“Barking Up The Wrong Tree”: Ted Cruz Keeps Talking About ‘Wages’ — But He Won’t Support Raising Them
“Washington” is keeping wages down and impoverishing the American middle class, at least according to Ted Cruz, who has adopted economic populism as a line of attack against the political establishment as a routine part of his stump speech in recent months.
The Texas senator has tried to link rival Donald Trump to Democratic frontrunner and perennial enemy of the American right, Hillary Clinton. But the argument that the federal government, and by extension the Obama administration, was responsible for the decline in wages of American workers, was yet another baseless charged levied against a rhetorically-convenient “Washington establishment.”
Where to start. It’s unclear whether or not Cruz believes in a minimum wage. He has argued against a minimum wage, saying it leads to job losses among American minority groups. “Every time we raise the minimum wage, predictably what happens is a significant number of people lose their jobs, and they’re almost always low-income, they’re often teenagers, African Americans and Hispanics,” he said, voicing concern for demographic groups that are unlikely to vote for him anyhow, and for whom his policies don’t reflect the concern of his talking points.
In Cruz’s mind, the minimum wage is best left to the states. While he assails the loss of American jobs, sounding much like a vague, rehearsed mashup of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in their criticism of outsourcing, his policies have a different end in mind: employment above all else.
“I think it’s bad policy,” said Cruz on CNBC, criticizing the existence of a minimum wage. “And you know, one observation I make to folks is next time you go to a fast food restaurant and you start ordering on an iPad, you’re seeing the minimum wage.”
During a Senate hearing in 2014, Cruz spoke out against President Barack Obama’s proposed federal wage increase to $10.10. He said:
The undeniable reality, the undeniable truth, is if the President succeeded in raising the minimum wage it would cost jobs for the most vulnerable. The people who have been hurt by this Obama economy would be hurt worse with the minimum wage proposal before this body. In 2013 the President in his State of the Union address proposed raising the minimum wage to $9.00. Now a year later the request has magically changed to $10.10. The only reason (there’s no economic justification) the only reason is politics. And I suppose if the approval ratings of democratic members of this body continue to fall in another month we’ll see a proposal for $15.00 an hour and then maybe $20.00 or $25.00 an hour. But I think the American people are tired of empty political show votes. The nonpartisan congressional budget office says that raising the minimum wage could cost a loss of 500,000 to 1 million jobs.
Cruz is barking up the wrong tree. It is not the $7.25 an hour minimum wage that made companies like Carrier, whose managers were infamously recorded laying off 1,400 at its Indianapolis plant earlier this year, outsource those jobs to Mexico. As the Economic Policy Institute pointed out in a 2003 report, NAFTA resulted in a period of job growth in the U.S. between 1994 and 2000. But starting in 2001, jobs started disappearing. “Job losses have been primarily concentrated in the manufacturing sector, which has experienced a total decline of 2.4 million jobs since March 2001,” read the institute’s report. “As job growth has dried up in the economy, the underlying problems caused by U.S. trade deficits have become much more apparent, especially in manufacturing.” It pointed to systemic turmoil in internationalized labor markets, the result of free trade agreements, which allow companies to move to where living costs (and thus labor) are cheapest.
But for Cruz, the problem has always been the minimum wage, despite evidence to the contrary: Another EPI report released in 2013 outlining the benefits of increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 concluded, “Raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 by 2016 would lift incomes for millions of American workers and provide a modest boost to U.S. GDP.”
Despite the doomsday predictions from Cruz and the rest of the 2016 Republican field, the report also predicted large increases in employment. By increasing the federal minimum wage to at least $10.10, low wage earners would experience a recovery of real income the likes of which we haven’t seen in decades.
However, the federal minimum wage has not budged by even a penny, leaving wage increases largely to states or large American cities, exactly the sort of decentralized political process Cruz would be expected to support: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle have all instituted $15 per hour minimum wages following concerted efforts by local organizations that stemmed partly from frustration over partisan gridlock in Washington. Both California and New York’s governors signed bills this year approving wage increases to the $15 an hour benchmark over a period of time. A total of 29 states, and Washington, D.C., have instituted their own minimum wages exceeding the federal minimum wage, as a result of slow progress on the federal level.
Since the minimum was last raised to $7.25 in 2009, it has lost 8.1 percent of its purchasing power as a result of inflation, according to Pew Research. The OECD has described the American minimum wage as an outlier amongst wealthy, industrialized nations — it should really be around $12, if we were to use GDP per capita as a guide. American workers are in desperate need of a minimum wage increase, not just poorly paid employment.
