Ouch!

The most recent Bluegrass Poll has found that Mitch McConnell is slightly less popular than President Obama among Kentuckians. (To put that in perspective, in 2012, Obama lost Kentucky by nearly 23 points. This may look dismal, but it’s not so bad when you consider that Congress overall polls as less popular than either cockroaches or colonoscopies…)

It’s been a long time since a Senate leader lost a re-election bid, but independent polls have challenger Alison Lundgren Grimes leading McConnell by 4 points. There’s a lot of time until November, and McConnell will have a lot of money, but his predicament–and his vulnerability–illustrate an increasingly common dilemma for GOP candidates.

Republican candidates have moved so far to the right in order to avoid or defeat Tea Party challengers that they have compromised their appeal even to the less extreme members of their own party. One problem is that, in the age of the Internet, it is no longer possible for either Republicans or Democrats to pander on the “down low” to their respective party bases in order to win the primary and then do a quick pivot to the center for the general election. Every email, every Facebook post and tweet, is forever available to opposition researchers and casual “googlers” alike.

Furthermore, as important as money continues to be, thanks to the Internet, communicating your opponent’s voting history, indiscreet tweets and other political miscalculations is far less expensive than it used to be.

This is a dangerous time for all incumbents. Disgust with Washington is palpable. How citizens’ anger and fatigue will play out across the political landscape is anyone’s guess. Democrats, especially, need to remember the time-honored rule: you can’t beat somebody with nobody–defeating even unpopular incumbents requires a strong candidate. (Speaking of which, Democrats in Indianapolis need a strong mayoral candidate yesterday.)

In Kentucky, Ms. Grimes appears to be that strong candidate. And the “turtle man,” as Jon Stewart refers to McConnell, is definitely unpopular and struggling.

It remains to be seen whether 2014 will be the year that citizens decide they’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore–but in Kentucky, at least, prospects for change are looking up.

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Looking for the Right Word…

I’m looking for a word. Irresponsible doesn’t quite convey what I’m after. Despicable and corrupt come closer. Bat-shit crazy is a bit too inelegant, and besides, being crazy lets people off the hook–it implies that they don’t really know what they’re doing.

Here’s what generated my search for that perfect word: Yesterday, when the House of Representatives voted to raise the debt ceiling, two Democrats and 199 Republicans voted no.

In other words, 201 Representatives favored an American default on its obligations that would probably trigger a worldwide financial meltdown, because….? Because they don’t approve of debt that the House of Representatives ran up? Because they don’t like the President? (There were 19 bipartisan, no-controversy votes to raise the ceiling when George W. Bush was President.) Because they’re pandering to people who are too stupid or uninformed to know what the debt ceiling is? Because they are too stupid or uninformed to know what it is?

Let me spell this out.

The Constitution requires that Congress make all spending decisions—the President proposes, but Congress disposes. Sometimes–okay, a lot of the time–Congress authorizes more spending than the government collects in revenue. That requires government to borrow the difference, in order to cover the deficit that Congress has already authorized.

For reasons that are not entirely clear, Congress also votes to authorize that necessary borrowing to the extent that it will exceed the previously-set debt limit, or ceiling.

To many of us, this seems a bit silly, since the debt ceiling vote comes from the same Congress that has already voted for the spending that requires the borrowing, but this practice of raising the debt ceiling has generally been uncontroversial, and for years the ceiling has been routinely raised by votes from large, bipartisan majorities. 

Routinely, that is, until the unthinkable happened, and Barack Obama became President.

Dishonest rhetoric to the contrary, failing to raise the debt ceiling would not do anything to reduce the national debt. Congress has already authorized the spending. Instead, it would be a vote for the U.S. to default on what it already owes.

Even using the threat of nonpayment of the nation’s bills as a bargaining chip sends a chilling message to world financial markets and undermines America’s reputation as a sound place to invest.

If Congress actually refused to raise the ceiling, the results would be catastrophic; such a refusal would require the United States to stop paying many of its bills—including amounts owed to senior citizens for social security, defense contractors and members of the military who defend the country, and many others. Economists warn that such a failure to pay our bills could precipitate a worldwide economic collapse.  That’s why John Boehner–who periodically visits reality– ignored the suicide contingent in his caucus, and brought a so-called “clean” bill to the House floor.

I’m still looking for the word that adequately describes the House members who voted not to raise the debt ceiling. Those who knew what they were doing are beneath contempt; those who didn’t understand the implications of their votes are intellectually unfit to hold office.

Whatever you call them, they need to be sent home.

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Cause and Effect

One of the first rules of academic research is: don’t confuse correlation with causation. In other words, just because two things are related doesn’t mean that one of them caused the other.

Of course, sometimes there is correlation and causation; one thing did cause the other. In those cases, the trick is figuring out which is cause and which is effect.

In Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, economics reporter Annie Lowery took a closer look at the conventional wisdom that marriage “lifts children and families out of poverty.” As she notes, no one disputes the fact that “where marriage is, poverty tends not to be.” There is a definite correlation between marriage and a whole host of positive outcomes for children and families.

That, however, doesn’t tell us that marriage cures poverty. Indeed, recent research suggests we’ve gotten the equation backwards. Living in poverty is a barrier to getting and staying married.  W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project, puts the issue rather starkly: “Unless we improve the fortunes of poor working people, particularly poor working men, we aren’t going to see marriage coming back.”

