Washington Thinktanks in the Twenty-First Century: A Modest Proposal
8/28/09 6:08 PM
Grasping Reality with Both Hands The Semi-Daily Journal of Economist Brad DeLong: A Fair, Balanced, Reality-Based, and More than Two-Handed Look at the World J. Bradford DeLong, Department of Economics, U.C. Berkeley #3880, Berkeley, CA 94720-3880; 925 708 0467; delong@econ.berkeley.edu. Weblog Home Page Weblog Archives Econ 115: 20th Century Economic History Econ 211: Economic History Seminar Economics Should-Reads Political Economy Should-Reads Politics and Elections Should-Reads Hot on Google Blogsearch Hot on Google Brad DeLong's Egregious Moderation August 20, 2009
Washington Thinktanks in the Twenty-First Century: A Modest Proposal At lunch over the weekend I rashly opined that it seemed to me that over this past decade the Center for American Progress [CAP] had greatly overperformed--had had an enormous positive and favorable impact on America and the world for the amount of funding that had been devoted to it. I went on to say that, by comparison and in contrast, in a purely relative sense of course, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities [CBPP] and the Brookings-Urban Tax Policy Center [TPC] and the Brookings Hamilton Project had underperformed--very good people, very hard work, very long hours, excellent policy analysis products produced, yet far less influence and far less bang-for-buck than CAP. Note: THIS IS NOT A CLAIM THAT CBPP AND TPC HAVE UNDERPERFORMED, GIVEN WHO THEY ARE AND WHAT THEY HAVE AND WHAT THEY DO: THIS IS A CLAIM THAT CAP HAS OVERPERFORMED. I then had to frantically try and justify this offhand opinion. Things got uncomfortably warm for a while... I do, however, think I am right. Podesta has proved to be a genius and CAP a huge win--an organization that produces an awful lot of paper on (a) these are what the good policies are, (b) this is how to build a coalition from the left in to enact these good policies, and (c) here is how to convince voters that legislators who support these good policies are worth electing. And it is read. And it is listened to. CBPP (and, now that I come to think of it, the Economic Policy Institute [EPI]) make the same kinds of arguments but I have the sense that they have less impact--I actually think both of them would do better if they were folded into CAP as subunits because a bunch of what makes CAP effective is its well-run outreach and message machine. With Hamilton and TPC, however, I think something different is going on: enhanced media training for thinktank fellows won't solve the problem. And then I came across a piece by Howard Gleckman of TPC, and it crystalized in my mind what the problem is: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/08/washington-thinktanks-in-the-twenty-first-century-a-modest-proposal.html
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of TPC, and it crystalized in my mind what the problem is: Here is Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center: The Wall St. Journal Editorial Page: Done In by the Facts Again: What would I do without The Wall Street Journal editorial page? I come to work on a slow summer’s day, not sure what I’m going to blog about, when I find this in the morning Journal: A piece in The New York Times over the weekend declared in a headline that ‘the Rich Can’t Pay for Everything, Analysts Say.’ And it quoted Leonard Burman, a veteran of the Clinton Treasury who now runs the Brookings Tax Policy Center, as saying that ‘This idea that everything new that government provides ought to be paid for by the top 5%, that’s a basically unstable way of governing.’ They’re right, but where were they during the campaign? There are merely three factual errors and one wildly incorrect assumption in this short paragraph.... [T]here is the implication that TPC is a Democratic organization. Or a nest of liberals. We hear it all the time. And it ain’t true. We’ve got Democrats. We’ve got Republicans. We’ve got folks whose political affiliation, if any, remains a mystery to me. Len worked in the Clinton Treasury. Rosanne Altshuler, our new co-director, was a senior staffer for George W. Bush’s tax reform commission, chaired by well-know lefties John Breaux and Connie Mack. Our other co-director, Bill Gale, was a senior staff economist for George H.W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. Note to Journal editorial page: Get over it. Finally, the Journal wonders “where they were during the campaign” in the matter of Obama’s enthusiasm for raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for new government spending. Well, we were pretty much where we are now. In our multiple analyses of both the Obama and McCain tax plans throughout the election season, TPC was the first to quantify the impact of Obama’s proposals on both the middle-class and the rich.... “His plan would drastically alter the distribution of tax burdens.... Households in the middle fifth of the income distribution would receive an average tax cut equal to 2.6 percent of income ($1,118).... The top 0.1 percent would face an average tax increase of nearly $550,000...” "Senator Obama's plan would add $3.6 trillion to the national debt over ten years..." “Obama’s effort to make the highest income Americans pay for more of government through higher tax rates will not come without a price...” “The other problem is that Obama will not have the money he needs to pay for all of his campaign promises….He can't cut taxes for everyone making $250,000 or less (the new middleclass in Obama land) and, at the same time, expand government programs for health care, the environment, education, and infrastructure. There are just not enough rich people to tax or Chinese to borrow from...” Once again, the Journal editorial writers have been done in by those pesky facts. Gets ‘em every time. What Howard Gleckman ought to say is something like: "Yes, WSJ editorial page. Len Burman was and is an Obama supporter. I am one too. There were problems--big problems--with the long-run fiscal sustainability of Obama's plans. Those problems remain. We never sugarcoated them: we were always out front pointing them out. But the problems with Obama's fiscal plans were orders of http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/08/washington-thinktanks-in-the-twenty-first-century-a-modest-proposal.html
