JHU POLITIK
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OCTOBER 27, 2014
VOLUME XVI, ISSUE VIII
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JHU POLITIK EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Eliza Schultz MANAGING EDITOR Christine Server
HEAD WRITER Julia Allen
ASSISTANT EDITORS Katie Botto Dylan Etzel Preston Ge Abigail Sia
POLICY DESK EDITOR Mira Haqqani
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Diana Lee
WEBMASTER Ben Lu
COPY EDITOR Florence Noorinejad FACULTY ADVISOR Steven R. David
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MARKETING & PUBLICITY Maria Garcia
STAFF WRITERS Olga Baranoff Arpan Ghosh Alexander Grable Rosellen Grant Rebecca Grenham Christine Kumar Shannon Libaw Robert Locke Corey Payne Juliana Vigorito
• October 27, 2014 • Volume XVI, Issue VIII
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
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Week in Review: Shifting Alliances Abigail Annear ’18 Johns Hopkins’ Mental Health Crisis Preston Ge ’17 Interview with Dr. Chor-Yung Cheung Evan Harary ’16 The Dream of Conservatism is Alive in Kansas Zachary Schlosberg ’16 Raise the Roof: RAD Politics Ryan Conroy ’15 The Bench Needs RBG Corey Payne ’17 Democrats Are Better with Public Budgets Alexander Grable ’15
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Week in Review: Shifting Alliances by Abigail Annear ’18, Contributing Writer Turkey and Kurdish Forces Broker Fragile Pact to Offset ISIS After a month of relentless combat in Kobani, the Turkish government will allow two hundred Peshmerga troops, the armed forces of semi-autonomous Kurdistan in Iraq, to cross its borders in order to defend the city against ISIS militants. When fighting began in the Syrian Kurdish city, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan initially refused to enable a Peshmerga deployment in Kobani due to the underlying involvement of the Syrian Democratic Union Party (PYD), a Kurdish political faction that adheres to the same ideology as the terrorist Kurdistan Workers Party. Erdogan’s reluctance to permit passage to Iraqi Kurds derives from a deep-seated aversion to a consolidated Kurdish political bloc. Following multi-party negotiations in Iraq, Ankara advocated for the allocation of weaponry solely to members of the Free Syrian Army and the Peshmerga, excluding the PYD.
Clinton and Pelosi, Once Tacit Rivals, Align for Midterms and Female Empowerment Sharing the stage in San Francisco at the “Ultimate Women’s Power Luncheon,” Hillary Clinton and House Minority Speaker Nancy Pelosi united to rally female participation in politics and to raise funds for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. With less than two weeks remaining before the midterm elections, the Democratic Party’s two most prominent women embraced each other as those in attendance cheered, “When women succeed, America succeeds.” Pelosi, who conspicuously withheld support for Clinton’s 2008 presidential bid by urging Convention superdelegates to respect popular backing of Barack Obama, praised the visionary leadership of Clinton, signaling a likely convergence of Democratic endorsement for Clinton’s 2016 bid. To begin her speech on gender equality at the event, Pelosi eagerly alluded to expanding female authority within the government: “I’m frequently introduced as the highest ranking woman in U.S. office; I’d like to give up that title, and soon.”
Extremists Propose “Hindu-Buddhist Peace Zone” in South Asia Claiming to embody the Buddha’s teachings of compassion, Buddhist radicals gathered in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo to announce an impending alliance between Hindus and Buddhists that would establish a perverse “peace zone” in southern Asia through the suppression of Muslim minorities. Headed by the leader of Bodu Bala Sena (BBS, meaning “Buddhist Power Force”), the press conference, which also involved Ashin Wirathu, dubbed by Time magazine as the “face of Buddhist terror,” revealed that the partnership would unite sympathizers against “rising” Islamic extremism. Inspired by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalism, BBS, which fiercely opposes multiculturalism, initiated talks with Rashtriya Swayam Sevak, a conservative Hindu group hostile to India’s 160 million Muslims that maintains close relations with the country’s ruling party. Muslims and Christians fear that such an accord will only intensify existing Islamophobic prejudices and propagate sectarian violence in the region. ■
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• October 27, 2014 • Volume XVI, Issue VIII
Johns Hopkins’ Mental Health Crisis by Preston Ge ’17, Assistant Editor
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ohns Hopkins needs to talk about mental health.
