Jaw-Dropping Arithmetic

 Posted by Mike  Debt and Deficit, Fiscal Issues, U.S. Politics  6 Responses »
Apr 292005
 

Ok, get out your calculators, and read the following quotes from this New York Times article on the budget resolution that Congress passed yesterday:

“The House and Senate broke a lengthy impasse over federal spending Thursday night, narrowly adopting a $2.56 trillion federal budget for 2006 that aims to trim the growth of Medicaid by $10 billion over five years, add $106 billion in tax cuts and clear the way for oil drilling in an Alaskan wildlife refuge”

“…the resolution assumes $106 billion in tax cuts over the next five years, and explicitly directs Congress to enact legislation providing for $70 billion of those cuts”

“It directs lawmakers to reduce the growth of entitlements – including farm subsidies and a federal pensions guarantee as well as Medicaid – by a total of $35 billion over the next five years.”

“Mr. Bush originally proposed a $51 billion reduction. The architects of the Congressional budget say the $35 million is significant nonetheless.” I think they mean billion, and that the million is a Times typo.

“[The Republican sponsors of the legislation] say the budget will fulfill Mr. Bush’s goal of cutting the federal deficit in half over five years, bringing the figure down to $210 billion in 2010″

“Earlier in the evening, Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the House majority leader, called the spending plan ” the best since the historic Balanced Budget Act of 1997.” ”

To review, Congress intends to cut taxes, further reducing government revenue by $106 billion over five years. In that same time frame, Congress intends to cut Medicaid by $10 billion and entitlement programs in general by $35 billion. And these combined cuts will reduce the deficit by half.

How do you even respond to that kind of absurdity?

Presidential Immigrants

 Posted by Hiren  2008 Election, Issues, Racism, U.S. Politics  15 Responses »
Apr 282005
 

Mike and Scott have thus far chimed in on the latest topic, Amending the Constitution. I’m going to focus primarily on whether the United States should allow naturalized citizens the privilege of running for the nation’s highest single office. The reason I am focusing on this issue is that I am a naturalized citizen. Although I have no intention of ever running for public office, much less for President, I cannot ignore how the current state of the Constitution does extend a slightly different set of rights to naturalized citizens.

The primary launching point will be the question: why does it matter where a person was born? Well at the time of framing the Constitution, it did matter. The idea was that people born in the United States were less likely to become puppets for England. Given the difficulty in spreading knowledge of someone’s background to the voters, the framers probably felt it best that proof of being born in the United States should be a prerequisite to hold the highest office. Otherwise, a candidate could likely lie about the whole thing and voters would not truly know that they were electing an Englishman.

Today, these concerns are less compelling. Some people might even prefer an Englishman to, say, a Texan. Given the ease with which information about a candidate’s background can be communicated to the voters, it no longer seems necessary to exclude an entire class of individuals from access to the highest office. What’s more is that the class of individuals we are excluding is a class of individuals other federal laws work to protect from exclusion. Try being an employer and getting away with a policy to only hire natural born citizens of the United States.

Eliminating the natural born citizen requirement makes this antiquated provision of the Constitution more consistent with a system of federal laws designed to protect people from discrimination based on their origin.

But here’s the real benefit to eliminating this provision: we could end up with better choices for the office. Michael Lewis in his book Moneyball expresses the philosophy of Sandy Alderson and Billy Beane that has allowed the low budget Oakland A’s to remain competitive in baseball. Part of the philosophy is this: if you exclude an entire class of individuals based on the way they look or where they’re from, you are less likely to find the best person for the job. In baseball, this means you look at a person’s performance indicators, not whether he fits your preconcieved notion of what a baseball players “looks” like. For the Presidency, that means opening up the office to all citizens (or even all people legally allowed to be in the United States). Sure, the chances that a foreign born President will be elected are remote, simply based on the numbers. Nonetheless, there does not seem to be any adequate justification to exclude this class of individuals.

To address Scott’s “no harm, no foul” argument: Scott argues that there is no real harm in the status quo, and hence, no impetus to change. The harm in the status quo is exactly what is captured in the Moneyball theory. If you exclude a class of people based on how they look or where they’re from, you are less likely to find the best person for the job. In that sense, the design of the current system is fundamentally flawed insofar as the point of the system is to find the best person to be the nation’s Chief Executive. Just because we cannot quantify the harm or point to a specific instance does not indicate that there is no harm. The harm in doing nothing is that we will be ignoring the shortcomings of the current system and taking no steps at improvement.

The same “no harm, no foul” argument could made for anything that isn’t inherently destructive, but not optimally beneficial. If we buy into the “no harm, no foul” perspective, then we would have little impetus for improvement and innovation.

