Changing Demographics: The GOP’s Census Problem
When the Census released its reapportionment totals in December, much of the focus was on the new seats in red states, and how it was a good thing for Republicans.
The data released by Census on Thursday, though, shows how those same population shifts are creating new challenges for the GOP.
While much of the shifting population is moving to red states, there is increasing evidence that it’s making those red states bluer, and most of the demographic trends are heading in Democrats’ direction.
Census Bureau director Robert Groves summed it up best Thursday: “We are increasingly metropolitan today, our country is becoming racially and ethnically more diverse over time … and geographically, there are a lot of areas of the country growing in number that have large minority populations.”
All three of those things suggest growing Demcoratic constituencies. Let’s look at each individually:
* The country is getting less rural: While 82.8 percent of the population in 2000 lived in metropolitan areas, that number is now 83.7 percent. A look at population changes county-by-county shows that many rural counties, especially in the solidly Republican middle of the country, actually experienced population loss over the last decade, while most of the big population growth was near big cities, where Democrats dominate.
* The country is getting more diverse: The minority population has increased dramatically to 36.3 percent and will only keep going down that path, as only a slight majority of U.S. children are white. And Republicans have major problems with minority populations. The black vote generally goes almost completely for Democrats, and even in the GOP wave in 2010, six in 10 Hispanics voted Democratic.
* The areas that are getting bigger are Democratic: A look at the states with the biggest growth over the past decade shows many of them have moved toward Democrats, including Nevada, North Carolina and Virginia (Obama was a surprise winner in all three, which had gone for President Bush in 2004). A look at the county-by-county growth in these states shows that the growth is focused in urban and Democratic areas — Las Vegas-based Clark County, Charlotte-based Mecklenburg County and the Research Triangle in North Carolina, and Northern Virginia all grew the fastest. That suggests that the growth is occuring in Democratic areas.
Now, just because Democratic-leaning demographics grow doesn’t necessarily mean Democratic voters will be created. For all we know, rural Republicans are moving into the city and making them redder.
But if Republicans want to compete in the decades to come, they need to be able to compete in metropolitan areas — likely by reasserting their dominance in the suburbs — and also be able to woo Hispanics, who now account for one in six people in the United States.
If they can’t, the demographics are just going to make it harder and harder.
By: Aaron Blake and Chris Cillizza, The Washington Post, March 25, 2011
Spending Cuts, Jobs, Growth: The GOP Austerity Delusion
Portugal’s government has just fallen in a dispute over austerity proposals. Irish bond yields have topped 10 percent for the first time. And the British government has just marked its economic forecast down and its deficit forecast up.
What do these events have in common? They’re all evidence that slashing spending in the face of high unemployment is a mistake. Austerity advocates predicted that spending cuts would bring quick dividends in the form of rising confidence, and that there would be few, if any, adverse effects on growth and jobs; but they were wrong.
It’s too bad, then, that these days you’re not considered serious in Washington unless you profess allegiance to the same doctrine that’s failing so dismally in Europe.
It was not always thus. Two years ago, faced with soaring unemployment and large budget deficits — both the consequences of a severe financial crisis — most advanced-country leaders seemingly understood that the problems had to be tackled in sequence, with an immediate focus on creating jobs combined with a long-run strategy of deficit reduction.
Why not slash deficits immediately? Because tax increases and cuts in government spending would depress economies further, worsening unemployment. And cutting spending in a deeply depressed economy is largely self-defeating even in purely fiscal terms: any savings achieved at the front end are partly offset by lower revenue, as the economy shrinks.
So jobs now, deficits later was and is the right strategy. Unfortunately, it’s a strategy that has been abandoned in the face of phantom risks and delusional hopes. On one side, we’re constantly told that if we don’t slash spending immediately we’ll end up just like Greece, unable to borrow except at exorbitant interest rates. On the other, we’re told not to worry about the impact of spending cuts on jobs because fiscal austerity will actually create jobs by raising confidence.
How’s that story working out so far?
Self-styled deficit hawks have been crying wolf over U.S. interest rates more or less continuously since the financial crisis began to ease, taking every uptick in rates as a sign that markets were turning on America. But the truth is that rates have fluctuated, not with debt fears, but with rising and falling hope for economic recovery. And with full recovery still seeming very distant, rates are lower now than they were two years ago.
But couldn’t America still end up like Greece? Yes, of course. If investors decide that we’re a banana republic whose politicians can’t or won’t come to grips with long-term problems, they will indeed stop buying our debt. But that’s not a prospect that hinges, one way or another, on whether we punish ourselves with short-run spending cuts.
Just ask the Irish, whose government — having taken on an unsustainable debt burden by trying to bail out runaway banks — tried to reassure markets by imposing savage austerity measures on ordinary citizens. The same people urging spending cuts on America cheered. “Ireland offers an admirable lesson in fiscal responsibility,” declared Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute, who said that the spending cuts had removed fears over Irish solvency and predicted rapid economic recovery.
