Bureaucracies and Implementation

An article in Politico details the slow progress of the implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. According to the article, federal agencies have missed 77% of the rule-making deadlines outlined in the bill. The reasons for this delay are numerous, including partisan opposition, as Senate Republicans are blocking the nomination of the head of the new Consumer Financial Bureau. Republicans counter this obstructionist charge, claiming instead that, "regulators are simply unable to write regulations from the law in a timely or effective way." The article also argues that the complexities and magnitude of the financial industry are too significant for bureaucracies to address. Sounds like a prime example of the need for bureaucratic reform Kamarck writes about.

Bureaucracy and Reform

Pinkerton's "Bugs" in the Bureaucracy

• The Peter Principle
• Parkinson's Law
• Michels's Iron Law of Oligarchy
• Olson's Sclerosis
• Information Infarction

Reform

• Reinvented Government, operating more like a business, with performance measures
• Government by Network, contracting out the work.
• Government by Market, creating a market driver to change the behavior of a large group or people, e.g. putting a bounty on cans and bottles.

Reinvention video here and here.

More on reinvented government

• Productivity
• Service delivery
• Performance measurement
• Regulatory reform
• Innovation

Lasting Impacts of Prop 13

The issue of property taxes in California and how they should be allocated has been an ongoing fight and was on full display in Claremont. On Friday, representatives for the state and redevelopment agencies met in Claremont to discuss the allocation of property taxes to redevelopment agencies. The California Legislature passed two bills for the 2011-12 fiscal year, one which “eliminates redevelopment agencies altogether, but allows cities to continue some form of redevelopment agency or go without,” and another which “forms an alternate redevelopment agency for cities that decide to continue with redevelopment. However, they will be required to pay 40 percent of its revenue to the state.”
The constitutionality of both bills is being challenged in the California Supreme Court starting November 10, but the most relevant part of this story to the class is this example of an unintended consequence of Proposition 13 and other California tax laws. Prior to these two bills, the reallocation of property taxes to redevelopment agencies “cost the state $2 billion annually to backfill the loss of property tax to schools.” Prop 13 greatly reduced property taxes that residents had to pay, which at the same time reduced the amount of money available to local schools. Due to other previous California laws, the state has had to pay for education from general fund, which would normally be paid for by property taxes. Marianne O'Malley with the Legislative Analyst's Office said that, “Every dollar redevelopment redirected from schools is a dollar that the state has to dip into the general fund to provide to local school districts,”
Overall the long lasting impacts of Prop 13 and other tax related laws are currently causing problems for California and have been magnified by the economic difficulties facing the state. Less property taxes plus property tax revenue being diverted to redevelopment agencies equals less local money for education, causing the state to cover more of the costs. For the full article on the Claremont discussion here is the link http://www.sgvtribune.com/news/ci_19218133

Why School Board Elections Matter

Evaluation and Reform

Law school, grad school, or policy school?

A crisis of confidence

Evaluation

Remember what Wolf wrote: "First, the `products' of non-market activities are usually hard to define in principle, ill-defined in practice, and extremely difficult to measure independently of the inputs which produce them."

Inputs v. outputs v. outcomes

Efficiency v. effectiveness

The examples of education and special education

Reform

• Reinvented Government, operating more like a business, with performance measures
• Government by Network, contracting out the work.
• Government by Market, creating a market driver to change the behavior of a large group or people, eg. putting a bounty on cans and bottles.

Budgets

Some distinctions:

• Fiscal policy v. monetary policy
• Authorization v. appropriation
• Budget authority v. outlay
• Mandatory spending v. discretionary spending
• Budget process v. appropriations process

Revenues and Outlays

Deficits

Debt

Composition of Outlays

TABLES

Fun with Historical Tables! Defense Outlays as

.....................................................FY1985.....FY2010

Nominal Dollar...........................252.7b........693.6b
Constant (2005) Dollars...........421.0b........585.9b
Percentage of Outlays...............26.7%..........20.1%
Percentage of GDP.......................6.1%............4.8%

Impractical Policy Making

On Saturday, I attended a discussion with Tom Leppert, a CMC
alum who is running for Senate in Texas. He spoke about why he’s running, what
his goals are, and what his political positions are. One that struck me in
particular was his strong stance against the DREAM Act. The DREAM Act helps
students who are illegal immigrants attend college. He opposed it mainly
because it ignored the “big picture” idea of tackling the immigration issue. He
described that the DREAM Act addresses only a small portion of the immigration
question and that policy must be made by looking at and addressing overall
problems.

