Category Archives: U.S. Congress

Pryor vs. Ross

Elections, Politics, State government, U.S. Congress, Uncategorized

By Steve Brawner

He’s a Democrat running for a high-profile statewide office. He’s developed a reputation through the years as a centrist willing to work with both sides of the aisle. He excels at retail, face-to-face politics. He faces a Republican attorney who doesn’t.

I could be describing Sen. Mark Pryor or Mike Ross. They’re similar elected officials facing similar opponents, and yet in the Senate race Pryor is usually polling several points ahead of his opponent, Rep. Tom Cotton, while Ross is polling behind Asa Hutchinson in the campaign for governor.

Why the difference between Pryor and Ross so far? One theory: They’re competing with each other a little bit, and Pryor is winning. Perhaps the most intriguing matchup this year is not Pryor vs. Cotton, or Ross vs. Hutchinson. It’s Pryor vs. Ross.

Let’s start with more conventional explanations for those polls, and then I’ll explain that theory. Pryor is a statewide figure who has represented all of Arkansas in the Senate for 12 years. He still enjoys good will because of his father, former Sen. David Pryor. Ross represented only one-fourth of the state as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and he’s been out of office for nearly a year-and-a-half.

As for their opponents, Hutchinson, the longtime Arkansas political figure, is a more polished candidate than Cotton. Hutchinson knows how to soften his stances and appeal to folks in the middle, while Cotton seems to know only one speed – full ahead. We like our politicians on a first-name basis here: Mike, Mark, Blanche, etc. We all know who “Asa” is, but Cotton, whom we just met a couple of years ago, is not yet “Tom.”

Other explanations? Because the Senate seat is so important nationally, the race has attracted millions of dollars in campaign ads that have taken the shine off Cotton. Hutchinson and Ross really haven’t laid a glove on each other yet. Meanwhile, Hutchinson was involved in a primary contest against an active opponent, Curtis Coleman, so his campaign has been somewhat in the public eye. Ross faced an inactive primary opponent and has been mostly laying the groundwork for the general election.

Let’s get back to the theory that Pryor and Ross are competing against each other.

Resources are limited. There is only so much campaign money, and there are only so many volunteers with only so much time and energy. There is only so much space for yard signs and bumper stickers.

That’s the case with any campaign season, but this year’s races are occurring in the context of a Republican surge in Arkansas that may have peaked but hasn’t ended. When there’s a trend, there’s more room for one outlier than two.

Of course, hanging over all of this is the fact that President Obama is still in office, he’s still a Democrat, and, right or wrong, he’s still deeply disliked by many Arkansans.

Arkansans like to think of themselves as independent. We have a history of splitting our tickets. Until 2010, this was one of the more Democratic states in the country, and Democrats still hold a lot of power at the local and state levels.

Given all that, some diehard Obama-dislikers will be prepared to vote for a member of Obama’s party in either the U.S. Senate or the governor’s race. But they won’t vote for a member of his party in both of this year’s major races. Doing so would be too much of an endorsement of him and what they believe he represents. Pryor and Ross are competing for those voters.

Republicans still have the momentum in Arkansas. Pryor and Ross – both very good politicians – are trying to swim against that tide. It’s foreseeable that one can do it. It’s harder, though certainly not impossible, to see both winning. They’ve both got a lot to compete against, including, in some ways, each other.

Anyway, that’s one theory.

Graphic for blg 5

Good times renew bad habits in Congress

Debt and deficits, Politics, U.S. Congress

By Steve Brawner

When a person is trying to solve an old problem, one of the most dangerous times is when they’ve had some success – especially when they really haven’t changed their mindset or habits. They’ve lost some weight on a fad diet, so they head for the buffet. They’ve cut down on their alcohol for a few weeks, so they drop into the bar because they’ve “earned it.” They’ve been pretty good about spending money lately, so they splurge.

Soon they’re eating, drinking and spending more than ever. Old habits die hard.

Congress is composed of people just like the rest of us, and those people also are vulnerable to the hazards of success. We’re starting to see that on display regarding the federal budget deficit.

The good news is that annual deficits temporarily are falling. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is estimating that Congress will “only” overspend by $492 billion this fiscal year – much better than 2009’s $1.4 trillion deficit and the trillion-dollar deficits that followed.