That much is evident from the response to last Wednesday’s passing of sophomore Yangkai Li. For the most part, the succinct email from the Office of the Dean of Student Life stuck to describing the events that transpired. It offered condolences to friends and family, and listed resources available to students seeking support. Suicide was heavily implied, but never stated: all in all, the email was perfectly politically correct. But being politically correct is not enough. Hiding passively behind a brief list of resources is not enough. Hopkins provides mental health care primarily through the Counseling Center. However, we can only meet in person with an actual therapist on weekdays which, for students, are the busiest days of the week. The center is located off campus, and is inconvenient for many students to reach. There are resources available on campus, but they are few and far between. Two of them, Campus Ministries at the Interfaith Center and the student-run Sexual Assault Response Unit, aren’t even mentioned on the Counseling Center website. But ease of access is not the main problem. Society stigmatizes mental illness, and judges those who seek help. For many students, the task of scheduling an appointment with the Counseling Center is itself insurmountable. How many students want help, but do not seek it because of the stigma that mental health care carries? At the same time, Hopkins also remains silent on mental health. The administration’s “Healthy Community Behaviors” email in September discusses excessive drinking, academic integrity, and sexual harassment, mirroring the “Community Responsibilities” email sent eleven months earlier. Since January 2014, I count six emails regarding sexual violence, three about Pike, and only one about mental health, which was sent directly after Yangkai’s passing. Is mental health so taboo of a topic that it merits acknowledgement only after an apparent student suicide? The Counseling Center’s 20132014 Annual Report mentions that it co-authored an email titled “How to recognize and assist distressed students,” which was to be sent to Peabody and Homewood students. Why did we never receive this?
When the American College Health Association reports that more than 30 percent of college students have felt so depressed that it was difficult to function sometime in the last year, it should be obvious that we need to have conversations about mental health. Discussing mental health is a sensitive issue. But there is a problem when our university – our home for three quarters of every year – fails to comment on it at all. Refusing to openly acknowledge the importance of mental health gives the impression that Hopkins does not care. Waiting to offer assistance until a student dies in what was likely a suicide implies that Hopkins only concerns itself with mental illness when it manifests in its deadliest symptom: suicide. Perhaps it is not just the university that needs to change the way it talks about mental health. Maybe we as students need to as well. Take, for example, the article in The NewsLetter reporting on Yangkai’s death. Written and published at astoundingly short notice, the article pries into details of Yangkai’s private life. It goes so far as to stalk and publish his blog posts, which show “what appear to be health problems.” There is no attempt to humanize him, nor are there accounts from people who knew him. Even ignoring the crass headline “Sophomore dies in an apparent suicide” and the lack of a trigger warning (both in print and online), the article reduces Yangkai to his condition. While The NewsLetter makes amends for this in a recently published tribute, the fact remains that the student newspaper initially pried and intruded. If we avoid talking about mental health until a student dies, we fail as a community. Remaining silent perpetuates the stigma surrounding mental illness. It marginalizes the problem rather than addressing it. Mental illness becomes a taboo, and the people who suffer from it become outcasts. Unfortunately, current policy facilitates this stigmatization. If our administration cares about its students, which I believe it truly does, then it needs to take the initiative on talking about mental health. By showing a strong commitment to shifting campus discourse, the administration can change how we as a community approach mental health for the better. ■
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Interview with Dr. Chor-Yung Cheung, Professor of Public Policy and Member of HKSAR Election Committee by Evan Harary ’16, Contributing Writer Dr. Chor-Yung Cheung is a senior teaching fellow of Public Policy at City University Hong Kong, focusing on political theory and Hong Kong politics. He is a panel member of the HKSAR Administrative Appeals Board and an elected member of the HKSAR Election Committee. How do you see the demands of the Occupy Central Movement? Their demands are very clear. First, they want an open system for the nomination and election of the Chief Executive. Second, they demand that the Hong Kong government be more responsive to its people. Many see the government as too oriented towards mainland interests. There are also a few subsidiary demands that are less clearly articulated. Many worry that the influence of mainland culture is too strong in Hong Kong, and that its core values may be corrupted. Also, you cannot extricate this crisis from wider socio-economic ills, such as income inequality. Without true democracy, protesters worry as to how they can address these problems. Can you elaborate on what the protestors mean by Hong Kong’s