Mark Schmitt

Does McCain-Feingold Help (Or Not Hurt) Democrats?

Here's a working link to Wednesday's provocative story in the Wall Street Journal, "McCain-Feingold Helps Democrats Stay Competitive"

Campaign finance regulation is always the realm of unintended consequences, some of which are good and some bad. The Journal's John Harwood points out two ways the law has, contrary to assumptions, helped Democrats this year. The first is the "stand by your ad" provision, requiring candidates to appear in their ads if only long enough to state briefly that they have approved the contents of the ad. That prevents the kind of hit-and-run attack ads that might backfire on a candidate if he or she were personally associated with them, and it is credited with the fact that the primary campaign has been almost entirely free of negative ads, with the exception of the anti-Dean ads aired by an independent group.

The "stand by your ad" provision (which, by the way, might well be found unconstitutional if challenged, since it regulates the content of a broadcast communication with the intent reducing negative advertising, rather than the "time, place and manner" of speech) wasn't particularly controversial, or considered an important part of the legislation. But it's often the little overlooked things in campaign finance regulation seem to matter most. In Arizona, for example, which has a system of full public financing for state elections, it's not the public money, but the system of qualifying for public financing -- by collecting a certain number of $5 contributions, to show broad support -- that captured the imagination of the public and politicians. The state commission that runs the program created a bolo-tie, cowboy-hat-wearing cartoon character called "Five-Dollar Bill" to promote the program, and the current governor, Janet Napolitano, boasts of throwing "five dollar parties" throughout the state.

More importantly, Harwood argues that the ban on soft money forced the Democrats to adapt by developing a small donor base, which had fallen far behind the Republicans. Indeed, it appears that the Democratic party committees have raised more in hard money (that is, contributions under the $2,000 limit, from individuals, which can be used for anything) than they had raised at this point in the previous election cycle in hard money and soft money combined.

The invaluable Professor Rick Hasen, who writes the Election Law blog dissented, noting that Republicans, with the now-$200 million raised by Bush still have a huge advantage that the Democrats can no longer use soft money to offset. Hasen also cites Nate Persily, another brilliant young academic in this field as arguing that "if raising small donations was really advantageous to the Democrats, they would have done more of it while raising soft money was still legal."

In a separate listserv, Tom Mann of the Brookings Institution argued in response that "Democrats got lazy going after soft dollars in large denominations. The new law forced their hand. The chairman of the DNC has said as much. And Howard Dean has led the way. The Democratic presidential candidates have raised collectively as much money as Bush has. The Democratic party committees are doing very well in their hard-money raising and especially with cash on hand. The national Democratic party committees are likely to invest more in GOTV in this cycle than they did in the 2000 cycle. And on and on."

Mann and Harwood are right here. Political fundraising operations have a culture. Either they go after big dollars (easy), or small dollars (usually more difficult). People who know how to schmooze big donors and walk out with $50,000 checks are very different from the people who know how to set up an operation that finds small donors and cultivates ever-expanding numbers of them. (Not that $2,000 is so small, by my standards, but it still takes a lot of them to finance a presidential campaign.) The Democratic fundraising operation was always based on cultivating large donors, sometimes ideologically motivated donors but often business donors who were persuaded that the Democrats were always going to control the House of Representatives or the Presidency, and so they had to hedge their bets. This wasn't always the best money to have, because it came with strings, and it was unreliable -- lose power and the money goes with it. The Republicans, in years out of power, had built a more reliable base of small and ideological donors, on top of which Bush added an unprecedented system for bundling contributions through business leaders.

The Democrats' escape from dependence on large contributions and soft money will certainly have its benefits. McCain-Feingold obviously forced the issue, but so did the fact of being out of power; the unifying and energizing presence of Bush, which has given Democrats a feeling that they have a stake in being DEMOCRATS that was missing in much of the Clinton era; and the fact that the internet can dramatically reduce the transaction costs of asking for a small contribution and all but eliminate the costs of asking for a repeat contribution. Dean didn't invent this, but he did show the way, and other candidates, and the party itself, will follow.

