Sorry, no complaints today

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

Watched the main Republican debate on CNBC Wednesday. This is the part where I’m supposed to complain about something. How about I not do that?

The debate featured the top 10 polling candidates and was preceded by a previous debate featuring another four.

This is a strong Republican field – maybe the strongest in memory. Those 14 candidates included two business leaders, a neurosurgeon, five current senators and one former one, and five current or former governors. While they all support smaller government, they are quite different – in background, in temperament, and in beliefs. One of the candidates is African-American, one is a woman, and three are the sons of immigrants – in two cases, Cuba, and in the other, India. One is the son of a former president and brother of another, but he must ask for our votes just as they did.

Over the course of an evening, these 14 ambitious high achievers stood in front of the American people, presented their ideas and qualifications, and asked for our votes. There were inaccuracies, of course, and promises based on bad math. But there were also substantive arguments based on detailed policy positions, and there was passion based on true belief.

Policies come and go. What’s more important is the process. The candidates disagreed, and it’s almost certain that some of them don’t like each other. But no one was going to draw a sword or stage, or amass their armies to seize power. The candidates faced challenging questions from moderators who had no reason to fear them, and they spoke before an audience that acted with restraint but felt free to express its approval and disapproval.

The Democrats’ slate of candidates is, unfortunately, thinner, the party’s establishment having chosen to rally behind one candidate early in the process. But it should be noted that the one candidate could be the first female president. Meanwhile, her main challenger is a person who is not a member of a political party and calls himself a socialist. Think I’m insulting him? I’m not. Regardless of what one thinks about his label, it’s good that voters are getting a chance to consider his ideas.

Please take a moment and consider the alternatives under which many people have lived in the past and under which many live today. The obvious example is Syria, which is engulfed in a religious civil war with many sides. ISIS is attempting to install a Muslim caliphate through tools such as beheading people based on their religion. The Assad government maintains power by dropping crude barrel bombs that kill indiscriminately. No wonder that war has produced more than 4 million refugees, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In China, 1.4 billion people are ruled by a Communist Party that, this week, decided to double its previous limit and allow families to have two children instead of just one. It holds onto power by promising unending economic growth, a promise it cannot possibly keep. North Koreans worship their leader or face the consequences.

Of course the American system is less than it should be. Of course it’s often corrupted by money and ego and partisanship. Of course problems are not being solved. Of course the media can be irresponsible and annoying.

But there has to be some balance between seeing all the flaws and seeing only flaws. Can’t there be something between naive and pessimistic? How about “optimistically realistic”?

The late writer David Foster Wallace told the story of two young fish who were met by an older fish swimming in the opposite direction. “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” said the older fish. After swimming a ways, one of the young fish looked at his buddy and said, “What’s water?”

The idea is that we can become so accustomed to our surroundings that we don’t realize they exist. The same is true for we who have lived in a society that is imperfect but, in the history of human existence, amazingly free and prosperous. What’s freedom? Most of us don’t know, because we haven’t experienced the opposite.

I don’t know, either. But I think it has something to do with my future president standing on a stage armed only with ideas and qualifications and asking for my vote, and my deciding whether or not to give it. Sorry, no complaints today.

Lead, listen or both?

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

“Look, I imagine that there’s theoretically a chance that (we) all went from being radical extremist crazies to Washington sellouts in 12 hours. But maybe a more likely narrative is that we really think that this is a good step for the conservative movement.”

That quote, published in the Washington Post, came from Rep. Mike Mulvaney, R-South Carolina.

Mulvaney is a member of the Freedom Caucus, the group of about 40 conservative Republican congressmen whose demands led to the resignation of Speaker of the House John Boehner. Some thought the group was being too combative and expecting too much. That’s where the “crazies” part comes from.

Most threw their support behind Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, whose plenty conservative but also willing to work with the other party, which the speaker of the House must do. When that happened, some of the same people – particularly talk radio hosts and bloggers – who were cheering about Boehner threw a fit because they didn’t like Ryan. That’s when the Freedom Caucus became “sellouts.”

I’m writing this not to defend the Freedom Caucus, but because the quote brought to mind the age-old question: How much should members of Congress lead, and how much should they listen?

