'Liberals Against Labor Unions'

That’s the title of a very short essay I have in the July issue of Philadelphia Magazine. (It’s not online, that I can find, but it’s on newsstands now.) It’s a piece I fear will cost me a few friends in this town--and possibly beyond--and so I hesitated to write it. I don’t like making my friends mad!

But: I wrote it. And I stand by it. Now I’d like to elaborate.

The central point of the essay is that the city’s public labor unions--in virtually every sector of public governance--contribute to the sclerotic can’t-do-much-but-do-it-expensively-and-slowly-but-intrusively nature of Philadelphia governance. Let’s face it: Governance in this city sucks. They’re not the only culprits, but mostly public unions appear to act as constituencies that are owed favors and pandering instead of partners in making the city better.

It hurts to write that, because I believe it’s not a coincidence that the decline of unionization in America has coincided with stagnating middle class wages. And I don’t think you forfeit your right to seek a better life just because you go into public service.

But...

Here’s a good place to go back and examine one’s underlying principles. Conservatives are for small, limited government. They tend to believe--or at least, say--that liberals are for big government, possibly for its own sake. I’ve never felt that way, personally. But I do want government to do stuff--to provide infrastructure, education, policing, and a safety net for those who are unemployed, sick, or old, a regulatory framework to protect us from unnecessary harm--so that we as citizens are freed to make the most of our gifts and resources. Bigger government is a byproduct of that, but it’s not the goal.

The thing is: I think conservatives are right to some extent that a bigger government is one that’s more likely to reach into your life in ways that are burdensome instead of helpful. So liberals (like me) who advocate for doing all these things should be at the forefront of making sure they’re done well, so that the burden is more than offset by the benefits. And when they’re not done well, we have to examine where the fault lies.

In Philadelphia, there are many reasons that governance is so sclerotic. The Republican Party gave up being competitive a long time ago, letting Democrats get fat and happy in their mediocrity. Huge chunks of the civil service are patronage machines aimed at delivering jobs to allies instead of services to citizens. Our recent mayors have either been (let’s be honest here) shady or (in the case of the current occupant) surprisingly ineffective at working the levers of power. L&I could get its own paragraph here.

But Philadelphia’s public unions also, from what I can see, carry a measure of responsibility. So we have to deal with the fact that their pensions currently outstrip our ability to pay for them; we have to deal with the apparent disregard they have for the citizens they serve; we have to deal with how they often seem to stand in the way of reforming government for fear of losing jobs.

(One thing: My piece was written and in the editor’s hands long before the school district’s blue-collar workers offered $20 million in givebacks to save jobs. Knowing that would’ve tempered how I wrote the original piece, admittedly. But I think the long-term trends are nonetheless clear.)

I am not Scott Walker. I am not a Republican. I don’t want to end public unions. (Neither does Walker, exactly; remember, that police unions were exempted from his Wisconsin crackdown, which means the moves there have been about consolidating Republican power rather than defending some small-government principle.) I want them to do better.

Living in Philadelphia has made me both more and less sympathetic to my libertarian-leaning friends. I’m not sure this (or any big city) can survive without a strong central government. But I also see how such a government, when it’s ossified and not-at-all nimble, makes the city a worse place to live. Right now, Philadelphia’s government makes this city a worse place to live for many of us who simply want to live and earn a living here. The public unions are part of the reason why. If those of us who are their natural allies acknowledge this, we can help them be part of fixing the problem.

The ACLU: Not just a bunch of liberal hacks, continued

Laura W. Murphy: 'Fixing' Citizens United Will Break the Constitution: "In “Fixing Citizens United,” Professor Geoffrey Stone -- usually a friend to the First Amendment -- argues for a constitutional amendment to “fix” the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. Professor Stone mentions the proposal rather offhandedly, but the idea is a nuclear option. A constitutional amendment -- specifically an amendment limiting the right to political speech -- would fundamentally “break” the Constitution and endanger civil rights and civil liberties for generations."

Murphy is the director of ACLU's Washington legislative office. They're obviously advancing a radical liberal agenda.