The Iraq Commission

I'm still mystified by the Bush appointments to the commission on pre-war intelligence about Iraq's WMD. Obviously, for reasons that other resourceful bloggers developed within hours, Judge Laurence Silberman violated the ethical obligations of the bench by his fierce activisim in the anti-Clinton quasi-legal skullduggery (activities that, as far as I know he has not denied), and is therefore no more qualified to chair such a commission than Henry Kissinger was the 9/11 commission. I presume that only the fact that Bush's AWOL status suddenly flared back up as the issue of the moment prevented the Silberman question from being the issue of the day. This administration has always been very savvy about the fact that the press and even the blogs can only handle one outrage at a moment. But let's hope we get back to this one.

I don't share the view of some of the bloggers that former Senator Chuck Robb is compromised here. His career is over, and he was defeated by a Bush crony -- Senator George Allen. He's capable of being a tough and plain-speaking guy, almost like McCain, and he was just so paralyzed by attacks and pseudo-scandals over his Senate career that nothing ever came of it. He's not going to play the role that Max Cleland played on the 9/11 commission, but I doubt he'll be a pushover here other. He's got nothing to lose.

And some of the other members of the commission are surprisingly good. I've come to know Judge Pat Wald a little bit in the last year, and she is extraordinary -- very well-versed in international issues as well as the law. And McCain -- that appointment is just amazing. McCain doesn't just give "the appearance of independence" -- he actually is independent. And he won't be sheepish in the least.

Trying to figure out the McCain appointment, though, I was reminded of something I was once told was the general wisdom around the House and Senate intelligence committees: "They don't tell you enough that you really know what's going on, but they tell you just enough that you can't say anything" without compromising classified information. In other words, exposing someone like McCain to just enough classified material is actually a good way to silence someone who might be a forceful critic whether on the commission or not. This only works with people who are actual patriots, however.

A little more on the budget

I finally caught the severe cold/sore throat that everyone else had a month ago, and I've been working on another project, so I haven't posted as much to the Decembrist as I would like. I expected to take a closer look at the budget, but obviously didn't get past the pictures, which I mentioned the other day.

All the good blogs by people who actually know something about economics, like Max Sawicky have by now thoroughly covered the budget. If you want a good just-the-facts summary of the major outrages, with the actual outrage left to your own mind, always rely on the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

A month ago, when the first "leaks" of the Administration's proposals started to come out, I wrote a short piece called "How To Read the Bush Budget," listing the ordinary ways that almost any presidential budget fudges the numbers, particularly about cutting discretionary programs and estimating the savings from tangential changes affecting entitlements. I got a lot of compliments on that post, and I notice it's gotten a lot of hits in the last three days. Let me just make clear that the reason I could do that post a month before the budget came out was that it explained the predictable ordinary white lies that are to some extent in the budget of every president. They are the "this never happened to me before," or "She's not really my girlfriend, we just went out a few times" kind of lies. The dishonesty in the 2005 budget is more like something out of a movie on the Lifetime network, with the guy whose wife and three kids in Chicago don't know that he has a whole other family in Texas, plus another one in Canada and everything's fine until the three wives accidentally meet... Well, you know the rest.

There's the decision to project out just five years instead of ten. There's the complete failure to account for expensive policies the administration favors, such as reform of the Alternative Minimum Tax. There's the overstatement of the current deficit in order to make plausible the claim that they will cut it in half in three years. All of these are the very same things that men like Richard Scrushy of Health South and Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom are likely to go to jail for. And this is on top of the "discovery" that the Medicare bill will cost 1/3 more than estimated, which the very, very sober and non-ideological budget analyst Stanley Collender has already compared to Enron.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities also points out another amazing thing that has not received much attention. The budget proposes to restore the "pay-as-you-go" rules that governed Congress when I worked on the Hill. They were frustrating, but essential to getting the deficit under control: Any money you propose to spend, through spending or tax cuts, has to be offset with a spending cut or tax increase. Except in the Bush version, tax cuts would not have to be offset. But refundable tax credits -- the kind of tax cut that helps poor working families -- would have to be offset. And increases in entitlement spending could only be offset with other spending cuts, not by closing tax loopholes. In other words, the rule says, you can't do anything, really, except cut taxes. Amazing.

