Standards and Consequences

In the WSJ, John Fund uses the recent Wisconsin judicial election to look at the variety of voting standards (or lack of standards) across the country. This election's fate was decided when a Republican county clerk realized that she had forgotten to add 14,000 votes from a city into her reported figures. This vote swing put the "conservative" candidate over the top. Fund reflects more broadly on the systems of voting in the US:

Our Constitution decentralizes our election procedures over 13,000 counties and towns, with each counting its votes in its own way. This basic framework is sound, but local practices are too often unsound. In 2005, a bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform, headed by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker, issued 87 recommendations on how to clean up our system. Sadly, most have been ignored or implemented only haltingly.

Fewer than half of states exchange updates on voter registration with other states, and many never sufficiently check the accuracy of registration information. Most registration lists are inadequately transparent—they aren't easily searchable and are clogged with ineligible or duplicate voters. Fewer than half the states require some form of post-election audit or manual recount.

The Carter-Baker commission noted that "the electoral system cannot inspire public confidence if no safeguards exist to deter or detect fraud or to confirm the identity of voters." Eighteen of the 21 commission members called for voters to show photo ID at the polls and for more security for absentee ballots.

Some states have since adopted photo ID laws. But too many (like Wisconsin) still do not require any ID to vote. In a time of razor-thin election margins, we can no longer afford such insecurity in our election process.

Also, though one-third of all votes in 2008 were cast before Election Day, safeguards against absentee ballot fraud are still spotty.

Fund's points also have a bearing on the fate of the Electoral College. The National Popular Vote movement attempts to sidestep the process of amending the Constitution by having various states sign onto a compact saying that they will cast their electoral votes not for the candidate who wins that state but for the candidate that wins the national popular vote. This movement could be on the verge of a significant win in California, where an alliance of Republicans and Democrats in the state legislature has formed to push through a bill that would have California join the compact.

As I've written before, this huge range of standards would make switching to a National Popular Vote system problematic. Right now, under the Electoral College, the voting irregularities of one state are somewhat confined to that state: having more rigorous, fraud-deterring standards within a state does not weaken it relative to other states for presidential elections. Moreover, what fraud does occur is often more limited in its impact.

If the Electoral College were nullified by the National Popular Vote compact going into effect (which would only happen once enough states to reach 270 electoral votes sign on), states would have an incentive to have as many votes---and as many fraudulent votes---flood the national system as possible. Rigorous standards, such as ID requirements for voting, could lower the turnout of the state and so weaken that state's influence in national elections.

Right now, the voting standards of, say, Georgia have a limited effect on Wisconsin, and Wisconsinites have limited motivation to police the standards of Georgia and other states. Under National Popular Vote, the whole calculus of standards changes considerably; then, the standards of Georgia would have a more considerable effect on the lives of Wisconsin citizens. Should National Popular Vote pass, there would very likely become a growing chorus on behalf of a single standard for voting across the county, with an increasingly centralized and invasive bureaucracy to oversee the nation's voting.

That increased centralization might not be a problem if you support the US government becoming more like a parliamentary democracy, but it is more troublesome for those who believe in the United States being a federated republic. Moreover, there is considerable reason to believe that a single federal standard for voting would be less secure than many state standards. In the past few years, it is precisely the biggest administrative bodies that have failed in their duties: megabanks, ratings agencies, federal overseers, etc.

There is of course a role for federal involvement in voting standards. The Civil Rights Act, for example, was hugely important for ensuring that the Constitutional franchise was enjoyed by the citizens of many states. But there is also a reason for wanting to limit federal power, as well.

The National Popular Vote compact has been proposed and is advancing in many state legislatures; it has already been passed in six states and Washington, DC (see its website for more details). Some state legislators may hope that the success of this measure would bring more attention to their states and so increase their own power and influence, but NPV may represent a significant step down the road of undermining the power and independence of these legislatures and their members.

Means-Testing Troubles

Yuval Levin's provocative essay on going "Beyond the Welfare State" offers the following prescription for a conservative re-thinking of entitlements:

Second, essentially all government benefits — including benefits for the elderly — should be means-tested so that those in greater need receive more help and those who are not needy do not become dependent on public support. Most retirees would still receive some public benefits (and the poorest could well get more than they do now), but the design of our welfare programs would avoid creating the misimpression that they are savings programs. People who are already retired or nearly so today should be exempted from such means-testing, as they have planned for decades around the existing system; Americans below 55 or so, however, should expect public help only if they are in need once they retire. Means-testing should, to the extent possible, be designed to avoid discouraging saving and work. And private retirement savings should be strongly encouraged and incentivized, so that people who have the means would build private nest eggs with less reliance on government.

Means-testing for entitlements for the elderly has been notion recently gaining in popularity among some sectors of the right, but I think there is reason for some skepticism about means-testing all elderly entitlements, particularly Social Security.

One of the more dangerous aspects of Great Society-style welfare was its encouragement of unsustainable and deleterious behaviors. Welfare checks provided to single mothers were no doubt motivated by a worthy spirit of compassion, but those very same checks indirectly financed the breakdown of the urban family. Rather than ending misery, they often ended up subsidizing it. Unlike private charity, government subsidies can create a sense of entitlement that may undermine the behaviors necessary to support a government capable of providing such subsidies.

As it stands now, Social Security mostly avoids that trap. Whether you manage your resources well in retirement or manage them poorly, you receive the same check. Far from encouraging bad economic behavior, Social Security tends to reward good economic behavior: if you achieve success in the workplace and improve your salary, you also reap a higher Social Security check when you retire. But even if you struggle in the workplace, you still will collect some benefit to help you in your old age. In many respects, this is exactly how government should work from a conservative perspective: it rewards industry but also provides a safety net for the less fortunate.

Means-testing could utterly vitiate that structural tendency. Instead of rewarding a person for economic success over a career, means-testing for Social Security could penalize them for this success. Levin notes some of the challenges of means-testing when he says that means-testing "should, to the extent possible, be designed to avoid discouraging saving and work." Yet I think it might be very hard to means-test Social Security so that it did not discourage saving and work.

If we means-tested Social Security based on the net-worth of a household, we would give the elderly little incentive to save. Say government offers the following choice: live close to the bone for years until you exhaust your savings and then get a Social Security benefit OR spend it extravagantly and then get that very same benefit. What choice would many people make? While elderly men and women are unlikely to start an explosion of illegitimacy (thankfully), subsidizing profligacy and discouraging prudence are rarely smart policies for a government; our current economic troubles are testament to the dangers of that course of action.

Means-testing on income could result in a significant lowering of the standard of living for the elderly. Right now, elderly Americans who have some level of health can work to supplement their Social Security income and so raise their standard of living. Means-testing could take that incentive away. The elderly could sit home and collect that government check OR they could go out and work, with the dollars earned in the workplace eating into their government checks. Many people of an advanced age would find it hard to earn enough in the market in order to make more than their government-guaranteed income, so many elderly Americans might find Social Security checks the absolute limit for their income.

I suppose some of these doubts are predicated on my suspicion that Social Security is not driving any potential entitlements crisis. Currently around 4.8% of GDP, Social Security is scheduled to peak at around 6.1% of GDP and stay around there for as far as federal actuarial accounting can see. That is a manageable number and a manageable increase. Many deficits the program may face could be eliminated by making a few relatively minor changes to the program (such as raising the cap on taxable income). Compared to something like Medicare, Social Security is very sustainable.

Granted, some of these objections could be worked around, but fiddling with Social Security is a dangerous business, and not only from a short-term electoral perspective. Compared to many government programs (including many means-tested ones), Social Security provides a social insurance safety net of equity while also encouraging individual initiative and prudence. Those advantages should not be overlooked.

(Crossposted at FrumForum)

Takers v. Makers, or Our Choices Have Consequences

Over at the WSJ, Stephen Moore laments the rise of government employment:

Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government. It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers...