Why the positive direction? The economy is improving, so the money is coming in. Also, those huge deficits were so alarming that even Congress and President Obama were inspired to raise taxes a little on the wealthy, let the payroll tax cut expire, and allow spending cuts to occur through the sequester.

Here’s the bad news. While this year’s annual deficit is smaller than it’s been, it’s still not a surplus, which means we’re still adding to the national debt – now $17.5 trillion, or more than $50,000 for every American. The deficits soon will start rising again, eventually hitting about $1 trillion again in 2022. Each year, the national debt will increase as a result.

Unfortunately, Congress and President Obama failed to use that string of trillion-dollar deficits as an opportunity to really address the country’s ingrained habits. There was a lot of talk but little action. They didn’t craft bipartisan solutions for Social Security’s and Medicare’s long-term problems. They didn’t significantly reduce military spending or question if the United States should remain the world’s policeman. They didn’t reform the convoluted, anti-growth tax code. They didn’t structurally reform how we govern ourselves.

Now that the sense of urgency is gone and we’re only overspending by $492 billion, what will happen next? We’re starting to get an idea.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted May 9 to make permanent what had been a “temporary” research and development tax credit that has been around since 1981 and extended many times. All of the members of Arkansas’ House delegation voted yes except Rep. Rick Crawford, who was attending to the death of his mother.

Now the House Ways and Means Committee is planning to vote on permanently extending and in some cases expanding more tax breaks. Those potential expansions would increase the national debt by about $80 billion over 10 years, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

The Senate was to vote on its own bill, perhaps this week after press time, that would extend the research and development tax credit two years and also renew about 50 temporary tax breaks that Congress also routinely extends, including breaks for racehorse owners and makers of Puerto Rican rum.

What’s wrong with all these tax breaks, besides the fact that they tend to reward only certain groups of the well-connected? In both the House and the Senate, Congress isn’t even trying to offset them with spending cuts.

That’s regrettable but not surprising. The immediate crisis has passed, we’re no longer running trillion-dollar deficits, so it’s time to reward ourselves with a trip to the buffet or bar.

Old habits die hard. We’ll worry about the debt when it feels like a crisis again – which it will, eventually.

Would you vote for Joe?

Debt and deficits, Elections, Politics, U.S. Congress

By Steve Brawner

Would the following campaign ads be effective with you? I’m really asking.

In all of them, the congressional candidate – call him “Joe” – faces the camera before an unadorned white background. There’s no stirring music, no slow-motion photography, no phony interactions with average Americans, and no rehearsed kitchen table scenes with the family. No narrator describes his opponents ominously.

In a calm voice, Joe describes a serious, ongoing national challenge. Let’s say it’s the national debt. He says the country is $17.5 trillion in the hole – equal to well over $50,000 for every American. He says we’re willfully passing on this debt to our children, and it’s time to be bigger than this.

Then he says you’ll have a different choice this time. He won’t promise what he can’t deliver. If you elect him, he will go to Washington and make hard choices. He’ll also tell you what those choices are beforehand.

That’s all Joe can squeeze into 30 seconds.

In another ad, he tells you he’ll treat the nation’s finances like he would treat his own if they weren’t adding up. Years ago when he was broke, he had to reduce spending on everything. If he’s elected to Congress, everything will be on the table, including popular programs like Social Security, Medicare and the military. Those three, plus interest on the debt, make up three-fifths of the budget, so they can’t just be ignored. “We’re past the point of just cutting waste,” he says.

Has he lost you yet, or will you still give him a chance?

In another ad, Joe says the government is awash in so much red ink, and it’s made so many promises it can’t get out of, that the budget can’t be balanced without more revenues. The American people have made it clear they’ll only cut so far, and it’s not enough to balance the budget. He won’t vote to raise tax rates, but he will support cleaning up the tax code. He’ll go after fat-cat loopholes first, but he also favors changing other deductions with widespread support. Those would include the mortgage interest deduction, which he says encourages homebuyers to go into too much debt the way it’s structured now. When the budget is balanced and the national debt is being paid down, he’ll start voting to cut taxes.

