AROUND NEW HAMPSHIRE
1. Grabbag
Commission will discuss a proposal to tax fuel-efficient vehicles to raise money for highway fund
State House Dome, by Garry Rayno, unionleader.com, October 3, 2015
A COMMISSION studying alternative ways besides a gas tax to raise money for the Highway Fund will discuss on Friday a proposal that would target all fuel-efficient vehicles.
The highway fund has been losing revenue for a number of years as gas prices soared and cars became more efficient. The recent expansion of electric, hybrid and natural gas powered-vehicles that pay little or no gas tax has aggravated the problem.
Places such as Oregon will track drivers' annual mileage and then charge a per-mile fee, but that becomes complicated with out-of-state travel and the need for record keeping, and it requires a $200 GPS tracking device.
Commission member Rep. Norman Major, R-Plaistow, asked Legislative Services to produce a bill that would charge what is being called a “road usage fee” to be assessed against the owners of fuel efficient vehicles whether they burn gasoline, diesel, propane, natural gas or are powered by electricity.
Major, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, developed a formula that would replace some of the lost revenue due to fuel efficiency or alternative fuels.
The formula is meant to replace what the state would have collected in gas taxes if all vehicles had fuel efficiency ratings of 20 miles per gallon or less.
Consequently, the higher the miles-per-gallon rating for a vehicle, the more the road usage fee.
The road usage fee would increase for every 5 miles-per-gallon greater efficiency up to 51 miles-per-gallon and beyond. Under the preliminary proposal, a vehicle that does not burn gas would be charged at the same rate as those operating up to or surpassing 51 miles-per-gallon.
Lawmakers would decide what the average miles driven would be. It could be 15,000 miles annually and everyone would be charged at that rate.
So, if your vehicle is U.S. Department of Transportation certified to operate at between 20 and 25 miles per gallon, then you would pay a road usage fee of $33. Other steps would be 26 to 30 mpg, $55.50; 31 to 35, $71.36 and on up to $166.50 at the top end.
The fee would increase if lawmakers decided to use 20,000 miles annually as the base, or decrease if the base is 10,000 miles.
The system would link the USDOT mileage estimates for a vehicle model with the vehicle identification number of each auto, and the fee would be collected by a town or city clerk when a person registers his or her vehicle.
Major, along with state safety officials, says the plan would raise between $35 million and $50 million a year for the Highway Fund, with the money dedicated to roads and bridges, with 12 percent of the money raised going to local roads and bridges.
Two years ago, lawmakers fought about increasing the gas tax just over 4 cents and any attempt to up that levy again faces rock solid opposition from Senate President Chuck Morse, R-Salem.
How House and Senate leaders view Major's proposal remains to be seen once the bill is printed and the ramifications are more apparent.
But Major, like most people in the state, knows that the state's crumbling transportation infrastructure needs all the help it can get or it will be even more expensive in the future to repair years of neglect.
Medicaid expansion
Perhaps the biggest battle brewing for next session is reauthorizing the Medicaid Expansion program under the Affordable Care Act.
Currently, there are about 42,000 adults receiving health insurance through the program. Gov. Maggie Hassan, who wanted the program reauthorized in the budget, agreed to back off when GOP legislative leaders promised it would be debated early in the 2016 session.
The program is scheduled to end Dec. 31, 2016, when the federal government decreases its share of the costs from 100 to 95 percent.
The change will cost the state about $12 million to $14 million in the 2017 fiscal year of the current biennium.
At the beginning of this year's session, House leadership was adamant the program would not be reauthorized because there was little if any support among Republican House members.
But after the recent budget agreement, the tune began to change as House Speaker Shawn Jasper, R-Hudson, said taxpayers should not have to pick up the tab for what the federal government does not pay.
That is not the same as saying it will not pass the House.
The trick will be finding money to pay the state's share without raising taxes, something not many politicians want to do in the run up to an election.
Look for lawmakers to find a way to use some of the Medicaid Enhancement Tax money that currently goes back to the hospitals. It's the hospitals that pay the levy to fund the expansion program.
One of the key reasons Medicaid expansion garnered GOP support two years ago was that it would reduce the amount of unpaid health care services hospitals must provide.
Called the hidden tax, hospitals shift the cost for those “free” services to insurance companies that in turn charge higher premiums.
If in fact hospitals' uncompensated care costs go down under expansion as early indications appear to show, then hospitals may not need all their Medicaid Enhancement Tax money to be returned.
Originally, the tax was assessed against hospitals, used to match federal money and then returned to the hospitals. Some adjustments were made to tie the money returned to actual care provided, but in the 2012-13 budget, the state kept about half the money for other things, which resulted in two lawsuits.
A settlement was reached a year-and-a-half ago after the state lost the two lawsuits that returned almost all the money collected to hospitals.
The numbers are being parsed now, but look for the MET to be the savior for a Medicaid expansion program that looked all but dead several months ago.
Throwing 42,000 people off health insurance in an election year is not something politicians want to do if they can help it.
Property liability trust
The battle continues between the Bureau of Securities Regulation and the remnants of the Local Government Center's insurance business.
At issue is the Property Liability Trust's petition to issue new policies or renew ones, which was filed June 30.
The pooled risk insurer of local governments agreed last summer not to issue new policies while addressing existing or future claims it was obligated to cover.
Last spring, the trust asked to sell new policies and renew existing ones again but withdrew that request when it became obvious the bureau was not going to grant the request.
The trust filed another petition to begin selling policies again, and on Tuesday the final hearing on the petition begins at 9 p.m. at the state archives building on Fruit Street.
The hearing will continue Wednesday and Friday if necessary.
The trust attempted to have jurisdiction moved from the bureau, which is under Secretary of State Bill Gardner's Office, to the Insurance Department in a last minute amendment to the budget trailer bill, but instead a committee was established to determine which agency would regulate the trust.
Budget surplus
The governor released the final unaudited financials for the 2015 fiscal year, which ended June 30, last week at the deadline Sept. 30.
The figures showed a $73.2 million surplus, which was about $10 million more than assumed in the budget that was eventually enacted last month.
House and Senate budget writers used the surplus to fund $49 million of the current biennium while putting $14.5 million in the rainy day fund.
The additional money could go into the rainy day fund or as Hassan suggested lawmakers may want to look at the education aid that will be reduced in the second year of the biennium for many school districts, while fast growing districts like Bedford, Dover and Pelham get more money.
A cap on enrollment growth has prevented the fast-growing districts from receiving all the money they are due under the existing distribution formula.
Dover sued over the cap and the case is pending in Stafford County Superior Court.
Partisan conferences
The Legislative Ethics Committee ruled recently that lawmakers can accept free room and board from partisan political committees.
Senate legal counsel Richard Lehmann asked for a committee opinion on behalf of Morse and Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley, R-Wolfeboro, if they could accept free room and board to attend the Republican Legislative Campaign Committee.
“According to the information submitted by Attorney Lehmann, the Senators attended the conference in Boston, Mass., for two days and two nights, and participated in briefings with elected officials from other states, policy roundtables, and various receptions. The policy roundtables and briefings featured such topics as U.S. energy policy, private market solutions to modernize Medicaid, and cyber security,” according to the opinion from committee chair former House Speaker Donna Sytek. “Based on the information provided by Attorney Lehmann about the conference's purpose and activities, the event, as described, qualifies as a bona fide conference, meeting, seminar or educational program.”
But Sytek said, the two senators have to report the reimbursement for the conference.
The highway fund has been losing revenue for a number of years as gas prices soared and cars became more efficient. The recent expansion of electric, hybrid and natural gas powered-vehicles that pay little or no gas tax has aggravated the problem.
