Category Archives: U.S. Congress

How Conner Eldridge thinks he can win

Elections, Politics, U.S. Congress

Conner Eldridge
Conner Eldridge
By Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

The campaign headquarters office where Conner Eldridge and I visit Jan. 19 is spacious but sparsely furnished – still developing, in other words, like his candidacy.

The 38-year-old former U.S. attorney knows he faces an uphill battle trying as a Democrat to win the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Sen. John Boozman, a Republican. Since 2010, the state’s allegiance has flipped. After a century and a half of Democratic dominance, Arkansas’ congressional delegation is now entirely Republican, as are all of its constitutional officers and two-thirds of its Legislature.

Eldridge, however, believes he can buck that trend. He thinks he has advantages this year that haven’t been available to the last two Democrats running for Senate: Sen. Blanche Lincoln, who won only 37 percent against Boozman in 2010; and Sen. Mark Pryor, who won 39 percent against now-Sen. Tom Cotton in 2014.

Eldridge looks at those numbers and then compares them to the University of Arkansas’ 2015 Arkansas Poll. It found an electorate split three ways: a third Republican, a third Democrat, and a third independent. Twenty-three percent of independents say they lean Democrat. Add them to the Democrats’ third, and that’s pretty much the base of Lincoln and Pryor voters.

He has to secure those votes plus find enough to win the election.

How does he think he can do that when Lincoln and Pryor fell far short? First, this will be the first contested Senate race in Arkansas in a presidential election year since 2004, when Lincoln defeated state Sen. Jim Holt.

That’s significant because presidential elections draw a higher turnout with a broader, more diverse electorate than midterms. In 2012, there were 1,078,548 ballots cast in Arkansas. In 2014, there were 226,000 fewer voters. It’s no secret that those missing voters in higher proportions are younger and/or minorities – in other words, more often Democrats. Midterms tend to draw an electorate that is older, more affluent, more conservative, and more white. Those characteristics more often describe Republicans.

Eldridge thinks some of those Democratic voters who stayed home in the 2010 and 2014 midterms will return to the polls this year and vote for him. How much is that worth? Some.

Second, Eldridge believes that Hillary Clinton, Arkansas’ former first lady, will outperform President Obama more here than she will in any other state. Obama won 37 percent here in 2012, dragging Democrats like Pryor down with him. Clinton should do better, and if she does, Eldridge should benefit. How much is that worth? Some.

Third, the Arkansas Poll revealed that despite serving in the House and Senate since 2001, Boozman remains somewhat of a low profile figure. Asked if they approved of the job he is doing, 44 percent either didn’t know or had no opinion, while his favorables were relatively low at 38 percent against even lower unfavorables of 18 percent. It’s not that Arkansans don’t like Boozman, who is an uncommonly nice and gracious person. A lot of them just don’t know him that well. Eldridge would be a new face and says he would be a more active senator.

“And I think Arkansas voters, independent voters, Republicans, Democrats, and independents, still vote the person, not the party, and are hungry, particularly at this important time, for somebody who’s going to shake things up, make a difference, work hard, and get things done,” Eldridge told me.

Finally, he draws hope from the recent Louisiana governor’s race, where a Southern Democrat won a rare victory these days against a Republican. The Democrat was an ex-Army Airborne Ranger while the Republican has a history with prostitutes. But at least it can be done.

So with a base of support somewhere close to 40 percent, plus a few percentage points because it’s a presidential year and a couple of points because it’s Hillary Clinton running and not Obama, and a bit more support from independents because he’s a new face, Eldridge thinks he can make a game of this.

We’ll see. This is a crazy year, at least in the presidential race. But Boozman still has an “R” by his name, and in the last two Senate elections in Arkansas, that’s been worth a lot.

Steve Brawner is an independent journalist in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com. Follow him on Twitter at @stevebrawner.

Red ink rising

Debt and deficits, Politics, U.S. Congress

Uncle Sam hangs on for webBy Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Let’s start this column with two words that sound like they might mean the same thing, but don’t.

“Deficit” and “debt” both refer to when the government spends money it does not have. The big difference is that “deficit” refers to a yearly shortfall, whereas “debt” refers to the government’s accumulated shortfalls. “Deficit” is the money the government added to its credit cards just this year. “Debt” is the money that was already there, plus the new deficit. Add it all together, and the national debt now equals $18.96 trillion, or $58,700 for every American man, woman and child.

Another difference is that sometimes the deficit goes down, but the debt almost never does. In fact, the last time the United States government owed less than it did the year before was 1957 under President Eisenhower.

