More Opportunities for Women Students at HKS
by Lena Benson on November 14, 2009 in HKS News, News
HKS students are witnessing an increase in the number of gender-related opportunities this year.
The Women and Gender Caucus was launched this fall by four MPP’10s: Molly Byrne, Carl Allen, Joni Angel, and Liz Terry. The Caucus was formed to engage both male and female students on gender issues as they relate to policy making, and to promote the presence of women speakers and fellows at HKS.
They have been working to ensure that female perspectives are represented on the faculty and in the curriculum. A flurry of female-led study groups have also been offered. They include Gina Ganz’s “Organizing for Power,” Peggy Noonan’s “Creativity in Journalism, in Politics, and in Life,” Stephanie Cutter’s “Eye of the Storm,”Kim Gandy’s “Winning Across Progressive Movements,” and Swanee Hunt’s “The Advocate’s Craft.”
“HKS seems to have a burgeoning support network for women,” said Jeannine Torres, MPA ’11. “Unfortunately, I have been unable to participate in a lot of them because of my schedule, but I appreciate their presence. It’s nice to know that I have the support if I need it.”
In addition, the HKS Women and Public Policy Program (WAPPP) has been continuing weekly seminars on topics ranging from salary negotiation to microfinance to The Oval Office Program, a selective one-of-a-kind yearlong series designed to encourage female students to run for public office and to prepare them for the various challenges of running a campaign.
Still, many students expressed concern that most of these programs either conflicted with required classes or failed to provide adequate social opportunities where they could regularly meet and learn from the career paths and life experiences of their female colleagues.
To address this deficit, some informal groups arose. Several African and African American female students created an email listserve to disseminate articles of interest. They also took a break from graduate school stress during monthly “Black Women’s Dinners” where they discussed issues that impacted them and provided academic and personal support to each other.
Some students also took advantage of summer internship opportunities working with women leaders. When Yordanos Eyoel, an MPP2 from Florida, was asked why she opted to take a summer internship in South Africa through the Council of Women World Leaders Program, she responded, “I felt that with my training at HKS, I didn’t have exposure to a lot of women leaders, and such an internship would afford me the opportunity to network with female professionals as well as equip me with skills to be an effective leader in male dominated spheres.”
But is this enough? Some voiced concerns that much of the positive changes may not roll over into next year. The burden should not be left on the female students to develop their own projects and community, they said, pointing out the need for more administrative support.
Allison Shapira, a Mid-Career MPA from Massachusetts, said she was optimistic that students’ initiatives will make these changes lasting. “These efforts should come from the ground up. It’s our leadership challenge as female students to create the kind of environment we want to see. We take responsibility for our own development, and the Kennedy School provides the opportunity.”
Only time will tell if this year’s opportunities will be as prevalent in the future, especially when students only have one or two years at HKS and take much of the institutional memory of their organizing efforts with them when they leave.
Nevertheless, this past month and a half have shown us that now is a good time to be a female student at HKS, and if these efforts do yield results, next year will be an even better time.
Endowment Hardships and the Power of Nice
by Jeb Breiding on November 14, 2009 in HKS News, News
Harvard recently reported that the value of its endowment declined by $11 billion, or 27 percent of the total. This is the equivalent of 35 years’ worth of tuition from the combined 20,230 undergraduate and graduate students. For the University, this represents the most severe financial setback in its 373 year history and will undoubtedly have serious consequences. The ambitious Allston Science Complex, scheduled for completion in 2011 at a cost $1.2 billion, has been put on hold. Capital spending overall has been cut by half.
For those colleges most dependent on endowment funding, like Arts and Sciences, cost cutting is already underway and is likely to be painful. The college is facing a budget deficit of $220 million and is taking measures to cut 20 percent of all costs. These cuts have manifested themselves in a variety of ways – thermostats have been lowered during the winter months from 72 to 68 degrees, free coffee is no longer available at the University’s Barker Center, courses have been cut, and class sizes are getting larger.
With salaries constituting approximately 50 percent of operating expenses, Harvard’s personnel-heavy budget leaves little room for less painful cuts, a problem which has few solutions. President Drew Faust announced recently that 1,600 employees have taken early retirement and that 275 others have been laid off. For those who remain, no bonuses will be paid for 2009 and salary increases for 2010 are unexpected.
Harvard has not been alone in suffering losses – the average university endowment fell 18 percent last year. But with an estimated $26 billion in total funding and stellar financial performance over the longer term, Harvard has the largest university endowment in the world. During the last ten years, including last year’s hiccup, Harvard’s endowment earned an impressive annual return of 8.9 percent, compared to 3.2% for its peers, a report compiled by Willshire Associates found.
The magnitude of the loss since last fall is nevertheless a severe jolt and has provoked a debate about the importance of accountability, the sensibility of expansion plans, and the need to reassess fund-raising efforts.
