Brendan Nyhan

Vice President Cheney pushes the mandate claim again:

Asked if he believes the president’s election victory was a mandate from voters for his Social Security plans, Cheney answered: “I think so – I think for the notion of personal retirement accounts.”

Said Cheney: “I think (for) people who thought about it, focused on it, there was no question about where (Bush) stood, no question about what he believed. Now we’re engaged in the debate. We’re doing exactly what we said we would do.”

NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll conducted by the polling organizations of Peter Hart (D) and Bill McInturff (R). Jan. 13-17, 2005. N=1,007 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.1 (for all adults):

In winning the presidential election, President Bush says that the voters gave him a mandate — meaning he believes that the voters have backed his positions on the issues and want him to pursue policies that he advocated during the campaign. Speaking for yourself, do you think that President Bush has a mandate from the voters to allow workers to invest some of their Social Security taxes in the stock market?

Has a mandate – 33%
Does not – 56%
Depends (vol.) – 2%
Unsure – 9%

FactCheck.org’s summary of their latest article on Social Security:

Can the current Social Security system — without individual accounts — be fixed with only “a few moderate changes,” as AARP suggests in a recent newspaper ad?

What the ad (PDF) actually says:

Let’s not turn Social Security into Social Insecurity. Yes, the program is in need of reform, which can be done with a few moderate changes, but it is not in need of a radical overhaul.

These are not the same thing. AARP said “the program is in need of reform, which can be done with a few moderate changes.” Despite Factcheck.org’s claims, it’s not clear that AARP was suggesting that moderate changes could “fix” the program. It said they were all that was needed for “reform.” Those may or may not be the same thing for AARP.

Moreover, “fixing” Social Security is a highly subjective standard, but FC implies in the article that “sustainable solvency” plans that restore solvency for longer than the standard 75-year window are necessary to do so. That’s an arbitrary and eminently arguable claim. 75-year projections vary dramatically depending on underlying economic assumptions. We should take action to strengthen Social Security’s finances, but why do we need to close the actuarial deficit for more than 100 years? That seems extreme to me, and it’s hardly grounds for contesting AARP’s claims.

WashingtonPost.com’s Dan Froomkin has a nice wrapup of the confusion and obfuscation surrounding Bush’s description of his private accounts proposal as an “add-on,” including this doubletalk from Dan Bartlett during an interview with Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday”:

WALLACE: Mr. Bartlett, that’s not right. The president’s plan is not an add-on, is it?

BARTLETT: Absolutely. Absolutely.

WALLACE: It’s an add-on?

BARTLETT: Absolutely. See, this . . .

WALLACE: Well, wait a minute. Wouldn’t it take revenue out of Social Security?

BARTLETT: Well, an add-on in the respect that there is disinformation being spread across the country that there will be no government benefit provided to future retirees. That is absolutely false. Every person who would select and voluntarily take a personal retirement account would be able to still receive benefits from the government.

Added on to that benefit would be the returns from a personal retirement account. So in that essence, it is an add-on.

WALLACE: But forgive me, most people up on Capitol Hill, when they talk about add-ons, are talking about you’re going to have your regular, full, unchanged Social Security, and then we’re going to add on the idea of personal accounts.

The plan the president’s talking about, you would be taking revenues out of Social Security and if you invested in the accounts, you would lose some of your guaranteed benefits under Social Security.

BARTLETT: Well, you’re not taking revenues out of Social Security. You’re giving those revenues directly to the recipients, allowing it to grow in an account, which is a critical part of making sure that individuals are able to realize. . . .

WALLACE: But they would be putting it in private accounts, not into the . . .

BARTLETT: They would be putting it in personal accounts . . .

WALLACE: Right.

BARTLETT: . . . but that’s not to say that would be their only source of income. There would still be a safety net provided by the government to each recipient.

And I think it’s people who talk about the fact that there would be no change to the system under their plans is misleading the public. There is going to be changes to the system. We cannot afford the benefits that are being promised to future generations.

During a “Marketplace” commentary yesterday (Real Audio), R. Glenn Hubbard, the head of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2001-2003, said the following:

[The late Princeton economist David Bradford’s tax reform] proposal would repeal the dreaded alternative minimum tax. The AMT was meant to tax the wealthy but is affecting more and more middle-income families than Congress ever intended.