The answer, of course, is that they should do both. And when those two realities conflict?

Maybe Benjamin Franklin can help. At the end of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, he was leaving Independence Hall when, according to Bartleby.com, a woman asked him, “Well, Doctor, what have we got – a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin required, “A republic if you can keep it.”

Franklin notably did not say “A democracy,” because that is not what the Founding Fathers created. In a democracy, voters make the decisions about their government. In a republic, they elect people to make those decisions, and then oversee them.

There are many wise sayings about letting your conscious be your guide, and not many about seeking only to please others. That’s because no one can twist in the wind forever before finally being blown away.

The same applies to politics. Members of Congress must listen to constituents, but it’s their name on the door. Arkansas’ four U.S. House members each represent 750,000 people, and Sens. Tom Cotton and John Boozman represent three million. We’re all different, we don’t always know what we want, and sometimes we want too much. We want less government but more government services, with lower taxes. We tend to want freedom, but not so much for those different than we. Two polls about the same issue – but with slightly different wording – can create vastly different results.

A few suggestions, then, for lawmakers.

– Don’t make many promises, particularly when those promises make it harder to accomplish more important goals. Pledges signed as candidates promising to never fill-in-the-blank can be counterproductive. Sometimes you can get a lot by giving a little – but you have to give a little nonetheless. Change takes time.

– Recognize the difference between right and wrong, and correct and less correct. For example, if a lawmaker really believes that abortion or capital punishment are murder, they should take a stand. Whether the top income tax rate should be a few percentage points in one direction or the other? There’s probably an ideal number, but no one knows what that is, and the country can be wrong either way and still be prosperous. If constituents can’t accept that, then they’re just wrong. If a congressman violates his deepest convictions, he is.

– Remember that hard-core true believers with time on their hands tend to speak a lot louder than people busy raising their kids and working for a living.

– Be willing to lead and lose. Somebody’s got to say that we can’t spend money we don’t have. Make the tough calls, and if the voters choose someone else as a result, so be it.

– Be willing to leave. We all can become a little corrupted by our jobs. We’re at our best when we’ve gained experience but not yet become stale or jaded.

And the rest of us? The latest Gallup poll has Congress with a 13 percent approval rating, yet 95 percent of House members were re-elected in 2014. The Senate was a little more competitive at 82 percent. In Arkansas in 2014, voter turnout was barely over 50 percent of registered voters.

Congressmen must listen. It helps when voters speak, without yelling, with a little thoughtful consistency, and most clearly at the ballot box.

Is health care a commodity or an entitlement? Neither.

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

The first question that must be answered about health care is about what it is: a commodity, an entitlement, or something else.

If health care is a commodity, then it must be treated as such. The price of health care should be what the market will bear, which, for someone in a life-or-death situation, is a lot. If someone is a poor negotiator, or if circumstances such as a ruptured artery make them unable to negotiate, then they might pay more. If they can’t afford it, then they can’t buy it, and the rest of us should feel no more remorse than if they can’t afford a pickup truck. They should have made better economic choices before they went shopping at the hospital.

Very few of us see health care this way. So if it’s not a commodity, then what is it? The opposite would be an entitlement – a service the government bestows. That’s how it works in a lot of European social democracies and in Canada.

Americans don’t like that either. The idea of the government having the power to give and take away free stuff, particularly something as important as health care, typically makes us uneasy (unless we can figure out some way of justifying it when we personally benefit, of course).

If health care isn’t a commodity, and it’s not an entitlement, then it’s something in between – a partial responsibility for middle- and upper-class individuals under age 65. That’s the messy middle ground Americans have selected, and the way it’s implemented is through insurance.

All of this is relevant because it’s time for Americans to once again sign up for health insurance. It’s now mandatory, of course, and this time, the fine for not paying is $695, which is enough to sting a little.

You can bet that Republicans will use this fact to score political points, even though this part of Obamacare was a conservative idea not long ago.

Insurance’s purpose is to insure us against unforeseeable costs we cannot pay. We pay thousands to the insurance companies today so we’ll be assured of receiving much more expensive care if we need it tomorrow.

