Wanted (Needed): Objective Analysis

As politicians and public leaders across the country try to work to find sustainable, long-term solutions to the major challenges confronting our country, one debate that has largely gone unnoticed is the validity of the data that is used to support each solution. Recently, we have seen politicians and public leaders at all levels propose policy solutions for health care, taxation, and economic stimulus, and it is not surprising to see Democrats or Republicans provide supporting data for their policies that are diametrically opposed to the other side’s data. Given the wide variety of conclusions drawn from the same set of data, how are we to know which solutions are more accurate?

At the core of the debate is the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which is charged with “[o]bjective, nonpartisan, and timely analyses to aid in economic and budgetary decisions on the wide array of programs covered by the federal budget; and the information and estimates required for the Congressional budget process.”. Both parties have a love/hate relationship with the CBO, promoting their analysis when it favors their position and discrediting it when it doesn’t. To provide data that support their policy positions, each party turns to outside sources, notably liberal or conservative think tanks.

In looking at this dynamic with some of the issues being debated today, neither Republicans nor Democrats were satisfied with the conclusions drawn by the CBO with regard to the possible extension of the Bush tax cuts. In forecasting out a possible extension of the Bush tax cuts, the CBO concluded that the short-term result of the tax cuts would result in an increase in economic output, income, and employment in the next two years. But, based on their modeling scenarios, the CBO concluded that these tax cuts would reduce income and add to federal debt relative to what would otherwise occur by 2020. In short, they concluded that the tax cuts should not be extended; a permanent tax cut or a temporary extension of the cuts would result in a negative impact on the economy.

This didn’t make either party happy. Using their own assumptions, Republicans rely on conclusions detailed by the Heritage Foundation, which claim that expiration of the Bush tax cuts will hurt the economy in the long run . Fundamentally, they believe that tax cuts are always good for voters. The White House, in contrast, wants to renew the tax cuts to all households making under $250,000 a year. Two different conclusions from the same data source.

Another example is the debate over health care reform. The CBO forecasted that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would reduce deficits $143 billion in its first decade. This conclusion was soundly rebuked by the White House as a conservative estimate.

Ultimately, both parties reject the objective analysis of the CBO if it doesn’t advance their desired policies. In the hyper-partisan environment in which our national politics currently operates, we need an independent source of data analysis that can provide us with an objective look at how our possible solutions will impact the country.

But, the writing on the wall indicates that the fight over data, and its legitimacy, will continue. Conservatives, sensing the potential for a Republican majority in one or both chambers, have already advocated for a “reform” of the CBO through “housecleaning”. Whether the Conservative argument that the CBO skews its results in favor of a “big government” approach is valid or not, an independent analytical voice is needed in our policy making process, as long as the assumptions made in the analysis are clear and transparent. To have a common ground for a rational debate on policy, we need the CBO as an independent body to provide our public leaders with an unbiased analysis of the impact of potential laws and spending bills.

Why Mayor Fenty on September 14th

Nearly four years ago Mayor Fenty was handed the keys to the Wilson building, and the responsibilities of the District’s executive. He was elected on the promise that he would bring change to the District by creating a place where parents would want to send their children to school, where residents would feel safe and where government would be accountable to the people.

On these three important promises, his record is clear. He delivered. How often do you get to say that in politics? Mayor Fenty’s strong leadership needs to continue in the District for the next four years.

Washington, D.C. was the murder capital of the world in the 90’s. After four years of Mayor Fenty’s leadership, we have decreased crime by unprecedented levels, and we are on pace to decrease last year’s 43 year low in homicides by another 15 percent!

Math and reading scores are increasing in our public schools by historical margins, libraries are popping up or being improved all over the District, more students have competent teachers and President Obama just chose our public schools as one of the few “Race to the Top” jurisdictions in the country, granting the city $75 million for our leadership in education reform.

Under Mayor Fenty, each District agency has been required to publicly post a performance plan and a performance accountability report every fiscal year. This plan and the subsequent report provide demonstrable results on how District agencies are performing in providing services and support to District residents. District agencies are held accountable for their progress in achieving results and, consequently, residents have seen dramatic improvement across District government over the past four years.

Today, however, after unprecedented and undeniable results in a very challenging time, Mayor Fenty trails his Democratic Primary challenger Vincent Gray in the polls. He has transformed the city and accomplished results, but he has done so without appeasing the “interest groups” (where I come from, these “interest groups” are called “lobbyists”).

Because of this, he has been labeled arrogant and interest groups have refused to endorse his re-election because he would not meet with them to let them set policy. Others have called him insensitive when he trimmed budgets and made the hard decisions he was elected to make about how best to provide services for all District residents. And when he takes decisive action to make common sense decisions instead of spending two years on a commission to get to obvious answers, he is called secretive, irresponsible and out of touch.

In essence, he has done everything we demand of our elected officials except act like a politician. With Mayor Fenty, we have exactly what we ask for – an honest, smart, efficient and effective leader that makes decisions he knows to be right, even if they are unpopular.