The Budget Ads are Better than the Super Bowl Ads

It seems the Administration has discovered a new deficit-reduction technique that just might work: Why not sell advertising right in the middle of the federal budget documents? If they can put ads at eye-level in men's rooms, and on airline baggage carousels, why not? And, needless to say, there are cash-rich advertisers who would love to buy space in a document that's been considered reliable and respected since 1948. For example, there's a little corporation called Bush-Cheney '04, Inc. that's sitting on about $100 million in cash and needs to boost a sinking brand name.

That's the only explanation for this, which jumped out from the section of the budget entitled "Upholding America's Values":

Good company. President Bush visits the St. Augustine Parish Hunger Center in Cleveland, Ohio in May 2001.

or this:

Caring for our seniors. President Bush meets with 94 year old Anna Tovcimak after a roundtable discussion on Medicare Liability Reform in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

or this:

Listen first, then act. President Bush takes a private moment to discuss Medicare. In December 2003 the President signed into law the first major improvement in Medicare since 1965.

or this:

Ready to read. President Bush helps a child with a reading assignment at Sullivant Elementary School in Columbus, Ohio.

The federal budget is far from a neutral statement of accounts. Of course it's an argument for the direction that the president wants to take the country. I've said before that it's a political document, and should be. But it is still a budget. It's not a campaign brochure. It's not an occasion to tout that the President "Listens, then acts" (even if there were the slightest reason to think that he or Congress listened to seniors in designing the Medicare bill), or reads to kids, or provides "good company" for hungry people!

The first Bush budget, for Fiscal Year 2003, was full of cartoons, including one depicting government as a bunch of Lilliputians tying down the American people. This one is full of these ridiculous campaign photos. No president in history has produced budgets like this, and there should be a little more outrage about this. Or, the Bush-Cheney Committee should just pay for the ads and maybe we'll reduce the deficit by 0.000003 percent.

Back to Nixon-loving, Bush-hating

David Bernstein, writing at the Volokh Conspiracy, combines two ideas that are both wrong: First, that Bush is like Nixon (a point I've written about before, and, second, that Bush-hating is an irrational response, given Bush's Nixonian spending on health and education, which liberals would applaud if they weren't so blinded by Bush-hatred. Here's Bernstein's main post, and there are some follow-ups later.

Bernstein claims that those who disagree with him take one of three positions: (1) deny that the increases occurred or argue that they weren't enough, (2) argue that spending on these and other domestic needs will be horribly constrained by the revenue shortfalls in future years or (3) complain that they money goes to purposes they don't agree with, such as school vouchers. I won't take the first position, the second is true even under Bush's own budget assumptions, and as for the third: well, different people have their own views, but I favor experimentation with school vouchers, so for me, that's not the point.

I've done this topic to death, so I should try to respond briefly and calmly.

First, there were plenty of reasons to hate Nixon, and social spending isn't the only thing that even liberals measure a president by. It's not for no reason that Nixon resigned under imminent threat of impeachment, after a group of Republican leaders decided they had had enough of a lawless presidency. It's true that only the hindsight of history has fully revealed the degree to which Nixon's domestic presidency was a continuation of, rather than a break with, the generally expansive trend of government in the Kennedy and Johnson years, and had liberals understood that, they might have looked at Nixon in a slightly different light, though he's no less guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors. But the difference between Nixon and Bush is simply this: Nixon's initiatives, except for wage and price controls, were good, serious efforts. They were relatively clear-cut, well-designed, and the resources were appropriate to the task. The EPA and SSI (the Social Security benefit for people who can't work because of disabilities), to take two examples of Nixonian liberalism, are generally popular, sound programs that no one questions. The Bush initiatives, on the other hand, are a mess: complicated, intrusive, and ineffective.