Surveys of college graduates are finding that more and more of our top minds want to work for the government. Why? Because in recent years only government agencies have been hiring, and because the offer of near lifetime security is highly valued in these times of economic turbulence. When 23-year-olds aren't willing to take career risks, we have a real problem on our hands. Sadly, we could end up with a generation of Americans who want to work at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

It's worth noting that we have created an economic structure that incentivizes working at the DMV. Moore bemoans the state of 23-year-olds not wanting to take career risks, but 23-year-olds, just like corporations, have every right to make decisions that are in their own economic best interests.

Consider manufacturing: the de facto federal consensus over the past twenty years has in many ways been that manufacturing workers should accept lower wages. Indeed, much of the right's anger with manufacturing unions in Detroit and elsewhere focuses on the fact that these unions have won generous pay and benefits for their members. Our trade and regulation policies have, over the past few decades, further shrunk a manufacturing employment sector already diminishing due to gains in technology.

Or construction: this field has already taken a hit due to the collapse in the housing market. Moreover, construction jobs have also witnessed a significant wage decrease due to a flood of illegal immigration.

Or hi-tech fields: many large companies are perpetually lobbying to employ more and more foreign-born workers through mechanisms such as the H1-B visa. Or they are outsourcing programming work. Both of these mechanisms have hurt employment prospects and the wage growth for Americans in these sectors.

There are still plenty of opportunities in these sectors of the American economy, true. But while many economic sectors were hollowed out, government employment, under George W. Bush and Barack Obama, has boomed. Government jobs are harder to outsource or close down due to foreign subsidies. And with youth unemployment at exceedingly high levels, the young people of America are going to take any opportunity they can get.

I think our energies would be better spent not on attacking working for the government but on improving the economic conditions for the private sector. Destroying teachers unions will not turn around our economy and is not even a certain recipe for improving public education.

The weakening of many parts of our economy has in turn strengthened government, but a half-dead economy cannot indefinitely support a perpetually-growing government. Revising some of our public policies and making targeted investments in the future can be a way forward. Supporters of a vital free-market economy and of effective government are no doubt hoping that such a way can be found.

UPDATE: It's worth adding that government entities, particularly at the state and local level, are already feeling the pinch of economic hardship. State and local governments have cut tens of thousands of jobs over the past year or so. Meanwhile, the federal government is still hiring, but even its numbers are down and do not seem to be making up for the cuts in state and local workforces. So employment in state and local governments may be a more challenging prospect in the months to come. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the sectors of the economy to gain the most over the past year were "administration" and "health-care" (though much of the US's health sector is driven by government spending).

(Thanks to David Frum, who rightly noted that government employment in the US has become less of a growth industry.)

Attributes for 2012?

Any Republican contemplating running for president in 2012 has two formidable obstacles: November 2012 and what happens starting January 2013.

For the first obstacle: Republicans should not underestimate Barack Obama. He’s a vicious political fighter who seems to get a thrill from the campaign for power. His political team proved itself a master of media narratives in 2008, and many in the media will be willing to give Obama an assist against any Republican opponent. The president has already somewhat turned around his poll numbers from the nadir of November 2010; Republicans should keep an eye on that trend continuing. Moreover, recent polling shows him with a significant lead over a generic Republican in 2012.

Obama's approval rating may still be under 50%, but Republicans would be premature in expecting a cakewalk in 2012. One of the big lessons of 2010 is that candidate quality does matter. There were numerous statewide races in 2010 that, by many metrics, Republicans should have won---but ended up going Democratic. If a Republican candidate cannot close the deal with voters, Barack Obama could end up being reelected, even with a sub-par economy and middling approval ratings.

If a Republican does win the presidency in 2012, he or she will have a host of problems to face. A Republican president in 2013 would likely inherit the longest-running economic stagnation since the Great Depression. The administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama have witnessed a massive expansion of the federal government; if a Republican president is serious about paring this government back, a lot of work lies ahead.

In the past, I've suggested some avenues for a rethinking of Republican policies, and what follows are some thoughts (in no particular order) about qualities a Republican candidate should possess, for both a successful campaign and a successful administration.

Articulate a vision. John McCain struggled to articulate a comprehensive vision for his campaign or a McCain presidency, a weakness Obama eagerly exploited. The "vision thing" is often crucial for successful presidential campaigns. This vision may not be enough (see Goldwater, Barry), but it is important, especially if a president wishes to build a longer-reaching legacy. There's a fine line between a vision and a mere slogan, and it was not always clear on what side of the line George W. Bush's notion of "compassionate conservatism" stood. Still, Bush was able to conjure some kind of purpose to his campaign. A successful Republican candidate in 2012 will have to do the same thing.

Take on the map. A candidate who has to reach for the "Bush" states is probably a candidate the party would be better passing by. Yes, a candidate could win with those states in the end, but those states should more be viewed as a last-ditch firewall than a goal. And it's worth noting how fragile the Bush coalition of the 2000s was: the loss of one closely contested state (Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004) would have cost Bush the White House. One of Obama's greatest electoral strengths in 2008 was his ability to open up the map for Democrats; this led to an Electoral College victory greater than any Republican has enjoyed since George HW Bush in 1988. The actual contours of the new GOP coalition might vary depending on the eventual candidate. But there's no reason to write off states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Oregon, Minnesota, or Wisconsin. Some of these states recently elected a Republican senator in 2010. And the GOP also needs to keep its eye on states Bush barely won (or didn't even win in both elections): New Hampshire, New Mexico, Iowa, Colorado, and Nevada, to name a few.

Lower the temperature of social issues. This is not the same thing as surrendering on social issues. Social conservatives are a key part of the Republican coalition; many socially conservative positions are among the more popular parts of the GOP platform. Moreover, there is, I think, an often undervalued theoretical affinity between social conservatism and fiscal conservatism. But one can argue for socially conservative positions without sneering at those who disagree with them. Dualisms like “Heartland Real Americans” vs. “Coastal Elitists/Fake Americans” (or suggestions that Republicans don't deserve the freedoms of the Constitution) are probably better left behind. A game-changing Republican presidential candidate will need to be able to show that he or she respects the views of a variety of other Americans, even if he or she doesn't always agree with them.

Remember managerial competence. Unfortunately, the challenges that face this nation cannot be dissolved with a few easy votes or executive orders. Repealing Obamacare will not be enough to stabilize the nation's health-care system; cutting earmarks will not restore the nation's fiscal health. In order to be successful, a Republican president has to have the ability to recognize and promote competent bureaucrats. The White House must be part of the "reality-based" community if it is to succeed.

Be willing to experiment. Government policy is often less about blind obedience to absolutes and more about being able to muddle through. Contrary to the wishes of some, the president---even at the peak of power---does not have a totally free hand to write policy. Various Congressional factions, public interests, and bureaucratic inertia all shape policy. Moreover, many policies can lead to effects completely unanticipated by their designers. All these facts will require an administration to be fluid, resourceful, and flexible. It's worth noting, though, that flexibility in means need not require an empty faith in political ends. One can still have deep principles and be flexible in applying them.

Fight the big battles, even if they cause you to lose the small ones. Barack Obama did not win every news cycle as a candidate in either the primary election or the general. Yet some of these daily losses led to his overall victory. Consider, for example, the flap about his willingness to meet with the leaders of countries like North Korea and Iran without preconditions during the primary battle of 2007/2008. The Clinton people hit Obama hard on this, and he endured some rocky coverage in the media, but this admission also illustrated Obama’s break with some of the rhetorical tendencies of the Democratic past, at least during that part of the campaign. This break in turn helped solidify his image as the "change" candidate in a cycle in which "change" was very hot. A candidate, Republican or Democrat, must be willing to take the heat of taking a strong stand at times. This willingness to face criticism can strengthen the image of a candidate’s inner fortitude and also can allow the candidate to push the parameters of public debate.

The political pendulum has swung fairly wildly from one party to the next in recent years. It remains to be seen how much the Republicans will be able to make good on their significant gains in 2010 for the presidential race in 2012. There is the real possibility of a major victory in November of next year, but there is also the possibility of a major disappointment---in that month and in the months after it. The GOP currently has the benefit of a wide-open field, and Republicans should welcome this opportunity for debate, trial, and exploration.

A Social Security Crisis?