The most perplexing issue regarding Gray’s popularity is that he has not disagreed with Mayor Fenty on one substantive policy issue. He merely wants to talk longer and act slower. He wants to give more opportunity for “interest groups” to influence policy. In short, he wants to slow down our progress. I don’t know about you, but I like progress – particularly when it can be done efficiently, effectively and responsibly, which is exactly how it has been done under Mayor Fenty.

Mayor Fenty has turned the corner on the dark days of corruption under Marian Barry, a strong, vocal and consistent supporter of Gray. To be fair, Gray is no Marian Barry, but he is also not the hard-charging, quick-thinking executive we need. Given the challenges the District will continue to face over the next four years, we need a leader that will act in the best interest of all District residents at the risk of upsetting some “interests groups.”

The last four years Mayor Fenty has responded to both well-established and unforeseen challenges, and the next four years promise to bring the same. We need a leader we know can rise to the challenge, lead our District, and continue to move us forward. Most importantly, we need a leader who is willing to make hard choices at the risk of being seen as unpopular.

Care about where you live. Demand results. Reward tough choices and stand against the status quo. Vote for Mayor Fenty on September 14th, because results matter and Fenty has delivered.

Should Business Leaders be Public Leaders?

Meg Whitman, the Republican candidate for governor of California, recently gave an interview, where she said, “…[W]hat I want to convince voters of is I am the very best person to fix the economy in California… I am a businessperson. I am not actually a politician. I am a businessperson. I have created jobs, I have met budgets, I have done, figured out how to do more with less, and that is actually a really important thing for the state right now.”

With the nomination of Whitman, fellow Californian Carly Fiorina , and professional wrestling executive Linda McMahon on Connecticut to November’s ballot, it has to be asked whether the experience these businesswomen gained by running private companies provides them with experience to be a public sector leader. It seems it is assumed by the public at large that the experience a candidate gains by being an executive at a private or public for-profit company provides a candidate with the necessary experience to run a government. Are the outcomes that for-profit companies value the same outcomes that we want our public leaders to implement in our governments, whether it be local, state, or federal?

To look at this, we need to look at what the things that executives are rewarded for in the private sector. For-profit companies are, by definition, profit maximizing entities. Private companies, companies that are not publically traded, exist to maximize the return of that company’s owners and investors. Publically traded for-profit companies exist to maximize the return to their share holders. This return is gained through a company’s profit, the excess of the company’s revenue to its costs. Profit is collected in one of two ways, either by reducing the company’s costs or by increasing the revenue. Private companies gain revenue by providing various goods or services to the marketplace, and the market decides which products succeed or fail.

Public organizations, on the other hand, are governments and nonprofits. They exist to provide services for the common good. They provide services and support for those that cannot afford the services or services for the public good. They maintain roads, police our streets, and educate our children. They provide the common infrastructure that is needed for a market economy to exist, and they ensure that no established laws are broken.

The key differentiator is profit. For-profit executives are expected to do more with less and have a surplus left over, regardless of the public good. Public executives are not expected to generate a profit; they are expected to increase the quality of life of their constituents. For-profit executives have a limited number of stakeholders: either their owners or their shareholders. Public executives count every man, woman, and child as their stakeholders.

Candidates who claim to have the experience for a public sector job, whether they are running for mayor, legislator, governor, Congress, or president, because of their prior work at for-profit companies are really telling us that they know how to “control” spending and “give government back to the people.” Whatever this rhetoric means in practice, we need to be careful that they are not still working to provide profits to the stakeholders they served while running those for-profit companies. Serving the bottom line and serving human beings result in two very different outcomes. We need to be sure that our leaders are serving our best interest, not theirs.

Shared Infrastructure Development

While on a recent trip to Ireland, we saw the country by car. We started on the west coast and moved our way east, and the difference in road development between the eastern hub of Dublin and the western cities of Galway and Limerick is remarkable. Dublin is surrounded by multi-car expressways, while many of the roads in the west barely have enough room for two cars to pass each other (which led to many harrowing moments). The west is the part of the country that Oliver Cromwell famously sent the eastern Irish landowners when he confiscated the land on behalf of the English crown and told the Irish to go “to hell or to Connaught,” and, due to its isolation from the rest of the country, is the home of the Irish Gaelic language and culture. Notoriously, some of the roads are unpaved and were largely developed when people primarily used horses for travel.

But, throughout the west, there were signs of large scale infrastructure development, with many roads being built, all with prominent signs proudly attributing the development to the NDP or National Development Plan. For a country that has faced its own economic crisis over the last few years, this scope of investment surprised me, especially since Moody's recently downgraded Ireland's bond rating. It surprised me until I learned of how it was being financed. Approximately one third of the financing for the Irish National Development Plan comes from E.U. Structural Funds.

