Kausfiles: A mostly political weblog.

The Best of Journolistism

Monday, March 30, 2009

Jon Chait is surely correct that if Obamas presidency fails it's the Congressional Democrats who'll be responsible. ... But a) Chait writes as if the only Democrats who might put parochial interests over national and party interests are Kent Conrad-style Senate moderates-- as opposed to, say, hard-core Dems who'll prevent Obama from killing ineffective liberal programs (and from being able to afford effective ones, because they insist on paying top-dollar "Davis-Bacon" wages). There are hacks on the left and right as well as in the center. ... b) Chait declares that Dems who want to "rein in deficits" are not necessarily pursuing "the national interest." In the long run? Really? ... c) He says Obama's budget "represents a once-in-a-generation chance for the Democratic Party to reshape the priorities of the federal government." So if Obama doesn't get his health care reserve fund passed this year, we have to give up on health care for a generation? Hype, I say. ... d) Chastising Dem dissenters, Chait claims "Republicans did not denounce Bush for squandering a budget surplus to benefit the rich." John McCain might be surprised to hear that. ... e) Chait says Bill Clinton "saw the core of his domestic agenda come to ruin," adding

The one factor within the Democrats' control is whether their constituents see Obama as a strong leader taking action, like Roosevelt or Kennedy, or a floundering weakling, like Carter or first-term Clinton.

I remember Clinton's first term as being rather effective--he passed welfare reform, NAFTA, and put the budget on a path to balance. Second term? Well, there was the "race initiative"! And he managed to preserve the surplus. Chait only says Clinton failed to pass "the core of his domestic agenda" because he doesn't like the idea that ending "welfare as we know it" was at the core of Clinton's domestic agenda. But Clinton campaigned on it at least as much as on health care. Marty Peretz could fill Chait in. ... 10:11 P.M.

___________________________

Left Dem Robert Borosage wrote about labor's "card check" bill earlier this month:

[The bill] will be introduced into the House in the next couple weeks, where passage is guaranteed. The real donnybrook will be in the Senate where it has strong majority support but must overcome efforts by a conservative minority to block the vote with a filibuster. [E.A.]

"Conservative minority." Hmmm. Not so sure about that. Does "card check" as written even have a simple majority in the Senate anymore? Opponents seem to have 41 solid votes, and some 17 Democrats are apparently wavering. All it would take would be 10 of them to make those pushing the bill a "liberal minority." It reminds me of the dynamic surrounding "comprehensive immigration reform"--where we were also told that a conservative minority was blocking the bill, but where, on the crucial cloture vote, that "minority" turned out to have 53 votes (versus 46 for proponents).

There's only one way to find out for sure, of course. I'm not that curious. ...  9:49 P.M.

___________________________

Anatomy of a succesful blog post: Matthew Yglesias finds a tiny, tiny little point to make ("[a]lmost nobody" watches daytime cable news, but "people who work professionally in the political arena" do) that lets him plug a banal quote from his boss, John Podesta. ... 9:23 P.M.

___________________________

Twitter Beats Big Labor? Did a loose coalition of low-budget social networkers and tweeters defeat Measure B--a plan by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the mighty International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (which seems to be running the city's Department of Water and Power) to create union jobs putting up solar panels all over the city? That's what L.A. Weekly's Daniel Heimpel claims. ... I can see some holes in his argument--Measure B was also opposed by the L.A. Times and by at least one prominent pol (Controller Laura Chick). And ballot measures usually have a tough road. Still! If it didn't happen this election, it will happen soon enough. ... 9:10 P.M

___________________________

RIF on This If You Can

Those worried about whether the Dem stimulus plus Obama's budget will produce an irreversible, costly, increase in the size of government--potentially crowding out future expensive Democratic initiatives such as universal health insurance--won't be cheered by this Washington Post story. Estimates of the additional federal workers soon to be hired range from 100,000 (from Prof. Paul Light)  to 260,000 (from the Heritage Foundation). For example:

Officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs ... said they expect to hire more than 17,000 new employees by the end of the year, many at hospitals and other facilities to fulfill Obama's pledge to expand veterans' access to health care. The agency -- whose budget will grow by 11 percent, to $56 billion, under Obama's plan -- will add about 7,900 nurses, 3,300 doctors, 3,800 clerks and 2,400 practical nurses, spokeswoman Josephine Schuda said.

