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.
Journalism and Generality
The media makes it hard for ordinary people to be libertarians. In large part, this is because journalism is in the business of selling panic—panic about terrorism, panic about drugs, panic about food, panic about pornography, panic about our health care system. If it’s not an emergency, it’s not news. To the lazy journalist, everything becomes an emergency—and emergencies always—always—demand state action.
The media makes things hard for the would-be libertarian in other ways, too. Consider this story from today’s Washington Post, about… well, it’s hard to say, actually:
Senate Democrats unveiled a plan Tuesday to save $21 billion over the next decade by eliminating tax breaks for the nation’s five biggest oil companies, a move designed to counter Republican demands to control the soaring national debt without new taxes.
With the proposal, Democrats sought to reframe the debate over debt reduction to include fresh revenue as well as sharp cuts in spending. For the first time, Democratic leaders suggested an equal split between spending cuts and new taxes — “50-50,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.).
That represents a larger share for taxes than has been proposed by either President Obama or the bipartisan commission he appointed to recommend how to cut the national debt.
So far, the Democratic tax agenda is focused on ending subsidies for big oil companies, a hugely popular proposal involving what Democrats see as a prime example of wasteful giveaways in the tax code. By raising the issue, Democrats are trying to force Republicans either to drop their rigid stance against new taxes or to defend taxpayer subsidies for some of the world’s most profitable corporations, including Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, Chevron and ConocoPhillips.
The proposal came in response to remarks Tuesday by House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who said raising taxes is “off the table.” A day earlier, he gave a speech demanding more than $2 trillion in spending cuts in exchange for GOP support for an increase in the legal limit on government borrowing through the end of next year.
Where am I confused, you ask? On almost everything a libertarian ought to care about. I’ll explain.
One of the key aspects of any good law is generality—that is, equality before the law. As F. A. Hayek put it:
[T]hough government has to administer means which have been put at its disposal (including the services of all those whom it has hired to carry out its instructions), this does not mean that it should similarly administer the efforts of private citizens. What distinguishes a free from an unfree society is that in the former each individual has a recognized private sphere clearly distinct from the public sphere, and the private individual cannot be ordered about but is expected to obey only the rules which are equally applicable to all….
The general, abstract rules, which are laws in the substantive sense, are… essentially long-term measures, referring to yet unnkown cases and containing no references to particular persons, places, or objects. Such laws must always be prospective, never retrospective, in their effect (The Constitution of Liberty, chapter 14, section 2).
Now, with every passing day our government stomps all over this generality requirement again and again, chiefly in the economic sphere. But is it doing so on the front page of today’s Washington Post? That’s a good question.
Will Republicans Come to Grips With Immigration?
Today POLITICO Arena asks:
Given President Obama’s speech today in El Paso, Texas, is immigration a winning issue for Democrats?
My response:
Immigration will be a winning issue for Democrats only if Republicans allow it, which they’re quite capable of doing. Where’s the anti-immigrant part of the Republican base going to go — to the Democrats? Hardly. With so much else at stake, will they sit out the 2012 elections, over this one issue? Please.
If Republicans play it right, this can be a winner. No one seriously believes that the estimated 10 to 12 million illegal immigrants in the country, most working, can or should be sent back to their countries of origin. So the main issues are paving the way to legalization, better securing the borders, and providing for a rational guest worker program. If Republicans got behind a package like that, immigration would cease to be a Democratic issue. This isn’t rocket science.
Thursday Links
- One thing is clear after President Obama’s speech yesterday: He envisions a smaller national debt, but a much bigger government.
- One percent is better than nothing, but it’s still pretty close to nothing.
- One thing is clear about climate change: it’s causing a rising tide of red ink in Washington. See the forthcoming book Climate Coup: Global Warming’s Invasion of Our Government and Our Lives and join us for the accompanying book forum, featuring MIT meteorologist Richard Lindzen and American Meteorological Society fellow Bob Ryan, on Wednesday, May 4 at 4:00 p.m. Eastern. Complimentary registration is required of all attendees by 12:00 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, May 3. If you cannot join us in person, we hope you’ll watch live online.
- One cannot be serious about reining in reckless spending without putting the Pentagon on the chopping block.
- One need not look very far to see how similar Republicans and Democrats are:
Burke v. Pelosi
Lindsey Burke of the Heritage Foundation has a good post today dissecting Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s recent press release on DC school vouchers.
If anything, Burke goes a little easy on Rep. Pelosi, comparing the maximum value of the vouchers ($7,500) with the published figure for DC public school spending ($17,600). As it happens, the public school spending figures published by the Department of Education (and the Bureau of the Census) are always badly out of date. That means they don’t take into account the continuing trends of rising overall spending and falling enrollment in DC public schools (let alone inflation). When you break down the DC K-12 education budget for the 2008-2009 school year, as I did in this Excel spreadsheet, it comes out to just over $28,000 per pupil. It’s almost certainly higher today.
