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an independent newspaper EDITORIALS
Mr. Obama’s recovery plan
F ANY DOUBTS remained that President Obama’s recent economic proposals were in part politically inspired, the president him- self dispelled them Wednesday. Popping in for a brief visit to northeastern Ohio, Mr. Obama delivered a full-throated attack on Re- publicans. Repeatedly excoriating House Minor- ity Leader John Boehner, whom he accused of seeking a return to “the same failed policies that ran our economy into a ditch,”Mr. Obama urged voters to “keep moving forward” with his pol- icies. Almost as an aside, the president briefly mentioned his own latest job-promotion ideas — stepped-up spending on infrastructure coupled with business tax breaks — but left it to his aides to flesh out the details. Fair enough; it’s election season, and it’s only
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natural for the president to strike extra hard when his party is down in the polls. But what about the merits of his tax ideas? The first is a 10- year, $100 billion plan to expand and make per- manent a tax credit for research and devel- opment first enacted under President Reagan
Fill that bench
T
A partisan brawl over nominations takes its toll on the federal judiciary.
HERE IS NEVER a shortage of finger pointing in Washington, so it comes as no surprise that partisans are blaming each other for the failure to fill vacancies on the
federal bench. Republicans say the president is at fault for fail- ing to send up more nominees; they also argue that Democrats are spinning the numbers to make the confirmation logjam look worse than it is. Democrats argue that Republican senators have brought the confirmation process to a halt as payback for what they saw as obstructionist Dem- ocratic tactics against Bush nominees. Both make valid points, but others are paying the price for the political mud wrestling. As the parties have squabbled, the number of “judicial vacancies” has more than doubled — from 20 at the beginning of the Obama administration to 49. Backlogs have grown, as have workloads for sit- ting judges and legal fees for litigants. Responsibility starts with the president. Judi- cial nominations have not been high on Mr. Oba- ma’s to-do list. This was especially true during his first year in office, when he sent up a mere 33 nominees for consideration. Even though the president has recently stepped up the rate of nominations, he is still running significantly be- hind his predecessors. According to a recently re- leased report by the Alliance for Justice, a liberal interest group that follows judicial nominations, Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush sent the Senate 123 and 122 nominees, respectively, during their first 20 months in office; Mr. Obama has transmitted 85 nominations.The president’s focus on his policy agenda helps to explain the lack of attention, but it is nevertheless perplexing be- cause Mr. Obama is a former constitutional law professor who should appreciate the importance of the federal courts. Republican senators have done their fair share to muck up the process. Nominees with biparti- san support on the Senate Judiciary Committee often wait close to eight months for a floor vote because of objections — or threatened objections — from Republicans. Take, for example, Albert Diaz, Mr. Obama’s nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which includes Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas. The appeals court, which handles a high number of terrorism-related cases, has suf- fered through multiple vacancies for numerous years, in part because Democrats blocked well- qualified Bush nominees in hopes of preserving seats for a Democratic president. Now that a Democrat has secured that right, Republicans are resorting to tactics they long deplored: Mr. Diaz has not been given a floor vote — even though he earned a unanimous thumbs up from the Judicia- ry Committee more than seven months ago. The shenanigans should stop. Presidents have earned the right to see well-qualified nominees confirmed in an expeditious manner. More im- portant, citizens of this country deserve a fully stocked and well-functioning judiciary.
Part political, part economic — and no substitute for a real restructuring
and extended more or less annually ever since. To pay for it, Mr. Obama would change certain tax rules which, in his view, encourage U.S. firms to send jobs overseas. This is not a new idea: Mr. Obama proposed the same deal more than a year ago. Perhaps making the oft-extended credit per- manent would add some certainty to businesses’ investment calculations. But the president’s cri- tique of current tax policy toward multinationals is controversial at best. Yes, companies can take credits for foreign taxes paid and defer tax pay- ments on foreign subsidiaries’ profits. But many economists argue that foreign investment by U.S. firms doesn’t destroy jobs in the United States; it creates them, in part by encouraging production for export to subsidiaries overseas. More promising is the president’s proposal to
allow firms to write off 100 percent of the cost of new equipment and other productive invest- ments immediately, rather than take the deduc- tions over several years. Administration officials argue that this would deliver what amounts to a $200 billion interest-free loan to companies that
are otherwise eager to expand but starved for cash. To be sure, many of the businesses sitting on an estimated $1 trillion in cash say they are awaiting consumer demand, but for those that hesitate to invest because of tight credit, this measure might provide a boost. The budgetary impact would be modest — $30 billion over 10 years, the White House estimates — since moving the deductions to the present means they will not be taken in the future. However beneficial to the economy in the
short term, such proposals are no substitute for the longer-term restructuring that the U.S. econ- omy requires. But there is, in any case, little chance that Republicans will join Democrats to enact either of the president’s proposals before the election, if ever. The GOP is doing just fine politically, resisting anything that it can spin as a tax increase and riding the wave of public eco- nomic discontent. At some point, both parties may offer serious solutions to the country’s real economic challenges — but apparently not dur- ing this campaign.