From Hubbard’s description, you would think he and the Bush administration had nothing to do with the AMT problem, but the reality is that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, which Hubbard supported, dramatically exacerbated it by lowering rates without corresponding permanent fixes to the AMT. After leaving the administration in 2003, Hubbard specifically argued (PDF) for the dividend tax cut in place of AMT relief, saying that the AMT should be addressed in the context of a larger discussion about tax reform.

The decision to not permanently fix the AMT was at least partially strategic. The administration and Republicans in Congress were able to push through much larger tax cuts than would otherwise have been possible because of the AMT, using revenue that would be generated by its explosion in future years to mask the true long-term cost of the proposals. The White House has also continually omitted funds for fixing the AMT from its budgets. Both tactics make future deficits look far smaller than they actually will be. The administration claims that the AMT will be fixed in the context of the President’s tax reform agenda, but this seems unlikely given the lack of funds available to pay for it.

(See this 2004 Center on Budget and Policy Priorities article and this February 2005 CNN/Money article for background on these issues.)

Of course, Hubbard is aware of all this, but in his commentary he plays dumb and blames the problem on Congress. Thanks Glenn! Good luck cleaning up your reputation among economists!

One rule of thumb in politics is to limit the number of empty threats you make for fear of looking powerless and foolish. But today, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham offers two particularly silly threats on consecutive pages of the New York Times — is he the new go-to guy for partisan bluster? The Larry Sabato of empty threat-making?

Republicans, however, see Mr. Lieberman as a potential partner and say Democrats are resorting to pressure tactics to hold members in line.

“The public is tired of that,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. “If this becomes ‘You cannot work with Bush to solve Social Security,’ then it will be a death blow to the Democratic Party. You will have more Republicans up here than we can handle.”

Lindsey Graham, page A14, on judicial nominations:

Republicans say Democrats are badly misreading the political climate. Many Republicans seem more than ready for the confrontation should no compromise be found, pointing to the Senate losses experienced by Democrats in last November’s election.

“If the Democrat Party continues this, they are going to pay another price in ’06,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

Does anyone not elected in a Republican primary think the Democratic Party “paid a price” in ’04 for preventing votes on a handful of judicial nominees? Or that Democrats are going to suffer a “death blow” for refusing to work with the President on private accounts?

As Rob Coddry says, “I mean, come on.”

Here at Nyhan HQ, the inane and bizarre discussion of Social Security on “Meet the Press” caused a lot of yelling at the TV. But the worst moment by far came from Joe Klein, who offered what can only be described as a primer in idiotic inside-the-Beltway punditry.

Here’s how to be the next Joe Klein in just two easy steps. First, make up some vague imperative to justify the policy that you favor. It should preferably sound forward-looking and insightful, yet make absolutely no logical sense. For example, we must have private accounts because it’s the information age! (Don’t bother to explain why.) Then demand compromise from both sides because compromise is always Good.

Watch the master at work:

KLEIN: I agree with Paul [Krugman] in that private accounts have nothing to do with solvency and solvency is the issue.  I disagree with Paul because I think private accounts [are] a terrific policy and that in the information age, you’re going to need different kinds of structures in the entitlement area than you had in the industrial age.  But it is very hard to do that kind of change under these political circumstances where you have the parties at such loggerheads.

The Democrats have for the last 10 or 15 years blatantly, shamelessly demagogued this issue.  They’ve offered nothing positive on Social Security or on Medicare or on Medicaid, and it’s time for them to compromise here.  It’s also time for the Republicans to compromise here.  One area where you might see, you know, some–one possibility is the old Washington standby, the demonstration project.  We might try privatization for some younger, you know, Social Security recipients–not recipients but, you know, contributors, or we might try it in a city or a couple of places.  We haven’t–we don’t know how it’s going to work.

Update 3/7: Josh Marshall has more on this.

Here’s how David Gregory reported on Alan Greenspan’s testimony during Wednesday’s NBC Nightly News:

GREGORY: On Capitol Hill today, it was Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan sounding the alarm, urging Congress to fix Social Security by adding private accounts before the program can no longer keep its promises to seniors.

GREENSPAN: We owe future retirees as much time as possible to adjust their plans for work, saving and retirement spending.

