❄ PLAIN TALK [III]: STARVE THE REPUBLIC

❄ This post, and other ‘PLAIN TALK’ posts on this blog, describe in plain language the current Republican Party aims and methods, which I consider a perverse exercise in political design. ❄

It’s bizarre that the slogan ‘No New Taxes!’ became a standard declaration, and then the loyalty oath of the US Republican Party. Why bizarre? Because the purpose of government is to collect and organize society‘s resources to meet compelling needs that cannot be met, or cannot be met as well (promptly, efficiently, effectively, cheaply), by other institutions. In short, there is a perceived need for government, and if there is to be government then it must be funded.

Of course “No New Taxes!” arose precisely among agitators who were suspicious of government, and above all suspicious of large government. In California a referendum campaign (‘Prop 13’) mandated stern limits to annual increases in property taxes. Government was likened to a ‘beast’, leading to the slogan ‘Starve the Beast”.

Bruce Bartlett traces the idea of using tax cuts to starve government to an unlikely source: John Kenneth Galbraith. Learning of this unexpected contribution by Galbraith made me laugh, as he was once my teacher, and I had paid some attention to his views. Galbraith, as Reader must suspect, was warning of this possibility. In 1965 Galbraith told the Joint Economic Committee of Congress that:

“I was never as enthusiastic as many of my fellow economists over the tax reduction of last year. The case for it as an isolated action was undoubtedly good. But there was danger that conservatives, once introduced to the delights of tax reduction, would like it too much. Tax reduction would then become a substitute for increased outlays on urgent social needs. We would have a new and reactionary form of Keynesianism with which to contend.” [Note 1]

Bartlett finds the first use of the phrase ‘starve the beast’ in this sense in the 1980s.

Holding elected officials to a pledge of “No New Taxes!” has been championed most prominently by Grover Norquist, about whose campaign Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (who was a student at Harvard with Norquist a quarter-century earlier) recently wrote that

“It is now clear that the Republican strategy is to drive America to the brink of fiscal ruin and then argue that the only way out is to cut spending for the powerless. Taxes—a dirty word thanks to Norquist’s “no new taxes” gimmick—are made to seem beyond the pale, even as the burden of paying for our society shifts disproportionately to the middle class and working poor. It is the height of fiscal folly. It is also not who we are as a country.” [Note 2]

Note that the Republican Party has no qualms about flagrant, unjustifiable spending of tax dollars, as the Iraq War (2003 - .. ) illustrates.

Can a complex modern society function if its government commits to ‘no new taxes’? Yes, but not well, and only for a time. Government performs useful functions the ‘private sector’ will not. In due course, unfunded, present functions will be reduced and new opportunities foregone.

The Question

How can the cry ‘No New Taxes!’ be discredited?

Approaches

‘No New Taxes’ is a childish slogan because it treats all taxes as alike, without regard for their use. And is there any difference between ‘new’ taxes and those already in place? Why should taxes be collected at all if no new tax can be justified? Recall Washington’s passing enchantment with ‘zero base budgeting’.

Tax critics often argue that the ‘private sector’ is good—entrepreneurial, more productive, a better source of ‘job growth’ and economic growth in general, more efficient, and via markets responsive to the people’s choices—while the ‘public sector’ performs badly. Or, in other terms, that the ‘market’ bests ‘regulation’. Again, these categories say nothing about content and quality. There is no doubt that markets can serve an allocative role, allowing individual preferences to be aggregated and ensuring that performance models are tested in competition. Efficiencies may result. Novel utilities and means to achieve them may be encouraged. It is equally true that no market can function without regulation (which needn’t be supplied by government), and that governments can use quasi-markets to explore efficiencies and innovations.

I once proposed a simple solution to funding the Iraq War (2003 - .. ). Observing that the GW Bush White House had asked Bill Clinton and GHW Bush to join forces to raise monies for relief of tsunami victims in Indonesia, I imagined funding the Iraq War from voluntary contributions. Americans would show their deep commitment to the Iraq War, by their dimes and their dollars. Banks and businesses would be generous. Children, shown on TV breaking piggy banks, would give their pennies. In short order the war would be funded without any burden on the Treasury.

Design of Maneuver Masquerading as Policy

Why ‘Starve the Beast’? Of course for some the slogan invokes the metaphor GOVERNMENT IS THE DEVIL. [Note 3] But the Republican Party employs ‘No New Taxes!’ as a cudgel to force concessions from its political opponents. [Note 4] It can do this because of the concurrence of these conditions:
[1]    Republicans have a clear majority in the House of Representatives, and
[1a]   Congress cannot pass bills, including appropriations, without approval of the House.
[1b]   the Republican majority in the House has, with few exceptions, acted as a disciplined force.
[2]   Senate rules permits cloture only by a vote of three-fifths, enabling any minority of 41 or more to threaten filibuster;
[2a]   on almost all matters the Republican minority leadership in the Senate has been able to block action if it has chosen to do so;
[2b]   Congress cannot pass bills, including appropriations, without approval of the Senate.