core values? We prize fairness, rule of law, human rights, democracy, and civility. There is no such tradition on the mainland, so many believe that Chinese influence is a threat. But in protesting this threat, I believe the protestors run the risk of undermining the values they fight to protect. They are disobeying the rule of law. Who can say whether this is justified? Are these protests the manifestation of a minority dissatisfied with due process? Is due process not rule of law? What I’m getting at is that civil disobedience should not be undertaken thoughtlessly. Even nobly undertaken movements can be co-opted by criminal elements if things get out of hand. It’s happened before. Perhaps the ends justify the means. But the point is that this is not a case of good versus evil. This crisis can only be resolved by compromise. In escalating unrest, Hong Kong will only hurt itself. How would you evaluate the government’s response to Occupy Central? All things considered, both sides have conducted themselves peacefully, and that is admirable. But I think the government’s chief misstep has been its use of police to resolve what is essentially a political problem. Yes, the protestors are breaking the law, and the police can try to restore law and order. But the protestors are breaking the
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law to express their dissatisfaction with the current system. This demands a political dialogue between the opposition and the government. So far, the Hong Kong government has hidden behind its police force and a claim to law and order, ducking the obvious need for a comprehensive political solution. Given the government response thus far, do you think Occupy Central has a chance in achieving any of its goals? Well, no. Not without compromise. Occupy is in no position to dictate terms. Right now, the protesters are applying direct pressure to the Hong Kong government. This may have an indirect effect on the mainland, but China is far from dependent on Hong Kong. The protesters are causing inconveniences that the city can absorb. But if they push any further, they will lose wider support. Violence will only invite a government crackdown. In Hong Kong, any stable solution requires the consent of three groups: the proestablishment administration with ties to Beijing, the big businessmen, and the opposition. Business is generally close to the mainland. If the businessmen are unhappy, all the bankers and developers leave Hong Kong. So they have to be included. China obviously cannot be ignored. I don’t think people realize how much popular support the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) enjoys in Hong Kong. Unions, notably, vote with the mainland. Some of the CCP’s supporters have been loyal since the revolution. In any given election the pro-establishment party gets 40 percent of the vote, minimum. And even the opposition sees no good in hostile relations with the mainland. And, of course, if you ignore the opposition, you get the Occupy movement. Right now, both Beijing and the opposition are taking a hardline. If this continues, we will have the same system until 2017. Even if Occupy dissolves, the opposition will still be there, and the same crisis will arise in a year or two. Hong Kong needs compromise, though no one can say what this compromise will be. ■
• October 27, 2014 • Volume XVI, Issue VIII
The Dream of Conservatism is Alive in Kansas
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by Zachary Schlosberg ’16, Contributing Writer
n 2010, Republican Sam Brownback was elected governor of Kansas, a staunch red state with a history of radicalism tempered by traditional centrism. The jewel in the new governor’s policy crown was to be a massive tax cut. In May 2012, supported by Reaganomics guru Arthur Laffer and Koch Industries-backed think tanks, the Kansas state legislature passed one of the largest tax cuts ever enacted in a single year by a state government. Brownback said it would create “tens of thousands of jobs.” However, the jobs have yet to materialize, and Brownback refuses to back down, insisting only more tax cuts can solve the problem, while making cuts to essential services, blaming the Democrats, and leaving Kansas sputtering on economic life support. Brownback’s plan cut the top two tax rates (6.45 percent on income over $60,000 and 6.25 percent on income between $30,000 and $60,000) down to 4.9 percent, and cut income tax for the bottom bracket (3.5 percent under $30,000) down to 3.0 percent. The plan also exempted almost 200,000 small business owners from their state income tax burdens. The governor’s long-term goal is to do away with income tax entirely. Along with the tax cuts, Brownback’s plan tightened welfare requirements to cut spending on the poor, privatized the delivery of Medicaid while rejecting federal Medicaid subsidies, and dissolved four state agencies, eliminating 2,000 state jobs. As Brownback explained to the Wall Street Journal in February 2013, “My focus is to create a red-state model that allows the Republican ticket to say, ‘See, we’ve got a different way, and it works.’” Many Republicans and conservative think tanks supported his plan, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said, “This is the sort of thing we want to do here in Washington, but can’t, at least for now.” There was talk among Beltway Republicans that Brownback could be the presidential candidate the Republicans had been searching for. Now, a year and a half after Brownback’s tax cuts were signed into law, the only question that remains is: what the hell happened?
