MONDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2010


many poor students. Although no pro- gram can completely compensate for the negative effects of poverty and fami- ly background, a substantial number of Head Start programs are so ineffective that they do little or nothing to boost child development and learning. A re- cent evaluation sponsored by the De- partment of Health and Human Ser- vices confirmed that at the end of the first year of school, children who had at- tended Head Start did no better than similar children who did not attend Head Start. The bottom line is that tax- payers get little for their annual in- vestment of $8 billion in Head Start. No wonder, then, that last month the Obama adminis- tration took the strongest action in the history of the Head Start pro- gram to force im- provements. The administration decid- ed to follow the recommendation of a panel of experts appointed at Congress’s behest in 2007 to propose a system for improving or shutting down failing Head Start programs. The panel report- ed its recommendation to HHS at the end of the Bush administration. Now, the Obama administration has shaken the dust off the report and is proposing a system, even better than the one rec- ommended by the panel, to shut down failing programs. Here’s how it would work: Each of the


nation’s local Head Start programs would be reviewed over the next three years. They would be evaluated by HHS based on seven criteria that measure program performance, fiscal integrity, and licensing standards and operations. By far the most important and telling part of the evaluation would be the use of a well-known rating instrument in which professional observers watch the teachers in Head Start classrooms and, based on reliable and well-defined rat- ings, gauge teachers’ ability to provide emotional support and instruction to students. What happens between teach- ers and students in the classroom is the key ingredient in student learning. Thus, the administration’s choice of this reliable and widely used teacher rating scale, developed by researchers at the University of Virginia, will provide the most important measure of quality. What happens if, based on the evalua-


THE PLUM LINE


Excerpts from Greg Sargent’s blog on domestic politics and debate on the Hill: voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line


GREG SARGENT Do the GOP’s poor


ratings matter? Amid all the grim polling news for Democrats, one bright spot that they take solace in is that the GOP notches consistently higher disapproval ratings than they do. And polls certainly do show that. But how significant are those numbers, anyway? Gallup has some new polling out that probes public attitudes toward the par- ties in a bit more detail than standard approve/disapprove questions do. And the results should be very disconcerting for Democrats. In sum, the two parties are basically tied on a range of questions that gauge what the public thinks of the two parties’ ability to govern:  The poll finds that 43 percent think the GOP “can bring about the changes this country needs,” vs. only 40 percent who think that about Democrats.  It finds that 42 percent think the GOP “is able to manage the government effec- tively,” vs. only 39 percent who think that


E.J. DIONNE JR.


This is a strange development. Presi- dent Obama, after all, has been working overtime to save capitalism. Wall Street is doing just fine, and the rich are getting richer again. The financial reform bill passed by Congress was moderate, not radical. Nonetheless, corporations and afflu- ent individuals are pouring tens of mil- lions of dollars into attack ads aimed al- most exclusively at Democrats. One of the biggest political players, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, accepts money from foreign sources. The chamber piously insists that none of the cash from abroad is going into its ad campaigns. But without full disclo- sure, there’s no way of knowing if that’s true or simply an accounting trick. And the chamber is just one of many groups engaged in an election-year spending spree. This extraordinary state of affairs was


facilitated by the U.S. Supreme Court’s scandalous Citizens United decision, which swept away decades of restrictions on corporate spending to influence elec- tions. The Republicans’ success in block- ing legislation that would at least have


Shadowy players in a new class war T


he 2010 election is turning into a class war. The wealthy and the powerful started it.


required the big spenders to disclose the sources of their money means voters have to operate in the dark. The “logic” behind Citizens United is


that third-party spending can’t possibly be corrupting. The five-justice majority declared that “this Court now concludes that independent expenditures, includ- ing those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. That speakers may have influence over or access to elected offi- cials does not mean that those officials are corrupt. And the appearance of influ- ence or access will not cause the elector- ate to lose faith in this democracy.” You can decide what’s more stunning about this statement, its naivete or its arrogance.


