Category Archives: Public Policy and Governance

About That “Abundance” Agenda

My middle son lived in Manhattan for ten years before relocating to Amsterdam, and during his tenure in the Big Apple he sprinkled numerous conversations with complaints (okay, rants) about the excessive costs of the city’s infrastructure. He couldn’t understand why other countries could extend their subway systems and railways at a fraction of America’s cost, and could complete projects far more rapidly.  He loved New York, but the glaring and costly inefficiency offended him.

I had no wisdom to impart. I didn’t know–and was unable to speculate– why a subway extension in the U.S. cost so much more–and took so much longer– than similar projects in other countries.

Until very recently, I was equally unaware of the policy war centered on something called  the abundance agenda, which turned out–despite what I still consider a weird label–to be an argument over that same question: why can’t America build things anymore?

As an article from The Atlantic explained:

The abundance agenda is a collection of policy reforms designed to make it easier to build housing and infrastructure and for government bureaucracy to work. Despite its cheerful name and earnest intention to find win-win solutions, the abundance agenda contains a radical critique of the past half century of American government. On top of that—and this is what has set off clanging alarms on the left—it is a direct attack on the constellation of activist organizations, often called “the groups,” that control progressive politics and have significant influence over the Democratic Party.

The article documented national examples that dovetailed with my son’s complaints. For example, the amount of time that elapsed between Biden’s signing of his infrastructure bill and actual construction meant that voters hadn’t seen the effects of that legislation by the next election.

A massive law had been enacted, yet Americans did not notice any difference, because indeed, very little had changed. Biden had anticipated, after quickly signing his infrastructure bill and then two more big laws pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into manufacturing and energy, that he would spend the rest of his presidency cutting ribbons at gleaming new bridges and plants. But only a fraction of the funds Biden had authorized were spent before he began his reelection campaign, and of those, hardly any yielded concrete results.

Only 58 of the “nationwide” electric-vehicle-charging stations were in service; completion dates for most road projects was mid-2027. Rural broadband access to had connected zero customers.

Policy wonks began to ask the same questions my son had asked. What was going on? American government used to construct engineering miracles like the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge ahead of schedule and under budget– Medicare had become available less than a year after it passed, but the Affordable Care Act’s exchange took nearly four years. And an embarrassing question: Why was everything slower, more expensive, and more dysfunctional in states and cities controlled by Democrats?

The policy wonks concluded that, over the years, a web of laws and regulations has turned any attempt to build public infrastructure into an expensive, agonizing nightmare. But removing excess regulations is highly controversial, because the limitations on building and government were largely imposed by interest groups that believed them necessary– interest groups that have dominated the Democratic Party for the last half century, and who saw their task as preventing an alliance of government, Big Business and Big Labor from subordinating the needs of citizens. They wanted to prevent the government from doing harm– but too often, they ended up preventing it from doing anything at all.

The National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, is an example. Passed in 1969, the law required the government to undertake environmental-impact studies before authorizing major projects and created elaborate legal hurdles to navigate.

Activist groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund saw NEPA as a potent tool to stop Washington (and, through state-level copycat laws, state and local governments) from building harmful projects. They pursued an energetic legal strategy to expand the law’s reach, turning it into a suffocating weapon against development. Over time, the environmental-impact statements required to start a project have ballooned from about 10 pages to hundreds; the process now takes more than four years on average to complete.

The article has many more examples, but the issue is so contentious because it isn’t “either/or”–it requires policymakers to find the mean between extremes. How much regulation is needed to safeguard the environment, or protect against government overreach–and how much is too much?

If and when we elect lawmakers who actually care about governing, it’s an issue they need to address.

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Economics And The Rule Of Law

One of the multiple failures of the not-very-bright people who are currently running/ruining our government is their inability to connect the dots, to understand that when they set out to undermine X, the consequences of that assault aren’t just limited to X. We live in a complex and interrelated world, and failure to understand those complexities can lead to unanticipated damage.

The Trump administration consistently displays enormous ignorance of the way the world actually works. That ignorance–that disdain for pesky things like expertise and evidence–is particularly evident in Trump’s approach to economic policy. It isn’t just his insane belief in tariffs (a belief shared by no economist, conservative or liberal). It isn’t just his echoing of longstanding Republican insistence that tax cuts for “job creators” will grow the economy–despite ample evidence to the contrary. (Of course, even if those tax cuts don’t lead to economic growth, they do lead to the growth of generous political contributions…)

It isn’t even the GOP’s failure to understand the dire economic and civic consequences of further impoverishing citizens who are already struggling in order to fatten the wallets of the already wealthy, a failure once again demonstrated by Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”

The most dangerous failure to connect the dots is the less-noted but even more consequential failure to understand the economic importance of the rule of law, or to recognize how Trump’s assaults on the law will dramatically and inevitably undermine the nation’s economy.