Let’s review what’s wrong with this — Greenspan did not urge Congress to “fix Social Security by adding private accounts before the program can no longer keep its promises to seniors.” He urged them to cut benefits for Social Security and Medicare, saying “I fear that we may have already committed more physical resources to the baby-boom generation in its retirement years than our economy has the capacity to deliver.” Private accounts would not “fix Social Security” or help it “keep its promises to seniors.” Greenspan’s rationale for endorsing private accounts was that they would boost national savings if the diversion of revenue into them forced federal budget cuts.

Why doesn’t David Gregory understand this? Even after the White House has admitted that private accounts do nothing to improve the fiscal situation of Social Security and Dick Cheney has admitted that they require trillions of dollars in transition costs over the next several decades, one of NBC’s top reporters is still buying into the phony claim that private accounts close the program’s financial shortfall. Is something wrong here, or is it just me?

After comparing the “nuclear option” to Hitler’s takeover of Germany, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) has published a Washington Post op-ed on the subject that’s almost as offensive.

The whole article is a rhetorical sleight of hand where filibusters are equated with “free speech,” even though (a) legislators don’t have a right to unlimited debate, (b) the modern filibuster usually ends debate on an issue, and (c) Byrd speaks for hours on the Senate floor (see this Michael Crowley article in The New Republic). He’s not exactly being oppressed, nor would he be if the nuclear option was enforced.

That’s not to say that there isn’t a serious issue here, but it’s about precedent and legislative procedure, not “speech.”

Byrd opens with ridiculous hyperbole:

A “nuclear option” is targeting the Senate. No, this isn’t some terrorist plot. Rather, some in the Senate are considering dropping a legislative bomb that threatens the rights to dissent, to unlimited debate and to freedom of speech.

All three of these are absurd. The nuclear option would not limit the rights to dissent, debate and freedom of speech. As a citizen of this country, Byrd retains all three. But there are no rights to unlimited debate and freedom of speech in a legislative context. If there were, legislatures would never be able to make decisions by voting — they would just talk endlessly. Moreover, Byrd doesn’t actually want to debate these nominees more — they’ve been talked into the ground. “Unlimited debate” is code for setting their nominations aside.

In the second paragraph, Byrd finally makes clear what he’s talking about:

President Bush has renominated 20 men and women to the federal bench, seven of whom the Senate rejected last year. To force a vote on these nominees, some senators are hoping to launch a parliamentary weapon aimed at the heart of open and extended debate. By a simple majority vote, a Senate filibuster on judicial appointments would be “nuked” for all time.

Note how Byrd links “open debate” with “extended debate” even though they are not the same thing. And of course, the judicial filibuster would not be “‘nuked’ for all time” — it could be reinstated by vote of the Senate, though it’s probably unlikely.

Next, Byrd tries to justify his rhetoric with unsubstantiated slippery slope claims that portray the proposed rules change as the first step toward despotism:

It starts with shutting off debate on judges, but it won’t end there. This nuclear option could rob a senator of the right to speak out against an overreaching executive branch or a wrongheaded policy. It could destroy the Senate’s very essence — the constitutional privilege of free speech and debate.

To understand the danger, one needs to understand the Senate. The Framers created an institution designed not for speed or efficiency but as a place where mature wisdom would reside. They intended the Senate to be the stabilizer, the fence, the check on attempts at tyranny. To carry out that role, an individual senator has the right to speak, perhaps without limit, in order to expose an issue or draw attention to new or differing viewpoints. But this legislative nuclear option would mute dissent and gag opposition voices.

Byrd again invokes the Constitution, but the “Constitutional privilege of free speech and debate” is simply not at issue here. Nor is it clear why “[t]his nuclear option could rob a senator of the right to speak out against an overreaching executive branch or a wrongheaded policy” or that it would “would mute dissent and gag opposition voices.” First, the “nuclear option” pertains only to judicial appointments. But more importantly, the Senate can already shut down debate with 60 votes. I don’t remember Byrd complaining that people’s rights were being violated when he has voted to end filibusters in the past.

Byrd then suggests that the President is reinterpreting the Constitution, even though he knows (from the copy he constantly waves around) that the filibuster is not in there:

We have heard the president call for an up-or-down vote on his judicial nominees. But nowhere in the Constitution is an up-or-down vote — or even a vote at all — guaranteed, and the president cannot reinterpret our nation’s founding document to achieve his political goals. Those who disagree with the president in this matter will be labeled “obstructionists,” but nothing could be further from the truth.