The decisions that led to the endowment’s loss were largely made during the tenure of former Harvard President Larry Summers, now a leading economic advisor to President Obama. During Summers’ stewardship, the endowment took on more leverage, increased its exposure to risky assets – accepting higher so-called ‘Value at Risk’ – and substantially reduced the liquidity of the portfolio. Summers also broke with Harvard’s longstanding policy of saving more when performance was good, in order to provide for ‘rainy day money’ when performance was bad.
There were also mishaps. A report by Bloomberg revealed that at one point, the endowment took a $923 million loss on a failed derivative bet that interest rates would rise. Bloomberg’s report suggested that the endowment may not have understood what it was investing in; Footnote 4 in Harvard’s latest fiscal report reveals that 64 percent of the endowment’s assets are held in Level 3 types of investments. These tend to be more obscure assets like private equity, hedge funds, and real estate whose ‘prices or valuation require inputs that are both significant to the fair value measurement and unobservable.’
Over the last ten years, Harvard’s expansion plans have grown at least as fast as it has outpaced the ability of its endowment to fund them. A total of 6.2 million square feet of campus was added from 2000 to 2008, the equivalent of about 140 football fields. Though many reasons have been given for such a plan, it also probably helped that during this eight year period, Harvard had four presidents, each of whom wished to make their mark.
Harvard’s endowment is not a single massive account, but a conglomeration of 11,600 separate funds, established over many years, and with a wide variety of purposes and restrictions. Yet Harvard centralizesits investment management of those collective gifts and donations despite their separate legal and fiscal status, which enables it to fund operating budgets at colleges that are heavy on costs, but light on recurring revenues. For example, the College of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate School of Design depend on the endowment to pay 55 and 48 percent of their budgets respectively, while HBS and HKS only draw 25 and 28 percent.
Though the aggregation, centralized management, and need-based distribution of funds worked well under normal circumstances, the drop in the endowment’s size and the restrictions on how some funds can be used has only increased the difficulty of managing the endowment over the past year.
Endowment funding has become a critical measure of a school’s vitality and stature. It enables a school to make long term investments, attract the best faculty, offer state of the art infrastructure, and attract the most desirable employers. Fundraising inevitably determines the relative bargaining strength among Harvard colleges, and can often spur internal competition.
Endowments have permanently transformed the operating model of universities. Harvard’s endowment in 1985 was $2.5 billion, and the portion of operating costs funded by it was a tiny fraction of what they are today.
The good news is that a new era of large donations to nonprofit institutions seems to be approaching. The Center on Wealth and Philanthropy estimates that up to $27.4 trillion will be donated over the next 40 years, and as the University’s premier public service school, HKS should stand to benefit from some of those funds.
The Kennedy School has the potential to be a preferred donor destination given our focus on “doing good” rather than just “making money.” But the HKS endowment is only $800 million, compared to $2 billion for the Business School and $11 billion for the College of Arts and Sciences. That is why many believe it is time for HKS to seize this opportunity to narrow this gap, and that we should put our brightest minds together to help make this happen.
In doing so, HKS should not lose sight of the fact that it has something else in its favor which engenders charity that its cousin across the Charles doesn’t have: ‘the Power of Nice.’
Citizen Conversation With…John Donahue
by Matt Bieber, News Writer on November 14, 2009 in Citizen Conversation with..., Features
Interview Conducted by Matt Bieber, News Writer, MPP’11
John D. Donahue is the Raymond Vernon Lecturer in Public Policy and faculty chair of the HKS Case Program and the SLATE teaching initiative.His teaching, writing, and research mostly deal with public sector reform and with the distribution of public responsibilities across levels of government and sectors of the economy, including extensive work with the HKS-HBS joint degree program. He has written or edited ten books, including Disunited States (1997), The Privatization Decision (1989, with four translations 1990-92) and most recently, The Warping of Government Work (2008). He served in the first Clinton Administration as an Assistant Secretary and then as Counselor to the Secretary of Labor. Donahue has consulted for business and governmental organizations, including the National Economic Council, the World Bank, and the RAND Corporation, and serves as a trustee or advisor to several nonprofits. A native of Indiana, he holds a BA from Indiana University and an MPP and PhD from Harvard.
You’ve spent an awful lot of time at the Kennedy School. You’re an MPP, a PhD, and you’ve spent the bulk of your career here. How do you think the school is doing? In particular, how has it changed since the time you were an MPP, and what challenges is it facing right now?
Harvard had really lousy luck in when it decided to launch the Kennedy School – or rather, when it decided to scale it up – in that it went from being a small program to an avowedly large-scale initiative meant to create a new profession in the late 70s. (1979 is when the current building was built.) That was just about the time the bottom fell out of public service in the United States. Right at the point when the relative economic rewards of public service collapsed, and right when trust in government and the status of public service declined. So we couldn’t have done worse.
I always think it’s important to think of that background in calibrating how we’ve done relative to the mission. Given how strongly the tide has been running against us, we’ve been doing pretty well. Had the Kennedy School been started in, let’s say, 1941 or 1946, or maybe right now, I think it might have been a smoother launch. So that affects how I set par in my mind.
If I could push a little further on that in particular, what do you see as the legacy of a stumbled launch thirty-odd years later?