For that system to function properly, most of us must lose money on this deal. And it only works fairly if all of us who can afford it pay in. The 23-year-old with money who doesn’t buy insurance will still be allowed to access the system if he crashes his motorcycle, because in that moment his life is so precious that it cannot be commodified. But somebody has to pay for saving that life, and because he didn’t, his health care will be subsidized by the rest of us. That makes it an entitlement.

One of the problems with this middle ground is that it doesn’t contain enough cost controls. If health care were a commodity, care would be rationed by the market. If it were an entitlement, care would be rationed by the government. As insurance exists now, buyers pay most of their health care costs upfront and have few incentives to shop around. Sellers therefore have few incentives to provide the cheapest deal possible.

The United States spends about 18 percent of its gross domestic product on health care, far more than the rest of the world, and the costs still are rising at unsustainable rates. If you’re wondering why you haven’t received a raise in a while, the truth is that you have: Your employer is paying more for your insurance every year rather than increasing your salary.

This can’t continue. In any economy, costs must be controlled by something, and if nothing else will do it, eventually the government will. So the buzzword these days is “consumer-driven health care” – making health care a little more of a commodity, but within the current system. Policymakers who are interested in solving problems are considering how to incentivize consumers to make more informed economic choices. Making them spend more of their own money, but not a crippling amount, through higher deductibles is one imperfect way of doing this.

This will be messy, it will be hard to figure out, and there will be a lot of yelling. So far, the United States has foregone the more cut-and-dried choices – making health care either a commodity or an entitlement – because of those choices’ problems. In other words, we still have a majority consensus about what health care is not. Now we just have to figure out what it is.

Is college worth it?

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

Is college worth the cost, is the current model sustainable, and how can colleges and universities more effectively meet state and student needs?

Those are questions that policymakers, along with colleges and universities, must answer in a world that can change a lot in four years.

On Monday, Clint Vogus, an Arkansas State University business instructor, and Dr. Thomas Lindsay, director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for Higher Education, told legislators that college doesn’t provide the same value it once did. Tuition costs have increased, and so has student debt, to $1.2 trillion nationally, making it the second largest source of consumer debt after home mortgages.

How big is the student debt problem? Americans, including the many who did not graduate, owe more in student debt than they do in credit card debt. Lindsay said giving students more scholarships won’t solve the problem. In fact, it will make it worse because the more government dollars that come into the system, the more colleges and universities raise the price.

The two were testifying before the Legislative Task Force to Study the Realignment of Higher Education, one of many groups appointed by Gov. Asa Hutchinson and legislators. Those groups exist to guide policy changes, to respond to changes that are already occurring, or just to ride the wave in education, health care, highways and prisons.

Vogus and Lindsay argued that despite the rising costs, a college education isn’t worth what it used to be for students or the state. Too many degree plans don’t lead to good jobs, and too many needs in the workforce aren’t being filled. Surveys indicate that students are studying less but earning a lot more A’s, and it’s not because they’ve become smarter. We’re told that, even if the world changes, college is supposed to make students more well-rounded and teach lifelong critical thinking and reasoning skills. But a 2011 report, “Academically Adrift,” found that’s often not the case. As measured by the Collegiate Learning Assessment, 36 percent of college grads didn’t show any improvement in those areas after four years of college.

Dr. Chuck Welch, president of the Arkansas State University System, defended the value of a college education as “still the greatest investment I’ve ever made in my entire life or ever will make in my entire life.” He pointed out that college graduates as a group make much higher incomes, are less likely to be incarcerated or be dependent on food stamps, and even live longer than those whose education stopped after high school.

In that respect, the numbers are clear, but the cause and effect relationship is not. Do college graduates earn more money because they have a degree? Or is it because they’re more likely to come from wealthier, educated families? In other words, did college put them on second base, or were they born there?

Progress will come slowly in this area, but it may actually come. A consensus has developed that college is too expensive and that it’s not meeting workforce needs. Vogus proposed a 90-hour degree that could be completed in three years. His employer, Arkansas State University, recently announced a three-year plan, though it relies on summer school and doesn’t reduce the required hours. Lindsay said that Texas A&M – Commerce responded to a challenge by former Gov. Rick Perry to offer a $10,000 degree by creating one that costs not much more, in part by offering most of the first two years of classes online.

