Category Archives: U.S. Congress

No good options in Iran

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

The question is not whether the deal struck between the American-led coalition and Iran is a good option. The question is, is it the least worse of a lot of bad options?

The deal would cut in half Iran’s number of centrifuges, require it to redesign one of its reactors, and allow inspections. In return, economic sanctions would be lifted, Iran eventually would be allowed to import and export conventional weapons, and after periods of years it could research advanced centrifuges and produce unlimited amounts of nuclear fuel. Supposedly in the short-term, the deal expands the “breakout time” – how long Iran would need to produce enough fuel to build its first bomb – to at least a year. The long term is a different story.

Iran is a fundamentalist Islamic state that sponsors terrorism, uses “Death to America” as a rallying cry, and seeks to destroy Israel. Its previous president was probably the world’s leading Holocaust denier. It’s the country that 35 years ago was holding hundreds of Americans hostage. Any deal with this country – especially one that lets it keep its nuclear program – must be a bad one.

On the other hand, will the currently imposed sanctions prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon forever? They haven’t stopped it from getting close now. Moreover, sanctions cause significant hardship for average Iranians, who, TV images to the contrary, are mostly going about their lives and have little influence over their leaders. If staying with the sanctions won’t stop Iran from eventually obtaining a bomb, then that’s a bad option, too.

How about increasing the sanctions – make them even tougher, so that the Iranians really suffer? That option leads to some difficult moral questions, it’s bad PR, and most importantly, the rest of the international community won’t support it. So it’s probably out.

That leaves war – not the video game kind, but the real kind, like the conflicts the United States hasn’t been able to completely stop fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan since the early 2000s. Anybody who wants war should be prepared to drive down to the military recruiting station and sign up. That’s not many of us.

I do not fault President Obama for choosing bad option number one. Every day he hears a briefing about the world situation that, the evidence has clearly shown through the past few presidents, turns a person’s hair gray. He concluded that continuing bad option number two, the sanctions, would not stop Iran from developing a bomb, and the best alternative is to get into that country and inspect.

Nor do I fault Arkansas’ congressional delegation for its opposition – including Sen. Tom Cotton, who attracted a lot of attention earlier this year with his open letter to Iran warning the ayatollah that any deal could be rescinded by the next president.

Diplomacy is not Cotton’s strong suit, but who can blame him for planting the flag on this one? Regardless of which bad option we dislike the least, we all are horrified at the prospect of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon. If an officeholder truly believes this deal makes that more likely, he or she must fight it with every tool available.

It should be pointed out that the deal did not provide for four American hostages: pastor Saeed Abedini, imprisoned for being a Christian; Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian; former Marine Amir Hekmati, who was visiting his family in Tehran when he was abducted; and Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent and CIA contractor who vanished in Iran in 2007 and whose whereabouts are not publicly known.

Of all the big, bad, scary things in the world right now, a terrorist obtaining a nuclear weapon is the biggest, baddest, and scariest.

One reason it’s the scariest is that it seems almost inevitable. Someday in some part of the world, something terrible eventually will happen. The national debt? Maybe we’ll start paying it down. Climate change? Maybe the scientists are wrong. But to prevent nuclear terrorism, the good guys must pitch a perfect game from now until mankind is no longer here.

Because nobody is perfect, the best we probably can hope for is to keep pushing that terrible day back as long as we can without giving up everything that matters in the process. And so presidents and members of Congress will continue to choose from bad options, trying to select the least wrong one.

Divided States of America

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

Last Monday, Gov. Asa Hutchinson decided to end Arkansas’ participation in the state’s current end-of-the-year Common Core PARCC exam, despite the fact that the State Board of Education had voted to do the opposite. It was only the fourth biggest story of the week.

That’s how much there was to talk about. The Supreme Court’s rulings on gay marriage and the Affordable Care Act, plus the Confederate flag issue, all were more newsworthy than Common Core, which usually gets people’s attention.

These issues run deep. For many Americans, gay marriage is either a fundamental human right, or it’s an attack on traditional marriage and a sin. Obamacare is an acceptable expansion of health insurance, or it’s a government takeover. Great-great-grandfather fought nobly for the South, or Great-great-grandfather was a slave.

