Conservative and liberal litmus tests

            On Tuesday, two different political parties in two elections occurring in two states will have a similar dilemma: what happens when your party’s candidate doesn’t effectively represent your party?

            First, New York’s 23rd congressional district: a special election is being held to replace Republican representative John McHugh, who resigned to become President Obama’s secretary of the Army.  Running for his seat are Democratic attorney Bill Owens, Republican assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, and attorney Doug Hoffman of the Conservative Party.  Scozzafava is a fiscal conservative, but is liberal on abortion and gay rights.  She was endorsed by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who warned that the way for a party to lose elections is to impose ideological litmus tests, no matter how ill-matched the “pure” candidates may be with their constituencies.  Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has spoke out for Owen and condemned “blurring the lines” between parties.  As it stands, Owen and Hoffman are leading Scozzafava.  It is entirely possible that come election day, this Republican-leaning district will give the plurality of its vote to Owen because Republicans could not unite behind their selected candidate.

            Then, look at Virginia’s gubernatorial race: Democratic state senator Creigh Deeds was selected by wide margins in all areas of the state in the June primary against his two liberal Northern Virginia rivals.  Since then, Democrats from the White House down to the grass roots level have widely viewed him as running his campaign into the ground, to Republicans’ glee.  Besides distancing himself from the Obama administration, Deeds has suggested in the final weeks of the campaign that he is against the climate change legislation and the public option in the healthcare bill, presumably to shore up his standing in rural Virginia (which he has somewhat obnoxiously termed “Deeds Country”).

            Consequently, Virginia Democrats have been posting on blogs that they are so disenchanted with Deeds that they will refuse to vote on November 3.  Or else, they will write in “Mark Warner,” “Thomas Jefferson,” or some other popular Virginian to express their dissatisfaction.  The problem is, by not turning out to vote for Deeds, all of the other Democratic candidates on the ballot will suffer, which is unfair to those who have waged competitive and competent campaigns.  Not to mention, these overly-sensitive liberal Democrats would never choose Republican Bob McDonnell in a million years, but they are essentially handing him victory by refusing to vote for their party’s candidate in order to teach someone (the other seven million people in this state?) a lesson.

            It’s entirely possible that other Democrats will outperform Deeds on the ballot, an indication of either the candidates’ strength or the loyalty of the rank-and-file voters (just not to Deeds himself).  It’s also possible that New York’s Republicans will end up uniting behind the candidate who is most likely to win in order to prevent enabling a Democratic victory in the district.  The takeaway lesson here is to remember that it is fine to disagree with candidates on principled issues, but the degree of “purity” should not prevent you from voting for the candidate who stands the best chance of implementing a vision similar to yours.  It is unproductive to think that the qualities which are best for the party are necessarily what is best for the people as a whole.

Protecting unions’ healthcare rights

            Yesterday, Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson pointed out a widely-overlooked aspect of healthcare reform that ought to be addressed before the final bill is deliberated upon.  Throughout the deliberations on how to pay for increasing coverage, two options have solidified.  The House’s plan is to tax wealthy households and individuals, which will cover about half the cost of the bill.  The Senate, on the other hand, will tax “Cadillac” plans that exceed roughly $21,000, encouraging folks to buy less expensive plans, consume fewer costly treatments, and thus reduce expenditures.

            Liberals are wary of the Senate’s plan because union members have, over the years, settled for lower wages in exchange for generous healthcare benefits, and any tax will ensnare middle-class families who happen to have well-earned, expansive health coverage.  However, it has been pointed out that many union contracts will have to be renegotiated in the coming years and employers can simply reduce the level of healthcare coverage while boosting wages in an attempt to shift the balance between income and non-taxable health benefits.  This will ensure that these workers will not cost the healthcare system as much in treatment and if they need to seek medical help above and beyond what their coverage entails, their extra wages can be used to cover that treatment.

            But Meyerson cautions us not to fall into a rhetorical fallacy: just because two ideas appear to be connected does not mean that there is necessarily a logical link between them.  In this case, we are dealing with the assertion that employers have a “pool” of money for each employee, into which are divided wages and healthcare benefits (in addition to Social Security taxes, pensions, etc.).  If one part of the pool—healthcare—shrinks, the other part—wages—will get larger, and the overall size of the pool will remain unchanged, as long as revenues and expenditures remain constant.

            Yet, this is not an ironclad deduction.  Unions have been successively weakened in America, and many people disdain unions as only serving the purpose of protecting incompetent workers from being fired.  This public condemnation—combined with the fact that in 2008, “top executives at 386 Fortune 500 companies averaged $10.8 million in total compensation, more than 364 times the amount paid to the average American worker”—demonstrates the relatively impotent bargaining position of the average employee.

