Posts Tagged ‘
White House ’
Friday, May 20th, 2011
Will Marshall
Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Will Marshall
President Obama made the cardinal mistake yesterday of stepping on his own message. His “winds of change” speech was supposed to formalize an historic shift in U.S. policy toward the Middle East. Instead, Obama managed to put the spotlight on the one thing in the region that seems impervious to change: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Grabbing the headlines were a set of new principles Obama introduced late in his speech for reframing stalled peace negotiations. His call for Israel to withdraw to its pre-1967 borders drew a swift rebuke from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom Obama meets today at the White House. Merits aside, the controversy over this oddly-timed change in U.S. policy has overshadowed the new doctrine the president meant to announce to the world: America henceforth will back reform and democracy in the region.
Conservatives predictably have hailed this as no change at all, merely a restatement of George W. Bush’s “freedom agenda” for the Middle East. But there’s a crucial difference: the impetus for economic and political change in the region is now coming from the ground up – from its long-suffering people, not from Washington. In fact, by defusing tensions between the United States and the Muslim world, Obama probably made it easier for indigenous movements seeking freedom and democracy to arise in the region.
The Arab revolt is widely seen as legitimate because it is not, in fact, an American project. Obama made clear in his speech that Washington is catching up to events in the Middle East, not leading them.
It’s odd that no one in the White House thought to apply the same lesson to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. If the parties to the conflict aren’t themselves motivated to make peace, no amount of outside pressure from the United States, nor any set of innovative “parameters” for negotiations imported from Washington will break the deadlock.
Unfortunately, the flap over Obama’s apparent revision of long-standing U.S. policy toward the conflict reinforces the myth – fostered by Arab dictators and the many U.S. Middle East experts who have invested their careers in peace processing – that Israeli occupation of Arab lands is the region’s core “problem.” Yet the region’s long-suffering people are writing a new narrative that focuses not on Israel, but on the corrupt and despotic rulers who have smothered their aspirations for individual dignity, economic opportunity, and self-determination.
In aligning U.S. policy with these aspirations, Obama ended the bankrupt policy of propping up friendly autocrats. He also restored the missing “d” in his strategic trinity of defense, diplomacy and development – democracy.
The president reaffirmed his view that Muammar Qaddafi must go, and he had suitably harsh words for Iran’s clerical dictatorship, which is intensifying its repression to keep an increasingly restive society under wraps. For consistency’s sake, Obama insisted that pro-U.S. rulers in Yemen and Bahrain share power and respect minority rights, respectively. These, however, are easy cases – too easy. Obama said not a word about the difficult problem of managing U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia, which for good reason feels deeply threatened by the uprisings sweeping the region.
Obama also struck a jarringly false note in urging Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad to “lead the transition, or get out of the way.” This formulation reflects the weirdly persistent illusion among U.S. policy makers that Assad, who inherited his dictatorship, can somehow be transformed into an agent of democratic reform. In many ways, Assad is worse than his father. He turned Syria into a prime transit point for suicide terrorists en route to kill Americans and civilians in Iraq; he has subverted democracy in Lebanon and funneled arms to Hezbollah and Hamas; and, he has made Syria a virtual satrap of Iran. The administration has announced sanctions on Assad and other Syrian leaders responsible for the bloody crack-down on demonstrators, but America’s interests clearly lie with regime change in Damascus.
Despite such qualms, Obama’s speech at last has aligned America’s values with its long-run interests in the political and economic modernization of the wider Middle East. It’s a shame, though, that this strategic pivot has been obscured by a perplexing and ill-timed attempt to resuscitate Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.
Tags: Bahrain, Bashar al-Assad, Benjamin Netanyahu, George W. Bush, Hamas, Hezbollah, Israel, Middle East, Mummar Qaddafi, Palestine, President Obama, Saudi Arabia, Syria, White House, Yemen
Posted in
A Progressive Security Strategy, Daily Fix |
1 Comment »
Friday, February 25th, 2011
Lee Drutman
Lee Drutman is a senior fellow and the managing editor for the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Lee Drutman
If you search through the White House visitor logs, you can find me. In fact, I’ve been to the Obama White House twice (though I seem to have two records for the same visit). Let me explain: A good friend of mine worked at CEQ for a while. Once, she took some friends on a tour of the White House. Once, we went to see the Christmastime decorations at the East Wing. However, if I had visited this friend at her office, which was not the White House but instead at Jackson Place, there’d be no trace of me in the White House visitor logs.
Yesterday, Politico ran a story noting this fact and insinuating that lobbying meetings were intentionally being moved to Jackson Place, or to the nearby Caribou Coffee on 17th Street, just so that they wouldn’t show up in the visitor logs. Many bloggers, especially those on the right have jumped all over Obama for this supposed hypocrisy. The ever-clever Michelle Malkin triumphantly rhymed: “Obama lied, transparency died.” Common Cause asked Obama to disclose every meeting regardless of where it occurs.
Now, I really don’t know if the Administration moved meetings off-campus so that they didn’t show up in the visitor logs. It seems to me like a silly thing to do. I’m trying to imagine what visitor would be so terrible that his or her presence in the visitor logs would be an instant scandal. I can’t. Based on what I know about the scarcity of space in the White House, I’m willing to buy the rationale that meetings were held elsewhere just because that’s where space could be found.
But I can see why people in the White House might be unnecessarily sensitive about who they are meeting with. The problem is that from Day One, when the Administration placed a ban on registered lobbyists serving in the White House, it tried to place itself somehow above and beyond the influence of lobbyists.
But as anybody who has spent any time in Washington knows, lobbyists are part of the policymaking fabric in this town, like it or not. To try to govern without at least getting their input and occasional buy-in is simply impossible. There are reasons to be concerned about their influence and power, but simply demonizing them as to-be-avoided-at-all-costs is not helpful, and almost certainly counter-productive.
In many ways, Obama has held himself to a standard that was far beyond reach. Of course he wasn’t going to rid Washington of special interests. But that’s politics. Everybody comes to Washington to change the way business is done. Nobody is ever powerful/foolhardy enough to do so.
One of the reasons that Obama was able to make White House visitor logs public is because the Secret Service keeps close track of everyone going in and out of the White House. When I’ve visited, somebody had to see my ID and check me in. What I can glean from yesterday’s press conference transcript is that this puts me into something called the “the WAVES system.” And when you’ve got an electronic database, it’s easy to make it public. And there’s no reason not to do so.
Maybe meeting disclosure should extend to Jackson Place. Maybe it should extend to Caribou Coffee. Should it extend to every phone call? Every kid’s soccer game an administration staffer attends where lobbyists might have kids playing as well? Where do you draw the line? Washington is in many respects one big social network. And lobbyists, the majority of whom once worked in government, are part of that network.