I’ve previously explained why widespread obedience to the rule of law is an essential underpinning of liberty and civic equality–why it is at the very basis of what I call “the American Idea.” But it is equally important to understand why the nation’s economic health is absolutely dependent upon a government that respects the rule of law.

Trump’s autocratic attacks on–and utter disregard for– the rule of law are a direct threat to the willingness of foreign investors to buy and hold American  stocks and bonds. When those investors see Trump and his administration unilaterally defaulting on contracts, arbitrarily withholding funds that have been properly and legally appropriated, ignoring court decisions and attacking judges, deporting people without even the pretense of due process–while at the same time providing special treatment for donors, favored companies, and White immigrants– those investors re-think the safety of their investments.

Why should we care?

Among other things, foreign investors inject capital for increased production and economic expansion. They create new employment opportunities and facilitate technology transfer. Foreign investors often bring in advanced technologies and expertise, fostering innovation and boosting productivity in local industries. When foreign businesses generate profits, they contribute to U.S. tax revenues, providing American government with resources to fund public services.

That investment is at risk. As one economist put it,

The erosion of the rule of law under Trump can have enormous economic significance for a foreign government, investor, or company with stakes in our economy. They now know that the U.S. government may ignore its contracts with them or decide not to enforce their agreements with others when it serves the political or personal interests of the president. That’s the way the world works in the kleptocratic dictatorships in Russia and Venezuela, and virtually no one invests in their stocks and bonds.

By following their lead, Trump and his apprentices risk devastating capital flight that could leave many of our leading financial institutions insolvent. In addition to his deeply destructive tariffs, Trump’s sweeping campaign against the rule of law in the United States has raised the economic stakes from a rocky business cycle to a potential financial and economic meltdown with terrible consequences.

America’s respect for the rule of law is the reason foreign investors have felt safe parking their money here, and all Americans have benefitted from our role as a safe place in the global economy.

Anyone who has taken Economics 101 understands that the rule of law is fundamental to business and investment. It creates the predictable, stable, and fair environment that economic activity depends upon. Without predictability and stability,
businesses and investors are unable to make long-term plans and commitments. Unless laws governing commerce are clear and consistently enforced– and not subject to arbitrary changes– companies can’t assess risks and returns.

You would think the Republicans who fancy themselves protectors of private property and capital would understand that it is the rule of law that protects that private property from seizure or infringement, and that investors–foreign or domestic– are highly unlikely to put money into an economy where assets can be seized or destroyed without due process.

When the GOP was a party, and not a cult, it understood that.

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The Fine Print

As Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” (more accurately called the MAGA Murder Bill) is winding its way through the compliant and spineless “public servants” (note quotation marks) in the House and Senate, a great deal of the public’s attention will be focused on the bill’s main thrust, which is to rob the poor to further enrich the obscenely wealthy. In order to achieve that goal, the GOP–which used to portray itself as the party of “fiscal sanity”–proposes to add 3.6 trillion dollars to the deficit over the next ten years.

But the overall cruelty of the measure shouldn’t preclude a look at the fine print–the nasty culture-war provisions that Republicans in Congress slipped in, in hopes that discussions of the major elements would shield them from view. Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect recently listed several of them. 

Perhaps the most egregious is an effort to cripple the courts. A provision would prohibit any funding from being used to carry out court orders holding executive branch officials in contempt. It would enable Trump and his officials to defy court orders at will. It is almost certainly unconstitutional—but then, so are most of the actions of this appalling administration.

The bill protects the tax preparation industry by repealing the Direct File measure sponsored by the Biden administration. That program allowed taxpayers to save money by using a free IRS tool to file their tax returns, relieving them of the need to pay commercial tax preparers.

The bill also adds to MAGA’s savage attacks on migrants, adding $45 billion for construction of immigration jails. (This is more than 13 times ICE’s current detention budget.) In addition to the money, the provision would allow for the indefinite detention of immigrant children, and would charge families $3,500 to reunite with a child who arrived alone at the border. Asylum seekers will have to pay an “application fee” of at least $1,000. (Because people fleeing horrific circumstances are presumably flush?)

Just in case some non-profit organizations in civil society have the nerve to criticise our would-be king, the reconciliation bill gives the administration the power to label nonprofits as “terrorist-supporting organizations,” a designation that can be used to terminate their tax status. Giving the administration such authority would be an open invitation to our demented autocrat to suppress the free speech and activism of climate and civil liberties organizations, among others.

