SUNDAY, MAY 16, 2010
POLITICS THE NATION
GOP has big ideas — under wraps
&
Marriage insurance or parent tax cuts could be on the agenda someday
by Perry Bacon Jr.
Billboards advertising the im-
portance of marriage. Shifting coverage of the elderly from Medi- care to private insurance compa- nies. Big tax cuts specifically for parents. Conservative thinkers are tout- ing those bold ideas and others in journals, op-ed pages and blogs. While the “tea party” movement has dominated public attention, small blocs of Republicans have quietly spent the past year craft- ing policies on a wide range of is- sues, looking to build support if the GOP regains control of Con- gress or the presidency. Many of these ideas won’t ap- pear in the GOP’s platform any- time soon, because they lack broad agreement within the par- ty. And Republican lawmakers plan to spend most of their time ahead of this fall’s election attack- ing Democrats instead of pushing new policy ideas, a view conserva- tive thinkers acknowledge is po- litically wise.
At the same time, Republicans on and off Capitol Hill agree that while the goals that animated the GOP in the 1970s, such as keeping the federal government small, re- main relevant, conservatives need a new set of policy proposals that reflect how the world has changed since the Reagan era. Below are three of the most in-
novative proposals from conser- vatives. None is likely to become law soon. But eventually they could take hold within the party, the same way unconventional ideas in the past, such as allowing people to use money they would otherwise pay in Social Security to create personal accounts, have turned into party orthodoxy.
The parent tax cut
Robert Stein, a conservative economist who served as deputy assistant secretary for macroeco-
nomic analysis in George W. Bush’s administration, says the tax code is unfair to one partic- ular group of Americans: parents. He says that parents invest thousands of dollars in raising members of society who eventual- ly fund programs such as Social Security and Medicare, but re- tirees who chose not to raise chil- dren get the same old-age benefits as those who did. “Once a country adopts an old-
age pension system, it creates an implicit bias against raising chil- dren,” Stein said. “One of the natu- ral reasons for raising children is not just because you like kids, but to take care of yourself in old age. Once a country gives everybody access to everyone else’s kids’ money, it undermines the natural economic incentive to raise kids.” Under current law, parents with children get a $1,000 tax credit plus a tax exemption for each child, saving a typical mid- dle-class family of four about $1,550 per child.
Stein would replace this system with a $4,000-per-child tax credit. That parental tax credit would be funded in part through Stein’s other big idea: Simplify the per- sonal income tax to two brackets — one that taxes 15 percent of in- come and the other 35 percent. He estimates that few people now in the 10 percent bracket would pay more if they move to 15 per- cent, because of the child exemp- tion.
But he acknowledges that some people would be bumped up to the 35 percent tax rate, mainly up- per-middle-class taxpayers who either didn’t raise children or whose children have already left home. “To be blunt, the plan is a tax
hike on the rich and makes the tax code even more progressive than it is today,” he wrote in a recent piece in the conservative journal National Affairs. The idea has not been debated among the GOP leadership in Congress, but it has generated criticism among conservative thinkers who say the government should not reward people for be-
havior that they might do anyway, such as having children.
Marriage insurance
Conservatives have long touted the importance of marriage. Bush even established a “Healthy Mar- riage Initiative” that created small federal grants for pilot programs to help couples strengthen their marriages. (That funding expires next year, and President Obama created a pilot program focused on fatherhood to replace it.) Much of the energy from con-
servatives went to promoting marriage as a cultural virtue. But Bradford Wilcox, a professor of sociology at the University of Vir- ginia, says that it is important to highlight the economic benefits of marriage. The divorce rate among col-
lege-educated Americans has dropped since the 1980s, but the rate has increased among people without college degrees. This cre- ates what he calls a “marriage gap” that denies lower-income people the advantages of mar- riage if they, for example, get laid off from their jobs. “We need to appreciate that marriage is more than an emo- tional connection between two people,” Wilcox said. “There are kids; it’s a kind of economic coop- eration, a form of social insur- ance.”
Wilcox says churches, the en-
tertainment industry and other cultural institutions would have to embrace this view of marriage, not just the government. He pro- poses federal funding for public- service announcements and other social marketing to promote mar- riage, modeled on anti-smoking campaigns.
And to discourage divorce, he
says, states should change mar- riage laws so spouses who are be- ing divorced against their will and have not engaged in abuse or adultery would be given preferen- tial treatment by family courts in determining alimony, child sup- port and custody of children.
Eyeing entitlement programs
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) wants
to dramatically change Social Se- curity and Medicare. He says that the country can’t afford the sched- uled increases in benefits, and he proposes remaking the system for future beneficiaries while keeping the current benefits in place for people already 55 or older. He would turn Medicare from a
government-run program to one in which people get vouchers to buy private health insurance. The amount of the vouchers would de- pend on the health and age of the retiree but would grow at a slower rate than health spending, which could mean voucher recipients pay more out of pocket to buy in- surance. Ryan says competition among private companies would drive down costs. For Social Security, he would
change the way benefits are calcu- lated for upper-income beneficia- ries, basing increases on inflation instead of increases in wages, which in the long term would mean lower benefits than under the current structure. For Ryan, these changes are not only about balancing the budget. By reducing some benefits, recipi- ents of government entitlement programs would be turned into consumers while the role of the federal government would be re- duced. For instance, he would al- low — as Bush proposed to much consternation from Democrats — younger workers to put some of the money they would pay in So- cial Security into individual in- vestment accounts. “Government increasingly dic-
tates how Americans live their lives; they are not only wards of the state but also its subjects,” Ryan said. “Dependency drains individual character, which in turn weakens American society.” Democrats have attacked
Ryan’s plan as a shift toward pri- vatization with which most Amer- icans would be uncomfortable. Other conservative thinkers pri- vately say his plans are so expan- sive that they would be politically toxic to propose in the near fu- ture.
baconp@washpost.com
Oil’s sway in Gulf states may temper response to spill
by Dan Eggen
In their battle to represent
Louisiana in the Senate, incum- bent David Vitter (R) and chal- lenger Charlie Melancon (D) dif- fer sharply on Wall Street reform, stimulus spending and a host of other issues.
