Back When Democrats Cared Enough to Advocate What Works
Many, if not most, of the stated goals of the Democratic Party have universal appeal in the United States. Foremost among those would be reducing poverty and ensuring that every child has access to a high-quality education.
The problem with the Democratic Party today is that its leadership seems not to understand the kinds of policies that will achieve those goals. Instead of finding out what works and implementing it, they simply call for new government programs on the assumption that those programs will work (or, if you’re jaded, on the assumption that doing so will get them re-elected).
It wasn’t always like that. There was a time when one of the most prominent Democrats in the nation was so deeply committed to these goals that he was willing to advocate the policies that would achieve them—special interests be damned.
Scott Walter has a little of that story at Philanthropy Daily.
To plagiarize Instapundit: more like this, please.
Woodward’s Narrative
The New York Times reports that the book, Obama’s Wars, by longtime Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward that is scheduled for publication next week, depicts an administration completely at odds over the war in Afghanistan.
According to Woodward, the president concluded from the start that “I have two years with the public on this.” He implored his advisers at one meeting, “I want an exit strategy,” and he set a withdrawal timetable because, “I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”
It’s unfortunate that the policy debate over Afghanistan will be further spun into a left-vs.-right issue. After all, there are growing, if nascent, signs that some on the political right have reservations about our continued military involvement in Afghanistan. Earlier this year, Congressman Tim Johnson (R-Ill.), who earned an 80 percent favorable rating from the American Conservative Union, was a GOP co-sponsor to Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s (D-Ohio) resolution to force the removal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. In March, Congressman John Duncan (R-Tenn.) came to the Cato Institute and explained why “there is nothing conservative about the war in Afghanistan.”
And as Cato founder Ed Crane wrote last year in the pages of the LA Times:
Republicans should take this opportunity to return to their traditional non-interventionist roots, and throw their neoconservative wing under the bus and forcefully oppose the war in Afghanistan. The Republicans have a chance at this moment to reclaim the mantle of the party of non-intervention — in your health care, in your wallet, in your lifestyle, and in the affairs of other nations.
I am not a conservative, and neither are many of my Cato colleagues. But these comments are intended to highlight that leaving Afghanistan is far beyond Left vs. Right. In fact, many conservatives used to deride nation-building as a utopian venture that had little to do with the nation’s real interests. In the case of Afghanistan, troops are being deployed to prop up a regime Washington doesn’t trust, for goals our president can’t define. There is a principled case to be made that a prolonged nation-building occupation is weakening our country militarily and economically. It’s a question of scarce resources and limiting the power of government. The immense price tag for war in Afghanistan can no longer be swept under the carpet or dismissed as an issue owned by peaceniks and pacifists, much less “the Democratic Party.”
Democrats Ignore 80% of Workers in Service Sector
In a bid to revive their sagging election prospects, congressional Democrats have hit on the theme of promoting domestic U.S. manufacturing. As a front-page story in the Washington Post reports today, the party has adopted the bumper-sticker slogan, “Make It in America.”
I’m all for making things in America, when it makes economic sense to do so. But the Democratic plan opens a window for all sorts of government intervention, including trade barriers, higher taxes on U.S.-owned affiliates abroad, and subsidies for “clean energy” and make-work infrastructure projects.
The campaign relies on two major but faulty assumptions: That U.S. manufacturing is in deep trouble, and that creating more manufacturing jobs is the key to prosperity. Neither assumption is true.
As I explained in a Washington Times column yesterday:
Despite worries about “de-industrialization,” America remains a global manufacturing power. Our nation leads the world in manufacturing “value-added,” the value of what we produce domestically after subtracting imported components. The volume of domestic manufacturing output, according to the Federal Reserve Board, has rebounded by 8 percent from the recession lows of a year ago. Even after the Great Recession, U.S. manufacturing output remains 50 percent higher than what it was two decades ago in the era before NAFTA and the WTO.
Manufacturing jobs have been in decline for 30 years, not because of declining production, but because remaining workers are so much more productive.
Again, I’m all for manufacturing jobs supported by a free market, but members of Congress need to wake up to the reality that America today is a middle-class service economy. As I wrote in the column yesterday:
More than 80 percent of Americans earn their living in the service sector, including a broad swath of the middle class gainfully employed in education, health care, finance, and business and professional occupations.
