I, Jo Hafford, resident of Phoenix, Arizona, am a liberal policy wonk. During the 2012 campaign cycle, when folks were bemoaning how similar the parties were, I knew the policy differences not from the Sunday shows but from their white papers - which I read, though I don't think Mitt Romney did. Simpson-Bowles? Yeah, I know why that didn't pass, and will never pass, and should never pass. Even here locally, in my fourth-bluest-in-the-state legislative district, I felt it necessary to read the House Minority Leader's legislation before making like a good little volunteer and falling in line (turns out he's farking brilliant on policy, but more on that at a later date).
There is, however, a problem with trying to be this familiar with policy, to say nothing of honestly loving the process that no one should watch up close. There are vast swaths of public policy that are unabashedly stupid. No, I'm not talking about the fiscal hara-kiri. That, for liberals, is genius, and at least short term will glue budget talks to the things that are actually in the budget - like do we want taxes, or do we want education, for example. I'm talking about things like the milk mess.
The milk mess would not exist were it not for a piece of legislation that never really got overturned, it just got papered over. Think of it like having a hornet's nest in your house, but instead of removing the hornet's nest, you get some really heavy wallpaper and just keep gluing another layer up there every few years. The mechanism that will (and I mean will) drive milk to $8 a gallon, to say nothing of the price of everything from cheese to chocolate, is still there in the statute. It's there for want of a single sentence in the Farm Bill - repealing not the Agricultural Act of 1948, but the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938. That, Speaker Boehner, is your Soviet-style dairy policy, that ties commodity prices to the commodity producer's standard of living. The reality is good ol' American capitalism and ingenuity have rendered that thing more or less useless, and it should go, but it doesn't. It is not still in the law because we don't know how to repeal a law - the House of Representatives symbolically repealed Obamacare 31 times, they totally understand repeal. It just never occurs to them "Hey, this law is crap, let's get rid of it."
There are other chunks of stupid in American policy. Everyone's hair is on fire over President Obama having given Congress a raise of about $900. Here's the deal - by law, Congress has gotten a cost of living adjustment for decades now. They've routinely rejected it for years. For the last two years, there has been a pay freeze in effect for all civilian employees of the federal government - all of them - and the only getting around it is by executive order, which we've done, for two years. Prior to that, cost of living adjustments were made by a matter of statute since forever, but what we've actually paid federal civilian employees has been dictated by the President since Bush 41.
That's right, kids. Doesn't matter if we're talking Biden or a petty warrant officer. If your job in federal government falls somewhere in the purview of the Executive, your pay has not been tied to your performance, or your tenure, or even a collective bargaining agreement for the last generation. The President picks up a pen and essentially decides, "OK, I will pay you this much," and that's what we pay you, by way of executive order. The average American wouldn't run a hot dog stand this way, much less the governing structure of the world's largest economy. But on we putter with this really asinine piece of policy that nobody seems to be willing to call out for what it is. The last attempt at a federal merit system was Carter, and Reagan chucked that along with everything else Carter tried to do, and we've never looked back.
Then there's the other thing we haven't tried to do since Carter - energy policy. Right now, it is a popular trick of demagoguery to rabble on about gas prices. It's like the common wisdom that when you're really desperate, and everyone is ignoring you, stand up and holler "TWO DOLLAR GAS!" as loud as you can, and the media will instantly hand you the microphone. Two dollar gas is never coming back, folks. Saudi Arabia can't support itself at the oil prices necessary for two dollar gas to be profitable ever again, and we'll do well to stick around three dollars for the near future. As the middle eastern OPEC nations become ever less stable - and have to throw around ever more largess to keep themselves in power - expect the price of oil to trend upwards over time, and take the cost of gasoline with it. Even after we throw a bazillion dollars at Big Oil, and even after Big Oil returns the favor with the lowest gas prices in the world (and they do), we are never ever ever going to see long term trendlines for gasoline, or for fossil fuels in general, trend down. Shan't happen.
So what's a wealthy, developed nation to do? Simple - you pull a Germany and build something else. You do this part, yes, through debt, but part through starting to siphon off these massive oil subsidies, and let the price of gas (and the tax revenues it takes in) drift upwards. Yes, this is hardcore economic engineering, but all policy is engineering of some sort. We could repurpose existing oil subsidies to retooling gas stations to provide hydrogen, for example. Or encourage oil companies to go into your local apartment complex, sign a deal with the property owner, and stick a recharging station in all of those spaces. Hell, they could get really clever and convert the covered parking to solar panels in some parts of the country. Or, as a nation, we could decide you know what, screw you Big Oil, we're gonna build that ourselves. We could take all those billions, build our own infrastructure, reduce our dependency on gasoline by orders of magnitude, start buying back gas vehicles, and let Big Oil shrivel down to Medium-Sized Oil. But we don't, because we talk about gasoline prices as if they were a barometer of anything in the universe, which they aren't. That, my friends, is stupidity in American policy making at work.
I could talk taxes. Tax policy in America is really, really stupid. From income tax to estate tax to sales tax, it's all so bloody dumb I could scream. We all know sales taxes are hideously regressive. We all know estate taxes are ham-handed efforts to prevent dynastic control of the economy (news flash: didn't work). We all know we have the highest corporate tax rates in the world that nobody pays. So what do we do? We nibble around the edges of this splendidly stupid section of policy, and bicker about a measly 3% in the rates. Really? 3%? Y'all want to fight over $800B when we need closer to $4T? The one whole sole and only reason I am not throwing a full-on tantrum over this right here and now is I'm working on a better plan.
This brings me to the confession I must make as even just a minor policy wonk. Everything, everything, has a highly technical plan to fix it. I am doggedly interested in these highly technical fixes. It's why I write this blog, why I'm politically active, and why every time I hear John McCain on TV I have to check myself for signs of an aneurysm. On policy, you will never hear conservative and liberal policy wonks prattle on the way demagogues and ideologues do. This was Paul Ryan's tell of how we knew he was not one of us - no real wonk in this life is ever going to hold up a damn philosopher as the backbone of a plan, ever, unless there's one out there I'm not aware of named Calculator. This is how we know John McCain is not one of us, too. When your objection is "lead from behind", when your answer to everything is boots on the ground and arm the rebels, you have stopped looking for technical solutions to achieve a definitive goal. You're just a war hawk.
Government has definitive goals because society has definitive goals, and society has definitive goals because the individuals that comprise it have definitive goals. We should not be bickering about what those goals are. The blatherskite of how American America can be and in America we have these American values that are American and blah blah blah from our politicians should be screamed down for the blatherskite it is. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, Amendments 1 through 26 - got it. These things do not need further defining, nor do they necessarily need tidbits like "Christian" or "traditional" or "English-speaking" jammed in them. These things need to be indefatigably worked toward. I confess that I want for the public discourse to be focused to the exclusion of all else on policy that does just that, and does it in a provable, mathematically sound way. And I confess that every time I hear someone rattle off an unprovable or flatly untrue talking point because they don't have a logical, well-reasoned counter, I want to whack them with an abacus.
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