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always out front pointing them out. But the problems with Obama's fiscal plans were orders of magnitude smaller than the problems with McCain's, and McCain was the rational one among Republicans. We support the lesser evil (or, more optimistically, the greater good). If the WSJ editorial page wants us to approve an endorse the candidates it prefers, it needs to work to push their tax-and-spending plans to a place where we can honestly say that they are best for America!" But that's not what Howard does. Howard, instead, goes into a defensive cringe, covering his organs of generation with his hands while he whimpers: the implication that TPC is a Democratic organization... nest of liberals... ain’t true. We’ve got Democrats. We’ve got Republicans. We’ve got folks whose political affiliation, if any, remains a mystery to me. Len worked in the Clinton Treasury. Rosanne Altshuler, our new co-director, was a senior staffer for George W. Bush’s tax reform commission, chaired by well-know lefties John Breaux and Connie Mack. Our other co-director, Bill Gale, was a senior staff economist for George H.W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers... The reason Howard gets so defensive is that the TPC views its mission as (a) figuring out what the good policies are, (b) building a coalition for those policies from the center--starting with one Democrat and one Republican each of whom wants to be in the position of winning applause for putting policy substance above partisanship--and then building out from there, and (c) arguing that supporting bipartisan initiatives is a good way for legislators to raise their chances of reelection. To say "yes, right now the Democrats are being a lot more sensible than the Republicans" spoils the first step of that, and so is not something that TPC can say and remain true to its mission. Now the problem with TPC's strategy is twofold. First, for the Republicans (c) is wrong: supporting bipartisan initiatives calls forth well-funded primary challenges from the wingnutsphere. Second, the whole start-in-the-center-and-build-out strategy no longer works. Paul Krugman's line is that bipartisanship as a legislative and an electoral strategy could work only as long as the ideological lines of party cleavage were blurred, which would be the case only as long as there were (a) a larger number of relatively liberal northerners who voted Republican because Lincoln freed the slaves, and (b) a large number of relatively conservative southerners who voted Democratic because Lincoln freed the slaves. Once the parties realigned, zero-sum partisan loyalties would dominate: centrist legislators would think hard whether it was more important to vote for a bill because it was good for America or vote against it because then you could paint the oppositeparty president as a failure and pick up seats in the next election, and make their decision. Influence over policy can no longer be found by placing yourself in the center: you wind up lying next to a squashed armadillo with a yellow stripe painted down your back. We saw this in 1993, when Clinton's centrist bipartisan deficit-reducing budget--half tax increases, have spending cuts--attracted not a single Republican vote. We saw this in February, when Obama's centrist stimulus package--2/3 spending increases, 1/3 tax cuts (Clinton was Mr. 43%, Obama is Mr. 54%), and 2/3 the size that would have been appropriate--attracted zero Republican votes in the House and only three in the Senate. We are seeing this on cap-and-trade, where the number of Republicans willing to sign on to do something about global warming if they can then shape the bill in the direction of economic efficiency is close to zero, and now on health care too. http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/08/washington-thinktanks-in-the-twenty-first-century-a-modest-proposal.html
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In this environment, the ability to shape policy in better directions comes not from being bipartisan or nonpartisan but rather from being partisan. People who seek influence should then: pick a party, support it, and work hard to make its policies the best policies possible that don't get you thrown out of the party by the ideologists. So if I were running the TPC today, I would split it in two--or, rather, I would have two different entrances to its offices. One entrance would be to the Center for an Efficient, Fair, and Egalitarian Tax Policy--and everyone who visitors met in that waiting area would be a convinced liberal certain that a more redistributionist and pro-equality tax policy was what America needs. The other entrance would be to the Center for Entrepreneurial Excellence through Tax Policy--and everyone who visitors met in that waiting area would be a convinced conservative certain that America's entrepreneurial energies are on the point of being excessively hobbled and damaged by unfairly progressive tax structures. Behind each reception area, of course, you can have the same computers, the same models, the same distribution and economic impact tables. Think of the main West Wing conference room: during Republican administrations it is the Theodore Roosevelt conference room. During Democratic administrations it is the Franklin Roosevelt conference room. That's the idea. RECOMMENDED (5.0) by 3 people like you [How?] You might like:
