Winning Progressive

For this weekend’s reading list, we have articles about Bill Clinton’s speech and relationship with President Obama, progressive Catholics, French President Francoise Hollande’s powerful speech about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, and the emotional trauma involved in the 25,000 rape-related pregnancies that occur every year in the US.

Clinton Resurrects the Party’s Universalism – How Bill Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention sought to sell President Obama’s positive economic record to working-class whites

Let’s Be Friends - The story of how the long-strained relationship between President Obama and former President Bill Clinton has been repaired and turned into a beneficial friendship for both of them

Holy Rollers – A report on how the Nuns on the Bus are just one of many examples of progressive Catholic groups and individuals who are standing up to the aging conservative hierarchy that rules the Catholic Church

The Crime Committed in France, By France – French President Francoise Hollande’s powerful speech commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Vel d’Hiv Roundup, in which 13,152 Jews in Paris were arrested by French officials and sent to concentration camps, and explaining the need for all societies to move beyond anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred

The Legitimate Children of Rape - a powerful essay about the extreme emotional trauma involved in the estimated 25,000 rape-related pregnancies in the US every year

Here at Winning Progressive, we define progressivism as the belief that we should use the tools of government to advance important individual and societal goals that individuals cannot reasonably achieve on their own and/or that the free market will not provide. We can and should have debates over whether specific government programs should be reformed, shrunk, expanded, or eliminated, and how we improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the government programs we have, as such debates are critical to ensuring that government serves the need of the public.  Unfortunately, for years now conservatives have focused not on such a debate, but instead have sought to vilify government as an evil entity that needs to largely be eliminated.  Such a philosophy is detached from reality and does little to benefit the American people.

A prime example of the failure of conservative vilification of government can be seen from the contrast between emergency disaster response to the recent tornadoes in the South, which caused more than 300 deaths and untold property damage, and that of the response to disasters like Hurricane Katrina under the George W. Bush Administration.  The response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (“FEMA”) to Hurricane Katrina was inexcusably negligent, as we’ve previously described here.    By contrast, FEMA’s response to the disaster created by the tornadoes in the South has been quite efficient and effective, with even Republican local officials praising the job being done by FEMA.    As a local resident was quoted as saying:

“It ain’t like Katrina,” said Darius Rutley, 21, whose house in Alberta was obliterated. “We’re getting help.”

As Kevin Drum has noted at his Mother Jones blog, the difference in FEMA’s effectiveness to the Southern tornadoes versus Katrina is part of a larger pattern of effective emergency responses during Democratic Administrations and ineffective responses during Republican Administrations.  And the reason for that contrast is that one party has focused on making FEMA an effective government agency, while the other has been blinded by an ideological opposition to government that has served to undermine FEMA’s effectiveness.  The contrast can be seen with regards to:

• Appointees: Under President Clinton, FEMA was headed by James Lee Witt, the first FEMA director with emergency planning experience, who turned FEMA into a highly effective agency that successfully handled a number of major disasters. For example, FEMA advance teams were on the scene of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 within five hours and three minutes.  President Bush replaced Witt with Joe Allbaugh.  What were Allbaugh’s qualifications to head FEMA?  He had no emergency relief experience, but he was Bush’s campaign chairman!  In 2003, Allbaugh was replaced by Michael Brown, a longtime friend of Allbaugh who also had no emergency relief experience, but was a big time Republican donor and had previously run the International Arabian Horse Association.  The Obama Administration returned to experience rather than cronyism as the basis for selecting a FEMA head. President Obama’s FEMA is run by W. Craig Fugate, who spent eight years as the Director of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management and previously worked as emergency manager for Alachua County, Florida for over a decade.

• Philosophy: In May 2001, Bush’s FEMA Director Allbaugh testified to a Senate subcommittee that:

Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program and a disincentive to effective state and local risk management.  Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level.

Similarly, in April 2001, Bush’s budget director, Mitch Daniels, announced the goal of privatizing much of FEMA’s work. As just one example, in June 2004, FEMA turned the task of developing a hurricane disaster plan for New Orleans over to a private consulting firm named Innovative Emergency Management. In light of the response to Katrina, it appears that if they did come up with a plan, it was not innovative and did not involve any management.

By contrast, President Obama’s FEMA Director, Craig Fugate, has focused not on trying to shrink or eliminate FEMA, but rather on making the agency effective in doing its job of responding to emergencies.

• Budgetary Cutbacks: In 2003, FEMA was made part of the Department of Homeland Security.  At the same time, its budget was cut and 500 of its staffers were laid off. In addition, three quarters of the funds that the agency spent on local emergency preparedness and first-responders was shifted to terrorism response rather than natural disasters and accidents.  By contrast, over the past five years, FEMA’s operating budget has increased by nearly $2.5 billion.

The bottom line is that, as the contrast between the Katrina and Southern tornadoes responses shows, a belief by our elected officials in competent, effective government can be the difference between our fellow Americans pulling through disasters as quickly as possible or being left victims of forces far beyond their control.  In other words, in the real world beliefs about government matter.