But as the devastation from
BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil dis- aster widens, the two lawmakers agree on one thing: It is no rea- son to halt drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The calamity
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overwhelming influence of oil on the politics of Louisiana and oth- er Gulf states, in which law- makers of both parties have gen- erally maintained enthusiastic support for offshore drilling in defense of one of the region’s bed- rock industries. In Louisiana, the sector provides more than 300,000 jobs and handles about a quarter of the oil and natural gas consumed in the United States, according to industry estimates. The oil business strongly fa- vors delegations from key Gulf states in its campaign contribu- tions. Lawmakers from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Ala- bama received an average of $100,000 from oil and gas com- panies and their employees in the past three years, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics and analyzed by The Washington Post. That compares with $30,000 for law- makers from other states. Local Republican and Demo-
cratic politicians say they try to balance the interests of the in- dustry and of conservationists while being mindful of the cen- tral role the region plays in sup- plying oil and gas to the rest of the nation. Many gulf area law- makers also say BP must be held responsible for the economic im- pact of the spill on the commer- cial fishing and seafood industry, which has come to a halt because of the disaster. “We need to find that balance
between ‘drill, baby, drill’ and ‘spill, baby, spill,’ ” Melancon said in an interview. “We need to fig- ure what it is that needs to be done so we can move forward.” But Michael Brune, executive
director of the Sierra Club, said many elected officials in the Gulf states “have very close, cozy ties with the oil and gas industry. That habit is hard to break even when disaster is staring them in
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A brown pelican gets a cleaning at the Fort Jackson Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Buras, La.
the face.” The Deepwater Horizon rig, leased by London-based BP and owned by Transocean of Switzer- land, suffered an explosion on April 20 about 50 miles southeast of Venice, La., killing 11. The spill has poured tens of thousands of barrels of oil into the gulf. The disaster has prompted growing pressure from environ- mental groups and some Demo- cratic lawmakers to slow or halt the pace of oil exploration along the coastal United States. Last week, Interior Secretary Ken Sa- lazar halted offshore drilling per- mits and canceled hearings — in- cluding some scheduled in Vir- ginia — until officials complete a review of the incident. The spill has also hurt the chances that climate-change leg- islation will pass Congress this year, since expanded oil drilling was viewed as a crucial conces- sion to winning over moderate Republicans in the Senate. “Expanded drilling is dead on
arrival,” said Sen. Bill Nelson (D- Fla.), an opponent of offshore drilling. “Now that people see that this can completely disrupt their livelihood, their culture and their way of life, I think you’re go- ing to see attitudes on drilling changing dramatically.” But it’s not clear whether that applies to states such as Louisi- ana, where the oil and gas indus- try has dominated the economy for nearly a century. Vitter said in a recent interview that slowing or
halting offshore drilling is simply not realistic. “Clearly, there have got to be changes made because of this incident,” he told Fox News. “We need to learn a lot of from it and there needs to be new procedures and equipment. . . . But we certainly shouldn’t start shutting things down.” During a hearing Tuesday, Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) warned against a “reactionary and overly stringent” response to the spill. “This accident should not be used as an excuse to halt the gains the United States has made in developing domestic en- ergy sources,” he said. Vitter and Louisiana’s other
senator, Mary Landrieu (D), rank among the top recipients of oil and gas money in Congress; while on Capitol Hill, each has taken in more than $750,000 from companies and their em- ployees, records show. Melancon, who trails Vitter in fundraising and the polls, has received just over $300,000 from the industry and its employees in three terms in the House, records show. Overall, nearly half of the top 20 recipients of oil and gas mon- ey in Congress hail from Texas or Louisiana, which together ac- count for about a quarter of the industry’s U.S. jobs. Landrieu, who has received nearly $200,000 from oil and gas politi- cal action committees over the past 15 months, said that she is “not a handmaiden to the oil in- dustry” and had also received
money from environmentalists. Stuart H. Smith, a New Orleans
attorney who has filed lawsuits against BP on behalf of environ- mental and fishing groups, said that “the oil business has pretty much gotten whatever they want in Louisiana for as long as they’ve been here.” He said the oil spill has laid bare tensions between oil conglomerates and commer- cial seafood operations, which ex- tract resources from the same waters. “You’ll find a lot of fishermen who will have two sons, say, one who’s a fisherman and one who’s working on a rig,” Smith said. “Those are the main opportuni- ties down there.” Don G. Briggs, president of the
Louisiana Oil & Gas Association, said the political influence of the energy sector in the state is exag- gerated. He also bemoaned the attacks on the industry by envi- ronmentalists and others since the beginning of the BP disaster. “The industry has a lot of oppo- nents, political and environmen- tal, and this provides a great stage for those opponents to stand on,” Briggs said. “But we didn’t stop going to space be- cause of the Challenger, we didn’t stop importing oil because of Val- dez, and we shouldn’t stop dril- ling exploration because of this one very tragic accident.”
eggend@washpost.com
Staff writer T.W. Farnam contributed to this report.
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