I suppose what Obama should have said from the beginning was that he was doing the best he can. He was going to make White House visitor logs public because the White House belongs to everyone, and everyone should know who is visiting. But that he also recognized that the White House is not a compound on a hill, and that disclosing visitor logs is not going to capture all the conversations he or anyone on his staff ever has with an interested party. Moreover, he could have also said that he valued the inputs of everyone, be they lobbyists or not. And that he and his staff had enough integrity, thank you very much, to cut through the self-serving BS of lobbyists.
But instead, Obama succumbed to the familiar politics of purity and moralizing when it came to lobbyists. This moment of gotcha journalism, I suppose is his comeuppance. When you hold yourself to unrealistic standards, it’s bound to come sooner or later.
Tags: Gotcha journalism, lobbying, Obama, White House
Posted in
Daily Fix, Fixing Our Broken Politics |
1 Comment »
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010
Mark Reutter
PPI Fellow Mark Reutter is the former editor of
Railroad History and author of
Making Steel: Sparrows Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might (2005, rev. ed.).
by Mark Reutter
Talk about a blessing in disguise. Just as the Obama administration’s high-speed rail program was running out of congressionally-appropriated cash, Governor-elects Scott Walker of Wisconsin and John Kasich of Ohio have come chugging to the rescue.
By vowing to kill planned passenger train lines in their states, the newly elected Midwest Republicans have potentially freed $1.2 billion in federal rail money that can be used to build “true” high-speed routes elsewhere. The windfall represents more than the $1 billion that the White House has requested from Congress in next year’s budget. It gives the administration breathing space to keep the program going even if the Republican-led House blocks rail appropriations in 2011.
Since the Wisconsin and Ohio grants are of secondary importance to the national goal of getting a 150-mph-plus rail line up and running, the governors’ anti-train stance amounts to an unintended gift to the Obama administration
To be sure, benefiting high-speed rail was not the intent of Walker and Kasich. Both politicians have a history of hostility to public transit. Walker has opposed light rail, commuter rail and other transit initiatives in his current job as Milwaukee County Executive. Kasich, a former Ohio Congressman turned Fox News host, likes to say that the only kind of train he approves of is a freight train.
Both have called on Washington to divert the rail money to state highway projects. Ray LaHood, U.S. secretary of transportation, said this isn’t permitted under the law. LaHood told a rail conference last week that he plans to reallocate the money to other states and will bill Wisconsin and Ohio for federal funds already spent on the suspended rail lines.
Poor Choices for Rail Aid
The $810 million in Wisconsin money was to extend Amtrak’s existing Milwaukee-Chicago Hiawatha line to Madison, with a top speed of 79 mph in 2013, rising to 110 mph in 2015; Ohio’s $400 million was to build a Cleveland- Columbus-Cincinnati route operating at 79 mph maximum speeds over existing freight tracks. It received a $400 million grant.
The Obama administration funded these projects largely because they were “shovel ready” (a key criteria of the stimulus act that provided $8 billion in rail aid to states) and because they represented “regional balance” for the Midwest that Congressmen from both parties demand when money is allocated for highways.
As we have argued, spreading out federal funds to too many marginal projects is a mistake operationally and politically. Operationally, intercity passenger rail will succeed only if it provides an obvious and understandable margin of superiority over highway trip times. Politically, moderate-speed lines advertised as high-speed (or as “emerging high speed,” in Obama administration nomenclature) confuses the public and opens up the federal initiative to legitimate criticism.
Studies indicate that somewhat-faster service will not create the transformational transportation that will get Americans out of their cars and jumpstart regional economies. This was underscored by a recent study of high-speed rail compared to conventional rail commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
Because the up-front costs of truly modern train lines are high, the administration needs to concentrate on finishing one or two routes with state-of-the-art equipment to prove that fast rail is an efficient and even profitable venture once construction is completed.
Florida Should be Centerpiece
The administration now has the opportunity to fund true high-speed rail by reallocating the Midwest money. It can fully fund the high-speed Tampa-Orlando line in Florida as well as help get a segment of California’s proposed 200-mph railway between San Francisco and Los Angeles into revenue service. There may even be money left over to accelerate “shovel-ready” projects in busy rail corridors with proven ridership in Illinois and Connecticut.
Newly elected California governor Jerry Brown (D) is a strong supporter of his state’s rail program – as is outgoing Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Both Illinois incumbent governor Pat Quinn (D) and Connecticut governor-elect Dan Malloy (D) are also pro-train.
Florida’s Republican governor-elect, Rick Scott, initially opposed the Tampa-Orlando line (the current governor, Charlie Crist, supports the project). But Scott has recently relaxed his rhetoric and says he is in favor of high-speed rail so long as Florida taxpayers don’t pay for it.
What reportedly swayed Scott was $800 million in fresh federal funds for the project last month. Florida now has $2.05 billion to complete the $2.6 billion line, including the $1.25 billion in federal funds it received in January.
Public-Private Partnerships
By reallocating a portion of the Wisconsin-Ohio funds, the $550 million gap could be closed. Or better yet, Washington could encourage private companies to invest in the Florida line by using federal funds as an incentive. Already Siemens, the high-speed locomotive maker, has announced interest in bidding on the Florida project if government shares a portion of the operational risk.
Such a public-private partnership would appear to satisfy Scott’s objections and could go a long way to appease Rep. John Mica (R – Fla.), a fan of public-private rail partnerships who is expected to become chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in January.
All of this could leave Wisconsin’s and Ohio’s new chief executives on the wrong side of the tracks. Or as a transportation official told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last week, “Expanding passenger rail is a national priority. Just because Wisconsin says no doesn’t mean it’s going away.”
Tags: 110 mph, 200-mph, 79 mph, Amtrak, Arnold Schwarzenegger, California, Charlie Crist, Cleveland- Columbus-Cincinnati, Connecticut, Dan Malloy, Florida, Fox News, high-speed rail, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, HSR, Illinois, Jerry Brown, John Kasich, John Mica, Los Angeles, Madison, Midwest republicans, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Milwaukee-Chicago Hiawatha, Obaa administration, Ohio, Pat Quinn, Public Transit, public-private partnerships, Rail Aid, Ray LaHood, regional balance, Republican Governors, Rick Scott, San Francisco, Scott Walker, shovel ready, Tampa-Orlando, Transportation, U.S. Conference of Mayors, U.S. Secretary of Transportation, White House, Wisconsin
Posted in
A New Framework for Growth and Equity, Daily Fix, Issues |
3 Comments »
Friday, November 19th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
“High risk” seems to be the consensus term for President Obama’s decision to push for ratification of the new START Treaty during this year’s lame-duck session. That’s understandable; hardly any Republicans senators are on board, and Republican senators-elect are complaining that no treaty votes should be taken until they have been sworn in (of course, they are complaining about the very existence of a lame-duck session, so that’s not a terribly distinctive argument). The administration needs 67 votes for ratification, and once Mark Kirk obtains his early swearing-in just after Thanksgiving, there will only be 58 Democratic senators.