By: Saif Alnuweiri, The National Memo, April 29, 2016
“The Same Wrongheaded Justifications”: Republicans Introduce A Bill To Monitor Refugees Who Settle In New York
Last week, Republican New York state senator Terrence Murphy introduced a bill that would make it legal to register and monitor refugees entering the state. The move was opposed by refugee advocacy groups, who called the proposed legislation “heinous” and said that it only stigmatized refugees further.
The bill, S6253-2015, has been a long time in the making and is cosponsored by a variety of Republican and independent senators. In a post on the New York Senate’s website last December, Murphy wrote, “The provisions of the bill allow New York to create its own mechanism to properly vet and monitor individuals seeking asylum within the state’s borders while continuing necessary humanitarian efforts.” His bill was a criticism of the federal government’s current screening process, which was characterized as having insufficient screening measures, despite the Obama administration’s step-by-step breakdown of how Syrian refugees are granted asylum in the U.S.
Murphy’s bill calls for the homeland security and emergency agencies to make plans with refugee agencies to monitor refugees for either a year or until they are given permanent residency by American immigration authorities. The bill proposed “requiring refugee resettlement agencies to submit quarterly reports to the bureau of refugee and immigrant assistance and requiring such agencies to monitor refugees for a certain period of time.” This is in addition to the two years of background checks performed by the federal government before refugees can even set foot in the country.
But exploring the bill reveals the same wrongheaded justifications used by other Republican governors and politicians who have vowed to keep Syrian refugees out of the country since the Paris attacks in November. The attackers were almost entirely European citizens who slipped back into Europe undetected. Of those who made it into the country posing as refugees, they took advantage of the European Union’s mismanaged handling of the refugee crisis. That in itself is a huge difference between the attacks in Paris and the likelihood of a Paris-style attack in the U.S.: it’s simply not as geographically close to hotbeds of extremism.
Furthermore, if terrorists were dressing up as refugees and entering the U.S. to commit attacks, it would’ve happened already. This country has accepted 2 million refugees since 1990 and yet not a single terrorist attack has been attributed to any of them. Anti-immigrant groups, on the other hand, have carried out numerous terrorist attacks over the same period. The same applies in Europe, which took in over a million refugees last year and has suffered a single attack which involved refugees, though the vast majority of conspirators in Paris were European.
The New York Immigration Coalition responded critically to the proposed legislation. “In places like Rochester and Buffalo where larger refugee populations have been settled, we have seen these communities help grow the economies of these localities,” read the group’s statement. “The ‘special registration’ called upon by this bill does not “protect” anyone, but puts up more red tape and ostracizes refugees.”
The New York bill is not the only one under consideration by state legislatures. In South Carolina, a similar bill is being proposed, along with civil liabilities for sponsors of refugees from Syria, Sudan and Iran who end up committing a terrorist act. “If it is not illegal, it is at least un-American,” said Ibrahim Hooper, communications director at Council on American-Islamic Relations, to the AP. That law may face a legal challenge, though, because it discriminates against people of a specific national origin.
Meanwhile, New York’s own refugee registration law is being reviewed by the Senate Finance Committee, where if approved, it will go to the state legislature for a vote. State Democrats, whose leaders have already pledged support for Syrian refugees entering the state, are most likely to oppose it.
By: Saif Alnuweiri, The National Memo, March 21, 2016
“Terrorism By Any Other Name”:The Armed Domestic Terrorists In Oregon Should Be Treated Just As ISIS Terrorists Would Be
The big story of the day is the armed seizure of an empty federal building in rural Oregon by a group of domestic terrorists, some of whom are the sons of federal tax cheat and freeloader Cliven Bundy.
They’re apparently upset at the conviction and upcoming jail sentences of a couple of fellow domestic terrorists for arson. They believe that the federal government has no constitutional authority to own land, that national parks are essentially illegal, and that men like them have a God-given right to mine, log and otherwise destroy whatever forest land they want. (It remains unclear whether they would condone Native Americans for “standing their ground” and responding with force to their trespass on the same lands that God clearly gave to them first.)
I don’t want to dwell too much on the rationales and motivations for these domestic terrorists any more than I would for the people who fight for ISIS or Al Qaeda. It’s always the same thing: a group of armed, angry men believe that the Big Bad Western Government is infringing on their right to do whatever it is they very well please–whether it’s to the environment, or to minorities, women, people of different religious groups, etc. Undereducated, armed angry men are often upset at Western governments for upsetting their private power apple carts because in their small, solipsistic worlds they’re very used to being lords of their manors and local enforcers of bigoted frontier justice. That’s as true of Afghan militants in the Taliban as it is of rural Montana militiamen. The only difference is in the trappings, the external presence of the rule of law and the degree of violence involved.
