Ed Gerwin, Senior Fellow at Third Way, on the surprising likelihood that major trade legislation could pass through Congress this year.
Follow Ed @EdGerwin for more on trade and global economic policy.
By Bill Schneider
We are witnessing the slow death of public opinion in this country. It’s being displaced by party opinion.
These days, more and more Americans are inclined to judge issues from a partisan viewpoint. In March, according to a Pew Research Center survey, twice as many Republicans (53 percent) as Democrats (27 percent) said the economy was poor. Yet, from everything we know, Republicans are not suffering more economic deprivation than Democrats.
Elections today are less and less about persuasion and more and more about mobilization: You rally your supporters in order to beat back your opponents. Republicans did that in 2004, when President George W. Bush got re-elected with 51 percent of the vote. Democrats did that in 2012, when President Barack Obama got re-elected with 51 percent of the vote.
Republicans today are all fired up over the controversies involving the Internal Revenue Service, the State Department and the Justice Department. They see Watergate.
Read more
The politics of immigration are certainly warming, but that does not mean that passing comprehensive reform will be easy.
Polling shows that a solid majority of voters support a path to citizenship for most of those who are here illegally now—just as polls in 2006 showed big margins in favor of citizenship. But a closer look at the middle shows that behind their support is a cloudy layer of doubt and concerns.
This memo outlines the best way to reach the conflicted middle—using the key words tough, fair, and practical.
By Ryan Fitzpatrick
Energy policy is difficult to move, in part because there’s really no such thing as a “must-pass” energy bill. It doesn’t carry the same urgency or institutionalized process as certain annual taxing and spending bills, and it certainly doesn’t generate the same passion in the electorate as health care, immigration, or other social policy priorities. Let’s face it…energy policy is the stowaway, not the train. You can slip a discrete energy policy into a larger vehicle, as we saw with the PTC’s inclusion in the fiscal cliff deal. But building a large, comprehensive energy bill in this political era is basically the equivalent of a dozen stowaways standing by the tracks deciding to tie themselves together. Good luck with that, guys.
Recent movement of hydropower and efficiency bills, along with bipartisan support for master limited partnerships and ARPA-E, has shown us the potential for passing targeted energy legislation in this Congress. Perhaps these particular issues are unique in that they tend to gin up relatively little controversy. But an incremental and targeted approach can be effective with contentious policies as well. Returning to our earlier example, the PTC for wind has become a target of hyper-conservative groups in recent years. Yet a significant block of Republican lawmakers, including tea party favorites like Steve King and freshman class president Kristi Noem supported the extension. To be precise, they actually FOUGHT for it, pressuring their leadership and colleagues to move the provision. Focusing solely on the PTC for wind allowed geography to trump partisanship. This prioritizing of parochial issues over political ideology is a well-known phenomenon in energy policy, and it has often provided opportunities for compromise and progress in Congress. But the influence of the “geography effect” is diminished once the policy in question is merged with others that are of less interest or that present a conflict for lawmakers.
For the House and Senate, the strategy that seems to be showing the most promise is to keep it simple (and practical), stupid. Smart policy initiatives will minimize variables that give lawmakers a reason (or an excuse) to vote against clean energy interests that matter to folks back home. And they will take advantage of unique coalitions that each individual issue can bring to the table based on geography, local economies, etc. Legislators can also encourage the Administration to continue its use of executive orders to increase efficiency and clean energy procurement within federal agencies, and to pursue collaborations with industry to iron-out regulatory hurdles that could slow the adoption of clean technologies.
The bottom line is, there is plenty to be done. It just can’t be done all at once. So pick your spot on the apple and start taking a bite.
Will Minn. lawmakers face retribution for gay marriage vote?
As Minnesota lawmakers voted to support gay marriage, some knew it was a vote that could cost them their jobs.
One lawmaker feeling heat is Rep. Joe Radinovich, a Democrat from Crosby, who called his support of gay marriage, “the right thing to do.”
Radinovich represents a district that supported a constitutional ban on gay marriage last November and a recall effort is now underway.
In his speech on the Senate floor Tuesday before voting to support gay marriage, Sen. Branden Petersen, a Republican from Andover, openly wondered what impact the vote would have on his political future.
“You’re going to see a few races where it might make a difference,” says Hamline University professor David Schultz.
While Schultz believes a handful of lawmakers could be at risk for their votes on gay marriage, he cautions that the next elections are far off.
The Minnesota Senate isn’t up for re-election until November 2016. House members are up for re-election in November 2014.
“As they always say, in politics a week is an eternity. Eighteen months is more than an eternity,” says Schultz.
Lawmakers in other states that have approved gay marriage have not seen a backlash.
Third Way, a national think tank, studied Washington state and New York where a whopping 97 percent of lawmakers who voted for gay marriage and ran for re-election, won.
“It gets back to the fact that once something is law, once people get used to it, then they are less likely to take it against people in terms of how they are going to vote,” says Schultz.
Schultz believes the lawmakers most at-risk for their marriage vote, are lawmakers who would have been at-risk anyway for a variety of other issues.
“I think it’s going to be the bread and butter issues about taxes, the budget and the economy,” says Schultz.
By Bill Schneider
The deficit is going down. Woo-hoo! Let the celebrations begin.
Oh, wait. That may not be altogether a good thing. Certainly not for Republicans. They need an out-of-control deficit to bludgeon Democrats into cutting more spending. It may not be good news for the economic recovery either. Budget austerity means slower growth. Want proof? Look at Europe.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this year’s federal budget deficit will drop from $1.1 trillion to $845 billion. Economists at Goldman Sachs project that we will get the deficit under control within two years. Why is this happening?
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The bipartisan Gang of 8 immigration reform bill renews America’s commitment to welcome the world’s huddled masses but also sets new priorities for skills-based immigration, eliminates arbitrary country caps, puts the students we’ve educated to work in our economy, and establishes a sustainable path for the agricultural and guest workers on which our society depends.
To read more about how the Gang of 8 bill reforms our outdated immigration system to fit America’s modern needs, read: The Gang of 8: Making America a Magnet for Global Talent.
Do voters punish legislators who support marriage for gay couples? A look at the data from the 2012 election shows that the answer is NO.
By Amanda Palmer, POLITICO
The Senate voted down a gun control measure last month, but the fight is just beginning.
The National Rifle Association and new pro-gun control groups headed by former Rep. Gabby Giffords and Michael Bloomberg are in an arms race since a background check bill narrowly failed in the Senate last month – ramping up their fundraising, airing attack ads and revving up their grassroots machines.
There was a time when a failed gun bill might have quietly slipped off the stage. But the dynamics have shifted, since the NRA is no longer the only group in the gun debate with money, power and some signs of staying power.
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Representatives Mike Thompson (D-CA) and Peter King (R-NY) have introduced a bipartisan compromise bill on background checks that protects the Second Amendment rights of gun owners while strengthening our ability to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, terrorists, and those who are severely mentally ill.
With so much at stake, we’ve written a quick one-pager to explain why both gun lovers and gun skeptics can support Thompson-King.
READ: The Thompson-King Background Check Compromise
Bill Schneider says American politics is tipping away from conservatives to progressives on issue after issue. How did we get here? What’s in store for the conservative movement? Last night, HuffPost Live hosted a discussion on the future of the Republican Party.
This segment features Bill Schneider, Distinguished Senior Fellow & Resident Scholar at Third Way, Buck Sexton, National Security Editor at The Blaze, David Badash, Founder & Editor of The New Civil Rights Movement, and Gregory T. Angelo, Executive Director of the Log Cabin Republicans.
