Public Policy and Governance – Page 7

Policies Matter

One of the most unfortunate aspects of our current politics is the way tribalism has obscured policy differences. As we head into the 2024 election, few–if any–voters will base their votes on the candidates’ different policy positions. That’s not a criticism of America’s voters. At the top of the ticket, our choice is between a senile megalomaniac whose sole “policy” (if it can be dignified by the term) is hatred of “the Other” and an opponent whose sanity and competence outweighs other considerations.

This won’t be a Presidential election where thoughtful policy differences drive votes, and that’s frustrating for those of us who are policy nerds.

The situation is somewhat different at the state level, however. America’s states have settled into Red/Blue tribal divisions that may or may not hold. For those of us who follow policy preferences and their outcomes, those Red and Blue states provide a rather striking natural experiment, and Blue state policies have emerged as clearly superior.

For example, The American Prospect recently ran an article comparing Oklahoma–a very Red state–with Blue Connecticut.

In Oklahoma, nearly a quarter of children live in food-insecure households, one of the highest rates in the country. The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT, its annual compilation of child well-being data, ranked Oklahoma 46th in the nation overall—as well as 49th in education and 45th in health.

Yet Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt rejected the roughly $48 million of funding for the 2024 Summer EBT program and announced in August the state would also not participate in the program next summer. Oklahoma was one of 13 Republican-led states that declined this year’s summer grocery benefit. “Oklahomans don’t look to the government for answers, we look to our communities,” a spokesperson for the governor said in a statement regarding the decision to decline the funding, which they referred to as a “handout.”

Halfway across the country, KIDS COUNT ranked Connecticut 8th overall, 3rd in education, and 11th in health. But the state, which also participated in Summer EBT this year, faces a hunger problem as well—more than 15 percent of children live in food-insecure households. In fact, Connecticut was one of the first states in the country to pilot its own program in 2011.

The article noted numerous other differences attributable to policy choices. Life expectancy in the two states had been roughly equal in 1959; today, folks in Connecticut live 4 years longer on average than those in Oklahoma. Oklahoma–with Wild West gun laws similar to those in Indiana– had the 13th-worst rate of gun violence in the U.S., while Connecticut had the 45th-worst rate.

Research shows that, as political parties nationalized, state governments followed the governing party’s ideology. Differences in outcomes followed.

State government, after all, plunges into the day-to-day minutiae of our lives through decisions about health, education, social services, criminal justice, and more. For example, families in some states get money to keep their kids fed during the summer; in other states, they don’t.

The lengthy article illustrates the multiple ways in which these ideologically-driven policy differences affect both individual citizens and economic performance in the state. It’s well worth a read.

Another article–this one from the American Prospect—focuses on educational vouchers, a policy choice I frequently discuss. The article warns that Red state expansion of universal school vouchers is likely to have profound impact on the lives of young people.

As states race to pay for families to send their kids to private schools, blowing up state budgets in the process, the schools attended by the vast majority of kids will be left with far fewer resources, blunting their prospects. By design, funds are being shifted away from students in poor and rural areas and into the pockets of affluent parents, entrenching inequality in the process.

Among the other detriments of these programs is an almost-total lack of oversight. In Arizona, for example, parents are allowed to direct education funds, not just to the school of their choice, but to anything they might call “education.”

As Arizona’s superintendent of public instruction Tom Horne, a loud proponent of vouchers, admitted in an interview, the state’s emphatically hands-off approach means that there’s nothing to prevent parents from using public dollars to teach their kids that the Earth is flat. Indeed, state law prohibits any kind of public oversight over the burgeoning nonpublic sector of private schools, homeschooling, and microschools, which are for-profit ventures in which small groups of students learn online while being monitored by a guide.

If, as economists insist, economic development depends upon the existence of a well-educated workforce, vouchers don’t just shortchange the children in sub-par private schools. They eventually impoverish the state.

Policies matter.