Advice and Consent

 Posted by Mike  Bush Administration, Judicial System, Legal Reform, Nomination and Confirmation, U.S. Politics  No Responses »
Apr 282005
 

“… And he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law …”
- United States Constitution, Article II, Section II

I have heard several rather strained explanations from conservatives lately telling me that the above passage really means that it is unconstitutional not to allow an up-or-down, majority rules vote on the floor of the Senate for all presidential nominees. I find that quite amusing when coming from the same people who claim that we need “strict constructivists” on the bench. If you actually read the above passage, you will see no “plain language” stating this “obvious interpretation”. Nothing says we need a majority up-or-down vote on presidential nominees. Instead, it says that the President shall appoint them with the advice and consent of the Senate. So the real question is, what does “advice and consent” mean?

Interesting historic note: George Washington first assumed that phrase meant that he ought to be present at, and participate in, Senate debate on nominees and treaties. Of course, his mere presence stifled debate, and this practice did not last very long. My point? It wasn’t clear exactly what “advice and consent” meant two hundred years ago, and it is not obvious what it means today, despite what conservatives will tell you. That being said, I can think of three logical interpretations of what “consent” means.

One interpretation is exactly the one that the religious right gives: majority rules. When it says “consent of the Senate”, really it means “consent of a majority of Senators”. This interpretation seems to fit with other parts of the Constitution that indicate that the founders had a high opinion of simple majorities. Also, it would exclude both the filibuster and the committee system (which, you notice, no one is complaining about) as legitimate means of killing nominees. Furthermore, I should note that if we were taking such a view, we should also assume that anytime the Constitution says that legislation must be passed by a majority or two-thirds of Senators, that it means exactly what is says there as well. That would indicate that we should end use of the filibuster, or the committee system, or any other parliamentary procedure to kill a bill, as unconstitutional. That interpretation would, of course, require a complete overhaul of our legislative process, and would probably cause just as much harm as good.

Another equally plausible interpretation is that the sentence means “consent of all Senators”, or unanimous consent. This interpretation would seem to fit more with the Articles of Confederation, which the Constitution was replacing, although you could argue that because the founders did not specify otherwise that they simply assumed that we would do things like they had been done before. Of course, the framers of the Constitution wanted to move beyond unanimous consent in many areas because it is so difficult to get. Sen. Kennedy (D-MA) and Sen. Hatch (R-UT) just don’t agree on very many things, especially when it comes to judicial nominees. So, this interpretation would seem unwise as well.

Finally, you could interpret “consent of the Senate” as meaning that the Senate itself gets to decide how it will give its own consent. This would seem, in my mind, to make the most sense given the text. After all, if I ask you for your consent, you would assume that I am leaving it up to you what decision making process to use. It is the only interpretation of the clause that does not require the assumption that the framers just left out a few words. It also happens to be the interpretation that has been used over the course of the last two hundred years. Of course, feel free to disagree with me here, but my point is that the Constitution is not nearly clear enough to make any accusations about the unconstitutionality of an opposing viewpoint.

I have also heard a number of conservatives attack the Democrats for breaking with Senate tradition by not allowing an up-or-down vote. Even the venerable Bob Dole makes that argument in a New York Times op-ed piece. Now, I won’t get into arguments as to whether or not Republicans filibustered anyone back in the 1960s. To me, that seems to be missing two points. First, the Senate does have a long tradition of killing nominations in committee. In fact, this tradition reached new heights when that Religious Right poster-child, John Ashcroft, was chairman of the Judicial Committee under Clinton. And of course, any candidate killed in committee never gets an up-or-down vote on the floor of the Senate. In fact, there has also been a long-standing tradition that any member of a state delegation can veto any nominee from his/her home state. Its called “blue-slipping” a nominee, and it was a tradition that the Republican majority made a conscious decision to ignore when Bush came into office. Four of Bush’s nominations have been filibustered because of that violation of Senate tradition. Sadly, Mr. Dole did not mention any of this; I would have been very interested in hearing his response.

Second, remember that Senators and Presidents are strategic actors. It has been in the rules of the Senate that judicial nominations can be filibustered. At the same time, real filibusters are time-consuming and politically costly for both sides. That means, if I know a candidate is going to be filibustered, I have significant incentives to simply kill the nomination before it ever comes to that point. In other words, the filibuster does not actually have to have been used in the past in order to have had a profound impact on which nominees got voted on, because it could very easily have affected who actually got nominated in the first place.

So, to the Republican Party and the Religious Right, don’t tell me about how the Democrats are not playing by Senate tradition, when it was the Republican violation of a different Senate tradition that helped land us in this mess. And don’t be so absurd to use someone else’s violation of Senate tradition to justify a change in two hundred year old Senate rules. Finally, stop preaching about Constitutional violations unless the actual Constitution is being violated, and not merely your own personal interpretation of what the Constitution should say.

The Reinvention of Ronald Reagan

 Posted by Mike  2008 Election, U.S. Politics  No Responses »
Apr 272005
 

You can’t stereotype the Democrats anymore. It used to be that they were the “bleeding-heart”, “tax-and-spend” liberals. And while those were pejorative terms used by the right, they did have a point. Democrats wanted to take your money and use it to better society as a whole, where as Republicans wanted you to keep your money, society be darned. The Republicans, however, have used the language of compassionate conservatism to keep their philosophy while usurping just enough of the left’s rhetoric to make it difficult for the left to maneuver. The Democrats, simultaneously moved to the center under Clinton, but in the meantime lost their stereotype, and left themselves adrift.