This brings up the questions: Should policy making address
short-term issues along with long-term issues? Can politicians address subsets
of issues to make progress without looking at the issue as a whole?

Ideally, all policy making would be comprehensive. However,
politicians must constantly consider not just what would be ideal but what
practically they can accomplish. With our fiercely divided two-party system, it
seems impractical to believe that action should only be taken with the big
picture in mind. Children of illegal immigrants brought here when they were
young hold no responsibility for the decision to illegally immigrate. Waiting
for a broader solution by not taking action for students directly hurts them. Furthermore, though unintended consequences
exist for the DREAM Act, so many more would exist for large-scale immigration
reform. The process for such passage and the amount of changes that would have
to be made after passage due to these unintended consequences will be
incredibly lengthy. In our system, incremental change works best.

Carol Browner on Colbert

Everything the Media Told You About Occupy Wall Street is Wrong

In this interesting article from the Huffington Post, Keith Boykin describes the top ten myths about Occupy Wall Street.

Most interesting was number six which reads:

"Myth #6. They Don't Know What They Want.

I found many different people gathered in Zuccotti Park with many different interests and agendas, but they seem to be unified by one common purpose. They're tired of a system that seems only to cater to the rich and powerful while ignoring the concerns of the vast majority of Americans."

Cannibis and the California Medical Association

Daniel Shane posts:

The Los Angeles Times ran a story this morning about a group advocating decriminalization of marijuana. That group happened to be the California Medical Association.

An excerpt:

The federal government views cannabis as a substance with no medical use, on a par with heroin and LSD. The CMA wants the Obama administration to reclassify it to help promote further research on its medical potential.

But Washington appears to be moving in the other direction. As recently as July, the federal government turned down a request to reclassify marijuana. That decision is being appealed in federal court by legalization advocates.

I find striking parallels between the pro-legalization and anti-tobacco movements; interestingly, the parallels move in completely opposite directions.

Take big tobacco. As Fritschler and Rudder note in Chapter 2, “it took more than fifty years from the point when scientists first presented credible evidence that smoking was a health hazard to the time when the issue was placed into play in the policymaking arena” (12). Policy entrepreneurs fought to bring a legalized evil into Congressional debate in the hopes that legislators would criminalize - or at least regulate - the industry.

In trying to overturn (rather than set) federal law, marijuana advocates face the opposite battle. Their policy entrepreneurs, however, still turn to the same avenues as did the anti-tobacco crusaders. First, the states. Anti-tobacco launched large-scale civil suits, led by attorneys general in states such as Mississippi. Pro-legalization leaders placed Proposition 215 on California’s 1996 ballot (and successfully passed it). Activists decriminalized marijuana in Alaska, Oregon, Colorado, New York, and several others, though federal law still illegalizes the drug. (http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=6331).

Much like the attorney general did in Mississippi’s anti-tobacco trial, CMA cited economic reasons for its advocacy. As the Recession continues to impact state and federal budgets, the CMA has – like groups such as FAMM – turned to arguments about inefficient and unnecessary government spending.

The Los Angeles Times wrote: “The CMA’s new stance appears to have as much to do with politics as science…[they cite] increased prison costs, the effect on families when marijuana users are imprisoned and racial inequalities in drug-sentencing cases.”