What’s more interesting to focus on is the response to the incident so far. As with ISIS, the Bundy clowns are actively seeking a confrontation with the big bad wolf of Big Western Government. They believe that an active confrontation will spark a movement that will lead to the overthrow of Big Brother. So far, especially after the incidents at Ruby Ridge and Waco, American leaders have been disinclined to give those opportunities to the domestic militiaman terrorists. Cliven Bundy and his miscreants got away with a wide range of crimes due to the forbearance of federal officials.
But the problem with taking that hands-off approach is that the treatment of left-leaning protesters is far different. Occupiers and Black Lives Matter protesters aren’t met with hand wringing and gentle admonishments. They’re met with batons and tear gas. If Black Lives Matter or Occupy protesters started arming themselves and taking over federal buildings, you can guarantee that police would start using live ammunition and people would die.
So on the one hand it’s understandable that federal officials would not want to make martyrs of the right-wing domestic terrorists who are actively seeking to engage in a confrontation and make themselves appear to be downtrodden victims of the federal beast. But on the other hand, it’s infuriating that they receive special kid glove treatment that would not be afforded to minority and liberal activists.
Personally, I feel that if ISIS fighters want a grand confrontation with the West on an open battlefield, it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to give them one. The outcome of that battle would not be in doubt. Similarly, I feel that if Bundy’s little crew wants to occupy a federal building and assert that they’ll use deadly violence against any police who try to extract them, then they should get what they’re asking for just as surely Islamist terrorists would if they did likewise.
As much as restraint is the better part of valor when dealing with entitled conservative crazies, principles of basic justice and fair play also need to apply. What’s good for one type of terrorist must also be good for another.
By: David Atkins, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthy, January 3, 2016
“Don’t Know Much About History”: Ben Carson’s Woefully False Claim About The Founding Fathers’ Elected Office Experience
Ben Carson is blundering through American history again.
I’ve written before about how Carson’s belief that the Founding Fathers were “citizens statesmen,” one of his favorite defenses of his own neophyte venture in politics, is woefully incorrect. Now the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page has taken up the standard against Carson’s misreading of history.
Per the Journal (h/t Talking Points Memo’s Katherine Krueger), Carson posted on Facebook Wednesday night, “Every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no elected office experience.” The Journal goes on to quote two American historians to say that this is nonsense – “That’s just patently false,” Benjamin Carp, an associate professor of history at Brooklyn College who has written several books on the American Revolution, told the Journal. Carp estimates that most of the signers had held elective office.
Chastened, Carson went back and edited his original Facebook post, changing his assertion to read, “Every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no federal elected office experience.” (Emphasis mine.)
That’s too cute by half and, perhaps not surprisingly, still wrong.
Second point first. Here’s “American Eras” via Encyclopedia.com regarding the first Continental Congress:
Choosing Delegates. Each colony had chosen its delegates to Congress in different ways. In four colonies, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, the assembly chose its delegates to Congress. The Massachusetts assembly made its choices behind locked doors; outside, Governor Gage’s secretary was proclaiming the legislature suspended. In Virginia, when the governor, Lord Dunmore, dissolved the assembly, it had reconvened in a nearby tavern to choose delegates; New York held a general election for delegates; and an open meeting in Charleston, South Carolina, chose that colony’s delegation. In other colonies delegates were selected at provincial conventions that had not been called by the established authorities.
Emphasis is again mine. Of course the Declaration of Independence was proffered by the second Continental Congress, but that session was largely a reconvening of the first after the British Parliament refused to remove the laws about which the first congress had complained.
And Carson is being too cute by half here because while the Continental Congress took on the powers of a federal government over time, it was not technically such when the Declaration of Independence was signed. So in that sense there were no federal elected offices from which the delegates could have gotten experience. But to argue that this validates Carson’s point would be like saying that Yuri Gagarin was an amateur because he had no previous experience in space; or like saying that Neil Armstrong was an amateur because he had never walked on the moon before. Of course the first delegates to the first national legislative assembly had no prior experience getting elected to a federal legislative body (though several had served as delegates to prior, lesser gathering like the Stamp Act Congress of 1765).
But as the Journal observed, they had plenty of elective experience of the variety available to them. So for example, a quick reading of some of the delegates to the Continental Congress shows that Delaware delegate Caesar Rodney continuously held some sort of legislative office from 1758, when he was 30, until his death in 1784; Thomas McKean, also from Delaware, “might just represent an ideal study of how far political engagement can be carried by one man. One can scarcely believe the number of concurrent offices and duties this man performed during the course of his long career,” according to ushistory.org; and Samuel Huntington of Connecticut devoted “nearly all of his life to public office” according to the same source. And so on.