TOM TOLES
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2010
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
dletters@washpost.com
School reform, done right As a social scientist who has been studying moti-
vation for 15 years, I applaud Robert J. Samuelson’s Sept. 6 op-ed column, “The failure of school reform,” for identifying a lack of student motivation as a sig- nificant problem for poor grades and low graduation rates. The decline is a result of misguided policies that call for the reduction of discipline and elimina- tion of incentives in schools. There are six unrelated reasons for the decline in student motivation: Some students lack curiosity, ambition, self-confidence, responsibility and orga- nizing skills; and for some, a combative nature dis- tracts them from their work. If schools would pay more attention to analyzing the motivational reasons for underachievement and failure, they could take inexpensive corrective ac- tions. Unfortunately, motivation is a dusty corner of the educational field, which incorrectly assumes that teachers need only tap into the child’s intrinsic interest in learning. Many underachieving students do not have sufficient intrinsic curiosity to make it through the school day; for these students, disci- pline and extrinsic incentives are essential. STEVENREISS, Columbus, Ohio
As an experienced teacher in a local school sys- tem, I continue to be frustrated by the finger- pointing and ranting that is directed at the school systems, their curriculum and their teachers. George F. Will’s Aug. 29 op-ed column, “A daunt- ing children’s divide,” discussed a report by the Edu- cational Testing Service that cites the five most im- portant factors for success in school: attendance, number of hours of TV watched, number of hours of homework completed, number of books in the home and whether there are two parents in the home. If these factors are powerful in supporting student success, I would think that people would jump at the chance to make some simple changes to reap such important benefits.
HELENMURPHY, Rockville
Student motivation is a part of school reform, as are all of the other aspects Robert J. Samuelson men- tioned. As long as I can remember — back to 1960 — it has been teachers’ task to “motivate” students. The students don’t, “after all, have to do the work” if they choose not to. Calls for a “great teacher” in every classroom re- inforce the perception that 20th- and 21st-century educational philosophy places just about all the re- sponsibility for school success on the teacher. Implicit in this educational philosophy is that teacher authority as well as student responsibility are not needed when teachers “motivate” students. SUSAN B. TOTH, Alexandria
While piling up the statistics of school reform’s failure, Robert J. Samuelson ultimately (and rightly) cites the primary cause as “shrunken student moti- vation.” Public schools increasingly lack authority, which
naturally comes from parents. Most Americans think public schools are in bad shape, but a consid- erable number of parents think their children’s schools are satisfactory. And when parental activists demand reform of public schools, they invariably seek more money, which has proved to be no solu- tion. But parents have very limited choice and so do not think effectively about what they want for their children. The solution seems clear, but unacceptable to
A stopgap, not a solution
Mr. McDonnell’s bid to privatize liquor sales is fine, but it won’t save Virginia’s roads.
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IRGINIA GOV. Robert F. McDonnell’s long-awaited proposal to privatize the sale of distilled spirits in the commonwealth is rooted in two seemingly unassailable
propositions. One is that the state should not be in the liquor business. The other is that selling off li- quor licenses and assets could yield a one-time cash windfall for Virginia, which Mr. McDonnell (R) has pledged to devote to the state’s appallingly underfunded highways and transit systems. In principle, these are sound ideas, and Mr. Mc- Donnell has now fleshed them out by proposing a detailed privatization plan that will be presented to the General Assembly in a special session this fall. The concern is that the risks posed by Mr. McDon- nell’s plan to the state’s finances, which could be considerable, may outweigh the prospective benefits for its transportation system, which look modest. Sales of hard liquor in Virginia are handled by a
state agency called the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC), which collects taxes and profits that net about $324 million a year for the state’s budget. That figure is expected to grow. As Mr. McDonnell understands, any privatization scheme should be revenue-neutral, especially in a time of scarce and dwindling public funds. But it’s unclear whether the new taxes that Mr. McDonnell would
LOCAL OPINIONS 3Join the debate at
washingtonpost.com/localopinions
How to clean up D.C. schools I was excited to read Andrew J. Rotherham’s
Sept. 5 Outlook commentary, “Tough reforms, tougher politics.” I was educated in D.C. public schools and, as a minority at-large member and chairman of the Fairfax County School Board, I have fought hard for a faster pace of school reform. It would be tragic to lose the momentum that D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee has estab- lished. As Mr. Rotherham noted, bringing about effec-
tive reform is hard work and may not be politically popular. But for the District to be a world-class city, it must make major improvements in its public schools. In approaching the primary elections, vot- ers should consider this fact, as well as the time it would take to select a new chancellor. No matter how talented that person might be, the knowledge of what happened to Ms. Rhee would surely con- strain any successor. Reform must not be delayed.