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Comments You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post. May I ask why so-called bipartisanship is an issue? In parliamentary democracies, the ruling party's leader is also the legislative head and the head of government. This gives him/her great power and means that the party in charge can pass essentially what it wants. This power drives parliamentary democracies to split power amongst enough groups that coalition to govern is necessary, but the coalition then determines its goals and enacts them. The real check then becomes the need to stand for election, but that's not "bipartisanship." On a practical level, being a legislator requires being re-elected. How does bipartisanship help an individual legislator be elected? It would seem to empower the opposing party, the one not in control, if seen from the governing party's perspective. It would seem useful only if a minority party is seeking to enhance its general appeal by appearing more in line with the governing party - and thus be more electable. I don't see how that applies to the http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/08/washington-thinktanks-in-the-twenty-first-century-a-modest-proposal.html
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by appearing more in line with the governing party - and thus be more electable. I don't see how that applies to the GOP - it might to fringe groups like Libertarians but they don't get enough votes to matter in any way (outside of their constant annoyance on the internet). So why be bipartisan? Is the idea that you'll work together to craft a better society? That may be appealing on the surface but if your party has the majority shouldn't you be deciding what you believe the country wants and enacting that? It seems to me the majority party has the obligations of power and if it chooses to incorporate minority views then it can. What bothers me is the idea that the Democrats can't pass a bill in the Senate when they have 60 votes. If they can't enforce party discipline on major legislation, then they should be looking at ways to punish offenders. Take their offices away, strip them of committee assignments, kick them out of the caucus, take away perks, etc. When did this idea that everything has to be negotiated come into being? It wasn't always this way in America - and isn't elsewhere. If you have the power, it is your job to exercise power and take the consequences. We have instead empowered random individuals who choose to stand outside their own party to the detriment of their party. In a world which acknowledges the reality of power, they would be dealt with. Why are our leaders so dense? Posted by: jonathan | August 20, 2009 at 10:32 AM "because a bunch of what makes CAP effective is its well-run outreach and message machine." I get the impression that this is the overriding factor. If you assume that these organizations all do roughly the same quality of work without drastic differences in the ideology of the policies advocated, there has to be some reason why one stands out and the others don't. Granted, if its communications strategy is what makes it come in first, that's probably because it's relatively new and allowed, based on its age, people who were far more comfortable with technology to work there. Think Matt Yglesias, for instance. As for your suggestion, it's not bad, but it requires a lot of people to work in good faith. There are some, to be sure, but the modern Republican strategy seems to be that we can have everything, that there are no trade offs. What they say privately is probably very differently than what they say publicly, because what they really feel doesn't seem to work for most of the population. Until that changes, I don't see how much of anything can be accomplished. Posted by: Brian J | August 20, 2009 at 10:32 AM In terms of media hits or web citations per budget dollar, the Center for Economic and Policy Research kills CAP and everyone else http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/cost-effectiveness-of-the-most-widelycited-think-tanks/ Also, in terms of impact, we were the only ones trying to warn about the housing bubble before it wrecked the economy. Even in Washington, a downturn costing $6 trillion in output is a big deal -- or adding $7 trillion to the debt (the bigger concern in DC). Posted by: Dean Baker | August 20, 2009 at 10:56 AM What the Tax Policy Center and Center on Budget and Policy Priorities provide is the gold standard of data analysis on the subjects they cover. That kind of credibility is a scarce resource, and it carries a surprising amount of weight in legislative outreach. If you're looking for a poster child for pointless bipartisanship, look no further than the Hamilton Project. Posted by: crumudgeon | August 20, 2009 at 12:25 PM I think the "ideology as the way forward" is dead on, at least here in GA where you can't debate issues at all--the facts, or lack thereof get in the way. Arming the troops so to speak, and keeping the wing in line is how its going to get done now a days... CEPR rocks! Posted by: Jim Nichols | August 20, 2009 at 12:51 PM One wonders if CAP would be so effective (per Brad) had TPC and CBPP not been doing the dirty, unglamorous work, for so many years. http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/08/washington-thinktanks-in-the-twenty-first-century-a-modest-proposal.html