It is one of the big lies of the trade debate that manufacturing jobs are being replaced by low-paying service jobs. Since the early 1990s, two-thirds of the net new jobs created have been in service sectors where the average pay is higher than in manufacturing. Members of Congress who belittle the service sector are ignoring the interests of a large majority of their constituents.
Congress and the president should focus on economic policies that promote overall economic growth, not policies that favor one sector of the economy over all the others.
Stevens Retirement Ill-timed for Dems
The retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens at the end of the Supreme Court’s current term, and the coming nomination and confirmation process, will doubtless further complicate and delay the Obama administration’s already complicated agenda during this mid-term election year. And the timing cannot be good news for Democrats running for reelection, because the process will serve to highlight their understanding of the Constitution as a document authorizing all but unlimited government in a year in which, thanks to the Tea Party movement, the Constitution is likely to have a prominent place in reelection debates.
Regarding a replacement for Justice Stevens, the nominee will almost certainly come from the Democratic Party’s liberal ranks. As a result, the ideological complexion of the Court is not likely to change, since Justice Stevens, especially in recent years, has been the most reliable liberal vote on the Court, whether on abortion, campaign finance, gun rights, affirmative action, or several other hot-button issues. As the press reviews those decisions over the coming weeks and months, therefore, controversy over the Court will be in the air, adding to what already promises to be a very political year.
Unions Fading in Private Sector But Not in Government
At the end of last week, the Labor Department reported that the share of private-sector workers who belong to labor unions fell to its lowest level in more than a century.
In 2009, the “union density” in the private sector fell to 7.2 percent, the lowest it has been since 1900. The recession caused the number of private-sector union members to fall by 10 percent last year, with the heaviest losses in manufacturing and construction.
Not surprisingly, union membership held steady in the public sector, with the share of government workers belonging to unions actually inching up to 37.4 percent. Unionization is more viable in the public sector because the additional costs imposed by unions can be passed along to captive taxpayers.
The economics of unionization are much different in the private sector, as I argue in an article in the latest issue of the Cato Journal now available online. In a competitive market, producers cannot pass the costs of unionization on to consumers without the real risk of losing market share to non-unionized rivals. This is a major, self-serving reason why organized labor typically opposes competition-enhancing trade agreements with other countries. (See the chart below from my Cato Journal article.)
The drop in union members was also another piece of bad news for the Democratic Party last week. As labor unions have become relatively more important as a constituency within the Democratic Party, they have become increasingly irrelevant in the private economy. Unions will find it more and more difficult to generate the funds for their political activities if the number of dues-paying members continues to slide.
As The Dems Turn (To School Choice)
We’ve been writing a fair amount over the last several months about increasing support for school choice among members of the Democratic Party. The focus has typically been on legislators, but a new report from the Center for Education Reform give a glimpse into possible widespread support among private-schooling Dems and Dem donors in Washington, DC.
The Trustees delves into the political affiliations of board of trustee members of the “ten most prestigious private schools that support the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.” Based on trustees’ total donation amounts to the two major presidential candidates in 2008, or to candidates, party committees, and parties themselves, the report suggests that trustees lean Democratic by a ratio of roughly 9 to 1.
Importantly, only about 37 percent of trustees were found to have made any contributions, so the 9-to-1 ratio doesn’t necessarily mean that trustees overall are similarly skewed. In addition, the underlying assumption seems to be that if the schools participate in the voucher program their trustees support school choice, which doesn’t necessarily follow. A trustee may very well think a school should take some voucher kids but also think the program ought not to exist. And, of course, trustees almost certainly don’t all agree one way or the other.
Those things said, this is yet more evidence supporting an increasingly inescapable conclusion: Democrats — who have historically opposed school choice much more so than Republicans — are finding that they just can’t do it anymore. There is no justification for consigning kids to awful schools.
Of course, members of both parties — or no party at all — who support only small, hamstrung programs still have a lot of thinking to do…
Tea Party Conservatism and the GOP
This morning, Politico’s Arena asks:
Is Tea Party conservatism a help or a hazard for Republicans seeking a return to power?