The one-year credit card additions, on the other hand, have been mostly shrinking since 2009, when the red ink hit $1.4 trillion, or more than $4,600 for every American. That was the year the economy was tanking, the banks were being bailed out, and the United States was still very much involved in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fiscal year 2009 started Oct. 1, 2008, when President George W. Bush was still in office. Under President Obama, yearly deficits stayed above $1 trillion each year until 2013, when the deficit dipped to $680 billion. In 2015, it was $439 billion.

As Obama pointed out in his State of the Union address, deficits have been cut by almost three-fourths since their peak. But with that $439 billon deficit, the government in 2015 still added about $1,400 in debt for every American.

Here’s another way to look at those numbers. As illustrated on the Department of the Treasury’s website, www.treasurydirect.gov, the $1.4 trillion in 2009 was equal to all the debt accumulated over the years from 1790 until 1983 – almost two centuries of combined borrowing. The $439 billion the president bragged about was equal to all the debt accumulated from 1790 until 1972.

That’s better. But no, the state of the union is not strong in this area.

Have I depressed you yet? Here’s the kicker. This brief period of falling deficits is now ending, and the yearly red ink will start rising faster again. On January 19, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the 2016 deficit will increase to $544 billion. From there, yearly deficits will keep expanding so that by 2026, a decade from now, we’ll be back to $1.4 trillion, and that’s assuming Congress doesn’t do anything to make the situation worse, that the United States isn’t in the middle of another recession or war, or that interest rates don’t spike. At that point, the deficit will be 4.9 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, double what it is today.

This is occurring for several reasons. In December, Congress increased spending for defense and other areas while making permanent numerous tax breaks that were “temporary” but routinely extended every year. Meanwhile, the debt is being driven over the long term by Social Security, government health care programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, and interest payments for the money already owed.

People don’t like to read sentences like that last one. Aside from interest payments, those programs are generally very popular because they are seen as benefitting the needy and/or deserving.

But I’m just telling you where the money goes. The government is increasing spending by $2.7 trillion from 2015 to 2026. Ninety percent of that increase is in those areas.

So that’s where we are: The debt is still increasing, and now, so are the deficits. For the foreseeable future, the government will keep going deeper in debt, and it will do so faster and faster.

There are two types of debt that don’t show up on a balance sheet. One is the debt we owe to our ancestors, who sacrificed much and sometimes everything to build a better life for us. We owe it to them to do the same for our children.

The other debt is to those children. We owe them better than this.

Related columns: Tax-cut-and-spend Congress.

Reducing debt and cures for cancer

Debt and deficits, Health care, Politics, U.S. Congress

By Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

During the president’s State of the Union address Tuesday, there was an elephant in the room, and I’m not talking about the Republican Party, whose mascot is the pachyderm.

The elephant would be the $19 trillion national debt, ignored by President Obama during an hour-long speech, which was otherwise pretty good, and alluded to a couple of times by South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in her Republican response, which was also pretty good.

What was good about the State of the Union speech was its optimistic tone and its call for reason on issues both at home and abroad. The United States should identify and respond to threats, not inflate them so that it makes bad decisions out of fear. Its politics should be messy, not ugly.

However, the president’s only referral to the government’s red ink was to say that annual budget deficits have been reduced amidst other aspects of an improving economy.

That’s true, but while deficits have decreased, they’re still occurring each year, and still adding to the national debt. At the tail end of the Bush administration and the first half of Obama’s, the United States government was spending more than $1 trillion more than it collected each year – more than $3,000 per American per year, and at its worst, $4,000. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the deficit for fiscal year 2015 was $439 billion, or almost $1,400 per American.

Yes, that’s an improvement. We’re adding to the debt less quickly than we were before.

But during this prolonged period of economic growth, policymakers have failed to act to reduce future deficits. They haven’t make changes to the government’s retirement and health care programs that soon will help drive those annual deficits back to $1 trillion levels. They’ve failed to reform a tax code to juice the economy by, if nothing else, reducing the time we all spend doing our taxes. They haven’t created a sustainable method to fund the country’s infrastructure.

The economy is much better than it was in the midst of the Great Recession. Unfortunately, it remains dependent on debt – and worse, the kind caused by in-and-out spending, not investment.

That’s why potentially one of the most important paragraphs in Obama’s speech was tucked in the middle, when he said the United States should cure cancer.

That’s exactly the kind of investment that can make life better for Americans and help reduce all that red ink described earlier in this column. According to the National Institutes of Health, cancer cost the health care system $124.6 billion in 2010 and will cost $158 billion in 2010 dollars in 2020 – and that’s not including the impact of each invaluable life lost, nor the financial and emotional losses suffered by cancer patients and their loved ones. The disease often strikes people during their most productive years, or before they’ve even reached those years. All those things slow the economy, cost taxpayer dollars, and add to the debt.

