“When The Dog Catches The Car”: Why Taking Over The Senate May Not Do Republicans Much Good
There’s an old story about a freshman member of the House who is getting shown around by a senior member on his first day, and the freshman asks about the other party. “I want to meet the enemy,” he says. “No, son,” says the old bull, “they’re the opposition. The Senate is the enemy.” I thought about that today as the prospect of a Republican takeover of the Senate becomes more of a possibility. If the GOP controlled both houses, would Republicans be able to present a united front against President Obama, one that might actually accomplish any practical goals? There are some clues in the maneuvering that’s going on right now over health care as Republicans look forward to this fall’s elections.
To begin with, we should acknowledge that a Republican takeover of the upper house is anything but a sure thing. The midterms are still seven and a half months away, and a lot could happen between now and then. There could be an economic crisis, or months of solid job growth, or an alien invasion, or who knows what. But barring anything dramatic, we know it is going to be very, very close. The map is just horrible for Democrats — not only are they defending 21 seats while Republicans are defending only 15, many of those Democratic seats are in conservative states such as Alaska, Arkansas and South Dakota, where any Democrat is going to be at a disadvantage. Combine that with the fact that the president’s party almost always loses seats in the sixth year of his presidency and with Obama’s relatively low approval ratings (43.3 percent in the latest Huffington Post/Pollster average), and it’s going to be a nail-biter. Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball predicts the Senate on Election Day as 48 Democrats, 49 Republicans and three toss-ups.
If the Republicans do take the Senate, they won’t have a lot of time to savor the victory, because two years later they’re going to be the ones defending more seats (see Sean Trende’s analysis for more details). That makes it entirely possible, maybe even likely, that Republicans will have control of both houses for only two years, and after 2016 we’ll go back to the way things are now. So can they legislate during that time?
To a certain degree, the question is moot as long as Obama is president. Anything big and consequential on the Republican agenda would get vetoed. But you can accomplish a lot by thinking relatively small. The question is whether Republicans — or to be more specific, House Republicans — are capable of doing that.
I’ll point you to two articles written in the last couple of days. The first, by Dylan Scott in Talking Points Memo, discusses some of the ways Senate Republicans and the insurance industry are thinking about the possibility of a GOP Senate takeover. There’s a lot of discussion about some of the features of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that might be trimmed back. Could you cut or eliminate a tax on insurance policies? What about restoring cuts to Medicare Advantage? Might you introduce a lower-level “copper” plan to be sold on the exchanges, which would be less comprehensive than the gold, silver and bronze plans?
Now let’s turn to the House. Last night, The Post’s Robert Costa reported that House Republican leaders are coalescing around an alternative to the ACA that would do some of the things Republicans have been advocating for years: repeal the ACA, institute medical malpractice reform, let people buy insurance across state lines and a few other things.
See the difference? The senators accept that the ACA is law and are thinking about how they’d like to change it. The House members are coming up with another way to make a futile, symbolic shaking of their fists in the general direction of the White House. And this may offer a clue to how legislating would proceed in a Republican Congress. The House, still dominated by extremely conservative Republicans for whom any hint of compromise is considered the highest treason, could continue to pass one doomed bill after another, while the Senate tries to write bills that have at least some chance of ever becoming law.
And that would be just fine with Barack Obama. If he’s faced with both houses controlled by the opposition, there’s nothing he’d rather see than them fighting with each other and passing only unrealistic bills that he can veto without worrying about any backlash from the public.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect; Published at The Plum Line, The Washington Post, March 17, 2014
“Inequality Perpetuates Inequality”: Conservatives Defend Inequality Out Of Self-Interest, Nothing More
Conservatives have justified inequality for decades, arguing that it is an inevitable byproduct of capitalism and broadly beneficial. This intellectual edifice has begun to collapse.
Supply-side economics rest on the assumption that the wealthy drive economic growth, and that by reducing taxes on them, we can unleash latent economic potential. In fact, however, investment is driven by demand, not supply (a point acknowledged by the relatively conservative Martin Feldstein). If there are viable investments, they will be made regardless of tax rates, and if there are no investments, cutting taxes is merely pushing on a string. Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, two top economists on inequality, find no correlation between marginal tax rates and economic growth.
