Half Changed World

I got an email from MoveOn this week about the lousy bankruptcy bill that the House is going to vote on tomorrow.

This made me go Hmmm, since MoveOn was very noticably absent from the public discourse last month, when there was a chance that the bankruptcy bill might be stopped in the Senate. Joshua Marshall loaned some space on Talking Points Memo to Elizabeth Warren, and they managed to stir up a good bit of attention in the liberal blogosphere.  But, as Salon’s War Room pointed out, MoveOn wasn’t involved:

"According to Eli Pariser, MoveOn’s executive director, it was because they didn’t think it would have made a real impact. ‘Because of the solid Republican support for the bill, terrible though the bill is, it wasn’t something that we could make a difference by weighing in on’".

But there’s even less chance of moving the House vote, so why is MoveOn getting involved now?

A close look at the email reveals two critical points:  First, it’s from MoveOnPAC, not MoveOn. Second, it’s not asking for members to call or email their representatives.  Instead, it asks for money for radio ads in the hometowns of Representatives who vote wrong on this bill.

So, this issue wasn’t important enough for MoveOn to mobilize its membership, but it is useful as a fundraiser?  Yech.

Today’s book is Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, by George Lakoff, better known these days for his slim spin-off volume, Don’t Think of an Elephant.  In this book, Lakoff attempts to answer the question that I was left with after reading What’s The Matter with Kansas?, namely why are Christian conservatives willing to mobilize to lower taxes?

Lakoff is a linguist, specifically a "cognitive linguist." This means that he studies how the language that we use to discuss things, and the implicit metaphors behind our choice of language, are shaped by — and in turn shape — how we think about the world.  His core argument is that the real difference between conservatives and liberals in contemporary American politics is that they use different models of the family as their central metaphor for thinking about society.  Conservatives use a "Strict Father" model, a metaphor that supports belief in authority, self-discipline and self-reliance, reward and punishment; liberals use a "Nuturant Parent" metaphor, a metaphor that supports belief in empathy, openness, cultivation of interests, promotion of opportunity, and second chances.  Lakoff argues that moderates (and swing voters) are those who apply both models at different times, depending on the specific issue at hand.

Lakoff acknowledges that there’s no real way to prove the accuracy of a cognitive model.  Instead, he suggests that readers evaluate his hypothesis by examining whether the model is a convincing explanation for the world we see around us.  I found Lakoff’s argument a plausible explanation for many aspects of American politics, including many conservative positions that I fundamentally find incomprehensible.  (For example, why do many conservatives feel that same-sex marriage is a "threat" to "traditional marriage"?   Lakoff argues "Metaphorically, someone who deviates from a tried and true path is creating a new path that others will feel safe to travel on.  Hence, those who transgress boundaries or deviate from a prescribed path may ‘lead others astray’ by going off in a new direction and creating a new path.")  I’d be very interested in knowing whether conservatives feel that Lakoff’s description is generally accurate.

The public debate regarding which Lakoff’s analysis seems least illuminating is that about abortion.  Lakoff accurately states that pro-life advocates view the fetus as a human life, and abortion as the destruction of that life, while pro-choice advocates view abortion as a simple medical procedure.  But his attempt to tie these positions back to the Strict Father v. Nuturant Parent models seems both weak, and deeply cycnical: he implies that adherents to the Strict Father model want to punish women for the lack of self-discipline and morality shown by having sex when they’re not prepared to parent, and therefore decide that the fetus is a baby, while Nuturant Parent supporters decide that the fetus is just cells because they believe in sex out of marriage, second chances, and heavy investments in all children.  This doesn’t ring true to me, and certainly doesn’t explain pro-choice Catholics like Frances Kissling or pro-life feminists like Hugo Schwyzer.

As someone who spends my professional life helping improve the research basis for social policy, I found Lakoff’s dismissal of the role of evidence in affecting policy choices both disheartening and plausible.  He argues that there is a small subset of both conservatives and liberals who are pragmatic enough to be moved by evidence, but that most people are too wedded to their cognitive models to listen to any evidence against the policies they support.  Much to my chagrin, I think that’s probably right.  Conservatives like full-family sanctions even thought there’s no evidence that they are more effective than partial sanctions, but because they seem morally right.  Liberals hate marriage promotion programs because they think it’s an illegitimate use of government power, even though the evidence that kids do better in married-parent families is fairly strong.

I want to talk a bit about Elephant, and the political implications of Lakoff’s arguments, as well as of the significance of the two models of families for parenting, but I think I’m going to save both topics for another day.