Second, liberalism is not about throwing money at problems. It's about trying to solve public problems by public means. As a liberal, do I celebrate the news that the Medicare bill will cost more than $500 billion, rather than $400 billion -- a 25% cost overrun in just two months? Of course not. In fact the news gives me a pain in the pit of my stomach. It doesn't mean we're doing 25% better at solving the health care problems of seniors. It just means we're doing whatever it is the bill does even less efficiently. The bill doesn't do the job, at any cost, and so every dollar spent on it is a dollar that's taken away from what could be a more effective program, or from long-term fiscal stability. The same is true in education, where No Child Left Behind is a mess, and makes so many more promises and demands than can possibly be met with the funding available, and thus invites deceit.

The shorter version of Paul O'Neill's complaint inThe Price of Loyalty, after all, is "I thought this would be the Nixon or Ford administration, but it wasn't." What liberals dislike about Bush is the very same thing that O'Neill disliked: reckless incompetence, Karl Rove running policy, nihilism on a grand scale.

Here's the difference between Nixon and Bush: When Nixon left, his successor could proclaim that "our long national nightmare is over." With Bush, we'll be feeling the consequences for generations.

McCain Speech on campaign reform

Senator McCain spoke today at the Carnegie Corporation of New York (which is not a corporation, but one of the major foundations in the U.S., very important on campaign finance reform, education, and other issues.) It was quite a room -- a lot of media people (Morley Safer asked a question, and I was sitting next to Nick Lemann, the new dean of the Columbia Journalism School and a hero of mine), plus a complete who's who of the people interested in campaign finance reform, many of whom came from Washington or California for the even, plus a good number of foundation presidents and key program officers. I was hilariously underdressed for some reason, in a dress shirt and sweater when everyone else had a suit and tie, but everyone said, "Oh, you're dressed like you're on sabbatical." (Last week in San Francisco, I wore a suit to speak at an event, and everyone else was dressed down. All events need dress codes these days.)

McCain was wonderfully charming and incredibly knowledgeable about not just campaign reform but media concentration and energy policy and a bunch of other things. He was completely at home in this crowd, which ranged from pretty far left to super-mainstream foundation-type liberals. I've always liked McCain, but felt that some progressives fell for him without remembering that he is a conservative: very much the direct heir of Barry Goldwater, whose seat he holds in the Senate. But at this point, he's out there on so many issues that he really does have more in common with progressives than with the Bush administration. He fought both the Medicare bill and the energy bill, which is more than I can say for Tom Daschle, Ron Wyden, Tom Harkin, etc.

And yet, McCain is still very much a conservative. He talked about the need for reform, and in his words, it's: "political reform, but also military reform (don't know if he means procurement or force structure), Medicare reform, Social Security reform, tort reform." Again, the other reforms are not necessarily those that most liberals would embrace, although I would argue that some of them we should embrace, and define.

McCain was very generous toward most of the Democratic candidates for president. He described Kerry, Lieberman and Edwards as close personal friends, which surprised me only in that he would include Edwards in that group. He worked very closely with Kerry on a commission in the mid-1990s that defused the politicized issue of POWs and MIAs in Vietnam -- a huge accomplishment, which is one of the few really significant achievements I credit Kerry with. And he's always found common ground with Lieberman, including on campaign reform. But I didn't know he had the same relationship with Edwards. But in response to a question about whether campaign reform should promote political equality, not just reduce corruption, McCain gave a beautiful answer about inequality, and said something like, "and there's a lot of people who want to hear more about that, and the proof of that is in the Edwards campaign and the big crowds he's getting in New Hampshire by talking about inequality and "two nations.""

And towards the President: not one kind word, though nothing really unkind except to say something like, "there's a lot of dissatisfaction out there.

