AND STILL THEY OPPOSE DRILLING IN ANWR:

Democrats are out of gas (Michael Barone, March 14, 2005, Townhall)

On domestic policy, the Democrats' thrust is to expand government to help ordinary people. But few get specific. In the American Prospect, historian Alan Brinkley says Democrats should re-engage "with issues of class and power." But exactly how, he doesn't say. In the New Republic, Jonathan Chait argues that, while conservatives are guided by ideology, liberals are guided by facts. Expanding government is a matter of examining facts and doing the sensible, compassionate thing. But he doesn't have the space to get very specific. Nor does he address David Stockman's argument that in policymaking, powerful interests tend to trump powerful arguments -- a criticism Democrats make, sometimes cogently, of Republican practices.

The New Republic's Martin Peretz takes a bleak view: Liberalism is "bookless," without serious intellectual underpinnings, as conservatism was 40 years ago. Back then, the liberal professoriate was churning out new policies, some of which became law. Today, the campuses provide liberals less guidance. The economics departments have become more respectful of markets and more dubious about government intervention. The social sciences have followed the humanities into the swamp of deconstruction. Peretz notices that liberals have no useful ideas about education. That overstates the case, but most reform ideas have come from the right, while most Democrats have focused on throwing more money at the teacher unions.

The bleakest picture of Democrats' prospects comes from two usually optimistic analysts, Stanley Greenberg and James Carville. In their latest Democracy Corps memo, they lament that, despite what they see as Republican stumbling on Social Security, voters don't think Democrats have new ideas for addressing the country's problems. By denying that Social Security has problems, "Democrats seem stuck in concrete."

In the New Republic, John Judis takes a longer view. Since the 1970s, he notes, Democrats have had little success expanding government. He blames this on international competition, the decline of private-sector unions and stronger business lobbyists. A revival of liberalism, he writes, "would probably require a national upheaval similar to what happened in the '30s and '60s. That could happen, but doesn't appear imminent."

The Democrats' problem is that they have proceeded for years with a goal of moving America some distance toward a Western European welfare state. Just how far, they have not had to decide.

Just as much of the Left has awakened over the past two months to the realization that George W. Bush's policies in the Middle East have worked and are bringing liberty to the region, at whatever pace, so too do they face the crushing realization that the most progressive ideas on how to help the poor are all contained in his Ownership Society/Neoconomics/Compassionate Conservatism proposals.

MORE:
Soak the rich (Rich Lowry, 3/14/05, Jewish World Review)

The Social Security debate is headed toward a monumental political irony: It might well be that Republicans offer creative ideas to make the system more "progressive" — i.e., more favorable to people lower down on the income scale — and Democrats resolutely refuse to adopt them. What happened to the Democrats we used to know, who made progressivity the highest test of any public policy and leapt at any opportunity to "soak the rich"? [...]

In the past, Republican Sen. Jim DeMint from South Carolina — who is seeking compromise with Democrats — has offered a proposal that would allow lower-income people to invest a higher proportion of their payroll taxes in personal accounts. DeMint suggested a sliding scale that would allow lower-income workers to invest up to 8 percent of the payroll taxes they and their employers pay, while upper-income workers would only get to invest 3 percent. Remember: The diversion of payroll taxes into personal accounts is, in effect, a tax cut. So this proposal would be what Democrats always profess to favor — a tax cut for the poor.

DeMint's idea would allow lower-income workers to benefit disproportionately from the higher rate of return that personal accounts offer over sending the taxes on to the federal treasury. Also, it would help black Americans especially to develop private assets, an area where they lag the rest of America as a direct result of the nation's legacy of racism. What is there for liberals — at least those who aren't theologically committed to handing President Bush a defeat on Social Security and opposed to encouraging private investment on principle — not to love?

Another key part of the Social Security equation is slowing the rate of growth of benefits to ensure the system's solvency. The administration has floated the idea of changing how Social Security benefits are adjusted over time, pegging their indexation to inflation instead of wage growth. This would create substantial savings.

Republican Sen. Robert Bennett from Utah has a proposal to keep the more generous wage indexing for lower-income workers and slowly phase in the stingier inflation indexing for the wealthy (in keeping with this priority, survivor benefits should be made more generous, and Social Security's disability benefits left untouched). The burden of the savings would therefore fall only on those who can most afford it. What is this if not "shared sacrifice"?

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 14, 2005 8:23 AM