Conservatives vexed to discover Congress has power of taxation

Well, not all of them. But some of them. Take this tweet, for example:

Which, well, yes.

The second-most-trafficked blog post I've ever written here is one I wrote while reading The Federalist Papers.  It's where I dive deep to discover that the Founders intended that Congress have unlimited power of taxation.  Now they obviously didn't expect that it would be used in unlimited fashion, but they were very specific that the power had to be unbounded. Here's one Constitutional case where we don't have to speculate about their intent, because they told us.

Here is Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 31:

As the duties of superintending the national defense and of securing the public peace against foreign or domestic violence involve a provision for casualties and dangers to which no possible limits can be assigned, the power of making that provision ought to know no other bounds than the exigencies of the nation and the resources of the community. 

As revenue is the essential engine by which the means of answering the national exigencies must be procured, the power of procuring that article in its full extent must necessarily be comprehended in that of providing for those exigencies.
As theory and practice conspire to prove that the power of procuring revenue is unavailing when exercised over the States in their collective capacities, the federal government must of necessity be invested with an unqualified power of taxation in the ordinary modes.

The lack of limits, I think, suggests that the federal government indeed has the power to tax anything that moves. And anything that doesn't move.

I suppose you can argue that taxing people in order to encourage them to buy health insurance doesn't qualify as an "ordinary mode"--but as Chief Justice John Roberts noted in today's opinion upholding the Affordable Care Act, government uses tax policy to encourage and discourage all sorts of behaviors. That horse is out of the barn, and with the full-throated support of a good number of Republicans.

I can understand why conservatives might be disgruntled about today's ruling, though I don't think they have as much to be upset about as they think they do. But if you're going to be mad that the federal government has the power to tax you, don't get mad at John Roberts--he didn't invent the power. The Founders did.

Next up: Barack Obama to put a tax on singing 'The Star-Spangled Banner'

Heartland Institute Reacts to Obamacare Ruling | Heartland Institute: 

"“Today’s decision will go down in infamy. It marks the moment when we all lost our freedom because the Supreme Court drew a road map to guide those dedicated to imposing a totalitarian, statist government on the American people. 

“The majority opinion on the individual mandate, authored by Chief Justice Roberts, held that, so long as failure to comply with a government directive is penalized by something ‘reasonably’ called a tax, Congress can force Americans to buy anything. It can force Americans to do something, indeed anything, like eat broccoli. It can force Americans not to do something, like not be obese. Or even not sing the Star Spangled Banner. All of this would be lawful under this ruling today. 

“There is no limit on the evil coming, unless we amend our Constitution. A dark day for America, indeed.” 

Maureen Martin
Senior Fellow for Legal Affairs
The Heartland Institute "

Emphasis added. No other comment offered.

Hey liberals: Get ready for the next Supreme Court battle

Ben and I have a fresh-fresh-fresh Scripps Howard column this week, reflecting on what lessons can be learned from the Supreme Court's ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act. Taking the victory at face value—though maybe I shouldn't—here's my take:

Liberals, enjoy the victory -- because now everything gets harder. 

And I mean everything. The Supreme Court's ruling doesn't end the debate over the Affordable Care Act, it simply throws it back to Congress. Obamacare-hating Republicans already run the House of Representatives. Further Republican victories in November could lead to an outright repeal of the law. It may be years -- if ever -- before the act joins Medicare and Social Security in relative safety from GOP assaults. 

Beyond that, liberals should understand -- as conservatives almost certainly do -- that the fight over Supreme Court nominees will become even more intense going forward. Conservatives don't believe that their argument failed; they believe that Chief Justice John Roberts failed. And they'll act accordingly. 

Remember Harriet Miers? George W. Bush nominated her to the court in 2005 -- but withdrew the nomination in the face of opposition from angry conservatives who felt insufficiently assured she'd take their side on the big issues. Conservatives have demanded those assurances ever since David Souter joined the court's liberal bloc after being appointed by a Republican president. 

They will double down on those efforts. And given the trend of recent years, no one should be surprised if -- when -- Republicans then filibuster the next Supreme Court appointment made by a Democratic president. The customary deference given a president in such matters will evaporate. 