Places such as Oregon will track drivers' annual mileage and then charge a per-mile fee, but that becomes complicated with out-of-state travel and the need for record keeping, and it requires a $200 GPS tracking device.
Commission member Rep. Norman Major, R-Plaistow, asked Legislative Services to produce a bill that would charge what is being called a “road usage fee” to be assessed against the owners of fuel efficient vehicles whether they burn gasoline, diesel, propane, natural gas or are powered by electricity.
Major, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, developed a formula that would replace some of the lost revenue due to fuel efficiency or alternative fuels.
The formula is meant to replace what the state would have collected in gas taxes if all vehicles had fuel efficiency ratings of 20 miles per gallon or less.
Consequently, the higher the miles-per-gallon rating for a vehicle, the more the road usage fee.
The road usage fee would increase for every 5 miles-per-gallon greater efficiency up to 51 miles-per-gallon and beyond. Under the preliminary proposal, a vehicle that does not burn gas would be charged at the same rate as those operating up to or surpassing 51 miles-per-gallon.
Lawmakers would decide what the average miles driven would be. It could be 15,000 miles annually and everyone would be charged at that rate.
So, if your vehicle is U.S. Department of Transportation certified to operate at between 20 and 25 miles per gallon, then you would pay a road usage fee of $33. Other steps would be 26 to 30 mpg, $55.50; 31 to 35, $71.36 and on up to $166.50 at the top end.
The fee would increase if lawmakers decided to use 20,000 miles annually as the base, or decrease if the base is 10,000 miles.
The system would link the USDOT mileage estimates for a vehicle model with the vehicle identification number of each auto, and the fee would be collected by a town or city clerk when a person registers his or her vehicle.
Major, along with state safety officials, says the plan would raise between $35 million and $50 million a year for the Highway Fund, with the money dedicated to roads and bridges, with 12 percent of the money raised going to local roads and bridges.
Two years ago, lawmakers fought about increasing the gas tax just over 4 cents and any attempt to up that levy again faces rock solid opposition from Senate President Chuck Morse, R-Salem.
How House and Senate leaders view Major's proposal remains to be seen once the bill is printed and the ramifications are more apparent.
But Major, like most people in the state, knows that the state's crumbling transportation infrastructure needs all the help it can get or it will be even more expensive in the future to repair years of neglect.
Medicaid expansion
Perhaps the biggest battle brewing for next session is reauthorizing the Medicaid Expansion program under the Affordable Care Act.
Currently, there are about 42,000 adults receiving health insurance through the program. Gov. Maggie Hassan, who wanted the program reauthorized in the budget, agreed to back off when GOP legislative leaders promised it would be debated early in the 2016 session.
The program is scheduled to end Dec. 31, 2016, when the federal government decreases its share of the costs from 100 to 95 percent.
The change will cost the state about $12 million to $14 million in the 2017 fiscal year of the current biennium.
At the beginning of this year's session, House leadership was adamant the program would not be reauthorized because there was little if any support among Republican House members.
But after the recent budget agreement, the tune began to change as House Speaker Shawn Jasper, R-Hudson, said taxpayers should not have to pick up the tab for what the federal government does not pay.
That is not the same as saying it will not pass the House.
The trick will be finding money to pay the state's share without raising taxes, something not many politicians want to do in the run up to an election.
Look for lawmakers to find a way to use some of the Medicaid Enhancement Tax money that currently goes back to the hospitals. It's the hospitals that pay the levy to fund the expansion program.
One of the key reasons Medicaid expansion garnered GOP support two years ago was that it would reduce the amount of unpaid health care services hospitals must provide.
Called the hidden tax, hospitals shift the cost for those “free” services to insurance companies that in turn charge higher premiums.
If in fact hospitals' uncompensated care costs go down under expansion as early indications appear to show, then hospitals may not need all their Medicaid Enhancement Tax money to be returned.
Originally, the tax was assessed against hospitals, used to match federal money and then returned to the hospitals. Some adjustments were made to tie the money returned to actual care provided, but in the 2012-13 budget, the state kept about half the money for other things, which resulted in two lawsuits.
A settlement was reached a year-and-a-half ago after the state lost the two lawsuits that returned almost all the money collected to hospitals.
The numbers are being parsed now, but look for the MET to be the savior for a Medicaid expansion program that looked all but dead several months ago.
Throwing 42,000 people off health insurance in an election year is not something politicians want to do if they can help it.
Property liability trust
The battle continues between the Bureau of Securities Regulation and the remnants of the Local Government Center's insurance business.
At issue is the Property Liability Trust's petition to issue new policies or renew ones, which was filed June 30.
The pooled risk insurer of local governments agreed last summer not to issue new policies while addressing existing or future claims it was obligated to cover.
Last spring, the trust asked to sell new policies and renew existing ones again but withdrew that request when it became obvious the bureau was not going to grant the request.
The trust filed another petition to begin selling policies again, and on Tuesday the final hearing on the petition begins at 9 p.m. at the state archives building on Fruit Street.
The hearing will continue Wednesday and Friday if necessary.
The trust attempted to have jurisdiction moved from the bureau, which is under Secretary of State Bill Gardner's Office, to the Insurance Department in a last minute amendment to the budget trailer bill, but instead a committee was established to determine which agency would regulate the trust.
Budget surplus
The governor released the final unaudited financials for the 2015 fiscal year, which ended June 30, last week at the deadline Sept. 30.
The figures showed a $73.2 million surplus, which was about $10 million more than assumed in the budget that was eventually enacted last month.
House and Senate budget writers used the surplus to fund $49 million of the current biennium while putting $14.5 million in the rainy day fund.
The additional money could go into the rainy day fund or as Hassan suggested lawmakers may want to look at the education aid that will be reduced in the second year of the biennium for many school districts, while fast growing districts like Bedford, Dover and Pelham get more money.
A cap on enrollment growth has prevented the fast-growing districts from receiving all the money they are due under the existing distribution formula.
Dover sued over the cap and the case is pending in Stafford County Superior Court.
Partisan conferences
The Legislative Ethics Committee ruled recently that lawmakers can accept free room and board from partisan political committees.
Senate legal counsel Richard Lehmann asked for a committee opinion on behalf of Morse and Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley, R-Wolfeboro, if they could accept free room and board to attend the Republican Legislative Campaign Committee.
“According to the information submitted by Attorney Lehmann, the Senators attended the conference in Boston, Mass., for two days and two nights, and participated in briefings with elected officials from other states, policy roundtables, and various receptions. The policy roundtables and briefings featured such topics as U.S. energy policy, private market solutions to modernize Medicaid, and cyber security,” according to the opinion from committee chair former House Speaker Donna Sytek. “Based on the information provided by Attorney Lehmann about the conference's purpose and activities, the event, as described, qualifies as a bona fide conference, meeting, seminar or educational program.”
But Sytek said, the two senators have to report the reimbursement for the conference.
2. Executive Council Report
by Councilor Colin Van Ostern, October 3, 2015
The Governor & Council held a fairly routine meeting in mid-September, in which it reviewed & approved 105+ items, approving:
· IN CENTRAL NH: Fuel assistance grants from Washington for the Belknap-Merrimack Community Action Program; purchase of an empty residential building next to the state prison in Concord; lease for the NH Commission for Human Rights on 2 Chennel Dr through year-end and then at Industrial Drive through 2020; a conservation trust on 87 acres in Gilmanton; and Building M roof replacement
· IN THE MONADNOCK REGION: Business financing for the Monadnock Economic Development Corporation & Tree-Free Greetings in Keene; acquisition & construction of Westmill Senior Housing in Keene; microenterprise training & technical assistance; and fuel assistance grants via Southwestern Community Services.