Recently, two IMF papers confirmed what Keynesians like Joseph Stiglitz have long argued: Inequality reduces the incomes of the middle class, and therefore demand. This stunted demand means fewer opportunities for investment, stunting growth.
Add to this growing body of research the fact that a robust defense of inequality is increasingly difficult to muster when every other OECD country has far lower levels of inequality than the United States. Greg Mankiw’s defense of the 1 percent was widely decried, because a large swath of research shows that the rise of the 1 percent did not come from natural economic forces, but rather rent-seeking.
The evidence is clear: The economic benefits of inequality have been massively oversold. Inequality is, in fact, a detriment to growth. So why has the right not conceded the argument?
The answer is class interest.
“Class interest” does not mean that the wealthy are nefarious schemers. Instead, it means there are various cognitive biases that lead them to justify and perpetuate inequality. For instance, Kris-Stella Trump conducted experiments in which participants were asked to solve anagrams in a high inequality scenario (the winner received $9 and the loser $1) and a low inequality scenario (the winner got $6 and the loser $4). When asked what a fair distribution would look like, the high inequality group preferred an inequality of $5.54 ($7.77-$2.23) while the low inequality group preferred inequality of $2.30 ($6.15-$3.85). She concludes: “Public ideas of what constitutes fair income inequality are influenced by actual inequality.” Inequality perpetuates inequality.
Paul Piff finds that the wealthy feel more entitled to their earnings and are more likely to show personality traits typically associated with narcissism. Recent research by Andrew J. Oswald and Natavudh Powdthavee finds that lottery winners in the UK are more likely to switch their political affiliation to the right, and also more likely to believe that current distributions of wealth are fair. As people get richer, they think that tax policies favoring the rich are fair — not because of the macro-economic benefits, but because of how they benefit me.
These cognitive biases, rooted in class distinctions, have deep implications. As a young economist argued in 1846, “The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships.” Benjamin I. Page, Larry M. Bartels, and Jason Seawright examined the policy preferences of the very wealthy and found that they generally fall in line with their class interests. The wealthy were far less likely than the general public to believe that “government must see that no one is without food, clothing, or shelter,” or that minimum wage must be “high enough so that no family with a full-time worker falls below official poverty line,” or that “the government in Washington ought to see to it that everyone who wants to work can find a job.”
This is not meant to demean the policy preferences of the wealthy — only to examine the motives. For too long, the wealthy have couched their economic ideas as being broadly good for the country, but in fact, de-unionization, capital market liberalization, and austerity benefit them while leaving the rest of us far worse off. It’s time that we were all honest about why we support the policies we support.
Now of course, not everyone who supports conservative economic policy is wealthy. Indeed, there is a large literature devoted to the question why the working class supports policies against their own interests. Engles calls this phenomenon “false consciousness,” writing to Franz Mehring, “the real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process.” Thomas Frank proposes that working-class conservatives are swayed by social issues. Ian Haney Lopez argues that racial animus still plays a role. Rick Perlstein notes the power of identity politics. The American ethos of upward mobility certainly plays a role; truck drivers in Tallahassee vote for tax breaks on Wall Street believing that they may someday posses enough wealth that an estate tax might affect them. John Steinbeck noted the power of aspiration, writing, “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
But when it comes to wealthy conservatives who favor economic policies that hurt many Americans: Bartels’ previous investigation of economic and political power finds, unsurprisingly, that those with a higher socioeconomic status have more influence on legislative outcomes. Martin Gilens, Dorian Warren, Jacob Hacker, Paul Pierson, and Kay Lehman Schlozman have all recorded similar findings. It seems obvious, but it is important to connect these dots: Not only do the wealthy have interests divorced from the broader interests of society, but they also have the political heft to turn those interests into policy.
It is considered rather gauche to discuss class today, and the inequality debate is therefore situated in a purely theoretical realm. Liberals are constantly confused and aggravated about why the preponderance of evidence that austerity doesn’t work (while stimulus does) and that inequality harms society is lost on a large portion of conservatives.
Well, let’s face it: Those who support austerity and inequality are not really about “trickle-down” economics or “efficiency and equity.” They are protecting the interests of the upper class.
As Jonathan Swift warned, “It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.”