What’s more, the average voucher amount is closer to $7,000, so DC schools are underperforming the private voucher schools while spending four times as much per pupil.
Despite this, Rep. Pelosi, President Obama, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and over 90% of Democrats in the House and Senate oppose the DC voucher program. It’s almost as if politicians care more about special interests and ideology than they do about kids and reality.
Good Riddance 1099 Mandate
Senate Democrats deserve credit for this much: in voting to repeal the so-called “1099 reporting mandate,” they have acknowledged that this small part of Obamacare will be a disaster. With time and education, perhaps they will see what most Americans already see: The rest of Obamacare is a disaster too — a monumental one — for patients, doctors, employers, the Constitution, and individual freedom.
At this point, even the most ardent Obamacare supporters must have noticed that the law has not been well received. As public opposition further manifests itself, perhaps some supporters will begin to reconsider their fealty to this law.
Immigration and Election Day
Immigrants are a voting block worth courting, but it seems both Democrats and Republicans aren’t terribly concerned about earning immigrants’ allegiance. The sometimes-dehumanizing rhetoric hurled at immigrants by a small, vocal minority of Republicans would seem to push immigrant voters into the loving arms of Democrats. But Democrats have been in charge of two branches of the federal government for two years and have done nothing to reform our immigration system. For his part, President Obama pledged that 2009 would bear witness to comprehensive immigration reform.
Dan Griswold discusses the rhetoric surrounding immigration in light of today’s election for today’s Cato Daily Podcast (subscribe, already!):
GOP: Cut Whaling History Subsidies, Save Nation
House Republican Whip Eric Cantor’s “YouCut” project has released a new video that attempts to visually underscore the impropriety of sticking future taxpayers with a mountain of federal debt.
The video begins with a voice saying “You wouldn’t do this to your child’s piggy bank” followed by visuals of a child’s piggy bank being smashed with a hammer. The voice then says:
But Democrat controlled Washington is leaving a $13 trillion debt for your children and future generations. It’s time Washington got its fiscal house in order. Start changing the culture of spending in Washington by voting on YouCut today.
That’s a wee bit disingenuous considering that Republicans and Democrats alike are responsible for the massive federal debt.
More frustrating is the fact that the GOP leadership rhetoric of grave concern is completely at odds with the party’s tiny proposed reforms. In Cantor’s YouCut commentary he says “America is at a critical crossroads, and the choices we make today will determine the kind of country we leave to our children and grandchildren.”
Now let’s look at this week’s proposed GOP spending cuts. A website banner says “CLICK HERE TO VOTE FOR THIS WEEK’S FIVE CUTS,” but takes the viewer to the YouCut page where they’re offered three spending cut options:
1. Terminate Taxpayer Funding of National Public Radio. The site says this would achieve “Savings of Tens of Millions of Dollars (potentially in excess of a hundred million dollars).” NPR shouldn’t receive taxpayer funding – and not just because it canned Juan Williams. But couldn’t the House GOP leadership have at least offered up the $500 million Corporation for Public Broadcasting that subsidizes NPR for cutting?
2. Terminate Exchanges with Historic Whaling and Trading Partners Program. The site says this would save $87.5 million over ten years.
3. Terminate the Presidential Election Fund. This would achieve a whopping projected savings of $520 million over ten years.
America is at a “critical crossroads” and the GOP leadership is offering to cut whaling history subsidies? Congress is bankrupting the nation and the possible next Speaker of the House – “never a details man” – can’t even specify what he would cut in the budget.
It’s pathetic.
Fear and Stasis
The Obama administration’s attacks on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce look a lot like a three-day story on its final day. The national media had its doubts, and even Democratic operatives decried the gambit.
Why did the administration go after the Chamber? The politics are not hard to figure out. Earlier actions of the Obama administration mobilized the Republican base. At the same time, the President and his party have been losing the support of independents for a year or so. Their only hope of limiting the electoral damage was to rally the Democratic base, who are discouraged and divided.
The Democratic base might agree about what they don’t like and fear: business, money in politics, and foreigners — or at least, foreigners spending money on politics. The attack on the Chamber of Commerce appealed to all three. The administration hoped that fear would engender hatred and hatred would bring people to the polls to vote against business and the GOP.
The most surprising part of the attack was the rather naked appeal to anti-foreign bias (see Bryan Caplan’s discussion of this concept here). Most people think of Democrats as friendly to undocumented foreign workers. But Democrats are first of all egalitarians; for them, the whole point of politics is to help the oppressed and harm the oppressor. They do not favor undocumented foreigners because they believe people have a right to free exchange, borders notwithstanding. Instead, Democrats see undocumented foreigners as victims of oppression by American businesses. Foreigners who have enough money to spend on elections are oppressors in the egalitarian mind.
Obama promised hope and change. He and his party now want to maintain — so far as possible — the political status quo (that is, their control of Congress). To do that they are trying to prompt fear and hatred among their most loyal voters. The new motto of the administration appears to be: fear and stasis.
