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America can learn some lessons on the deficit from Britain

Dalibor Rohac is a Research Fellow at the Legatum Institute.

While the federal spending in the United States is exploding, a silent fiscal revolution is taking place in the UK, under the leadership of George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr Osborne, who keeps a very low public profile, delivered his 2011 budget speech at the House of Commons last Wednesday.

Unlike Mr Geithner’s fiscal “plan,” which would lead to a doubling of the public debt in the horizon of ten years, Brits seem to be following the path of a genuine fiscal consolidation, and are committed to eliminating the existing structural deficit by the fiscal year 2015/2016.

The fiscal problems in the United States are a very urgent matter, and it is striking how little is being done to address them, on either side of the political spectrum. True, the GOP-proposed cuts would shave some 0.4 percent of GDP off government spending. However, a genuine fiscal consolidation would require massive changes to welfare programmes and entitlements.

This would involve a repeal of Obamacare, and substantial changes to Medicare, Medicaid, eliminating agricultural subsidies, raising the age of retirement, and the like. None of these measures is likely to be popular anytime soon. As a recent WSJ/NBC poll showed, even the Tea Partiers, by a 2-to-1 margin, thought that significant cuts to Social Security were unacceptable.

Yet, as Americans continue to live in a slowly growing economy, adjusting public spending in order to live within the country’s means will become unavoidable.

Much can be learned from Britain’s example. In the last year’s ‘emergency budget,’ presented shortly after the election, the Chancellor has embarked on a program of cutting more than $130 billion from public spending in the course of next 4 years, removing 500,000 people from the public paycheck. Almost a quarter of that reduction in spending is coming from cuts in welfare. The budget imposed a two-year pay freeze for public sector employees, freeze in various social benefits, and a commitment to an accelerated increase of state pension age to 66 years.

The Tories have been able to sugar coat the austerity pill by Mr. Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ agenda which should empower individuals to have more initiative in affairs that used to be the domain of the government. In the future, voluntary groups in communities should be able to run post offices, public libraries, transport systems, and social housing projects. Sceptics say that the ‘Big Society’ is a mere marketing gimmick, not altering the actual manner in which these public services are delivered.

However, the possibility that the UK might be transitioning towards a culture in which private initiative and voluntary, spontaneous organizations are replacing the government in providing a wide array of public services, should serve as a lesson to Americans, who are constantly being nudged by the Obama administration into accepting an increasingly active role played by the federal government.

Moreover, the “Big Society” should register as an important lesson for those who are genuinely concerned with the sore state of America’s public finance and are seeking a political platform to translate their concerns into political action. Slashing government spending is not enough to build a political vision that is appealing to a broader audience. Those who call for a reduction in the size of government should also offer a positive vision of how private initiative can improve America’s social fabric and help the poor and the vulnerable.

Although the fiscal consolidation has triggered a lot political upheaval in the UK, the actual cuts in the 2011 budget are modest – the overall spending has increased by 2 percent compared to the 2010 emergency budget. Contrary to the hysterical reactions on the political Left, the government is not retrenching as I believe it should.

Unsurprisingly, Mr Osborne’s plan does involve tax hikes – the VAT has increased from 17.5 percent to 20 percent, for instance, as has the capital gains tax. However, these changes are accompanied by a gradual reduction of corporate tax rate from 28 percent to 23 percent by 2014/2015. Furthermore, the Chancellor understands well that, in order to limit its impact on the economy, the UK tax system will need to progressively shift away from direct taxation to indirect.

The 2011 budget was unveiled in difficult economic circumstances. The UK’s inflation is at 4.4 percent, very much above its two-percent target, and there are worries that the 2010 deficit target of $242 billion might be missed. However, these adverse factors appear to strengthen, rather than weaken Mr Osborne’s case for prudent and restrained fiscal policy.

Given the existing political constraints, it is not a surprise that the consolidation occurring in the UK is far from perfect. While putting their public finance in order, the Brits might be missing a rare chance to radically downsize their government.

But the relevant question for Americans is whether are willing to draw at least some lessons from the British example or whether they decide to stride down the path of fiscal profligacy, leading ultimately to national ruin.

Four ways that George W. Bush would have handled the situation in Libya better than Obama has

Miles Taylor has written for The Chicago Tribune, The World Politics Review, The Daily Caller, and Arms Control Today. He works in the U.S House of Representatives and previously served in the Department of Homeland Security. He is co-founder and senior editor at Partisans.org.