Next, anti-tobacco turned to the White House. FDA head David Kessler recognized his need for President Clinton’s support. President Clinton only lent that support once he learned his tobacco swing states “would be willing to see tobacco controlled.” (142)

President Obama enjoys no such guarantee. The Times article notes how “opinion polls show state voters…are divided on the question of total legalization…51% opposed and 46% in favor.” If the legalization movement continues mimicking anti-tobacco, even if it is fighting in the opposite direction, it will have a much tougher time winning approval from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Smoking and Implementation

Tobacco wins a narrow, brief victory in the Supreme Court.

But now, the rest of the story:

The decision rested on statutory, not constitutional grounds, and so Congress could overturn it by passing another statute: H.R. 1256: Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act

FDA acts

[If you want to write a senior thesis on the subject, start here.]

Occupy Wall Street

I went home to New York City for fall break and traveled down to zuccotti park, the base of the Occupy Wall Street protests. I've uploaded some pictures I took of the protestors

Policy Implementation, Before and After

Last week, Secretary Sebelius announced that HHS is halting the implementation of the CLASS Act. The CLASS Act passed as part of the Affordable Care Act, and would have established a voluntary government-administered long-term care insurance plan. People who could not qualify for or afford commercial long-term care services could buy into the CLASS program. It would have been funded solely by premiums, not tax dollars. HHS could not find way to make the program financially solvent for 75 years, as the law requires.

Politco summaries Assistant Secretary for Aging Kathy Greenlee's explanation of the agency's decision:

The department was ultimately stumped on how to stop the program from attracting a pool of beneficiaries that had unsustainably high needs, Greenlee wrote in a memo. Actuarial models showed that premiums could climb as high as $3,000 per month if adverse selection — in which the program would attract only the people with health problems — ”were particularly serious."

Such premiums would only cover the minimum benefit allowed in the statute — $50 per day. Such low benefits, Greenlee warned, could make the risk selection problem even worse.

I wrote a paper on oversight of ACA implementation last spring, and attended a House Subcommittee on Health hearing titled “Implementation and Sustainability of the New, Government-Administered Community Living Assistance Support (CLASS) Program." During the hearing Republican members expressed concern that CLASS would be a new entitlement program. Greenlee testified that the program may not be solvent as it was written in the ACA, but that her agency was making adjustments. After 19 months spent studying the program, I guess HHS concluded that adjustments wouldn't be enough.

The CLASS Act was disbanded before it could be implemented. On the other side of the policy process, government officials may solicit feedback on whether programs are being implemented efficiently. My mom recently attended a feedback "evening of discussions" with Sue Swenson from the Department of Education. Swenson is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services and came to Colorado to hear from parents of children with disabilities talk about their experience with pubic education, specifically inclusion.

While many of the parents wanted to talk about specific problems with how Denver Public Schools is implementing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act's inclusion requirement (that children with disabilities be educated in the "least restrictive environment"), Swenson made it clear that her office was not able to help with specific cases. She told the two dozen parents in attendance to contact lawyers in ED's Office of Civil Rights if they thought the school district was violating their requirement to provide a "free and appropriate public education" in the "least restrictive environment." According to my mom, Swenson just wanted to listen and "absorb the hurt." While she did ask for policy suggestions, she mainly pushed for parents to organize at the grassroots to push for change.

Climate Change and the Issue Attention Cycle

An article in the NY Times explains how climate change has been moved to the back burner of the political agenda by both Democrats and Republicans. The article mentions that in 2008, both Barack Obama and John McCain believed climate change was man made and supported legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Now, only one of the Republican candidates, Jon Huntsman, says he trusts scientists' assertion that climate change is a real threat. Obama has also shifted from his earlier vigilance against greenhouse gas emissions as his administration is working to exempt American airline carriers from a European law that charges airlines landing in Europe for carbon dioxide emissions. It seems that climate change is firmly in the fourth stage of the issue attention cycle in which the public is confronted with and disapproves of the costs of addressing the issue. Data from a recent poll shows the percentage of Americans who think the earth is warming dropped to 59 percent last year from 79 percent in 2006. In the article, Andrew J. Hoffman, director of the University of Michigan’s Erb Institute for Sustainable Development, states: “People say, ‘Wait a second, this is really going to affect how we live!’ ”

Direct Democracy in California & Unintended Consequences

Last night Dan Walters, a leading political columnist at the Sacramento Bee, discussed the question: "Is California ungovernable?"