            Employers could very well shrink the pool—paying less for healthcare, refusing to increase wages, and then pocketing the rest.  Congress ought to write a provision into the bill requiring employers to match dollar-for-dollar any decrease in existing health benefits with an increase in wages.  If that cannot be done without a compelling reason, union leaders should have the right to appeal to the Labor Department for an inquiry and/or punishment.  Among the administration’s many endeavors to reinvigorate the middle class and curtail the rampant greed of corporate culture, ensuring that unions receive proper respect at the bargaining table will prevent the further widening of the wealth gap that is a byproduct of the American myth that what is good for wealthy businessmen is good for the country overall.

Let’s opt out of the “opt-out” idea

            Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) announcement that the healthcare bill for his chamber will include a government-run option is a double-edged sword.  On the one hand, it is a relief to liberals who consider the public option to be the next-best (and only) alternative to a single-payer system but at the same time it puts moderates of both parties (well, Democratic moderates plus Sens. Collins and Snowe) in an enormous position of power.  Every senator who could potentially vote for this bill is needed and must be accommodated in the search for sixty votes.  It’s an undemocratic system that gives disproportionate advantage to rural states, but that is the way our Constitution works, for better or worse.

            The small state senators have a legitimate point with a public plan which is linked to Medicare, in that doctors already receive lower per-patient reimbursement by the government than by private insurers in their states or by Medicare payments to other states.  In part, this is due to the different costs of living throughout the country, but also it is attributable to formulas which have historically penalized efficient, rural providers such that they cannot afford to take on a good number of Medicare patients and still meet operating costs.  So, from their perspective, private insurers would better compensate doctors.

            Still, the formula can be altered.  What’s more, the people who do not have insurance currently are treated either at neighborhood clinics or in emergency rooms, so all that this legislation is doing is shifting the costs around.  The goal of healthcare reform is to bring down the cost of providing care overall, so the combination of new customers, reduced premiums, lower drug prices, and patient-centered care will, in theory, increase the number of patients that doctors see while decreasing the amount of billable-hours treatment people receive for their illness.

            I am concerned about this new “opt-out” aspect of the public option.  If states are allowed to forgo participation, how will the people currently uninsured find an affordable plan, especially if there is a mandate on individuals to purchase insurance?  Plus, the greater the number of people that participates in the public option, the more the costs of treatment will be spread between healthy and ill people, lowering premiums not just for people in the government plan, but for its competitors.  If half of the states choose not to make the public option available, what will that do to cost estimates which base premium prices on a certain level of participation?

            Lastly, there is a civil rights question here: if states are presented with a means of insuring those who are sick but choose not to make that path available to citizens, is the state liable for every ensuing preventable death?  Will public plan-based insurance be valid if a person seeks medical treatment in a state that has opted out?  And if states opt out, should they have to find another way to ensure that at least 95 percent of their legal residents have insurance or face some penalty, such as being denied funding for highways?

            The top map in this graphic is from Gallup, and I colored in the bottom section with the electoral results from last year’s election.

There seems to be a slight correlation between the percentage of insured adults per capita and the political leanings of the state.  Of course, this map does not indicate which party is in charge of the state legislature or the governor’s mansion.  For instance, even though Virginia voted Democratic in 2008, we will very likely have a Republican governor and legislature when the healthcare bill takes effect.  So, we can say that generally, state governments controlled by Republicans (who will be most likely to opt out) tend to have higher rates of uninsured adults.

            What it comes down to is this: I am worried that the ability to opt-out of the public option will fail to help people in states that most need an alternative method of procuring affordable insurance.  The senators from states such as Arkansas, Nebraska, and Louisiana should look at the 19 to 27 percent of constituents who lack insurance and explain why they were loathe to support a plan that will ensure their wellbeing.

Cars, taxes, and fairness

         While perusing the Virginia blogs, I came across this Crystal Clear Conservative post slamming the Democratic candidate for the House of Delegates in my district, who suggested that the state “charge vehicle property taxes in a way that corresponds to each driver’s contribution to congestion and excessive road wear, e.g., by weight of vehicles.”  This is largely a moot point now because a.) she does not have a prayer of winning, and b.) she has removed this aspect of her transportation vision from her website.

            I can understand why people may find this proposal unpalatable because “big government” is penalizing you for buying a hefty car.  But, this makes perfect sense under free market conditions in which all information is available—a concept which conservatives claim to uphold.  Think about it: when you buy your SUV, register it, and pump gas into it, are you paying for the wear that you inflict on the road?  For the pollution you cause to the air and water (in the form of runoff)?  For the large parking space you take up?  If you think the answer is yes, then ask yourself what price the tiny, hybrid car driver is paying for these infrastructural and environmental issues.  It’s the same amount.

            As it is, road and parking lot construction is socialized.  You can drive 100 miles down a stretch of road in a compact car or drive back and forth for one mile 100 times in a pickup truck and still only be paying for your gas usage, even though clearly one driver is putting out more exhaust and causing more road wear.  The state at the end of the day has to pool our tax dollars and apply fixes to these problems.  We charge trucks higher tolls because of their heavier weight, so why can we not apply the same principle to drivers of large vehicles?