In both ads, he says he’ll listen to your concerns and be open to compromise. But you can trust that he will never pander to you, and he won’t vote to put our children in ever deeper debt. “Americans will pay our own way from now on,” he says.

Joe runs one more ad pledging not to run a single negative commercial, and if outside interest groups do so in his favor, he’ll denounce them. You’ll elect him for the right reasons, or he’ll just have to lose. His Bible taught him not to bear false witness against his neighbor, and his mama taught him that if you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all.

Joe has offered specific proposals for addressing a compelling national problem. You probably won’t agree with all of them, and some may even offend you.

But would you prefer a candidate who tells you nothing, offers “solutions” that don’t solve anything, and explains every problem by blaming the other party? The political professionals who produce most of today’s ads are certain you would.

Ross Perot campaigned for president sort of like what I’ve described using 30-minute ads, not just 30-second ones. In 1992, he used charts to lay out the country’s financial situation. Back then, the debt was $4 trillion – less than a fourth what it is now. He won 19 percent of the vote as a third party candidate.

But he was a billionaire. If Joe’s not rich, I’m not certain he could even raise the money to get on the air.

If he could, could you vote for Joe?

Pryor’s prior positions on Social Security, Medicare

Debt and deficits, Elections, Politics, U.S. Congress

By Steve Brawner

In one of Sen. Mark Pryor’s latest campaign ads, a Little Rock woman named Linda looks into the camera from her kitchen table and calls his opponent, Rep. Tom Cotton, “a real threat to your retirement” because he has voted to turn Medicare into a voucher system and has voted to raise the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare to 70.

She’s right about at least the voucher part. Forcing seniors to buy private insurance with help from a government check is a bad idea.

But the part about raising the retirement age for Social Security? At least one other elected official has mentioned it as a potential solution – Sen. Mark Pryor.

In an interview in 2011 with the KTTS television station in southwest Arkansas, Pryor was asked what should be done about Social Security. He responded that the program is “very, very fixable. And again if people would get serious about this in Washington, we could fix Social Security next week if we wanted to.”

One possible fix? “Probably the biggest change would be is you would take my kids’ generation, teenagers today,” he said, “and life expectancy’s longer, etc., and probably say that they couldn’t get Social Security until they turn 68 or 69. If you just did that one change, you’d fix about 80 percent of it right there.”

You can see it on YouTube.

That was not the only time Pryor discussed making changes to popular entitlement programs. In 2010, he offered an amendment that would have established a limit on federal spending and created a presidential debt commission. His amendment would not have excluded Social Security and Medicare. “We need to put 100 percent of everything on the table,” the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported him saying.

Pryor was being honest about the problems the country faces, and honesty is the crucial first step to finding solutions.

And he wasn’t done. On Jan. 5, 2011, he told the Little Rock Rotary Club that he supported many of the recommendations of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform – known for its sometimes politically unpopular prescriptions.

“We have to take a hard look at entitlement programs, including the sacred cows of Medicare and Social Security, and admit that we cannot bring our spending into balance without changes in these programs,” he said, according to the Arkansas News Bureau. He also said, “The solution will be painful. There is no easy way out. Everything must be on the table.”

Three-and-a-half months later, Pryor told the Political Animals Club in Little Rock that he wanted his legacy to be addressing the national debt. That required making difficult decisions about programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

“My view on the debt is that it is beyond politics,” he said, according to the Democrat-Gazette. “This isn’t about the next general election; it’s about the next generation.”

That was three years ago. Pryor’s campaign isn’t talking much about painful solutions or the next generation now. Instead, he’s being positioned as the defender of the status quo.

That’s smart politics, but it’s not good for the national discourse. Campaigns are a conversation about the direction of the country, not just a time to pick winners and losers. They set the tone for how Congress governs afterwards. If campaigns lead voters to believe that Medicare and Social Security are perfectly fine, it makes it harder for members of Congress to make politically tough choices during the rare occasions when they actually govern after the election.

This isn’t to say that Pryor is a hypocrite. Campaigns rarely ennoble anyone. We voters have set the ground rules, and one of the rules is simple: Don’t give us the bad news.

But despite what his campaign ads are implying, even Pryor knows there really are problems with Social Security and Medicare. He said so repeatedly in 2010 and 2011. Those problems are fixable, but only if we acknowledge they exist.