If workforce needs don’t change colleges and universities, then economics might. State dollars are flat. Bain and Company, a management consulting firm, says that 43 percent of colleges and universities nationwide spend more than they can afford. The 14-17-year-old demographic that feeds colleges and universities isn’t growing. And the word is out that a college degree is not a guaranteed route to a better job.

Meanwhile, students have other choices. For $12,000, they can learn computer coding in 12 weeks of intensive training at The Iron Yard, a chain of private schools with a location in Little Rock.

In less than three months, they’ll be qualified for a very good job. They won’t have the college experiences that are meant to make them more well-rounded. But then, they can do that on their own time, independent of taxpayers, using the money they’re making.

Pay DHS director like a football coach

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

The highest paid state employee is Bret Bielema, the head football coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks. He will make $4 million this year. Meanwhile, the director of the Department of Human Services – an agency that serves 1.4 million Arkansans with 7,500 employees – will earn $163,000.

It might be time, if not to reverse that mindset, then at least to rethink it.

The current DHS director, John Selig, announced last week that he is leaving his post at the end of this year, and Gov. Asa Hutchinson is searching for his replacement. It needs to be a good one, but there are challenges. Talking to reporters Wednesday, Hutchinson said, “There are some salary constraints for being able to attract someone from the private sector or someone that’s led a large organization, so we’ll have to look at that, but we’ll see what we can do.”

We’ll see what we can do. Those are not words that University of Arkansas Athletic Director Jeff Long has to say when looking for a new coach.

DHS is state government’s largest agency. It has an $8.35 billion budget. It pays for medical care for lower-income Arkansans. It serves patients in nursing homes and serves clients with a range of disabilities. It’s in charge of state adoption and foster care services.

It juggles a lot of balls, and lately it has been dropping a few of them. Costs for a new system to determine Medicaid eligibility have ballooned to $200 million, more than twice the expected amount. A consultant advising legislators about reforming health care found almost 43,000 Arkansas Medicaid beneficiaries with out-of-state addresses. It’s not clear exactly what that means, but it’s not good.

This is not meant as a criticism of Selig, who’s had a tough job managing a sprawling agency. In the past few years, DHS has had to respond to many big changes, including health care reform and the private option, which is the controversial program where federal Medicaid dollars buy private insurance for lower-income Arkansans.

The important question is, who is the best person for the job moving forward, and how do we get him or her? And the answer is, we’re not going to, not with a salary of $163,000 a year. That’s the kind of money you might pay a longtime state employee who’s worked his way up and is not far from retirement, not a dynamic visionary who can modernize and streamline an organization.

It’s not just the director’s position, but also the salaries of his or deputies. One of the reasons Bielema came to Arkansas was his frustration with what he could pay his assistants at Wisconsin. He knew an organization is only as strong as its second layer of leadership.

Hutchinson said that he’s “looking outside the norm” in his job search, meaning the next DHS director doesn’t have to be a person with experience in human services. Instead, he said, “We’ve got to have somebody that can understand $200 million (information technology) contracts, that can minimize the risk for the taxpayers, that can work with the Legislature, that can recruit the right talent for the different levels of DHS as well.”

Those people are hard to find. In fact, you’ve got to make them want to come to you. The Legislature should pony up and raise the salaries of the director and his top officials significantly. That’s how you attract qualified people who know, like Bielema and his staff do, that if they don’t produce, someone else will take their jobs.

Meanwhile, maybe state leaders should consider funding a private foundation to supplement salaries for top jobs across state agencies. Private sources pay most of Bielema’s salary. A foundation increased the salary for Mike Preston, the new Arkansas Economic Development Commission director.

There’s a reason why football coach Nick Saban won national championships at LSU and then Alabama, and why Urban Meyer won national championships at Florida and then Ohio State. Some people are the best at what they do.

Arkansas should try to hire the Nick Saban of DHS directors. Spending hundreds of thousands on leadership can save hundreds of millions in costs. When the Razorbacks had a head coaching position open, everyone knew the job would pay a high salary, because failure on the football field is unacceptable. Likewise, when managing state government’s largest agency whose responsibilities include nursing homes, the disabled, and foster kids, it’s not enough just to see what we can do.