Any institution, if it doesn’t have a strong external constituency to keep it on track with its intended mission, will follow a path of least internal resistance and find something else to do. One thing about the Kennedy School is that there’s a strong gravitational pull exerted by the faculty of Arts and Sciences. Most of us come from there. We all respect the elegance of what they do. Without some other strong force offsetting that gravitational pull we end up—instead of orbiting at an appropriate distance around the arts-and-sciences world—getting pulled completely into it.
The Law School, the Medical School, and the Business School all benefit from the discipline imposed on them by a pretty robust and well-defined labor market they’re feeding into. Because we don’t have that, we’ve got to work extra hard to become something distinct from just a branch of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Do you think the Kennedy School has a clear picture of what it wants its students to leave the Kennedy School having learned? Is there a clear vision of a successful student?
Some parts do. I admire the MPA/ID initiative because of the clarity of its mission. I think it’s kind of a niche mission, but they know what they’re doing. I think the intentionality of the MPP program ebbs and flows. There are times that we have a clear fix on what we’re trying to do and we build it into the curriculum, and there are times when we sort of drift away from that.
We always do come back. This is a conversation that we always have, over and over again. It would be easier, again, if we had a thousand public-service organizations around the world that know exactly what they want in an MPP to keep us honest if we start to depart from that. In the absence of that external discipline, we need a little bit more internal focus.
Which areas of the MPP curriculum and of the MPP profile are well defined right now and which ones could use some work?
I think the pieces are well defined, but the whole is not as much greater than the sum of the parts as it ought to be. To the extent that the MPP offers something distinctive, it’s the reliable capability to integrate and apply the different disciplines in real world practice. I wish we did a better job at that. You get some practice at it in Spring Exercise, you get some practice at it in your PAE. In my ideal conception of the Kennedy School, we’d devote more time to this kind of integrated policy analytic work throughout the core, but that’s hard to do.
We all have so much within our areas that we think it’s urgent for you to learn. I’ve got my stuff I want you to learn in management, and other people have their stuff they want you to learn in economics, statistics, ethics, and so on. It’s a collective action problem, making way for the common curriculum of integrated policy analysis.
I’ve been impressed in the moments when our syllabi are coordinated – so that we’re talking about topics that integrate material that we’re learning in multiple classes at once. But I can imagine that doing that thing on a large scale is really hard to arrange.
You bet. It pays off big-time. If I had my way, that would happen closer to 90% of the time, instead of 10% of the time. But again, it’s a lot of work to get that done.
I actually have an ambition – not this year and not next year but probably the year after that – to do some experimentation with a single cohort that does a little bit more consistent integration and see if we can demonstrate the value of that.
Is that tied into your efforts to improve professional pedagogy more generally? And can you provide some background on that effort for our readers?
The case program was broken and we had to close it or fix it. The dean asked if I would become the faculty chair to try to help fix it, and I said okay. Then about a month later, the dean said, “While you’re at it, can you do something about faculty training and assessment?” I said, “Not by myself, I can’t. But if you will help me line up some reinforcements, maybe collectively we can..”
So we recruited two fabulous colleagues – Dick Light and Dan Levy—who joined with me as the core faculty team. Anne Drazen had been the head of IT at the Kennedy School and was sort of bored with running a mature process and raised her hand to do be the staff head of the effort. And we recruited Lee Warren, an ace teaching coach, to be the director of professional pedagogy.
We have an advisory board, chaired by Derek Bok, who understandably turned down everything else Harvard wanted him to do after his second time as president, but said yes to us because he cares so much about this mission. The dean, the executive dean, the academic dean are all strongly behind it.
What does the content of the training look like in particular? What gaps are you seeking to fill?
Well, case teaching for one thing, but not just the case method strictly speaking. The term we use is problem-based learning, which includes cases, but also includes exercise and simulations, and all kinds of teaching methods that have the students actively engaged in the learning experience, rather than passively receiving lessons from the professor.
We just finished the first case teaching seminar for faculty who wanted to use the method but didn’t know how. This past August and September we just did our second round of new faculty orientation for people to introduce them to the idea that this is a professional school, and what that institutional distinction means for how they might approach teaching.
When the school was small, when I was an MPP student, there were only around 25 people on the faculty. The Tom Schellings and Dick Neustadts and Fred Mostellers of the world were able to informally impart the ethos of professional-school pedagogy to the new folks. Then the school got big and that model didn’t work anymore. It took us a while to figure out that we needed a more structured institution to replace it. To their credit, this leadership team recognized that, set out to fix it, and is putting tons of support into the effort. It’s going to take five or ten years to see if it’s going to make a big difference, but so far, things are going very well.
Heroes and Villains: The Players I Truly Love and the Ones I Love to Hate
by Chris Arlene, Sports Editor on November 14, 2009 in Sports
As if the Phillies losing the World Series to the Yankees last week wasn’t bad enough, I was forced to spend two full sessions of Linda Bilmes’ budgeting class examining Yankees star Alex Rodriguez’s then record 2001 free agent contract. (Though I must admit that my roommate Jay, the teaching fellow for the course and a soulless Yankees fan, made things a little better when he naturally referenced Rodriguez’s previous use of steroids by calling him “A-Roid” instead of “A-Rod.”) Notwithstanding his not so Freudian slip, the whole experience managed to add insult to injury.