His talk serves as an important reminder that unintended consequences can grow to define a state's political and economic turmoil. Dan Walters' argues that California suffers from a structural disorder. Policymakers are unable to improve the state, because their powers are limited due to the initiative and referendum process. Too much democracy also does not ensure that legislators are fully accountable for their actions.

California Democrats claim that the initiative process in California has turned public policy-making into an industry that requires enormous amounts of money to place an initiative on the ballot, thus catering to the few big players who do have the means to pass a law.

"Last weekend, the state Democratic executive board made it official, declaring that "the initiative process is being abused by the use of misleading titles and advertisements by unscrupulous signature-gathering companies, hired signature collectors, and concealed sponsors to create laws and programs that benefit a very few people at the expense of the many."

The link to the rest of the article: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/08/04/v-wireless/3815557/dan-walters-california-democrats.html

Lobbyists, Lawyers, and Cigarettes

Second Assignment

CMC Government 116

Professor Pitney

Second Essay Assignment

12 October 2011

Pick one of the following:

1. Whatever happened to the safe-havens program from HR 2018? How would one know whether and how it worked? In your answer, consider the difficulty of appraising such a program.

2. In 2009, President Obama signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. Why did it pass? How is it working? In your answer, consider the role of the bureaucracy and the difficulty of isolating the impact of a single statute.

3. Read one of the case studies that I am sending you: Build America Bonds, Federal Support for Energy and Housing, Services to Veterans. Appraise the program's performance. In your answer, consider developments since the writing of the case. Be skeptical of claims that policymakers offer within the case.

------------ADDITIONAL OPTIONS AS OF OCTOBER 14------------------------

4. In Reducing the Deficit: Spending and Revenue Options, the Congressional Budget Office lists 105 ways to cut the deficit. Pick one that you like. Explain why President Obama should seek its enactment and how he could get congressional support for it. In your answer, take account of developments since the document's publication. Consider sources of political opposition as well as substantive policy arguments against the proposal. That is, if this option were both easy and effective, why the government not already taken it?

5. Pick a faith-based government program at the federal or state level. (You may find relevant information here and here.) Evaluate its performance. Does the "faith" component make a difference? How do we know?

Whichever essay you choose, do research to document your claims. Do not write from the top of your head. And whatever your position, seriously consider obstacles and counter-arguments.

• Essays should be typed, stapled, double-spaced, and no more than four pages long. I will not read past the fourth page.

• Put your name on a cover sheet. Do not identify yourself on the text pages.

• Cite your sources with endnotes, which should be in a standard style (e.g., Turabian or Chicago Manual of Style). Endnote pages do not count against the page limit.

• Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you.

• Return essays by the start of class, Wednesday, October 26. Late essays will drop a letter grade. I will grant no extensions except for illness or emergency.

Outcomes and Higher Education

Using Moneyball as his hook, Ryan Craig writes at Inside Higher Ed:

Like baseball 10 years ago, higher education is focused on what’s easy to measure. For baseball it may have been body parts, batting averages and the numbers on the radar gun. For higher education, it’s the 3Rs: research, rankings and real estate. Each of these areas is easily quantified or judged: research citations or number of publications in Nature and Science; U.S. News ranking (or colleges choose from a plethora of new entrants to the ranking game, including the international ranking by Shanghai Jiao Tong University); and in terms of real estate, how much has been spent on a new building and how stately, innovative and generally impressive it appears.

...

Universities that continue to focus on the 3Rs in the wake of the seismic shifts currently roiling higher education (state budget cuts, increased sticker shock, technology-based learning) are either not serious about improving student learning and student outcomes, or they’re like the baseball fan who has lost her car keys in the stadium parking lot at night. Where does she look for them? Not where she lost them, but under the light because that’s where she can see.