What this means is that the Republican leadership can demand that terms be included in legislation as a condition of its being enacted, and can threaten to preclude approval of legislation if it funds functions to which the Republicans object. As a first approximation Republican members of the House and Senate are not free to vote in accordance with their judgment, if they disagree with the Leadership. I say ‘first approximation’ because the Party recognizes that preserving a Senate seat may require allowing a sitting member to vote ‘independently’ in order to burnish his badge for reelection ... and has a sufficiently large minority in the Senate to do so.

How ‘masquerade’? To clothe ‘No New Taxes!’ in the appearance of sound policy, the Party asserts that the national economy is in dire straits and that only rejection of the ‘tax and spend policies’ of its opposition can rescue the country. This is a larger question than we can disentangle here, but there are some certainties that the Republican Party assiduously avoids: first, that something more than 40% of the substantial national debt follows from the ‘Bush era tax cuts’ and the Bush-Cheney war of choice in Iraq; second, that the financial stability of Social Security could be readily achieved by a few steps (such as requiring a contribution of income exceeding the current ceiling); third, that Republican Party hostility to the Obama Administration’s medical care initiative perpetuates, and does not address, the medical cost problem; fourth, that there are substantial military savings that could be had if there were bipartisan readiness to enact them. And fifth—about which the economic consequences are highly uncertain but the scientific evidence firm—that anthropogenic climate change is a fact for which government readiness to take actions may require some readiness to spend.

Drafting Problem

Devise a systematic, evidenced comparison of tax-funded (government) and private (‘non-governmental’) approaches to a significant issue, such as health care, incarceration, global warming, transport systems, food safety assurance, or the custody of nuclear weapons.

NOTES


[Note 1]:  Joint Economic Committee. 1965. January 1965 Economic Report of the President. 89th Cong., 1st sess. Washing- ton, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. P. 13. Cited in Bruce Bartlett, “ ‘Starve the Beast’: Origins and Development of a Budgetary Metaphor,” The Independent Review, v. XII, n. 1, Summer 2007, pp. 5–26. http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_12_01_01_bartlett.pdf
[Note 2]:  Deval Patrick, “How Grover Norquist hypnotized the GOP,” The Washington Post, 30 June 2011. On Norquist’s pledge, see Americans for Tax Reform, “What is the Taxpayer Protection Pledge?”.
[Note 3]:  On similar uses of metaphor, see George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).
[Note 4]:  For an illustrative account of current arguments about spending and revenue, see “Anti-Tax Diehard Looms Large in Spending Showdown”, Associated Press, The New York Times, 3 July 2011.

[Political Design 2011.06.30. Revised, adding Derval Patrick quote and reference to Grover Norquist: 2011.07.03. Post A27. http://www.learnworld.com/blog/design.html or http://design.learnworld.com]

❄ PLAIN TALK [II]: SUPPRESS THE VOTE

❄ This post, and other ‘PLAIN TALK’ posts on this blog, describe in plain language the current Republican Party aims and methods, which I consider a perverse exercise in political design. ❄

Five years ago I blogged, in “Every Citizen a Voter [I]”, on voter suppression in the United States. [Note 1] This post is subtitled EVERY CITIZEN A VOTER [II]. Far from urging all citizens to register and vote, key Republicans prefer to shape the electorate to their pleasure—by excluding those thought less likely to vote Republican.

Now, in 2011, E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes that “An attack on the right to vote is underway across the country through laws designed to make it more difficult to cast a ballot. If this were happening in an emerging democracy, we’d condemn it as election-rigging.” [Note 2] Although the title of Dionne’s article—“How states are rigging the 2012 election”—seems to say the culprits are ‘states’, the full text makes plain that the culprit is the Republican Party. “The laws in question are being enacted in states where Republicans control state governments” and the laws themselves display “rank partisanship.”

What do these laws do? Dionne: “The laws in question include requiring voter identification cards at the polls, limiting the time of early voting, ending same-day registration and making it difficult for groups to register new voters.”

The Question

Should we understand these laws, and their enactment, as ordinary, ‘just politics’, normal, and so to be expected? Or should we understand them as extraordinary, pernicious, a threat to public life, orchestrated, and a large-scale exercise in voting fraud?

Are the persons who promote these laws, and the state legislators and governors who enact them, engaged in an illegal conspiracy?

Approaches

Begin with this radical idea: US citizens have a right to vote, which no one may take away. An electoral democracy requires nothing less.