In general, Jay and I spend a lot of time arguing about the value and importance of A-Rod. Is A-Rod really an athlete that can be liked; the kind of player that fans actually want to root for? This back and forth inspired me to put together a top 10 Love ‘em or Hate ‘em list. The following ten players fall into one of these two categories, and though this is my list, you may find that quite a few people will agree with my classifications. However, it is important to note that this list can ebb and flow over time, especially if someone I don’t like somehow ends up playing for one of my beloved Philadelphia teams.
Please note: I’m only considering current players, so guys like Barry Bonds (HATE!) or Charles Barkley (LOVE!) are ineligible. Also, the words “love” and “hate” are used here as they are normally used in the context of sports, so they can be thrown around lightly. Lastly, I don’t wish anyone in the “hate” category any personal misfortune, but they would definitely make the “villains” team of any MTV Good vs. Evil Celebrity Challenge that I might someday produce.
LOVE ‘EM
Shaquille O’Neal. How can you hate Shaq? In his prime, he was a dominant power on the court; he’s a reserve police officer in multiple municipalities (he’s made a citizen’s arrest); and he’s created nicknames for himself such as “The Big Aristotle” and “Wilt Chamberneezy.” His mile-wide smile and ability to give a decent interview puts him at the top of my list.
Chase Utley. The Phillies’ gritty second-baseman is the toughest player in baseball. Utlley could wind up as one of the top three players for his position ever, and he’s the only guy that can really pull off the over-greased hair thing. The guy even needed off-season hip surgery last year, but would never use his injury as an excuse for poor play. Total throwback.
Lebron James. Now that Shaq plays with him in Cleveland, the Cavaliers may be the most likeable team in the NBA. James is en route to being an all-time great; his commercials and television performances are HILARIOUS; and you can tell that his teammates genuinely like playing with him. He’s making the NBA fun again.
Chad Ochocinco. Just to stick it to the NFL, Chad legally changed his last name from Johnson to “Ochocinco.” If that doesn’t earn you a lifetime of respect, nothing will. For all of his antics, he hasn’t killed any locker rooms and he continues to perform well on the field.
Clinton Portis. As a Miami alum and feature back of the Washington Redskins, he’s got two strikes against him. But his press conference shenanigans and costumes are downright genius (check them out on YouTube right now!). It’s easy to see that he doesn’t take himself too seriously.
HATE ‘EM
Kobe Bryant. May just be the second best shooting guard ever (behind some guy named Michael Jordan), but do any of his teammates actually like him? Have you ever had a classmate or a coworker who was really smart, very hardworking, and clearly had all the tools to be a leader, but who didn’t have any people skills? The kind of person who wouldn’t hold an elevator even though they clearly saw you running for it? Kobe is the taller, richer version of that person.
Brett Favre. Though he’s performing very well so far this season for the Vikings, Favre’s annual offseason, “I’m retired…wait, no I’m not!” routine is getting old. He holds every passing record worth having, but we’ve also lost track of how many games he has lost by throwing bad interceptions. Not going to be sad when he finally decides to stay on his Mississippi farm for good.
Terrell Owens. I must admit, I ABSOLUTELY LOVED T.O. during the fall of 2004 when he had the single greatest season of any wide receiver in Eagles history. But then he started doing shirtless sit-ups outside of his house and his jerk-of-an-agent kept saying, “No comment” and it was a wrap. He’s killed three separate locker rooms and something seems karmically right about him being stuck in Buffalo.
Tony Romo. Yes he’s a Dallas Cowboy, so that’s grounds enough for hatred. Add to that the constant camera pans to whichever singer he is dating at the moment; ridiculously giddy touchdown celebrations; and the whole “Hollywood gunslinger” persona, and it’s clear why the guy who has never won a playoff game is just so easy to hate.
Alex Rodriguez. I don’t have any real beef with A-Rod, but there’s not enough space to have a “ I feel bad for A-Rod because he’s clearly insecure and self-absorbed but has absolutely no personality and makes awful decisions like hooking up with Madonna and hanging pictures of himself as a centaur around his house” category.
State Insurance Deal Remains Unused By Mass. Towns
by Sayce Falk, News Asst. Editor on November 14, 2009 in News
Despite the crushing burden imposed on local governments by state budget shortfalls – Massachusetts has already decreased funding by $90 million to its 351 cities and towns within the last year – one of the largest money-saving measures available remains largely out of reach to many communities in the Boston area.
The Group Insurance Commission (GIC), a health insurance system for state public employees created in 1955, was opened to local governments to enter their employees in 2007. Yet only a tiny majority of eligible towns have entered into the agreement. There is no indication that they are any closer this year, despite the enormous shortfall in state aid.
