NDN Blog

This essay is cross-posted at the Huffington Post.

The foundation of the Republicans' "return to power" argument is a promise to reduce the federal budget deficit and rein in government spending. But in a major speech last week, the Republican House leader John Boehner made clear that this promise is at best a false one, and perhaps even qualifies as the "big lie" of campaign 2010.

In an updated new analysis, first reported by Sam Stein in the Huffington Post last week, NDN has shown that the plan Rep. Boehner outlined in his speech would increase the deficit by more than $4 trillion over ten years. Not only does his plan explode the deficit, but it only identifies $67 billion in cost savings over ten years, an amount less than the new interest on the debt his budget would generate. Billed as a major address by the man who would be Speaker, Rep. Boehner's speech, taken at face value, shows that the entire argument the Republicans are making this year is built upon a huge set of lies.

That the Republicans have no real plan to deal with the most difficult economic circumstances the US has faced in 70 years should come as no surprise. When the GOP was last in power, wages and incomes for everyday people dropped, surpluses became historic deficits, global support for economic liberalization weakened, the world experienced a true global financial collapse, US automakers failed and the US entered into its worst recession since the Great Depression. By any measure the Republican's stewardship of the US economy in this past decade was among the worst performances by a party in power in all of US history.

The new Boehner plan is a direct challenge to those who care about the future of the United States. It makes clear that those who did so much damage to the US economy and the US national interest have not learned from their mistakes, and are approaching our difficult economic challenges with an appalling lack of seriousness and the same reckless approach which did so much to contribute to our current economic troubles. In an essay published earlier this week, the renowned economist Jeff Sachs wrote:

The Republican strategy, if it can be dignified by that word, offers us a complete collapse of the federal government (and state governments supported by federal taxes) and of course even more explosive deficits.

Friends, the Boehner plan is a call to action. But what can an average American do? I have a simple idea. In September, work with allied groups and other friends to get every Republican candidate running for federal office to answer a simple question:

"If the federal budget deficit is such a threat to our economy and our future, can you produce an economic plan which reduces the federal budget deficit at all, even by a penny, over the next ten years?"

The answer, remarkably, is no. Despite their very public commitment to fiscal prudence, not a single GOP candidate running for federal office in 2010 can produce such a plan. By campaigning to extend the Bush tax cuts as Rep. Boehner proposed last week, they are guaranteeing to explode the federal deficit in the coming decade, not shrink it. These very same Republicans have warned that doing so would slow economic growth and lessen the life prospects of Americans to come.

There is little doubt that the GOP will gain additional power this fall. But before they do, the nation needs to know more about their plans, and the big lie that is at the very heart of their irresponsible pitch. You can do your part today by sending this post on to others, and doing all that you can to confront our potential representatives, and get them to answer this simple question. The American people deserve to hear every Republican's effort to explain away this little inconsistency, for it does so much to expose the ideological and moral rot at the very foundation of their 2010 election argument.

Good luck. A lot is at stake here.

I just posted a new essay on Huffington Post, "The Big Lie At the Core of the GOP's Economic Argument."

Check it out.  Would love your feedback.

I'm excited to announce the addition of four new high-caliber members of our already very able NDN/NPI team.  Look forward to our community getting to know them as I do in the months ahead.   Here they are:

Clare Giesen - Director, Electricity 2.0 Initiative

Clare Giesen will direct and coordinate our Electricity 2.0 initiative. Clare brings a wealth of high-level energy experience to her new role at NDN. She served as White House Liaison for the Department of Energy during the Clinton Administration and worked on electricity re-structuring and the deployment of renewable energy technologies. As senior advisor at the USDA Rural Utilities Service, she initiated and developed their first renewable energy loan program for the rural electric cooperatives. A native Texan, she served as Chief of Staff to Congressman Mike Andrews. Most recently she was Executive Director of the National Women's Political Caucus.

Ana Maria Vidal - Program Associate,  Latin America Policy Initiative

A native Caribbean, Ana Maria joins us as Program Associate for NDN's Latin America Policy Initiative.  After graduating from Tufts University with a degree in International Relations, she served as a Deputy Advisor to the Governor of Puerto Rico, focusing her work on education and economic development. Her exposure to higher education partnerships in Mexico as well as her experience as a citizenship teacher for Salvadorian Refugees in Massachusetts have led her to a keen interest in US-Latin America relations. Before coming to NDN, Ana worked at an international development consulting firm in DC, providing support for projects all over the world, and is currently pursuing to a master's degree in Government at Johns Hopkins University.