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Further, media hits are only one measure of impact. I don’t recall Matt Y. testifying on substantive public policy issues in front of a congressional hearing or getting published in many peer reviewed academic journals. He may be fielding calls from congressional members and administration staff on substantive issues, like CBPP and TPC folks do, but I doubt it. I think as an academic and blogger who lives in California, Brad’s idea of how to evaluate impact on the policy process in Washington DC is very likely limited and incomplete. Posted by: EricB | August 20, 2009 at 01:17 PM One wonders if CAP would be so effective (per Brad) had TPC and CBPP not been doing the dirty, unglamorous work, for so many years. Further, media hits are only one measure of impact. I don’t recall Matt Y. testifying on substantive public policy issues in front of a congressional hearing or getting published in many peer reviewed academic journals. He may be fielding calls from congressional members and administration staff on substantive issues, like CBPP and TPC folks do, but I doubt it. I think as an academic and blogger who lives in California, Brad’s idea of how to evaluate impact on the process in Washington DC is very likely limited and incomplete. Posted by: EricB | August 20, 2009 at 01:19 PM This is an apples to organes comparison. CAP and TPC are different types of organizations. Further, bipartisan is different and distinct from nonpartisan. Check the TPC mission statement. TPC… “provides timely, accessible analysis and facts about tax policy to policymakers, journalists, citizens, and researchers.” I don't believe that they seek to build bipartisan consensus at all...TPC operates on a nonpartisan basis. Posted by: Gordon | August 20, 2009 at 01:37 PM I believe the roots of bipartisanship lie in the peculiar institutions we American's employ for electing our President. In order, to be elected one must assemble a coalition sufficient to garner electoral pluralities in enough states to represent a (sort of) majority of the population. (Maine and Nebraska are different since they assign electoral votes to Congressional Districts. However, they are also small states unlikely to determine the outcome of a national election.) Historically such broad coalitions represented diverse interests some of whom could be accommodated in bargaining to secure support from both parties. Starting with the Southern strategy of Richard Nixon, the Republican party went all in on the strategy of representing culturally conservative whites as an interest group. This demographic is declining nationally. Much of the rest of the population has moved on to other issues. It strikes me as not inconceivable that we are heading for another period like the "Era of Good Feeling" wherein there is only one truly national party. As that era (1812-1832) demonstrates 1) politics doesn't cease, it just takes the form of interparty squabbling. 2) an eventual realignment will result in a second,rightish coalition. For now though the smart money is building your coalitions from the left towards the center. Posted by: John Howard Brown | August 20, 2009 at 02:13 PM Brad: After all these years, you misunderstand what TPC does. Our role is to crunch numbers in an objective and non-partisan way, and describe the policy consequences of tax proposals. It is not very sexy, but somebody has to do it. Washington is full of folks who try to get laws passed, but we're not among them. For more, check out today's TaxVox http://taxvox.taxpolicycenter.org/blog/_archives/2009/8/20/4294862.html Posted by: Howard Gleckman | August 20, 2009 at 03:47 PM I greatly admire Brad DeLong’s economic expertise and analytical work. But, with all due respect, I think that his August 20 blogpost on the effectiveness of Washington think tanks missed some key points. (I would have written in response to his post much more quickly, but I’ve been traveling and have had limited access to the internet.) DeLong seems to equate effectiveness mainly with media coverage, buzz in the blogosphere, and so on. But when it comes to shaping policy, that’s just part of the process. In my view, the truest test of an organization’s effectiveness is whether, through its efforts, policy improves or adverse policies are avoided. Measured that way, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) — if you’ll allow me a moment of immodesty — is widely regarded by independent observers as having one of the most impressive track records among organizations that work on public http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/08/washington-thinktanks-in-the-twenty-first-century-a-modest-proposal.html