But fewer voices are asking if Republican obstruction of START carries any political risks. There is virtually no evidence that foreign policy had a significant partisan impact on the midterm elections, even amongst the Republican-tilted November 2 electorate; no one can credibly claim any conservative mandate on arms control or other defense policy controversies. The President has consistently obtained some of his strongest approval ratings on foreign policy and defense issues. He has a glittering array of distinguished Republican backers for START representing past GOP administrations. And the argument being made for delay on START by the most visible GOP senators—the treaty needs to be held hostage to higher defense spending (for nuclear modernization)–strikes a discordant note with GOP and nonpartisan demands for immediate reductions in federal spending, not to mention the desire for bipartisanship wherever possible.
Moreover, it’s not clear that Republicans have their own internal act together on defense and foreign policy; there are a host of potential rifts, some left over from the Bush administration, some dating back to the Cold War. Perhaps the threat to delay START ratification is more of a bluff, and if the administration doesn’t call it, progress on any other legislation during the lame duck session could prove impossible. The politics of this fight will now become clearer now that the White House has refused to back down.
The big overriding question, of course, is whether bipartisan cooperation will prove possible on any significant issue, with Republicans making full extension of Bush tax cuts and a drive to repeal health reform their top priorities. There’s some interesting new political science data on the extent to which the midterms increased polarization in Congress (or at least in the House). According to Adam Bonica, who is using the standard measurement for the ideological positioning of Members of Congress:
77 percent of freshmen Republicans in the 112th Congress will locate to the right of the party median from the 111th. In other words, nearly 8 in 10 incoming House Republicans would have been on the right wing of the party in the 111th Congress.
The problem for Republicans is that their “conservatism” does not necessarily dictate clear positions on many defense policy issues, or on the larger conflict between deficit reduction and other policy goals. But ideology by no means disposes the GOP to cooperate with Democrats, and particularly with the President whose defeat in 2010 is, according to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, their paramount goal.
On the public opinion front, pollsters are beginning to shift from retrospective looks at 2010 voters towards efforts to measure the likely 2012 electorate, which will be much larger, younger, less white, and less conservative. The shift in perspective can sometimes be dramatic. Public Policy Polling caused a stir by releasing a large batch of state polls of likely 2010 voters showing President Obama trailing a “generic Republican” in all of them, some by big margins. Then PPP released a poll of Virginians who voted in any of the last three elections, and measured Obama against named potential GOP opponents, and the picture was very different: Obama not only had a positive (50/45) job approval rating in the Old Dominion, but led (or in the case of Mitt Romney, was tied with) all the Republicans who might run against him. And this was in a state where on November 2 Republicans knocked off three Democratic House members and nearly beat a fourth. It’s all about who gets asked, and how the questions are framed.
Tags: 112th Congress, Adam Bonica, Bush tax cuts, Cold War, defense issues, defense policy controversies, Democratic Senators, Foreign policy, Generic republican, high-risk, Homeland security, Lame Duck, Mark Kirk, midterm elections, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, PPP, President Obama, Public opinion, Public Policy Polling, republicans, START, Virginians, White House
Posted in
Daily Fix, Issues, Political Memo |
No Comments »
Monday, November 15th, 2010
Scott Thomasson
Scott Thomasson is the economic and domestic policy director for the Progressive Policy Institute.
Follow @st_ppi
by Scott Thomasson
The president will meet with leaders from both parties on Thursday to discuss Congress’s unfinished business for the lame-duck session, and the only thing that is clear going into that meeting is that item number one on the agenda (for right or wrong) will be the Bush tax cuts. Speculation is running high this week that the White House is considering a compromise approach that would extend all of the Bush tax cuts temporarily, most likely for two years. This comes in place of the previous round of speculation that the president’s strategy was focused on “decoupling” the tax breaks, meaning he would push for Congress to vote separately to permanently extend lower tax rates for all households making less than $250,000 per year, while allowing another vote on a temporary extension of the cuts for the two percent of taxpayers earning more than that.
As both sides prepare to dig in their heels for the coming tax fight, the possibility of policy alternatives has given way to a pure tug-of-war exercise, in which compromise is limited to questions of how long to extend the cuts or whether to draw the line at $1 million rather than $250,000. The rare occurrence of a fresh approach is too quickly ignored, such as Senator Mark Warner’s op-ed last week calling for the high-income tax cuts to be redirected as targeted tax incentives for business to boost investment and jobs.
Warner’s proposal would likely be a far more effective way to put lost tax revenues into the most productive hands for lifting our economy, but it’s probably not on the table.
Both parties appear hell-bent on confining this battle to the provisions of the original Bush tax cuts, with the winner to be determined by which provisions do or do not get extended. It’s an unfortunate corner we have painted ourselves into, but there are still important policy issues within this narrow debate that deserve greater attention and vigilance.
In a new memo released today, PPI Senior Fellow Michael Mandel acknowledges that the current tax debate has totally missed the most important big-picture questions about the need to modernize our outdated tax code for what he calls the “supply-chain world” of the 21st-century global economy. However, Mandel points out specific elements of the Bush tax cuts that could actually help move us closer to the type of tax code we need for today’s economy: namely, the lower rates on dividend income and capital gains rates.
Mandel explains that keeping rates low on income from capital is critical for encouraging investment in critical innovative industries over the long-term, and that raising these rates right now would be a particularly bad idea, because our economy is still languishing in what he calls a “business investment drought.” Compared to the data on consumer demand, government spending, and even the collapse in housing, Mandel concludes that the real hole in the economy is nonresidential investment, which has plummeted even more sharply than housing. So while the tax debate has so far focused on the economic impact marginal tax rates would have on consumer spending, Mandel makes the case that we should be looking at the impact that upcoming tax votes will have on investment:
It doesn’t make sense to raise the tax rate on corporate dividends and capital gains in the middle of a U.S. investment drought. That’s true, whether you believe in Keynesian economics, supply-side economics or anything in between.
Taxing capital at too high a rate impairs the environment for innovation, especially in this world of permeable borders and mobile money. In particular, raising the tax rates on dividends is likely to hurt innovative industries such as telecommunications and pharmaceuticals, which tend to pay out dividends at a higher level than other industries.
I have raised similar issues about this potential problem of dividend rates before (mainly here, but also here), but Mandel’s analysis of investment brings the question into much sharper relief. Unfortunately, the positions of the White House and Congress have been much less clear in this issue. This year’s tax debate has been an exercise in gamesmanship more than a battle of ideas, so both the president and Democratic leaders have remained a little ambiguous about their proposals for these rates, largely because they don’t fit well with the line-drawing fight over whether the wealthiest Americans should have any of their tax cuts extended.