Morley Winograd - Special Advisor, Global Mobile Technology Initiative

Morley Winograd, a fellow with NDN since 2009, will be expanding his role at NDN as a Special Advisor to the Global Mobile Technology Initiative. Morley spent eighteen years in the telecom industry in a variety of sales and marketing positions with AT&T and became the Executive Director of USC's Marshall School of Business's Institute for Communication Technology Management (CTM) in 2001. Morley is also the co-author of two technology related books: Taking Control: Politics in the Information Age (with Dudley Buffa in 1996) and Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube and the Future of American Politics (with NDN fellow Mike Hais in 2008). He and Mike are working on their next book scheduled for publication in the fall of 2011.

Samhir Vasdev - Policy Associate, Global Mobile Technology Initiative

Samhir Vasdev, a summer associate with the Global Mobile Technology Initiative, will stay on as a Policy Associate and contributor to the Global Mobile blog. Samhir  is completing his final year at Georgetown University, majoring in political science. He's interested in the way 21st-century technologies intersect with politics, governance, citizenship, and development, particularly in developing countries in Africa. He's thrilled to have the opportunity to continue exploring this powerful space with NDN and the New Policy Institute.

In a new study released by NDN today, we calculate that the plan released by John Boehner yesterday would add more than $3 trillion to the deficit over the next ten years.

That the new economic plan from the House Republican Leader explodes the deficit and does nothing meaningful to cut government spending raises very real questions about the Washington Republican Party's commitment to the promise of a new age of austerity and fiscal rectitutde Republican victories will bring.

I would also add that the utter lack of fiscal seriousness of this proposal - despite the very public positioning of the Republican Party today - recalls the economic recklessness of the recent conservative era in Washington which brought a decline in wages and benefits for the average American, an exploding structural deficit, the Great Recession/massive job loss and a global financial meltdown.  Boehner's new plan makes no effort to break from this horrendous legacy, and raises very real questions about the economic strategy of the GOP which must be answered by the GOP leader and all his candidates seeking the House. 

Of the many questions to be asked, there is a simple one all Republicans should answer now: "how exactly are you going to reduce the deficit over the next ten years?"

My guess is that not a single Republican running for major office could actually lay out a plan that would reduce the deficit over this time frame.  If anyone finds such a plan - rather than a rhetorical commitment to do so - please send it along.

PM Update - Sam Stein of the Huffington Post, and Jonathan Cohn of TNR have each written pieces today based on our study.  If you see any more let us know.  And feel free of course to spread this important study through your networks too.

Friday Update - Keith Olbermann talked about our study on the air last night, and a smart new Newsweek piece by Andrew Romano also references it.

Friday PM Update - CBO reports this week that if the health care bill passed this year is repealed, as Boehner proposed in his economic plan, it would add another $455 billion to the deficit over the next ten years, pushing Boehner's plan over the $4 trillion mark.

Just as the national debate heats up, the NDN team is stepping up, taking our arguments to the airwaves at an impressive rate. 

Last Friday Rob was on CNBC, I was on Fox and Alicia on Dylan Ratigan's MSNBC show.  Yesterday Rob was on Fox, and today he appeared on both the BBC and CNBC.  Tonight Alicia returns to Larry King, and tomorrow I will be on Fox in the afternoon.   All in all it will be eight appearances in just four days, on all three cable networks, and even a spot on the venerable Larry King.

And our economic policy analyst Jake Berliner has also begun to get in rotation, and is doing a particularly good job. 

I am very proud of the air time the NDN is getting.  At a time of national struggle, it is critical that mature, modern voices take the to airwaves, and engage in the critical debate about our future now playing out 24/7 on cable news.  Our team keeps getting invited back because we have something to say, are not afraid of the fight, and stick to our guns. 

And be sure to catch Alicia tonight on Larry King talking about the important AZ and FL primaries, and the broader lay of the land.   I will be Fox at 230pm tomorrow.  And look for more to come....

Wed AM Update - Will be on Fox today around 230.  If you see it would love your feedback.

If you had asked me in 2008 whether I thought it possible that there would be a sustained, orchestrated effort in the first two years of the first term of the first African-American President to undermine and question the integrity of the 14th Amendment I would have answered "no way."  The 14th Amendment of course being one of the three major Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution designed to correct the "three-fifths" of a person clause of the original Constitution and the entire racist body of law which grew up after its adoption. 