If one side in the debate can over- whelm the political system with clandes- tine cash, which is what’s happening, is there any doubt that the side in question will buy itself a lot of influence? If that’s not corruption, what exactly is it? And how can five justices, who purport not to be political, sweep aside what elected officials themselves long ago con- cluded on the subject and claim to know what will or will not “cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy”? Could anything undermine trust in the system


about Democrats.  The poll finds that 42 percent think the GOP “has mostly honest and ethical members of Congress,” vs. only 39 per- cent who think that about Democrats.  And it finds that 32 percent think the GOP “has a clear plan for solving the na- tion’s problems,” vs. 33 percent who think that about Democrats. The GOP holds a slight lead in all those categories except the last, but the parties are basically tied in all of them. Interestingly, these views of the GOP have remained mostly stable since 2006, when the GOP lost control of Congress. The GOP now edges Democrats in these categories because there’s been an ex- traordinarily steep drop in public regard for Democratic governance since that year. I wonder how much the generalized GOP approval/disapproval numbers that Democrats keep citing actually mean in the real world. Polls do consistently show more trust in Democrats on specific is- sues. But overall, the bad economy seems to have sharply boosted public skepti- cism about the Democrats’ competence and ability to govern — dragging them down to the GOP’s level in that regard.


A test for Head Start H


by Ron Haskins and W. Steven Barnett


ead Start, the nation’s most im- portant education program for 3- and 4-year-olds, is failing too


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A17 ROBERT J. SAMUELSON


The Obama administration’s evaluation system would close failing Head Start programs.


tion and the classroom rating, the Head Start program does not measure up? The program would then be required to compete with other programs to keep its funding. The solution, in other words: Use the market to get rid of un- derperforming Head Start programs and fund new programs that hold more promise. If the new program did not perform, it would also lose the Head Start money. To ensure that Head Start programs all over the country get the administra- tion’s message, the Obama reforms re- quire that a minimum of 25 percent of all Head Start programs be exposed to competition from other programs each year. If the new programs are better than the ineffective Head Start pro- grams they replace, the average quality of Head Start will increase each year and more children will be prepared for the rigors of public schooling. For almost half a century, Head Start has led a charmed exis- tence. Through Republican and Democratic ad- ministrations,


through numerous federal budget crises that led to cuts in many programs, and despite growing indications that too many of its local programs were failing, Head Start has never been subjected to the kind of scrutiny that the Obama evaluation promises. Now it seems like- ly that within a few years, the worst Head Start programs will be shut down, replaced by energetic programs built on the realization that they must perform or lose their funding. Numerous evaluations provide strong


evidence that high-quality preschool programs can affect children’s devel- opment in ways that radiate throughout childhood and even into adulthood. Yet the single biggest source of government investment in helping poor and minor- ity children reap the advantages of pre- school has been allowed to nurture me- diocrity. Now, with both Democrats and Republicans, Congress and two admin- istrations playing lead roles, the poten- tial for change is finally at hand. It’s al- most enough to restore a person’s faith in the federal government.


Ron Haskins is a senior fellow at and co-director of the Brookings Institution’s Center on Children and Families; he was appointed to the Advisory Committee on Re-Designation of Head Start Grantees. W. Steven Barnett is a professor of education, economics and public policy, and director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University.


The Age of Austerity


States. Governments throughout Europe are cutting social spending and raising taxes — or contemplating doing so. The welfare state and the bond market have collided, and the welfare state is in retreat. Even rich countries find the costs too high, but the sudden austerity could per- versely trigger a new financial crisis. Europe’s plight is now the most obvious


W JASON REED/REUTERS


Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, left, President Obama and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House in September.


JACKSON DIEHL


Diplomacy by timetable In Obama’s world, the clock rules all


B


arack Obama’s foreign policy so far has been dominated by process — and its most notable


product has been deadlines. The president’s biggest achieve- ments so far are not results but the would-be means to deliver them. His administration hasn’t produced an Is- raeli-Palestinian peace — but it has brought the two sides to the bargain- ing table. It hasn’t stopped Iran’s nu- clear weapons program — but it has orchestrated new sanctions to force Tehran to negotiate. It hasn’t extract- ed the United States from Afghanistan —but it has put in place a strategy that is supposed to make that possible. It has done all this with painstaking diplomacy, with highly orchestrated internal and external consultations — and at times with stumbling trial and error. It has also set a remarkable number of clocks ticking. One clock is measuring whether