The Kansas of 2014 is vastly different from the Kansas of 2010, when Brownback was elected with an enormous margin. It is a Kansas in which, unthinkably, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Paul Davis, has led the polls. The $251 million surplus that Brownback inherited, owing to a one-cent sales tax increase implemented by his predecessor coming out of the recession, is predicted to fall to $27.9 million by the end of next year. And, last year, Kansas experienced the second-lowest revenue drop in the United States. Kansas’ in-house nonpartisan analysts also estimate a total revenue drop of $5.2 billion by the end of fiscal year 2018. “Kansas is a cautionary tale, not a model,” writes the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan think tank, which Brownback’s team has dismissed as “liberal.” “Promises of immediate economic improvement have utterly failed to materialize.” However, Brownback continues to spin his tales of utopia. “I think the left is just so desperate… They want this model to fail so bad that they can’t wait for it to and they just want to get me electorally before we get on through this and prove that this is working.” Brownback’s fictions are rampant. He frequently, yet falsely claims that he inherited $876 in the state treasury, and has raised funds to $500 million. Another lie is that he has put “a record amount into education,” even as Kansas’ per-pupil spending has fallen 17 percent below pre-recession rates, while the median state’s per-pupil spending today hangs around 5 percent below pre-recession rates. His lies have helped bring him back up in the polls. As of today, he is up against Davis by 2.1 percent, whom he calls an “Obama democrat” who “voted for Obamacare,” despite the fact that Davis, being a Kansas state legislator, did not come within 1100 miles of the ACA vote. “The sun is shining in Kansas,” touts Brownback’s campaign material. Yet, as historically prominent Kansas Republicans start to throw their support behind Brownback’s Democratic challenger, it is unclear what exactly is left for the sun to shine upon. ■
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Raise the Roof: RAD Politics
by Ryan Conroy ’15, Contributing Writer
S
ince 1937, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has funded public housing authorities (PHAs) to provide housing for lowincome families and senior citizens. More than a million households live in housing administered by PHAs, but the stock of public housing is falling. The average project was built 40 years ago, and most are in dire need of repair. However, the portion of the HUD budget allocated to PHAs (approximately $2 billion) is woefully inadequate. Most of this money goes to direct rent subsidies for tenants, leaving little for the properties themselves. As a result, the capital backlog for public housing projects has grown to over $26 billion. HUD’s pilot Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program addresses this mounting backlog. By converting a public housing unit to a RAD unit, PHAs forego direct government funding for that unit in the future. In return, that funding is transferred to the project-based Section 8 voucher program. Under this program, PHAs charge market rates for housing and accept government vouchers to make up the difference between the market rate and what the tenant can afford to pay. There’s no real difference for the tenant – rent remains subsidized. The PHA, however, is regulated by different rules, which allow it to receive federally insured mortgage loans and compete for tax credits from state governments. This change of regulation is the crux of the RAD program. While the HUD’s Capital and Operations funds are inadequate to address the backlog of repairs, there is more money available through tax credits, allocated by individual states in a competitive process that favors projects housing the poorest in the population. PHAs in dire need of repairs are more likely to win these allocations. Just as tenant funding is shuffled between programs, so is funding for repairs. No new money is spent on them. The PHAs are simply much better positioned to win tax-credits that would be allocated anyway. However, just as the original Section 8 program was criticized in the 1970s for privileging access to affordable housing over the expansion of the