Which only raises this point: If Carson wishes to compare himself in terms of political experience to the delegates of the first Continental Congress, shouldn’t he seek some sort of state legislative office before attempting the presidency?
Perhaps Carson should start playing “Wonderful World” at his rallies; that’s the classic Sam Cooke song which begins, “Don’t know much about history…”
I’ll give Carson one thing: Claiming precedent for one’s own beliefs or actions in those of the Founding Fathers is a classic political move; that Ben Carson is so bad at it just underscores that he is an amateur politician.
By: Robert Schlesinger, Managing Editor for Opinion, U.S. News & World Report, November 6, 2015
“Social Safety Net In Hands Of The States?”: The GOP’s State Budget Disaster Is The Best Case For Big Government
The Republican Party is cutting a swath of destruction through state budgets.
In Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback’s experiment in income and business tax cuts has blown a $344 million hole in the budget for this fiscal year, and a projected $600 million hole for the next fiscal year. Part of his plan to close it is to cut $44.5 million from public schools and universities.
Illinois needs to cut over $6 billion to balance its books. So Gov. Bruce Rauner is calling for a $1.5 billion cut to the state’s Medicaid program, plus $600 million in cuts to local government finances and $387 million in cuts to higher education (though he may have trouble getting those ideas past the Democrats in the Illinois legislature).
Wisconsin’s state budget, meanwhile, faces a $238 million deficit, thanks in small part to tax cuts Gov. Scott Walker pushed through after taking office in 2011. That wiped out a $759 million budget surplus in 2013. Now Walker is looking to cut $300 million from higher education over the next two years, along with cuts to the state park system and its recycling programs, among other things, and to restructure about $100 million in debt payments the state already owes.
These three examples show the GOP’s “tax cuts now, tax cuts forever” ideology remains utterly unconcerned with economic reality. But more deeply, they’re a lesson in some bad choices America made in how to design its national social safety net, which set the stage for the current crises.
In not one of these three cases do the projected budget gaps rise above 1 percent of the income generated annually by the state’s economy. The idea that taxes couldn’t be raised, starting on high earners, to close these holes is risible.
On top of that, these tax cuts are often pitched as growth enhancers for state economies. That was the explicit case Brownback made for his tax cut package. But for such a policy gambit to have even a chance of working, spending must be held constant. If you start cutting spending on things like health care or education or transit or whatnot, you’re just pulling more dollars out of the state economy with one hand even as you leave more dollars in with the other.
In other words, you have to be able to deficit spend. But that can be hard for states. First off, most of them have balanced budget amendments in their constitutions, which means deficit spending is just a no-go. These restrictions generally don’t cover individual infrastructure projects and the like, which states can choose to borrow a set amount for from the bond markets. But covering shortfalls between general annual spending and revenue is much more difficult legislatively.
The other problem is that the bond markets might just not give you the money. Investors may consider a state a bad bet, which would drive its borrowing and interest payments up. That hasn’t been much of a problem in the aftermath of the recession, as investors have been desperate for safe places to park their money — which makes the refusal of state governments to borrow to cover their regular expenditures all the more absurd.
But the low rates won’t last forever, and the willingness of investors to take a bet on a state puts limits on state government borrowing.
What this all means is that state government spending is pretty pro-cyclical — i.e. it rises and falls with the economy. If the economy is doing well, state tax revenues go up. If the economy goes into recession, state tax revenues go down, forcing budget cuts in health, education, and elsewhere. And that’s before you factor in Republican governors and state legislators who are out to cut taxes willy-nilly.
But for spending on things like health care and education — two of the biggest drivers of any state’s budget — being pro-cyclical makes no sense. It’s not as if people just stop getting sick during recessions, or that children simply stop needing an education. These are public investments in the health and well-being of the American people themselves, and the need for them remains constant throughout all the ups and downs in the economy.
The only entity that can spend with impunity regardless of the state of the economy is the federal government. That’s because it can print money, which means it can always pay lenders back in a pinch. This does mean the federal government faces a different sort of threat — instead of being abandoned by investors, it could print so much money it drives up inflation. But that’s just really hard to do, historically speaking.
In short, these are programs that should be run through the federal government. But Medicaid is a joint state-and-federal program, meaning both the federal government and state government supply some of the money from their respective budgets. Meanwhile, education is funded by streams from the federal, state, and local levels at the same time.
That structure leaves these programs critically vulnerable to the whims of the economy — not to mention the whims of Walker, Brownback, Rauner, and their friends in the Republican Party.
By: Jeff Spross, The Week, February 24, 2015
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