· IN STRAFFORD COUNTY: Fuel assistance grants via Community Action Partnership of Strafford Co; funding for a local household hazardous waste pickup day in Dover; water system financing in Rochester; and National Guard facility renovations in Rochester.
· STATEWIDE PROJECTS: Extraordinary Service Award for a cross-agency process & learning improvement team of state employees who went above & beyond to serve New Hampshire’s citizens.
· APPOINTMENTS & CONFIRMATIONS - 15 new nominations by Governor Hassan: including a new Assistant Commissioner of the Dept of Environmental Services; and 24 confirmations including Victoria Sheehan as the new Commissioner of Transportation.
Our next meeting is Wednesday 10/7 at UNH-Manchester. Please let me know if you have any questions.Sincerely,
Colin Van Ostern
(or follow the links below for documentation of each item)
FULL INFORMATION
- DETAIL: CENTRAL NH
#37 Authorize to enter into a sole source contract with Community Action Program Belknap-Merrimack Counties Inc., Concord, NH, for the Fuel Assistance Program, in the amount of $4,288,735. (2)Further authorize to advance $419,756. Effective October 1, 2015 through September 30, 2016. 100% Federal Funds.
#44 Authorize to purchase a 7,261 square feet +/- residential building and land appurtenant to the building located at 280 North State Street from the City of Concord, NH, for the sum of $1. 100% General Funds.
#46 Authorize to retroactively amend its lease with ZJBV Properties LLC, Manchester, NH, (originally approved by G&C on 6-23-10, item #56B), for 2,655 square feet of office space located at 2 Channel Drive Unit 2, a single story building in Concord, NH, by increasing the price limitation in the amount of $18,585 from $211,272 to $229,857, and by extending the term from June 30, 2015 through December 31, 2015. 17% Federal, 83% General Funds.
#47 Authorize to enter into a new lease with McCarthy Properties, West Wareham, MA, for fit-up and provision of office space comprised of 2,890 square feet to be located on the ground floor of 2 Industrial Drive, Building #1, Concord, NH, in an amount not to exceed $197,520. Effective September 16, 2015 through October 31, 2020. 17% Federal, 83% General Funds.
#63 Authorize to award an Aquatic Resource Mitigation Fund grant to the lakes Region Conservation Trust, in the amount of $184,080 to acquire a Conservation Trust on a parcel of land totaling 87.57 acres in Gilmanton. Effective upon G&C approval through December 31, 2015. 100% Aquatic Resource Mitigation Funds.
#104 Authorize the Bureau of Public Works Design and Construction to enter into a contract with Kevin W. Smith & Son Inc., Gorham, ME, for the Building “M” Roof Replacement, Concord, NH, for a total price not to exceed $645,000. (2)Further authorize a contingency in the amount of $10,000 for unanticipated structural expenses, latent conditions, or owner initiated changes, bringing the total to $655,000. (3)Further authorize the amount of $15,000 for payment to the Department of Administrative Services, Bureau of Public Works Design and Construction, for engineering services provided, bringing the total to $670,000. Effective upon G&C approval through December 18, 2015. 50% Federal, 50% General Funds.
2. DETAIL: MONADNOCK REGION
#29 Authorize to award a grant to the City of Keene, NH, in the amount of $300,000 for the purpose of providing funds to the Monadnock Economic Development Corporation to assist TFG Tree-Free Inc., d/b/a/ Tree-Free Greetings with its business expansion project. Effective September 16, 2015 through June 30, 2017. 100% Federal Funds.
#30 Authorize to award a grant to the County of Cheshire, Keene, NH, in the amount of $500,000 to support acquisition and construction of senior housing units to be known as Westmill Senior Housing Railroad Street, Keene, NH. Effective September 16, 2015 through June 30, 2017. 100% Federal Funds.
#31 Authorize to award a grant to the County of Cheshire, Keene, NH, in the amount of $378,250 for the purpose of assisting three organizations to provide microenterprise training and technical assistance activities. Effective September 16, 2015 through June 30, 2016. 100% Federal Funds.
#35 Authorize to enter into a sole source contract with Southwestern Community Services Inc., Keene, NH, for the Fuel Assistance Program, in the amount of $3,750,499. (2)Further authorize to advance $326,325. Effective October 1, 2015 through September 30, 2016. 100% Federal Funds.
3. DETAIL: STRAFFORD COUNTY
#36 Authorize to enter into a sole source contract with Community Action Partnership of Strafford County, Dover, NH, for the Fuel Assistance Program, in the amount of $2,515,382. (2)Further authorize to advance $243,944. Effective October 1, 2015 through September 30, 2016. 100% Federal Funds.
#61 Authorize to enter into a grant agreement with the City of Dover, totaling $6,986 to fund Household Hazardous Waste collection projects. Effective upon G&C approval through June 30, 2016. 100% Hazardous Waste Funds
#67 Authorize to amend a loan agreement with the City of Rochester, NH (originally approved by G&C on 9-4-13, item #78), by increasing the loan by $200,000 from $2,070,000 to $2,270,000 to finance water system improvements. Effective upon G&C approval. 100% Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Fund Repayment Funds.
#100 Authorize the Bureau of Public Works Design and Construction to enter into a contract with Pine Brook Corporation, Kittery, ME, for the Raymond Bisson Renovations, Rochester, NH, for a total price not to exceed $1,050,319. (2)Further authorize a contingency in the amount of $40,000 for unanticipated structural expenses, latent conditions, or owner initiated changes, bringing the total to $1,090,319,000. (3)Further authorize the amount of $45,000 for payment to the Department of Administrative Services, Bureau of Public Works Design and Construction, for engineering services provided, bringing the total to $1,135,319. Effective upon G&C approval through March 18, 2016. 100% Federal Funds.
#101 Authorize the Bureau of Public Works Design and Construction to enter into an agreement with Colby Company LLC, Portland, ME, for Professional Services for the Seacoast Field Maintenance Shop, Rochester, for a total price not to exceed $970,207. (2)Further authorize the amount of $182,367 for payment to the Department of Administrative Services, Bureau of Public Works Design and Construction, for engineering services provided, bringing the total to $1,152,574. Effective upon G&C approval through June 30, 2018. 100% Federal Funds.
4. STATEWIDE PROJECTS AND POLICIES
#93 Authorize the State Suggestion and Extraordinary Service Award Evaluation Committee to award non-monetary recognition to Robert Kelley and William Armstrong, of the Department of Administrative Services, Tara Albert and Robert Minucucci for the Department of Environmental Services, Jillian Schenck, of the Department of Health and Human Services, Theresa Pare-Curtis of the Department of Information Technology, Stanley Freeda of the Department of Education, Christopher Kench of the Department of Corrections and Christopher Rousseau of the Department of Safety effective upon G&C approval.