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The Climate-Denial Party

How, I wonder, do climate-denying Americans manage to ignore the mounting evidence of climate change? I suppose I can understand that people might once have dismissed the overwhelming majority of scientists who’ve been warning us for many years. After all, the changes we actually have experienced until recently–things like spring coming earlier each year–have been subtle. But you’d think our recent episodes of weather disasters, the fires following unusual droughts, and the hurricanes made more powerful and destructive thanks to their paths over warming oceans, would have convinced them.

Evidently not. At least not Hoosier Republicans.

Not only did Mike Braun and Jim Banks vote against added funding for FEMA, Braun and Rokita have opposed Indiana utilities plans to phase out their dependence on coal. According to the Capital Chronicle, Braun just sent a letter to the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC) opposing a coal plant’s proposed conversion to natural gas.

He urged commissioners to deny the conversion, and encouraged collaboration with policymakers to preserve coal’s role — “the most reliable baseload fuel” — while “looking to the future.”

Todd Rokita, Indiana’s embarrassing Attorney General, has been an even more avid protector of the fossil fuel. As another article from the Chronicle has reported, the Attorney general has urged utility regulators to deny early coal plant retirements.

Coal plants have historically had 50-year lifespans, according to a 2019 article published in Nature Communications. But they can last longer with fixes and upgrades.

U.S. coal plants are about 44 years old, in a capacity-weighted average, according to an analysis by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Plants scheduled for retirement this year averaged 54 years of age: almost a decade older.

But coal plants decommissioned amid their expected decades-long lives have become a political flashpoint.

The IURC says it lacks the authority to prevent a utility from converting from coal–that the agency’s jurisdiction is limited to assessing the reasonableness of rates and other tasks spelled out in the legislation that established it. Rokita, however, argues that the IURC doesn’t need explicit authority. Meanwhile, Indiana’s Republican lawmakers have introduced a bill that would grant the IURC that specific authority. The article noted that the legislature might also require that such action be made mandatory and not discretionary.

House Bill 1382, introduced last session, would’ve spelled that out. It also laid out conditions utilities would’ve had to meet in order to apply for permission to close any “fossil fuel fired” plant. The proposal never got a hearing and died.

The Hoosier Environmental Council said that bill would slow Indiana’s transition away from coal, a dirty fossil fuel, to greener energy sources.

“Besides adding an unnecessary burden to the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, this bill encourages our public utilities to keep their current energy generation sources running as long as possible, which are majority fossil fuels,” the council said on its website.

Indiana’s GOP characterizes concern for the environment as an attribute of “far Left liberalism.”

The digitally-altered Braun attack ad against Jennifer McCormick is telling. (It was also illegal…) That altered ad was intended to demonstrate to Hoosier voters that McCormick is “unacceptably liberal.” The evidence for that assertion included her prior support for Hillary Clinton and her current support for Joe Biden, a purported attack on gas stoves, and her intention to create a state office that would focus on environmental issues.

The altered ad was visually and textually dishonest. McCormick had never even mentioned gas stoves, and has made it clear that she’s concerned with weightier matters–like women’s reproductive rights. But that accusation was clearly intended to buttress the case for her “unacceptable liberalism.”

What is truly notable about that bit of egregious dishonesty is the obvious assumption that voters will agree with its premise: the only Americans who take climate change seriously are “far Left”– that people who care about the environment are by definition “too liberal” for public office.

According to Indiana’s GOP, basic scientific literacy–not to mention common sense–is disqualifying.

I don’t understand when climate change became a culture war issue. I don’t understand people who dismiss knowledge and expertise as some sort of phony elitism. And I really don’t understand how anyone even remotely aware of Hurricanes Helene and Norman can continue to ignore the evidence of their senses.

The Republicans’ rejection of fact, science and evidence does explain the party’s animosity toward education, and GOP support for the vouchers that encourage parents to send their children to schools that will “protect” them from “theories” like evolution and climate change.

It’s just another example of Republicans’ rejection of reality. Hoosiers need to vote Blue.

