Boffoblog

Our Budget Priorities

Peter Daou alerted me (and some other bloggers) about survey results on Americans' budget priorities from  a study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland.  You can read the report here and the raw results here.

Overall, the results should cause some concern among Republicans, especially the fiscal conservatives.  In a nutshell, respondents to the survey would prefer to cut defense, reduce the deficit, and raise spending for domestic programs like education, renewable energy and veterans.

The portion of the study I like was one where the respondents were given a fixed budget -- $1000 in tax money -- and asked to allocate it among seventeen budget areas and an eighteenth item for deficit reduction.  On the computer- assisted task, they got instant feedback for a budget allocation on a given item by showing the resulting increases or decreases in all remaining areas. This permitted them to fiddle with the allocations to arrive at their optimal hypothetical budget.  They also saw how the administration's own budget compared.

This method is superior to nearly all opinion surveys on budget priorities which essentially give respondents a free lunch.  Typically, a questionnaire asks only whether one wants to increase or decrease defense spending, increase or decrease education, etc.  In other words, one is freely given the option of saying "increase" to everything -- and then ask for a tax cut, to boot!  While that kind of budgeting might make sense to Bush's OMB, that is not how the real world works ordinarily.  Inevitably, budgets force difficult tradeoffs, especially in an era of large deficits.  Beware any survey results which do not ask respondents to make tradeoffs.

(For those wanting to delve deeper into public opinion on the budget, check out "Individuals, Institutions, and Public Preferences over Public Finance" by John Mark Hansen in the Sept. 1998 issue of the American Political Science Review.)

The PIPA survey does have some of the traditional free-lunch questions, but the budget task puts them into perspective.  Among other things, the exercise reveals that people want to reserve a much larger proportion of the budget for deficit reduction -- that is to say, any -- and to increase substantially contributions to the UN, job training and investment in energy conservation and renewables.  The biggest cuts?  Defense and supplemental spending on Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Bush budget is to the right not just of Democrats but of the average Republican response on the survey as well.  For sixteen of the eighteen areas, Republicans shifted their allocations in the same direction as Democrats relative to the Bush budget.  Though GOP respondents in general are more to the right than Democrats in all cases -- no surprise -- they are more moderate than the White House in nearly all cases.  And dare I say more sensible as well.

In this light, it is even less surprising that the GOP is having to temper its enthusiasm for further tax cuts, taking them off the table for now in order to satisfy other budget goals, as the Washington Post reported.  The White House, not least due to over-reaching on Social Security, is feeling the pressure from both inside and outside.  Another item on the second term agenda falls by the wayside.

GOP Falsehoods on the Filibuster

Jeffrey Toobin has an article in the current New Yorker on the fuss over the filibuster.  I'd like to say something more detailed about it in the next day or two, but for now just a few quick-hit responses to claims and rhetoric by the GOP:

• In keeping with the privatization -> private accounts -> personal accounts rhetorical evolution, the Newspeak version of the nuclear option is the "constitutional option."  Apparently calling it that makes it so.  But as the story shows, some GOP senators -- the moderates and the "traditionalists" -- are uncomfortable with removing the filibuster by fiat.  From here on in, one way to see where a senator stands is by listening for the label they use.  Let's start a tally: McCain and Specter call it the nuclear option, and Collins sits on the fence by using both names.  That's not even getting to the several others who expressed reservations.  Perhaps that is why, despite rumors Frist would force the Dems' hand in February, the nuclear option has stayed parked in the silo: They might not have enough votes to win a simple majority.  Wouldn't that be ironic.

• Grassley says "Filibusters are designed so that the minority can bring about compromise on legislation. You can always change the words of a bill or the dollars involved. But you can’t compromise a Presidential nomination. It’s yes or no. So filibusters on nominations are an abuse of our function under the Constitution to advise and consent."  First, the history is false.  The filibuster arose by accident, near as anyone can tell, due to an oversight in a rules rewrite early in the 19th century.  Beware anyone on the right or the left saying the filibuster was "designed" for anything in particular.  It was not.  Like most of the rules in Congress, their purpose comes from their use.  Second, one can certainly compromise on a nomination -- by putting forward a more moderate nominee.  The filibuster functions no differently for a nomination than for a bill.