If you’d like to help spread the progressive message of why competent, effective government matters, use our Letter to the Editor Campaign links to send a letter to the editor of your local newspaper.   And, as always, feel free to share your thoughts about this post at the Winning Progressive Facebook page.

(By Mark Bridger, cross-posted as That Mans Scope blog)

Few things have been more persistent than the claim that tax cuts either “pay for themselves” or, in fact, increase growth. It seems hardly possible to dispel this notion, in spite of the fact that all evidence indicates that it is a myth. In response to a comment by an anonymous reader, I discussed this briefly in a previous blog; however, it seems that I still need to say a few more words and give some statistical references.

First of all, whether there are tax cuts or tax increases, the history of capitalism in this country has always been one of recurring “business cycles.” These comprise a period of growth (G) then a period of leveling off of growth (L) culminating in a peak (P); these are followed by recessionary periods of varied seriousness (R), then a leveling of decline (L), then a repetition. Schematically, then, we have the cycle:   GLPRL, GLPRL, … etc.

The length of such a cycle can vary, with an average of maybe 5-7 years, though very serious recessions — including the Great Depression, can themselves last many years. Since the Great Depression and the ascendancy of Keynesian theory, the seriousness has been greatly mitigated — at least until the recent Great Recession which began around 2008.

The general path of the economy in the U.S. has been upward: most business cycles end in a recovery with the economy in a better state than it had been in the previous cycle, measured in terms of investment and GDP growth. On average this increment from peak-of-cycle P to peak-of-cycle P has been around 2%. There is also the matter of average (over the cycle) real tax revenue per capita; this is a measure of how much the government is actually taking in per person, adjusting for inflation.

Note the phrase “on average.” Results do vary from cycle to cycle, which enables us to make comparisons between business cycles and tax policies. In the early ’80s, under President Reagan there were a series of “supply-side” cuts in the tax rates, where “supply side” means favoring the investing class. Again, in the early years of the 21st century, the Bush Tax Cuts cut the rates for investors and the wealthy (both supply-side + “trickle down” theories at work). In between, in the ’90s there were tax increases on the wealthy under President Clinton. How did these varying tax policies, based on competing economic theories, effect the business cycles?

The answers are quite clear. Comparing the Reagan and Clinton cycles, the recoveries from the recessionary periods of the respective business cycles were quite similar; (about 2%); however, the per capita tax revenues under the Clinton recovery were about twice the size as those under the supply-side Reagan recovery. Thus, the supply-side theory fared no better in terms of recovery, but was a real drag on government revenues. This is part of the reason that, rhetoric aside, the Reagan “conservative” theory resulted in deficits, while the Clinton administration actually achieved the budget balance that the Reaganites merely talked about.

Moving on to the next business cycles, the comparison between the Clinton and Bush years is even more noticeable. The improvement in the economy (investment and GDP growth), from P to P, from Clinton to Bush, was somewhat lower than the historic improvement, but the tax revenue increase was no more than 1/2 % — virtually nil in comparison with the average over the last 50 years of about 10% (11% under Clinton).

Thus, in terms of economic recovery, there was no discernible difference between Republican/conservative and Democratic/liberal tax policies. But, in terms of real per capita tax revenues, tax cuts, far from “paying for themselves, seem to be very damaging. And here’s the kicker: None of these comparisons take into account the disastrous economic consequences of the Republican/conservative policy on de-regulation of speculation in the financial markets: the Great Recession of 2008-2011 (and still counting).

In the crucible of real-world testing of economic theories — the only meaningful test, after all — the conservative program has failed. As the handwriting on the wall says from Daniel 5: “Mene mene tekel upharsin” (“You have been judged in the balance and found wanting”).

The data backing up these remarks comes from official statistics reproduced by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in this report. Please check it out: it has references to many other sources.

In Part II of this evaluation of tax cuts, to be posted here on Friday, I will address economic fairness and the role that conservative tax cuts on the wealthy have played in widening economic inequality in America.

The federal government is not the solution to all of our problems. It does, however, play a critical role in providing services, such as disaster relief, that cannot or will not be adequately provided by individuals, private business, or state and local governments. In order to do so, government must be provided with adequate resources and the experienced leaders needed to carry out its mission effectively.  Unfortunately, time after time Republican politicians have offered us little more than an orthodoxy of privatization, budgetary cutbacks, and cronyism that does not serve the needs of the American people.  A poster child example of the failure of this Republican philosophy is the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

Five years ago this week, my wife and I were on an eight-hour-long drive to visit family for the Labor Day weekend. The entire ride we were tuned into NPR listening to coverage of the horrible disaster that was unfolding in New Orleans and parts of Mississippi due to Katrina. The impacts were staggering – at least 1,800 people dead, hundreds of thousands of people displaced, 80% of the city of New Orleans flooded, more than $80 billion in damages. For days, we saw images and heard news reports of thousands of people huddled on their rooftops waiting to be rescued as the waters rose, and tens of thousands more marooned in the Superdome and New Orleans Convention Center with little access to food, water, or medical care.

What struck me most listening to the news commentary was the complete absence of the federal government in providing aid to these folks. (more…)