The Zero Boss asked why I oppose private accounts in Social Security.  It’s a reasonable question, and he asked nicely, so I’ll try to answer it.  And maybe I’ll get some more links.  (That’s a joke — Shakespeare’s Sister reports that one of the reasons the leading male bloggers don’t link to women is women don’t write about Social Security.  Via Feministe.)

Let’s start with a graph that I’ve showed on this site before:  http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/poverty03/pov03fig04.pdf  What this shows is that Social Security has been remarkably successful in reducing poverty among the elderly.  As late as 1967, 30 percent of all the elderly in this country were poor; today it’s just over 10 percent. 

So, what’s the problem?  Well, there’s no immediate problem at all.  For some years to come, even without any changes, Social Security taxes will bring in more revenue than the program pays out in benefits.  And then, as the baby boomers start to retire, there will be a period where the benefits exceed the revenues, but the program is paying out from the surplus that’s been built up over the years.  And then, finally, there will come a date when the surplus is all gone, and the benefits that have been promised still exceed the anticipated revenues.  This is estimated to occur somewhere around 2040, plus or minus a few years depending on whose figures you’re using. 

This is a problem, but not one that seems insurmountable if anyone was really motivated to solve it.  We put off the retirement age a few more years; we raise the cap on the amount of wages that are subject to Social Security taxes; we fiddle with the inflation adjustment; it all works out.  (The problem of health care costs for the elderly is much more intractable, but somehow Bush has decided that Social Security is in crisis and Medicare isn’t.) 

Diverting some of the taxes towards private accounts only makes the funding gap worse.  And while Lindsey Graham has indicated that raising the cap might be on the table, the Administration still says it’s not.  So, the only way that they’re willing to consider closing the funding gap is to cut benefits — and the private accounts proposal just seems like a smokescreen to try to hide that.

Moreover, it’s important to remember that Social Security isn’t just a retirement program.  It also provides both disability and survivor’s insurance.  And while a private account might add up to a reasonable amount of money after 40 years, it’s not going to provide anything significant to the person who is disabled or dies in their 30s or 40s.  Americans face more economic risk in our lives now than at any point in decades; it seems crazy to me that the President wants to shift even more risk onto individuals and families.

I’m thinking of moving my money away from Charles Schwab, due to their support of the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security, which in spite of its Orwellian name is a group that lobbies for Social Security privatization.  Can anyone recommend a brokerage firm that has low fees, decent service, and isn’t involved with any such groups?

Matthew Yglesias argues that the withdrawal of the Financial Services Forum from a related lobbying group is "probably the most important Social Security development of the day."  Unions have been putting a lot of pressure on these firms — by organizing pickets and letter writing campaigns, but also by threatening to pull their pension accounts.

I’m writing about welfare today.  Since I do work on this issue, I feel compelled to state  — just in case it’s not blindingly obvious — that this is my personal opinion, and not that of the Administration or any portion of the federal government.  I’m writing it on my own free time, on my personal computer.  OK?

The Senate Finance committee reported out a welfare bill today.  Or, rather, the Finance committee having rules and procedures unlike anyplace else, they reported out a description of a bill which staff will later fill in with actual legislative language.

The welfare law actually expired in September 2002, but Congress has been too deadlocked to pass a new law.  So they’ve been passing 3 and 6 month extensions to keep it running ever since.  This is not necessarily a terrible thing, as Bush and the House Republicans are the only people in the world who think welfare reform didn’t push recipients to work hard enough, so they’re trying to make it tougher.

But it’s hard for states to run a program never knowing what the rules are going to be next year, and the proposed bills also include some important child support reforms that would encourage states to pass through more of the money they collect from non-custodial parents to the custodial parents and kids, instead of keeping it to offset their welfare costs.  And, in the current budget climate, locking in the block grant at current levels for another 5 years is looking like a smarter and smarter idea.

The bill the Finance committee reported out has bipartisan support, which is a rarety these days.  It makes the work requirements somewhat tougher, and includes money for marriage promotion, which is one of the Administration’s big priorities.  But it also includes an increase of $6 billion over 5 years for subsidized child care, which has been a huge priority for Democrats.  It’s not perfect, but it’s probably about as good a bill as I could hope for in the current Congress. 

So, the big question is whether the Republican leadership is willing to bring this bill to the floor for a vote by the full Senate?  And if so, will the Democrats vote to refer it to conference committee, without some sort of agreement that they won’t get screwed over in conference?  My best guess is no.  So don’t expect this bill to become sausage,  I mean law, any time soon.

