Category Archives: Politics

Tax-cut-and-spend Congress

Uncle Sam hangs on for webBy Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Many Republican members of Congress, including all six members of Arkansas’ congressional delegation, have signed the Americans for Tax Reform’s pledge not to raise taxes, and mostly they stick to it. Many Democrats have signed a pledge not to mess with Social Security. But there’s no group asking members of Congress to pledge to reduce the national debt.

Much as I hate all these pledges, maybe there should be.

This past week, Congress rushed through two legislative packages that will make the national debt bigger. One was a package that permanently extended tax breaks that, in fairness, mostly were being routinely extended temporarily before. We’re now assured of adding $700 billion to the national debt over 10 years, whereas before we at least argued about it every year. All four members of Arkansas’ House delegation voted for the deal, which was consistent with the pledge they have signed.

And that wouldn’t be a problem, if Congress had voted to cut spending elsewhere to offset the tax cuts. Just as you and I ought to cut back on spending if we decide to take a job that pays less, Congress ought to cut spending if it cuts taxes.

Instead, Congress also voted this week for a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending package that increases spending by $50 billion. The 2,000-page bill is full of provisions that range from the important (allowing the U.S. to compete in the oil exporting market) to the mundane ($65 million for salmon restoration). It was negotiated by congressional leaders behind closed doors and then presented to the membership with little time for them to read it and nothing else on the table to avert a government shutdown.

To their credit, Arkansas’ senators, Sen. John Boozman and Sen. Tom Cotton, voted against both packages, which were combined in the Senate into one vote. In the House, Rep. Rick Crawford and Rep. Bruce Westerman get credit for voting against the spending package. Meanwhile, I can’t blame the two House members who voted for that package, Rep. French Hill and Rep. Steve Womack. Time was running out, there was no alternative, and many Republicans want to give new Speaker Paul Ryan, who helped broker the deal, a chance to succeed.

Also, the tax deal isn’t that much of a break from past policy. It mostly extended tax breaks permanently that were being extended temporarily year after year. Now at least we have clarity.

The problem is that once again, members of Congress voted to cut taxes, increase spending, and add to the debt because they don’t have enough motivations to behave differently. People often complain about “tax-and-spend liberals.” The truth is that most members of Congress often are “tax-cut-and-spend Republicans and Democrats.” And that’s why the national debt is creeping toward $19 trillion, or $58,000 for every American.

In signing the combined packages into law Friday, President Obama said, “I think the system worked.”

He’s right. The system worked perfectly. It did exactly what it was designed to do: Cut taxes, increase spending, and make the numbers work because the costs will be borne by future generations who don’t yet vote.

This has been going on for almost all of America’s history. According to the U.S. Treasury’s website, the national debt was $71 million in 1790, and then it dipped to less than $34,000 at the beginning of 1835, and it’s been pretty much rising ever since, until recently, when it exploded under your and my watch. It took about 191 years for it to reach $1 trillion and then needed 20 years to reach $6 trillion. Under the last two presidents, it’s grown another $13 trillion. As of Dec. 16, it was $18,796,279,678,290.28.

Two things can change this dynamic.

One is voluntary. Voters can elect fiscally responsible candidates. In office, those lawmakers must place as high a priority on future generations as they do on cutting taxes and increasing spending today. Would signing a pledge to reduce the debt help? It’s helped elsewhere.

More likely, there must be a mechanism, such as a balanced budget amendment, that makes it easier for elected officials to make responsible choices because, if they don’t, they’re breaking or at least skirting the law.

That way the system would work only when it does right by everyone – those who vote, those who don’t, and those who can’t because they’re too young or not yet born.

Next president: one of these four

Hand with ballot and box
By Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

You might think there are 17 candidates still running for president – as of Thursday morning, anyway. There are actually four-and-a-half.

There’s Hillary Clinton, who’s been the Democrats’ 2016 nominee since then-candidate Barack Obama clinched the party’s nomination in 2008. Among Republicans, there’s Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz, and Sen. Marco Rubio.

The next president is probably one of those four. Let’s give half a slot to someone else who might emerge from Iowa and New Hampshire as still a viable candidate.

Who could that be? Former Gov. Jeb Bush’s last name has helped him raise money but hasn’t helped him in the polls. Dr. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina had their moments but have faded. Gov. John Kasich never caught on. This is not the year for Sen. Rand Paul’s brand of very-small-government Republicanism, if ever there will be one. Gov. Chris Christie appears to be on the upswing, a little.