5. DETAIL: APPOINTMENTS AND NOMINATIONS
( * = District 2 Resident)
New Nominations by Governor Hassan:
Lieutenant Colonel, NH Army National Guard
Marie-Claude Bettencourt, Charlestown *
Agricultural Lands Preservation Committee
Peter S. Helm, Canterbury, NH *
Board of Dental Examiners
Puneet Kochhar, Dover, NH *
Current Use Advisory Board
David M. McMullen, Groton, NH
Assistant Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Services
Clark Freise, Litchfield, NH
Executive Branch Ethics Committee
Gregory L. Silverman, Concord, NH *
Genetic Counselors Governing Board
Thomas B. Merritt, Littleton, NH
Midwifery Council
Evelyn A. Aissa, Concord, NH *
New Motor Vehicle Arbitration Board
New Motor Vehicle Arbitration Board
Peter R. Mans, Newbury, NH *
Board of Optometry
Scott M. Krauchunas, Belmont, NH *
Railroad Appeals Board
Wayne M. Gagne, Nashua, NH
Real Estate Commission
Paul A. Lipnick, Nashua, NH
Rivers Management Advisory Committee
James W. Ryan, Northwood, NH
Transportation Appeal Board
Eric G. Falkenham, Hopkinton, NH
Carl L. Quiram, Bedford, NH
Confirmed by the Council:
Joseph P. Nadeau, Durham, NH to the Adult Parole Board *
Robert J. Gagne, Manchester, NH
Leonard Gerzon, Amherst, NH to the Assessing Standards Board
Loren Martin, Concord, NH to the Assessing Standards Board *
Gary E. Nichols, Newport, NH to the Assessing Standards Board
Martha Noel, Goffstown, NH to the Assessing Standards Board
Eric G. Stohl, Colebrook, NH to the Assessing Standards Board
Lisa M. Lanzara-Bazzani, Nashua, NH to the Board of Chiropractic Examiners
Keith J. Zimmermann, Hooksett, NH to the Board of Chiropractic Examiners
Susan P. Bryant-Kimball, Sandwich, NH to the Current Use Advisory Board
Daniel L. Andrus, Bow, NH to the Board of Fire Control
Robert Phillipson, Keene, NH to the Fish and Game Commission
Jeremy B. Thibeault, Etna, NH to the Fire Standards and Training Commission
Jacob P. Bronnenberg, Loudon, NH to the Board of Foresters
Robert S. Woodward, Lee, NH to the Health Services Planning and Review Board
Patricia Jabre, Portsmouth, NH to the Board of Hearing Care Providers
Sr. Paula Marie Buley, IHM, Nashua, NH to the Board of Higher Education
Mary Beth Rudolph, Madbury, NH * to the NH Housing Finance Authority
Jacqueline H. Davis, Auburn, NH to the Human Rights Commission
James Long, Lee, NH to the Board of Natural Scientists
George S. Lamprey, Center Harbor, NH to the Real Estate Appraisers Board
Richard P. Weaver, Gilford, NH to the Residential Ratepayers Advisory Board
Frederick J. McNeill, Manchester, NH to the Rivers Management Advisory Committee
Victoria Sheehan, Nashua, NH as the Commissioner of the Department of Transportation
3. NH's Economic Outlook
NH's leading economists optimistic about the state's 2016 economic prospects
by Dave Solomon, unionleader.com, October 3, 2015
New Hampshire's leading economists are optimistic about the state's economic prospects for 2016, with one going so far as to predict that the Granite State will have the highest growth rate in the Northeast, ending a “decade-long nightmare of sub-par job growth.”
The tone among presenters at the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce Economic Forecast on Tuesday was the most positive in recent memory, with Dennis Delay, an economist with the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies, predicting strong employment growth, continued momentum in the housing sector and lower energy prices overall.
Economist Brian Gottlob, principal at PolEcon Research in Dover, was even more bullish, posting in his Trend Lines blog on Monday a bold prediction: “New Hampshire will once again exceed the U.S. rate of employment growth in 2015 and will have the highest growth rate in the Northeast.”
“It has been our state's decade-long nightmare to have sub-par job growth after becoming accustomed to superior job growth for much of the prior three decades,” he wrote. “After several years of playing the pessimist it is nice to be able to argue that New Hampshire will once again be a leader in economic performance. ... I expect New Hampshire to add about 16,000 non-farm jobs in 2016, a rate of about 2.5 percent annual growth.”
In a later interview, Gottlob admitted he is a little more optimistic than most analysts, but not by much.
“I'm pushing it,” he said of his rosy forecast, “and I'm pushing it because I am so happy to say that things in New Hampshire are finally where we are used to being, where we want to be, with above average growth.”
Boatloads of data
Gottlob, a frequent presenter at the chamber forecast, was not on the panel Tuesday, but released his economic preview just prior to the event, where Delay was joined by economist Connor Lokar, from ITR Economics of Manchester.
All three oracles had boatloads of data to support their predictions.
Delay's organization has done some “on-the-ground” surveying, with mostly positive results. “Business contacts report moderate growth,” he said, “with 10 of 12 responding manufacturers reporting ongoing demand increases. Software and information technology firms are seeing revenue growth, while increases at staffing firms are even more robust.”
One of the best indicators of job growth is the number of “quits” reported as the reason for job loss, as opposed to “layoffs.” The difference usually means wage hikes are on the horizon.
“One of the things that I see as proof positive that the economy is really growing, and we will see this in the next few quarters, is a significant increase in wage growth,” said Delay. “Quits are up. People are choosing to leave their jobs. We're back to the point now where we are seeing more people quit than get laid off, by a 2-to-1 margin.”
“That's an indication that workers have something better lined up, or expect to be able to find something better,” he said. “Employers are going to have to start bidding up wages to attract qualified employees.”
Connor concurred in his advice to business owners at the Tuesday event. “You need to identify who is valuable in your organization moving forward, and take steps to keep them in your business,” he said, “or they will be going elsewhere.”
Workforce growth
Gottlob sees other positive trends that mean good things for the immediate future — the number of people in the workforce is starting to grow again; people from other states (particularly Massachusetts) are moving to New Hampshire again; and new households are being created at the fastest rate since before the Great Recession, as millennials are finally entering the housing market in substantial numbers.
The most recent data on in-migration from the U.S. Census is for the year ending 2013, which showed New Hampshire had a net gain of 3,000 people.
Gottlob estimates that number would be about 4,000 to 5,000 for 2015 by year's end. That's a far cry from the 10,000 to 20,000 a year moving to the state in the 1980s-1990s, but it sure beats population loss and a shrinking workforce.
“There are a number of positive developments that have come to a head or are coming to a head this year and into next year,” he said. “We are finally going to get to the point where we need to start building additional housing, so we will also see a pickup in construction activity.”
Even energy prices, for the past three years an economic drag, have turned positive.
“Energy prices are a game-changer in New Hampshire,” Gottlob said, “because we have been so disadvantaged by energy prices that when energy prices are good it confers upon us such a larger benefit than the rest of the country. There are only a handful of states that are big users of heating oil, and we are one of them.”
Not a lot of negatives
The constraints on the natural gas supply into the state continue to be a potential problem in the long term for both home heating and electricity, but winter pricing is better than last year.
Unitil was the last of the state's four utilities to announce its winter rate on Friday, at 9.4 cents per kilowatt hour from Dec. 1 to May 31. That's down from 15.54 cents last winter.
Connor agrees there are “good days ahead,” but his firm believes that growth will slow in the fourth quarter of this year and first quarter of next year before taking off on a good three-year run, with the likelihood of a mild recession starting in 2019.
“On average, the U.S. economy goes into recession every 10 years, and by then it will have been 10 years since the last one,” he said.
But that's down the road, and between now and then, barring unforeseen circumstances, the outlook is mostly positive.
“I don't see a lot of strong negatives,” Gottlob said. “There are always world events that could impact us, but on balance, there aren't that many troubling indicators, compared to other periods of time
The tone among presenters at the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce Economic Forecast on Tuesday was the most positive in recent memory, with Dennis Delay, an economist with the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies, predicting strong employment growth, continued momentum in the housing sector and lower energy prices overall.
Economist Brian Gottlob, principal at PolEcon Research in Dover, was even more bullish, posting in his Trend Lines blog on Monday a bold prediction: “New Hampshire will once again exceed the U.S. rate of employment growth in 2015 and will have the highest growth rate in the Northeast.”