There was an air of finality to last week’s developments. Gay marriage is now legal everywhere, and it’s also supported by a growing majority of Americans, particularly those under 30, so politicians calling for massive resistance won’t accomplish much if their goal is to make it illegal again. Obamacare is now firmly entrenched in the health care system, especially with this latest Supreme Court decision. To substantively change anything at the federal level, Republicans would have to win the White House, the House and a 60-vote majority in the Senate, an almost impossible task given the math in 2016. Then they would have to coalesce behind an alternative, which would be even harder. The Confederate flag has far fewer defenders than it did a couple of weeks ago. It’s been removed from Alabama’s Capitol, and even NASCAR’s chairman said he wants his sport “disassociated” from it.

But the arguments will continue, as they always do in a democracy. The debate over gay marriage now shifts to the extent that private individuals and businesses can be compelled by government force to accept it. Obamacare will be the focus of more litigation, and House Republicans will continue to stage votes to repeal it. Regardless of what happens to the Confederate symbol, far deeper substantive divisions will remain over race, justice, and the meaning of the past.

One of the things that’s most frustrating about American politics is that there are issues where we could agree, at least about the problem, if we gave it a shot. Most of us would say it’s wrong to keep adding to the national debt that we’re passing on to our kids, and because money doesn’t grow on trees, the government must over time collect as much money as it spends. We should agree that the country should maintain its highways, control its borders, and manage an orderly immigration system.

Unfortunately, we often can’t take meaningful action on these important areas where we could agree because the debate is so clouded by those important areas where we’ll never agree. Republicans and Democrats in Washington have become like a married couple that can’t stop fighting over the in-laws long enough to call 9-1-1 about their kitchen that’s on fire. Even a commonsense issue like the national debt, which must be addressed by a series of difficult but doable mathematical compromises, becomes enmeshed in the culture war. It’s hard to work with the other guy when you’ve told your supporters he’s a communist or a Nazi.

Increasingly, these United States are looking much more divided, much more tribal, and much more us versus them. Too many of our daily conversations, the media we consume, and our Facebook posts – my goodness, the Facebook posts – are marked by mocking, scornful attitudes towards entire groups of people, often based on beliefs.

And that’s a little scary. You can’t really believe in freedom unless you believe in freedom for those who are different than you, and that’s hard to do for someone you don’t respect. The next step after contempt is control, and control tends to spread like a virus that starts in one part of the body and then multiples until everything is infected.

We’re not all going to get along, but, like a lot of difficult marriages, we can meet in the middle as often as possible for the sake of our kids. No one ever said living in a free society would be easy, but Someone did once say, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” So peace be unto you, even when we don’t agree, and even when we can’t.

Leadership needed to keep the republic

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

As Benjamin Franklin was leaving Independence Hall at the end of the Constitutional Convention, a woman asked him if the delegates had created a republic or a monarchy. According to notes written by Dr. James McHenry, a Maryland delegate, Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

He did not say “democracy,” which the Founding Fathers saw as “mob rule.” Instead, they created a republic, where the people have ultimate authority by electing their officials but don’t stand in town squares and raise their hands to decide national issues.

Given that history, should elected officials vote their consciences, or should they follow popular opinion? Both, if they are doing their jobs. They should listen to their constituents and give great weight to their wishes, but if all they do is stick their fingers in the air and then follow the political winds, why should they exist? Why not just post every question currently facing Congress on the internet and let us all vote by clicking? How much funding should the Central Intelligence Agency receive this year? Click.

The character quality that’s needed, and the one that’s been missing far too long, is leadership. Elected officials must be willing to make tough calls, explain their decisions, and then accept the consequences. In some countries, if you lose power, you die. Egypt, for example, recently sentenced its previous president, Mohammed Morsi, to execution. In the United States, former Sen. Mark Pryor became a well-paid lobbyist after being “deposed,” as did Blanche Lincoln, Tim Hutchinson and many others.

And that brings us to the national debt. I think I first wrote about the subject in 1992, and frankly, I’m getting tired of trying to convince you people to be concerned about it. But I’ll try again. The debt has reached $18.2 trillion – roughly $57,000 for every American man, woman and child. It’s partly financed by foreign creditors, which is a really stupid idea. The government has many trillions of dollars in assets and is not bankrupt. But this is a growing problem because the government has made many trillions of dollars’ worth of promises that it cannot keep.