Former Gov. Mike Huckabee started in the top 10 but has never gained traction. His path to victory – win Iowa and build momentum with support from Christian conservatives – was blocked by Cruz, Carson, Rubio and, surprisingly, Trump.

This week, Huckabee was relegated to the undercard debate for the second time. His spokesperson, Alice Stewart, left the campaign. A traveler snapped a photo published on the Arkansas Times website of him pushing his bag through the Little Rock airport, head down and cane in hand after a recent knee surgery. Behind him was former first lady Janet Huckabee dragging her luggage. No one else was with them.

Little Rock is home to Huckabee’s campaign headquarters, but he lives in Florida now, and of course his focus has been on the Iowa caucus six weeks away. There are many reasons why he could be here in December, but a staff meeting followed by a press conference would not surprise me. His former campaign manager, Ed Rollins, said a candidate must be able to look into the mirror every day and see the next president of the United States. It would be tough for Huckabee to do that now.

That leaves Trump, Cruz and Rubio. Trump is the Republican Party establishment’s worst nightmare because he’s not part of their clique, and because he’s not really a conservative or even a Republican, and because they can’t control him, and because he’s accelerating the party’s descent into what Sen. Lindsey Graham once called a “demographic death spiral.”

What Graham was talking about was the fact that the GOP is too much the party of white people in a country where white people are shrinking as a percentage of the population. According to Gallup, President Obama won 89 percent of nonwhite voters in 2012 and 90 percent in 2008. John Kerry won 83 percent in 2004. As pointed out on fivethirtyeight.com, President Reagan won 56 percent of white voters in 1980 and won 44 states, while Mitt Romney won 59 percent of white voters in 2012 but lost the election. That’s because nonwhite voters have increased from 12 percent of the electorate to 28 percent and will keep rising.

Trump’s sweeping comments about Mexican rapists and shutting the door on all overseas Muslims play well with many voters but don’t help the GOP with its demographic problem. There’s also his comments about women, a majority of the electorate that voted for Obama by 14 points in 2012, Gallup says. If Trump wins the nomination, he’ll be running against a very tough woman. That should be interesting.

Republicans – who, let’s remember, control the House and Senate and occupy 31 governors’ seats – have other problems in presidential elections. Democrats have won four of the last six elections and the popular vote in five of them. Electoral College math elected George W. Bush president in 2000, but now it favors Democrats. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have voted for the Democrat in six straight elections, giving them 242 reliable votes, just 28 short of victory. Republicans have won 13 states with 102 votes six straight times, as shown by Politifact.

Other states are reliably red, but Republicans still must win most of the purple states. It’s hard to see that happening with Cruz, who sees and speaks about the world in black and white (and blue and red).

That leaves Rubio, who is quickly becoming the establishment’s choice. So was Jeb Bush.

Rookie still trying to shine light on campaigns

By Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Rep. Jana Della Rosa, R-Rogers, is a rookie, and she admits she made some rookie mistakes.

During this past legislative session, her self-described rookie-ness got in her way as she tried to pass a bill that would have required legislative and statewide candidates to file campaign finance reports online in a searchable database. It failed in the House, 48-33, with 19 not voting, and never made it to the Senate.

Arkansas is one of 17 states where legislators have the option of electronically filing those reports, or to file by paper. At least 31 states require electronic reports.

Why does it matter? Filing reports by paper makes it harder for voters to follow the money trail. They can see the reports online at the secretary of state’s website, votenaturally.com, but only in document form. They can’t do a search to learn who is donating to more than one candidate, and how much.

True, it’s possible to print out every legislative report and wade through the information. But that would take an enormous amount of time that few people have – not we in the media who also must cover other news, and certainly not the average Joe citizen.

That information is important – certainly more important than what’s on candidates’ websites. The type of donors who give to multiple candidates are doing so because they want something. Not necessarily a bad thing, but something.

I could be naive, but I think most elected officials at the Capitol imperfectly are trying to do mostly the right thing most of the time – just like the rest of us when we’re put into gray-area situations with conflicting influences. But no matter how noble they are, they can’t ignore the people whose donations made it possible for them to be elected.

Because campaigning is a for-profit enterprise, money will flow to political candidates like water flows downhill. The most effective reform is to shine as much light as possible on the process. That way, voters can determine for themselves which elected officials are navigating an imperfect system appropriately, and which ones are being overly influenced by donors.