“It has been our state's decade-long nightmare to have sub-par job growth after becoming accustomed to superior job growth for much of the prior three decades,” he wrote. “After several years of playing the pessimist it is nice to be able to argue that New Hampshire will once again be a leader in economic performance. ... I expect New Hampshire to add about 16,000 non-farm jobs in 2016, a rate of about 2.5 percent annual growth.”
In a later interview, Gottlob admitted he is a little more optimistic than most analysts, but not by much.
“I'm pushing it,” he said of his rosy forecast, “and I'm pushing it because I am so happy to say that things in New Hampshire are finally where we are used to being, where we want to be, with above average growth.”
Boatloads of data
Gottlob, a frequent presenter at the chamber forecast, was not on the panel Tuesday, but released his economic preview just prior to the event, where Delay was joined by economist Connor Lokar, from ITR Economics of Manchester.
All three oracles had boatloads of data to support their predictions.
Delay's organization has done some “on-the-ground” surveying, with mostly positive results. “Business contacts report moderate growth,” he said, “with 10 of 12 responding manufacturers reporting ongoing demand increases. Software and information technology firms are seeing revenue growth, while increases at staffing firms are even more robust.”
One of the best indicators of job growth is the number of “quits” reported as the reason for job loss, as opposed to “layoffs.” The difference usually means wage hikes are on the horizon.
“One of the things that I see as proof positive that the economy is really growing, and we will see this in the next few quarters, is a significant increase in wage growth,” said Delay. “Quits are up. People are choosing to leave their jobs. We're back to the point now where we are seeing more people quit than get laid off, by a 2-to-1 margin.”
“That's an indication that workers have something better lined up, or expect to be able to find something better,” he said. “Employers are going to have to start bidding up wages to attract qualified employees.”
Connor concurred in his advice to business owners at the Tuesday event. “You need to identify who is valuable in your organization moving forward, and take steps to keep them in your business,” he said, “or they will be going elsewhere.”
Workforce growth
Gottlob sees other positive trends that mean good things for the immediate future — the number of people in the workforce is starting to grow again; people from other states (particularly Massachusetts) are moving to New Hampshire again; and new households are being created at the fastest rate since before the Great Recession, as millennials are finally entering the housing market in substantial numbers.
The most recent data on in-migration from the U.S. Census is for the year ending 2013, which showed New Hampshire had a net gain of 3,000 people.
Gottlob estimates that number would be about 4,000 to 5,000 for 2015 by year's end. That's a far cry from the 10,000 to 20,000 a year moving to the state in the 1980s-1990s, but it sure beats population loss and a shrinking workforce.
“There are a number of positive developments that have come to a head or are coming to a head this year and into next year,” he said. “We are finally going to get to the point where we need to start building additional housing, so we will also see a pickup in construction activity.”
Even energy prices, for the past three years an economic drag, have turned positive.
“Energy prices are a game-changer in New Hampshire,” Gottlob said, “because we have been so disadvantaged by energy prices that when energy prices are good it confers upon us such a larger benefit than the rest of the country. There are only a handful of states that are big users of heating oil, and we are one of them.”
Not a lot of negatives
The constraints on the natural gas supply into the state continue to be a potential problem in the long term for both home heating and electricity, but winter pricing is better than last year.
Unitil was the last of the state's four utilities to announce its winter rate on Friday, at 9.4 cents per kilowatt hour from Dec. 1 to May 31. That's down from 15.54 cents last winter.
Connor agrees there are “good days ahead,” but his firm believes that growth will slow in the fourth quarter of this year and first quarter of next year before taking off on a good three-year run, with the likelihood of a mild recession starting in 2019.
“On average, the U.S. economy goes into recession every 10 years, and by then it will have been 10 years since the last one,” he said.
But that's down the road, and between now and then, barring unforeseen circumstances, the outlook is mostly positive.
“I don't see a lot of strong negatives,” Gottlob said. “There are always world events that could impact us, but on balance, there aren't that many troubling indicators, compared to other periods of time
4. Ayotte's Gun Stance Will Hurt Her
Kelly Ayotte Should Be Worried About Losing Her Seat Over Gun Control
by Rebecca Leber, newrepublic.com, October 2, 2015
Gun violence “is something we should politicize,” President Barack Obama insisted in emotional, frustrated remarks on Thursday after a mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon left ten people dead.
Obama’s speech charged politicians to lead with gun control legislation, but he left out the more obvious point: Congress’s makeup needs to change if there’s any hope of ever passing the most basic of gun control legislation, universal background checks. This starts with targeting vulnerable pro-gun politicians and replacing them with Democrats or Republicans who better represent public opinion.
And no one is more vulnerable than Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, who faces reelection in a presidential swing state in 2016.
Ayotte is an incumbent of an unpopular Congress in a blue-leaning state. No matter what, she'd already face an uphill climb during a presidential year, when turnout is generally better for Democrats. But it's her record on gun violence that could tip the scale in favor of Democrats.
After the Newtown, Conneticut shooting in late 2012, Ayotte was considered a possible GOP vote in favor of the Toomey-Manchin amendment to strengthen background checks. In the end, only four Republicans broke with their party to vote for the bill, leaving it to fail 54-46in the Senate. Ayotte was one of the votes against it. For weeks after her vote, Ayotte faced tough questions at town halls over her vote, includingone memorable encounter with the daughter of a Newtown victim. "You had mentioned that the burden to owners of gun stores that these expanded background checks would cause," the daughter Erica Lafferty said. "I'm just wondering why the burden of my mother being gunned down in the hall of her elementary school isn't as important as that?" Ayotte's poll numbers fell. According to an April 2013 survey by the left-leaning Public Policy Polling, before the vote, 48 percent of New Hampshire voters approved of the job she was doing, while 35 percent disapproved. After the vote, she went underwater, with 44 percent approving while 46 percent disapproved. Since then, she's recovered her poll numbers.
Ayotte won’t be the only Republican facing scrutiny for a pro-gun record. Other vulnerable politicians are in a similar position—in 2016, more Republicans are running in moderate swing states. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Senator Rob Portman of Ohio also voted against background checks in 2013, face competitive Democratic challengers, and received intense scrutiny for their votes.
Now, none of this is a guarantee that gun control will remain a top concern 13 months from now, but there are some encouraging signs that 2016 might be a key moment for the gun violence movement, despite the political power of the National Rifle Association.
For one thing, they have deep-pocketed groups on their side: Independence PAC, Everytown for Gun Safety, and Mayors Against Illegal Guns, backed by Michael Bloomberg. These groups saw some unexpected, if spotty successes in the 2014 cycle, which otherwise went poorly for Democrats overall. Colorado ousted the pro-gun Republicans who had replaced legislators recalled over passing gun control and Washington state passed a ballot measure to expand background checks.
Admittedly, there aren't many examples of Democrats winning a seat from Republicans based on gun control alone. But it could motivate voters, particularly in states that have dealt with high-profile shootings of late. And Virginia might prove to be a model for 2016. Every seat in the Virginia General Assembly is up for election in 2015, and the narrowly Republican-controled legislature voted down background checks, while sending pro-gun bills to the Democratic governor (who vetoed). Republicans are expected to hold on to a majority, but since two Virginia journalists were slain on camera in August, guns have reemerged as an issue in the state.According to a late September poll from the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University, 14 percent of Virginia voters say reducing gun violence should be the top priority of state legislators, behind concerns over public schools and federal spending but above issues like health care and traffic.
As Virginia could show, it sometimes takes a tragedy to change the politics around gun violence. The changing politics around guns might mean bad news for Ayotte, too.