That's just one agency. ... And what if in the future we decide to shrink the veterans' health system in order to save money and beef up the system for the rest of the population? Good luck. My impression is that the average citizen has no idea how difficult it is to get rid of federal workers once they have been hired. Here are the relevant rules for federal "reductions in force," or RIFs, complete with elaborate rights of employees with seniority to "bump" lower level employees, causing a chaotic cascade of job switches. Ronald Reagan came into office with a huge head of steam to cut the bureaucracy. He succeeded in RIFing the equivalent of fewer than 80,000 full-time non-defense workers--105,000 counting all part-timers--a reduction that didn't last long. (Here's a Heritage report on the subject.)

Couldn't a future administration, faced with budget deficits, just freeze hiring and let attrition reduce the work force? Sure, if you want the best people to leave and the worst (i.e., the least likely to get private sector jobs) to stay. What about contracting out? Contractors can always be terminated, after all, without the complications of  civil service rules. And contracting out was certainly the option favored by recent administrations, including Clinton's. Alas, the Post notes

Obama's insistence that he would scale back the use of private-sector contractors.

AFSCME will be happy. No wonder Washington, D.C. real estate is already starting to come back.** ...

P.S.: This generalized federal bloat, and not "earmarks," looms as the real disaster of Obama's first budgets. If an Alaska senator sticks in an earmark for the Bridge to Nowhere, at least the taxpayers are likely to get a Bridge to Nowhere. If we increase the Department of Transportation budget and they hire a new Human Resources coordinator, what does that get us? ...

P.P.S.: Here's a not-atypical argument for hiring new civil servants:

Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents workers in 31 federal agencies, said the administration appears to be "rebuilding workforces that have not been properly maintained and supported."

At the Internal Revenue Service, she said, "there are hundreds of thousands more taxpayers today than there were 10 years ago, and there are 27,000 fewer employees." [E.A.]

Too bad there were no increases in computing power during those 10 years that, in every other industry in America, allowed fewer white collar employees to process more paperwork! ... Seriously, imagine someone at G.E. or PayPal making this argument. "Help! We're handling more paperwork now with fewer people than a decade ago!" They'd be laughed at, if not RIFfed. ...

_______

 **--This sentence originally said "Washington, D.C. real estate isn't suffering." While D.C. apparently did relatively well in the real estate bust compared with other cities, and has emerged in better shape, prices have still dropped sharply and continuously since 2006. ... The forecast for the D.C. labor market is also substantially better than for other regions of the country. ... [Thanks to reader J.S. for the correction.] 8:01 P.M.

___________________________

Did Dr. Sanjay Gupta really say he opted out of the Surgeon General's job to 'spend more time with his family'?  ("He has removed himself from consideration to focus more on his medical career and his family.") Doesn't he know the phrase is a punch line, not an explanation? ... And won't he be spending pretty much the same amount of time with his family, since he's, you know, not changing his job? ...  7:59 P.M.

____________________________

Has L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa accidentally revealed the real reason why politicians are worried about the decline of the MSM?

I have press conferences where reporters don't show up anymore - it's just (TV) cameras. It's scary....A regular day would be six, seven cameras ... (Now) you get five on a great day ... [E.A.]

And what if the cameras go away too? It would be tragic if Villaraigosa had to figure out a way to govern other than by feeding the MSM a diet of staged events. ...  7:54 P.M.

___________________________

Kings of L.A.

The members admit that they never discussed what a digital billboard was, or its intrusive impact, before quickly approving them citywide; ...[M]any now admit they had no idea what made up the $1 billion to $3.6 billion solar plan, Measure B, but stuck it on [this] week's ballot anyway. ... They squabbled over selling valuable city land throughout the run-up in land values, and now that they're desperate for funds, council members plan to hold an embarrassing fire sale of the public's land. 

Needless to say, the city's giant budget deficit is driven in large part by "increases in employee pay and benefits". [LAT via LAO] ... More generally, in part due to L.A.'s weak-mayor/strong council system, residents have little sense that the development (or overdevelopment) of L.A. is under any kind of intelligible control.  It seems as if everything's a favor handed out by individual councilpersons--an impression reinforced by the Weekly. ... P.S.: If you are part of kf's coveted Beverly Hills demographic, my mother says to vote for Mirisch. I note only that she is an excellent judge of character.. ... 10:57 P.M.

___________________________