Back to the rookie. Della Rosa said one of the mistakes she made this past legislative session was idealistically focusing only on how the system would benefit the public when lobbying her fellow legislators, which is not the best way to change someone’s personal behavior. If she’s re-elected in 2016, she’ll push a complete redo of the system that will make campaigning easier for them.

Filing campaign finance reports is a huge pain in the neck. It’s very easy to make an honest mistake, and then an elected official finds his or her name in a headline alongside the words “ethics violation.” The current electronic filing system is kind of glitchy. So Della Rosa is promising an e-filing system that will be easier to navigate and will prompt and warn candidates to keep them out of undeserved trouble.

Implementation costs have averaged $500,000 to $2 million per state, but perhaps Arkansas could purchase a system already used elsewhere. Yes, that’s an expense, but it would be worth it to be able to follow the money.

Della Rosa outlined her proposal Nov. 19 before a legislative subcommittee that certainly seemed ready to embrace it. At least, no one was willing to speak publicly against more transparency. Sen. John Cooper, R-Jonesboro, another rookie legislator, was particularly ready to march alongside her.

One of the objections legislators raised earlier this year was that some candidates live in areas without adequate broadband internet access. So she brought along Shelby Johnson, director of the Arkansas Geographic Information Systems Office, who said the entire state is covered by satellite internet service and that a large part of it is covered by other services, particularly wireless. In other words, no one must travel that far to find internet service capable of uploading a simple document.

By 2017, another two years will have passed where some legislators who weren’t comfortable with the internet will become more so, or will be replaced by someone who is. No doubt some legislative opponents don’t particularly want their campaign donors known, but fear of change is often the biggest hurdle any salesperson must overcome. If Della Rosa is still in office, she’ll be able to make an offer that will be hard to refuse – a system that benefits both voters and candidates.

For hire: the next president

Elections ahead
By Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

In a representative democracy like ours, voters should see themselves as human resources directors, not vote-at-home reality TV show viewers.

So for this column, let’s set aside televised presidential debate performances and act like we’re hiring someone for a job, which we are. Presidents don’t actually debate once they’re in office, anyway. Let’s also set aside each candidate’s ideology, personality, perceived character, and ability to inspire. Those are important, but we’ll get to those later in the hiring process. Finally, let’s set aside our own emotions and preconceived notions about the candidates and their parties. Instead, we’re sifting through resumes and looking at the candidates’ qualifications. Those ought to count for something, right?

We all know Hillary Clinton will be the Democrats’ nominee. She was a very influential first lady who played an important role in her husband’s presidential administration. She then served as a U.S. senator and then secretary of state. Based on those experiences, she’s qualified to make the second round.

If there’s a job that best prepares a person to be president, it would be governor of a large state. On the Republican side, the most qualified candidate is Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Kasich is one of two candidates in the race who has served as both a governor and a member of Congress. He was chairman of the House Budget Committee during the only time period in recent memory when Congress actually balanced the budget. As governor of Ohio, he helped turn a shortfall into a surplus.

Kasich’s leadership of Ohio is also important because it’s a diverse state that’s neither red nor blue, which is why it’s one of the few states that matter anymore in the Electoral College, and why no Republican has ever been elected without winning it. Unfortunately, Kasich was on the end of the debate stage Tuesday, not the middle with the frontrunners, and he did not do well.

The debate format also has not been kind to the other governor on the main stage Tuesday, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. But because we’re acting like human resources directors and not reality TV show-watchers, we’re not so worried about that. Instead, we’re looking at Bush’s resume, which says he was a two-term governor of one of the nation’s most populous states. Florida is also a diverse state with, like America, a large Hispanic population. As governor, Bush once had to respond to four hurricanes in 44 days, the kind of crisis presidents face.

Three other governors will be on Arkansas voters’ ballots come March 1: the state’s own Mike Huckabee, who spent a decade in office; Gov. Chris Christie, who as a Republican governor of a blue state must work with Democrats to get anything done; and Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, who has served in Congress and then served two terms as governor of Louisiana, where he responded as an executive to both Hurricane Gustav and the BP oil spill.

On the Republican side, five senators will be on the ballot: Marco Rubio of Florida, Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.

I’m placing experience in the Senate below experience as governor. While senators deal with national issues, the buck does not stop with them. They are not required to administer much, and with the way Congress works these days, they don’t have to accomplish much, either. Rubio, Cruz and Paul all are eloquent spokesmen for their points of view, but, like then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2008, they all are serving their first terms in the Senate. Graham, who is in his third term after previously serving in the House of Representatives, is by far the most qualified, but he wasn’t even invited to this last set of debates because of his low poll numbers.