Sidenote:  I googled the quote about "Those who love sausage and respect the law should never watch either being made."  Different sites attribute it to Mark Twain and Otto van Bismarck.  Anyone have an authoritative citation?

Today I’m writing about Federal budget rules, a topic that can put even the most dedicated policy wonks to sleep.  But the Republicans in Congress are counting on the MEGO (my eyes glaze over) factor to get away with some outrageous rules that will hamstring any attempts to improve entitlement programs (Medicaid, Food Stamps, Veterans’ benefits) while letting tax cuts get a free pass.  So it’s worth keeping your eye on the ball, even if it takes an extra cup of coffee to stay awake.

The issue is the "Pay As You Go" or "PAYGO" rules.  In the 1990s, determined to get the budget deficit under control, Congress adopted a set of rules that said that you couldn’t pass a tax cut or expand an entitlement program without finding an "offset."  If these rules were applied to your household budget, it would mean that if you wanted to sign up for cable, you had to give up your weekly pizza night to pay for it.  If you wanted to buy a car, you might have to get a Saturday job to cover the payments.  Everything had to be paid for. Everyone kicked and screamed about the hard choices that it forced, but it was fair and it worked: by the late 1990s, we were running a surplus.

Since last year, however, the House Budget Committee has been using a new version of these PAYGO rules that only applies to entitlements.  Tax cuts are "free" under these rules — Congress doesn’t have to find any offsets, but can run the deficit up as high as they please.  Entitlements, however, still require offsets — and they can only be offset by cuts in other entitlement programs.  So if you want to improve access to Food Stamps, for example, you have to cut access to another entitlement program.  In the household example, this is equivalent to saying it doesn’t matter to your budget if you get another job and bring in more income, or if your hours are cut in half.  All that matters is that any increased bill is offset by a decrease in another bill.  It just doesn’t make sense.

The best source of information on this sort of budgetary maneuver is the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.  Here’s a link to their paper on the PAYGO rules and here’s one to an overall discussion of ways in which the Administration is playing games with the budget process.  Read ’em and weep.

Deep thanks to everyone who has picked up my post about possible cutbacks in the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).  The National Partnership for Women and Families now has an Action Alert that you can use to send emails, or print letters for mailing, to your Senators and Representative and to the Department of Labor. 

There are some very good discussions going on about this issue in the comments at RebelDad and Bitch, PhD.  I’m curious as to whether there’s something that I could do differently that would encourage folks to comment more here.  Would it help if I added my own comments in response to the comments I receive?  Just wondering.

Others who have picked up the story include the Daily Yak (with a story about the grief he got for taking FMLA leave), DaddyTypes, 11d, Thrifty Mom, Uncommon Woman, Mimilou, and Lifechanges… Delayed, .  Thanks!

Twelve years ago, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was signed into law.  It was the first bill signed by President Clinton, as it had been repeatedly passed by Congress, but vetoed by Presidents Reagan and Bush.  It’s not perfect — the leave is unpaid, which means that it’s of limited use to the most vulnerable families, and it only covers about 60 percent of the workforce, because small companies are excluded — but it’s a lot better than nothing.

Today, there are widespread rumors that the Family and Medical Leave Act is under attack.  While nothing official has been released, the rumors are that the Department of Labor is considering making regulatory changes that would severely undercut the protections of FMLA.  There are two changes that are commonly mentioned:

• Limit the protection to illnesses that require more than 10 days of leave (up from the 3 in current regs).  This would mean that if you had to miss 4 days of work because of surgery or a child’s asthma flare-up, you could be fired.  Those of us at the upper end of the income scale would probably still be ok, because we could "shop around" until we found a doctor who was willing to say we needed the full two weeks off, but those without such resources — or who can’t afford to be without a paycheck for that long — would be screwed.  This seems like a bad idea for employers too, as it would create a perverse incentive for people not to go back to work as soon as they were able.
• Require that employees take FMLA-protected leave no less than half a day at a time.  This one would hurt anyone with an condition that requires ongoing care which doesn’t take that much time.  For example, prenatal care.  During my pregnancies, I always tried to schedule my appointments for the beginning or end of the day, so as to minimize the amount of leave that I had to use.  (This was both a courtesy to my boss, and personally necessary, because your accumulated leave is the only paid maternity leave you get as a federal employee.)  If this rule were in place, an employer could have required me to take 4 hours of leave for each appointment.  Someone with an even slightly less than routine pregnancy could easily burn through 2 or more weeks of her FMLA before the baby was even born.