Why is the President Determined to Destroy the Private Health Insurance System?

(slightly updated from last night)

I have to confess, I didn't watch all of the State of the Union address. Reading Madlenka's Dog to my daughter for the 40th time seemed like a better use of my time, and certainly easier on the ol' ticker.

So I just heard pieces here and there. But this jumped out: "tonight I propose that individuals who buy catastrophic health care coverage, as part of our new health savings accounts, be allowed to deduct 100 percent of the premiums from their taxes."

The health section of the speech was eyes-glaze-over stuff. And judging from Frank Luntz's focus group on MSNBC, voters were perfectly happy that he was talking about health costs at all. But what he actually said is hugely important.

It makes you wonder if Bush has a secret plan to bring about socialist revolution. What would you do if you wanted to create a public uprising that would demand single-payer health care? First, you would destroy the private health insurance system. And the way to do that is with exactly the policy Bush just proposed: make catastrophic insurance fully tax-deductible, and couple it with health savings accounts.

Any system of insurance depends on a balance of risk. In comprehensive health insurance, that means balancing healthy people who pay more into the system than they cost, against people who need the insurance more, and, in some years, cost more than they put in. And in the United States today, health and wealth are remarkably correlated, so you have to keep healthy, wealthy and young people in the system. That's one reason why requiring individuals to have health insurance is such a good idea, and would lower costs for everyone.

Catastrophic care insurance is a completely separate system. In exchange for a very high deductible, sometimes as high as $5,000, you pay a fraction of the premium in a comprehensive plan. In effect, you agree to pay out of pocket for all the normal, reasonable costs -- check-ups, outpatient procedures, minor emergencies -- that are the bread and butter of standard health care, but if you're hospitalized or have some major problem, insurance will kick in. As long as you're well off, healthy and relatively young, don't have and aren't planning to have small children, and don't spend much on ordinary doctor stuff, a catastrophic plan could be a very sweet deal. Health savings accounts, as passed in the Medicare bill, make it an even better deal. If I had a catastrophic plan, whatever costs I did incur under the deductible, I would pay for with pre-tax money from the account, which in a high tax bracket is the equivalent of a 35% discount. Plus, investment earnings in the account accumulate tax-free, so if I had doubled my money in the account, as long as I spent the money on health care, that would also be, in effect, free money. I could even spend it on plastic surgery. (Get that chin implant so I look more presidential.) Now this is starting to look like an irresistible deal.

And then, if on top of that, the premium on the catastrophic plan became 100% tax-deductible, the combination would be an even better deal. Now, if I'm in the 35% bracket, I'm paying that much less for my premium, plus anything I pay under the deductible is coming from tax-exempt funds. I'd have to be crazy not to go for this deal, especially because premiums for ordinary self-employed health insurance are not fully tax-deductible, and out-of-pocket costs are not tax-deductible unless you itemize and the costs exceed 4.5% of income.

If I were an employer, I'd figure out a way to start offering this deal to my higher-paid employees. It could be as simple as giving them $5,000 cash instead of health insurance. I'd get my costs under control, and they'd get a chunk of money tax-free to put straight into their health savings account and pay the premiums on the catastrophic plan.

But what if I'm not in the 35% bracket? If I'm in the 10% bracket, then both the deductibility of the premium and the health savings account are worth a lot less to me. But much, much more important: I can't deal with the risk of a catastrophic plan. If I'm making $25,000 a year, I can't handle the risk of $5,000 in health care costs. That would be a disaster. And I probably can't put that much away in a health savings account. The catastrophic plan combined with a health savings account simply isn't an option for poor and middle-class people, even if healthy.

Health savings accounts, combined with deductible premiums, are really just a giant bribe to better-off people to OPT OUT of the comprehensive health insurance system. What the administration is doing, first with health savings accounts, which are now the law, and then with this proposal, is to confer enormous tax advantages on a type of insurance that is already advantageous, but only for the relatively wealthy. But the consequence of it would be that, as young and healthy people withdraw from the standard, low-deductible insurance market, premiums in that market would go through the roof, insurers would desperately try to find ways to deny coverage to higher-risk people, and the whole delicate balance would surely collapse.