That was in June 2009. Since then, the interest rate on Irish debt has doubled; Ireland’s unemployment rate now stands at 13.5 percent.
And then there’s the British experience. Like America, Britain is still perceived as solvent by financial markets, giving it room to pursue a strategy of jobs first, deficits later. But the government of Prime Minister David Cameron chose instead to move to immediate, unforced austerity, in the belief that private spending would more than make up for the government’s pullback. As I like to put it, the Cameron plan was based on belief that the confidence fairy would make everything all right.
But she hasn’t: British growth has stalled, and the government has marked up its deficit projections as a result.
Which brings me back to what passes for budget debate in Washington these days.
A serious fiscal plan for America would address the long-run drivers of spending, above all health care costs, and it would almost certainly include some kind of tax increase. But we’re not serious: any talk of using Medicare funds effectively is met with shrieks of “death panels,” and the official G.O.P. position — barely challenged by Democrats — appears to be that nobody should ever pay higher taxes. Instead, all the talk is about short-run spending cuts.
In short, we have a political climate in which self-styled deficit hawks want to punish the unemployed even as they oppose any action that would address our long-run budget problems. And here’s what we know from experience abroad: The confidence fairy won’t save us from the consequences of our folly.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, March 24, 2011
Gingrich’s Next Two Weeks Of Policy Statements Revealed
Two weeks ago, Newt Gingrich said this is what he would do about Libya, if he were president: “Exercise a no-fly zone this evening”.
Yesterday, here’s what Newt said about Libya, where the United States is exercising a no-fly zone: “I would not have intervened”.
After a full day of people making fun of him, the former House speaker — who masquerades as an intellectual policy wonk but who is actually just a master self-promoter — explained himself in a lengthy Facebook post, Sarah Palin-style, that generally made no sense, Sarah Palin-style.
His position seems to be that he would not have intervened, but once the president said, “Gadhafi must go,” the United States had to intervene, to save face, and that’s when Newt would’ve exercised the no-fly zone, if he were president and had made that statement, which he wouldn’t have done.
Also, Gingrich says, now that we’ve done this we should also do it in the Sudan, Syria, Zimbabwe, Yemen and elsewhere, except we shouldn’t do it at all, anywhere.
We here at the War Room have just received, from the future, the next two weeks of Newt Gingrich’s public statements on Libya, and other assorted matters of national import.
“Meet the Press,” March 27
“What the president needs to do is have Congress vote on the use of ground troops in Libya, immediately.”
Neil Cavuto, March 29
“If I were president I’d unilaterally strike Iran right now instead of wasting our time and resources in Libya.”
Facebook, March 29
“My position on Libya has not changed: What the United States should’ve done is invade with a ground force, after receiving congressional authorization, but only if he hadn’t sought United Nations approval, which would’ve changed everything. Under the current circumstances, with the president already having totally blown it, our best option is a surprise airstrike on Iran.”
Human Events.com, March 31
“This is the single biggest foreign policy disaster I’ve seen since, literally, the Battle of Blandensburg, which I am writing a book about. We should pull out now and refocus on jobs, here at home.”
“Good Morning America,” April 1
“Look, if I was the commander in chief, I wouldn’t rest until we had Gadhafi’s head on a pike outside one of his gaudy palaces.”
Facebook, April 2
“Again, I’m distraught to see America so poorly led during this time of great international turmoil. My position is clear: The United States has a jobs crisis exacerbated by the failed policies of our current president, but after we committed ourselves to removing Gadhafi, we forced ourselves to take literally any action at our disposal to make that a reality, as long as we did it right, because if we aren’t doing it right, which we aren’t, but which I would, we should not do it.
“I also apologize to the hardworking staff at ‘Good Morning America’ for the incident with the chair, but I am growing tired of constantly answering such transparently biased questions about my very simple position on the conflict in Libya.”
“Face the Nation,” April 3
“I support gay marriage.”
“Fox and Friends,” April 6
“Gay people should be thrown in jail, forever, if they try to marry each other.”
Twitter, April 6
“deep respect 4 homosexual americans-vow to serve ALL americans if prez-inmate marriage will strengthen national respect 4 traditional family.”
By: Alex Pareene, Salon War Room, March 24, 2011
The Affordable Care Act, One Year Later
A year ago this week, Capitol Hill was full of noise as the House of Representatives debated, and then voted, on the Affordable Care Act. But one of the most vivid memories of that experience for me was an extended moment of silence.
It came very late on Sunday evening–after the floor speeches, the votes, and the press conferences had ended. The galleries had long since emptied and the Capitol building itself was virtually unoccupied, so that it was possible to walk the entire length of the building, on the ground floor hallway that stretches from the House all the way to the Senate, without hearing so much as a single conversation.