In bewailing the "entitlements crisis," many have made much of the fact that the percentage of GDP expended on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid is growing at a fairly ferocious pace. In 2007, those three programs totaled 8.4% of the GDP. By 2050, the CBO estimates they could be 18.6% of GDP. By 2080, they could be nearing 25% of GDP. The current federal budget as a whole is 25% of GDP, and that recently spiked (it was under or around 20% for most of the past 15 years). So, if current trends do not change (a colossal if), federal spending on just three programs would be as big as a proportion of the economy as the whole federal budget is now. Those numbers would probably not be sustainable.

However, grouping those three programs together hides a significant fact: the driving force behind the inflation of those "entitlement" programs is the increase in medical spending. Social Security spending is far more sustainable than the current Medicare and Medicaid regimes.

Currently, Social Security spending is about 4.8% of the GDP. This spending is estimated to rise to about 6.1% of the GDP by 2035 and will linger around 6% for the next fifty years after that. This is about a 27% increase in Social Security spending as a percentage of GDP. That's not a small number, but it is a manageable one, especially when one considers that that period will witness the retirement of the Baby Boomers. If it gets its economic house in order, the US could conceivably afford to spend 6% of its GDP on Social Security for a very long time.

Moreover, due to reforms during the Reagan era, Social Security is more sustainable now than it used to be. According to the Congressional Research Service, the worker earning an average income who retired at 65 in 1980 drew out more in benefits than he had put in through taxes and accumulated interest in less than three years. An average 65-year-old retiring in 2002 would have to collect for almost 17 years for that to happen; the retirees of 2020 would have to collect for nearly 21 years to reach that point. (And, yes, I realize that those figures could also be used to argue for a kind of privatization, but let's focus on fiscal sustainability for the moment. I also realize that the federal government has borrowed against the Social Security "surplus" of past decades, and that a time will come, if it has not already come, when the federal government must pay back the billions and billions and billions it owes to the Social Security system.)

If there is an eventual crisis for Social Security (the status of SS crises depend upon assumptions about rates of economic growth, employment, and other factors, leading to various projections), the solutions to make Social Security more sustainable seem relatively clear cut. Raising the cap on incomes taxed for Social Security (the current max is around $106,000) and slightly changing the retirement age---to suggest two obvious choices---could extend Social Security's sustainability for a long time.

It may be Pollyannaish to suggest that a few minor changes could indefinitely protect Social Security, but it is realistic to say that those changes are minor compared to the ones needed for Medicare and Medicaid. That's where the real growth in spending is. Health-care spending has long exceeded the rate of inflation, and, with an aging population, that spending is only increasing at a faster rate.

For Medicare and Medicaid, the options are a lot harder. Because Social Security works on a fixed-benefit model, the costs are easier to project and, if needed, easier to curb. Federal health expenditures have long operated upon a blank check model, and there seems to be considerable waste in federal health-care spending. But finding strategies to identify that waste and cut it is a much more challenging proposition. I think effective savings can be found, but achieving them will acquire bureaucratic know-how and determination.

Some Republicans may find themselves in a hard place in terms of dealing with Medicare/Medicaid spending. Barack Obama's proposals to cut the rate of growth of Medicare spending were met with cries of "death panels." Over the past few years, many Republicans allied themselves with protecting Medicare funding. Yet now Republicans want to talk about seriously cutting the deficit, and photo-op cuts to the "discretionary" side would offer marginally cosmetic changes to the budget at best. (None of this is to suggest that I find the supposed "savings" of Obamacare particularly persuasive.)

There may be something to be said for various Social Security reforms. But Social Security does not seem to be ground zero for the government's fiscal crisis; the fiscal necessities for reform there are far less pressing than those for other parts of the federal budget.

Two points in closing:

The first is electoral. Social Security is one of the most popular government programs. According to a recent Wall Street Journal poll, 77% of Americans find cutting Social Security to be unacceptable. Kicking grandma off of Social Security while also advocating for ever-expanding tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans (who have been the real economic winners of the past decade) is the electoral equivalent of running into machine-gun fire.

The second is more principled. From a small-government perspective (or at least from my perspective), Social Security is far from the most invasive program or the force that most undermines the sustainability of our nation as a free-market economy. If conservatives do want to advance the cause of a smaller government, there are, I think, much bigger and more pressing fish to fry. Reckless financialization, the hollowing out of the middle class, government distortions of the market through cronyish favoritism, the decay of the family---all these things are much more dangerous to the future of individual liberty vis-a-vis the government than Social Security.


(Crossposted at Frum Forum)

Wisconsin: An Educational Failure?

CNS is running a news story that skewers the Wisconsin educational system. A few key details:

In the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests administered by the U.S. Department of Education in 2009—the latest year available—only 32 percent of Wisconsin public-school eighth graders earned a “proficient” rating while another 2 percent earned an “advanced” rating. The other 66 percent of Wisconsin public-school eighth graders earned ratings below “proficient,” including 44 percent who earned a rating of “basic” and 22 percent who earned a rating of “below basic.”

Moreover:

Wisconsin public schools increased their per pupil expenditures from $4,956 per pupil in 1998 to 10,791 per pupil in 2008. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator the $4,956 Wisconsin spent per pupil in 1998 dollars equaled $6,546 in 2008 dollars. That means that from 1998 to 2008, Wisconsin public schools increased their per pupil spending by $4,245 in real terms yet did not add a single point to the reading scores of their eighth graders and still could lift only one-third of their eighth graders to at least a “proficient” level in reading.

Sounds pretty terrifying. Except there are a few problems.

To tackle the matter of finances first. The statistics quoted above compare apples to oranges. The $4956 CNS attributes to 1998 does not cover the total per-pupil spending---only the spending for instruction (and not for support services). The amount spent per pupil on instruction in Wisconsin in 2008 was, according to the Department of Education, $6560, or about exactly what it would be if 1998's numbers were adjusted for inflation. The total expenditures per pupil in 1998 were $9298. According to the inflation calculator, $9298 in 2008 comes out to $12,281. So total expenditures in Wisconsin for education seem to have gone up slower than the rate of inflation.

On to the role of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests: One of the unfortunate tendencies of many right-leaning approaches to education policy has been the elevation of standardized test scores above all (see No Child Left Behind, etc.). Especially from a classical conservative perspective (though not only from that perspective), it seems problematic at best to reduce educational success to a few test scores. Moreover, one perhaps cannot disregard the notion that certain parties inside and outside the government may have an interest in defining "proficiency" up in order to precipitate a useful "crisis." So I think these scores might be taken with a grain of salt.

But it should be noted that Wisconsin's average eighth-grader NAEP reading score of 266 is above the national average. 34% of students at or above grade level in reading may sound bad, but the highest-scoring state scored only 43% at or above level. That state happens to be the union bastion of Connecticut, which spent over $14,500 per pupil. Massachusetts and New Jersey round out the top three, both having spent significantly per pupil more than Wisconsin.

What does a low-scoring state look like in terms of scores? States like Louisiana ($10,000 per pupil), Mississippi ($7890 per pupil), California ($9706 per pupil), and Nevada ($8180 per pupil) have NAEP proficiency ratings in the low 20s (Mississippi is in the teens). The lowest-scoring jurisdiction in the USA is Washington DC, with only 13% of 8th-graders at or above level. The District spends over $16,000 per pupil.

The case of DC shows that high spending is not enough to ensure academic success, and the case of Idaho (which spends $6900 per pupil for an achievement level about equal to Wisconsin's) shows that higher spending is not necessarily necessary for scores above the national average. Many of the states near the bottom are right-to-work states, but some right-to-work states have higher scores. Meanwhile, many union-strong states dominate the top of the charts, but having a strong union (see California) is not a sufficient recipe for educational success.

Unions in public education may be bad or they may be good. But to single the public schools of Wisconsin out for a unique inefficiency and failure is rather unfair.

There are far more variables involved in the success of our schools than mere funding and union presence. The composition of student populations in a school district, for example, plays a key role in the challenges and opportunities for that school. An inner-city school with a majority of immigrant students faces a very different educational situation than a small middle-class town in Idaho---and that educational situation would not suddenly turn around if a union were abolished. Unfortunately for us, perhaps, educational policy often seems more about struggling with numerous finite particulars than grasping that golden panacea.