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independent observers as having one of the most impressive track records among organizations that work on public policy. For example, about $215 billion of the $787 billion stimulus law that the Administration and Congress enacted this year stemmed from ideas in our analyses or from polices that we designed — including many provisions to expand assistance for low- and moderate-income families as well as to provide state fiscal relief. Two pivotal Center analyses from last fall — showing the very large increase in poverty that would result from the recession and the stunning dimensions of state fiscal gaps — also played critical roles in helping to shape the public debate and the thinking of federal policymakers. The law devoted more resources to these matters than any previous stimulus bill in history. Or, to take another example, at the start of 2008, every major climate-change bill would have boosted poverty substantially due to the increases in energy prices that it would have generated. We issued analyses that focused attention on this problem. And we designed a remedy that many members of Congress and policy organizations rallied around — one that is included in House-passed legislation and that the Congressional Budget Office says will fully shield the bottom fifth of the population from these higher energy prices. Nor are our impacts limited to low-income issues. The National Journal described the Center as constituting the “cerebellum” of the successful efforts to stop President Bush’s privatization proposal for Social Security. The White House official in charge of Social Security for Bush later said that no organization was as effective in thwarting the Administration’s privatization plans as CBPP. In addition, our policy impact extends to the state level, where we partnered with several funders to establish an effective network of 31 independent policy institutions that work on budgets, taxes, and social programs in their states. When anti-tax, anti-government groups put money and muscle in 2006 into an effort to pass ballot initiatives in 16 states to impose severe tax and spending limitations, CBPP and this network helped lead the opposition, produced the key analyses, and performed extensive public education and media outreach work. In the end, the anti-tax, anti-spending effort failed in all 16 states. DeLong is surely right that CAP — which I greatly admire — outdistances other policy organizations in the extent to which its messages reach key audiences across the country. The Center’s work complements that of CAP and other policy organizations with the powerful effects that we have on specific policy debates and outcomes. The impacts that I’m describing have been confirmed in a variety of independent assessments of non-profit organizations. Just last year, a survey of thousands of non-profit CEOs across the country culminated in Forces for Good, an Aspen Institute-published book, which identified the Center as among the 12 most effective non-profits in America. That survey included non-profits across the political spectrum, and it included both policy organizations and those that deliver services. That finding mirrors earlier surveys in which executive and legislative branch officials and journalists were asked to rate policy organizations on their effectiveness and consistently put the Center among the very top rated organizations. A final note: the CEPR survey of media citations per budget dollar cited in some comments to DeLong’s August 20 post is problematic with respect to CBPP. The survey uses budget numbers that include, among other things, the costs of the extensive assistance that we provide to our state network, our entire international budget project (which works to improve budget deliberations in poor countries), and the budget of a nonprofit for which we serve as the fiscal agent. Together, those items represent about half of our budget. Comparing our media cites per budget dollar to those of other organizations that do not serve similar functions is like comparing apples to oranges. Moreover, media cites do not tell the full story of how policy organizations can shape media coverage and public debate. Organizations like the Center often have their greatest impact when editorial writers, columnists, and others use their policy conclusions and numbers without even citing the source of the information. Posted by: Robert Greenstein | August 22, 2009 at 10:34 AM I worked CBPP for six years (1999-2005) and am currently at CEPR, which gives me a relatively unique perspective. When I was at CBPP, my dream merger proposal to combine CBPP with EPI and devote about a third of the combined resources to media and communications. http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/08/washington-thinktanks-in-the-twenty-first-century-a-modest-proposal.html
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combined resources to media and communications. I saw CBPP's main strengths as the programmatic and fiscal elements of means-tested anti-poverty programs that provide income or in-kind support (as a practical matter these are the "Policy Priorities" in its title) and inside-thebeltway lobbying/advocacy. Where it was weak in my view was economics (it's had only a handful of economists on staff since its founding), policy affecting the broad middle class, and outside-the-beltway influence/media. Merging it with EPI and directing much more of the combined budget to communications would address these weaknesses, while retaining the strengths. I wouldn't combine CBPP/EPI with CAP because what's really needed is at least three major big-budget progressive think tanks in DC that cover the bases on economic/social policy (a la the right wing triumvirate of Heritage, Cato, AEI), and have the ability and resources to do both short-term legislative work and long-term work changing public debate and opinion. Posted by: Shawn Fremstad | August 24, 2009 at 12:19 PM
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