            Now, the point I am about to make does not have any direct bearing on a vehicle-weight tax, but it invariably comes up when talking about road transportation: the tax we pay on gas is not a user fee, nor is it a sales tax.  It is simply a gas tax that is usually set slightly higher than the sales tax.  For example, in Virginia the sales tax is five cents on every dollar (5%).  It is .191 cents per gallon of gas.  If gas is $2.50 per gallon, this means that each dollar of gas has a 7.6% gas tax.  So, in effect the user fee that we pay for our roads is 2.6 cents per dollar of gas.

            The Virginia gas tax, like the cigarette tax (which is 30% per dollar) is low relative to most other states.  In the past, any discussion about raising either of these taxes has been silenced by asking the question: why are we trying to penalize people for smoking/driving by curtailing their liberty to engage in that activity?  Well, the fact is that driving and smoking—like anything when done to excess—create a hazard.  Too much smoking induces medical problems which gobble up our healthcare resources.  Too many cars wear out our infrastructure, cause congestion, and degrade the quality of life.

            In any conversation about whether to raise the gas tax, perhaps it would be more helpful to frame the problem in terms of “equitable user fees”.  The exact amount at which to set the user fee would be a normative question.  Is it worth only 2.6 cents to you that, for every gallon of gas you burn, you receive: road access, free parking in many locations, no direct air or water quality charge, the ability to keep mass transit users off the roads and out of your way, and the maintenance of stoplights, intersections, and road signage?

            If we’re going to talk about vehicle-related taxes (and Virginia will have to soon), let’s at least acknowledge the fundamental issue of fairness at stake before the more complicated question is resolved of how much of the cost burden road users should bear.

Bob McDonnell, the (probable) next governor

           Between now and November 3, unless Bob McDonnell walks into a hair salon and announces to all the women that they ought to be at home baking cookies and pumping out kids, there is an overwhelming chance that he will be elected the next governor of Virginia.  Conversely, unless Democrat Creigh Deeds surgically attaches Mark Warner to his hip and parades him across the commonwealth, he will probably fare badly.  To be frank, McDonnell probably would have squeaked by on Election Day even if Democrat Deeds had been a stellar candidate with a transportation plan and a clear message on taxes—just because of the natural inclination of Virginians to vote for the opposite party of whomever controls the White House.

            But as it is, McDonnell now has a double digit lead over Deeds.  The same Northern Virginians who gave Deeds his primary victory by wide margins have largely become disenchanted with his overly-negative campaigning, loss for words in the face of reporters, the distance he has tried to put between himself and President Obama, and the latest gaffe in which he said he would consider opting Virginia out of the public option if it were passed in healthcare reform.

            Now, it’s true that what he said—that he’s not convinced the public option is the only way to reduce costs—is essentially what the president has also stated regarding the public plan.  Considering, though, that Deeds has rebuked McDonnell for raising federal issues in debates, Deeds could have said something along the lines of, “I will wait until the bills are completed in the House and Senate before I make a judgment.”  Or, “I will do whatever possible to ensure that the maximum number of Virginians have health insurance.”  Or, “I will speak with members of the Virginia congressional delegation to ensure this legislation results in a net benefit for citizens of the commonwealth.”  Since Deeds’s strategy in the final weeks is to energize Democratic voters, I’m not sure that expressing skepticism over an item on the wish list of many liberals is the best way to impress the base. 

            As it is, many Democrats will probably get over their heartburn about Deeds and vote for him if only to vote against McDonnell.  This bears some resemblance to the 2004 presidential election, where people plainly knew what they disliked about President Bush, but Sen. John Kerry was such an uninspiring and amorphous candidate that the electorate did not have as much confidence in him as a potential commander in chief.  The danger of electing McDonnell is that he could also sweep into office a Republican Lieutenant Governor (who can break tied votes in a nearly evenly-split Senate), a Republican Attorney General (and an ultraconservative, environmentalist-hating, immigrant-bashing, state “sovereignty”-supporting one at that), and a Republican House of Delegates. 

            This means that after eight years of having moderate Democratic governors stand between the people and the legislature, it is probable that there will be laws enacted over the next two to four years that chip away at gun regulations, expand the use of capital punishment, crack down on non-felon illegal immigrant workers and families, fail to raise taxes to maintain our road systems, eliminate the chance of any new funding for public transit, slash welfare benefits, oppose the president’s healthcare proposal, and fail to lessen the burden on public colleges and universities and the financial burden on their students.

            If Glenn Beck is worried that the Democrats are hijacking his country, I am worried that a solidly Republican state government will enact seriously regressive policies that would caricature us as a “Deep South” state.  Of course, congressional Democrats have served as their own check over the past ten months, but an ideologically pure GOP can mobilize their ilk more efficiently.  That’s why I hope that there is at least one Democrat elected statewide to serve as a counterweight, if only in title, to a reinvigorated Republican government.