President Obama has said he supports keeping rates on dividends capped at 20 percent, in line with what the rate will be for capital gains income (both are currently taxed at 15 percent, but the dividend rate is scheduled to more than double in 2011 to 39 percent for taxpayers receiving the bulk of these payments). Secretary Geithner has said the same. Both men stopped short of saying outright that the 20 percent rate would apply to all taxpayers, even those making above $250,000, even though the president’s budget for 2011 spells it out explicitly. The 20 percent rate has also been endorsed by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, who called it “good policy” to keep the rates in line with capital gains rates:
Changing dividends to 20 percent as opposed to ordinary income rates and keeping it the same as capital gains, I think, is good policy. I’m going for policy. Twenty percent on dividends and capital gains is the right policy.
Senator Baucus and President Obama both deserve enormous credit for “decoupling” good policy from the political gamesmanship over the Bush tax cuts, and Baucus should continue to advocate for the lower dividend rate to be included in whatever compromise proposals get thrown around in the coming days and weeks. As Mandel writes in today’s memo, “the best we can hope for may be small steps in the right direction” from this Congress toward a smarter tax code that encourages sustainable growth and innovation. Hopefully Obama and Baucus can avoid taking a step backward on this one.
Tags: budget for 2011, Bush tax cuts, Capital, compromises, decoupling the tax breaks, dividend rates, Geithner, innovative industries, lame-duck session, Mark Warner, Max Baucus, Michael Mandel, nonresidential investment, pharmaceuticals, PPI, President Obama, Senate Finance Committee, supply-chain world, tax incentives, Taxes, telecommunications, U.S. investment drought, White House
Posted in
A New Framework for Growth and Equity, Daily Fix, Issues |
1 Comment »
Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
So Election Day 2010 has finally arrived, after what may have seemed to progressives like the longest midterm election cycle ever, dominated as it was (certainly in media coverage) by raging Tea Partiers determined to take America back to the prelapsarian paradise that was ruined by the New Deal.
Election Day itself isn’t quite what it used to be, thanks to the steady rise of early voting, especially in the West. Michael McDonald of George Washington University estimates that nearly 29 percent of all ballots will have been cast early (in person or by mail), with particularly high rates in all-mail-ballot Washington and Oregon, but also in Colorado, Arizona and California.
Election Night won’t necessarily end tonight, either, since both Washington and Alaska—both of which have potentially crucial Senate races—allow mail ballots postmarked by today to be received and counted later—sometimes much later. An additional issue is Lisa Murkowski’s viable write-in candidacy for the Senate in Alaska, since write-in votes are usually counted much later, and challenges to individual ballots are certain if it matters.
Since turnout is invariably important in midterm elections, it’s worth noting that the weather today is unusually good in most of the country, with the exception of heavy rain predicted in the lower Mississippi River Valley and parts of the Gulf Coast of Florida.
I’ve written a pretty elaborate Election Night Guide for The New Republic, which you can find here. It begins with the restive period before polls close, and concludes with what late-night insomniacs can expect to see and hear. But here’s a brief overview:
- Ignore just about everything you hear during the day that purports to tell you what is happening. The days of leaked “early exits” that were exchanged (and often distorted) ended with the new security measures enacted in 2008. Now media outlets won’t get data from the exit poll consortium (which will cover statewide races only in 26 states) until 5:00 EDT, and won’t make any calls based on this data until the relevant polls are closed. You may also hear or read anecdotal assessments of turnout, usually from local media or state election officials; they often turn out to be wrong. Finally, given the Tea Party Movement’s paranoia about “voter fraud” (which has not, in reality, been a significant problem since the 1960s), there will undoubtedly be reports during the day of alleged pro-Democratic chicanery in heavily minority areas. Conservative media will fan the flames, in part to counter or cloak the often very-real incidents of voter intimidation or polling-place chaos engineered by local GOP operatives in these same locales. Be forewarned.
- At roughly 5:30-5:45 EDT, turn on your television and watch as the networks begin carefully releasing exit poll “findings” that don’t related to specific contests; they are sometimes quite revealing, and the official network analysts often drop broad hints in reporting them. One obvious number to pay attention to is the president’s job approval/disapproval ratio; if it’s negative by more than a few points, that’s not good news for Democrats. Another key set of numbers involve the demographic breakdown of the electorate. Democrats hope that the percentage of voters over age 50 does not exceed 60 percent, and non-Hispanic whites aren’t over 80 percent. If partisan-ideological self-identification numbers are released, note carefully whether independent “leaners” are assigned to each party. If the percentage of conservatives significantly exceeds the percentage of moderates, that, too, is a bad sign for Democrats.
- The first poll closings are at 6:00 EDT in the Eastern Time Zone portions of Indiana and Kentucky, where there’s a pretty good assortment of bellwether House races. Even if there seems to be a clear trend (e.g., Baron Hill is winning, or Ben Chandler is losing), be aware that regional trends don’t always hold sway elsewhere. The first inkling we will have about a highly competitive Senate race is at 7:30 EDT, when West Virginia closes its polls.
- If you decide to watch the whole show on the tube, keep in mind that the networks are going to spend a lot of airtime reporting the results of non-competitive races (some of which, like the Senate races in Kentucky and Delaware, involve colorful personalities on which they probably have a lot of footage in the can), and letting their highly paid pundits and “guest commentators” have their say. This will be particularly true at 8:00 EDT, when nineteen states close their polls. If you want to keep up with what’s happening in real time, go online, and consult a cheat-sheet of key races (if you don’t like mine, which I mentioned above, there are many others available, including Nate Silver’s very precise hour-by-hour analysis of House races). Avoiding the tube will also enable you to postpone listening to massive quantities of spin until tomorrow.
- Given the natural horse-race obsessions of the chattering classes, there will be a major emphasis in coverage on who “won” or “lost,” and in that connection, context is everything. The conventional wisdom is that Republicans will narrowly win the House while Democrats narrowly hold the Senate. But expectations are being distorted by the unusually broad range of final generic congressional ballot findings by major polling outlets, which has enabled spinmeisters in both parties to make a case that Republican gains will be larger or smaller than originally anticipated. Keep in mind as well that raw Republican gains must be assessed in light of the large majorities Democrats currently hold in Congress (known as the “over-exposure” phenomenon); the near-universal history of the party controlling the White House losing seats in the first midterm after a new administration takes office (the only recent exception being the post-9/11 midterm of 2002); and the normal midterm turnout patterns that create an older and whiter electorate. There will be plenty of time for analysis later, so take claims made tonight with a large grain of salt.
