FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2010
KLMNO
EZ RE Washington FORUM EUGENEROBINSON
Democrats lost in the wilderness
looks like they’re about to prove, once again, that you can get your way in Washington without a congressional majority — if you have a firm sense of purpose. Maybe the Democratic Party will findone someday. Ormaybenot. Sigh. What has me exercised — okay,
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frothing—is theongoing fightover the Bushtaxcuts for thewealthy,whichare set toexpireat theendof
theyear.Byall rights, this shouldn’t be a fight at all. The Republican position is so ludi- crous that it beggars belief. Here’s what they argue: Extend the
tax cuts for the richestAmericans—in fact, make them permanent. Doing so would increase the deficit by $700 bil- lion over the next decade, but this doesn’t matter. We did tell you that we’re the party of fiscal responsibility, however, so to prove it we’ll block the extension of unemployment benefits for millions of jobless workers. Three weeks beforeChristmas. Inotherwords, there’sno additional
money in the national coffers for the victims of the most devastating reces- sion since theGreatDepression.But to help investment bankers start the new year right, perhaps with a new Mer- cedes or a bit of sun in the Caribbean? Step right up, and we’ll write you a check. And there’smore: Republicans con-
tend that whatever the long-term im- pact of extending those tax cuts, it wouldbeamistaketoletanyone’s taxes rise when the economy is still strug- gling to find its legs. Some economists agree. But it’s hard to find any econo- mist who believes that ending jobless benefitsisagoodidea,sincethismoney gets spentalmost immediately—recip- ients, after all, are without other in- come but still have to pay for housing, food, clothing, transportation and oth- er necessities. That’s why unemploy- ment payments pack such a stimula- tive punch. Tax savings for the rich, by contrast, have a much weaker econo- my-wide impact; thewell-to-do,whose basic needs are already met, may de- cide to skip the newcar or the vacation andjustput themoney inthe bank. So why is there even an argument?
Certainlynot because of any statement “the American people” might have made in last month’s election. Every poll I’ve seen indicates that the Demo- crats still have public opinion on their
side.Theyalsoholdthepresidencyand bigmajorities in Congress—and even in January they’ll still control the White House and the Senate. Yet not only is there an argument over the tax cuts, but Republicans are also seen as having theupperhand. That’s because the GOP has been
disciplined and purposeful in pursuit of its goals. I happen to think those goals are cynical, situational and ulti- mately bad for the country: Block the Democrats whenever and wherever possible, try to limit President Obama toasingleterm,andpreventanymean- ingfuldeparture fromthetrickle-down economic philosophy that has left the nation’s finances in such a parlous state. It’s an agenda that may lack nobility, butnot clarity. What is the Democratic Party’s bot-
tomline?Who knows? TheWhiteHouse, for theumpteenth
time, has approached a negotiation by signaling in advance its willingness, if pushed to the wall, to make major concessions—inthis case,atemporary tax-cutextensionfor therich. Itdoesn’t take a genius to recognize this as a flawedbargaining strategy.Votersmay want more bipartisan cooperation in Washington, but I believe they also want their president to fight for the principles that gothimelected. Democrats in Congress are all over
themap. SpeakerNancy Pelosi and the House leadership, predictably, are readytohaveafightonwhat theyseeas favorable political terrain. In the Sen- ate,Democratshave toparse the impli- cations of a GOP threat to halt all business until the tax cut issue is dealt with. And everyone wonders whether the White House intends to stand tough, or has decided to give in, or has already caved — or, perhaps, has a specific preferred outcome inmind. If so, the White House doesn’t seem to havemade clear what the objective is, muchlesshowto get there. Power without purpose, in fact,
doesn’t get youanywhere.
eugenerobinson@washpost.com
To our readers We’re proud to report thatWashing-
ton Post columnist Eugene Robinson has been elected to the Pulitzer Prize Board. Robinson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2009, will now help judge the annual awards for the best American work in journalism and the arts.
WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES
From left, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, co-chairs of theNational Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, listen as Sen. TomCoburn (R-Okla.) speaks during the commission's meeting on CapitolHillWednesday.