Bush nostalgia has swept the airwaves as a parade of the president’s former advisors have taken to news shows to opine about President Obama’s military intervention in Libya.  These officials-turned-pundits—including Dana Perino, John Bolton, Karl Rove, and the like—have thoroughly bashed the White House for its approach to the situation.  But this begs the question:  how would George W. Bush have handled the Libya crisis?  Would he have done any better?

The answer to the latter question is “yes.”  This is obviously a subjective judgment but one made considerably easier by the Obama team’s poor handling of situation.  Over the past few weeks, President Obama has done the foreign-policy equivalent of hiding behind the couch with his hands over his head.  His chief missteps?  The President has been indecisive, unable to lay out clear strategic objectives, and anxious to dodge demands for American leadership.  That’s not how his predecessor would have handled it…

Bush would have been more decisive.  From the Global War on Terror to the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan, President Bush demonstrated one quality above almost all others: he was a deliberate and resolute leader. Supporters and critics alike will recall that Bush was fond of referring to himself the "decider." Like him or not, he took that role very seriously and did not equivocate when it came to pressing issues.

How would that have translated to the Libya situation? It means Bush would have almost certainly elected to take action when it mattered. To the contrary, his successor's team sat on the sidelines for weeks--hoping, praying that they could find an “out”--while Libyans were attacked by their own country's warplanes. It simply wouldn't have been the 43rd President's style, with his strong sense of justice and unwillingness to "pass the buck," to fiddle while Tripoli burned.

Bush would have established mission clarity. President Bush would have at least given Americans the courtesy of an Oval Office address before bombing Libya and would have laid out the mission clearly. Instead, his successor made the announcement in a low-quality audio recording while touring South America and has since failed to sufficiently outline U.S. objectives. The professional and experienced Bush national security team would never have stood for committing American forces to military action without publically defining a strategy.

Some critics might allege that the Bush administration didn’t have a clear mission in Iraq or Afghanistan. This couldn’t be further from the truth.  At the time of invasion, the United States had very clearly defined missions in both cases.  Because those missions were later altered does not mean they did not exist in the first place. By contrast, President Obama and his team have sent mixed messages about U.S. involvement in Libya.

Bush would not have committed to military action without reaching out to Congressional leadership.  This does not necessarily mean seeking “permission,” but rather doing what presidents have done for decades by ensuring the country’s top elected officials are briefed on important national security actions.

While the Obama team has finally caved to pressure by briefing senior Congressional aides, they were unable to answer critical questions—or explain for that matter what took so long to reach out to the Hill. The delay has been to the detriment of the mission, with Congressional support beginning to erode on all sides. This could have been avoided, or at least limited, if the President had reached out to allay Congressional concerns sooner.

Bush would have embraced America’s leadership role.  “To whom much is given, much is required.”  This favorite Bush saying sums out how the former president would have treated the Libyan crisis.  He wouldn’t have shied away from standing up to Qaddafi’s brutal assault on his own people. Bush recognized what may be an inconvenient truth: by virtue of its strength and prosperity, the United States underwrites global security. This means stepping up to the plate when called to action.  And the need for action was no more clear than when the other week the Arab League, whose membership includes many rabidly anti-American states, took the unprecedented step of asking for Western intervention.

But President Obama has tried to dodge the need for U.S. leadership at every turn, sitting virtually silent as France and Britain took the lead in condemning Qaddafi when fighting first broke out.  Rather, Obama has been quick to declare that the United States will be reducing its role and will instead hand off operations to allies on a continent that has spent the past two decades slashing defense budgets and retreating from the world stage.

Very few countries in the world have the political-military prowess to lead a coalition like this.  While the international community should be deeply grateful for the efforts of states like Britain and France, it should also be worried to see an American president so eager to take a backseat.

***

Rarely does a president commit the country to military action and face such swift denunciations for his handling of it.  But both sides of the aisle have expressed displeasure with President Obama’s lack of leadership, and that is a sad reality—not just for Americans who take pride in standing up for what is right—but for those in the world who so desperately depend on it.

If the Obama administration is still adrift in its search for a Libya policy, they may steal this line from Bush’s second inaugural address: “Today, America speaks anew to the peoples of the world. All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know the United States will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.”

Now is not the time to stand down.

Herb London on Libya: We are at sea as one nation in an international armada that has lost its way

Herbert London is president of the Hudson Institute and author of the book Decline and Revival in Higher Education (Transaction Publishers).