That leaves the three outsiders: Donald Trump, Dr. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina, all of whom are accomplished individuals even though they have no experience in holding elected office. As human resources directors, we voters might or might not decide to go with our guts and bring in one of these three from the outside to shake things up.

But that should not become a habit. Ideology, personality, perceived character, and ability to inspire – all of those matter a lot. But experience and qualifications shouldn’t be irrelevant. As democracy’s human resources directors, we ought to at least glance at the candidates’ resumes before hiring them for the job.

Senate race not yet unpredictable

By Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Politics in Arkansas is becoming increasingly predictable: In statewide races and in many legislative ones, bet on the candidates with an “R” beside their names. The past week or so, things became, if not unpredictable, then at least mildly interesting in the U.S. Senate race.

On Nov. 4., the latest Arkansas Poll sponsored by the University of Arkansas’ Diane D. Blair Center of Southern Politics and Society revealed these numbers about U.S. Sen. John Boozman: 38 percent of respondents approved of his job performance, 18 percent disapproved, and 44 percent had no opinion or refused to answer the question.

It was the first and the last numbers that raised some eyebrows – particularly the last. That 38 percent approval rating is a little low. More striking is the fact that Boozman has been in the Senate for five years and in office for 14, and yet 44 percent of respondents don’t have much of an opinion about him. Arkansas’ other senator, Tom Cotton, who won his first race in 2012, had a 45-27 approval rating with 29 percent not knowing or refusing to answer.

The next day, CNN.com published a story saying national Republican Party leaders are becoming concerned that Boozman raised less money in the last quarter than did his 38-year-old Democratic challenger, former U.S. attorney Conner Eldridge.

Of course the Eldridge campaign tried to make hay with these two stories. Meanwhile, the day of the CNN.com story, I was called at home by an automated telephone survey asking about a hypothetical matchup between Boozman and former Lt. Governor Bill Halter, who forced Sen. Blanche Lincoln into a runoff in the 2010 Senate race. Halter did not respond to a request for an interview and it’s unclear who sponsored the survey, but someone seemed to be testing a Halter candidacy. For whatever reason, he’s not running.

Then on Nov. 9, the last day of the filing period, businessman Curtis Coleman filed to run against Boozman in the Republican Party primary. Coleman said he had been encouraged by supporters to run, and when he challenged them late last week to raise enough money to cover his filing fee before the end of the weekend, they responded by donating more than $20,000. Coleman said the conservative but low-key Boozman isn’t conservative enough and is not enough of a fighter.

Libertarian Frank Gilbert, who won 2 percent of the vote running for governor in 2014, also will be on the ballot.

All of this is worth a column, but is it enough for Boozman to be worried? Probably not any more than any incumbent with challengers should be.

This will be Coleman’s third statewide race. In 2010, he won 5 percent of the vote in an eight-candidate primary won by Boozman without a runoff. In 2014, Coleman won 27 percent in the Republican primary running for governor against now-Gov. Asa Hutchinson. Coleman said he now has statewide name identification and a grassroots network, but so does Boozman, and he’s the incumbent.

The Democrats’ Eldridge is an attractive young candidate with a crime-fighting resume, family connections, and personal wealth, but he has a “D” by his name and was appointed to his post by President Obama. Republicans will make a huge deal of that.

As for those 38-18-44 numbers, Boozman can work with those. Twice as many like him as don’t, and he will have millions of dollars to court that 44 percent who don’t have much of an opinion about him. When only “very likely” voters are counted, his support increases to 44 percent. (Cotton’s increases to 51 percent.) At this point three years ago, Sen. Mark Pryor’s numbers in the Arkansas Poll were much worse: 33-41 approval-disapproval, with 26 percent having no opinion or not answering. He lost to Cotton.

Meanwhile, Democrats are fielding candidates in only one of the state’s four U.S. House races. In the 2nd District, former Little Rock School Board member Dianne Curry filed Monday to run against incumbent U.S. Rep. French Hill, a Republican. Hill also faces a primary opponent, Brock Olree, and a Libertarian challenger, Chris Hayes.

So things will be mildly interesting but still predictable: Arkansas’ congressional delegation in 2017 probably will look exactly as it does now. Then again, that’s a prediction, not a prophecy. There’s still an election to be had.