The Day After Tomorrow

The Wisconsin budget battle is really not about today or tomorrow but the day after tomorrow; it is far less about helping the state make up for a projected $137 million budget deficit than it is about changing the role that public unions play.

This budget shortfall was not unexpected. Indeed, Wisconsin's Republican governor, Scott Walker, has pushed for policies that, in the short term at least, have exacerbated the state's deficit. Walker and the Republican-controlled Wisconsin state legislature passed in January $117 million (over the next two and a half years) in tax breaks for businesses and health savings accounts. Part of the budge deficit is really the story of transferring some state subsidies from public employees to private businesses. That transference may be good or it may be bad, but it is a key detail of this battle.

Moreover, it seems as though union leaders are open to accepting Walker's demands that members contribute 5.8% of their incomes towards their public pensions and and at least 12.6% of their incomes towards health-care plans. This increased contribution would be a de facto pay cut for union members (for example, University of Wisconsin union members could see a 8-15% pay cut). Union leaders have suggested that they would be willing to make these concessions. If this battle were just about the upcoming deficit, it would be over.

But it isn't. There's one concession that unions are not willing to make: surrender their collective bargaining power. Walker's proposal would deny most unions the ability to collectively bargain for anything more than salary (and even that would be limited); Walker's proposal excepts from these collective bargaining rules his political allies in the police and firefighters unions. His proposal also puts up additional hurdles for unions to maintain their union status. These measures set the stage for a long-term structural change.

Consider education. The elimination of union collective bargaining could open the door for destroying tenure, limitations on teaching load, pay for extracurricular activities, limits on working hours, and state funding for continuing the education of teachers. The end of collective bargaining could also help undermine public employee pension funds.

Scott Walker has borrowed a page from Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel and is not letting a crisis go to waste. As with Obama, the most contentious part of Walker's proposals (collective bargaining) serves a far more structural purpose than a short-term one.

(A couple other structural notes: At a time when private sector employment is stagnating and wages shrinking, public workers are not going to be able to defend ever-increasing wages and benefits for themselves. Also, many public unions made the choice to full-throatedly back Democrats, which has limited their leverage over Republicans. With Republicans newly empowered in state legislatures across the country, the hands of public unions are significantly weakened. These unions could be paying a price for their partisanship.)

A Fiscal Crisis or an Economic One?

After having backed a $800+ billion tax-cut/stimulus package last December, House Republicans are now looking for ways to trim $100 billion from federal budget. The new wonky cocktail party comment on the battle over Obama's new budget is that non-defense discretionary spending was merely 15% of the 2010 budget. Defense spending came out at about 20% and interest payments on the ballooning national debt were about 5%. The rest of the budget came from "mandatory" programs. Last year's deficit was about 40% of the federal budget, so, even if we were to reduce all discretionary spending to zero, we would still have a considerable deficit. Even reducing defense spending to zero might not erase the deficit.

So "mandatory" spending is the only thing left on the chopping block. The left likes to appeal to this "mandatory" spending as a device for arguing that taxes should be raised; the right likes to appeal to this "mandatory" spending percentage as an excuse for "entitlement reform." Both views may have some substance.

But what is "mandatory" spending? Despite what some media reports or pundits may imply, it's not just Social Security or Medicare. While both are part of "mandatory spending," plenty of other measures are as well. Indeed, if there will be an "entitlement crisis" for Social Security or Medicare, we probably haven't even hit it yet.

Many of these outstanding "mandatory" costs over the past few years can directly be traced to the nation's poor employment picture. Even the Obama administration forecasts the unemployment rate for 2012 to be 8.6%. That would mean nearly four years (at least) with unemployment rate above 8%. We have not seen that continuously high level of unemployment since the end of World War II. With the government safety net bearing more weight than it has in decades, it's no wonder that it is straining.

According to the Heritage Foundation, government spending on unemployment benefits jumped from about 30 billion in 2010 dollars in 2000 to about 194 billion in 2010. And unemployment benefits are only part of the picture. Section 8 housing benefits would grow 7.5% for the next year under the Obama budget proposal, from $26.6 billion to $28.6 billion. Foodstamps spending would grow from $68 billion to $80 billion. Spending for all these measures has been fed by economic stagnation.

This increase in unemployment has also hit tax receipts. Government revenue fell from a high of 2.7 trillion (in 2010 dollars) in 2007 to 2.1 trillion in 2010. If tax receipts reached 2007's levels, we would cut $600 billion from the deficit. A drop in the need for unemployment assistance could easily cut federal spending by at least $150 billion. That's already about half of last year's deficit taken care of without making a single cut to any program. (And those figures do not take into account other areas where unemployment has increased federal spending.)

The fastest, politically easiest way to reduce the deficit would be to restore the health of the labor market (which might be the same thing as saying that the fastest, easiest way to reduce the deficit would be to rub a lamp until a genie come out). This is not to say that there is not a cloud in the fiscal future of Medicare or Social Security, or that there is not waste in federal expenditures, or that making certain budget cuts would be a bad idea, or that taxes should not go up (it's worth noting that we have had nowhere near a balanced budget since the Bush tax cuts passed). This is not even to say that there are no hard choices that face us in dealing with mounting debts. But the focus should be less on trying to shave off a billion here or there and more on getting the nation's economic house in order so that it can get its fiscal house in order.

For the past few years, if not the past decade, the US has been in a period of economic stagnation. If the unemployment rate continues to hover around 9% and tax receipts do not go up through increased taxes, expect either more debt or a radically diminished standard of living or perhaps both. The government has been able to mask some of the effects of this stagnation through increased subsidies to the unemployed. We are borrowing to pay for that mask now. Perhaps the best strategy for the nation's immediate fiscal future would be to make that mask unnecessary.

A Dangerous Farce

With income inequality in the US breaking records, it is not surprising to see a kind of social Darwinism returning to the scene as a farce of bad faith among the global elite. Chrystia Freeland's article in the Atlantic on the new superwealthy contains a lot of interesting material. This nugget particularly reveals the potential for self-righteousness among our self-anointed elite:

I heard a similar sentiment from the Taiwanese-born, 30-something CFO of a U.S. Internet company. A gentle, unpretentious man who went from public school to Harvard, he’s nonetheless not terribly sympathetic to the complaints of the American middle class. “We demand a higher paycheck than the rest of the world,” he told me. “So if you’re going to demand 10 times the paycheck, you need to deliver 10 times the value. It sounds harsh, but maybe people in the middle class need to decide to take a pay cut.”

Well, if statistics are to be believed, the people in the American middle class have been taking a pay cut relative to the wealthy for years.

What does seem very clear is that the elite upper class will do anything possible to avoid taking a pay cut. The near-crash of 2008 showed that our economic elite was quite willing to make use of government assistance in order to survive; they were not willing to die by the social Darwinian sword with which they had cut down so many in the middle class. The housing bubble and the Wall Street tycoons it fed were lifted by the flow of money from government agencies such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The fortunes of money managers have been built on government subsidies, protections, and loopholes. (To be clear, the elite have every right to defend their economic interests, but so do the middle class and the poor.)

The case of "free trade" offers a revealing instance of contemporary trends. Rather than being a kind of victory for the free market, "free trade" has often become merely companies playing nations off of each other in hopes of getting the most subsidies. Consider the following story from the New York Times:

Aided by at least $43 million in assistance from the government of Massachusetts and an innovative solar energy technology, Evergreen Solar emerged in the last three years as the third-largest maker of solar panels in the United States.

But now the company is closing its main American factory, laying off the 800 workers by the end of March and shifting production to a joint venture with a Chinese company in central China. Evergreen cited the much higher government support available in China....

Factory labor is cheap in China, where monthly wages average less than $300. That compares to a statewide average of more than $5,400 a month for Massachusetts factory workers. But labor is a tiny share of the cost of running a high-tech solar panel factory, Mr. El-Hillow said. China’s real advantage lies in the ability of solar panel companies to form partnerships with local governments and then obtain loans at very low interest rates from state-owned banks.