Yemen’s security forces killed more than three dozen protestors in the last few days. Qaddafi has announced that Allied efforts to destroy his anti-missile defenses are a form of terrorism and as a consequence, he is prepared to decimate the rebels in Libya.  It seems to me that it is time to ask a question that haunts the history of our time:  Are there no limits to dictatorial power?

Since the Holocaust, the international community has given lip-service to the idea that mass murder by dictatorial leaders should never be tolerated. Yet remarkably there are instances in Africa and Asia where this is common practice. In the Arab world where Sharia prevails, the killing of apostates is a routine practice.

Based on recent events, it would appear that conditions across the globe are sliding back to a barbaric period in which murder of one’s own people for the retention of power is permitted or at least ignored. The argument is we cannot possibly intervene whenever atrocities occur. Or perhaps more logically, sovereignty trumps atrocity.

It is instructive that U.S. State Department officials employed the latter position for a time by suggesting we should not insinuate ourselves into a Libyan civil war.  In other words, however sanguinary the attacks may have been and continue to be, there is not a justifiable role for the US. Needless to say, that position has been modified by our stance on the “no fly zone.”

As I see it the basic Obama foreign policy thrust is based on an incremental U.S. withdrawal from regional influence.  The withdrawal, I should hastily note, is both emotional – an unwillingness to defend our interests and our allies – and physical – a drawdown of troops based on the belief we cannot afford these foreign ventures.

That strategic version, or lack thereof, has created a situation in which our enemies believe we are ineffectual and our allies believe we are untrustworthy.  Instead of hastening to carve out a defensive stance for the U.S. one that recognizes our foreign interests, the administration has decided to channel our foreign policy through the United Nations.  In doing so, the leverage that emerged in the past from the assertion of national power is lost.  We are at sea as one nation in an international armada that has lost its way.

The new concept of America opting out of unilateral action has implications for nations with imperial goals.  Iran has become the “strong horse” in the Middle East neighborhood by default. Our emerging position encouraged its evolution. Ortega y Gasset once noted, “To create a concept is to leave reality behind.” Our concept of multilateralism is a chimera surrounded by a fantasy.

Winston Churchill warned that when democracies triumphed in World War II they “were able to resume the follies which has so nearly cost them their life.” It seems we are at it yet again.

We watch with horror as power hungry barbarians kill their own people.  But we generally tolerate these actions. We are overcome by the magnitude of evil and the inversion of certitudes, but are helpless in their wake. We seek fresh creeds, but do not know how to deal with the revulsion in our collective gut.  And all the while our leaders tell us this will pass and, after all, there is nothing we can do.

Is the world turning to savagery? Is the 1930’s a scenario for the new century? Are we to allow shamefacedly the death and horror we have the capability to prevent? The derision of death lurks in our imagination, but the will to reverse it has not emerged. America cannot police the world, but the U.S. is still the only anchor that can assure international stability. It seems to me that role must be recognized and given the attention history has placed on it.

A Jacksonian dawn in the Middle East means the U.S. needs to start practicing a "democratic geopolitics"

Alexandros Petersen is Director of Research at the Henry Jackson Society: Project for Democratic Geopolitics.

"If you believe in the cause of freedom, then proclaim it, live it and protect it, for humanity's future depends on it."
 
In the midst of democratic tumult across the Middle East, Henry “Scoop” Jackson’s oft-repeated words ring as true as they ever did in the struggle against totalitarianism during the Cold War. He is perhaps best known for the admiration “neocons" had for him, but as a ranking member of the Armed Serves Committee, Senator Jackson was widely considered a realistic and sagacious steward of American power and influence. His legendary decisiveness and insight are sorely missing in an administration that seems to have been caught flat-footed in responding not just to the reformist groundswell across the Middle East, but also to its inevitable violent realities, currently on display in Libya.
 
Many have already noted that “the neoconservatives were right” about not precluding revolution and representative government for the Middle East.  The real question is about what policies the United States should adopt moving forward.  President Obama should take a page out of an old Democrat senator’s playbook and announce a Jacksonian approach to developments in the Middle East.  This would be predicated on the concept of “democratic geopolitics,” not blindly idealistic or cold-hearted, but hard-headed and principled.
 
Scoop Jackson was right in his unflinching belief that democratic governance should be encouraged globally, that it ought to have no borders of geography, culture, language or religion, and that extant democracies should support one another in approaching authoritarian and totalitarian states.  He was right to highlight the grave human rights abuses of non-representative governments, while neither wide-eyed nor shrill in expressing his convictions.  Scoop’s insistence that governance be a criterion in international affairs was a result of a deep understanding of a world system profoundly threatening to the security of the United States and its allies.
 