Every school year is important to every child. ROBERT E. FRYE, Springfield
Regarding the Sept. 3 front-page article “Fa- mous in the halls of Janney Elementary”: I came to know custodian Ron Hillyer when my
son attended Tenleytown’s Janney Elementary School. We bonded over our mutual interest in the movie “Glory,” and he shared with me mementos of his time as an extra on the set. On several occa- sions, when I planned to meet my son at school, he knew to find me in Mr. Hillyer’s office. D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee would do well to lis- ten to Mr. Hillyer’s ideas for school reform — his dedication, sensitivity and experience are an in- spiring combination that sometimes seems under- valued by our schools chancellor. And he could cer- tainly show her how to properly wield a broom. MARIANFOX,Washington
impose (which would fall heavily on restaurants sell- ing liquor) would fully replace the annual revenue the state would lose to privatization — or whether that income would grow over time to match the growth projected for ABC’s own liquor sales. If Mr. McDonnell’s calculations are correct, sell-
ing off liquor licenses and other assets would pro- duce a one-time windfall of $458 million. That sounds like a substantial sum — but it is paltry compared to the state’s annual unmet needs for transportation. It would be a onetime gain, when the state needs a steady stream of new revenue. To put it in some perspective, $458 million doesn’t even begin to cover the cost of maintaining Vir- ginia’s roads for six months, let alone constructing new ones. Mr. McDonnell says that he would leverage that
money through the creation of a transportation infrastructure bank that would dramatically re- duce the state’s borrowing and finance costs for road building. That’s not a bad idea. If Mr. McDon- nell can provide assurances that his scheme would not deprive the state budget of revenue, legislators would have reason to support it. But it still does not amount to a sustainable, long-term and ample plan to rescue the state’s sclerotic transportation network.
many: End government management of schools and allow all parents the freedom of choice for their chil- dren. Funding should follow this choice, protected by the right of privacy, whose origin is traced to the 1925 Supreme Court school case Pierce v. Society of Sisters. We would then get more very good schools, many satisfactory schools and perhaps some bad schools. What are we afraid of? Or is it just the power of the vested interests? J.W. MCPHERSON, Silver Spring
The author is the head and founder of the private Brookewood School in Kensington.
A quote big enough to share I’m in favor of correct attribution, but I don’t think
Theodore Parker would mind the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. getting credit for the quote “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” [“Where credit is due: On the floor of the Oval Office,” Jamie Stiehm, op-ed, Sept. 4]. And I wouldn’t be sur- prised if President Obama does know the history of this quote, which was woven into the new rug in the Oval Office.
All three men — Parker, King and Mr. Obama —
have worked tirelessly for social justice. Parker was a gifted thinker, but let’s face it: He tended to wordiness. King transformed Parker’s quote into something more eloquent, and he used the quote to carry forward the struggle that had characterized Parker’s life. I’m guess- ing that Mr. Obama wanted to honor King on this Oval Office rug, and this quote is not only eloquent but about the right size. As Ms. Stiehm says, “King made no secret of the au- thor of this idea. As a Baptist preacher on the front lines of racial justice, he regarded Parker, a religious leader, as a kindred spirit.” The same can be said of Mr. Obama — a kindred
spirit trying to carry forth the ideals embedded in this quote. I’m guessing that Mr. Obama will do what King did — bring up Parker’s name as opportunities arise. JOANTORNOW, Washington
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Conservative conservation efforts?
George F. Will’s Sept. 5 op-ed column, “Why the greens are blue,” invoked Friedrich Hayek to deride environmentalists for seeking government action on climate change. Mr. Will cited the warnings of Hayek and other economic libertarians that human in- terventions in complex systems have large, unin- tended consequences that we can’t foresee. I agree. But this argument cuts both ways. In our time, perhaps the single most egregious
example of such human intervention is what we are doing to the climate, an extremely complex system we little understand but on which civilization is totally dependent. For example, there are about 825 million cars on the planet emitting carbon dioxide at levels not seen before. We have no way of knowing what the results will be, but they are far more likely to be bad than good. This radical intervention in the climate should pro- pel conservatives to action. Since they oppose the solu- tions proposed by liberals, they are duty-bound to pro- pose solutions that they can support. BYRONKENNARD,Washington
The writer is executive director of the Center for Small Business and the Environment.
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