• Part of the strategy behind the nuclear option, as Toobin describes, is that a federal court would be extremely unlikely to overturn a rule change adopted by the Senate.  The reason?  Article I, Section 5 which permits each chamber of Congress to decide its own procedures.  Ah, but there's the rub.  It is for that very reason that a federal court would not declare the cloture rule and the filibuster unconstitutional either, despite the argument of Hatch, Frist and friends.  It should hardly be surprising that for all the bluster raised, they have not whispered one syllable about challenging the practice in court.  They won't because they'd lose.  Thus, the claim that the filibuster is unconstitutional is false.  The nuclear option is the strategy that eats itself.

• If the point of order against a filibuster is raised on the basis that the action is dilatory, that, too, bespeaks the hollowness of the strategy.  For one, a perfectly forthright effort by the minority to engage in extended deliberation over a nominee might well be perceived by an annoyed majority as a dilatory tactic.  Yet, that is not the standard put forward.  Instead, we are meant to consider whether the filibuster of a nominee is per se dilatory.  On what basis?  Because it delays a vote?  Well, so does any debate.  Here the contrast with the last great effort in Congress to do away with dilatory tactics, the House circa 1890, is instructive.  At that time, all action ground to a halt due to the "disappearing quorum" -- members were present but refused to heed a quorum call, depriving the House the majority it needed to proceed.  The tactic did not involve any deliberation -- indeed, it involved nothing but refusing to answer -- and so could quite easily be labeled dilatory.  The filibuster is another animal entirely, because here it involves action indistinguishable from ordinary Senate business -- debate -- but for the fact that the majority lacks the votes to impose cloture in order to end it.

My Promise To You

Things you will not read about on my blog, ever:

• Martha Stewart's release from jail
• Bubba the Lobster
• The Michael Jackson trial
• "Starlet," the new reality show on the WB
• Any reality show
• Paris Hilton, with or without her Sidekick
• The "NYPD Blue" finale
• Whether the NHL will fold, be bought out, or slowly wither away
• Vin Diesel

DeLay Knows How to Pick His Friends

The Washington Post had a story today about Tom DeLay's attempt to regain the confidence of his constituents in the face of the numerous corruption and abuse of power allegations, not to mention that unfortunate little trial going on right now.   Much has been written in blogtopia about it, mostly on the real chance Dems have to make him nervous in '06.  Read Off the Kuff, the Daily DeLay, DeLayWatch, and Bull Moose.

While that is the main thrust of the story, there is another angle worth exploring as well.  As part of his effort to shore up support in his home district:

In January, DeLay shook up his team of political consultants. He signed on Sam Dawson, who was a top political aide to then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and helped devise the Republican strategy for taking over the House in 1994. Dawson will serve as his general consultant and media strategist.

Who is this Dawson fellow?  Thought you'd never ask.  The short answer is that he is a longtime GOP operative, a South Carolinian and former associate of Lee Atwater.  He has about 30 years of campaign experience, including Bush-Quayle in '92, Buddy Roemer in Louisiana, Coverdell in Georgia, and an extended stint with the NRCC in the '80s under Ed Rollins and again in the late '90s.  Lately he's had a media consulting firm, among other things doing ads for Republican House candidates.

The long answer is a bit more sordid.  See, this Dawson fellow has a history of playing as down and dirty as necessary to win a race, as an associate of Atwater and Rollins would.  In fact, the Atlanta Constitution back in the day called him "Atwater's leanest and meanest disciple."  To be called the meanest is surely saying something.  Some Republicans disagree -- after all, Dawson has worked for moderates as well as conservatives.  Still, in one failed Ohio race, he was brought in to pull a moderate candidate to the right in order to win the GOP primary.

The campaign he ran that everyone still talks about, however, was a 1978 race for a South Carolina House seat.  (If you'd like to consult the sources, the stories I drew most of this from are in Vanity Fair, Nov. 2004, and the NYT, Sept. 24, 1986.)  Carroll Campbell (the R) was going up against Max Heller, the mayor of Greenville and a Jewish refugee from Nazi-era Austria.  The Campbell campaign ran a push poll asking voters which of six characteristics best described the two candidates:

1. Honest
2. A Christian man
3. Concern for the people
4. A hard worker
5. Experienced in government
6. Jewish

Another question asked whether fifteen "personal qualities" would best describe the two candidates, including "native of South Carolina" and "Jewish immigrant."