Observe, however, that states have denied the vote, or removed a registered voter from the rolls, on many grounds—or pretexts. Being a woman, failure to meet a property test, race, too short residence, failure to pay poll tax, alleged non-residence, status as felon, failure to register or re-register, failure to register by deadline, failure to vote in a recent election or elections, and so forth.

Just as previous tests have often been explained as ‘necessary’ to construct a reliable list of qualified voters, some current proposals—for example, requiring a ‘government-issued photo ID at the polls—are justified as necessary to prevent ‘voting fraud’. If not felony, at least irony!

Some would argue that this is a political matter, subject to legislative jurisdiction. On this argument, terming the several proposals to place conditions on voting ‘illicit’ sounds out of place. And, even Dionne notes, the US Supreme Court upheld in 2008 an Indiana requirement that voters produce photo ID. [Note 3] Does it follow that it is far-fetched to write of a ‘conspiracy’? A conspiracy, according to my dictionary is “A combination of persons for an evil or unlawful purpose; an agreement between two or more to do something criminal, illegal, or reprehensible; a plot.” [Note 4] If voter suppression is not unlawful, it is at least evil and reprehensible. So ‘conspiracy’ it is.

Accounts

Are there sources that might help us to characterize this ‘conspiracy’, and hence better understand how to prevent its achieving its ‘reprehensible’ or ‘evil’ purpose?

A New York Times editorial on this subject is titled “The Republican Threat to Voting”. [Note 5] According to the Times “ Many of these bills were inspired by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a business-backed conservative group, which has circulated voter ID proposals in scores of state legislatures. ” What is this ‘ALEC’? It‘s website describes it as “non-partisan”, but critics portray it as partisan to the core, in effect a front organization for Republican Party ambitions, financed by the Koch brothers.

The squarely non-partisan League of Women Voters has long championed voter registration. In the first half of 2011 Googling on [“League of Women Voters” suppression] uncovers several League state organizations criticizing the Republican initiatives. [Note 6]

Design Proposal

See “Every Citizen a Voter [I]”.

Design Problem

There I pose this question: “ how would the transition from the world we have now to a world of presumed voting eligibility be accomplished?” And in the meantime are vigorous voter registration drives and vigilance at the polls the only available responses?

NOTES

[Note 1]:  This blog, 6 June 2006, “Every Citizen a Voter [I]”.
[Note 2]:   E. J. Dionne, Jr. “How states are rigging the 2012 election”, Washington Post, 19 June 2011.
[Note 3]:   David Stout, “Supreme Court Upholds Voter Identification Law in Indiana”, The New York Times, 29 April 2008.
[Note 4]:   The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, v. 1, p. 407.
[Note 5]:   Editorial, The New York Times, “The Republican Threat to Voting”, 26 April 2011.
[Note 6]:   [Wisconsin] “League of Women Voters Denounces Costly Voter Suppression Legislation,” http://www.lwvwi.org/Portals/0/News%20and%20Events/PDFS/LeagueDenouncesVoterSuppressionBill.pdf , 5 May 2011. [South Carolina] “League of Women Voters Denounces Voter Suppression Legislation,” The Pickens Sentinel, http://www.pickenssentinel.com/view/full_story/13396203/article-League-of-Women-Voters-denounces-passage-of-voter-suppression-legislation-Read-more--The-Easley-Progress---League-of-Women-Voters-denounces-passage-of-voter-suppression-legislation-?instance=home_news_lead , 25 May 2011. [Florida] “League of Women Voters Accuses Legislature of Voter Suppression,”, ABC Action News, 11 May 2011. http://www.abcactionnews.com/dpp/news/political/league-of-women-voters-accuses-legislature-of-voter-suppression .

[Political Design 2011.06.29. Post A26. http://www.learnworld.com/blog/design.html or http://design.learnworld.com]

❄ PLAIN TALK [I]: OBSTRUCT THE REPUBLIC

❄ This post, and other ‘PLAIN TALK’ posts on this blog, describe in plain language the current Republican Party aims and methods, which I consider a perverse exercise in political design. ❄

Consider a call to END PARALYSIS BY A SUPERMINORITY. This note returns to a subject raised earlier [Note 1], but takes a different tack than those developed in ‘Are You an Obstructionist?’  The earlier note is more elegant. This note is blunt, but it also addresses conventional arguments for the status quo.

The US Senate operates under rules [Note 2] that enable ’two-fifths plus one’ to block legislation (in that to end debate requires the votes of three-fifths of the Senators). [These provisions are the ghostly remnants of racist filibuster against civil rights in the Senate of olde.] The problem is that one Party has chosen to use Rule XXII to give it a veto on Senate action ... and so block any legislation (including those to tax and appropriate funds) that the majority judges necessary for governance. A number of US states require a ‘supermajority’ of 3/5 or 2/3 to pass some legislation (in the state legislature or by referendum), such as budgets and tax bills. This note speaks only to the US Senate practice, as state constitutions and rules are various.