By: Sean McElwee, The Week, March 18, 2014
“And You Thought Christie Was Bad”: Report, Scott Walker’s Jobs Agency Pouring Money Into Red Districts, Neglecting Others
Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has long been criticized for his state’s poor jobs numbers — but now the potential 2016 presidential candidate is under fire for the locations of the jobs that have been created.
In 2011, under Walker, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation was established as the state’s largest private-sector jobs agency. The WEDC’s purpose is to develop and facilitate economic programs that create new jobs or subsidize already existing ones. Using taxpayer money, the WEDC awards, grants, and loans money to businesses across the state.
According to a Citizen Action of Wisconsin report released in February, however, data reported by the WEDC shows “[jobs] impact concentrated in a handful of legislative districts” – specifically, districts represented by Republicans.
Furthermore, because red districts in the state are benefiting more from the WEDC than other districts are, members of the Republican Assembly who are in leadership positions benefit from a disproportionately increased number of jobs in their districts.
Using numbers reported by the WEDC, the report finds that Republican assembly districts have approximately 86 percent more jobs projected in the first quarter of the 2014 fiscal year than Democratic districts. While there are 453 jobs projected per Democratic district, an overwhelming 842 jobs are projected per Republican district.
Additionally, while over 6,000 jobs are projected to be created in just one GOP assembly district alone, 14 districts have zero jobs projected, which calls the WEDC’s methods of distributing funds and impacting job creation into question.
“There’s a real question about what’s actually being done with public money, and whether or not the resources are being distributed fairly across the state,” says Robert Kraig, the executive director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin.
WEDC spokesman Mark Maley denies the agency has committed any wrongdoing, explaining, “What we’re really focused on is economic development all over the state. We absolutely do not make any political favorites or geographical favors, when it comes to granting awards.”
WEDC’s own data, however, proves inconsistent jobs impact across districts not only represented by different parties, but also home to varying socioeconomic classes. As Citizen Action points out, there is one job impacted for every 36 residents in Wisconsin’s Waukesha County, but one job impacted for a whopping 166 residents in Milwaukee County. The difference between the two counties extends beyond partisanship: Waukesha’s average income is 73 percent higher than Milwaukee’s, and its poverty rate is 75 percent lower.
Maley denies that the impoverished county — which also happens to be Democratic — is not being helped by the WEDC. In fact, he says, a million-dollar grant has been awarded to the city of Milwaukee to renovate an automotive facility, but the grant will not show up in the report because it was not part of the WEDC data used by Citizen Action.
Governor Walker also denies that any particular districts are favored under the WEDC and blames the “completely biased and partisan” Citizen Action report for painting a different reality.
Walker adds that “…you have a significant number of business leaders more often than not [who] happen to be Republicans vs. Democrats. We measure success not by party affiliation. We measure success by whether those employers are creating jobs.”
But as Kraig counters, the conservative governor’s logic suggests that Wisconsin families should “move to Republican districts where they can live in closer proximity to the supposed ‘job creators,’” which not only is an unrealistic and unfair expectation, but the answer to an already shaky defense.
By: Elissa Gomez, The National Memo, March 17, 2014
“The Missing White Poor”: Guess Who Makes Up A Plurality Of America’s Poor?
You may have heard about how last week, Paul Ryan made some unfortunate remarks about poverty, blaming it at least partly on, well, lazy black people: “We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular,” Ryan said, “of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.” The reason many people got angry about this is that when we talk about poor white people, nobody suggests that it’s a product of a pathology that lies within those particular people. Republicans may think persistent poverty in rural areas is a regrettable thing, but they aren’t delivering lectures to those people about their “culture.” It’s kind of a generalized version of the fundamental attribution error—people like me are poor because of conditions outside themselves, while people unlike me are poor because of their inherent nature.
Ryan’s words set off a predictable round of “Is Paul Ryan racist?” contemplation (see here, for example), and in response to that we have to remind ourselves that that is always the wrong question. It’s impossible to know with certainty whether anyone is racist, because that requires looking into their heart. But much more importantly, it doesn’t matter. What matters is what people say and do, not what lurks within their souls. You can say to Paul Ryan, “Here’s what’s wrong with what you said” without shouting “You’re racist!” which not only doesn’t convince anyone of anything, it only leads everyone who doesn’t already agree with you to shut down and refuse to listen to anything else you have to say. Before we get to today’s chart about race and poverty (oh yes, I do have a chart), you should play this classic from Jay Smooth every time you’re tempted to call a politician a racist.
