Smart Decisions

/ The Old Crank

From a recent Chronicle of Philanthropy profile of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s first vice president for public policy, David C. Colby:

Mr. Colby will split his time between Princeton, N.J., where the fund’s headquarters are located, and Washington, where he’ll work to educate politicians about the foundation’s research and learn how the fund can help lawmakers shape policy. A big focus this year will be on helping the federal government make smart decisions about where it trims spending. (my emphasis)

Interesting that the focus here is on where to cut, not whether to cut. There very well may be some savings to be had in some of the areas that the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation cares about—and I assume they will limit themselves to those things when they make their suggestions as to where to “trim”—but there are still reasonable people who think that any further cuts to federal non-defense discretionary spending is a bad idea, since Congress already cut, in 2012, $1.5 trillion of discretionary spending for fiscal years 2013 through 2022. Three-fifths of that is coming out of non-defense programs, which will shrink non-defense discretionary spending to its lowest level on record as a share of GDP.

Two Points About the Debt Ceiling and Spending Cuts

/ The Old Crank

I don’t know why some people claim that Republicans won’t get specific about the things they would cut from the federal budget. I was glad to see Robert Greenstein address this in the commentary I referenced earlier today:

Some Democrats dismiss the threat that the Boehner rule poses, saying that Republicans ultimately will back off of it because they won’t publicly identify the specific program cuts they would make to produce the savings that would raise the debt ceiling for a reasonable period of time. That view, alas, is mistaken.

To be sure, Republican congressional leaders seem unwilling to propose specific cuts in the two main, popular middle-class entitlement programs — Medicare and Social Security — that would produce large savings over the next ten years. They want Democrats to propose such cuts, or at a minimum, they want to find a way to put some Democratic fingerprints on them.

But, Republican leaders appear more than willing to specify deep cuts in two other parts of the budget — core entitlements for low-income Americans, like Medicaid and SNAP (formerly known as food stamps), and the annual caps on funding for non-defense discretionary programs. The Ryan budget featured trillions of dollars of cuts in these two areas. House Republicans may well try to pass legislation in February to raise the debt limit for a year or so, accompanied by cuts primarily in low-income assistance programs and in the caps on non-defense discretionary programs. They will likely re-pass, in the new Congress, the legislation that they passed twice in the last Congress (most recently on December 20) to cancel the first year of sequestration and replace it with spending cuts that hit low-income programs disproportionately.

I would add that Republicans have supported a specific proposal to cut social security as well, by proposing to switch to chained CPI.  They almost got this during the last round of negotiations with the President, in fact, and I don’t know why it might not be proposed again.

Second point: Republicans thinks the public overwhelmingly has their back on the so-called “Boehner Rule”—that any increase in the debt limit must be accompanied by massive spending cuts.

Immigration Reform and Adult Education Funding

/ The Old Crank

VOXXI on the possibility of immigration reform serving as a lever for increasing the federal investment in adult education:

[A]s talks heat up regarding anticipated immigration reform, the grease used to accomplish such a monumental task will indeed be English adult instruction on a national level.

This is similar to the previous large immigration overhaul in 1986 when $4 billion was earmarked towards states providing English classes. However, [Migration Policy Institute Policy Analyst Sarah] Hooker said whatever reform does happen, plenty of questions remain.

“English classes would likely be an element of any major reform bill,” Hooker said. “The one question would be at what point would someone have to demonstrate English proficiency? Is it going to be at the point of adjusting to a temporary legal status or applying for citizenship or some intermediate point along that pathway?”

I think the biggest difference between now and 1986 is that it is much less likely that an immigration reform bill introduced this year will include any new funds for additional English classes. If anything, we’re more likely to see additional cuts to federal spending for non-defense discretionary programs like adult education later this year. [1]

To me, it would be perverse for a comprehensive immigration reform bill to ignore the dramatic state budget cuts to adult ESL classes in states like California. But it appears Congress is going to be stuck in fiscal austerity mode for some time, and so I’m hard pressed to come up with a scenario in which immigration reform results in a significant new federal investment in adult education.

I’d love to be wrong about this.

h/t @otan

[1] As noted in this commentary by Robert Greenstein, the end-of-the-year “fiscal cliff” budget deal only delayed the scheduled across-the-board sequestration cuts that were supposed to kick in on January 2nd:

Sequestration will hit March 1 unless the President and Congress delay it further or replace it with something else.  Republicans are insisting that policymakers must replace every dollar of across-the-board cuts that’s cancelled with a dollar of spending cuts.  The White House, consistent with its dollar-in-taxes-for-a-dollar-in-spending principle, wants to replace sequestration with a package that includes equal amounts of revenue increases and spending cuts.

Both sides, in other words, have already agreed that additional spending cuts will be on the table during the next round of negotiations, and while this doesn’t necessarily mean cuts will be made to adult education, any non-defense discretionary program is pretty vulnerable as both sides look for things to cut. Further, the likelihood of any increases in discretionary spending for things like adult education seem to me to be pretty unlikely in an environment where both sides are looking for $2 trillion in deficit reduction…

“The Alphabet Is an Abolitionist”

/ The Old Crank

Last week I had a chance to stop by the Smithsonian American Art Museum here in Washington to take a look at their new exhibit,  The Civil War and American Art.

One of the paintings on display is Eastman Johnson’s The Lord Is My Shepherd. Completed  just a few months after the Emancipation Proclamation, it depicts an African-American man reading from a Bible.

The Lord Is My Shepherd, by Eastman Johnson.

The Lord Is My Shepherd, by Eastman Johnson. Source: Smithsonian American Art Museum

From the exhibition notes:

The Lord Is My Shepherd does not distinguish between literacy in the service of faith or of political awareness. Literacy was in its own way a declaration of independence and humanity for a people long denied both. The idea of wanting to learn—through reading, writing, talking, and being heard—was a powerful force in black communities. It embodied the concepts of determination and self-advocacy, of independent thinking and initiative. As a writer for Harper’s Weekly bluntly put it, “The alphabet is an abolitionist. If you would keep a people enslaved, refuse to teach them to read.”

The exhibition is on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum until April 28th, and then moves on to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in May.