“This is the biggest savings state government could give them,” said Representative Stephen Kulik, assistant vice-chair of the State House Ways and Means Committee. “But unions have inaccurately framed this as being an assault on the very basic principles of collective bargaining.” Massachusetts municipal governments face major problems as they try to balance their budgets. They are limited by state law from raising property taxes by more than 2.5 percent a year. Under the original proposal, the state agreed to provide more local aid in exchange for such a limitation, but that promise has been repeatedly broken, under governor Mitt Romney in 2001 and Governor Deval Patrick earlier this year.
In contrast with the limited growth in revenue, the cost of medical care has been rising rapidly – the Boston Municipal Research Bureau found that Boston’s employee health costs leapt 92 percent from 2001 to 2007. Yet Boston and other local communities do not retain the independence and flexibility of many other public sector employers. In particular, the Massachusetts state government, which enrolls its employees under the GIC, does not have to negotiate the details of the plan with each union before they make the change. State law requires that local governments include such details in its collective bargaining negotiations.
The result is evident in the state’s response to the economic crisis last summer – the legislature increased the premiums paid by state workers from 20 to 25 percent. That kind of swift reaction to changing economic circumstances is virtually unheard of at the local level.
The GIC keeps costs down in a variety of ways – strict requirements for documentation, the spreading of risk over a large pool of enrollees, and purchasing power as a result of its size – which largely mirror the policies of other successful private and public health insurers.
Yet less than 10 percent of eligible communities have been able to opt into the program. One of the chief reasons is that the GIC requires 70 percent of all employees to agree to a change before it can go into effect – which means governments must deal simultaneously with multiple unions.
Most unions are loathe to relinquish such an important negotiating chip, argued John Dunlap, Boston’s director of labor relations. The well-known ability of teacher, police, and firefighter unions to muster state-level support to block any statutory changes has also kept the issue from being resolved. Another worry is that the cost savings are a proxy for cuts in the quality of care.
“The GIC is not a good insurance plan,” said Tom Ross, secretary-treasurer for the Somerville firefighter’s union. “It’s not a good deal for the firefighters and it’s not going to have the same level of care for firefighters.”
Cities and towns in the Boston region have been dealing with the GIC in different ways. Some, like Boston itself, have been pressing the state to allow them the greatest degree of independence – devising their own health care plan, similar to but separate from the GIC, without union interference.
Dunlap has pressed for such flexibility, pointing out that the city would gain the benefits of greater flexibility but still allow some input from Boston unions. “The unions are in a strange place. They want to keep [health care negotiations] on the table, but some recognize that the Boston position is a compromise between what we have now and the GIC.”
Other communities, like Brookline and Somerville, have continued to press their unions to remove health care from the negotiating table, but without much to show for it. “There’s been no new urgency in GIC negotiations yet,” said Harry Bohrs, the chair of the Town of Brookline’s Advisory Committee.
Though little progress has been made to date, the budget crunch is far from over for Massachusetts. Governor Patrick is currently considering how to close an additional $600 million hole in the state’s budget, and many communities expect that means even more cuts to local aid.
“The moment has not yet come,” said Kulik, referring to union recognition that GIC entry is necessary to forestall layoffs, “but it could happen as early as the end of this legislative session in July 2010.”
20 Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall
by Sebastian Litta on November 11, 2009 in Opinion
I was born in a country that no longer exists: East Germany, that tiny socialist country where people wore grey clothes and worked in grey factories producing grey widgets that other grey people did not want to buy. But it was also a country where all of these grey people had colorful dreams of a future where they would be able to live without the fear of being imprisoned for listening to the wrong music, where they could vote for different parties and travel abroad.
Still, in January 1989, our grey-clothed leaders announced that the wall around our country would last for at least another 40 years. They were wrong. Less than a year later, on November 9, 1989, during a turbulent time of mass protest against the hated regime, a press conference changed the world. Socialist party official Günter Schabowski announced an ease of travel restrictions. When a journalist asked when this would take effect, Schabowski had no answer and simply remarked, “I assume it’s now.” Within hours, if not minutes, East Germans flocked to the border checkpoints and, before midnight, the specter of Communism was over.
How will Germany commemorate this event? While there are many success stories to be told, the general picture is less optimistic. Compared to other former socialist peoples, East Germans certainly enjoy a much higher standard of living now. Also, Germany is ruled by Angela Merkel who grew up in the East. And, more importantly, Michael Ballack, captain of the German National Soccer Team, is an Ossi – or East German – too.
However, there is no CEO of any major German company coming from the East. Most top politicians are from the West; even many governors in the East German Länder used to be Westerners. Merkel did not include a single Ossi in her new cabinet. But it is not just the lack of East Germans in the top echelons of German society that cause many people to be skeptical about the future. Other developments will likely be on the minds of many East Germans during the upcoming celebrations.
First, there are huge demographic problems: by 2020, East Germany will lose another 10 – 15 percent of its population given the declining fertility rates coupled with many young East German women migrating to the West in search of work.
Second, there are too few jobs to be found not just for women but for all East Germans. With the exception of a few highly subsidized technology companies, there are no major employers in East Germany. Unemployment is high, in some regions reaching 25 percent.