The recent news of the attacks on "birthright citizenship" promised in the 14th Amendment is not the first orchestrated attack we've seen on this influential Amendment, one which not just helped ended the institutional racism of the pre-Civil War United States, but which was used to dismantle 20th century segregation in the recent Civil Rights era.  Last year NDN led a national effort to push back against an effort by Senators Vitter and Bennett to knock undocumented immigrants out of the reapportionment process, something we and many others believed was a direct assault on this clause of the 14th Amendment

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State

Like the decision to grant people born here in the US citizenship, this clause was designed to prevent the institutional racism the practice of slavery created in the US from every reoccuring.  In the case of birthright citizenship, our nation made a decision to prevent any future group of American politicians from determing that any one group would be something less than the rest of us, as it had in the era of the "three-fifths" of a person clause.  Given our history, this seems, in hindsight, to have a particularly wise and thoughtful decision.

While in each case the target group of these recent radical assaults on the 14th Amendment were not African-Americans but recent Hispanic immigrants, is it really possible that in the early days of this new age of racial conciliation promised by the election of Barack Obama, that we are seeing a sustained set of attacks on the Constititional Amendment that has done more to promote equailty among the races in the US than other?  It is in some ways shocking, in some ways, perhaps, predictable.  Race has a tortured history in our proud nation, and it shouldn't be suprising that for some the experience of a non-white President might cause a particularly powerful reaction.

It is at moments like these that we need to stop using the word Republican or conservative to describe this type of approach to our politics.  Radical or reactionary is more apt.  And I am proud of Senator Harry Reid last year for standing up to the first sustained assault on the 14th Amendment, and staring it down, defeating it.  The question is - when are other political leaders, including our President, going to show the kind of courage Harry Reid showed last year and mount a sustained defense of the 14th Amendment and the politics that it ushered in the face of these reactionary attacks?

Update - I weigh in on this debate in an article in the the upcoming edition of the The Economist, now online here.

Update, 7pm - In a Washington Post Op-Ed, former Attorney General Gonzales comes out against the efforts to roll back the 14th Amendment.  It includes this powerful graph:

As the nation's former chief law enforcement officer and a citizen who believes in the rule of law, I cannot condone anyone coming into this country illegally. However, as a father who wants the best for my own children, I understand why these parents risk coming to America -- especially when there is little fear of prosecution. If we want to stop this practice, we should pass and enforce comprehensive immigration legislation rather than amend our Constitution.

We sent the following letter to the Senate

"Tonight or tomorrow, the members of the United States Senate will have an important opportunity to send a clear signal to the American people that they are going to do what is necessary to ensure America's prosperity in the 21st century by adopting the Education Jobs Fund Amendment to H.R. 5297, the Small Business Jobs and Credit Act. The amendment will provide funding for saving the jobs of 130,000 public school teachers who will otherwise be laid off this fall.

As the global economy grows more competitive, and the jobs of the 21st century grow more knowledge-based and skills-intensive than many of the jobs of the 20th century, it is in the vital interest of the United States to provide our workers and our students with more than what Americans were offered in previous eras.  Our 21st century workers and kids will need more, not less; more knowledge and skills; more opportunities to upgrade their skills and knowledge; more and better teachers and schools; and more chances to integrate the exciting opportunity of the emergent world of digital learning into traditional educational environments. Providing a thorough and enhanced system for the acquisition of more advanced skills and deeper knowledge for the American people is one of the great tasks of leaders and policymakers in the years ahead.  Supporting the EJF Amendment is a critical step in this vital direction.

In a nation as rich as ours and in an era in which education and knowledge are so important, there simply can be no rationale for starving a new generation of Americans from the kind of schooling they need to succeed in the more challenging economy of the 21st century.   The stakes for our future are just too high, the national interest much too clear.  We urge all Senators to support the Education Jobs Fund amendment to the Small Business Jobs and Credit Act."

- Simon Rosenberg, NDN President

I released the following statement today:

"I applaud the decision made today by US District Judge Susan Bolton in striking down portions of SB1070.

While I have great sympathy for the people of Arizona who know better than most how broken our immigration system is today, SB1070 was, as President Obama repeatedly said, the wrong approach to a tough problem.

What this debate reminds us - and the debate will continue - is that it is long past time for Congress to accept its responsibility in building a better immigration system and move on comprehensive immigration reform legislation as soon as is practical.

For those in Arizona who support SB1070, I hope they will take their energy, passion and concern for the future of their state and turn it into a sustained campaign to pressure their elected Representatives in Washington to work with Democrats and Republicans in Congress to build a better and more modern federal immigration system.