Saving the American Dream
It’s not perfect, but the fiscal commission’s plan will get the nation back on track BY JUDD GREGG
now lurching toward fiscal disaster, toward firmer eco- nomic footing. As a member of this bipartisan commission and co-au-
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thor of the Conrad-Gregg Bipartisan Fiscal Task Force legislation the panel is based on, I hope this plan will be supported. Itshouldnotbeviewedas theultimate solution. But it is a template for governance, something that has been sorely lacking as the country sinks deeper and deeper into debt. For the past century, theUnited States hasbeenthemost
exceptional engine of economic growth in the world. Little wonder that the world, and many in our own country, ask how America can be on the path to bankruptcy, with an unsustainable debt that threatens our global credit rating, the value of our currency and the well-being of future generations. What happened? The answer is partly demographics, as
the massive baby-boom generation retires and draws on big, open-ended entitlement programs that are already facing shortfalls. The bigger culprit is reckless spending beyondwhatwecanafford.We are experiencing the largest expansion of the federal government in decades, and we are amassing a crushing debt that our children and grandchildren will be responsible for repaying. As a consequence, the next generation will inherit a less prosperous and less secure nation, something that is antithetical to the American Dream. But there is little utility in continuing to talk about the problem. This is the point at which we must stop discussing and
start acting. The plan released Wednesday represents an opportunity to do what we were sent toWashington to do: keep the nation safe from harm and on sound economic footing. Many have lost sight of that second tenet, as the rush to fund every project and special interest has overtak- en a common-sense grasp of fiscal responsibility. If adopted, the plan would take steps to curb spending,
reduce deficits by nearly $4 trillion over the next decade, lower our debt-to-GDP ratio and move toward fundamen-
fter months of intense debate, the president’s Na- tional Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform has produced a plan to move this country,
tal tax code reform. The plan will not win high marks from everyone. It is imperfect, but it represents the compromis- es that both political parties must be willing to make to reach a shared goal of fiscal health for our nation. The plan falls short of permanently solving our prob-
lems, but that would be too much to ask of it. However, it proposes large reductions in discretionary spending, one of the drivers ofourdebt, paring outlaysbackto2008levels by 2013.We cannot continue to increase spending with no regard for the consequences, so while I would like to see additional reductions, this is a good first step. Equally important, the plan puts the right focus on the
tax reform debate, which should not be about whether to extend or end current tax rates for some people. Instead, the discussion should be about how to simplify an overly complex and outdated tax code to make it fairer, more efficientandmoreproductive, so that lower marginal rates for individuals and corporations allow dollars to flow toward spurring the economic growthweso urgently need. Unfortunately, significant health-care savings are miss-
ing from the plan; this is an issue that will have to be addressed soon. Even if all of the provisions are adopted and adhered to for the next 15 years, our national debt will be brought back down only to today’s level—60 percent of gross domestic product, which is far higher than the healthy average level of 35 percent, where it stood for the past 40 years. Nonetheless, Isupport this plan,wartsandall,becauseit
sends a critical message to the American people, financial markets and the international community that the U.S. government is finally ready to act seriously, decisively and responsibly about our short and long-term fiscal crisis. The importance of that message cannot be overstated. Americans rightly expect their elected leaders to govern responsibly in good times and bad. There are no easy fixes to our problems. They will not go away on their own, nor can they be taxed away. Our choices will be hard and sometimes very unpopular. The good news is that we have a serious plan to address our issues. It is time to govern.
The writer, a Republican from New Hampshire, is the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee and is a member of theNational Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.
hy did Republicans go to the trouble and expense of win- ning themidtermelections? It
A grass-roots answer to gridlock
BYWILLIAM A. GALSTON AND DAVID FRUM
sentiments of the real—and very frustrated— Americanmajority. A Pew survey taken after the midterm
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election found that 55 percent of respondents wanted Republican leaders in Washington to “try as best they can to work with Barack Obama to accomplish things, even if it means disappointing some groups ofRepublican sup- porters.” Sixty-two percent wanted Obama to workhardtocooperatewithRepublicans, even if itmeant disappointing some of his support- ers.