Third, this dire economic situation is very different from the Wirtschaftswunder times of the 1950s which allowed West Germans to appreciate democracy because of Coca Cola and steadily rising incomes. Many East Germans question the benefits of democracy. In a recent election in my home state of Brandenburg, the post-communist party earned almost a third of all votes.
Even more stunning was that the main candidate of the party was Kerstin Kaiser, who had worked for the Stasi, East Germany’s notorious secret police that commanded a network of several hundred thousand people that spied on colleagues, classmates (as in the case of Kaiser), neighbors, or even parents or spouses. People are beginning to forget that East Germany was once a dictatorship; nostalgia is winning the subtle war against democracy.
Finally, history could not resist playing a little trick by allowing East Germans to have stormed the wall on November 9 of all days! This day is not only the day when Germany finally became a republic after World War I in 1918 but also the day when Nazis and their many supporters destroyed Jewish synagogues and shops in 1938. This makes November 9 an unlikely day for cheerful celebration.
In addition, Chancellor Helmut Kohl decided to make October 3 – the day in 1990 when reunification documents were signed in a rather sober ceremony – the new national holiday. Hence, this November 9 is likely to be a strange holiday. The heroes of 1989 are almost forgotten. And Germans are about to forget the tremendous achievements that this peaceful revolution has brought.
The Democratic Caucus at Harvard Kennedy School
by Mary Smith on November 11, 2009 in Dems v. Reps, Opinion
Despite popular sentiment, it has been Democratic presidents who have historically made the difficult decisions to balance the budget and help reduce the national debt. Republican presidents, on the other hand, claim fiscal responsibility even as they spend the United States into a massive hole. Now, President Obama is coming under attack for fiscal irresponsibility from Republicans, when he is taking the necessary steps that will help save the American economy.
Looking at history, Republicans have consistently been enormous debtors. Even the champion of small government, President Reagan, spent without limit. In just eight years, Reagan was able to triple the national debt. He never once submitted a balanced budget to Congress during his presidency. He thought cutting taxes meant small government, but if you do not have the political will to follow that up with cuts in spending then you are fooling yourself and the American people. Reagan ran enormous budget deficits that drove the U.S. to its highest ever levels of debt.
After the massive spending years of Reagan and Bush 41, we finally got Bill Clinton. Republican love to accuse Democrats of being the teenager running around with America’s credit card, but by the end of the Clinton years, the government had balanced its budget and was headed towards paying down the national debt.
In the eight years after the Clinton administration, George W. Bush drove the national debt from just over $5 trillion to $10 trillion. In his two terms, Bush amassed more debt than any president did from George Washington through to his father’s administration, combined. Pulling a page from the Reagan playbook, Bush promised small government and his first step was to cut taxes. Unfortunately, he followed up, not with spending cuts, but with massive unfunded programs such as Medicare Part D.
The future of the United States may be bleak indeed because of our crushing debt load. We need to address the debt, but cannot do so at the expense of our economic recovery. We need to distinguish deficits for economic stimulus reasons, such as those proposed by President Obama, and deficits for irresponsible reasons, such as those presented by President Bush. The recovery bill set forth by President Obama is one of the only reasons there are some bright signs in our economic future. According to Peter Orszag, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, the recovery bill is one of the main reasons that we saw GDP growth this quarter. The current budget deficit and the mounting debt are a major concern for President Obama and the American people, but we cannot stomp on these green shoots of economic recovery by tightening up the federal budget too quickly. We must withstand these short-term deficits in order to address the longer-term debt problem after we have come out of this deep recession.
Putting it all into perspective, according to OMB estimates, the U.S. government will add another $9 trillion to its debt over the next decade. Of that $9 trillion, more than half comes from President Bush’s policies – the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts as well as the unfunded Medicare Part D. Only 10 percent comes from the Obama recovery bill. Once the United States comes out of this recession, we will see the Democrats, not the Republicans, making the tough but necessary choices to help pay off the debt.
President Obama faces a political storm, as the deficit hawks – silent for years now – will come down on the president for his economic recovery plans that include deficit spending. As politically difficult as this will be, I know that President Obama will withstand the political pressure and do what is best for the American economy and the future of our country. He will continue his short-term policies encouraging stabilization and economic growth and get serious about reducing the national debt once the economy is back up and running.
The Republican Caucus at Harvard Kennedy School
by Michael Sechrist on November 11, 2009 in Dems v. Reps, Opinion
During the 2008 presidential election cycle, President Bush took a beating by many on the growing deficit. In a 2007 interview, then Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama spoke with clarity and command when he said that, “[The Bush Administration] has been the fiscally most irresponsible administration that we have seen. We have increased the national debt, almost doubled it, since George Bush took office; it is now over $9 trillion dollars, and that is money that we are all going to have to pay back.”
Obama’s stance dovetailed nicely with a factsheet put out by House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer at the time. His factsheet graphically showed that President Bush borrowed more from foreign governments and financial institutions than the first 42 U.S. presidents combined. It went on to say that the “increased amount of debt held by foreign creditors undermines America’s national security. The United States is more vulnerable to geopolitical pressures in unstable parts of the world.”