The push poll, quite possibly the first of its kind, had its intended effect as a whisper campaign began to spread about Heller.  That, of course, was by design.  Dem Alan Baron wrote in a newsletter a few years afterward that, based on conversations with Campbell's pollster, the intent was to "determine the impact on voters of information that Heller was (1) a Jew; (2) a foreign-born Jew; and (3) a foreign-born Jew who did not believe in Jesus Christ as the savior."  Apparently #1 and #2 were OK with South Carolina voters, but #3 was not.  And so the Campbell campaign went after Heller.

Apparently the push poll was not enough, however, and notably Campbell never mentioned his opponent's religion directly.  A week before the election, Heller was up by 14 points.  Then, a third fringe candidate named Don Sprouse entered the race who did put Judaism front and center.  Heller, Sprouse said, wasn't qualified to be in Congress because "he doesn't believe in Jesus Christ."

Why would Sprouse enter the race then, and choose that particular line of attack?  After all, the push poll's results were not public knowledge at that point.  While Campbell and Atwater denied any role, using a third candidate as a stalking horse to make the dirtiest accusations was a strategy Atwater used that very same year to reelect Strom Thurmond.  The most direct evidence of a link between Sprouse and the Campbell campaign comes from a parking lot meeting between Dawson and the Campbell campaign's new best friend, a meeting Atwater disclosed to several people after the fact.

The anti-Semitic attacks and innuendo were effective, and Heller lost to Campbell by six points.  Sprouse's vote was negligible, but he raised the issue of religion so that Campbell himself wouldn't have to.

Dawson may have cleaned up his act some since then -- I won't claim that every race he's managed has been so utterly soiled by bigotry and manipulation -- but it did set a template by which later dirty campaigns were run, including Bush's campaign of innuendo against McCain in the 2000 South Carolina primary.

As I said, Tom DeLay sure knows how to pick his friends.  As though he needed any help playing dirty.

This Isn't TSP

The Washington Post -- finally! -- does a story taking apart one of Bush's privatization pitches, that his plan is modeled on the successful Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) used by millions of federal workers.

Except it's not.  Modeled on it, that is.  You'll already be familiar with some of the arguments in the story (you read it here), but I think this passage captures the spirit nicely:

For most federal employees, the TSP serves as one leg of a "three-legged stool" of retirement income; the other two are the traditional Social Security benefit and a government pension. But because many businesses no longer offer defined-benefit pensions, many employees in the private sector have only a two-legged stool -- their 401(k) plan plus Social Security.

The money that workers divert to Bush's personal accounts, plus 3 percent interest, would come out of their guaranteed Social Security benefit. So, in effect, the president would be shaving down one of the legs and hoping that a new one -- the individual account -- would grow at least enough to compensate for the loss.

"It's not really like TSP at all," said James Sauber, chairman of the Employee Thrift Advisory Council, a 15-member panel of representatives from federal labor and managerial organizations. "He's proposing to weaken one leg of the stool to fund another leg of the stool."

Another Domestic Priority Stalls

We know the trouble Bush has run into with Social Security privatization, and I just wrote about the obstacles "Clear Skies" faces.  Now time to remind you of another of his domestic priorities which shows every sign of stalling before it gets anywhere.  Yes, it's civil service reform again.

A couple weeks ago I wrote about the skepticism greeting the scheme from senators, including Republicans with responsibility for shepherding it through the process.  (Yes, Voinovich is causing trouble again.)  Now CongressDaily says Tom Davis is also putting the brakes on in the House.   His northern Virginia district has about 50,000 federal employees, making any support for the president on this issue rather uncomfortable.

If the Senate does block the proposal, then Davis is off the hook with the administration.  If by some chance it moves, then he will have to make a choice between his constituents and the White House.  My guess is Bush will be the one left wanting.  Either way, expanded civil service reform looks to be dead in the water, which is a good thing, at least in the form Bush wanted it.  At the very least, the longer Davis flirts with the idea the greater the opening for Dems to challenge him in '06.

Hmm, this whole second term agenda thing doesn't seem to be going very well for Bush, does it?

Clear Skies Hazy

Last Wednesday the LA Times published a letter to the editor from Paul Oakley, exec dir of the Coalition for Affordable and Reliable Energy, a coalition of manufacturers, coal producers and their allies that strongly supports Bush's "Clear Skies Initiative."  Putting his best face on a political problem, he said that Inhofe had postponed a markup of the bill until this coming Wednesday to find an agreement on "workable, bipartisan multi-emissions reduction legislation."