Happy (or as the case may be, unhappy) election watching. This campaign cost a total of $4 billion, so let’s hope tonight is at least as entertaining as the alternative cable offerings.
photo credit: dailyinvention
Tags: 2010 midterm election, Alaska, Arizona, Barin Hill, Ben Chandler, California, Campaigns and elections, Colorado, Congress, conservatives, Deleware, demographic breakdown of the electorate, early exits, Election Day, Election Night, exit polls, George Washington University, Gulf Coast of Florida, independent leaners, Inidiana, Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski, Michael McDonald, midterm election cycle, Missisippi River Valley, moderates, Nate Silver, New Deal, non-Hispanic whites, older electorate, Oregon, over-exposure phenomenon, partisan-ideological self-identification, prelapsarian paradise, progressives, Senate race, Senate races, Tea Partiers, Tea Party Movement, The New Republic, Virginia, voter fraud, Washington, White House, whiter electorate
Posted in
Daily Fix, Political Memo |
1 Comment »
Tuesday, October 26th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
Virtually every election cycle produces some sort of “lessons learned” debate in both major parties. Big victories invariably generate a scramble for credit among factions and leaders. Big defeats often lead to “struggles for the soul” of this or that party. Such struggles typically reflect old battles and grievances as much as fresh evidence of public opinion or the success or failure of particular strategies and tactics. And that’s why they sometimes begin well before voters actually weigh in.
The first major trumpet blast on the Democratic side was by The Nation’s Ari Berman, who penned a New York Times op-ed with the unsubtle title: “Boot the Blue Dogs.” In fairness to Berman, the Times’ word limits forced him into a CliffsNotes version of his argument, which he has elucidated at greater length in an entire book. But his essay does cover a lot of ground heavily occupied by those on the Left who believe that the willingness of the Obama administration and the Democratic congressional leadership to tolerate moderate-to-conservative Democrats has doomed the party politically and substantively:
With President Obama in office, some notable beneficiaries of the Democrats’ 50-state strategy have been antagonizing the party from within — causing legislative stalemate in Congress, especially in the Senate, and casting doubt on the long-term viability of a Democratic majority….
A smaller majority, minus the intraparty feuding, could benefit Democrats in two ways: first, it could enable them to devise cleaner pieces of legislation, without blatantly trading pork for votes as they did with the deals that helped sour the public on the health care bill. (As a corollary, the narrative of “Democratic infighting” would also diminish.)
Second, in the Senate, having a majority of 52 rather than 59 or 60 would force Democrats to confront the Republicans’ incessant misuse of the filibuster to require that any piece of legislation garner a minimum of 60 votes to become law.
The obvious response to Berman’s argument is that Democrats (particularly in the Senate) have been perfectly free throughout the last two years to pursue this small-majority strategy, but chose not to for one reason or another (often because some left-leaning Democratic senators opposed measures to reduce the power of the filibuster, which they have deployed during periods of Republican ascendancy).
Perhaps “booting” the Blue Dogs will make the caucus more collegial, but it won’t increase the number of progressive House or Senate members. So what’s the harm of having Blue Dog members who will help maintain the majority, and on many occasions, will vote with the caucus as well? As for the idea that a more ideologically consistent caucus will be able to draft “cleaner” legislation, what difference does that make if you don’t have the votes to enact it?
An additional argument that is often heard (but that Berman does not include in his Times piece) is that the power of the Democratic Party’s message is directly proportional to its consistency. It’s pretty easy to go from this line of reasoning down the rabbit hole of cognitive science or “branding” theory, but there are a lot of progressives who seem to believe that intraparty dissent undermines progressive messaging. By the same token, of course, democracy and the First Amendment undermine progressive messaging, but that seems a small price to pay.
A stronger argument, I’d submit, is that some Blue Dogs are fundamentally at odds with other Democrats on politically critical issues involving first principles, such as progressive taxation and economic inequality. If House Democrats with a robust majority cannot implement the longstanding position of the Democratic Party favoring the repeal of Bush tax cuts for the wealthy (while maintaining middle-class tax cuts), the majority truly is of limited utility.
Part of the problem with this whole debate, of course, is that all Blue Dogs aren’t the same, and that no one—not Ari Berman, not Nancy Pelosi, not Tim Kaine—has the authority to define the boundaries of dissent for Democrats. Moreover, what are the implications of a tougher party line for dissenting progressives?
What if President Obama strongly promotes a trade agenda, or a deficit reduction compromise, that infuriates the Democratic Left? When President Clinton split with House Democrats over trade and welfare reform measures, who were the good, loyal Democrats in that fight? Maybe that’s obvious to Ari Berman, but maybe not so much to others.
A final planted axiom in Berman’s essay should be noted for purposes of clarity: the idea that Blue Dogs exist because they were “recruited” by Rahm Emanuel. Obviously many leading Blue Dogs have been around for much longer than 2006 or 2008. Others have been political powers in their own districts, and national party financial backing, while helpful, wasn’t necessarily the key factor in their decisions to run for Congress. But in any event, the suggestion that the national party could, if it chose, “recruit” more progressive candidates who could win in tough territory is not supported by much actual evidence. Certainly primary challenges to Blue Dogs this year haven’t gone very well.
None of this is to say that congressional leaders and the White House couldn’t more effectively deploy sticks and carrots to encourage greater party discipline. In the Senate, support for the party on cloture motions ought to become as automatic as it used to be.
But losing seats in, and perhaps control of, the House or Senate this year does not make such disciplinary measures any easier for Democrats, and the idea of deliberately shrinking the House and Senate Caucuses isn’t likely to go over very well with either Members or with the Democratic rank-and-file. In any event, looking at the most vulnerable Democratic seats in the House, plenty of Blue Dogs are going to be “booted” and replaced with right-wing Republicans, so we will soon see if that has any sort of salutary effect on the Democratic Party.
Photo credit: Mahima Hada
Tags: Ari Berman, Blue Dogs, Boot the Blue Dogs, Bush tax cuts, caucus, CliffsNotes, cloture motions, deficit reduction, Democratic, Democratic congressional leadership, Democratic majority, Democratic Party, economic inequality, filibuster, First Amendment, House members, left, New York Times, Obama Administration, party discipline, President Clinton, President Obama, progressive, progressive taxation, Public opinion, Rahm Emanuel, Senate members, The Nation, trade agenda, truggles for the soul, voters, welfare reform, White House
Posted in
Daily Fix, Fixing Our Broken Politics, Issues, Political Memo |
2 Comments »
Friday, October 22nd, 2010
Jim Arkedis
Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.
by Jim Arkedis
The Israeli-Palestinian peace talks effectively died this week. That’s what happens when you take your case to the press.
Though the hard left no doubt cheers a Palestinian effort to seek unilateral recognition from everyone from the UN Security Council to the Poughkeepsie Dog Catchers Society, it’s simply neither a serious nor well-considered effort.
The move is bad for everyone, including peace-seeking Palestinians. A UNSC resolution will be vetoed by the Americans and will split the Europeans; its failure will then cause regional Arab powers to blame everyone but themselves at a time when Arab engagement is crucial to success.