Most Republicans would agree that fiscal deficits make our government more vulnerable to global instability. In the past 20 years, foreign holdings of U.S. federal debt have increased from 19 percent to 49 percent. That means that over half of our federal debt is held by countries whose interests may not be our own. China, Japan, the U.K. and oil exporting countries are the biggest holders of U.S. Treasury securities.
But according to The New York Times this past summer, “…Mr. Obama does not have a realistic plan for eliminating the deficit, despite what his advisers have suggested.” His plans to halve the federal budget by 2013 means little considering that the federal budget will be twice what it is today even after such a reduction. Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package contradicts a key DNC tenet that “[Democrats] will maintain fiscal responsibility, so that we do not mortgage our children’s future on a mountain of debt.”
In fairness, President Bush raised the national debt $1.8 trillion in his first seven years in office. By the time his second term ended, the national debt stood almost $4.9 trillion higher than when he first entered. Obama recently said he “found this national debt, doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office.” Well he is re-gifting it now for future generations.
Since taking office, President Obama has added $1.8 trillion to the national debt. What President Bush did in seven years, Obama is doing in his first year. If the Obama administration’s budget projections are right, it will take the national debt four years to rise to what it did in eight under President Bush. But White House economists’ projections are subject to change. For instance, the deepening recession made the Office of Management and Budget recalculate the national debt this summer. In just five months, from February to August 2009, OMB calculated that $2 trillion was added to the national debt. This will require the national debt limit, which Congress approves, to be increased by another trillion dollars this month to $13 trillion. This is the second increase since Obama took office in February.
As discussed, the problem does not lie with one party. It is a problem that all Americans, on both sides of the aisle, need to address. Right now, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. According to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, beyond our explicit liabilities of $13 trillion, implicit liabilities in Medicare and Social Security run close to $43 trillion. The total deficit then, all told, runs closer to $56 trillion, which comes down to $184,000 for every person living in the U.S.
The GAO describes this path as “unsustainable.” They estimate that government debt as a percentage of GDP will rise from 90 percent today to “170 percent by 2040 to over 600 percent by 2080 – far exceeding the historical high of 109 percent that occurred immediately following WWII.” By comparison, the E.U. does not let countries accede to it if debt levels exceed 60 percent of GDP; so by all accounts, we would not be let in.
Right now, when you type in “national debt” on the DNC website, you get a broken link. As voters, we need to demand that our elected officials move from this broken path of spending and burdening future generations. We must demand that a plan be produced and executed. Our security, in all areas, is at stake.
To further highlight this important issue, the HKS GOP caucus will host a series of events next semester, during National Debt Week. Details are currently being finalized, but we encourage the HKS Democratic Caucus to join us in supporting the events. We hope that all students will attend at least one event so that we can collaborate on fixing this important issue. Stay tuned.
Seniority System Blues…
by Zachary Kushel, Opinions Asst. Editor on November 11, 2009 in Opinion
Americans take pride in the supposed ability of the U.S. constitution to hold elected officials accountable to the people. Every two years in November, voters have the ability to select new members for every seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and one-third of the seats in the U.S Senate. By design, the system is set up, like in every democracy, to ensure that lawmakers accurately represent the constituents that vote them into office.
Yet, in reality, entrenched internal norms of Congress adversely impact the ability of elections to lead to real change. While the votes of new members of Congress are technically equal to those of veteran members, the relative power of new members within the rigid hierarchy of Congress’ committee system is hampered by their junior status.
As we have been constantly reminded throughout the recent debate on health care reform, the committee structure places a large amount of power in the hands of committee chairmen. Entire policy initiatives and sectors of the economy are not left to the consideration of the entire deliberative bodies. Instead, they are at the discretion of an individual member elected by a small minority of the country’s voters.
Both Democrats and Republicans allow their party caucuses to determine each committee chairman by a vote of the caucus. But rather than initiating true competition and vigorous internal debate about the merits of potential candidates, both parties instead defer to seniority. As a general rule of thumb, they simply allow the most senior member of the party on that committee to, by default, serve as its chairman.
As might be expected, the direct impact of this procedure is that many of the most powerful individuals in Congress also tend to be the oldest. Senator Robert Byrd, 91, served as Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee until earlier this year. When he finally relinquished his post, he was replaced by 85-year-old Senator Daniel Inouye. The excruciating pace that is required in the modern legislative process makes fulfilling the duties of a committee chairman extremely difficult for young members, let alone for members in their eighties and nineties.
The Appropriations Committee maintains control over virtually all discretionary spending in the U.S. The chairman has some ability to direct or hold-up funding as he/she may deem appropriate, despite what the congressionally approved budget resolution may call for. It is difficult to make the argument that, in 2009, the ideal individuals to hold this position would be a man elected during the Eisenhower Administration and a Medal of Honor recipient from World War II.