Then it’s on to more claims about violations of freedom of speech and slippery slopes:

A federal judge is selected for a lifetime appointment. Senators must apply their best judgment to each selection. If a senator believes a nominee should not be confirmed, that senator has a duty not to consent to confirmation. Yet, for the temporary goal of confirming a handful of objectionable judicial nominees, those pushing the nuclear option would callously trample on freedom of speech and debate.

If senators are denied their right to free speech on judicial nominations, an attack on extended debate on all other matters cannot be far behind. This would mean no leverage for the minority to effect compromise, and no bargaining power for individual senators as they strive to represent the people of their states.

Yes, Americans believe in majority rule, but we also believe in minority rights. Our liberties can be truly secure only in a forum of open debate where minority views can be freely discussed. Leave it to the House to be the majoritarian body. Let the Senate continue to be the one in which a minority can have the freedom to protect a majority from its own folly.

The worst line in the whole article might be the claim that “Our liberties can be truly secure only in a forum of open debate where minority views can be freely discussed.” Minority views are discussed at extreme length in the Senate. That will not change.

Personally, I actually lean against the “nuclear option,” but Byrd’s argument is misleading and overblown. No matter what happens, the Republic will live on.

Update 3/5: Jeffrey Toobin has a useful article on the “nuclear option” debate in the New Yorker.

Update 3/7: The Wall Street Journal alleges that Byrd supported rules changes that were pushed through on majority votes during the Clinton administration. If true, it’s not surprising.

Update 3/7: A commenter has caught another distortion in the op-ed — Byrd claims that “President Bush has renominated 20 men and women to the federal bench, seven of whom the Senate rejected last year.” His next sentence does begin “To force a vote on these nominees,” which is an implicit acknowledgment that their nominations were filibustered, but the phrasing is still misleading in context — the Senate did not reject their nominations. They were blocked by filibuster, but that’s a different matter altogether. Rather than address the merits of that tactic directly, Byrd uses another rhetorical trick to try to legitimize it.

I still don’t know the correct mix of overconfidence, strategic calculation and desperation that’s driving the White House Social Security agenda, but Noam Scheiber thinks a combination of the last two is driving President Bush towards a back-door phaseout plan. And Josh Marshall reports that the President is referring to his private accounts, wrongly, as “add-on” accounts. Up is down!

On Thursday, Factcheck.org, our former colleagues when we were running Spinsanity, released an article criticizing stupid liberal/Democratic rhetoric about Bush’s Social Security plan being intended to enrich Wall Street — a point I’ve made before. Brooks Jackson, who runs Factcheck, pointed to the low administrative costs of the Thrift Savings Plan, the federal program President Bush has cited as a model for the design of his private accounts, as evidence for his criticism.

But as the Center for American Progress pointed out before I could, the Washington Post had written a whole article that morning explaining why private accounts would have substantially higher administrative costs than the Thrift Savings Plan. I don’t remember Jackson’s article addressing the issue at the time, but it was modified the day it was released and I can’t tell what’s been changed. Does anyone have an original copy? In any case, Factcheck now addresses the costs issue in some detail, though they don’t talk about the Post article specifically.

Update 3/5: I think I’m getting a better handle on this after re-reading the Post article and the Factcheck one. There are two separate issues in question:

1) Would a TSP-style plan have administrative costs that are as low as the Social Security actuary estimates (.3 percent)?

2) Would a TSP-style plan funnel a lot of money to Wall Street?

The Post article suggests that #1 remains an open question, but it doesn’t bear on #2 since the extra administrative costs Bush’s plan would incur (relative to TSP) would cover additional bureaucracy, not Wall Street fees.

(This is what I get for linking to CAP. For those who haven’t read it, here’s my Spinsanity column on why you can’t trust them.)

That said, I think the summary of Jackson’s column is misleading because it suggests that the low administrative costs paid by TSP directly disprove CAP’s claims. I don’t think that follows, but it is true that a TSP-style system is unlikely to be a bonanza for Wall Street.

Update 3/6: Jackson has told me by email that the article was not modified. Also, Factcheck has posted a response to CAP’s criticism that strikes me as correct.