U.S. troops will be ready to begin handing off security to Afghanistan’s army by July 2011, when the first with- drawal of American troops is to take place. Another paces Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Ab- bas as they try to conclude a “frame- work agreement” by next September, when the one-year timetable Obama encouraged them to establish will ex- pire. A third follows Iran’s nuclear pro-


gram. The administration said last spring that Iran was two to five years away from producing a bomb. If Iran does not soon begin to negotiate seri- ously with the United States and its Security Council allies, or take some confidence-building steps away from producing weapons, that time frame will begin to overshadow the sanc- tions policy. A final clock governs Iraq — where Obama has promised a complete with- drawal of U.S. troops by the end of 2011. Will Iraq be fully ready to defend itself by then? No one knows — and yet the timetable is already locked in. Obama’s foreign policy record hard-


ly figures in this fall’s midterm elec- tion. That’s at least in part because of its inconclusiveness: It has neither failed nor produced tangible out- comes. A year from now, thanks to the timetables, the record should be in — just in time for the 2012 presidential campaign. This is not entirely a coincidence;


after all, as Bob Woodward reports in his latest book, Obama told one sena- tor that he established the July 2011 Afghanistan deadline so as not to “lose the whole Democratic Party.” That, however, doesn’t mean his


clocks will prove beneficial. More like- ly, they are setting him up for failure. Success may not be possible in Af- ghanistan — most of Obama’s civilian advisers, according to Woodward, have already written it off. But what’s interesting is that those who still be- lieve in the counterinsurgency policy, such as Afghan commander Gen. Da- vid Petraeus, are careful to say that success will require many years of commitment, not a handful of months. If Afghanistan looks much better by July 2011, not just the skep- tics will be surprised, but the opti- mists as well. Obama’s first timetable, of course, was for Iraq — his plan to withdraw troops in 16 months put him into con- tention in the 2008 Democratic pri- maries. By the time he took office as president, two years later, Iraq had changed utterly, and Obama’s 16 months had come and gone. The president nevertheless adopted a sim- ilar, 18-month timetable for ending U.S. combat operations. He stuck to it despite Iraq’s political impasse and its increasing instability this summer — causing some Iraqis to question whether U.S. policy amounted to any- thing more than a timetable. Next comes the December 2011 date for full withdrawal. If Obama sticks to it, he will put the nascent U.S. “stra- tegic partnership” with Iraq’s new re- gime at risk — and hand an advantage to Iran. In the Middle East negotiations, counterproductive timetables are multiplying. The one-year deadline for completing talks seems to have de- rived from a two-year deadline estab- lished last year by Obama’s envoy, George Mitchell. Meanwhile, Israel’s 10-month moratorium on settlement construction in the West Bank has ex- pired, prompting the administration to press for a new 60- to 90-day dead- line.


Once again the timetables are dis-


connected from a strategy. Is it pos- sible that Netanyahu and Abbas can agree on the borders of a Palestinian state in less than 60 days and end the settlement debate? No. But then, what will happen when the next deadline arrives? Discussion will be forced on yet another timetable. Process is always important to good


policy — and yes, the Bush adminis- tration sometimes demonstrated what can go wrong when there are no dead- lines. Yet in the Obama administra- tion, the timetable is becoming an end in itself. It reflects a president who is fixed on disposing of foreign policy problems — and not so much on solv- ing them.


threat to the already lackluster global re- covery. The International Monetary Fund forecasts the world economy will expand about 4 percent in 2011. Although this sounds respectable, the underlying growth predictions for the United States (2.3 percent) and Europe (1.8 percent) are so low that there would be little, if any, re- duction in the 38 million unemployed in these two major economies. Clearly, most European nations waited too long to overhaul their welfare states. (The same is true of the United States.) The added costs of the global recession have now forced them to do the politically unthinkable: chop social spending and raise taxes in trying economic times. They have little choice, but it may be a mission impossible.


On the one hand, huge deficits and debts — the sum of past deficits — mean some countries can no longer borrow at reasonable interest rates. Last week, rates were about 10 percent on Greek 10-year government bonds and more than 6 per- cent on Irish and Portuguese bonds. Even these rates would be higher if these coun- tries hadn’t acted to cut long-term budget deficits. By contrast, rates are about 2.3 percent on 10-year German government bonds and 2.4 percent on 10-year U.S. Treasuries.


On the other hand, abrupt tax increases and spending cuts threaten deeper reces- sions. In Greece, the value-added tax (a national sales tax) was increased four per- centage points; the normal retirement age is also being raised. Portugal approved a VAT increase of two percentage points. In


Without spending cuts and tax increases, deficits may choke world economies. But those cuts and increases threaten growth.