Look back at the 1980 election that put Ronald Reagan in the White House. Despite rhetoric you might have heard recently from the religious right, Reagan didn’t run as a good Christian man. He was not an active church-goer, and his wife was known to consult with an astrologer. No, Carter was the one who had the Christian credentials. He was a deacon in a Southern Baptist church in Hope, GA. He talked about self-sacrifice and helping the poor. He was more interested in doing the Right thing than the Best thing, and he admitted it. He was the bleeding-heart liberal at its finest, as was his Vice President, and Reagan’s opponent in 1984, Walter Mondale. So when Reagan ran for President, he didn’t run as a compassionate conservative. Reagan ran as an in-your-face, pro-business, commie-hating, cut taxes and cut spending kind of guy.

That attitude proved successful in the 1980s, as Reagan and his predecessor defeated three consecutive bleeding-hearts (Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis). And so the Democrats changed tactics. They moved to the center, which did two things. In the short-run, it allowed them to win the presidency. In the long-run, however, they lost the Jimmy Carter’s of the world. They completely ceded to the Republicans the evangelical vote, and the South along with it. Suddenly, the Democrats are no longer the bleeding-hearts trying to protect the poor and urging good Christian self-sacrifice, a strategy that at least left the religious right torn between abortion and poverty. Instead, the democrats became the party of centrist pragmatism, of technocrats like Clinton and Gore and Kerry. These are candidates who lacked zeal, who lacked any appeal to the Southern Christian Conservative. So evangelicals became Republican whole-heartedly, and now they are remaking the Republican party into their own image.

Hence the reinvention of Reagan. When Reagan died, he wasn’t remembered as the in-your-face guy who was going to use a bomb where Carter used a hug. He was remembered in many circles as a good Christian family man who had a strong moral compass.

What’s the answer? Lets get back the good-ol liberal stereotype, to be more like Ted Kennedy and less like Bill Clinton. Listen to Kennedy speak sometime. Whatever you may think of the man personally, you have to admire the fact that he is unabashedly liberal. Kennedy will flat out tell you “I’m gonna raise your taxes to pay for her education, and your just going to have to live with it”. And before you throw the electoral failures of the 1980s at me, let me also remind you that the Democrats didn’t lose Congress until 1994, after the move towards the center and the abandonment of the south. Because after all, Bush is not Reagan. Bush needs to be perceived as the good Christian family man in order to win elections. And the best way to fight that is to run a Jimmy Carter, a man who will walk the walk as well as talk the talk.

News Notes

 Posted by Mike  Education, Foreign Policy, Issues, Middle East, U.S. Politics  3 Responses »
Apr 262005
 

You’ve got to love San Diego politics. Perhaps the two funniest, and saddest, sentences I’ve ever seen in print about an American city, from this New York Times article: “The mayor of San Diego, Dick Murphy, caught up in federal investigations into the city’s finances and questions about his political legitimacy, announced Monday that he was resigning, effective July 15.” And “In the interim, [until the city council figures out what to do next] the acting mayor will be Deputy Mayor Michael Zucchet, a member of the City Council under federal indictment on charges he received payments from a Las Vegas strip-club owner in exchange for a vote to relax the no-touching rule at San Diego’s topless clubs.”

I guess when the weather is perfect, your football and baseball teams are resurgent, and your economy is good, you start creating your own problems…
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So, it looks like the No Child Left Behind Act is imploding. Connecticut is suing. The NEA is suing. Utah is blatantly ignoring the federal law. Even Texas is thumbing its nose at the law, although they are being fined half a million dollars for doing so. I guess in this one thing, Bush has fulfilled his promise to be a uniter and not a divider. Both Red states and Blue states are up in arms over the No Child Left Behind Act.

Education ought to be governed locally and funded nationally. Communities themselves need to decide what to teach and how to measure success. Because frankly, success is measured differently for kids in the Bronx than it is at an elite prep school or a school for those with learning disabilities. At the same time, those schools who can least afford to pay for the basics are the same schools who need the most money to go towards after-school programs and tutors and mentoring. The problem with the No Child Left Behind Act is that it does the exact wrong thing. It requires schools to meet national or state-wide standards for success, but maintains the system of local funding.

But, this is what you expect when you elect a guy who insists on doing something about education on the national level but refuses to spend a dime on any fiscal policy that doesn’t “give money back to investors”.
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Internationally, Syria today withdrew from Lebanon. Thankfully. Recent history says that most of Lebanon’s problems tend to originate from their neighbors, and for the first time since 1970 neither the PLO nor Israel nor Syria holds a military presence in that country. Still, this is a time for cautious optimism. Lebanon is a country scared to death to hold a national census, which should immediately tell you how unstable it is. Moving past a civil war is like dismantling a bomb, and any wrong move could still blow the place apart.

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