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The Politics Of Lying

When I was teaching, Free Speech discussions would frequently evoke a question from students appalled by the massive amounts of disinformation enabled by the Internet and social media: “Can’t we at least outlaw lying?” I would have to explain that courts would have great difficulty determining the difference between what is a lie and what is a mistake, etc. The practical problems of such an effort would be insurmountable.

More to the point, the First Amendment rests on reliance upon the “marketplace of ideas.” Bad ideas and lies are to be countered by better ideas and facts. It is a theory that depends upon the participation of We the People.

It isn’t working very well right now, and I see no simple solutions. Neither does Bill Adair, who founded Politifact. In a recent essay for the Atlantic, he explored the failure of that fact-checking site to combat the firehose of propaganda and lies that distort our political lives.

For American politicians, this is a golden age of lying. Social media allows them to spread mendacity with speed and efficiency, while supporters amplify any falsehood that serves their cause. When I launched PolitiFact in 2007, I thought we were going to raise the cost of lying. I didn’t expect to change people’s votes just by calling out candidates, but I was hopeful that our journalism would at least nudge them to be more truthful.

I was wrong. More than 15 years of fact-checking has done little or nothing to stem the flow of lies. I underestimated the strength of the partisan media on both sides, particularly conservative outlets, which relentlessly smeared our work. (A typical insult: “The fact-checkers are basically just a P.R. arm of the Democrats at this point.”) PolitiFact and other media organizations published thousands of checks, but as time went on, Republican representatives and voters alike ignored our journalism more and more, or dismissed it. Democrats sometimes did too, of course, but they were more often mindful of our work and occasionally issued corrections when they were caught in a falsehood.

After exploring some theories about why politicians lie–the calculus that they apparently apply to determine the ratio of risk to reward– Adair notes that today’s extreme political polarization encourages them to do little else.

Now that many politicians speak primarily to their supporters, lying has become both less dangerous and more rewarding. “They gain political favor or, ultimately, they gain election,” said Mike McCurry, who served as White House press secretary under President Bill Clinton. As former Democratic Senator Bob Kerrey told me, “It’s human nature to want to get a standing ovation.” Lies also provide easy ammunition for attacking opponents—no opposition research required. They “take points off the board for other candidates,” said Damon Circosta, a Democrat who recently served as the chair of North Carolina’s Board of Elections.

Adair notes that partisan media, especially on the right, fosters lying by degrading our shared sense of what’s real. These outlets expect politicians to repeat favored falsehoods as the price of admission. If you’re not willing to participate in the twisting of facts, you simply won’t get to speak to the echo chamber.

Tim Miller, a former Republican operative who left the party in 2020, pointed out that gerrymandering, particularly in red states, has made it so “most of the voters in your district are getting their information from Fox, conservative talk radio … and so you just have this whole bubble of protection around your lies in a way that wouldn’t have been true before, 15 years ago.”

Adair uses Mike Pence as an example of the way today’s political incentives change people. They had been neighbors when Pence was in Congress, and Adair saw him then as “a typical politician who would occasionally shade the truth.” When he was Indiana governor, Adair watched his lies grow. “By the time he became Donald Trump’s vice president, he was almost unrecognizable to me.”

The question, of course, is “what can we do?” Here are Adair’s closing paragraphs:

If politicians lie because they believe they’ll score more points than they’ll lose, we have to change the calculus. Tech and media companies need to create incentives for truth-telling and deterrents for lying. Platforms of all kinds could charge higher ad rates to candidates who have the worst records among fact-checkers. Television networks could take away candidates’ talking time during debates if they’re caught lying.

But these reforms will demand more than just benign corporate intervention. They’ll need broad, sustained public support. Voters may not be willing to place truthfulness over partisan preference in every case. But more will have to start caring about lies, even when their candidate is the culprit.

Amen.

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The Scorecard

There’s a standard sentence in investment prospectuses: past performance is no guarantee of future returns.