The NYT notes that, within a year of opening the Massachusetts factory in 2008, Evergreen was already investigating opening a factory in China.

So 800 manufacturing jobs were lost in what was supposed to have been a growth industry in the United States. Millions of dollars were extracted from taxpayers in the US and no doubt millions more will be gained in the People's Republic of China. The point here is not to criticize the actions of Evergreen Solar: our government has created the conditions so that a corporation can game the trade-subsidy system, and the company's management is merely operating rationally within that set of conditions.

But it may be time to reconsider whether our government ought to continue that set of conditions. However much some of its members may desire it, the elite does not live in a bubble. Wealthy nations, with a strong middle class, guarantee the global infrastructure upon which this self-proclaimed global elite depends. In the short run, many in the global elite have profited from the current economic order's undermining of the middle class. In the long run, however, the global elite need stable societies.

For allies of small government, the rise of this self-appointed global elite has been problematic. The undermining of the middle class has led to the strengthening of government power. Many of the poor seek an empowered central government to dole out subsistence-level benefits. Meanwhile, the elite have encouraged a stronger central government in order to use it as a conduit to channel more wealth to themselves. President Obama has spoken about the need for the United States to out-innovate the world, but it remains decidedly unclear whether diminished innovation is the real source of our economic troubles. With employment levels faltering and a government and an economy increasingly dependent upon borrowing money, it may be time to consider addressing this increased inequality as contributing to economic stagnation and as threatening the free-market foundations of our economy.

Fanatic---Critique Thyself

Bill Maher slams the "teabaggers" as ignorant rednecks or something and says that the Founding Fathers would have "hated [your] guts" (video at the link). In support of his claim that the Founders would have hated many Tea Partiers' religious convictions, he quotes John Adams: "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it." Sounds like a pretty thorough denunciation of religion, doesn't it?

Well, maybe not quite. Adams made this claim in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, but there's a crucial context that Maher is omitting:

Twenty times, in the course of my late Reading, have I been on the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible Worlds, if there were no Religion in it."!!!! But in this exclamati[on], I should have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without Religion, this World would be Something not fit to be mentioned in public Company—I mean Hell.

In this letter to Jefferson, Adams seems less to be making a wholesale rejection of religion than to be claiming that a wholesale rejection of religion is just as fanatical as a belief that the state should allow only one religion (a statement that Joseph Cleverly, Adams's former schoolmaster, once made).

It is somewhat ironic that, in a diatribe attacking the supposed stupidity of others and implicitly suggesting that religion is the province of the ignorant and depraved, Maher mangles a quotation and reduces the complexities of Adams's thought to a crude, and mistaken, caricature. While some of the Founders were not afraid to challenge orthodox Christian beliefs (at least by the standards of many today), to identify them all with the rejection of religion is an unfortunate distortion. Moreover, the virtues of science and intellectual enlightenment, which Maher says he supports, are in no way helped by wild quotations out of context. It is that attention to context and to detail that helps distinguish the scientific worldview.

Chafee Turns Back on E-Verify

Republican-turned-independent Lincoln Chafee, the new governor of Rhode Island, breaks with the past gubernatorial administration and reverses a measure instructing state agencies to verify the eligibility of potential employees to work legally in the United States:

The 2008 order, which sparked protests and heated debate, directed state departments and vendors to use the federal E-Verify database to check the legal status of new hires. It also required State Police to enter an agreement with federal immigration authorities.

The agreement, known as 287(g), gave specialized immigration enforcement training to some troopers, allowing them direct access to an electronic immigration database to quickly check if a suspect in custody is in the country illegally.

The unemployment rate in Rhode Island is 11.6%, which is one of the worst in the nation. David Frum has wondered about the seeming absence of a voice for the American worker in many elite debates about immigration, and Chafee's repeal may provoke more thoughts along the same lines.

Rhode Island legislators are proposing a bill that would reinstate E-Verify in the state hiring process.

Udall Resolution Hits

Via Greg Sargent, here's the text of the Udall Resolution. Sargent provides the following summary of its points from a Senate aide:

Clear Path to Debate: Eliminate the Filibuster on Motions to Proceed

Makes motions to proceed not subject to a filibuster, but provides for two hours of debate. This proposal has had bipartisan support for decades and is often mentioned as a way to end the abuse of holds.

Eliminates Secret Holds

Prohibits one Senator from objecting on behalf of another, unless he or she discloses the name of the senator with the objection. This is a simple solution to address a longstanding problem.

Right to Amend: Guarantees Consideration of Amendments for both Majority and Minority

Protects the rights of the minority to offer amendments following cloture filing, provided the amendments are germane and have been filed in a timely manner.

This provision addresses comments of Republicans at last year's Rules Committee hearings. Each time Democrats raised concerns about filibusters on motions to proceed, Republicans responded that it was their only recourse because the Majority Leader fills the amendment tree and prevents them from offering amendments. Our resolution provides a simple solution -- it guarantees the minority the right to offer germane amendments.

Talking Filibuster: Ensures Real Debate

Following a failed cloture vote, Senators opposed to proceeding to final passage will be required to continue debate as long as the subject of the cloture vote or an amendment, motion, point of order, or other related matter is the pending business.

Expedite Nominations: Reduce Post-Cloture Time

Provides for two hours of post-cloture debate time for nominees. Post cloture time is meant for debating and voting on amendments -- something that is not possible on nominations. Instead, the minority now requires the Senate use this time simply to prevent it from moving on to other business.

A few points in response:

• This proposal does lessen the number of choke points, by ending the filibuster on a motion to proceed. This vote has often been taken to be a key vote in evaluating the strength of a proposal. It definitely offers one weakening of minority rights.
• This proposal does greatly increase the power of 51 votes. The majority only needs to wait out the minority (and the minority's delaying tactics will be limited by the fact that they cannot filibuster the motion to proceed to debate). That may be good; that may be bad. But it seems a fact of this proposal.
• The process of how this vote is taken matters. If it establishes the fact that 51 votes can change the rules in defiance of the tradition (and rule statements claiming) that the Senate is a continuing body, the success of this proposal with less than 2/3 of the Senate would greatly weaken the power of the minority.

McConnell: GOP Showed Restraint in '95

Mitch McConnell has an op-ed in tomorrow's Washington Post bringing up a few facts about filibuster "reform." The first is that the Senate GOP decided to keep the filibuster even when it gained power in January 1995:

Just two months after securing a congressional majority for the first time in 40 years, Republicans strode into the Senate chamber on Jan. 5, 1995, to cast the first vote of the 104th Congress - a vote to limit their own power.

Sen. Tom Harkin had proposed changing Senate rules so that it would take only 51 votes to shut down debate instead of the traditional 60. Though it was clearly in the Republican majority's short-term interest to support the measure, every one of us voted against it, as did then-Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. and senior members of the Democratic leadership in the Senate, including the majority leader and the president pro tempore.

The second is that Reid has done certain things to shut Republicans out of the process in the Senate:

What these critics [of the filibuster] routinely fail to mention (and too many reporters fail to report) is the precipitating action: the Democratic majority's repeated use of a once-rare procedural gimmick that has kept Republicans from amending bills that are brought to the floor. This practice, known as "filling the amendment tree," leads to a question that answers itself: Why would Republicans vote for action on a bill that, we've been promised, we'll be blocked from contributing to in any way? If the majority wants more cooperation, it could start by allowing differing views to be heard.

Over the past four years, Democrats have used such gimmicks to pursue their most prized legislative goals while attempting to minimize the number of uncomfortable votes they've had to take. My Democratic counterpart in the Senate, Harry Reid, has played quarterback, setting records for the number of times he has blocked Republicans from having any input on bills, cut off our right to debate and bypassed the committee process in order to write bills behind closed doors.