The PA went public with this ill-conceived demand as a response to Bibi Netanyahu’s impossible pre-condition offer of extending a moratorium on settlement construction only in return for Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Doing so is a non-starter for the PA – it would essentially prevent ex-patriot Palestinian refugees from staking a claim to property and/or cash from the Israeli government.
Bibi’s demands were the beginning of the end, and should have spurred the Obama administration’s negotiators to keep the talks quiet at all cost. Of course, maybe they tried, and tried hard, but the two parties were never on the same page from the beginning.
A resolution to this conflict will only be achieved through painstaking negotiations behind closed doors. When the parties begin to litigate their case in the court of international public opinion, it is nothing more than a desperation Hail Mary on 4th-and-a-million with no time on the clock.
If talks aren’t dead, they’re in a coma and on life support. The White House needs to get both sides to shut up, and find a face-saving way for Bibi to extend the settlement moratorium that somehow addresses – or agrees to delay – the question of Israel’s Jewishness/Palestinian refugees.
Failing that, we’ll look to start these talks up again under the next Israeli government.
Tags: Arab powers, Bibi Netanyahu's, Europeans, ex-patriot Palestinian refugees, Foreign policy, international public opinion, Israel's Jewishness, Israeli government, Israeli-Palestinian, Jewish state, Middle East Peace Talks, moratorium on settlement construction, Obama, PA, Palestinian effort, Palestinian refugees, peace-seeking Palestinians, Poughkeepsie Dog Catchers Society, settlement moratorium, UN Security Council, unilateral recognition, UNSC, White House
Posted in
A Progressive Security Strategy, Daily Fix, Issues |
1 Comment »
Thursday, October 14th, 2010
Scott Thomasson
Scott Thomasson is the economic and domestic policy director for the Progressive Policy Institute.
Follow @st_ppi
by Scott Thomasson
Constellation Energy announced last weekend that it is pulling out of negotiations with the Obama administration over its pending application for Department of Energy loan guarantees to build a new reactor unit at its existing Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant in Maryland. This means that for now, Constellation has scrapped all plans to expand the plant, which would have brought 1600 megawatts of low-carbon power to the market and thousands of jobs to the local economy.
What drove Constellation to walk away from further negotiations is the position taken by the White House Office of Management and Budget over the cost of the “credit subsidy fee” Constellation must pay for the guarantee. OMB set the fee at $880 million, or 11.6 percent of the total guarantee. OMB says this fee accurately reflects the risk to taxpayers of default by Constellation, which may or may not be accurate, even presuming that shielding taxpayers from 100% of the default risk is an appropriate goal. The problem is that no one ever expected the loan guarantee program to be priced so high, most notably the energy companies that have spent years now tied up in the application process. Constellation had argued for a fee closer to 1-2 percent, and DOE had previously made statements that indicated it was basically in agreement with that fee level, before the Obama White House got involved in the program and indicated it needed greater protections against the risk that the company won’t repay its loans. OMB has demanded a price for those protections that is basically what private lenders would charge (which is high considering the regulatory and cost risks associated with a nuclear power plant–hence the need for the loan guarantee program in the first place).
If you are an opponent of expanding nuclear power, this is great news. It means that after years of hard-fought legislative and regulatory battles in which the nuclear industry made significant headway toward getting the federal government to clear the way for a “nuclear renaissance” in the U.S., yet another battleground has been found to effectively scuttle the entire program for nuclear loan guarantees for the time being. Apparently that new battleground is the arcane world of credit scoring within the federal budget bureaucracy, most notably OMB.
By throwing sand in the gears of this final stage of the bureaucratic approval process, the White House has let the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program grind to a halt after years of promises of support to the industry for badly needed new projects. By all accounts, this controversy appears to be simply a fight between budget bureaucrats that needs to be hashed out publicly and resolved. But a less benign interpretation might suggest a deliberate bias among those in the administration in favor of spending loan guarantee dollars on renewable energy at the expense of nuclear projects. In either case, it is a problem that President Obama could easily fix with leadership from the White House, by making it clear that nuclear power is a national priority that is too important to lose new projects over bureaucratic delays.
Instead of leadership, the White House has responded with unfortunate lack of credible commitment to addressing this issue. According to Bloomberg news, OMB’s spokesperson said administration officials were surprised that Constellation gave up on negotiations. It’s hard to believe they could really be that clueless. Everyone following the nuclear loan guarantee process knew this was a potential deal-killing problem for Constellation and other applicants, especially anyone who read Constellation’s executives say so specifically in the New York times almost a year ago. This issue was raised in Jack Lew’s recent confirmation hearing to take over OMB, and Senate Energy Chairman Jeff Bingaman openly criticized the administration in a hearing on September 23 for holding up these loan guarantees. These complaints have been heard coming from several different corners in Washington and the energy industry for months. If I knew enough not to be shocked by Constellation’s move, how did OMB and the White House did not see this coming?
The administration’s handling of the Constellation loan application raises an important question that needs to be answered: just how committed is President Obama and his administration to expanding nuclear power? The president has said nuclear energy is part of his vision of America’s energy future (most notably in a speech ironically delivered in Maryland announcing a nuclear loan guarantee approval), but we have not seen many tangible results that the members of his administration are fully committed to making that vision a reality. After all, the Constellation announcement comes during the same week when the president was stumping for more infrastructure spending and his own economists released a report arguing that now is an ideal time to build large capital projects, both in terms of economic stimulus and low project costs for financing and labor. In the last week, the administration also cleared the way for two new solar energy projects on federal land and, even more notably, announced a $1.3 billion DOE loan guarantee approval for a massive new wind power project. All of these other initiatives this week are important and deserving of the president’s leadership in making them a national priority. But with the news from Constellation coming amidst all this other administration support for new energy and infrastructure projects, the overall picture is too easily misconstrued as the administration coordinating to put a thumb on the scale in favor of everything but nuclear energy.
Given the energy realities we are facing and the president’s own acknowledgments that nuclear energy needs to be part of a low-carbon response to meeting growing demand, President Obama can not afford to let a bureaucratic bean-counting snafu tie up billions of dollars in new investment and tens of thousands of jobs. Hopefully, this issue is essentially a policy glitch in the administration’s energy agenda, rather than something more problematic. But regardless of the cause, if President Obama is serious about including nuclear in our energy mix, then he needs to use the power of his office to take a hard look at these problems–and fix the glitch.
Photo credit: Let idea Compete
Tags: Bloomberg news, bureaucratic, Calvert Cliffs, Clean energy and technology, Constellation Energy, Department of Energy, economic stimulus, energy agenda, energy companies, energy mix, Infrastructure, Jack Lew, Jeff Bingaman, low-carbon power, Maryland, new energy, New York Times, nuclear industry, nuclear power, nuclear renaissance, Obama Administration, Office of Management and Budget, OMB, Senate Energy Chairman, solar energy, taxpayers, White House, wind power
Posted in
Clean Energy and Modern Infrastructure, Daily Fix |
2 Comments »
Tuesday, October 12th, 2010
Will Marshall
Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Will Marshall
President Obama’s call yesterday for $50 billion in new transportation spending is politically risky, given public worries about government spending and debt. But if linked to a strategic and sustained strategy for modernizing the nation’s infrastructure, it could signal the start of America’s economic comeback.