AND NATIONALLY
5. Obamacare is Saving Money
Obamacare Haters Freaking Out Over New Report
by Jonathan Chait, nymag.com, September 24, 2015
When he ran for president, Barack Obama promised that his health-care plan would hold down inflation in the medical sector enough to eventually save the average family $2,500 a year. The cost of health care had been growing far faster than inflation for decades, but Obama believed his reform could “bend the curve” of cost growth downward. The $2,500 figure was a rough projection of the cumulative savings that accrue.
Conservatives ridiculed Obama’s promises, insisting that rather than bending the curve down, Obamacare would cause health-care inflation torise instead. Instead, costs have not only fallen, they have fallen by more than the administration projected. By two years ago, health-care costs had fallen enough to fulfill the promised $2,500 savings. A new reportyesterday from the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that premium growth for people with employer-sponsored insurance has continued to stay well below the pre-Obamacare trends:
Meanwhile, costs have continued to fall, causing the Congressional Budget Office — whose original forecasts conservatives dismissed as unrealistically optimistic — to keep revising its estimates of the costs of Obamacare lower and lower:
Based on the evidence to date, the Obamacare skeptics have been completely wrong. Incredibly, some of the skeptics are claiming vindication anyway. John Merline of Investor’s Business Daily and Nick Gillespie of Reason insist Obama’s promises to save money for people with employer insurance has failed. Why? Because the nominal cost of health insurance has gone up. They pluck this information from the Kaiser Family Foundation report:
And, yes, even as health inflation has dropped, the nominal cost of health insurance has risen. But Obama did not promise a nominal price cut. It is true that he never specified the baseline against which his $2,500 savings would apply, because political candidates usually do not detail their baseline assumptions when they deliver stump speeches. A sensible interpretation of Obama’s promise would be a $2,500 savings against the baseline of existing projections — Obama’s reforms would save the average family $2,500 compared to what would happen if his reforms were not enacted. That promise, again, has come true.
Merline and Gillespie instead assume that Obama was using a baseline of existing nominal prices. The only way Obama’s reforms could succeed is not only if the decades of medical inflation slowed their rate, but if prices actually dropped in nominal terms. Of course, Obama never actually said anything like this. Merline does not even claim he did. Instead, he insists that it kinda “seems” like Obama meant this: “So was [Obama] talking about lowering the rate of increase? It sure didn't seem that way. On CNN he said, ‘We're going to reduce costs an average of $2,500.’”
Oh, it "seems" that way, huh? That's your argument? The reason it makes sense to judge Obamacare against an alternative world in which decades of medical inflation drop to zero percent a year is that it "seems" as if he made this insanely grandiose promise?
So, yes, if you assume that Obama meant an implausibly unrealistic promise that he did not actually say, then his reforms have fallen short. If you instead judge them against historic standards, or a plausible reading of what he meant, they have been an unqualified success.
The determination of Obamacare haters to claim vindication is a testament to the power of the human spirit in the face of all factual evidence. Right-wingers have every right to ideologically oppose the concept of a government program that uses regulation, taxes, and spending to provide insurance to people who can't afford it. Their unwillingness to concede that this program is working on its own terms is delusional.
6. Gun Regulation and the Constitution
The Second Amendment Is a Gun-Control Amendment
by Adam Gopnik, newyorker.com, October 2, 2015
The tragedy happens—yesterday at a school in Oregon, and then as it will again—exactly as predicted, and uniquely here. It hardly seems worth the energy to once again make the same essential point that the President—his growing exasperation and disbelief moving, if not effective, as he serves as national mourner—has now made again: we know how to fix this. Gun control ends gun violence as surely an antibiotics end bacterial infections, as surely as vaccines end childhood measles—not perfectly and in every case, but overwhelmingly and everywhere that it’s been taken seriously and tried at length. These lives can be saved. Kids continue to die en masse because one political party won’t allow that to change, and the party won’t allow it to change because of the irrational and often paranoid fixations that make the massacre of students and children an acceptable cost of fetishizing guns.
In the course of today’s conversation, two issues may come up, treated in what is now called a trolling tone—pretending to show concern but actually standing in the way of real argument. One is the issue of mental health and this particular killer’s apparent religious bigotry. Everyone crazy enough to pick up a gun and kill many people is crazy enough to have an ideology to attach to the act. The point—the only point—is that, everywhere else, that person rants in isolation or on his keyboard; only in America do we cheerfully supply him with military-style weapons to express his rage. As the otherwise reliably Republican (but still Canadian-raised) David Frum wisely writes: “Every mass shooter has his own hateful motive. They all use the same tool.”
More standard, and seemingly more significant, is the claim—often made by those who say they recognize the tragedy of mass shootings and pretend, at least, that they would like to see gun sanity reign in America—that the Second Amendment acts as a barrier to anything like the gun laws, passed after mass shootings, that have saved so many lives in Canada and Australia. Like it or not, according to this argument, the Constitution limits our ability to control the number and kinds of guns in private hands. Even the great Jim Jeffries, in his memorable standup on American madness, says, “Why can’t you change the Second Amendment? It’s an amendment!”—as though further amending it were necessary to escape it.
In point of historical and constitutional fact, nothing could be further from the truth: the only amendment necessary for gun legislation, on the local or national level, is the Second Amendment itself, properly understood, as it was for two hundred years in its plain original sense. This sense can be summed up in a sentence: if the Founders hadn’t wanted guns to be regulated, and thoroughly, they would not have put the phrase “well regulated” in the amendment. (A quick thought experiment: What if those words were not in the preamble to the amendment and a gun-sanity group wanted to insert them? Would the National Rifle Association be for or against this change? It’s obvious, isn’t it?)
The confusion is contemporary. (And, let us hope, temporary.) It rises from the younger-than-springtime decision D.C. v. Heller, from 2008, when Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for a 5–4 majority, insisted that, whether he wanted it to or not, the Second Amendment protected an individual right to own a weapon. (A certain disingenuous show of disinterestedness is typical of his opinions.)
This was an astounding constitutional reading, or misreading, as original as Citizens United, and as idiosyncratic as the reasoning in Bush v. Gore, which found a conclusive principle designed to be instantly discarded—or, for that matter, as the readiness among the court’s right wing to overturn a health-care law passed by a supermajority of the legislature over a typo. Anyone who wants to both grasp that decision’s radicalism and get a calm, instructive view of what the Second Amendment does say, and was intended to say, and was always before been understood to say, should read Justice John Paul Stevens’s brilliant, persuasive dissent in that case. Every person who despairs of the sanity of the country should read it, at least once, not just for its calm and irrefutable case-making but as a reminder of what sanity sounds like.
Stevens, a Republican judge appointed by a Republican President, brilliantly analyzes the history of the amendment, making it plain that for Scalia, et al., to arrive at their view, they have to reference not the deliberations that produced the amendment but, rather, bring in British common law and lean on interpretations that arose long after the amendment was passed. Both “keep arms” and “bear arms,” he demonstrates, were, in the writers’ day, military terms used in military contexts. (Gary Wills has usefully illuminated this truth in theNew York Review of Books.) The intent of the Second Amendment, Stevens explains, was obviously to secure “to the people a right to use and possess arms in conjunction with service in a well-regulated militia.” The one seemingly sound argument in the Scalia decision—that “the people” in the Second Amendment ought to be the same “people” referenced in the other amendments, that is, everybody—is exactly the interpretation that the preamble was meant to guard against.
Stevens’s dissent should be read in full, but his conclusion in particular is clear and ringing:
The right the Court announces [in Heller] was not “enshrined” in the Second Amendment by the Framers; it is the product of today’s law-changing decision. . . . Until today, it has been understood that legislatures may regulate the civilian use and misuse of firearms so long as they do not interfere with the preservation of a well-regulated militia. The Court’s announcement of a new constitutional right to own and use firearms for private purposes upsets that settled understanding . . .