Defending the Filibuster

Frustrated by the fact that Republicans were able to use the filibuster to block or temper numerous "progressive" power grabs during the first two years of the Obama administration, Senate Democrats, led by Tom Udall (NM), seem to be making a determined play to modify the filibuster. Meanwhile, Harry Reid is in negotiations with Republican Senate leadership about some kind of compromise or deal about the filibuster. Brian Beutler at TPM has done some excellent reporting on this, though there is still much uncertainty about the actual movements. In 1975, Democrats changed the filibuster rules by using the controversial strategy of invoking the "Constitutional option," one Udall and friends seem inclined to use when the Senate reconvenes later this week. This "option" would find that the Senate could modify its rules (including the filibuster) by a bare majority vote on the first day of the Congress. Normally, it takes 2/3 of the Senate to change the rules. Ironically, the reform of 1975, by requiring a 3/5 vote of the whole Senate to override a filibuster, actually made the filibuster stronger and helped it become more common.

Filibuster reformers have a few different options. Perhaps one of the more striking ones is requiring 41 votes to sustain a filibuster. As Beutler explains,

Here's how they propose to change that. Under this plan, if 41 or more senators voted against the cloture motion to end debate, "then you would go into a period of extended debate, and dilatory motions would not be allowed," Udall explained.

As long as a member is on hand to keep talking, that period of debate continues. But if they lapse, it's over -- cloture is invoked and, eventually, the issue gets an up-or-down majority vote.

This change would offer a radical shift in the burden of the filibuster, transferring it from the majority to the minority. There is something to be said for this reversal, but making the filibuster threshold 41 votes (instead of, say, one-third of the senators voting) would be a great weakening of the power of the minority.

Furthermore, Udall's plan may provide a further weakening of the filibuster in that it seems to suggest that cloture never needs to be successfully invoked for a majority to override the minority; it only needs to wait that minority out. So 51 votes (or even fewer) could have greater power in the Senate.

Udall has a number of proposals floating around, but all have the same goal: weakening the power of the minority. Democrats have a smaller majority in 2011 than they did in 1975, but the caucus is also much more under the thrall of a "progressive" ideology as well. One of the key tenets of many self-styled "progressives" from Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama is the importance of centralizing power. A bicameral legislature helps check this centralization, and the filibuster, by stressing the need for bipartisanship, further exasperates "progressives" eager to have government by monolithic ideology.

Some Republicans may think that, with the GOP controlling the House, the party would be insulated from any diminution of the filibuster---and that 2012 will bring Republicans to power in the Senate and the White House, so a weakening of the filibuster now would set the stage for a conservative empowerment shortly in the future.

This would be an incredibly short-sighted assumption. According to the conventional Washington narrative, Barack Obama went from being politically untouchable to being a political Untouchable in under two years. There's no reason to think that that process can't be reversed. It would be a foolish thing indeed to underestimate Obama's political strength.

There are deeper structural issues at play as well. Republicans and Democrats will both have their time in the minority. Partisan alienation is never in short supply in our republic, and the traditions of the Senate that limit the power of smaller majorities help build a bipartisan consensus. Checks on small majorities (and that's what the filibuster is, in part) incentivize cooperation and help keep the federal government from dissolving into wild swings as one temporary majority flips into another.

In the days ahead, a few questions remain. Perhaps the most prominent of them: Are the Democrats really serious about "reforming" the filibuster? True, Senate Democrats have almost unanimously signed off on a letter asking for some procedural changes in the next Congress, but there's a lot of vagueness in that desire for change. While "progressive" netrooters salivate over ending the filibuster, numerous Senate Democrats approach this issue more as practical politicians and less as ideologues. Senators know that the filibuster can be a valuable tool when they are in the minority, and have an interest in keeping that tool. Democrats might be able to herald as a great victory some weakening of the (sometimes abused) power of anonymous holds. They might put on a good show of Senatorial kabuki, rile up activists, and leave things pretty much the way they are.

Or they might decide to make a real move against the filibuster. Republicans should fight any radical assaults upon the power of the minority. Under the current Democratic gameplan for attacking the filibuster, there are a lot of delays that Republicans can use to rally popular support in defense of the rights of the minority and the spirit of compromise. The "opening day" could presumably take "weeks" as Republicans demand debate on rules changes.

Moreover, this debate about Senate rules could put a hold of the Senate's business. As a memo from one of Beutler's sources states,

Reform Senators would need to object to any attempt to transact substantive business or seek a unanimous consent request to that effect. The objective is to ensure that the reformers do not waive any rights to amend Senate rules on opening day by majority vote.

The GOP could use this tactic to its advantage. After all, the Obama administration does have a number of pressing issues, especially the raising of the debt ceiling. How much patience with the public have with a seemingly unchastened Democratic party attempting to arrogate more power to itself instead of doing the nation's business?

Having experienced a substantial setback in 2010, "progressives" are trying to reach for more power and undo checks on the power of future "progressive" forces. It remains to be seen whether Republicans and moderate-minded Democrats will allow them to succeed.

The Filibuster and Recent History

In what seems a rather transparent attempt to make the most of a diminished majority, Senate Democrats have (almost) unanimously signed on to a letter asking Majority Leader Harry Reid to "reform" the filibuster:

The letter, delivered this week, expresses general frustration with what Democrats consider unprecedented obstruction and asks Reid to take steps to end those abuses. While it does not urge a specific solution, Democrats said it demonstrates increased backing in the majority for a proposal, championed by Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., and others, to weaken the minority’s ability to tie the Senate calendar into parliamentary knots.

Among the chief revisions that Democrats say will likely be offered: Senators could not initiate a filibuster of a bill before it reaches the floor unless they first muster 40 votes for it, and they would have to remain on the floor to sustain it. That is a change from current rules, which require the majority leader to file a cloture motion to overcome an anonymous objection to a motion to proceed, and then wait 30 hours for a vote on it.

This "chief revision" may have some merit in some aspects, though it seems that the real aim of many advocates of filibuster "reform" is to limit the ability of the minority to put any brakes on the ambitions of the majority. A radical diminishing of the power of the minority would transform the Senate from an institution emphasizing compromise to one emphasizing majoritarian partisanship.

However, the past few weeks of the lame duck session of Congress have probably complicated the "progressive" mantra that the "Senate is broken." On the tax cut compromise, DADT, and the START treaty, we have seen Senate Republicans cooperating with Senate Democrats and the Obama White House to pass significant reforms. When there is large popular support for a measure (as in the tax cut deal or repealing DADT), the Senate seems quite capable of passing legislation. Bernie Sanders gave one stem-winder of a filibuster---but that did not stop the tax cut deal from passing with overwhelming support. It seems that when unpopular bills are considered (such as Obamacare) that the supposed "brokenness" of the Senate appears.

The past few weeks have shown that it is possible for the Senate to pass legislation and to work in a bi-partisan fashion. The "brokenness" of the Senate may have less to do with structural problems and more to do with limited public support for radical "progressive" dreams.

Wheels behind the DREAM

Mickey Kaus suggests that Harry Reid and friends are not just going through senatorial kabuki over the DREAM Act---they actually want it to pass.

Today's long Hill story on the DREAM Act will do nothing to allay Kaus's fears. It goes into detail about how the scheduling of votes on this measure has been a key strategic device for DREAM backers.

However, this story also feed into a media narrative about Republicans vs. immigration "reform":

The bill faces a tough road in the upper chamber. Republicans will filibuster the measure, and a similar bill failed in the Senate in 2007. Since then, party polarization has grown only more severe.

This paragraph seems to imply that party polarization was a big reason for the failure of immigration bills in the Senate in 2007. The record of the final filibuster vote on the "grand bargain" immigration bill of 2007 shows that a thoroughly bi-partisan majority opposed the bill. Opponents of the bill ranged from Bernie Sanders to Jim DeMint. Conversely, supporters of the measure also came from both parties. Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama both supported the bill.

There is likewise a potential bipartisan coalition that could oppose the DREAM Act. The narrative of the DREAM Act debate should not be read solely through partisan lenses.

Meanwhile, Kaus has more thoughts on why the passage of the DREAM Act could pave the way for a more "comprehensive" legalization.