Even more important than the money, however, is an Obama initiative that didn’t get as much media play: a proposed National Infrastructure Bank. It is the key not only to leveraging business capital – U.S. companies are sitting on $2 trillion in potential “private stimulus” money – but also to making sure we invest that money wisely.
The president said he would ask the lame-duck Congress next month to approve the $50 billion measure, which would front-load money that otherwise would be spread over the life of a six-year surface transportation bill. He left little doubt his immediate goal is to goose the pace of the agonizingly slow economic recovery.
“Nearly one in five construction workers is still unemployed and needs a job. And that makes absolutely no sense when so much of America needs rebuilding,” Obama told reporters at the White House on Memorial Day. Attempting to preempt Republican objections that infrastructure spending is simply stimulus is drag, Obama noted that “Investing in infrastructure is something members of both parties have always supported.”
Maybe so, but it’s worth noting that the word “infrastructure” appears nowhere in the GOP’s 48-page Pledge to America. What’s more, Republicans are likely to over-interpret likely midterm gains as vindication of their attacks on Obama as a big spender, so good luck getting them to vote for infrastructure in the lame duck.
That’s a shame, because spending on infrastructure is both stimulus and investment. It could get more Americans working now, but it is also essential to building our country’s long-term capacity to compete in fast growing global markets for high speed rail, civilian nuclear energy, clean cars, intelligent transport systems and renewable fuels.
The federal government, of course, is constrained by enormous deficits and a growing national debt. That’s why we need a National Infrastructure Bank, which would structure public-private deals to fund big capital projects that can generate real economic returns. As noted by an economic analysis the White House released yesterday:
“There is currently very little direct private investment in our nation’s highway and transit systems due to the current method of funding infrastructure, which lacks effective mechanism to attract and repay direct private investment in specific infrastructure projects. … A National Infrastructure Bank would also perform a rigorous analysis that would result in support for projects that yield the greatest returns to society and are most likely to deliver long-run economic benefits that justify the up-front investments.”
An infrastructure bank, along with new public seed capital and a third element of the Obama infrastructure initiative – merging the many stovepiped “modal” transportation funding streams so public dollars can be used strategically – begin at last to push the economic debate in a constructive direction. The two great challenges America faces now are reviving our economic dynamism and shrinking a massive overhang of public debt. To meet them, the Obama administration needs to fashion an ambitious, “cut and invest” strategy aimed at slowing health care and entitlement spending generally, and using public dollars to leverage massive private investment in productivity-enhancing infrastructure.
That’s why President Obama should press ahead with his infrastructure plan, despite the political fallout from the midterm election. If Republicans want to frame the economic debate as a choice between more tax cuts and rebuilding the common foundations of American prosperity, so much the better. That’s one progressives can win.
Photo credit: Center for Neighborhood Technology
Tags: big capital projects, business capital, civilian nuclear energy, clean cars, cut and invest, debt, deficits, Deficits and debt, economic dynamism, economic recovery, federal government, global markets, GOP, government spending, Health care, high-speed rail, highway and transit systems, Infrastructure, infrastructure plan, intelligent transport systems, investment, long-term capacity, Memorial Day, midterm, midterm election, National Infrastructure Bank, new transportation spending, Pledge to America, President Obama, private stimulus, progressives, public-private, renewable fuels, Republican, stimulus, Transportation, transportation bill, White House
Posted in
Clean Energy and Modern Infrastructure, Daily Fix, Fiscal Responsibility, Issues |
4 Comments »
Thursday, October 7th, 2010
Mark Reutter
PPI Fellow Mark Reutter is the former editor of
Railroad History and author of
Making Steel: Sparrows Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might (2005, rev. ed.).
by Mark Reutter
America’s transportation infrastructure is enfeebled, Washington’s transportation policy is broken, and we need to start building fast trains.
While that might be old news to readers of Progressive Fix, what is news is who’s saying it this week: Samuel Skinner, Secretary of Transportation under George H.W. Bush, and Norman Mineta, DOT Secretary under George W. Bush, were co-chairs of a conference at the University of Virginia behind a new report making this case. Mary E. Peters, Mineta’s successor under Bush, and a smattering of ex-DOT undersecretaries filled out the roster of 80 transportation experts.
Describing government spending on transportation as woefully underfunded, the report estimated that between $134 billion and $267 billion more is needed each year from now to 2035 to make U.S. roads, rail, and air transportation competitive with other countries.
The report lamented the “pork and political opportunism” in the current transportation reauthorization act, SAFETEA-LU, and advocated the setting up of core national priorities for transportation such as high-speed rail networks.
“High-speed rail has the potential to provide a fast, efficient and integrated alternative to driving and flying,” the report said. The best approach for genuine high-speed rail would be rights of way separate from existing freight lines – a policy strongly advocated by PPI (see here and here).
A major increase in the federal gas tax, which has remained unchanged at 18.4 cents a gallon since 1993, would help pay the bill for getting America’s transportation systems back to state-of-the-art standards.
Derailing High-Speed Rail
The group’s “call for action” comes at a time when Republican leaders have steered the GOP in a completely different direction. Extending the Bush tax cut has become their top national priority. The White House’s plan last month for $50 billion in infrastructure spending on highways and rail was met with open contempt by House Republican Leader John Boehner.
Several state races are shaping up as tests of whether President Obama’s higher-speed rail initiative can survive Republican hostility. In Wisconsin and Ohio, Republican candidates for governor have called federal stimulus money awarded for train improvements a major waste of taxpayer funds.
Scott Walker, the Republican candidate for governor in Wisconsin, has launched a website called notrain.com. He’s ahead in the polls, as is John Kasich, the former House Republican who vows to kill a $400 million federal stimulus project to link Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati by rail if elected the next governor of Ohio.
The anti-rail contagion has spread to New Jersey, where Republican Gov. Chris Christie is threatening to scuttle a train tunnel to Manhattan – and forfeit $6 billion in pledged funds from the federal government and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey – citing concerns of large cost overruns.
Christie yesterday postponed his announcement of whether he will back out of the agreement to build the tunnel – which would create 6,000 long-term construction jobs – in part so that he could campaign for other Republicans in the Midwest.
In California and Florida, where full-scale high-speed train networks have been awarded federal stimulus grants, GOP candidates are suggesting that they would delay or disrupt the projects.