The court made it clear today that fashioning immigration policy is a federal responsibility, and for those who want a better immigration system in the US, it is time to focus on helping Washington get this done in the months ahead."

The current issue of National Journal has a pathbreaking article by Ron Brownstein, "the Gray and the Brown."  that I think is one of the most important articles I've read all year.  This is one of those preverbial "must reads."  The article grew out of a forum Brownstein and National Journal hosted recently at the Newseum, and I am honored, and excited to have been able to participate in both the forum and the piece itself.  To give you a flavor of the article's remarkable argument, I offer up this passage which concludes with some quotes from me:

"A Titanic Battle"

What's clear is that demographics aren't going to provide much relief from these pressures for decades. As the minority population ages, it will make up a steadily increasing share of seniors over the coming decades, Frey notes. But the minority share of the youth population will continue to grow at a comparable pace. So, the chasm between the mostly white senior population and the mostly minority youth -- the cultural generation gap -- could remain as large as it is today through 2030, before narrowing slowly in the decades thereafter.

If anything, the nation's evolving demography may wind these tensions even more tightly. While the share of the population represented by young people is expected to stabilize at just under one-fourth, the senior share is projected to steadily rise from about one-eighth today to one-fifth by 2040. By Frey's projections, that will slowly shrink the working-age population -- those who provide the tax base for young people and seniors alike -- from about 63 percent of the society now to 57 percent by 2030.

In that world, the generational and racial implications of the choices between tax cuts and spending reductions, and between public spending aimed at the old or the young, could grow increasingly explicit and explosive. Rosenberg isn't alone in believing that the way the United States sorts through those options will powerfully shape not only its economic but also its social future. "The challenge for us in the next few years is creating a politics of investment during a time of potential austerity to make sure that we're ... funding the future and not the past," Rosenberg says. "This is going to be a titanic battle not only at the federal level but at the state level as well."

In the latest in a series of thoughtful FT pieces on what Amerca needs to do get its economy back on track, Jeff Sachs offers up a valuable contribution today, arguing: 

A proper US investment recovery plan has five parts. The first is a significant boost in investments in clean energy and an upgraded national power grid. These should be promoted through guaranteed price subsidies to clean energy to be financed by gradually rising carbon taxes, as the clean energy capacity comes on line during the coming decade. The alternative cap and trade system is cumbersome, unnecessary and politically dead.

The second is a decade-long programme of infrastructure renovation, with projects such as high-speed inter-city rail, water and waste treatment facilities and highway upgrading, co-financed by the federal government, local governments and private capital. Such projects are complex, requiring government leadership in land management, project design, public-private co-operation and partial subsidy or credit guarantees. New tools can help, such as a national infrastructure bank – championed last year before plans were strangely downplayed.

The third component is more education spending at secondary, vocation and bachelor-degree levels, to recognise the reality that tens of millions of American workers lack the advanced skills needed to achieve full employment at the salaries that the workers expect. The unemployment crisis is largely a structural crisis of job skills. It is hitting young workers – many of whom should still be learning – and older workers who lack a degree.

The penultimate part of the plan is boosting infrastructure exports to Africa and other low-income countries. China is running circles around the US and Europe in promoting such exports of infrastructure. The costs are modest – essentially just credit guarantees – but the benefits are huge, in increased exports, support for African development and a boost in geopolitical goodwill and stability.

The fifth and final element should be a medium-term fiscal framework that will credibly reduce the federal budget deficit to sustainable levels within five years. This can be achieved partly by cutting defence spending by two percentage points of gross domestic product, meaning ending the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations and cutting wasteful weapons systems. Other measures should include gradually phasing out the tax subsidy on high-end health insurance, taxing Wall Street bank profits and bonuses, raising high-end marginal tax rates and, if necessary, introducing a small value added tax. Public investment costs could be financed mainly by public tolls, gradually rising carbon taxes and by repayments of international loans to finance the export of infrastructure.

The Obama administration and Republican opposition are both guilty of irresponsible short-termism and lack of forward-thinking. Both would dangerously prolong the budget deficit, the first through a combination of increased fiscal transfers and tax cuts, and the latter through even larger and more unsustainable tax cuts. Neither would do what America needs and China is doing better: investing for the future through serious attention to sustainable energy, cutting-edge infrastructure, enhanced labour-force skills and the promotion of international development through the export of infrastructure.