has now misappropriated this award for two years in a row. Not only is each of these “lies” factually true, but — and this is more important — the people who made those statements believe them to be true, which means they fall short of the dictionary definition of a lie: “An assertion of something known or believed by the speaker to be untrue with intent to deceive.“ There is simply no factual basis — and no excuse — for calling them lies.
PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year award has proven as conducive to civil discourse as Rep. Joe Wilson’s, R- S.C., dyspeptic “You lie!” outburst during one of President Obama’s previous addresses to Congress. Rather than continue to poison the well by dispensing another award this year, PolitiFact should just let it lie.
PolitiFact should also revisit its evaluations of those two claims.
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