Similarly, a university is not what its buildings look like, or what its reputation or rankings say, but what it has done. And by done, we don’t mean research. The link between research and instructional efficacy is unproven at best. We define instruction of students to mean producing measurable outcomes in terms of student learning and employment. [emphasis added]

...

How ironic that we may be doing a better job gathering baseball statistics at colleges than we are at gathering education statistics. It is essential that we begin to track persistence data on part-time and transfer students on a systematic basis. The Department of Education should lead this initiative.

Congress vs. Bureaucracies

In the Smoking and Politics book, we read about how Congress stripped some of the FTC's authority by constructing the Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act to supercede state and local laws. Now, The Huffington Post is describing how GOP congressmen

are proposing legislation to disrupt the EPA's regulatory abilities:

"In just the year since the GOP took control of the House, there have been at least 159 votes held against environmental protections -- including 83 targeting the Environmental Protection Agency -- on the House floor alone...Some of the efforts are broad-based, like the TRAIN Act, which would install overseers for the EPA and require cost considerations to trump health and science concerns for new rules. Another such effort is the REINS Act, which essentially requires Congress to approve all new regulations, essentially granting each chamber the ability to veto the executive branch."

Stephen Colbert Goes to Washington (For an FEC Hearing)

This clip is from a real life Federal Elections Commission hearing on whether or not promoting Colbert's Super Pac would constitute an in kind political donation from Viacom, thus forcing Viacom to disclose some financial information.

While it was not a hearing on Rule-Making, it is probably the most exciting any Commission hearing can get.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Colbert Super PAC - I Can Haz Super PAC!
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Legitimation

Federal advisory committees

The Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act of 1965

Current data on attitudes toward government.

Opinion of health-care legislation.

From the Kaiser Family Foundation:

A New Best Practice? Bardach Would Be Skeptical

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal ran a profile of John White, superintendent of the New Orleans public school system. The article mentioned the successes and failures of the district’s attempt to create an all-charter school system. The early results of the program are mixed:

The results are encouraging. Five years ago, 23% of children scored at or above "basic" on state tests; now 48% do. Before Katrina, 62% attended failing schools; less than a fifth do today. The gap between city kids and the rest of the state is narrowing.

But New Orleans schools still have a ways to go. A state report this week based on scores, graduation rates and attendance records said the majority of the city's schools merited a D grade or worse.

But the article also brings about another important question: does this have any relevance to the rest of the country?

… [White] heads the Recovery School District, which includes most schools in New Orleans and surrounding areas, and has broad powers over them. Hurricane Katrina wiped out resistance from politicians and unions and improbably made the Big Easy a national laboratory of educational reform.

Four out of five kids in New Orleans attend independent public charters. The schools under Mr. White's supervision are open to all students no matter where they live. "In other cities, charter schools exist in spite of the system," Mr. White says. "Here charter schools are the system."

White freely admits that reform in New Orleans has primarily happened after Hurricane Katrina, which left the city with very little public education infrastructure. On top of that, White himself is any enthusiastic reformer who came to New Orleans to change the school system after working with charter schools and Teach for America elsewhere in the country.

It will be interesting to see whether this reform can serve as a useful “best practice” for other districts. As we’ve seen in class, pilot program results can often be deceiving. These programs are often tailored to their environment – this case is a rather extreme example – and may not apply elsewhere. The existence of a dedicated official like White can also impact a program. He helped develop the program he is implementing; superintendents who are required to enact reform may not bring the same enthusiasm to their work.

Still, New Orleans has inspired reform programs in Detroit and Tennessee. The WSJ stated that “By 2013, New Orleans plans to have the country’s first “all charter” school system” – leaving the possibility that other districts may follow.

The rest of the article, including an interesting complaint by the Southern Poverty Law Center about the impact of charter schools on special-needs children, is located here.

Interest Groups, Unintended Consequences and Disclosure Laws

Another Public Policy Lesson from Colbert Super Pac

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Colbert Super PAC - Trevor Potter & Stephen's Shell Corporation
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Colbert creates a 501C(4) to receive unlimited, undisclosed campaign donations. Stephen's personal lawyer creates an anonymous shell corporation that does not have to disclose any financial information until 2013. Even then, no one will ever know who his donors are. On top of that, he can receive unlimited donations to his 501C(4)and donate to Colbert Super PAC.