At the same time we’re spending that kind of money to treat the disease, Congress recently appropriated $5.2 billion for cancer research this fiscal year, which is actually a raise from the previous $4.9 billion. That’s pretty good, but we could do better.

Since 2009, the national discussion over heath care has been about bureaucracies – what kind and how much. At some point, it would be helpful to talk about health care when we’re talking about health care. Curing the various types of cancer would be one of the greatest investments America could ever undertake. It would increase Americans’ ability to enjoy their inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It would be a far greater service to the world than many of the things we’ve been doing since 2001. It would be a wonderful gift to future generations and sort of make up for the debt we’re passing down to them.

The research must take into account not only medical effectiveness, but cost-effectiveness. The NIH assumes in its analysis that new technologies and treatments will cost more, not less. So not only must cures be found, but costs must be affordable – both for Americans and for poorer countries.

We can do it. Americans put a man on the moon. Let’s find cures for cancer next.

Related: Who gets first dibs on Uncle Sam’s money? Its creditors, of course.

Executive orders, congressional disorder

Health care, Politics, U.S. Congress

U.S. Capitol for blogBy Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

This past week saw two big news events that weren’t actually very “new”: President Obama’s announcement that he is issuing yet another executive order, this one related to gun restrictions, and Republicans in Congress voting to repeal Obamacare.

Obama’s executive order, which attempts among other things to close the gun show loophole, doesn’t seem to be that significant a policy move or even a bad proposal. Sellers should all play by the same rules, and I’m not opposed to there being one less avenue for crazy people, convicted felons and terrorists-in-waiting to be able to purchase military-grade weapons.

The problem is the process. Congress has not voted to accomplish what Obama wants to accomplish. More concerning, executive orders are becoming a habit of his, the most obvious example being his attempt to completely bypass Congress on immigration policy. That effort is now being tied up in court, where it should be. And I write that despite the fact that, as with the gun show issue, I agree with Obama in principle that the United States should focus on deporting dangerous illegal immigrants while finding a path to legalization for those who have been here awhile and are otherwise obeying the law.

But that’s another column. This is about misusing the presidency’s powers.

I guess this is the part where I’m supposed to write about Obama in hysterical, apocalyptic terms. Let’s instead have a calm, rational discussion, shall we? President Obama is exceeding his constitutional authority. He should stop doing that.

Actually, Obama is doing exactly what the Founding Fathers anticipated a chief executive would do, which is try to exercise power. They knew that was a bad thing, even if the president’s goals were agreeable.

So they included in the Constitution a system of checks and balances to keep that from happening. Congress makes the law; the president enforces the law; the judiciary interprets the law.

Unfortunately, Congress is failing to check and balance the president, and it’s time for congressional Democrats to step up.

Members of Congress are supposed to place their branch above their political parties – which, by the way, are not even mentioned in the Constitution. Throughout American history, senators and representatives have stood up to presidents who have tried to usurp their role. Instead, with exceptions, congressional Democrats today too often are behaving as if this is a British parliamentary system, where a prime minister leads the government and most everybody falls in line most of the time.

Because I’m determined to offend everyone in this column, congressional Republicans share blame as well. The system is supposed to work through a system of checks and balances, not unending dysfunction. Republicans made a political decision from the beginning of Obama’s presidency to make him fail, no matter what. It’s worked for them – politically. They’ve made huge gains in Congress, in governor’s offices, and in state legislatures. But a more constructive approach would have been better for the country.

Now we’ve had yet another vote to repeal Obamacare – one that actually will make its way to Obama’s desk, where he will veto it.

This is happening because Republicans believe it will help them in November prove once again that President Obama supports Obamacare, along with Democrats, as if there were any doubt about all that. Meanwhile, Republicans still haven’t coalesced behind a plan to replace the system they would repeal. The bill they sent to his desk would give policymakers a couple of years to create an alternative, but if they don’t, or can’t, would we all go back to the days when insurance companies denied coverage to people because of pre-existing conditions, or cut them off when they became too expensive to cover? At the moment, I guess we would.

No one’s the hero, and no one is the villain. What’s happening is that a lot of officeholders are caught up in the big game up there, which is one reason why Obama’s approval ratings are only 45 percent, according to Gallup, while Congress’ are at 13.

Anyway, it’s 2016, and time for us regular folks to vote. If we do our jobs better, maybe they will too.