See this analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities last year on the risks to the insurance system from HSAs alone. The report cites other studies showing that the HSAs as passed in the Medicare bill could pull so many healthy people over to catastrophic that it would cause premiums for those left behind to double. And that's before adding the benefit of full tax deductibility.

Do Bush's advisors understand any of this? Are they just so profoundly opposed to any kind of communal pooling of risk, even outside of government, that they don't care? Is it just another way to funnel wealth to the rich, and to the politically connected insurance company that first offered HSAs, Golden Rule? Are they entirely indifferent to consequences that will occur a few years down the road? I suppose the answer is, All of the above, but the cause doesn't really matter. This is just something that must be stopped, now. I'm guessing that if I'd listened to more of the speech, I might find even more things like this.

The Supreme Court Upholds McCain-Feingold

I feel as though I should have some profound commentary on the Supreme Court's decision upholding the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA). I know a lot about it; I even helped put the funding together for the legal defense. But reading the decision through quickly, my reaction was that it seemed anti-climactic. Congress wrote a law that was constitutional; the Court held it to be constitutional. The alignments were not surprising, the result not unduly complex. Perhaps the only surprise was that the Court fairly easily rejected the plaintiffs strongest argument, which was that the provision limiting ads that mention a candidate right before the elction was overbroad.

Long ago, right after the law passed, former Federal Elections Commission chair Trevor Potter cut through the thicket of arguments to make clear that the Supreme Court had, over several decades, laid out some very specific markers of the kinds of restrictions that it would permit in a campaign finance law, and BCRA followed those markers quite carefully, with one or two exceptions. (Read Potter's original article here )

The lower court decision in May, which was really non-decision as it was three separate and overlapping opinions by three judges who could not even agree on a set of facts, invited a lot of analysis, and seemed to pose the possibility that the Court would render an equally complex decision, since it didn't really have the option of upholding or overturning the lower court. But that was misleading. The Supreme Court has visited these issues again and again; it's not a great mystery what the rules are, and the congressional sponsors had superb legal advice, from Potter, from Fred Wertheimer, from the Brennan Center for Justice and many others. And they took the advice, which is good.

The flip side of this point is that the Court has marked out both what is permissible in campaign reform, and what it would hold unconstitutional. And there isn't a lot of room to further limit money beyond what's in this bill. Certainly the independent organizations being put together to generally boost Democrats and Republicans next year, which can't run ads mentioning candidates and can't coordinate with candidates, cannot be limited. And it would be difficult to imagine limiting issue ads that occur well before an election, such as the Bush ad accusing Democrats of opposing tough action against terrorism, a classic soft money ad, which might influence the election were it not laughable.

That means that the best opportunity for further reform is not to keep chasing after "loopholes," or non-loopholes, but to build some counterweights to this kind of money, in the form of public financing, as in Arizona or New York City, or free broadcast time for candidates. Those have to be the next step in reform.

Finally, an interesting paragraph jumped out of the opinion, all of which is a well-written, clear statement of the problem and the logic of the solution:

Plaintiffs argue that without concrete evidence of an instance in which a federal officeholder has actually switched a vote (or, presumably, evidence of a specific instance where the public believes a vote was switched), Congress has not shown that there exists real or apparent corruption. But the record is to the contrary. The evidence connects soft money to manipulations of the legislative calendar, leading to Congress. failure to enact, among other things, generic drug legislation, tort reform, and tobacco legislation. Donations from the tobacco industry to Republicans scuttled tobacco legislation, just as contributions from the trial lawyers to Democrats stopped tort reform. To claim that such actions do not change legislative outcomes surely misunderstands the legislative process.

Well put.