Full transparency without any actual transparency

Administrative Policymaking

A Pyramid and a Triangle

Legislative Policymaking: The Example of Autism Legislation

• It started with a letter
• Groups not in the mix
• Groups for and against
• CARE
• A Senate speedbump
• An anti-climax
• Obama signs CARA

Administrative policymaking

• The process
• The Federal Register
• Regulations.gov

Tobacco mutates

• USDA and Tobacco
• Other agencies: FDA, FTC, FCC, Surgeon General
• A question to JFK
• Advisory Committee on Smoking & Health

Cutting Foreign Aid: Well this Sounds Familiar

Perhaps, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve predicted the future. More specifically, Professor Pitney’s observation that the common citizen would call for a decrease in foreign aid as a means of decreasing the national debt seems to have proven prophetic. As this recent New York Times article points out, members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate have proposed significant cuts to foreign aid.

The Obama Administration has proposed $59 billion in spending on international affairs (a category that includes foreign aid and the budget of the State Department) during this fiscal year. The House has proposed cutting $12 billion from this expenditure, while the Senate has proposed cuts of $6 billion, both with a strong focus on the foreign aid portion of this budget. Both plans call for the largest decrease in foreign aid since the 1990’s.

However, as the article points out, many worry that the unexpected consequences from such an act could cost the US. In addition, it reflects changing priorities within the government’s agenda over the past decade. Whereas President Bush significantly increased foreign aid after 2001, at a time when international relations sat at the front of the national agenda, recent concerns about the deficit have redirected the priorities of the country's leaders towards cutting spending, even at the cost of America’s international image.

As "Occupy Wall Street" Protest Enters Third Week, Local Businesses Suffer

On the Huffington Post blog, Alicia Ciccone wrote an interesting article on the unintended economic consequences of the "Occupy Wall Street" Protest movement now in its third week. Local businesses, surely part of "the 99%" the protesters seem to be advocating for, have suffered from vandalism and a significant reduction in business due to the protest.
Here is an excerpt:

At Zuccotti Park, just south of the World Trade Center site, hundreds have set up camp and show few signs of dispersing. The ground is littered with cardboard signs, awaiting new revolutionaries to pick them up and join the movement. There are information tables, newsies calling out to the crowd and a congregation of musicians beating bongo drums. Bystanders gather around the park's perimeter, attempting to navigate the crowded sidewalks and police barricades, but to no avail -- they are compelled to stop and read or just stare.

Zuccotti Park is more of a granite-clad pedestrian plaza than a park. On a normal weekday, pre-protest, the area would be crowded with "suits" eating their lunches or drinking their coffees, courtesy of the nearby food trucks, sandwich shops and pizzerias. Today, it's difficult to navigate the area moving north to south, as pedestrians and onlookers encounter human roadblocks once they hit the Liberty Street and Broadway intersection. Double-decker tour buses roll by the park to allow patrons to snap pictures of a "real New York City protest," while clogging crosswalks and slowing traffic. These days, the sidewalks opposite the park are empty except for camera crews setting up their shots, and the few people walking by have their backs to the businesses, their eyes fixed on the growing commotion across the street.

Check out the full article here

Colorado Ballot Measure

Alyssa's ThinkProgress blog post is here.

Agenda Setting and Policy Selection

Legislative Research

• Govtrack
• Thomas
• Lexis-Nexis
• CQ Electronic Library
• US Code
• Citing US Code
• Other sources

Bill Drafting

• An example of legislative language: The Safe Havens Support Act

• Types of measures

• Senate Legislative Counsel

• House Legislative Counsel

Rules

• Senate Rules

• House Rules

Do They Read The Bills? No.

• The PATRIOT Act.

Friends and Foes

• 501(c)(3) and (c)(4)
• Congressional Member Organizations