A number of groups – the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the Concord Coalition, the Committee for a Responsible Budget – are trying to educate the American people about the debt, and, just as with my columns, it’s not getting through. Americans know no entity can indefinitely spend more than it collects and are concerned about the debt in the abstract, but they oppose specific cuts and don’t want to raise (their own) taxes. It’s hard to balance a budget if you don’t decrease outgo and/or raise income.

Anyway, democracy often doesn’t reflect the will of the majority on a particular issue, but the will of the loudest and most committed less-than-majorities. Any spending cut or tax increase will attract fierce opposition by the groups most affected. What matters is not what 51 percent want. What matters is what 15 percent want that the other 85 percent won’t fight for.

The debt is not the kind of issue that leads Americans to march on the Capitol. It’s a terrible injustice that affects mostly people who are too young to do anything about it. There will never be a groundswell of support for paying it down, even though the alternative is leaving it to our kids and grandkids, which surely few of us want to do.

Because there’s never going to be a groundswell, elected officials must lead. They must make tough decisions that they explain to the public, and then they either will be re-elected, or they will lose and become lobbyists. No one will lop off their head if they raise the gas tax or cut a program somewhere.

It takes a special person to do this, because apparently it’s very tempting in Washington to do whatever it takes to be re-elected. These types of republic-leaders can’t get elected without support. They need campaign donations – in larger increments from those who can, and in smaller increments from the concerned common man. I really wish those groups I mentioned, or at least their allies, would start playing a little more hardball.

There’s been enough talk about this subject. A few of us must lead, and a few more of us must have their backs. And if the American people won’t accept that this republic can’t keep going into debt, then I guess we won’t be able to keep it.

Seek first to understand, even in politics

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

The fifth of Dr. Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” is “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” Could that apply to politics, even today?

Covey taught that being understood is such a fundamental need that it is impossible to influence another person until that need has been met. He compared it to air: Remove it from a room, and nothing else would matter to the occupants.

Unfortunately, understanding is in short supply – in Washington, D.C., of course, but also outside the Beltway. Americans are divided ideologically, culturally and even geographically. We live in red and blue states and in safe Republican and Democratic congressional districts. Even our neighborhoods and churches are largely politically segregated. As a result, we’re far more likely to talk about people on the other side than with them. Now we’re entering another campaign season where billions of dollars will be spent to disunite us. Didn’t we just have an election?

Seeking first to understand, then to be understood is important politically for three reasons: because none of us knows everything (except radio talk show hosts and TV pundits, of course); because most of us have something to offer; and because the stakes are too high not to try.

The issues that we argue about usually involve competing worthwhile values that are difficult to balance – what government should do to help the needy, for example. Few Americans, including conservatives, want the government to do absolutely nothing to help those who truly need it, and most of us, including liberals, agree that too much government dependence is bad both for society and for dependent individuals.

What’s the exact dollar figure that perfectly balances those two competing values? No one can know. Thank goodness we don’t have to hit that sweet spot perfectly. Just getting reasonably close and governing responsibly is good enough.

In a country with 300 million people, you don’t reach that point by digging ideological trenches and shooting at each other across no man’s land. That kind of thinking just perpetuates an unsustainable status quo.

So how about seeking first to understand? What if we humbly acknowledged that, because we don’t know everything, the greater good is accomplished by combining our ideas with others’? It’s good that liberals warn of the dangers of capitalism degenerating into a survival of the fittest mentality, and it’s good that conservatives voice their concerns about government’s inefficiencies and its capacity to restrict freedom.

By valuing both points of views, and others across the political spectrum, we can get to Covey’s sixth habit: Synergize. That’s the idea that individuals can come together from different places and create something better than what either would have created on their own. It’s much better than compromise, where no one walks away particularly happy. Compromise is better than continued fighting, and in politics, it’s often the best possible result. But synergy happens, too. It’s how we got the Constitution. These days, a framework might be created that better addresses human needs without increasing dependency and adding to the $18 trillion national debt.

Covey also taught that each of us inhabits two circles: a circle of concern where we have no control, and a circle of influence where we do. Focus on your circle of influence, he said.