Taxing Skepticism

A few thoughts about Obama's two-year, $1-trillion "tax cut compromise":

• Timing is not necessarily of the essence. In a few weeks, the GOP will have a much stronger hand in Congress. Why the rush now? They could certainly work out a retroactive tax cut in early 2011 (and by 2011, it would be a tax cut).
• Keep things in perspective. The GOP could pass a continuation of the tax reductions for everyone making less than the top 1% or 2% today. Those tax continuities are not up for debate. The real points at issue are maintaining a taxation rate of 35% for the highest tax bracket (instead of allowing it to rise to 39.6%) and maintaining some kind of estate tax exemption. In exchange, if reports are correct and the Bush tax cut extension is only 1/3 of the $1-trillion package, Republicans are willing to offer $600 billion in new spending and subsidies. So, $300 billion a year in exchange for tax cuts for the highest wage earners?
• Reputations matter. If the GOP isn't careful, passing this "compromise" could be taking a flamethrower to the Republican mantra that the party has "learned" from the "excesses" of the Bush years and now is serious---really serious---about deficit spending. With that reputation burned to a crisp, the GOP may have running on a message of fiscal sobriety in 2012 and beyond. That image was a big reason for Republican gains among moderates and conservatives, and it is not an inconsiderable benefit to be thrown away. Is two years of tax reductions for top earners really worth that?
• What about the economy? Krauthammer and others have suggested that this tax cut compromise is a Stimulus II (or III or IV or whatever), aimed at buoying the president's chances of reelection through improving the economic picture. If this plan would end up improving the economy, there are two possible responses. One is that, if the president's policies do improve the economy, then kudos to him, and he deserves some credit for that. On the other hand, there is also the risk (and one I at least am worried about) that the economic stimulus of this compromise would create the illusion of authentic economic growth financed through frantic borrowing---but it would not do anything to improve the actual fundamentals of the economy. This compromise, then, could focus as a kind of narcotic that temporarily hides the effect of continuing economic erosion while in fact making this erosion much worse. And if this compromise can help push the president over the top in 2012, it might give another four years to failed economic policies.

I guess part of my skepticism stems from wondering whether some on the right have conflated policy substance with partisan optics (Ha ha---Obama's fighting with the left! Look---Paul Krugman hates it!). A victory for the latter does not mean a victory for the former. I'm not necessarily opposed to this measure, but I'm not totally convinced to favor it, either.

Krauthammer's recent column seems a centerpiece of growing conservative opposition to the compromise (some more details here), and other skeptical takes can be found here, here, here, and here. Jonah Goldberg seems to be pushing back against this opposition.

DREAM Votes

Many opponents of the so-called DREAM Act have emphasized focusing on potentially wavering Senate Republicans, such as:

Lisa Murkowski (AK)
Richard Lugar (IN)
Sam Brownback (KS)
Susan Collins (ME)
Olympia Snowe (ME)

Lugar could face a primary battle in 2012, as could Snowe. While Collins may back Snowe's decision on DREAM in an act of solidarity, the other senators on this list could be harder to pressure. Murkowski just made it through an election, and Brownback is leaving the Senate to become governor.

Opponents of the DREAM Act would also be wise to keep their attention on certain Democrats. Democrats facing reelection in 2012 are marked with an asterisk:

Mark Pryor (AR)
Mary Landrieu (LA)
Claire McCaskill (MO)*
Jon Tester (MT)*
Kent Conrad (ND)*
Joe Manchin (WV)*

If opponents of the DREAM Act can get some of those votes, it becomes very hard to see how DREAM can break a filibuster.

Wild cards in this cloture vote include Byron Dorgan (D-ND), George Voinovich (R-OH), and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR). These senators will be leaving the Senate in January. Dorgan especially has been known as a skeptic about legalization plans, but it remains to be seen how much influence the White House and others may have over him now.

As Mickey Kaus points out, the DREAM Act may be about more than just legalizing some children:

I have differences with Roy Beck, head of the influential restrictionist group NumbersUSA. (He wants to reduce both illegal and legal immigration.) But Beck's closing analysis of the DREAM Act is quite powerful and damning. He argues that, because there are no penalties to lying on a DREAM application, and because once you file the application you get a work permit good for 10 years (while you comply with the Act's requirements), DREAM is basically a 10 year free pass to any illegal in a broad under-35ish age range who either qualifies or is willing to say he qualifies even if he doesn't.

Patrick '10 = Obama '12?

TNR offers a potential view into White House thinking for 2012:

Of all the historical analogies urged on Obama following November’s drubbing—Truman in ’48, Reagan after ’82, Clinton after ’94—the one the White House has opted for is easily the most obscure. That would be Patrick in ’10—as in Deval Patrick, the recently re-elected governor of Massachusetts. Months after Patrick signed the state’s first sales-tax hike in 33 years, political chatterers gave him little chance of surviving to a second term. Not only did he face the same foul, anti-incumbent mood that elected Scott Brown, he’d drawn an attractive GOP candidate in businessman Charlie Baker.

Patrick’s handlers recommended that he distance himself from liberals in the state legislature—and, above all, downplay the tax increase. The governor overruled them...[R]ecalls one still-traumatized adviser[,] “He thought the way to do it was to be true to what he ran on [in 2006]”—the belief that voters will support someone who levels with them, even if they don’t love every decision. In the end, Patrick and his “politics of conviction” won by a comfortable seven-point margin.

It’s not hard to see the appeal of this narrative in Obamaland, whose principal also fancies himself a teller of hard truths.

Jim Geraghty offers some incisive criticisms of this model:

1) Who’s going to be your Tim Cahill? This article doesn’t mention that Patrick won 48 percent of the vote in heavily-Democrat Massachusetts. Patrick won because the anti-incumbent vote was split by Cahill, who won the 2006 treasurer’s election as a Democrat, served for a while under Patrick, and then rebelled, changing his party to “unenrolled” (equivalent to “independent” in Massachusetts) so he could challenge Patrick. Despite Charlie Baker and the RGA spending enormous resources to try to drive him out, Cahill won 8 percent on Election Day. (A detailed analysis of Cahill’s spoiler role can be found here.)

2) You can only alienate so many supporters before you’re doomed. Deval Patrick’s share of the vote in 2010 was 7 percentage points lower than his share in 2006. If Obama sees similar proportional erosion, he’ll be trying to win the presidency with 46 percent of the vote.

3) Guys, it’s Massachusetts. Any Democrat who does not mock Red Sox fans has a much larger margin for error and cushion than a Democrat running nationally.

4) The economy in 2012 remains an X factor, but it’s worth remembering unemployment rate in Massachusetts was 8.4 percent in September and 8.1 percent in October – not all that good, but almost 2 points better than the national average...

I think #1 and #2 are the most problematic for the White House. Patrick did not gain a majority in 2010, and he started from a much stronger place in November 2006 than Obama does from November 2008.

There are a few other problems for this model. Though TNR talks up the attractiveness of GOP candidate Charlie Baker, he didn't exactly ignite a fire under Massachusetts Republican activists; indeed, operatives of some other Massachusetts Republican campaigns would even privately lament the GOP gubernatorial ticket in the run-up to the election. Baker was no Mitt Romney, who generated a significant amount of excitement among Bay State Republican activists. This could serve as a warning to the GOP in 2012: if Republicans nominate a candidate incapable of inspiring enthusiasm and unable to articulate a clear vision, Obama could end up winning reelection.

Also, Obama's record is significantly different from Patrick's. While voters may not have been happy with Patrick's sales tax increase, that measure pales in comparison to the radical legislation passed over the past few years. Considering the rapidly accumulating number of broken promises about Obamacare, one might wonder whether the aftershocks of Obama's health-care legislation would render the image of a "straight-talking" president a little bit of a stretch.

Ann Coulter: Palin Presidential Skeptic?

On a Red Eye episode last week, Ann Coulter said that she hopes Sarah Palin does not run for president: she believes that Palin would be more effective where she is right now in the media.

I can't seem to find a clip of that moment, but, while searching this, I saw that this was not a one-off for Coulter. In a video of an appearance in early 2010, Coulter makes the same point, as she does in the report of an appearance in November.

Though Coulter is famed as a conservative bomb-thrower, her eye as a political analyst is often under-appreciated.