In a sense, he's right.  The reason the bill was pulled from the committee's agenda just prior to the February break was that it was deadlocked 9 to 9, with all Democrats together with Jeffords and Chafee opposed.  The opponents have shown little indication of folding, even in the face of Inhofe's intimidation tactics.  It's not that Republicans want to find a bipartisan solution, it's that they need to.  If anything, the only bipartisan coalition is the one blocking the bill.

Inhofe also faces dissent within his own ranks, CongressDaily reminds us today (subscription only).  Voinovich, who chairs the subcommittee with jurisdiction over the bill, wants to find a bipartisan compromise.  That's something for which Inhofe has shown little taste.

Fight the Spam

Perhaps you have read a blog with comments inundated with spam from online casinos.  Perhaps a favorite blog has had to shut down, temporarily or permanently, due to thousands of spam comments and referrals.  Perhaps you are a blogger wrestling with the problem every day.

I thankfully have had to do very little of that -- as far as I can tell, Typepad has effectively filtered out the spam -- but the problem affects all of us directly or indirectly.

Netaloid has done a masterful job, and a service to us all, researching not just the origin of the online casino spam, but also the tools for us to fight back.  If you are a blogger beset by such spam, go sign his online petition.  Believe it or not, we in blogtopia have some political leverage over the spammers.  Use it!

Here are the relevant links over at Netaloid:

• Part I: Spammers Bet on Casino Affiliate Cash
• Part II: Voiding an Agreement
• A Related Story: If Tiger is the Spice, Spam is the Meal
• Part III: Please Sign This Petition

One Side Is Dirtier Than the Other

I'm sure we didn't need the LA Times to tell us that the Social Security privatization debate is becoming more heated.  My real objection, however, is that the reporter does what lazy journalists do in a polarized political world -- mistake quoting both sides for objectivity.

Let's compare the evidence of mudslinging put forward.  On the one hand, there is the campaign of the swifters to label the AARP as anti-troops and pro-gay.  On the other hand, there are ads by Campaign for America's Future run in the hometown papers of pro-privatization Rep. Jim McCrery saying he is not working in the interests of his constituents.  On the one hand, the RNC calls CAF a "liberal front group" from "the Michael Moore wing."  On the other hand, the DCCC has posted quotes from prominent Republicans showing them contradict themselves about Social Security privatization.

Notice any difference?  The strategy of the right is to attack with innuendo at best tenuously connected with the substance of the issue, not to mention tenuously connected with the truth, and to attack not the decision-makers themselves but those supporting the decision-makers.  The strategy of the left, on the other hand, is to engage on the issue at hand by documenting the record of leading Republican policymakers.  To say that the two are playing the same game, as the Times reporter implies, disguises the fundamentally dishonest and dishonorable tactics the right employs.

McCrery's response to the charges?

"I get contributions from all kinds of interests, and so does almost every other member of Congress," McCrery said. "To impugn the motives of a member of Congress based on his campaign contributions is not appropriate and has no standing in the arena of political debate."

That is patently false.  He and the rest do not get contributions "from all kinds of interests."  Interests donate money to those who will support their issues, and as such the question is absolutely appropriate and does have standing in political debate.  Perhaps he simply would prefer not to reflect on his sources of financial support.

The article points out, probably correctly, that CAF cannot identify a specific favor McCrery did due to a contribution.  That obsession over a smoking gun misses the point, however; as any prosecutor will tell you, one does not need a smoking gun to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

It may be a topic to explore in greater detail some other day, but for now a brief sketch of the matter of campaign contributions.  There has been much research over the past couple of decades on the link between campaign contributions and policymaking.  For the most part, the evidence comes down to little more than a correlation between the two.  As any first-year stats student will tell you, correlation is not causation, and evidence of direct causation -- a contribution or a pattern of contributions leading to a specific policy -- has proved elusive.  Yes, there are a few evocative anecdotal stories, but little systematic evidence to support the broad claims of corruption.

The fundamental reason is that contributions tend to go to candidates who already support the group's point of view.  That is to say, rather than buying a vote they are a way to get a supporter of one's issue into office.  While one can still make an equity claim that this advantages those interests with the money to spend, it is a far cry from the corruption claim.