The E.U. Structural Funds are grants of financial assistance that strengthen “the EU's economic and social cohesion by reducing developmental disparities between its regions.” Essentially, if there are regions within the E.U. that need infrastructure investment to improve their roads so that they can compete economically, the E.U. provides that region with a grant to bring that region on par with the rest of Europe. They know that Europe's collective economy won't grow if the laggards in the economy did not have the ability to initially develop as the rest of Europe has.

Given the recent cascading impact of the Euro’s valuation, the Europeans know that areas that have relatively weaker economies as compared with the economic leaders of the continent (Germany, France, UK) can bring down the whole house. That is why this fund to develop remote areas of Europe in order to build the overall economy of the country needs to be replicated elsewhere.

In the U.S., President Eisenhower solved the issue of the roads back in the 1950s. But, some of these roads are in need of repair or upgrade. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives the U.S. a cumulative grade of D for the current condition of our infrastructure. They estimate that a five year investment of $2.2 trillion will be needed to upgrade our collective infrastructure.
If you focus on bridges alone, ASCE states on its website:

Simply maintaining the current overall level of bridge conditions—that is, not allowing the backlog of deficient bridges to grow—would require a combined investment from the public and private sectors of $650 billion over 50 years, according to AASHTO [the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials], for an average annual investment level of $13 billion. The cost of eliminating all existing bridge deficiencies as they arise over the next 50 years is estimated at $850 billion in 2006 dollars, equating to an average annual investment of $17 billion.

And there are still other areas of the country that need further road and rail development to continue to remain competitive in the current global economy. The key factor here is that the E.U. is helping its member countries modernize by providing direct grants for infrastructure development. We've pumped a lot of money into the economy in the last two years but, in the larger budgetary and deficit discussions, the growing and pressing need for further infrastructure development is not being discussed.

Unplugging

I recently got back from a trip to Ireland, and I had the most amazing experience. I unplugged. I didn’t unplug in the extreme sense, but, while there, I didn’t have a cell phone, e-mail, computer, or iPod. The rooms we stayed in at two B&Bs didn’t have televisions and I read only one newspaper the entire trip (which focused mostly on Irish topics). In fact, the only television I watched while on my trip was the U.S./England World Cup football, ne soccer, match at the pub. Having left all my electronic leashes behind, I spent some time reading a book (you know, those things made out of paper) instead of blogs and the internet, and found myself thinking more clearly.

Which is not to say that I don’t think clearly. However, given the dominating role the internet plays in our lives, I believe that more people than not find that their thinking or thought process can be improved. In his new book The Shallows, Nicholas Carr attributes the decline in our ability to concentrate to the growth of the internet as a primary source of information and reading . This lack of concentration is also seen in technology’s ability to help us multitask, and have us focus poorly on multiple tasks at one time rather than focusing well on one task at a time. A recent New York Times article focused on the role of technology in our life and its impact on our ability to think. As cited in the article, recent research has found that multitaskers suffer from fractured thinking and a lack of focus even when not multitasking. Carr has taken this idea one step further, likening our use of the internet to multitasking by reading a book while trying to do a crossword puzzle.

What does this all mean? With the ubiquity of technology and gadgets, our concentration is being pulled and taxed, hurting the quality of our thought and work. As a result, our ability to think strategically has suffered. Anecdotally, I know of many public sector leaders that have sacrificed their preference to address challenges strategically and comprehensively and now spend most of their time addressing issues tactically. To combat this, we need to force ourselves to unplug. Turn off the computer. Put down the blackberry. This can be hard when we’re in our comfort zone and routine, at home or at the office. To do the job well, we need to discipline ourselves not to always be working in our e-mail, and focus on the long-term projects on our plate.

Do we miss "Crossfire"?

Five years ago this month, CNN hosted its final “Crossfire” episode at George Washington University. For those of you that don’t remember, or have made the conscience decision to block it from your memory, this relatively popular show pitted two political pundits (one from the left and the other from the right) against each other in what CNN called “debate.”

For 23 years this show fell pathetically short of actual policy debate. It took a comedian, albeit a highly intelligent and informed one, to call out the final hosts – Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson – for this lack of substance.

There were many interesting and funny parts of “Crossfire,” but unfortunately this show (while providing great drama) missed an incredible opportunity to actually educate the public on the differences between the right and the left. Instead we tuned in to see Tucker Carlson “eat a shoe” when Hillary Clinton sold a million copies of her autobiography “Living History.” Again, entertaining, but hardly good for democracy.

We don’t necessarily miss this high drama (well, maybe some of us do), but many of us miss the potential benefit of bringing together experts from the left and the right to talk about the most pressing issues facing our country and the world. Imagine how much more civil our discourse could be if we left out the possibility of scoring political points. Imagine how much more effective our policy would be if we actually listened to each other before deciding on a course of action.

Although it would make for less marketable TV, America needs an honest discussion of policy issues from true experts, not political strategists. If these people are one in the same, fine; but let’s not pretend political expertise is the same as policy proficiency.

We need experts talking with experts with different opinions and views. As Americans, committed to creating a more perfect union, we must not only demand an honest debate of the issues, but then tune in if or when it happens.