Meg Whitman, running as the Republican candidate in California, says the state cannot afford “at this time” the costs associated with new high-speed rail. Rick Scott, Republican candidate for governor in Florida, has jumped on the same bandwagon, questioning whether the state can afford a rail line between Orlando and Tampa that has been awarded $1.25 billion in federal stimulus money.
Ironically, the current governors of California and Florida, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Charlie Crist, gained office as Republicans and have been big rail supporters. “To say ‘now is not the time’ shows a very narrow vision,” Schwarzenegger’s communications chief told the New York Times in response to Whitman’s tepid support for California’s rail investment.
The Eisenhower Model
“We’re going to have bridges collapse. We’re going to have earthquakes. We need somebody to grab the issue and run with it,” Mineta told reporters on Monday.
His earnest tone, delivered at the Rayburn House Office Building, was at odds with the anti-tax, anti-government vitriol coming from those of the same political stripe occupying nearby offices.
Advocates of infrastructure spending must offer specific data and concrete examples of the damage that continued underfunding of transportation projects could inflict on America’s standard of living and economic security. A starting point would be America’s dangerous overdependence on gasoline coming from unstable or hostile foreign countries. Add to this the lost productivity for U.S. drivers stuck in traffic jams, which the Mineta-Skinner report estimated at $87 billion in 2007, or $750 for every driver.
And consider that our population is expected to grow by 90 million in the next 40 years. These citizens will need to move, and high-speed rail is cheaper to build and causes much less environmental damage than new highways and airports.
A role model for such educational outreach is Dwight Eisenhower. The Republican president launched the Interstate Highway System by articulating a vision of top-quality roads benefiting all citizens and secured bipartisan support in Congress. It was part of his crusade to win the Cold War.
There’s a new battle out there – in the form of competition from emerging economic powerhouses like China, which plans to spend over $1 trillion in the next 10 years on a comprehensive 220-mph train system. While China builds its future, many of our politicians welcome gridlock as a way to wrest short-term partisan gains.
Photo credit: aussiegal
Tags: 220-mph train system, air transportation, America’s standard of living, anti-government, anti-rail, anti-tax, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bush tax cut, California, call for action, Charlie Crist, China, Chris Christie, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Cold War, Columbus, DOT Secretary, earthquakes, economic security, Eisenhower Model, environmental damage, fast trains, federal gas tax, federal stimulus, Florida, freight lines, gasoline, George H.W. Bush, GOP, government spending, high-speed rail, high-speed rail networks, highways, House Republican, HSR, Infrastructure, infrastructure spending, Interstate Highway System, John Boehner, John Kasich, Mary E. Peters, Meg Whitman, Midwest, Mineta-Skinner, national priority, New Jersey, New York, New York Times, Norman Mineta, notrain.com, Ohio, Orlando, political opportunism, Port Authority, PPI, Progressive Fix, rail, Rayburn House Office Building, Republican leaders, Rick Scott, SAFETEA-LU, Samuel Skinner, Scott Walker, Secretary of Transportation, short-term, state races, Tampa, traffic jams, train tunnel to Manhattan, Transportation, U.S. drivers, U.S. roads, underfunded, University of Virginia, Washington’s transportation policy, White House, Wisconsin
Posted in
Clean Energy and Modern Infrastructure, Daily Fix |
1 Comment »
Monday, September 27th, 2010
Lee Drutman
Lee Drutman is a senior fellow and the managing editor for the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Lee Drutman
df
September 29, 2010 / 9:00 – 10:30 am
Panel: Keeping America on Track: The Future of High-Speed Rail
Jefferson West Room, Washington Hilton
Introductory remarks by U.S. Representative Marcy Kaptur (D-OH)
Moderator:
- Michael Riley, Managing Editor, Bloomberg Government
Panelists
- Pierce Homer, Transportation Director, Moffatt & Nichol
- Ken Orski, Editor and Publisher, Innovation Newsbriefs
- Mark Reutter, Fellow, Progressive Policy Institute
- Petra Todorovich, Director, America 2050
To register for “Keeping America on Track: The Future of High-Speed Rail”, click here.
gfgf
September 30, 2010 / 9:45 – 10:00 a.m.
Keynote Speech: Competitiveness Through Innovation
IBR East Room, Washington Hilton
Introduction by Will Marshall, President, Progressive Policy Institute
Featured speaker
- Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.)
October 1, 2010 / 8:45 – 9:00 a.m.
Keynote Speech: Rebuilding America: Can Our Political System Deliver?
Columbia Hall 5 & 7, Washington Hilton
Featured speaker
- Norman Anderson, CEO, CG/LA Infrastructure
- Will Marshall, President, Progressive Policy Institute
fgh
October 1, 2010 / 9:00 – 10:30 a.m.
Panel: Retooling the American Economy for Jobs, Innovation, and Competitiveness
Columbia Hall 5 & 7, Washington Hilton
Moderator:
- David Wessel, Economics Editor, Wall Street Journal
Panelists
- Tom Friedman, New York Times Columnist, Pulitzer-Prize Winning Author
- Jason Furman, Deputy Director, National Economic Council, White House
- Roderick Bennett, Advisor to the General President of the Laborers’ International Union of North America
- John Woolard, CEO, Brightsource Energy
fg
October 1, 2010 / 10:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.
Panel: Financing Future Growth: How Do We Pay For New Projects?
Columbia Hall 5 & 7, Washington Hilton
Moderator:
- Will Marshall, President, Progressive Policy Institute
Panelists
- U.S. Representative Rosa L. DeLauro (D-CT), Sponsor of National Infrastructure Development Bank Act of 2009 (H.R. 2521)
- Chris Bertram, Assistant Secretary for Budget and Programs and C.F.O., U.S. Department of Transportation
- Leo Hindery, Jr., Investor, Managing Partner of InterMedia Partners VII; former President and CEO of AT&T Broadband; former President, Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI)
- Ev Ehrlich, Economist, President of ESC Company; former Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs
To register for the North America Strategic Infrastructure Leadership Forum, click here.
Tags: America 2050, AT&T Broadband, Bloomberg Government, Brightsource Energy, Chris Bertram, Commerce for Economic Affairs, David Wessel, ESC Company, Ev Ehrlich, HSR, Innovation, Innovation Newsbriefs, InterMedia Partners, Jason Furman, John Woolard, Jr, Keeping America on Track: The Future of High-Speed Rail, Ken Orski, Laborers' International Union of North America, Leo Hindery, Marcy Kaptur, Mark Reutter, Mark Warner, Michael Riley, Moffatt & Nichol, National Infrastructure Development Bank Act, New York Times, Panel, Petra Todorovich, Pierce Homer, PPI, Rosa L. DeLauro, Tele-Communications, Terry O’Sullivan, tom friedman, Transportation, U.S. Department of Transportation, Wall Street Journal, Washington Hilton, White House, Will Marshall
Posted in
Daily Fix |
4 Comments »