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physical stock of affordable housing, a similar criticism might be applied to the RAD program. Both rehabilitations and new constructions are competing for many of the same tax credits. While the RAD program may squeeze the rate of new constructions to some extent, this does not discredit the program. For one, the stock of public housing has been in decline for the last two decades. Since 1990, it has dropped by around 25 percent. If the objective of HUD is to enable access to quality housing for poor Americans, the most cost efficient strategy is to effectively maintain the building stock that already exists, rather than waiting for it to become so decrepit that it must be completely rebuilt. Second, the RAD program engages developers that would be competing for tax credits in the first place, as the rehabilitations necessary at many PHAs involve new construction. The RAD program even allows for rebuilds if the property is beyond repair. Third, the RAD program is not the only alternative available to PHAs. HUD’s Choice Neighborhoods program also provide funds for rehabilitation, and the Hope IV program enables a transition to Section 8 vouchers. There is currently a 60,000 cap on the number of units that may be converted under the RAD program. This cap is maxed out, and another 120,000 units are already on the waiting list for future commitments. These could be awarded soon, but it depends on whether Congress passes legislation that would change the cap. The 2014 Omnibus Appropriations Bill failed to do this, but the 2015 bill should not. The RAD program is a rare no-brainer in politics. With absolutely zero increase in government outlays, raising the cap would spark an estimated $6 billion capital investment into public housing stock, create more than 100,000 jobs, and give 180,000 American families more dignified homes. That’s something both sides of the aisle can stand behind, and doing so would win support from the RAD program’s legions of supporters in the affordable housing community. The RAD cap needs to be lifted, and the RAD program itself needs to become an enduring institution in the American housing policy toolbox. ■
• October 27, 2014 • Volume XVI, Issue VIII
The Bench Needs RBG by Corey Payne ’17, Staff Writer
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uth Bader Ginsburg (lovingly referred to as “RBG” by many of her admirers) has served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States for 17 years. The 81-year old justice, just as poised and visionary as ever, is now facing a problem: the liberal base that has long championed her has begun to call for her resignation. The liberals calling for her to step down say they are doing it out of love. They say that if RBG were to resign this year, President Obama would have the opportunity to appoint a new left-leaning justice while Democrats still held the Senate. They say that Ginsburg, a two-time cancer survivor, could irrevocably influence the Court’s future if she were to leave office during a Republican administration. While this argument certainly has validity, we have to think about the ramifications of the President choosing a new justice in the current political climate. His approval ratings are reaching record-low numbers, the Democrats have likely lost the Senate, and conservative populism (as ironic as it may seem) is growing. An unpopular commander-in-chief, combined with a lame duck Senate and the probability of an outgoing Democratic majority, will likely not hold the type of mandate needed to push through and confirm another visionary like Ginsburg. She herself has said, “If I resign any time this year, [Obama] could not successfully appoint anyone I would like to see in the Court.” The argument for her to stay grows weaker if we view her only as a member of a liberal voting bloc. If we see her role as solely a vote in the direction of liberal ideology, then we have drastically misunderstood the role of the Court and the importance of Justice Ginsburg. The purpose of the Court is not to promote a political agenda, but rather to interpret the Constitution. Many cases brought before the Court boil down to single-issue interpretation, which makes it easy to confuse the Court’s decisions with a political agenda. If we view the Court the same way we view Congress, then it doesn’t matter who holds the seat as long as they vote the right way. Rows of congressmen, nameless and faceless, are generally unimportant. They vote along the party line, and then they go home.