The late Senator Strom Thurmond served as Chairman of the Armed Services Committee until 1999, when he was 96-years-old. Would you prefer a 96-year-old to oversee our nation’s military simply by default? Is there any other industry where individuals of such advanced age could serve in positions of such great power? The inevitable result is that staff end up running more than just the day-to-day operations of the committee. In cases where members are absent or ill, the staff director essentially functions as a de-facto-chairman, sometimes for months at a time. These unelected individuals, who few of us have heard of and are subject to limited public scrutiny, hold power over large portions of domestic and even foreign policy.
The seniority system also rewards with power those individuals who are furthest insulated from the electorate. These are most often members who were first elected many years ago and hail from districts or states where the party balance sways heavily in one direction. Safe seats fail to ensure that the actions of these chairmen are scrutinized in regularly competitive elections.
The result is an incestuous status quo under the facade of a seniority system. This must be abandoned. We should allow for the proper functioning of the current process whereby true, internal party caucus elections ought to be held. The successful challenge by Congressman Henry Waxman against fellow Congressman John Dingell this past fall for the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee was a model for future selections. The House Democratic caucus wanted climate change to be at the forefront of the committee’s agenda and elected a better-equipped – and more junior – member to advance such an agenda.
The election of President Obama proved that age and experience are both overrated factors for the majority of Americans. Age should itself neither be a factor nor a disqualifier in determining a chairmanship. There should be true competition for these positions. If a party caucus feels that a 90-year-old is the most qualified and capable individual to serve as a chairman, and express this view via their votes, then the 90-year-old should be awarded the position without hesitation. But such scrutiny must take place, as longevity does not necessarily equate to quality. Selecting committee chairmen more likely to advance the interests of the electorate may go a long way in improving Congress’ still-anemic approval ratings.
The Halting Progress of God and Gays
by Jesse Lava, Opinions Columnist on November 11, 2009 in Heresies, Opinion
Last Tuesday night was bittersweet for the cause of gay rights — and for progressive religion.
The bad news first. In Maine, voters decided in a referendum to reverse legislation giving homosexuals the right to marry. The 53-47 percent margin wasn’t as whopping as it might have been. But it was enough. This victory for anti-gay forces was due in no small part to the Roman Catholic Church, which came out swinging for a repeal. Portland Bishop Richard Malone went so far as to have local priests take up a collection to help fund the effort and show a video about how devastating it would be to human civilization if gays were able to tie the knot. One lay Catholic woman was stripped of her leadership role in a local congregation for penning an op-ed supportive of same-sex marriage. The Church was playing hardball.
A valiant crew of progressive clergy fought back. The Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry in Maine — comprised of Episcopalians, Presbyterians, United Methodists, reform Jews, and others — held rallies and press conferences declaring that God is about love and inclusion, not fear and discrimination. Their work helped show that the divide over gay rights exists within the religious community, not between the faithful and the secular. That’s a crucial message, even though fear ultimately trumped love in Maine.
Across the continent, however, a different dynamic was playing out. Washington state had a referendum of its own on the ballot — this one involving civil unions that promised gays all of the benefits of marriage other than the name. As in Maine, the state legislature had already passed a bill recognizing these rights, but voters now had the opportunity to wield a veto. The margin was razor-thin. But in a 51-49 percent vote, Washington went with equality.
The religious community played no small role there, too. Of the 280-odd groups that officially endorsed the campaign to keep civil unions legal, about 50 were faith-based. One of these groups, the Church Council of Greater Seattle, represents nearly 500 congregations. The other groups represent hundreds more. Like their counterparts in Maine, these progressive religious organizations argued in the run-up to the referendum that faith is above all about love. And this time, they actually won.
To be sure, the bar was lower in Washington than it was in Maine, since some voters think the word “marriage” makes all the difference. But that doesn’t diminish the fact that for the first time in any statewide referendum, a majority of voters favored giving gay couples the same legal rights as straight ones. It’s a big deal. And just 20 years ago, it was unthinkable.
In the years to come, people of faith will continue to wrestle with this topic. But despite temporary setbacks in Maine and elsewhere, those of us who support gay rights can take solace in the apparent fact that the future is already written on this issue. Vast majorities of young people (religious or not) support absolute, uncompromised equality for homosexuals — from serving in the military to getting married to anything and everything else. The consensus is emerging and inevitable.
I am reminded of a story that progressive evangelical Jim Wallis likes to tell about a sermon he saw Archbishop Desmond Tutu deliver in Cape Town, South Africa, just before the fall of apartheid:
“The place was surrounded by soldiers and police who outnumbered the worshipers three to one. They came into the sanctuary. He was preaching. They stood along the walls…with tape recorders and pads, writing down what he was saying. They had already put him in jail. They were saying to him in effect, ‘Go ahead, be bold, be prophetic, and we’ll put you right back in jail.’ He looked at them and pointed his finger and said, ‘You are very powerful, but you are not gods. And I serve a God who cannot be mocked. You have already lost, so I invite you today to come and join the winning side!’ The place erupted.”
This tale, indeed, reflects the triumph of what I see as the ultimate article of Christian faith: love wins.