Other bits of “fine print” more directly support the major goal of the bill: protecting the extremely wealthy against efforts to get them to pay their fair share of taxes–basically, exempting the rich from paying their dues to the country that made their accumulation of wealth possible. As Kuttner reports, the bill would gut an Estate Tax that is already massively favorable to the top 1%..

As if the current exemptions were not enough, the bill raises the no-tax floor to a staggering $15 million for single people and $30 million for couples in 2026. So a couple could leave $29.99 million to their heirs, tax-free. As recently as 2001, 2.1 percent of estates paid some tax. With this change, the percentage falls to less than 0.08 percent.

There’s much more. The bill weakens the Child Tax Credit, by lowering the eligibility income threshold. Millions of children will suddenly become ineligible. It expands school vouchers–continuing the GOP effort to destroy public education and shift tax dollars to religious institutions, in violation of the First Amendment. It includes what Kuttner calls “Stealth Cuts’ to the Affordable Care Act, with a provision that will increase out-of-pocket costs and make insurance more expensive.

And speaking of despicable: One bit of fine print supports gun silencers. “Buried deep in the bill is a provision that repeals the $200 excise tax on the sale of gun silencers, which have no lawful purpose other than concealing shootings.”

Several of these measures ought not survive the rules governing the budget reconciliation progress, which require that measures in a reconciliation bill be limited to budget and spending. Under those rules, ordinary legislation is not permissible. Kuttner notes that the Senate rules on germaneness are tighter than those in the House, “thanks to the Byrd Rule, which holds that “extraneous” matters may not be included in a budget bill.” Given the cravenness of the Republican Senators, those rules are a thin reed, but we can hope…

The real merit of the “Big Beautiful Bill” is educational. It is a road-map, an “up-front” admission of where MAGA Republicans want to take America. Like Project 2025, it is a candid statement of purpose, an acknowledgement of their determination to remake the United States into a medieval  country characterized by corruption, chaos and cruelty.

We can’t let that happen.

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The “Naughty” List

Santa Claus isn’t the only one who is keeping a list of “who is naughty and who is nice.” Charlie Sykes recently brought some limited order out of the chaos of Trump’s first months–a real service, since most of us have been beaten down by the daily firehose of assaults on decency, the Constitution and the rule of law–the tactic Steve Bannon has called “flooding the zone with shit.”

Sykes assembled his list in order to criticize Chuck Schumer, who has finally graduated from sending “stern letters” and moved to block Trump appointees. Sykes asks “What took you so long? Why didn’t you act when”…and then he provides his list of Trumpian assaults that should have prompted active blowback when they occurred.

Granted, Sykes’ list isn’t comprehensive, so intensely has the zone been flooded, but here are the acts that he says should have triggered action from Schumer when they occurred:

  •  blanket pardons for Jan. 6 rioters, including those who assaulted police officers.
  • his purge of the FBI, targeting agents who had investigated his own misconduct.
  • suspending enforcement of the foreign bribery ban.
  • calling for the impeachment of a federal judge who ruled against him.
  • firing the head of the Office of Special Counsel who protects whistleblowers.
  • firing the head of the Office of Government Ethics.
  • firing the prosecutors who worked on Capitol riot investigations.
  • slashing the office that prosecutes misconduct by public officials.
  • dropping charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams in return for Adams agreement to work with ICE — a move that led to the resignation of the acting SDNY U.S. attorney and several other federal prosecutors.
  • Trump’s refusal to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. — stating that he could, but wasn’t going to.
  • Trump’s suggestion to the president of El Salvador that he would send “homegrown” criminals — American citizens — to his notorious prison.
  •  Trump’s executive orders targeting individuals who had criticized him — including Chris Krebs, who had challenged his 2020 election lies.
  • stripping the security clearances of law firms who had challenged him. 
  • Trump’s threats to strip licenses from media critics.
  • allowing Elon Musk’s team to access sensitive and protected taxpayer information.
  • when his top aides were caught chatting about military action on Signal.
  • firing six National Security Council officials on advice from far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer.
  • refusing to rule out the use of military force to seize Greenland. 
  • Trump’s purge of top generals, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
  • sending masked agents to seize people on the streets.
  • arresting international students for little more than for writing op-eds.
  • when White House aide Stephen Miller said that administration was considering suspending habeas corpus.

Sykes list–which I would emphasize is far from comprehensive–was generated as Americans learned of Qatar’s offer of a “gift”–a plane described as a “palace in the sky.”  The offer was, as Sykes says, “a very visible symbol of Trump’s susceptibility to corruption.” But–as he also reminds us– we have seen countless other examples.