But what the people want and what they
expect are very different. In Congress, the center has collapsed, and ideological overlap between the parties has vanished. Although 30 percentofgrass-rootsRepublicans consider themselves moderate or liberal, and 60 per- cent ofDemocrats consider themselvesmoder- ate or conservative, their voices are muted in the nation’s capital. As increasingly polarized media feed centrifugal forces, potential prima- ry challengers stand ready to punish deviation fromparty orthodoxies.Only 22 percent of the Pewrespondents thought that cooperationwas likely to happen under these circumstances. On Dec. 13, more than 1,000 citizens from
the 50 states will convene in New York to change the odds. They are founding a move- ment — No Labels. Among them will be Democrats, Republicans and independents who are proud of their political affiliations and have no intention of abandoning them. A single concern brings them together: the hy- per-polarization of our politics that thwarts an adult conversation about our common future. A single goal unites them: to expand the space within which citizens and elected officials can conduct that conversation without fear of social or political retribution. Theirmovement rests on the belief that the
real American majority wishes to reassert control over a political systemmired in brain- dead partisanship. Those traveling to New York are going at their own
expense.No Labels is gaining a thousand fans on Facebook each
day.Citizens across the country are askinghow they can get involved. Will politicians listen? Here’s why they
should. Our political systemdoes not work if politi-
cians treat the process as a war in which the overriding goal is to thwart the adversary. At a time of national economic emergency, when Americans are clamoring for positive action, our government is routinely paralyzed by petty politics. Through the summer, as the economy teetered between recovery and stagnation, the Federal Reserve lacked a quorum because a singleRepublicansenator took it uponhimself to block Obama’s appointments. Republicans were only doing unto the Democrats as the Democrats had done unto them: In January 2008, as the country geared up for an epoch- making election, theFederalElectionCommis- sion lacked a quorum because one Democrat had put holds on President George W. Bush’s nominees. Nor does the political systemwork if politi-
When ‘Buy American’ harms America
BY CHRISTOPHER B. BARRETT, ELIZABETH R. BAGEANT AND ERIN C. LENTZ
P
iracy is not the only robbery on the high seas. A 56-year-old policy known as cargo preference is cost-
ing U.S. taxpayers an estimated $140 million each year for humanitarian food shipments and is affecting millions of aid recipients worldwide. It is time to update this well-intentioned but ineffec- tive policy. Cargo preference was launched in
1954 alongside modern American food aid programs. By requiring the U.S. government to ship three-quarters of its international food aid on U.S. flag ves- sels, the policywasintended to maintain essential sealift capacity in wartime, safeguard maritime jobs for American sailors and avoid foreign domination of U.S. ocean commerce. But in a compre- hensive—and, to date, the only peer-re- viewed —analysis of available shipping data and shipping vessel ownership records, we found that cargo preference falls well short of these objectives. Our study of the shipping data and the fiscal 2006 food-aid shipment records — the only full year records were available — from the U.S. Agency for International Development found that by restricting competition, the policy costs U.S. tax- payers a 46 percent markup on the market cost of ocean freight. A few factors contribute to the ex-
pense of the cargo preference policy: Fully 70 percent of the vessels approved for cargo preference fail to meet theU.S. Maritime Administration’s age-based criterion for being militarily useful. And the system that awards food-aid ship- ping contracts allows price competition only within each priority category. That effectively means that the shippers us-
ing onlyU.S. vessels for the entire voyage automatically win bids against shippers that, inaneffort tominimizecosts,move containerized cargo between foreign andU.S. flag vessels en route. Seven major U.S. military operations
— in Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, the Persian Gulf, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq — have been carried out since the cargo-preference policywasimplement- ed. But in that time there has been no documented call-up of citizen mariners for national service from these vessels. Meanwhile, the ships’ crews supported by cargo preference number only about 1,400 mariners. So the extra $140 mil- lion cost to U.S. taxpayers breaks down to about $100,000 per sailor.
Ashipping policy that overcharges U.S. taxpayers needs an update.