There is another element of the conventional story which is also vastly oversimplified:  Campaign contributions don't buy votes on bills.  If that were the case, then we would expect that most contributions would go to the swing voters in Congress, the moderates who would tip the balance on a roll call vote from one side to the other.  In fact, that is not the case.  A disproportionate share of contributions go to strong supporters, not to the weak supporters and undecideds.  Again, if it's about corruption and vote buying, donating to strong supporters seems a waste of money.

But these PACs and other big donors don't waste their money.  What do they get in return?  Certainly there ought to be some payoff for them in Congress -- and therefore some reason for us to be concerned -- but what is it?  A pattern we see generally, illustrated by McCrery, is that most contributions go to members of the committees with jurisdiction over an issue, and especially the chairs.  Our first tip-off, then, is that whatever influence that is bought is upstream, long before bills get to the floor.

Rick Hall at the University of Michigan has written that most of the important work of Congress is done by the select few who choose to participate in committee and subcommittee deliberations.  On a given issue, only some members of the committee or subcommittee will be involved in writing the bill and its amendments, negotiating deals, working with interest groups, and shepherding it to the floor.  Hall and a coauthor found that while campaign contributions do not buy votes, they do buy participation.  That is to say, a PAC donor is able to mobilize a supporter to become more active on the issue in committee.

Which brings us back to McCrery.  The reason the question of campaign contributions absolutely is a valid subject of debate is that he is chair of the Ways and Means subcommittee which will get the first crack at the privatization bill.  He is also someone, as Josh Marshall has documented on many an occasion, who has expressed only lukewarm support for the president's proposal at times.  What does the money do?  It prompts a conservative already sympathetic to the "ownership society" to set aside his concerns and sell the president's plan.  And lately that's just what he's done.

So while the right wages a war with innuendo, aspersions and misdirection, the left has engaged the core of the debate directly.  For once, let's hope the facts win out.

Finding One's Constituency

One of the obstacles the president has found in trying to sell his Social Security privatization is that a primary target group in the propaganda wars is voters under thirty, who voted strongly for Kerry and subsequently have proven resistant to Bush's sales pitch.

Well, if legal voters won't buy what you're selling, I suppose the next step is to turn to the grade school set.  That's exactly what they've done.  According to the New York Times, a nine-year-old presidential trivia expert is now on board and will spend his spring break barnstorming with Progress for America.  (That's the same group Josh Marshall reports has also bought a Social Security Trustee to help sell the scheme.)

I have no doubt that he is a very bright boy.  Nevertheless, this just reeks of exploitation.

Inhofe the Intimidator

As Kos pointed out, the LA Times reports that James "outraged about the outrage" Inhofe has adopted the well-worn wingnut tactic of intimidating opponents when the facts are inconvenient.  In this case, as chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, he demanded that a witness who testified in opposition to the president's "Clear Skies Initiative" turn over financial records.

Beyond the passage Kos quotes, there are a few things to note about this story.  First, the witness in question was not some ecoterrorist but an Ohio state environmental regulator speaking on behalf of two organizations of state and local officials.  Not only that, but he voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004.  Second, while the request for financial records is invasive and offensive, it might be marginally less so if it were the practice of the committee to ask all witnesses for the same.  As you might well imagine, the witness was singled out for such treatment.

Dems on the committee are understandably afraid to speak out since they are still in the midst of negotiations over the bill.  Waxman, with nothing to lose on the House side, in the meantime will take up their cause.  And for the record, a representative of the groups says they do not accept outside financial support of the sort Inhofe is fishing to find.

But there is another dimension to the story which might be amusing if it weren't so disturbing.  Recall that six weeks ago Inhofe gave a speech not only praising Michael Crichton's new anti-global warming novel but saying it ought to be required reading for all senators, as I blogged at the time.  No, not for a special edition of Oprah's book club, but because this novel -- a novel! -- is meant to tell us something real about the dark underbelly of scientific research into climate change and the wild-eyed tree huggers who support it.

As further evidence that Inhofe cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality, he is treating this Republican state bureaucrat as though he were an ecoterrorist out of Crichton's novel, simply because he opposed the president's proposal.  As I said, it would be amusing if it weren't so disturbing.