A “democratic geopolitics” approach would mean no if's and/or but's about the imperative to contribute to the ouster of the remnants of Gaddafi’s odious regime, with significant resources devoted to building democratic institutions from scratch in a Libya badly scarred by totalitarianism. It would mean just as many, if not more diplomatic, advisorial and financial resources geared towards reforms and institution-building in Egypt, not just to bring better governance to the Egyptian people, but to ensure an ally in Cairo that will keep Israel secure from the south and never again allow the passage of Iranian or other hostile warships through the Suez canal.
 
Democratic geopolitics would mean a frank discussion with Bahrain’s leadership to ensure major reforms and a strengthening of the defense relationship with the strategically-located Gulf state.  And, it would see preparations to contain the fallout from protest-induced instability in divided Yemen, to ensure that a new more representative government does not alienate any of the country’s factions now at dangerous loggerheads.  These are not novel recommendations, but they are moves not currently being taken by the White House.  Scoop would have doubtless been urging immediate action.
 
We are witnessing a Jacksonian Dawn in the Middle East. Now we just need a similar awakening towards “democratic geopolitics” in U.S. foreign policy.  Moving forward, one can only hope that implementation is predicated upon one of Scoop’s other well-known adages: “in matters of national security, the best politics is no politics."

In a "statistical lack of diversity," Democrats outnumber Republicans on college campuses - but the real problem is whether their "sacred values" have overtaken their dispassionate pursuit of truth

Herbert London is president of the Hudson Institute and author of the book Decline and Revival in Higher Education (Transaction Publishers).
 
As you might guess, discrimination is high on the agenda at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference where psychologists discuss racial prejudice, homophobia, sexism, etc. Yet remarkably the most controversial speech at this year’s meeting was by Professor Jonathan Haidt from the University of Virginia.
 
After polling his audience on political views, Haidt found that almost all were politically liberal. He counted a grand total of three conservatives. “This,” he noted, “is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” after pointing out that the 40 percent of Americans describe themselves as conservatives. To the consternation of those in attendance, Professor Haidt concluded that social psychologists are a “tribal-moral community” united by “sacred values” that hinder genuine research and damage the credibility of the discipline. Furthermore, this insularity blinds researchers to the hostile climate they’ve created for non-liberals.
 
When women or minorities are underrepresented by a factor of two or three in social psychology research, discrimination is invariably employed as an explanation, but when conservatives are underrepresented by a factor of more than 100, alternate explanations are sought. Almost all the research on the Academy points out the overwhelming liberal bias that prevails among the professoriate. In so many instances I am familiar with, young conservative scholars are fearful of expressing their political views since this could be used against them in tenure and promotion decisions.
 
Dr. Haidt argues that disciplines such as sociology, psychology and anthropology have long attracted liberals, but they became exclusive after the 1960’s when the fight for civil rights against racism became a “sacred cause.” According to him, if a group circles around sacred values, it will evolve into a “tribal-moral community” in which science will be embraced when it supports the cause and dismissed when it doesn’t.
 
All one has to do to affirm this conclusion is recall how Larry Summers, former president of Harvard, was ostracized for wondering whether the preponderance of male professors in math and science might be due partly to the variance in I.Q. scores among men and women. This was simply not a permissible hypothesis for many academics.
 
Dr. Haidt has urged his colleagues to focus on shared science rather than shared moral values. And to the surprise of many, the Society did vote to put a statement on the group’s home page welcoming psychologists with “diverse perspectives.” In some quarters this is a notable victory.
 
While I applaud Dr. Haidt’s efforts, and note that he is a former liberal turned centrist who did not deliver his remarks out of some political bias, there is still much to be done and spoken about in institutions of higher learning. Despite the fact Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 12 to one in American universities is not on its face cause for concern. It is the translation of political views into specific curriculum orientations that poses the great challenge.
 
After all, if education is to be open and predicated on rational exchange, sacred causes should not influence the character of instruction. Those students recruited into the circle of moral doctrine are in fact detached from the essential elements of scholarship.
 
Professor Haidt has revealed a foundational truth about his discipline. But this is merely the thin edge of the wedge, since many disciplines are facing the same provincial locution. The question that remains is the extent to which higher education has been compromised by the intrusion of sacred values over scientific dispassion and the extent to which recovery is possible.