The research strongly suggests that the biggest problem facing impoverished people isn’t the fact that they’re single. It’s–wait for it–not enough money. And until that problem is addressed, all the millions of dollars spent on programs offering “relationship counseling” and marriage promotion might just as well be flushed down the commode.

Maybe the millions of dollars going to the various providers of “faith-based” marital advice and middle-class “values” counseling might better be spent on ameliorating poverty. Love is grand, but food comes first.

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“I Love This City!”

Last week, Jon Stewart interviewed New York’s new Mayor, Bill De Blasio.

Neither my husband nor I had actually heard De Blasio speak. We knew, in a hazy way, what his platform had been and what his stated priorities were, having followed the campaign coverage in the New York Times and elsewhere, but this was the first time we’d actually heard De Blasio himself.

He plopped his huge frame down in the “guest” chair on the Daily Show set, and responded to Stewart’s greeting. The first words out of his mouth were “I love this city!”

I was so jealous.

How long has it been since Indianapolis has had a mayor who unabashedly loved this city, and said so at every opportunity? I can tell you–it has been since Bill Hudnut. There are a lot of things politicians can fake, but it would take truly significant acting skills to convey the genuine devotion to place that was Hudnut’s signature and seemed so authentic coming from De Blasio.

Loving one’s city is no guarantee that a mayor’s policies will be wise, or his appointments capable. It’s not a substitute for political savvy or the sort of deep understanding of the nature of urban community that are the (rare) attributes of a really great mayor. That said, however, an obvious love for one’s city tells citizens a lot of important things about character and political motivation.

Too many mayors view election to City Hall as a stepping stone to higher office rather than an opportunity to make their city better. Too many seek office to feed an ego rather than serve a constituency. These motives aren’t the property of one political party, and they aren’t limited to mayors, obviously–but I would argue that they hamper mayors in ways they don’t hamper legislators.

A mayor who loves his city makes it his business to know his city. He or she is a student of urban policy, an ever-present participant in civic conversations, a visitor to distressed precincts as well as privileged enclaves, and a convener of contending interests rather than an instigator of conflict–in the immortal words of George W. Bush, “a uniter, not a divider.”

I don’t know how De Blasio will do as Mayor. For a man who is small in stature, Bloomberg–who also clearly loved New York– left very big shoes to fill. But there is something very reassuring about electing someone who so obviously cares about the city he will lead–who embraces the public rather than walling himself off from it, who invites dialogue rather than shunning it.

Yep. I’m jealous.

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Hollow Government

Media commentators are finally beginning to understand something that academics have been warning about for well over a decade: when government contracts out–“privatizes”–too aggressively, it loses critical capacity. In the memorable phrase of one researcher, it “hollows out” government’s ability to perform.

Steven Pearlstein, a respected business columnist for the Washington Post, recently wrote

Two of the biggest news events of the past year have been the leaks about top-secret snooping by the NSA and the disastrous rollout of Obamacare. But in an important way, they are both manifestations of a story that has been unfolding for decades — that of a federal government that has outsourced too much of what it does to private contractors while allowing the quality of its own workforce to atrophy.

Much of the public debate about outsourcing has focused on the management challenges involved, the undeniable opportunities for favoritism and corruption, and confusion about when constitutional limits on government action should be applied to private contractors doing government’s work. Less attention has been paid to the danger Pearlstein addresses, although it has been highlighted by several scholars: government is losing its capacity to perform, and with it, the capacity to manage the performance of others.

Recognition of the problems caused by indiscriminate contracting have been mounting. The Office of Personnel Management recently announced that final quality reviews for background investigations will be conducted by government employees — not contractors.  According to Federal News Radio,

The news comes amid an employee’s whistleblower lawsuit, also joined by the Justice Department, alleging that the government’s largest background-check contractor, USIS, had improperly signed off on hundreds of thousands of background investigations that had never been properly vetted — a practice known as “flushing” or “dumping” records. 

Although he identifies market ideologues as largely responsible for the federal government’s excessive reliance on contracting, Pearlstein also places considerable blame on the need to “work around” outdated bureaucratic rules and intransigent public unions.

Not only are there caps on the number of government workers, but there are also caps on government pay that ignore the realities of the marketplace — and that, too, has driven the outsourcing trend…..

In the end, taxpayers are not only indirectly paying the higher salaries they refuse to pay directly to government employees — they also wind up paying for the contractors’ profit and the costs of winning and managing contracts.

Pearlstein notes that federal contracting grew from about $200 billion in 2000 to about $550 billion in 2011 before falling back to $450 billion last year, and that sixty percent of that was for services. By some estimates, there are twice as many people doing government work under contract than there are salaried government workers. As I have previously pointed out, we are not making government smaller–we are just making it less visible,  less efficient and less accountable.

[L]ong before the botched rollout of Obamacare, even the Professional Services Council, the leading trade association for federal contractors, was complaining publicly that too many agencies lacked skilled workforce to manage the contracting process — in particular, contracts for complex new computer systems.

Those who want to make government small enough to drown in a bathtub are evidently getting their wish. It should remind us to be careful what we wish for.