That is obviously a fair point when you are considering the purchase of stock; it’s far less persuasive when you are casting a vote. In fact, when one candidate is an incumbent, checking past performance is usually an excellent guide to the positions that candidate will take in the future.

Recently, an article in The Indiana Citizen highlighted a Common Cause scorecard on an element of past performance of Indiana’s Congressional delegation–their votes to protect the country’s democratic institutions.

The fifth biennial scorecard compiled by Common Cause rated seven of Indiana’s nine U.S. representatives and two U.S. senators as doing little to preserve democracy during the 118^th Congress.

Common Cause, a nonpartisan watchdog, focused on 10 democracy-related bills in the U.S. Senate and 13 in the U.S. House, covering such topics as voting rights, election security, ballot access and ethics reform for the U.S. Supreme Court when rating the federal lawmakers in its 2024 Democracy Scorecard. Then the organization examined the record of every congressional member to determine whether he or she took a “pro-democracy” stance on these issues.

Reps. Frank Mrvan and Andre Carson, Democrats representing the 1^st and 7^th congressional districts, respectively, were the only members in Indiana’s congressional delegation who achieved near-perfect scores. Carson took a pro-democracy position on 12 of the 13 bills while Mrvan took a pro-democracy position on 11 of the 13 bills, according to the Common Cause scorecard.

Unsurprisingly, three Hoosier Republicans –- Sens. Mike Braun and Todd Young and Fifth District Rep. Victoria Spartz– rated a zero. Braun is currently running for Governor, and Spartz–despite indicating earlier that she didn’t intend to run again– is once again a candidate for the 5th district seat.

The other six members of Indiana’s congressional delegation – all of whom are also Republicans – received low scores, although not zeros. Reps. Rudy Yakym, of Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District, Jim Banks, of the 3rd District, James Baird, of the 4th District, Greg Pence, of the 6th District and Erin Houchin, of the 9th District took pro-democracy stances on just one of the 13 bills. Retiring Rep. Larry Bucshson, of the 8th Congressional District, earned a score of 2 out of 13.

The article quoted Aaron Dusso, chair of the Department of Political Science at IU-Indianapolis, and his reference to the 2018 book, “How Democracies Die.” That book was published in 2018 by Harvard University political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, and it was widely reviewed and discussed. It focused on measures of democratic health, and especially on four major threats to democracy– rejection of democratic rules; denial of political opponents’ legitimacy; tolerance of political violence; and willingness to curtail freedoms, particularly of the press. Since 2016, MAGA Republicans have increased their support for all four, ramping up efforts at vote suppression and gerrymandering, supporting Trump’s “big lie while making phony claims about non-citizens voting and his threats to jail political opponents, telling pollsters that violence “may be necessary” and unremittingly attacking the mainstream media.

Elected GOP officials aren’t doing the people’s work, either.

The scorecard is rating the members of the 118th Congress, which Common Cause called “one of the most dysfunctional in American history.” Through Aug. 15, 2024, just 78 standalone bills – or 0.5% of all the bills introduced in the 118th Congress – have become law, according to Common Cause. This compares to the 116th and 117th Congresses, in which 2% of the bills introduced became law and the 114th and the 115th Congresses in which 3% of the bills passed to the president’s desk.

In fact, Common Cause asserted that in its first year, the 118th Congress turned in the least-productive first year performance of any Congress in nearly a century.

Dusso pointed out that politicians typically act and vote in ways they think their constituents want. When lawmakers continue getting elected, they are justified in thinking that they are fulfilling voters’ wishes.

“It’s probably our fault that this is what’s happening,” Dusso said. “We’re willing to tolerate these types of things and we continue to elect individuals and we continue to elect a Congress that isn’t able to pass bills in any real serious way. And, that doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon.”

I know Aaron Dusso to be a brilliant scholar, but I’m hopeful that his last sentence is wrong–that this will be the year when We the People begin a long-overdue change, the year we eject incumbents who have failed to respect either the Constitution or the democratic process.

