ConservativeHome's Big Ideas blog

The best event yesterday in Washington: AEI and NRI on economic, healthcare, and constitutional ideas for the new Congress

Ryan Streeter

This event is 3 hours, but well worth the time to work through. Co-sponsored by AEI and the National Review Institute, it featured a talented group of panelists (see below) on what the new Congress can do on economic issues, healthcare reforms, and the Constitution. 

We feature the video here.

Two important points among many in the discussion:

1. Jim Capretta trains the audience's eye on what ConservativeHome views as THE central big issue in Obamacare: the new law essentially starts a war over the future of the middle class. These are my words, not Jim's. With 111 million Americans falling between the 130%-400% of poverty threshold and thus being entitled to premium discounts through the bill's government exchanges, we face a massive expansion of government-subsidized healthcare for lower and middle income workers. And not only this, the bill will directly and negatively impact growth, making it harder for people trying to work up the employment ladder, which in turn increases their dependence on government. It's a terribly vicious cycle.
2. Kevin Hassett, one of Washington's finest economists, said Obama's deficit commission is "the best commission I've ever seen." This strong endorsement is followed by a highly interesting data-driven discussion of how, historically speaking, successful fiscal consolidations were more characterized by spending reductions than tax hikes.

Perhaps working through these videos would be a good use of the GOP transition team's time! It's certainly worth their staffers' time.

Panel I: Health Care Reform: Second Opinions

JAMES CAPRETTA, Ethics and Public Policy Center
SCOTT GOTTLIEB, M.D., AEI
RAMESH PONNURU, National Review
Moderator:
KATE O'BEIRNE, National Review Institute

Panel II: The Economy and Spending: Growing and Cutting

ANDREW G. BIGGS, AEI
KEVIN A. HASSETT, AEI
ROBERT STEIN, First Trust Advisors
Moderator:
STEPHEN SPRUIELL, National Review

Panel III: The Constitution: A Repair Manual

Panelists:
MICHAEL S. GREVE, AEI
DAVID MCINTOSH, The Federalist Society
MATTHEW SPALDING, The Heritage Foundation
Moderator:
MATTHEW FRANCK, The Witherspoon Institute

Michael Barone unpacks November 2 and what it means for the GOP in 2012

Michael Barone is one of America's best-known political commentators. He is the principal author of the Almanac of American Politics, a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a regular columnist at the Washington Examiner.

ConservativeHome's Ryan Streeter asked him 5 questions to get his take on the recent elections.

RS: What must Republicans do to demonstrate they are acting on behalf of the voters who just made them the majority in the House, and what does history teach us about their prospects if they fail on this front?

Barone: I think they have to present and advance serious proposals to reduce the size and scope of government and to repeal and replace Obamacare. I think voters will understand that they will have hard time overriding Obama vetoes, but they will expect serious proposals. Republicans in 2010 were given control of one house of the legislative branch. In 2012 they will be asking for majorities in both houses and control of the executive branch as well--a harder sell. To gain that they must show that they have serious policy alternatives.

RS: You’re an astute observer of British politics as well as American politics.  The Conservatives experienced quite a surge, albeit short of a governing majority, in the British elections last May. How would you compare or contrast the British Conservatives’ electoral success with that of Republicans on Nov. 2?

Barone: One similarity is that both British Conservatives and American Republicans failed to make the gains some of their leaders expected and hoped for among the very high education demographic--"people we knew at school." Republicans made greater gains than Conservatives in culturally conservative and white working class areas--the former, because America has many more of them; the latter, because the Democratic party has probably never had, and if it did once have it lost long ago, the strong bond with white working class voters that the Labour party has had in Britain.

RS: What do we know about the broad middle of the electorate that swung back so decisively to the Republicans on Nov. 2?  

Barone: I'm still crunching the numbers, trying to learn more. My initial take is that Republicans did especially well among white ethnics (recapture of the House seat that includes Staten Island, the one part of New York City where you have a hard time finding a New York Times) and among Hispanics in at least some states (AZ,, NM, FL, TX). Also perhaps among Asians: I need more data on this.   

RS:  You’ve pointed out in a recent column that the GOP didn’t do as well in the West as it did in the East.  Is that a fluke, or is there some underlying trend at work here?

One reason is that Hispanic voters broke heavily for Democrats in CA and NV, at least at the top of the ticket. Also apparently CO, where Republicans effectively forfeited the governor race, with a small but probably decisive negative effect on the race for senator. The casino industry worked NV very, very hard for Harry Reid; given the unlikelihood of John Ensign's being reelected in 2012, they faced the possibility of NV having two freshman senators if Reid lost. They very much did not want this to happen.

RS: You’re one of America’s leading demographers and readers of trends.  What trends do you see in the electorate on which the GOP should reflect?

Barone: Young voters. Their 34% margin for Obama in 2008 was reduced to a 17% margin for House Democrats in 2010. I think there's a fundamental tension between the Obama Democrats' policies (centralized command and control, mid-twentieth century style) and the way young Americans live (with their own iPod playlists and Facebook pages, fashioning their own worlds). I think Republicans should argue that their twenty-first century policies will create a framework in which young Americans can choose their future, while the Obama Democrats' policies would empower centralized experts to choose their futures for them. 

Arthur Brooks: Conservatives still haven't made the moral case for enterprise, put forward real solutions, and explained that real progress comes with a cost

Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, has emerged as one of America's leading advocates for free enterprise and the moral conditions of prosperity. ConservativeHome's Ryan Streeter recently put 10 questions to him.

RS: In your recent book, The Battle, you have redefined the culture struggle in America away from the social issues, to free enterprise. Why?

Brooks: Yes, the book identifies a culture struggle—but not one as people have typically understood it. Americans are not just arguing over this or that economic policy. They’re really arguing over cultural imperatives.  Do we want to become more of a European-style social democracy, or do we truly want to embrace free enterprise?

Data show that Americans are emotionally invested in the idea that we are a free enterprise country – not because of economics, but because of who we are as a people and what we value. What’s central to America – going back to the founders – is liberty and how we exercise it in our daily lives. Today, as I show in The Battle, we primarily do that through our system of free enterprise.

RS: Who is your intellectual hero and why?

Brooks: Well, I have a few. First, Milton Friedman. He was one of the first economists to lay the cultural groundwork for what we now so commonly refer to as the free enterprise system. He wrote his books as economic works, but they became cultural phenomena, because he wrote in aspirational terms that people could understand and identify with. He saw free enterprise as not just one economic philosophy among many but a core element of who we are as Americans, how we operate, how we live out the freedom we all cherish.

Another hero is Irving Kristol.  His main contribution wasn’t in showing why one must be a conservative, but in helping us appreciate why “liberalism” (as we have come to define it in the U.S.) was so deeply unsatisfactory for happy lives and healthy societies. 

Of course, I would cite James Q. Wilson and Charles Murray as intellectual heroes. They are the most influential social scientists of the past 50 years.  Their work has addressed the essential questions of society and culture, and shown an entire generation of social scientist how to think about big, difficult issues. They were especially influential among social scientists in think tanks rather than in the academy, among those who most influence public policy. I’m a social scientist because of Wilson and Murray. It’s as if they provided a manual on how to work through tough issues in social science.

RS: Which two or three books (besides your own!) have been especially influential on your overall outlook on public policy?

Brooks: Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom has been more influential than anything else. I know it’s a bit of a cliché (and I should probably come up with something under the radar that seems deeply original). But let’s be honest—the book is truly great and everyone should read it, or re-read it.  Contemporary books include Michael Novak’s Spirit of Democratic Capitalism,  and James Q. Wilson’s The Moral Sense.