My response:
Let’s start with some clarity: “Tea Party conservatism” stands for several things, but it is not the caricature one often finds in the mainstream media, to say nothing of the left wing blogs. It is a movement with deep historical roots, drawing its name and inspiration from the Boston Tea Party of 1773. As with that event, taxes brought it to the fore — on Tax Day, April 15. But taxes are simply the most obvious manifestation of modern government run amok, insinuating itself into every corner of life. Trillions of dollars of debt for our children, out-of-control government budgets, massive interventions in private affairs — the list of wrongs is endless, and under Obama has exploded. He stands for nothing if not for making us all dependent on the government he has promised us. That’s not America. That’s a foreign vision, which over the centuries countless millions have fled, searching for freedom.
To be sure, the Tea Party movement has its fringe elements, as did the revolt against British tyranny, which the establishment of its day disparaged. So too does the Obama administration, some of whom have already resigned. The basic question, however, is what does the movement stand for? What are its principles? And on that, the contrast with the Obama vision is stark: However much confusion there might be on specific issues, which is to be expected, the broad principles are clear. The Tea Party movement stands for limited constitutional government. At its rallies, on hand-written sign after sign, that was the message repeatedly seen. These are ordinary Americans – Republicans, Independents, and even Democrats — who want simply to be left alone to plan and live their own lives. They don’t want “community organizers” to help empower them to get more from government.
But they do need to be organized to bring that about — to get government off their backs. And the Republican Party should be the natural vehicle toward that end — the party, after all, that was formed to get government off the backs of several million slaves. But today’s Republican Party is a mixed lot: Some understand those principles; but others, as in the NY 23 race, are all but indistinguishable from their counterparts in the party of Obama. The problem in NY 23 was not that a third party entered the race. Rather, the party establishment botched things from the beginning, by picking a nominee who properly belonged in the Democratic Party, as her pathetic last-minute endorsement indicated, and that’s why a third party entered the race — with a novice of a nominee who nearly won despite the odds against him.
The question, therefore, is not whether Tea Party conservatism is a help or a hazard for Republicans seeking a return to power? To the contrary, it is whether the Republican Party is a help or a hindrance to the Tea Party movement? It will be a help only if it returns to its roots. The mainstream media, overwhelmingly of the Democratic persuasion, will continue to push Republicans to be “moderate,” of course – meaning “Democrat Lite” — to which the proper response is: Why would voters go for that when they can get the real thing on the Democratic line? If Tuesday’s returns showed anything, it is that Independents, a truly mixed lot, are up for grabs; but at the same time, they are looking for leaders who promise not simply to “solve problems” but to do so in a way that respects our traditions of individual liberty, free markets, and limited government. When Republican candidates stand clearly and firmly for those principles, they stand a far better chance of being elected than when they temporize. That is the lesson that Republicans must grasp — and not forget — if they are to return to power.
Democrats Favor Trade Sanctions on Americans
Scott Lincicome sharpens his pencil today and calculates that Congressional failure to ratify the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement–a deal that was signed almost three full years ago–has so far cost American exporters $2 billion. That tally increases $1.9 million each and every day.
Since that time [the trade agreement signing], American exporters have paid approximately $1.9 million per day in Colombian tariffs that they wouldn’t have paid if the Democrat-controlled Congress had just passed the FTA back then and thus allowed it to enter into force. By my math, that means that Congress’ and (now) the President’s partisan stalling has resulted in a pointless tax on American businesses of almost $2 billion ($1.9798 billion = 1042 days times $1.9 million) and counting.
My colleague Dan Griswold explained yesterday how U.S. trade policy punishes poorer people abroad, and amounts to a regressive tax here at home:
America’s highest remaining trade barriers are aimed at products mostly grown and made by poor people abroad and disproportionately consumed by poor people at home. While industrial goods and luxury products typically enter under low or zero tariffs, the U.S. government imposes duties of 30 pecent or more on food and lower-end clothing and shoes — staple goods that loom large in the budgets of poor families.
The Obama administration and Congress could easily remove the sanctions that burden America’s exporters and lower-income consumers. But until they’re convinced that they can make up the revenues lost by crossing Big Labor, the Democratic Party playbook counsels more of the same disingenuous rhetoric of fraternity with the common man and more exaggerations about evil foreign labor practices.
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