Now, on to our chart. Everyone knows that minority populations in America, particularly blacks and Hispanics, suffer from disproportionate levels of poverty. For the moment, we don’t have to go into why that is and what can be done about it. I just want to note something that seldom gets mentioned: the actual racial makeup of America’s poor. In fact, when I tried to find a chart laying it out to paste into this post, I couldn’t find one. So I took poverty data and population data and made one myself (this is as of 2012):
The point of this chart is that even though blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately poor, the largest group of poor people in America is … white people.
Despite that fact, when you say “the poor,” what pops into most people’s heads is an image of a black person, probably due in no small part to the fact that poverty in America is represented in the media as a largely black phenomenon (I’m not just saying that; there’s research backing that up).
I’m not saying there aren’t different kinds of poverty that might demand different solutions, given the particular economic challenges that characterize particular areas where certain people are concentrated. Though it’s worth noting that many of the states with the highest poverty rates among whites also have the highest poverty rates among blacks. These are largely in the South, where Republican economic policies of low taxes and light regulation have, weirdly enough, not resulted in economic nirvana for all. But the point is that when we talk about “the poor,” the image of a white person should be just as likely to come to your mind as the image of a black or Hispanic person. But I’ll bet it isn’t.
Finally, a programming note. All this week I’ll be guest-blogging for Greg Sargent at the Washington Post, so my posting here will be somewhat lighter. Be sure to check both places!
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Writer, The American Prospect, March 17, 2014
“Stripping Away The Rhetoric”: Rebuilding The American Dream, One Insurance Policy At A Time
The Republicans give lots of reasons for their opposition to the Affordable Care Act. Only two really matter.
One is politics. The other is money. More precisely, big-business money.
Like Social Security and Medicare, the expansion of health insurance coverage is making voters more predisposed to support the politicians that championed the law — and they’re all Democrats.
Meanwhile, the more Americans benefit from this new law, the more Republicans are being forced to modify and mellow their rejection of it.
Within a few years, it may become as politically suicidal to openly attack the Affordable Care Act as it would be to call for abolishing Medicare.
Of course, Republicans can’t say they oppose the reform law often called “Obamacare” because it boosts the Democratic Party’s prospects. So they say it violates states’ rights. They say it infringes on individual liberty. They say it hurts small businesses. They say it will cost Americans their jobs.
None of these charges is withstanding scrutiny.
The law was written with states in mind. That’s why states can build their own insurance exchanges. It doesn’t erode individual liberty. The Supreme Court said so. And while it will be some time before we know about the law’s full economic impact, the evidence so far suggests that it puts more money into the pockets of people who will spend it, according to a report by the Congressional Budget Office.
Wasn’t that the same report that said Obama’s expansion of health insurance coverage is killing jobs? Indeed, many news outlets reported exactly that. But that’s a misreading of the report.
The CBO found that some workers — mothers with small children, students, and those close to retirement — have voluntarily left the workplace, because they didn’t need a job to maintain access to quality health care anymore.
Once the Affordable Care Act began to take effect, these workers exercised their newfound economic freedom by choosing to quit. They’re now caring for their kids and grandchildren, focusing on their own education, simply opting to enjoy their golden years, or starting their own businesses.
That’s something to celebrate. The critique that the Affordable Care Act somehow reduces the incentive to work doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
The voluntary exit of more than 2 million workers from the American labor force will benefit many people. These workers are free to follow their dreams. If they are providing care, they will ease our caregiving deficit. And other Americans seeking work may finally find a job.
At the same time, money saved on health care can be spent on things that small businesses sell. Yes, I know. Republicans claim higher wages are bad for small businesses, and because small businesses are the engine of the economy, Obama’s expansion of health insurance is a job-killer. That’s just wrong.
Wages aren’t the top concern of small businesses. Taxes and poor sales are. So with more money in more pockets, sales receipts should climb.
When you strip away the rhetoric and take a good hard look at what the Affordable Care Act actually does, it sure looks like the new law raises wages and increases workers’ bargaining power.
By: Jonathan Stoehr, Managing Editor, The Washington Spectator; The National Memo, March 17, 2014
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