Sen. Chris Murphy, for example, has been banging the drum about Trump’s potential $TRUMP crypto conflict of interest for months. “My hair has been on fire about the meme coin from day one,” Murphy told The Washington Post. “That is a level of corruption that is just absolutely stunning. It was already the most corrupt thing a president has ever done in the history of the United States.”

What didn’t make Syke’s list is the Trump administration’s effort to neuter the other two branches of government.

Under the Constitution, Congress and the courts are “co-equal” with the Executive branch, but Trump and MAGA have bullied the Republicans in Congress into submission. (Given that the GOP is currently in the majority, Democrats have been left with limited options for resistance–a good reason to put those options to maximum use.)

Unlike Congress, the courts–at least, the lower federal courts–have fulfilled their Constitutional role. They have ruled for the plaintiffs in virtually every case challenging Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional actions–but while Trump has given lip service to obeying those rulings, he continues to ignore a number of them. At the same time, he has increased his threats against judges who dare to rule against him, and MAGA thugs (Trump’s “brownshirts”) have taken to issuing threats against the judiciary and their families.

We the People need to leave a large civic lump of coal in the Trump stocking. Sooner rather than later.

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One More Time

Yesterday, I posted about Trump’s attacks on the basic research that generates medical breakthroughs, and the critical importance of the government grants that fund that research. Medical advances are obviously salient to the general public; we care about cures for the diseases that cause death and suffering, and when we understand the significance of assaults on the research that makes those breakthroughs possible, we oppose them.

What is less well understood is that basic research funded by government has given America its global dominance in technology and innovation.

A recent essay from the Washington Post reminds readers what is at stake as Musk and Trump wreak havoc with those research grants.  reminding us that “we are the nation that spawned the internet and GPS, and has the most Nobel laureates curing deadly diseases, making intelligent machines and shedding light on the dark secrets of the universe.”

Whether they are geeks in garages or eggheads in university labs, American entrepreneurs have built their ideas and fortunes on the back of basic research supported by taxpayers, who then reap the rewards. It’s not an accident of geography or artifact of culture that the United States has bred some of the best inventors of the 20th and 21st century. The hidden engine of the country’s illustrious track record has been the grants given to academic researchers by federal agencies that the U.S. DOGE Service has been decimating and that President Donald Trump proposes to shrink catastrophically in the next budget.

Lithium-ion batteries that power your smartphone and computer, weather forecasts that help you figure out what to wear, wings of airplanes that take you on vacation and all the messaging you do online can be traced to the symbiosis between research funded by government and private industry, the scaffolding for mind-melds of scholars and entrepreneurs. Moderna’s multibillion-dollar coronavirus vaccine that saved millions of lives owes its origins to decades of research on mRNA, viruses and vaccines that was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Google arose from a National Science Foundation digital libraries grant that supported then-Stanford University graduate student Larry Page. We have QR codes, barcodes and MRIs today because of basic research investments in mathematics and physics.

The essay explains why the free market will not fill the gap. Corporate and business research understandably has a narrower focus and shorter time horizon than the basic research funded by government. Its timelines are adequate for building a somewhat better gadget, but there is no business purpose to be served for funding open-ended questions with no immediate, obvious payoff–questions that, over time, have yielded the big breakthroughs.

Giving out grants for what might look frivolous or wasteful on the surface is a feature, not a bug, of publicly funded research. Consider that Agriculture Department and NIH grants to study chemicals in wild yams led to cortisone and medical steroids becoming widely affordable. Or that knowing more about the fruit fly has aided discoveries related to human aging, Parkinson’s disease and cancer.

We all benefit greatly from what the author calls “America’s innovation engine.” Yet Congress is about to allow the Trump administration to break it, because most of the general public doesn’t yet see–or understand– what’s being lost.

The most profitable companies in the country continue to trade on investments in research made decades ago, while political leaders strip the next generation of the chance to become groundbreaking inventors and innovators. Preventing such entrepreneurs from rising might even protect the big companies’ profits. Little wonder, then, that many of the richest men in the world — men who call themselves innovators — have done little to protect the invention engine from Trump’s havoc. Or that the richest of them, Elon Musk, has even been an architect of its destruction. Meanwhile, Musk keeps boosting his own companies with public funds, proving that at least his private-sector innovation depends on the government he is stripping for parts.

In the late 20th century, the United States invested in knowledge while other countries invested  in infrastructure projects that were more visible and politically palatable. As a result, their growth stagnated while America’s thrived. America’s investments in research built great universities that became magnets for the world’s brightest minds– and for the immigrants who founded major companies in the United States.

As the author concluded,

There is no plainer betrayal of the MAGA promise to restore the nation’s storied past than to destroy this legacy of invention. What we’re losing is far more important, however, than the pride one felt being part of that America. We’re losing the country’s future.­

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