I can’t create synergy in Washington, but I can seek first to understand, then to be understood in my own life. I’ve decided to learn to avoid fruitless political debates, online or in person – the kind where two people are concerned only with scoring points and not considering the other’s ideas. Nothing productive happens when two people are emotionally invested in a political argument and motivated by pride and fear of losing face. I’ve wasted my time on several of these lately. In the end, all I accomplished was become frustrated and lose 45 minutes that could have been spent more productively.

Instead, I’ve determined to treat these discussions as opportunities for partnership rather than competition – to seek first to understand. I expect I’ll learn something actually listening to others. Maybe we’ll create a dialogue that enriches us both. Maybe I’ll influence the other person, and if I don’t, I certainly wouldn’t have done so by trying to debate them into submission.

And if I’m caught in a conversation with someone who’s not seeking to understand? Hopefully, I’ll be wise enough to get out of it, go somewhere else, and get some air.

Christie, doc fix: A little honesty in the national debt debate

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

Uncle Sam hangs on for webA couple of things happened this past week that are worth noting because they concern senior citizens (today’s and tomorrow’s) and taxpayers (as usual, mostly tomorrow’s).

On Tuesday, the Senate sent to President Obama the long-awaited and much-discussed Medicare “doc fix.” Each of the past 17 years, Medicare payments to physicians have been scheduled to be cut automatically under something called the sustainable growth rate formula, and each of those years, Congress has suspended those cuts for one year. It’s been a charade, but one with real consequences because Medicare payments to doctors are low, and some doctors routinely threaten to stop treating those patients. Those who still do would like more certainty than these one-year fixes provide.

Now there will be no more last-minute reversals of the pretend spending cuts. The problem, as is usually the case, is that Congress did not offset the costs of the doc fix, either with spending cuts or higher taxes. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the legislation will add $141 billion to the national debt through 2025 – money that almost certainly would have been added anyway, just one year at a time.

Arkansas Sens. John Boozman and Tom Cotton voted for the doc fix, which passed 92-8. Earlier, they voted for an amendment that would have required Congress to offset the bill’s costs. That amendment failed, 58-42.

So we’re still burdening future generations with more debt, but at least we’re being more honest and transparent about it. Unfortunately, that qualifies as progress.

On the same day that the Senate passed the doc fix, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a probable presidential candidate, proposed in a speech a number of meaningful reforms to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Generally speaking, Medicare serves seniors, and Medicaid also serves seniors along with poor people and the disabled.

Christie’s proposals would affect Americans of all income classes. The retirement age would be raised to 69 very gradually (for Medicare, it would reach that age in 2064). Future senior citizens earning annual incomes above $200,000 from other sources no longer would receive Social Security benefits. Wealthier recipients would pay a higher percentage of Medicare premium costs than they do now. Christie would reform the qualification process for Social Security Disability Insurance, which has become a welfare program for younger recipients. Medicaid recipients above the poverty line would be required to pay co-pays rather than basically receive their health care for free.

Why is he talking about those popular programs? Because they are important contributors to the national debt, which has grown from less than $1 trillion in 1981 to more than $18 trillion today. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, $24.11 of every $100 the federal government spends goes to Social Security, while $14.42 goes to Medicare and $8.60 goes to Medicaid. That’s $47.13 of every $100, an amount that will grow as the baby boomers age.

What’s important about Christie’s speech is not whether he’s offered the right answers, but that he’s talking about the subject at all. Social Security has long been called the “third rail” of American politics: Like the electrified third rail on a subway system, if you touch it, you die. Politicians would rather talk about lowering taxes and increasing spending now because the young and unborn who will pay for those decisions don’t yet vote.

Hopefully, Christie’s plan will at least start a real discussion. A government that is $18 trillion in debt and adding more every year must cut spending, increase tax revenues, or do some combination of both. Other potential presidential candidates – including the two with Arkansas ties, Hillary Clinton and Mike Huckabee – should offer their own concrete proposals, not poll-tested platitudes. Those who want to keep the status quo, or increase spending, or cut taxes should show how they will make the numbers work.

At least then we’d have an honest debate – not just about how big the government should be, but also about how today’s taxpayers pay for the government we already have.

If Christie can’t win that debate, then hopefully someone else can with their own plan that preserves an appropriate social safety net without adding to the debt. We can’t just keep passing government’s costs to our children and grandchildren – like the doc fix does, albeit transparently.