Medicare Post-Mortem II -- The Message and the Liberal Quandary

As I more or less concluded in a previous post, there may be have been nothing that could have been done to restrain a congressional/presidential majority that is determined to pass a particular piece of legislation and is altogether indifferent to the cost, the details, the effects of the legislation as long as they can shovel a few hundred billion dollars to their friends. And it's too much to expect a coherent opposition message to develop when a bill is voted on three days after being unveiled, and there are perhaps a dozen things terribly wrong with it.

Still, there was something missing from the opposition message on the Medicare bill. Most frustrating to this observer was the ease with which the opposition allowed its message to be portrayed as merely wanting more benefits from the bill. This allowed countless supporters of the bill, the reluctant as well as the enthusiastic, to portray the bill as if it were a happy medium between the liberals who wanted more and the conservatives who wanted less. If both extremes were unhappy, supporters said over and over again, then there must be something right in the bill. This was how the debate was depicted in most of the press as well, with the exception of the Washington Post. And conservatives, in their own post-mortems on the bill, have glibly fallen back on the assumption that a Democratic alternative would have been even more costly and more expansive.

And yet, nothing could be farther from the truth. Opponents of the bill would have been happy with far less, certainly far less spending. This is provable: In 2000, President Clinton introduced a prescription drug bill, basically to flesh out a Gore campaign promise. Its ten-year cost was $253 billion, 40% cheaper than the $400 billion program just passed. And because it would have taken effect immediately, whereas the new law waits until 2006, its ten-year cost was really a ten-year cost, whereas the $400 billion covers just seven years of drug benefits. Unlike the bill just passed, the Clinton proposal did not have a "donut hole," the gap between $2200 in costs and $5000 in which no benefits at all are paid. Unlike the bill just passed, it provided real security, in the form of a "stop-loss" at $4,000 in out-of-pocket costs, above which 100% of drug costs would be covered. Unlike the bill just passed, premiums would have been set $25 a month in the first year, rather than some-amount-that-is-probably-likely-to-average-about-$35.

There's certainly been some inflation in prescription drug costs since 2000, but a bill that allowed the federal government to modestly exercise its buying power in exchange for the massive new market created for the pharmaceutical industry could surely have held those costs down. The difference between a solid $250 billion bill and a full-of-holes $400 billion bill is all the crap loaded onto the so-called conservative bill: the bribes to companies to induce them to provide insurance they would not otherwise want to offer, bribes to other companies to induce them not to drop their coverage, another massive tax giveaway to the well-off in the form of Health Savings Accounts, etc., etc.

Why is it so difficult for liberals to offer any alternative other than "more"? So long as liberalism is defined principally by its greater generosity, more benefits, more taxes, more government, etc., it will be vulnerable to the manipulations of quasi-conservatives who can spend recklessly to buy power, always protected by the assumption that the liberals' alternative would be even more reckless.

I started thinking about this a couple weeks ago when I saw the elegant zinger that Brad DeLong took at the expense of poor Andrew Sullivan:

Andrew Sullivan despairs when he contemplates the future of America:

www.AndrewSullivan.com - Daily Dish: I know I'm a broken record on this but we truly need some kind of third force again in American politics - fiscally conservative, socially inclusive, and vigilant against terror...

It was called the Clinton Administration, Mr. Sullivan.

And you and your friends spent a decade trying (unsuccessfully) as hard as you could to wreck it.

Well put. But while the Clinton administration was, in practice, the most fiscally conservative/responsible in decades, this characterizes its practice in governing, not really its politics. Clinton was elected on "Putting People First," which was not about fiscal conservatism but about economic stimulus, education, service, etc.. It was Paul Tsongas who in the 1992 primaries represented the "third force" Sullivan now calls for (at least on the first two fronts; "vigilant against terror" wasn't a distinction with a difference between politicians then -- or now.) And in the general election of 1992, it was Ross Perot who was the voice of fiscal conservatism, peeling those voters concerned about that issue away from George H. W. Bush, while freeing Clinton to preach a more traditional Democratic message, albeit a restrained one.