In the Court, passion and life are vital and necessary. Justice Ginsburg’s dissenting decisions have done more for this country than her majority decisions. Her writing has provided us with hope for the future, and she is a visionary decades ahead of her time. Her dissents will be to the next generations what John Marshall Harlan II’s were for ours. She has laid the foundation for future progress—in a way that a moderate judge would never have been able to do. Last Saturday, she released a dissent on an emergency stay on Texas’ voting rights restrictions. While the conservative majority, following precedent, did not release a written opinion, Justice Ginsburg would not allow rights to be stricken without a fight and wrote a lengthy dissent of six pages for a decision that would usually receive none. Her blisteringly beautiful Hobby Lobby dissent has already been used as the basis for appellate cases, and is positioned to go down in history as the greatest opinion of our time. Our democracy is greatest not when we all agree, but when we disagree. Through our disagreements we become a better and freer society. We do not need more moderates on the Court—we need liberals and conservatives who oppose the very principles the others represent, for from those great debates come the greatest achievements in democracy. Justice Ginsburg has been the catalyst for many of those debates in recent memory. Surely, moderation has its place in our society. A moderate is well-reasoned and deliberative, but by no means visionary. Replacing Justice Ginsburg with a moderate (which would surely happen if she were to retire in today’s political climate) would be a disservice to her legacy. It would further transform the Court from the country’s highest constitutional authority to a partisan pendulum, changing tides and decisions with each presidency. However, given her contributions to constitutional debates, the possibility of a moderate conservative replacement is a small price to pay for just a few more years of having Justice Ginsburg on the bench. ■
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Democrats Are Better with Public Budgets
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by Alexander Grable ’15, Staff Writer
n a Gallup poll conducted between September 25th and 30th, respondents voted that Republicans would deal better with the federal deficit than Democrats. But, upon an examination of the historical record, it becomes clear that these respondents are mistaken. Since Ford, no Republican administration can claim to have been fiscally responsible. This is no coincidence. Republican budget policies almost always increase deficits. This is also no accident. According to the Nixon tapes, though he did not act on it, Nixon wondered if he should deliberately increase the deficit so that, once out of office, Republicans could turn and demand that Democrats cut spending. Nixon reasoned that, since spending helps the economy, under Republicans the economy would do better and under Democrats, it would do worse, and therefore Republicans could develop a reputation for delivering good economic growth. Reagan implemented this policy by cutting taxes and increasing spending. The promised growth did not arrive. The average growth rate in the 1980s was barely larger than the average rate in the 1970s. As Reagan’s former Office of Management and Budget Director, David Stockman, later admitted, the Republicans would still use the deficit as an excuse to dismantle federal programs that Democratic voters liked. Simultaneously, Republicans asserted that tax increases were unacceptable to them as they ostensibly hurt growth worse than spending cuts. They implemented this new strategy in the 1990s. However, something happened that scuppered their narrative. Under Democratic pressure, President George H. W. Bush increased taxes, then President Clinton pushed a larger tax increase through Congress. The result was that, beginning in fiscal year 1994, the deficit began falling rapidly while the economy expanded at a healthy rate. By FY 2000, the federal government was running a $237 billion surplus. It is telling that Republicans began immediately demanding tax cuts to eat away at the surplus. During the debate over the 2001 tax cuts, Republicans – including then-Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan – stated their fears that continued surpluses would lead to more spending. Republicans continued and continue to advocate for deficitinducing policies to hurt Democrats politically.
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During the second Bush administration, though the expense of the wars was moved off the books, there was no hiding the increasing deficits tax cuts had generated. With the economic crash of 2008, excluding the cost of the wars, Bush left Obama with a $1.22 trillion deficit. Obama, by enacting the stimulus, tax cuts, and finally adding the cost of the wars to the books, increased the deficit. But beginning in FY 2010, under full Democratic control, the federal government began slashing the deficit. In December 2012, taxes were raised slightly. For this last budget year, the deficit has been reduced to $483 billion. Obamacare has helped slow the growth in healthcare spending, improving the budget outlook. This is not a purely federal level phenomenon. In states like California and Connecticut, the Democrats have sharply reduced deficits. The Republicans are another story. In Kansas, Republican Governor Brownback, backed by the libertarian Koch brothers, has sharply slashed spending and taxes. The results have been anaemic growth and an ever-widening budget deficit. In New Jersey, Governor Christie’s policies have resulted in widening pension fund gaps, budget deficits, and repeated bond rating downgrades for New Jersey. The reason the narrative of responsible Republicans and spendthrift Democrats persists is because the media follows Republican myth-making. One great myth is that President Carter was a fiscal wreck. The truth tells a different story. Carter’s highest budget deficit, at 2.6 percent of GDP, was lower than Reagan’s lowest deficit, at 3.0 percent of GDP. The rate of private sector job growth under Carter, at an average of 188,000 new jobs per month, was better than Reagan’s average of 153,000 new jobs per month. Yet you would never know this from the way the media compares the two. In a democratic system, the perception voters have of reality is important in informing how they vote. Republicans have worked hard to give them a distorted view. If America is to have well-formulated fiscal policy, it is necessary that voters be educated on the reality of the fiscal situation. Democrats have proven to be better at dealing with deficits than Republicans, and Democratic budget policies reflect the current needs of the country. ■
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