Justice Stevens and his colleagues were not saying, a mere seven years ago, that the gun-control legislation in dispute in Heller alone was constitutional within the confines of the Second Amendment. They were asserting that essentiallyevery kind of legislation concerning guns in the hands of individuals was compatible with the Second Amendment—indeed, that regulating guns in individual hands was one of the purposes for which the amendment was offered.
So there is no need to amend the Constitution, or to alter the historical understanding of what the Second Amendment meant. No new reasoning or tortured rereading is needed to reconcile the Constitution with common sense. All that is necessary for sanity to rule again, on the question of guns, is to restore the amendment to its commonly understood meaning as it was articulated by this wise Republican judge a scant few years ago. And all you need for that is one saner and, in the true sense, conservative Supreme Court vote. One Presidential election could make that happen.
7. Fantasy Land
Opposition to legal abortion takes magical thinking and a lack of logic
by Jessica Valenti, theguardian.com, September 30, 2015
There was a time when I empathized with those on the other side of the abortion debate. They felt abortion was murder – and no matter how wrong I knew they were, I understood that believing such a thing would mean fighting to make abortion illegal.
But I don’t understand anymore. There are too many holes in their logic, too much magical thinking and outright lies to leave room for meaningful debate. How can you find common ground if you’re not even living on the same planet?
Those intent on destroying access to abortion live in a dream world where they are right and just, even has they are continually provided evidence to the contrary and confronted with their deceptions. Never has this been more on display than in the last few weeks as Republicans have tried to defund Planned Parenthood, and Carly Fiorina’s campaign doubles down on the lie that there’s a video of Planned Parenthood providers talking about “harvesting the brain” of a live fetus.
As has been pointed out over and over, the video that Fiorina claimed existedsimply does not, and so her campaign released a different video, complete with spliced and edited audio and video, to keep the lie going. And while the GOP claims that their obsession with Planned Parenthood is about donated fetal tissue – despite every completed state investigation clearing the nonprofit organizationof any wrongdoing – Republicans earlier this week questioned Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards about which affiliates provide the most abortions and grilled Richards about her salary. Last time I checked abortion was legal, as was having a paying job.
But I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Fantastical self-deception is necessary if you want to make abortion illegal. How else could you convince yourself that denying women abortions is good for them, even as that lack of access harms and even kills them?
The fantasy world that anti-choicers live in is one where women don’t really need abortions to save their life, even though women routinely have life-threatening pregnancies. It’s a world where women can’t get pregnant from rape, or if they do should look upon the forced pregnancy as a “gift”. A world where there are only two kinds of women – women who get abortions and women who have children – even though over 60% of the women who get abortions are mothers. (This particular delusion is so ingrained that when Naral Pro-Choice America president Ilyse Hogue went to a Capitol Hill hearing while pregnant with twins, someone from the opposition asked if her stomach was “real.”) Perhaps the most dangerous fantasy, though, is the anti-choice claim that if Roe v Wade is overturned women won’t be arrested for having abortions – even though this is already happening while the procedure is legal.
In some cases, as with Fiorina, these aren’t self-deceptions but knowing lies, made to provocate and rally people behind the cause by any means. And the power of these lies are dependent on the widespread, manic self-righteousness that makes anti-choicers unable – or unwilling – to separate fact from fiction. It was only three years ago, for example, that an article about $8bn, 900,000 square foot Planned Parenthood “abortionplex” went viral with people deriding the move, including a Facebook post from a Louisiana Congressman. It turned out to be an Onion article.
The gaffe would be funny if American women’s lives and health weren’t on the line. Most of us can’t afford to live in a dream world – we live in the real world, where access to contraception, healthcare and abortion are necessary for our freedom and lives. There is a right and a wrong here. Just not the ones most Republicans think.
8. The Party of Delusions and Lies
The GOP's Delusions
by Paul Waldman, prospect.org, September 27, 2015
These days, conservatives have to take their victories where they can find them. After all, the Affordable Care Act is still the law of the land, gay people are getting married, our noble job creators suffer under the tortuous and unjust burden of high marginal income tax rates, the government continues to provide food stamps to layabouts who think their children ought to eat, immigrants walk amongst us speaking strange and indecipherable tongues, and worst of all, that usurper Barack Obama strolls into the Oval Office every day like he's the president or something.
In the face of all this horror, even small victories can be cause for celebration. So it was when Marco Rubio told attendees at the Values Voter Summit on Friday that Speaker of the House John Boehner had announced his resignation, and was met with whoops and cheers lasting a full 30 seconds. I couldn't help wondering: What exactly do they think is going to happen now? Is there any way that Boehner's departure makes it more likely that any of the things conservatives say they want will actually come to pass?
Today's Republicans are hardly the first party to spend more time worrying about betrayal from their colleagues than from their opponents on the other side; it's a dynamic nearly as old as politics itself. But they truly have created not just a politics of anger, but a politics utterly removed from any substance at all. Policy goals may be the nominal justification for all the anger, but in truth nobody bothers figuring out how they might be achieved. The performance is its own end.
Ted Cruz is in many ways the prototypical legislator for this Republican era. On the campaign trail, he tells audiences he has "a proven record" that qualifies him for the presidency. But what is that record? Since he got to Washington two and a half years ago, he has not authored any legislation that passed, or used his position on various committees to some important policy purpose. He'll tell you a lot about "standing up" — against Obamacare, against increasing the debt ceiling, against Planned Parenthood. And what were the results of all that standing? Did Ted Cruz get the Affordable Care Act repealed, get taxes cut, get government restrained — did he get a single solitary thing that conservatives would look at and say, "Yes, that was one of our goals, and he helped make it happen"?
Of course not. Cruz is not a legislator, he's a performer, a kind of right-wing version of the Code Pink activists who disrupt Capitol Hill hearings. He doesn't accomplish anything, but he certainly does stand up. So it's no accident that many House Republicans look to him as a mentor when they're considering shutting down the government — another bit of political performance art that inevitably gains conservatives nothing, as long as you're thinking about the goals they claim to espouse.
You might say it's not his fault — after all, he's a first-term senator in the party that doesn't control the White House. The problem is that Cruz and others like him continually tell their constituents that none of that will matter as long as Republicans despise Obama with sufficient fervor and show sufficient immovability once they do all that "standing up." And so their voters are inevitably disappointed.
You can blame ignorant voters who expect things they'll never get, but the greatest responsibility lies with the politicians who keep telling them to expect it. At that same Values Voter Summit, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal (Is there anyone who has been more diminished by running for president this year?) got up and told the crowd, "That's one down and 434 to go," adding, "Here's what I say in response to Speaker Boehner stepping down: Mitch McConnell, it is now your turn."
Yeah, if every member of Congress were ousted, that would...um...I don't know, but to hell with them! The fact is that no one has done more to thwart Barack Obama over the last seven years than Mitch McConnell has, and there is no Republican in Washington more shrewd. Tea Partiers hate him not because he's some kind of moderate compromiser, but because he's realistic about what is and isn't possible — and because he isn't shy about expressing his dislike for ultra-conservative members of Congress who couldn't strategize their way to passing a National Puppy and Kitten Appreciation Week.
Jindal isn't the only one saying conservatives should turn their unquenchable rage on McConnell now that Boehner is out of the way. And there's no doubt that the idea that Boehner and McConnell have been ineffectual is driving much of the success of Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina, and Ben Carson, as they feed the childish and ignorant idea that an outsider president can swoop into Washington and make everything work through the force of his or her will. But to repeat the question I asked earlier, what do they think is going to happen now? If the next speaker of the House is conservative enough, will that mean Barack Obama will suddenly start signing all the ridiculous bills the House passes? Of course he won't.