(As I think about this, I can't help but remember the longest conversation I ever had with Andrew Sullivan, which was at a dinner in 1991 when as the editor of The New Republic he was announcing that "we have decided" that the governor of Arkansas would not only be the next president but a heroic leader, and I was expressing just a little bit of skepticism.)

"Fiscal conservatism" has never been a winning political message, at least not for Democrats. It is an abstraction, a limit, not the thing itself that people want from government. For the Right, fiscal conservatism has been a winning message, probably because it's really code for low taxes and minimal regulation, even though actual fiscal conservatism has to mean getting the long-term balance between revenues and spending right.

But there has to be a way to use the reality, now proven over at least four presidential administrations, that Democrats are responsible, moderate, and get more out of government for less, while Republicans are reckless, irresponsible, rob the future, and produce exactly the kind of government that we don't like. I don't know how best to convey that point, but as long as the distinguishing characteristic of liberalism is "more," we can't get that point across. We need a way to talk about the future, about security, about doing more with less, about letting the private sector do what it can do best but not insulating it from risk.

Increasingly, I think the only answer to this paradox is in something like the "Radical Centrism" of people like Ted Halstead, Michael Lind and, to some extent, Matthew Miller. I used to wish that this "centrism" could be called with it really is: good, responsible liberalism, updated for modern circumstances, respectful of the market, and thankfully stripped of its fuzzy thinking, sacred cows and special interests. But it's actually more than that, and we so clearly need a fresh start that the idea of the radical center can have the effect of clearing out the cobwebs and potentially restarting the debate, on some premise other than just "more." It can also allow us to start the tax debate fresh, rather than just falling into the trap of arguing about whether to repeal the Bush tax cuts, which is just another more vs. less argument.

On the other hand, for an almost-persuasive, though mean, critique of the Radical Center approach, see Bob Kuttner's review of Miller's recent book.

Why are we hearing about the "First Tee" program only now?

In an earlier post today, I was reminiscing about my experience with the disastrous crime bill of 1994, which the Republicans savaged on the grounds that it contained a million dollars for "Midnight Basketball" and other crime prevention programs. I was thinking about that while I happened to be reading a report put out last week by the Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee demonstrating the astonishing increase in the number and cost of earmarked projects in congressional appropriations bills.

According to this very well-done report, in the Fiscal Year 2003 bill funding the Departments of Labor, HHS and Education (which in congressional parlance is called the "Labor-H bill," and by tradition, never included earmarks), House Majority Leader Tom DeLay inserted a requirement that the Department of Education spend $1 million of funds intended for education improvement to support a program of the World Golf Foundation called "First Tee."

The mission of First Tee, according to its homepage, is "to impact the lives of young people around the world by creating affordable and accessible golf facilities primarily to serve those who have not previously had exposure to the game and its positive values." A little more research at the web site of the World Golf Foundation finds that the program basically funds the building of golf courses: "The First Tee golf facilities will depend on the needs of a given community. The fundamental concept is to use the available space to create a quality playing area and a true golf experience through a variety of hole lengths, shapes, and strategies." A little more research reveals that the program has also received $5 million from the no-women-allowed Augusta National Golf Club.

And, as the report notes, this money is coming out of the very federal education programs, such as No Child Left Behind, that are so grossly underfunded. The report points out that there are 31 schools in DeLay's own district designated as failing.

Given all this, why are we only hearing about this now?? This bill passed a year ago -- in fact, right before the election! In a single million-dollar ripoff, it says everything that needs to be said about the current majority. (Oh, did I forget to mention that the organization also hands out the "Shell Oil/George Bush Volunteer Award"?) It's got government waste, insider dealing, discriminatory clubs, giveaways to people who don't need it, the fraud that is No Child Left Behind. And it's not hard to understand.

For anyone who lived through the savaging of Midnight Basketball and other crime-prevention programs, it's very frustrating that something like this could go unmentioned for a year. But it's never too late.