Democrats should be planning and preparing for those clashes now. 

They should also be prepared to modify and improve the law over time. 

The truth is that Obamacare's individual mandate is a blunt, inelegant instrument to expand health coverage in the United States -- flawed, but also what was politically possible at the time it passed. Over time, it will need amending and refinement. That will take a lot of work. 

The defense of Obamacare isn't over. Thanks to John Roberts, it has just begun.

Did John Roberts actually just kill the Affordable Care Act?

Although I have a Scripps Howard column coming out soon that suggests otherwise, I think it's possible that Chief Justice John Roberts decided to kill the Affordable Care Act today--not with the beheading that everybody was expecting, but with a slow-acting poison.

Consider this.

One of the big things the Affordable Care Act does is make it nearly impossible for insurance companies to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions. That removed a big obstacle for many people obtaining insurance, but it also created a problem--burdening those companies with huge medical costs that they were otherwise avoiding. The individual mandate was intended to solve that problem by sending lots of healthy people (and their cash) to the insurance companies, allowing the insurers to still make money.

By reframing the mandate as a tax, though, Roberts may have found the mechanism that blows the house of cards apart. Here he is, delivering the majority opinion:

Indeed, it is estimated that four million people each year will choose to pay the IRS rather than buy insurance. ... We would expect Congress to be troubled by that prospect if such conduct were unlawful. That Congress apparently regards such extensive failure to comply with the mandate as tolerable suggests that Congress did not think it was creating four million outlaws. It suggests instead that the shared responsibility payment merely imposes a tax citizens may lawfully choose to pay in lieu of buying health insurance.

And:

First, for most Americans the amount due will be far less than the price of insurance, and, by statute, it can never be more. It may often be a reasonable financial decision to make the payment rather than purchase insurance.

Now. I doubt Republicans would mount a campaign to get everybody to pay the tax and avoid health insurance in order to undermine the purposes of he Affordable Care Act. But if the mandate is now framed in the popular mind as a "cheap tax I can pay" instead of a "rule that I must follow," it's possible that many young, poorly paid people will opt to pay the tax--and that insurance companies will drown over time as a result.

UPDATE: Ezra Klein is thinking along similar lines.

At Imprimis: Richard Vedder is wrong; education pays

At Imprimis—the "most influential conservative publication you've never heard of"—Ohio University economics professor Richard Vedder argues that the federal government is creating more problems than benefits with its student loan programs, and along the way makes a weird observation:

What about higher education being a vehicle for equal economic opportunity or income equality? Over the last four decades, a period in which the proportion of adults with four-year college degrees tripled, income equality has declined. (As a side note, I do not know the socially optimal level of economic inequality, and the tacit assumption that more such equality is always desirable is suspect; my point here is simply that, in reality, higher education today does not promote income equality.)

Vedder kind of gives the game away with his postscript—he doesn't care about income inequality, he just thinks it a handy tool to use in the argument against education. And it's true in a very narrow sense that increased access to college hasn't reduced income inequality. In truth, it's probably contributed a bit. Check out this chart:

Would you rather have a four-year college degree—likely with above-average earnings and below-average unemployment—or do you want to just keep that high school diploma?

Or study the numbers here: Between 1990 and 2008, a man with a high school diploma saw his earnings grow just 61 percent—that lagged the 67 percent inflation rate during that same period. Men with bachelor's degrees saw a 209 percent increase in income; men with PhDs saw a 227 percent increase.

Getting a good education, it seems, has been really smart way to stay ahead of the inequality trend.

And that matters, because college education—while more pervasive than it ever has been—is still the exception than the rule: Adults with four or more years of college comprised less than 30 percent of the population in 2009. Combine the relative scarcity of diplomas with the income benefit those diplomas conferred, and you get part of the explanation for increased income inequality in the United States in recent decades.

There are other things that Vedder, to my mind, gets wrong, and clearly we need to talk about how we pay for education and get it delivered. But Vedder's case is premised on this wrongheaded—misleading—idea that college education hasn't been very helpful economically, so to hell with the federal government helping young people get a degree.