Of course, the administration had no evidence the charges were true and argued that the Chamber should be seen as guilty until proven innocent. All in all, the whole affair suggests desperation and a complete loss of constraint in pursuing a political end. It suggests, I think, conduct that used to be covered by the word “Nixonian.”
Time to End the Campaign Finance ‘Reform’ Ruse
Today POLITICO Arena asks:
Looking at the repeated failures of campaign finance reforms, is it time to end the restrictions?
My response:
Funny, we didn’t hear the primal scream about campaign finance from liberal Democrats during the 2008 campaigns, when money was pouring into their coffers from everywhere. Do we need any better evidence of the hypocrisy surrounding their screams this year? If so, turn to the lead editorial in this morning’s Wall Street Journal. It’ll tell you all you need to know about the campaign finance “reform” ruse that has been going on for years.
Born-Again Budget Hawks (D-BS)
“Now on Democrats’ agenda: Budget cuts,” proclaims a front-page headline in Saturday’s Washington Post. The online headline reads, “Democrats add fiscal austerity as a campaign issue.”
Good news, huh? Let’s check it out:
The candidate was outraged — just outraged — at the country’s sorry fiscal state.
“We have managed to acquire $13 trillion of debt on our balance sheet,” he fumed to a roomful of voters. “In my view, we have nothing to show for it.”
And that was a Democrat, Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado, who voted “yes” on the stimulus, the health-care overhaul, increased education funding and other costly bills Congress approved under his party’s control.
Meanwhile,
Paul Hodes, the Democratic Senate candidate in New Hampshire, recently proposed $3 billion in spending cuts that would slice airport, railroad and housing funds. Elected to the House four years ago as an anti-war progressive, Hodes lamented that “for too long, both parties have willfully spent with no regard for our nation’s debt.”
So Senator Bennet is outraged at the national debt — for which we have “nothing to show” — but he has voted, apparently, for every one of the spending bills in his time in the Senate that have created today’s $13 trillion debt. The National Taxpayers Union says his overall voting record on spending bills rates an F.
And Representative Hodes is calling for a $3 billion spending cut. Sounds big, eh? Front-page news indeed. But of course, it’s less than 0.1 percent of the 2011 federal budget — and that’s assuming that all these cuts would come out of this year’s budget. Hodes’s press release doesn’t make that clear; they might be cuts over 5 years or so. And his very next press release said he was fighting for federal funds for local New Hampshire services.
Both Republicans and Democrats want voters to think that they’re getting tough on spending, deficits, and debts. But their statements are at wide variance with their actual records and actions. We didn’t pile up $13 trillion in debt while no one was looking; members of Congress, of both parties, voted for these bills. Voters need to watch what they do, not what they say.
My colleague Chris Edwards, quoted by reporter Shailagh Murray, is a little more polite:
“The problem from a fiscal conservative voter’s point of view is that every member or wannabe member claims to be a fiscal conservative these days, so it’s more difficult than usual to separate the wheat from the chaff,” said Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank.
The GOP and the “Ground Zero” Mosque
Some leaders within the Republican Party seem to have fixed on a useful club with which to bludgeon the president and his fellow Democrats — Cordoba House, aka the “Ground Zero” Mosque. Over the weekend, Republican strategist Ed Rollins explained how the party would use the issue in the coming months:
ROLLINS: Intellectually, the president may be right, but this is an emotional issue, and people who lost kids, brothers, sisters, fathers, what have you, do not want that mosque in New York, and it’s going to be a big, big issue for Democrats across this country.
“Face the Nation” Host Bob SCHIEFFER: So you see it as an issue that’s going to continue?
ROLLINS: Absolutely. No question about it. Every candidate — every candidate who’s in the challenge districts are going to be asked, how do you feel about building the mosque on the Ground Zero sites?
This strategy, exploiting still-raw emotion and implicitly demonizing Muslims, threatens to trade short-term political gain for medium-term political harm to the party. And it most certainly will translate into long-term harm for the country at large.
Opposing the construction of a mosque near the Ground Zero site plays into al Qaeda’s narrative that the United States is engaged in a war with Islam, that bin Laden and his tiny band of followers represent something more than a pitiful group of murderers and thugs, and that all American Muslims are an incipient Fifth Column that must be either converted to Christianity or driven out of the country, else they will undermine American society from within.
It isn’t a political slam-dunk, either. Though 64 percent of Americans think a mosque near Ground Zero is ”inappropriate“, 60 percent of all respondents in the same survey, including 57 percent of Republicans, believe that the organizers have a right to build in that location, and presumably would not favor a government prohibition on this activity. (h/t Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight) If anyone were to show evidence that the parties building the center were in any way linked to the 9/11 terrorists, or funded by or funding these same terrorists, then the issues at stake would change. But they haven’t done so, and are unlikely to do so. In the meantime, those GOP leaders who oppose the mosque betray a basic inability to discern public attitudes, even as they propel this country on a ruinous course, headlong into a civilizational war which pits all Americans against all Muslims.
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