Intra-party conflict and tumult can leave a party stronger, as new ideas get tested and fresh approaches find their way to implementation. But it's awfully hard to look at the GOP today and say that they are going to emerge from this period primed for great policy victories. They've got the anger thing down pat though.
Are bigotry and lies exactly what the Republican electorate wants?
by Paul Waldman, The Plum Line, washingtonpost.com, September 28, 2015
A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows a remarkable result: Ben Carson has moved into essentially a tie for the lead, with Donald Trump scoring 21 percent and Carson scoring 20 percent. They are followed by Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina at 11 percent. Carson and Fiorina’s rise comes at a time when one of them is getting large amounts of media coverage for his ignorant, even bigoted remarks about Muslims, and the other is getting lots of coverage for a lie about Planned Parenthood videos she keeps stubbornly repeating no matter how many times it’s debunked.
While the details of these two cases are important, what’s even more important is the fact that the controversies may be helping Carson and Fiorina in the primaries, not hurting them. Welcome to the GOP, circa 2015.
Let’s start with Carson. Last weekend, Carson told Chuck Todd on Meet the Press that no Muslim should be elected president. Given the chance to clarify his remarks, he didn’t back off at all, saying: “Muslims feel that their religion is very much a part of your public life and what you do as a public official, and that’s inconsistent with our principles and our Constitution.” He did allow that a Muslim could be president if he or she “publicly rejected all the tenets of sharia,” explaining that Muslim politicians are particularly dangerous because “Taqiyya is a component of Sharia that allows, and even encourages you to lie to achieve your goals.” This is complete nonsense, but it reflects Carson’s level of understanding of Islam.
You might think that at this point, someone close to the candidate would say to him, “Gee, Dr. Carson, you’re getting a lot of questions about Islam. Maybe you should read something about it, or, I don’t know, talk to a scholar who can answer questions you might have. What do you think?” If anyone did suggest that, it appears that Carson would have replied with something like, “That’s okay — I listened to Glenn Beck talk about Islam on his radio show one time, so I’m all good. I’ve got everything I need to know.”
This weekend, Carson appeared on CNN’s State of the Union and ABC’s This Week and stuck to his guns. He and CNN’s Jake Tapper went back and forth over the issue, with Carson insisting repeatedly that for a Muslim to be president, “you have to reject the tenets of Islam.” To ABC’s Martha Raddatz, he said, “what I would like for somebody to show me is an improved Islamic text that opposes sharia,” by way of explaining why Islam is so suspect. Carson seems to think that “sharia” (which just means “law” in Arabic) is a specific, agreed-upon set of governing instructions that all Muslims who haven’t expressly denounced it believe in. But it’s nothing of the sort. The Taliban have their idea of what Islamic law is, just as David Koresh had his idea of what Christian law is, but the idea that we should assume barring any public disavowals that every Muslim believes what the Taliban believe makes no more sense than assuming that every Christian shares Koresh’s views.
Now to be clear, my position has long been that candidates should be asked detailed questions about their religious beliefs in proportion to the degree they say those beliefs will impact what they would do as president. If a candidate says, “My faith is a source of comfort and contemplation,” then the details aren’t particularly important. But if he says, “My faith is the foundation of everything I do every day and everything I believe about the world,” then we need to know a lot more about the specifics of what he actually believes.
But Carson argues that unlike people of other faiths, Muslims are inherently suspect because of something he heard somebody say about Islam, and therefore that Muslim politicians have a special responsibility to publicly disavow every interpretation anybody anywhere has made of any passage in the Koran that might be shocking to someone who knows nothing about Islam.
So what if we applied the same principle to Christians and Jews? After all, the Bible is full of very concrete and specific commands that could relate directly to governing — commands that in many cases, only a complete lunatic would believe in — and if Carson is right, then people whose religions are based on that scripture should be required to make a public statement of disavowal for every one of them.
For instance, Deuteronomy 22 states that if a man rapes a virgin, he must give her father 50 shekels and marry her. I would be shocked if any of the current presidential candidates thought that prescription should be enshrined in American law, but just in case, perhaps we ought to make all of them publicly disavow it. Ditto for Exodus 31’s insistence that anyone who desecrates the Sabbath must be put to death, and anyone who works on that day must be exiled from his people. A campaign to cast out every American who has answered work emails on a Sunday would be even harder to achieve than Donald Trump’s idea to round up 11 million undocumented immigrants, but we need to know if, as believers, the candidates are planning such a thing.
If you think I’m being ridiculous, you’re absolutely right. So why is it that Ben Carson is being any less ridiculous? And more to the point, why is it that so many Republican voters hear what Carson is saying, and respond, “Hey, he’s right! That’s who I’m voting for!”
Before we answer that question, let’s turn to Fiorinia. In the last Republican debate, the topic of secretly recorded Planned Parenthood videos came up, and Fiorina said passionately, “I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, to watch these tapes. Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says ‘We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.'” While it received huge applause, the line was false. The Planned Parenthood videos contain someone describing a similar scene, but not what Fiorina claimed was in them.
Which might not be a big deal — afterward, Fiorina could have said, “I mixed up something in those videos with things I had seen and heard elsewhere,” and we could still have a reasonable debate about the merits of fetal tissue research. But that’s not what she said. Instead, after practically every single fact-checking enterprise declared her claim false (here’s Politifact, here’sFactCheck.org), her campaign released its own cobbled-together video, using footage not from Planned Parenthood of a fetus kicking on a table, in an attempt to claim that Fiorina was actually telling the truth. Even in their phony video, which includes a photo of a stillborn baby being passed off dishonestly as a photo of an aborted fetus, there isn’t anyone saying, “We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.” This is, as Dahlia Lithwick says, “trying to doctor doctored videotapes and still failing to produce an image that corresponds to Fiorina’s narrative. It’s truthiness elevated to almost cosmic levels.”
But most remarkably, Fiorina continues to insist, no matter who asks her, that she never said anything untrue about the original Planned Parenthood videos. When Chris Wallace asked her on Fox News Sunday last week, “Do you acknowledge what every fact checker has found, that as horrific as that scene is, it was only described on the video by someone who claimed to have seen it?”, she answered, “No, I don’t accept that at all. I’ve seen the footage.” Yesterday she appeared on Meet the Press, and Chuck Todd asked her, “There is no evidence that the scene you described exists. Are you willing now to concede that you exaggerated that scene?” She replied, “No, not at all. That scene absolutely does exist. And that voice saying what I said they were saying, ‘We’re going to keep it alive to harvest its brain’ exists as well.”
There’s no reason why a conservative couldn’t say to her, “Look, I agree with everything you believe about abortion and Planned Parenthood, but you just need to admit you misspoke and move on.” But Fiorina has seemingly decided that the proper strategy is to just keep lying about what is in the end just a detail related to a larger policy issue, no matter how many people point out that she’s lying.
And why not? It’s working. While not long ago her support was too small to measure, she’s now in double-digits in the polls, while other candidates are faltering. The people rallying to support her don’t seem to care. Quite the contrary — they may be looking at this controversy and concluding that Fiorina is standing up to all those media bullies with their “facts” and their “evidence,” just like Ben Carson is telling it like it is on why the Constitution is for people like us, not people like them.
However this primary race turns out, at the moment more than half the Republican electorate is supporting either 1) a spectacularly xenophobic candidate who wants to round up 11 million people and build a wall around America; 2) a candidate who thinks that we ought to have religious tests for high office; or 3) a candidate who evinces few qualms about lying repeatedly even after her lies have been carefully documented. This is a party with a lot to be proud of.
FINALLY
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