Andmuchof the windfall gains of this supposedly “buy American” program accrue to foreign shipping lines, thanks to a complex set of nested holding companies incorporated in the United States. A large share of the vessels eligible for preferred treatment are ulti- mately owned by foreign lines that include Hapag-Lloyd, Maersk and Wal- lenius. The extra costs of this program —
$140 million is roughly equal to the fiscal 2006 value of non-emergency food aid to Africa—are largely shouldered by programs such as USAID. This reduces resources to minimize hunger and hu- man suffering abroad. With the federal government struggling not only to cut spending but also to meet President GeorgeW. Bush’s 2005 pledge to double U.S. aid to Africa and to fund President Obama’s Feed the Future initiative, end- ing wasteful cargo preference spending
is an obvious source of revenue. More efficient ways can be found to
fulfill cargo preference’s policy objec- tives. The 1996 Maritime Security Pro- grammeets the same demands by subsi- dizing only militarily useful U.S. flag ships. By ending cargo preference on food aid, we could augment the Mari- time Security Program, reduce costs to taxpayers and more directly support additional militarily useful vessels. The Pentagon would have more vessel op- tions to quickly mobilize for national security missions, while the United States would be able to increase human- itarian response worldwide. Eliminat- ing a parallel, obscure provision that requires 25 percent of bagged food aid to be handled in the U.S. Great Lakes port range would similarly encourage great- er price-based competition among ocean carriers. Tightening guidelines regarding corporate parentage of eligi- ble carriers could increase the benefits afforded to American carriers, mer- chant mariners and other ocean freight industry employees. Rather than promote ineffective ship-
ping subsidies under the guise of hu- manitarian assistance, national security and “buy American” objectives, Con- gress should revisit the role of cargo preference as it applies to international food aid.Updating this legislation could enhance welfare and security in Ameri- ca and abroad while costingU.S. taxpay- ers less. There is no reason for high-seas piracy to be legislated fromWashington.
Christopher B. Barrett, Elizabeth R. Bageant and Erin C. Lentz are at Cornell University. Barrett is a professor in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management and associate director of the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future. Bageant is a research assistant. Lentz is a research support specialist.
cians treat members of the other party as enemies to be destroyed. Labeling legitimate policy differences as “socialist” or “racist” undermines democratic discourse. Over the next 12months,No Labels plans to
organize citizens’ groups in every state and congressional district. Among other activities, these citizens will carefully monitor the con- duct of their elected representatives. Theywill highlight those officials who reach across the aisle to help solve the country’s problems and criticize those who do not. They will call out politicians whose rhetoric exacerbates those problems, and they will establish lines that no one should cross. Politicians,media personali- ties and opinion leaders who recklessly de- monize their opponents should be on notice that they can no longer do sowith impunity. Here’s why the political parties should take
note: In another bipartisan post-election sur- vey, fully 61 percent of independents—whose shifting preferences made much of the differ- ence between the Democratic victory in 2006 and the Republican resurgence in 2010 — endorsed the proposition that “Governing is about compromise, and I want my elected officials to work with the other side to find common ground and pass legislation on im- portant issues.” Only 32 percent chose the contrary proposition that “Leadership is about taking principled stands, and I wantmy elect- ed officials to stand up forwhat they believe in, even if it means that legislation on important issues does not pass.” Themajority of indepen- dents are calling for a newpolitics of problem- solving. Both political parties ignore this ma- jority at their peril. That’swhatNoLabels is.Here’swhat it isn’t:
It is not a nascent third-partymovement. It is not a stalking-horse for an independent candi- dacy. And it is not a front for anyone’s agenda. Inanact as old asAmerica, citizens are coming together out of frustration and patriotism to give their country a better future. The chal- lenge is enormous.But asMargaretMead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
WilliamA. Galston and David Frumare among the founders ofNo Labels. Galstonwas deputy assistant to President Bill Clinton for domestic policy from 1993 to 1995. Frumwas a speechwriter and special assistant to President GeorgeW. Bush from2001 to 2002.
s President Obama and congressional leaders struggle to establish a working relationship, they should ponder the
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