If these changes worry you, please act now.  If the Department of Labor gets a clear message that people care about family and medical leave, and will oppose the proposed changes, they may well back off before they start the formal rulemaking process.

• Write Labor Secretary Elaine Chao.  Her address is:

Elaine Chao
U.S. Department of Labor
200 Constitution Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20210

• Write your Senators and Representative.  Even though the proposed changes are regulatory, not legislative, your elected officials can put pressure on the Department of Labor if they hear that this is a big deal to their constituents.  While you’re at it, you might ask them to cosponsor the Healthy Families Act, which would guarantee workers 7 days of paid sick leave.
• If you are a business owner who supports FMLA, your voice is especially needed.  The Administration is going to claim that these changes are business-friendly.  If you think that these changes are bad policy, if you think they’ll encourage employees to take more leave than they need, if you’ve managed fine under the current system, please speak up.   Write Chao, write your elected officials, but also write the Chamber of Commerce and similar organizations and tell them your story.
• Spread the word.  If you have a blog, write about this. Tell your friends, your coworkers.  Bring sample letters to your playgroup, your moms night out, your weekly basketball game.  This issue is especially important for parents, but it affects everyone — even if you don’t have kids, you can get sick yourself, or have to care for a sick parent or other family member.  You shouldn’t lose your job as a result.

For more information on this issue, see the AFL-CIO working women’s department or the National Partnership for Women and Children.

Update:  The National Partnership now has an Action Alert available that you can use to send emails to Congress and the Department of Labor with a push of a button. 

… the Bush Administration is also proposing to completely gut a bunch of social programs, and no one’s paying attention. 

Here’s the official press release and here’s the NY Times story on it. 

The Bush proposal would take 18 different programs — including the Community Development Block Grant (run by the Department of Housing and Urban Development) and the Community Services Block Grant (run by Health and Human Services) — and consolidate them into a single program based at the Department of Commerce.  Why Commerce?  Because HUD and HHS actually think helping poor people is part of our mission, while Commerce works for the business community.

Oh, and the total funding would drop from $5.6 billion to $3.7 billion.  But if you move the shells back and forth fast enough, maybe people won’t notice that you’ve palmed the ball.

I actually agree that some degree of consolidation would be a good thing — HHS has a few small pure economic development grant programs that clearly belong somewhere else, if they’re worth funding at all.  But this is a slash-and-burn operation, not a careful pruning.

Today’s book review is of What’s the Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, by Thomas Frank.  It came out this summer, to generally positive reviews, but not a whole lot of attention, then seemed to top every Democrat’s reading list after the election.

Frank explores how Kansas, once a center of Populist revolt against oppressive economic elites, has in recent years come to be dominated by a form of Republicanism defined by revolt against cultural elites.  Democrats are almost entirely absent from Frank’s story — he argues that the battle in Kansas is between Conservative and Moderate Republicans.  He discusses the ways in which those who are the chief beneficiaries of modern capitalism describe themselves as "just folks" like the victims of modern capitalism, in contrast to liberals, atheists, intellectuals, feminists, etc. and harness outrage against those groups into a political movement.

It’s an interesting book and I enjoyed reading it.  But ultimately, I felt like I was left hanging; Frank describes what has happened in Kansas — a story both funny and sad — but doesn’t really answer the why part of it.  One chapter ends with the image of an angry mob, storming the statehouse, chanting "we are here — to cut your taxes."  It’s a great line, but I still don’t have a clue why the pro-life anti-gay Christian movement is passionately opposed to taxes. 

In the conclusion, Frank suggests that Democrats are — at least on economic issues — all but indistinguishable from Moderate Republicans.  And with the all-but-disappearance of labor unions, there’s no one to keep economic issues on the table.  Lower- and middle-income Americans therefore vote against their class interests on a regular basis.

It makes a lot of sense.  And yet, a quick look at the exit polls from the last election indicates that there’s still a linear relationship between how much money you have and how likely you are to vote Republican.  Kansas is a lot more Republican than the country as a whole, but the relationship holds true there, too.  So, implicit behind Frank’s argument is a claim that there ought to be an even stronger correlation between income and voting patterns. 

I’m not enough of a political historian to know if that’s ever been the case — I do know that for almost a hundred years, leftists have been lamenting the lack of class consciousness among American workers.