Ireland, government workers’ salaries were cut an average of 7 percent. In Spain, grants for new children are being abol- ished. Unemployment rates are already about 11 percent in Portugal, 12 percent in Greece and 14 percent in Ireland. To some economists, this is folly. Des- mond Lachman of the American En- terprise Institute foresees a futile down- ward economic spiral. As recessions wors- en, losses in tax revenue and higher jobless spending will offset some project- ed improvements to budget deficits. So, more tax increases and spending cuts will be needed. People will lose patience, Lachman


says. Governments will fall or decide that default — repudiating some debts — is a lesser evil than tolerating persistent mass misery. “It’s a race between Greece and Ireland” to see which defaults first, he ar- gues. The defaulting country will also abandon the euro and create its own cur- rency to regain some control over its inter- est rates and exchange rate. The danger: another financial shock, perhaps like Lehman Brothers’ failure. If one country defaults, investors will dump bonds of others. European banks, with more than $1 trillion in loans to Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, will suffer more losses, Lachman says. Not so fast, argues Jacob Kirkegaard of


the Peterson Institute. Europe has acted “pragmatically” to avert doomsday, he says. Because bond markets can force weak countries into bankruptcy — by not buying the nations’ debt or imposing pu- nitive rates — Europe has created tempo- rary lending sources. In May, the Euro- pean Union and IMF rescued Greece with a $146 billion package. The E.U. and IMF have also pledged a roughly $1 trillion fund that other countries (say, Ireland or Spain) could tap. Finally, the European Central Bank — Europe’s Fed — is buying the bonds of weaker borrowers. The ultimate hope is to buy time. Effec-


more than secret contributions to shad- owy groups spending the money on nasty ads? The good news is that the class war is bringing a certain clarity to politics. It is also another piece of evidence for the radicalism of the current brand of con- servatism. This, in turn, is forcing Demo- crats to defend a proposition they have been committed to since the days of Franklin Roosevelt but are often too tim- id to proclaim: that government has a le- gitimate and necessary role in making economic rules to protect individuals from abuse. It has thus been both entertaining and


educational to watch Republican Senate candidates in Connecticut, West Vir- ginia, Alaska and Kentucky grapple with the impact of their bad-mouthing minimum-wage laws. Conservative academics have warred against the minimum wage ever since FDR declared the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 perhaps “the most far- reaching program, the most far-sighted program for the benefit of workers that has ever been adopted here or in any oth- er country.” These critics have never gained trac- tion because most people think it’s sim- ple justice that those who work for a liv- ing be treated with a modicum of respect.


Many voters who express skepticism about government in the abstract none- theless favor laws that give a fighting chance to individuals with weaker bar- gaining positions in the marketplace. The minimum-wage battle under- scores the difference between 2010-style conservatism and the conservatism of Dwight Eisenhower or even Ronald Rea- gan. The 2010 right actually imagines a return to the times prior to the New Deal and Teddy Roosevelt’s Square Deal, the heady days before there were laws on wages and hours, environmental con- cerns and undue economic concentra- tion. The country doesn’t need this class


war, and it is irrational in any case. Prac- tically no one, least of all Obama, is ques- tioning the basics of the market system or proposing anything more than some- what tighter economic regulations — af- ter the biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression — and rather mod- est tax increases on the wealthy. But even these steps are apparently too much for those financing all the tele- vision ads, which should lead voters to ask themselves: Who is paying for this? What do they really want? And who gave them the right to buy an election? ejdionne@washpost.com


tive deficit cuts, it’s argued, will spur eco- nomic growth by reassuring bond mar- kets that debt levels are sustainable and justifying lower interest rates. That’s also the theory of new British Prime Minister David Cameron, who has proposed shrinking government spending by a sixth by 2015.


Austerity is transforming economics and politics. The Age of Entitlement was about giveaways; the Age of Austerity will be about take-backs. The Age of Entitle- ment was about maximizing economic growth; the Age of Austerity will be about minimizing economic reverses. Similar di- lemmas confront most advanced societies. Even Germany’s government debt as a share of the economy is large (73 percent in 2009). Governments are caught in a vise. With- out unpopular spending cuts and tax in- creases, unmanageable deficits may choke their economies. But those same spending cuts and tax increases also threaten eco- nomic growth. The United States is not ex- empt. Low American interest rates mean bond markets haven’t yet turned on us. We need not threaten the recovery by im- mediately slashing budget deficits. But we do need to act convincingly to curb future deficits. Austerity can’t be fun, but how painful it will be is still partially up to us.


e have entered the Age of Auster- ity. It’s already arrived in Europe and is destined for the United


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