It felt more than silent. It felt peaceful and, yes, satisfying. A prolonged, difficult debate had finally ended. It was time to move on.
Except that we haven’t moved on. We are still having arguments about health care reform. In fact, we are still having the same arguments about health care reform. The Affordable Care Act is law of the land now, yes, but its critics are determined to change that. And while the prospects of repealing it legislatively remain relatively slim, the prospects of repealing at least part of it judicially seem far more realistic than they did in the spring of 2010.
So perhaps it is worth taking a step back, just for a moment, and remembering how we got to this point–why this debate started in the first place and why it led to the enactment of this law.
It’s really not that complicated. Around one-fifth of the non-elderly population, or somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 million people, have no health insurance. Many millions more have insurance with major gaps or limitations, leaving them at risk of financial or medical catastrophe. Notwithstanding legitimate debates over exactly how many people go bankrupt or suffer physical hardship because they can’t pay their medical bills, virtually nobody denies that the human toll is real and significant.
These problems are the product, in part, a dysfunctional health insurance system that evolved haphazardly during the 20th Century. They also the product of a medical system as inefficient as it is costly. The United States pays more–far, far more–for health care than any other developed nation. But the care does not seem to be better overall, to say nothing of the fact that it is patently less available.
The goal of reform was really two-fold: In the short term, to make sure everybody can afford to pay for medical bills without financial distress; it the long term, to make the health care system as a whole more efficient, so that it no longer applied such a crushing financial burden on society. A single-payer system, like the ones in France or Taiwan, would have accomplished this. So would a scheme that turned health insurance into a regulated utility, as the Dutch and Swiss governments have done.
Political compromises, dating back to the earliest days of the 2008 presidential campaign, left the U.S. with a second-best–or, more accurately, a third- or fourth-best solution. It bolsters two existing insurance arrangements: Employer-sponsored coverage for workers in most companies, Medicaid for the very poor. It creates a new, regulated marketplace–insurance “exchanges”–for everybody else. Then, through a combination of tax changes and alterations to Medicare, it tries to reengineer medical care itself, wringing out administrative waste and focusing resources on the treatments, and care styles, that provide the most bang for the buck.
It’s easy to find the flaws–and to figure out who’s responsible for them. Doctors, hospitals, drug manufacturers, and device makers fought changes in the delivery of medical care that might affect their incomes; unions lobbied against tax reforms designed to discourage overly generous insurance; everyday Americans resisted changes to plans they already had. All of this blunted the Affordable Care Act’s efforts at cost control, which explains why, ten years from now, the best projections suggest we’ll have spent roughly as much on health care–as a government and as a country–as we would have if the law never passed.
At the same time, political conservatives fought to limit the bill’s expanse, demanding that the new outlays not exceed a $1 trillion, give or take. They had extra power, thanks to the filibuster, and were able to make the demand stick. As a result, the expansion of insurance coverage–via Medicaid and subsidies for private insurance–will not begin until 2014. Even then, somewhere around 20 million people, or 8 percent of the total population, will remain uninsured. And for some of the insured, the coverage will remain meager.
But the law’s shortcomings should not tarnish its many virtues. Eight percent uninsured means 92 percent insured, or around 95 of residents here legally. Or, to put it another way, more than 30 million additional people will have health insurance because of this law. The coverage, if not always as generous as it should be, will be enough to keep many if not most of the newly insured out of bankruptcy–and it will be available to almost everybody, regardless of pre-existing condition or insurance status.
The cost picture is also encouraging. The official projections suggest that, as of 2021, government spending (and, apparently, the country’s total spending) on health care will not be rising as fast as it is now. This is the critical distinction, because it’s the long-term burden of health care that threatens to bankrupt us. Critics doubt that officials will enforce planned changes to health care financing, but today’s lawmakers have no way to force action by their counterparts in the future. All they can do is put laws on the books–and that’s what they have done.
Are there better alternatives? Of course. But the loudest critics of the law, from the right, don’t have them. For all of their screaming, they have yet to put forward a credible plan that can do as much, let alone more, for less money. Their plans, stripped of misleading rhetoric, generally involve covering far fewer people, dramatically reducing the coverage that people have, or some combination of the two. Their dispute is not with the means Democrats have used to make health care affordable to all. It’s with the goal itself.
No, the way to improve the law is to build upon it–to bolster the insurance coverage, reach those Americans the law as written will not reach, and to strengthen the experiments in cost control that work. The best analysis of the law remains the one Senator Tom Harkin gave: The Affordable Care Act is not a mansion. It’s a starter home. But it’s got a solid foundation, a sturdy roof, and room for expansion.
A year from now, the presidential campaign will be well underway and the debate about the Affordable Care Act will likely be, if anything, more acrimonious than it is now. But perhaps after the election and, hopefully, after 2014, the country really will move on.
By: Jonathan Cohn, The New Republic, March 23, 2022
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