Mike Braun and Jim Banks are clearly unworthy of the promotions they seek, and the others who have failed to protect American democracy should not be returned to Congress to do more damage.

We can do better.

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Biden Administration Bragging Rights

A few days ago, I wrestled with the question that I still believe is THE question–how can anyone look at Donald J. Trump and see a person qualified to be President (or, frankly, dog-catcher)? Today, I want to focus on a different question: why has there been so little public appreciation of the incredible performance of a transformative and incredibly successful Biden Administration?

The most recent jobs report (a report Simon Rosenberg characterized as “Smoking Hot”) showed the addition of 254,000 jobs in September–far in excess of expectations. Not only that, but routine revisions from the previous two months added another 72,000 jobs. Both liberal and conservative economists agree that the American economy is currently the strongest advanced economy in the world.

That strong economic performance has allowed the administration to accomplish other important tasks.

Under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris we’ve had the longest period of low unemployment in a peacetime American economy since WWII and the best job market since the 1960s. The stock market is breaking records. GDP growth has been 3% over 3 years. We have the lowest uninsured rate in American history. The rate of formation of new businesses is at an all time high. Wage growth has been running ahead of inflation for some time now. The battle against inflation has been won. The deficit is lower. Crime is down. Drug overdoses are down. Obesity is down. The flows to the border today are lower than at the end of Trump’s Presidency. We passed the first bi-partisan gun safety bill in 30 years. Domestic oil, gas, renewable production are higher than they’ve ever been and we are more energy independent today than we’ve been in decades. The three big Biden-Harris investment bills will be creating jobs and opportunities for American workers for decades to come, while accelerating the energy transition needed to keep the planet from warming.

Read that paragraph again, and unless you have been lobotomized by Faux News and its clones, you can’t help but be impressed. Despite the constant, bizarre and increasingly frantic lies of Trump and his MAGA minions, crime is down. Inflation is way down. The deficit is lower. We are finally combatting climate change. And much more.

Unlike Trump, who is a publicity hound entirely focused on occupying center stage, and entirely uninterested in governing–or honest work of any kind– Biden approached the Presidency as a job. He was so focused on performance rather than publicity that in the third year of the administration, Politico ran an article titled “30 Things Joe Biden Did That You Might Have Missed.” Among them: expanded overtime pay guarantees; first over-the-counter birth control pills; making renewable power the nation’s #2 source of electricity; rules preventing discriminatory mortgage lending; crackdowns on junk fees and overdraft charges; and a wide variety of measures aimed at ensuring a level playing field for American business vis a vis China.

And that was before the administration engineered lower prices for several lifesaving medications–including insulin, which is capped at $35 for Medicare recipients.

American society is certainly not perfect, but these facts are so positive–especially given the chaos inherited from Trump and the pandemic–that Republicans have resorted to simply lying about them. Marco Rubio responded to the most recent jobs report by insisting that it must be “fake.” Trump and his allies lied about FEMA’s response to hurricane Helene, calling it inadequate, despite the fact it was characterized by Republican governors as excellent. And Trump has continued lying about endorsements.

Here’s the thing: As we enter the last few frenzied weeks of the Presidential campaign, it is easy to get caught up in the lies and the constant name-calling–to attend more to the horse-race and less to the candidates’ demonstrable policy and performance differences.

Most of the people who will go to the polls this year lived through a Trump administration characterized by constant turmoil and turnover, not to mention the sight of a U.S. President openly consorting with autocrats while demeaning and undermining America’s allies. For the past four years, those voters have thrived under the Biden-Harris administration. Citizens who care about policy, who base their votes on verifiable facts and experience and who care about the common good, will vote for Kamala Harris. Those who are motivated by bigotry and resentment–voters who reject reality and whose sole interest is culture war and animus–will vote for Trump and the profoundly regressive MAGA movement promised by Project 2025.

Harris is running on the premise that Americans won’t vote to go back. I hope she’s right.

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