Take her infamous appearance on Hannity and Colmes in late January 2008, in which she claimed that she would vote and campaign for Hillary Clinton if John McCain was the Republican nominee. Coulter's argument revealed a deep antipathy towards McCain, and it certainly generated a lot of buzz for her.

But can you really imagine Ann Coulter campaigning for Hillary Clinton? By late January, Coulter might have calculated that she never would have to campaign for Clinton---because Clinton was not going to be the Democratic nominee. In retrospect, Coulter's endorsement of Clinton over McCain can be seen as a sign of just how dire things were for the Clinton campaign in early 2008. (It might also be noted that, shortly after her H&C appearance, she refused to say that she would support Obama over McCain.)

So Coulter is offering some additional political analysis here---and this analysis implies that Palin would be more effective not running for the Oval Office. Is it time to add Coulter to the list of Palin presidential skeptics?

Changes on the Ground

Michael Barone digs into some of the election results on the state level:

Republicans snatched control of about 20 legislative houses from Democrats -- and by margins that hardly any political insiders expected. Republicans needed five seats for a majority in the Pennsylvania House and won 15; they needed four seats in the Ohio House and got 13; they needed 13 in the Michigan House and got 20; they needed two in the Wisconsin Senate and four in the Wisconsin House, and gained four and 14; they needed five in the North Carolina Senate and nine in the North Carolina House and gained 11 and 15.

Republicans even gained seats in the Massachusetts legislature, in a year in which the anti-Democrat wave didn't seem to break very hard in the Bay State.

Aftermath

A few basic points for the moment:

• Voting lock-step with a radical agenda doesn't endear you to moderate voters.
• Candidate quality matters, and the fact that a candidate has aligned himself/herself with the "tea party" does not necessarily make that person a good candidate.
• The GOP has an opportunity here, but only an opportunity---no guarantee.
• Obama and his fellow Democrats seem now to be emphasizing the need to "get things done" for the American people; Republicans need to emphasize getting the right things done.

With the networks calling the WV Senate race for Joe Manchin, it's awfully hard to see how the GOP takes the Senate (unless a surprise happens in CA).

Keep your eye on VA-11 and VA-9. These are races that Nate Silver says GOP needs to win to beat 538 projections; as of this moment, the Republican candidate leads.

Update: VA-09 has been called for GOP.

Inside the O'Donnell Ad Contretemps

I've been in contact with a source closely involved with Comcast Channel 28 who has given a fairly detailed timeline of the events about the Christine O'Donnell ad problems. A key detail about this story is that the company that O'Donnell contracted with to broadcast the ad (Positive Promotions) only supplies content to Channel 28; it does not have full control of the broadcasting technology. That will have important ramifications below.

So here's the timeline:

Afternoon of Friday, October 29: Station is told to expect O'Donnell epic ad by 5:30 that day.

5:00 pm Friday: Station employees are told that they will not be receiving the epic ad until Saturday at 2.

Saturday: 3 ads and a 2-minute piece are delivered (which are available on the TV station website), but no epic ad.

Sunday: Told that epic ad would be done by 2 pm on Sunday.

9 pm Sunday: Epic ad is delivered. But it needs to be converted.

10:30 pm Sunday: Ad ready for broadcast. But it needs to be taken to the Comcast studio. Here's where it runs into some serious problems. As the source relates:

...the employees running the show at Comcast do not have the time to take a show that arrives that close to airing with what they are already busy doing on Sunday nights. I believe there was a live taping at 11pm. The program needs to be loaded into the automated system, before it airs. The employees leave at or before midnight, and they are not legally obligated to [Positive Promotions] to load a program into the system before they leave. In fact, it is my understanding that programs should arrive 48 hours prior to airing, but they usually make exceptions for [Positive Promotions], but right before airing and before they want to leave is not one of them.

The source also relates that the Comcast studio employees do not begin to work until 3 pm on Monday, which explains why the Monday morning broadcast did not go forward (since the program wasn't in the system, it couldn't be broadcast).

The source emphasizes the O'Donnell's people were warned about the consequences about submitting the epic ad late. The source also suggests that Positive Promotions was not required to post the shorter ads on their website but did so as an act of goodwill.

Based on this timeline (which no O'Donnell person has yet challenged), it would seem hard to accuse the employees of Positive Promotions of any grave misdeed or sinister conspiracy to destroy Christine O'Donnell. Of course, if anyone has any information to the contrary, they are welcome to come forward.

O'Donnell's people now seem to be trying to smooth things over with Channel 28, which is now airing the epic ad.

Ranking the Senate

So I've made my tentative predictions for the results tomorrow. Let's dig into the Senate a little bit more.

My basic assumption here is that Republicans are likely to hold all open GOP seats and are (barring something very strange) clear favorites to get at least 4 Democrat seats (AR, IN, ND, and WI).

And then the toss-ups. What follows below is my ranking of toss-ups, from what I guess to be most likely to switch to least likely. I emphasize that this order is very, very tentative, and I would in no way be surprised if some of the seats higher up the list stayed Democrat while lower seats switched parties.

The Good Chances

Pennsylvania
Pat Toomey has led throughout most of the polling cycle, even if Joe Sestak has closed the gap a little recently. Sestak has a reputation as a strong closer, but I don't think he's got the numbers. Sestak is a pretty far-left Democrat, who could have won in 2006 or even 2008 (maybe), but Pennsylvania doesn't seem like his territory in 2010.

Illinois
Mark Kirk has had a very slim lead over Alexi Giannoulias for months now. Giannoulias has been dogged by ethical questions throughout this campaign. Neither candidate has ever really cracked the high 40s in polling, so there could be a surprise here, but it looks like Kirk has the edge.

Nevada
Sharron Angle has struggled against Harry Reid. Neither candidate seems particularly popular in Nevada, but Angle seems to be pulling ahead in the final days of the campaign. With Tuesday approaching, Nevada voters don't seem comfortable with pulling the lever for an increasingly left-wing Reid and for the Obama agenda.

Colorado
Republican Ken Buck has had a few difficulties on the campaign trail, but Democrat Michael Bennet is facing a very hostile political environment. A divisive governor's race (with a failed GOP candidate and an empowered Tom Tancredo) may pull down Buck. But polling gives Buck an edge, and he seems to be pulling away from Bennet.


The Unknowns

West Virginia
This state is puzzling. It has a radical antipathy to Barack Obama and his agenda. And yet it may be on the verge of sending a Democrat into the Senate. Democratic Governor Joe Manchin is personally very popular and separated himself from the administration on cap-and-trade very early on. But now Manchin has much more explicitly distanced himself from the White House, including reversing some of his former positions. For example, in the heat of the health-care battle, Manchin supported Obamacare; now, in the heat of the campaign, he has denounced that measure. Republican John Raese had successfully attached Manchin to the Democratic agenda in the early fall, but now Manchin seems to have successfully danced away from his old allies and has regained his lead in the polls. I'm still somewhat bullish for Republicans in this race, though. Will WV voters really go into the voting booth on Tuesday and not fear that Manchin will, once in office, cast his vote for "progressive" plans? I think those reservations could sway some voters---Tuesday will tell if they sway enough.

Washington
Patty Murray is vulnerable, and Dino Rossi has run a good campaign. Coming up on Tuesday, this race is about as close as it can get. A wave could definitely propel Rossi over the top.

The Long Shots

Connecticut
It seemed in early October that Linda McMahon was narrowing the gap against Democrat Richard Blumenthal, but the rest of October saw Blumenthal expand his lead. A Republican win could happen, and there are a number of close House races, which could help McMahon.

California
This race seems within five points, but those are a long five points. Under perfect storm conditions, Carly Fiorina could pull off a win over Sen. Barbara Boxer.

Delaware
This state is so small that a surprise could happen. But make no mistake: it would be a SURPRISE. The RCP average of polls has shown little real movement in the race for almost six weeks, and the picture isn't a pretty one for Christine O'Donnell---a 10+-point Coons lead. O'Donnell did surprise some pundits with her victory over Mike Castle in the Republican primary, but polls taken prior to the race did show her leading Castle. That kind of evidence is lacking this time around. Maybe her 30-minute epic commercial airing today and tomorrow will help her beat Coons.