The Question

What’s wrong with this? If it’s bad, how can it be fixed?

Approaches

What’s wrong is that requiring a supermajority, when more than half but not three-fifths favor a bill, effectively disenfranchises those whose votes elected that majority of the Senate. It is not far-fetched to call it vote theft.

Defenders of this rule offer two arguments. First, that the rule ensures that a majority does not trample the minority. Second, that in any case the Constitution (Article I Section 5) stipulates that “Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings ... ”.

The issue of ‘cloture’ confronts every deliberative body. When is enough talk enough? Is there some argument, not yet heard, which would sway the body if only a member were given time enough to speak it? And how can the body know it would not be swayed if it silences that member?

But ‘trampling’ conveys another fear: that the substance of a bill, if enacted, could deprive the minority of rights or precious policies ... and that if as many as two-fifths plus one judge the bill so onerous, or even dangerous, then that bill should not pass.

In a voluntary society—say, the Different Drummers’ Club—mutual respect, a readiness to listen but also a readiness to accept practices that make for decision, is sufficient. If it were not, members would leave, as they are always free to do. And the Drummers’s decisions are of modest consequence. But the US Senate must judge matters of enormous consequence, war and equity, justice and regulation, initiative and restraint, and its members are expected to serve their terms. Could reasonable men and women find a way to ensure that any Senator’s argument could be made and be available? Of course.

Now, what about substance? What of ‘the onerous, the dangerous’? The Constitution builds in two protections against bad bills: requiring approval of both House and Senate, and requiring Presidential approval. Those who insist on the Senate’s requirement of a supermajority must believe that House, Senate, and President would agree to a bill so bad, so onerous and even dangerous, that it must be stopped. And it is not impossible to imagine Congressional majorities and a President who would commit to bad policy and bad practice. Of course, as long as there is some vestige of an electoral system the customary reply is that the public will, at the next election, have the option of throwing the rascals out. But in these early 2000s it has become clear that large numbers among the US public can’t spot a rapscallion when he, or she, is in plain sight.

The argument is often made that we may rail against the opposition’s superminority today, but on a later day, after an election that transformed us into a minority, we would prize the ability to prevent a new majority from enacting its mad schemes. Shouldn’t we think more kindly of the Senate’s requirement of 60%?

No. The requirement of a supermajority introduces an asymmetry. If Party A has a reliable 60% it can pass what it will—and if it has the cooperation of the House and the White House that bill becomes law. Thereafter, Party B can reverse the law, only if it can muster a vote of 60% in the Senate, and a majority in the House, and a Presidential signature, at the same time. Party A has put a ‘lock’ on the terms of that act, which may be modified in the future in the necessary bargaining between Parties A and B but which will resist reversal if Party A remains obstinate.

Of course, the main objection to a Senate superminority is that it makes for paralysis. A majority in the Senate cannot act unless it can muster 60%, which an obstinate Opposition will deny if it can.

Design Proposal

The post “Are You An Obstructionist?” offers one approach: to call for personal pledges not to obstruct a majority.

A very different approach would be to wrench the supermajority requirement out of the rules: let a majority decide, unless the Constitution requires more. [Note 3] Apply it to getting a vote, and the vote itself, on bills, and on appointments.

It is interesting, by the way, that the drafters of the Constitution were well aware that there might be some matters for which a supermajority was desirable. Article 1 Section 5 not only refers to rules, but stipulates that a 2/3 vote is required for one particular action:

“Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.”

It does not say that the concurrence of two thirds is required to end debate, and it does not say that the Rules may not require two thirds.

Drafting Problem

I leave it to the Reader to wrestle with drafting suitable rules. Would you really want a ‘mere’ majority to be able to end debate? Wouldn’t these two rules (simple majority to act, and to force a matter onto the agenda) require guarantees that the text of a bill be available for some set number of days in advance of consideration and vote? How is a minority’s role to be honored and respected? Are there other issues raised by such a blunt way of addressing the filibuster?

[Note 1]:   See Are You an Obstructionist? Post A23. 7 August 2010.
[Note 2]:   Rule XXII, Precedence of Motions, §2. http://rules.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=RulesOfSenateHome.
[Note 3]:  The Constitution requires a two-thirds majority, in some cases of both Houses separately, in eight matters: expulsion of a member, veto override, Senatorial treaty ‘advice and consent’, initiating a Constitutional amendment, overriding an Amendment 14 §3 disqualification of having violated an oath to the Constitution, conviction by Senate in trial of impeachment, and to overcome Presidential insistence that he or she is not unable to perform the office. None of these is an ‘ordinary’ legislative matter.

[Political Design 2011.06.18. Minor revisions 2011.06.25. Post A25. http://www.learnworld.com/blog/design.html or http://design.learnworld.com]