Even the Easy Parts Are Hard

American politics have become so dysfunctional, thanks in part to the special interests’ capture of our political class, that even what should be easy parts of dealing with the policy agenda are hard. We now endure a situation in which normal politics have become toxic: When Congress fails to act on public policy problems, the problems almost always get worse; when Congress does act on them, they also get worse.

Case in point: the so-called December 2017 tax policy reform. How anyone could append the word “reform” to a plutocratic giveaway that changes the structure of the tax code not one iota eludes me, except as an example of either shameless spinning or the full-frontal deterioration of the proper use of the English language. Or both.

Some policy problems actually are hard because the subjects are genuinely complicated: immigration reform, healthcare, gun control, and others we can all list. Even some of these, however, have relatively simple solutions in theory.

To take just one example, healthcare insurance premiums could be made affordable again for the vast majority of Americans if the three categories of the most expensive generic cases were carved away from the main insurance pool: the very ill elderly; trauma cases; and treatment for chronic and progressive diseases like diabetes. These cases could be handled by a secondary insurance market, just as secondary insurance markets operate in many niches of a modern economy. Even if some combination of state and Federal government were to heavily subsidize insurance premiums for these classes of cases, it would still be simpler and cheaper than the Affordable Care Act.

But never mind how we pay for healthcare—which, just by the way, is not the same problem as reforming healthcare itself (another example of the massive confusion of language we suffer). The latter really is complicated, which everyone paying attention has known for years. I can think of at least three cases of simple fixes for non-trivial problems that, in normal times, would be gimmes. That they’re not gimmes illustrates the fact that the current two-party monopoly of Congress—with some notable and frustrated exceptions—is an idea- and deliberation-free zone with little to no interest in public service.

So, first, we have a problem over early voting that, in some states, has become a major issue of contention. Democrats seem to want to extend the period of early voting basically forever, while Republicans would constrain it to about 15 minutes if they could. Everybody knows why: People who work at jobs in lower socio-economic echelons have a tougher time getting to the polls, and those people tend to vote Democratic.

I dislike early voting in general because things can change between when someone “early” votes and when election day happens to be. Ideally, everybody should be voting in the same situational context, which is also why announcing election results in eastern states before polls have closed out west is a bad idea. The solution to the early voting problem is obvious: Make election day a Federal holiday—in both presidential election years and in midterm election years. Do that, and the rationale for early voting goes away in the blink of an eye.

That would mean adding two holidays every four years, but a compensatory change is readily available: Get rid of Columbus Day, and Veterans Day too.

Columbus Day amounts to Italian-American day, which is nice but unnecessary. Worse, lately Columbus Day has been connected to Indigenous Peoples Day. That is not for no good reason, but the trajectory now let loose is likely to turn Columbus Day into another divisive symbol in American society and politics. Seems to me we can do without that.

Another reason to get rid of Columbus Day is that it’s become a class-discriminatory holiday. Pretty much only bankers, bureaucrats, and mail carriers get off; most people who actually work for a living usually don’t, and public schools are usually in session as well. That creates havoc for lots of families with minor children, which we could also do with a little less of these days.

As for Veterans Day, that has to do with veterans from World War I. Don’t look now, but we’ve plum run out of living veterans from World War I. So Veterans Day should be combined with Memorial Day, and the holiday should be renamed Veterans and Memorial Day. Pretty simple, I think. We certainly should honor the men and women who have put themselves in harm’s way in defense of our country, but we don’t need separate holidays for those who lived and those who died in the process.

If we did this, we would add two holidays every four years but get rid of eight. That would mean three more work days added on average to the calendar year. That’d be good. From the beginning America has always been about the nobility of hard work. We have wandered too far from thinking of all honest labor as noble, so all real Americans would cherish those added productive days. (It would, of course, be great if we had a holiday where bankers and bureaucrats had to go to work but the rest of us didn’t. That’ll never happen….)

Second, let’s take a look at the Social Security trust fund. We’ve known for many years that our demography is leading to an insolvency train wreck—more healthy retirees and fewer workers to support them. Every expert who follows this problem agrees that at current rates of tax inflow and disbursements we have at most seven years before the entire system implodes. It’s hard to think of a clearer example of the irresponsibility of Congress—or perhaps we should be honest about calling it cowardice—that this can has been kicked so far down the road.

Of course something has been done in recent years to slow the train engines, but what has been done has been both band aid-like and prejudicial, again to people who work with their bodies for a living: The retirement age for both men and women has been kicked out several years. This is class prejudicial because the data clearly show that people who do physical labor for a living have shorter lives than those who do not. So extending the retirement age amounts to a reverse Robin Hood: taking from the poor to give to the rich.

None of this is necessary, because if Congress had any courage it would do the simple and honest thing: Simultaneously remove the cap from taxing income and means-test benefits. Back during the Depression, when the Social Security Administration was created, the basic concept was that of an insurance pool for the elderly: Those who could not save for retirement would be helped by those who could. Back in those days life expectancy was so much shorter than today that not a lot of people actually drew a lot of benefits. But the psychology of the time was one in which we, as a hurting nation, thought that society had a moral obligation to bring the less fortunate along with the rest of us. There is an iconic line from It’s a Wonderful Life that expresses perfectly the zeitgeist of the era. Mr. Potter is trying to drive the Building & Loan out of business, and George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) pleads with the agitated crowd not to break ranks: “We can get through this thing all right. We’ve got to stick together, though. We’ve got to have faith in each other.” Exactly that is how most Americans understood the spirit of Social Security during the Depression, and for some years thereafter during wartime. Then somehow the conception changed, first into a forced savings account for those too intemperate to save for their own retirement, and then into an exclusively personal nest egg even for those who were forethoughtful enough to plan. Mr. Potter has prevailed. So now even retirees whose yearly income exceeds $1 million draw Social Security benefits. Is that more obscene than insane, or more insane than obscene? It’s a toss-up as I see it.

Means-testing benefits should be prorated or graduated so that above a certain threshold of post-retirement yearly income a retiree would receive, say, 80 percent of benefits, and then above a higher threshold 60 percent, and so on until, above quite a high threshold, benefits would be zero.

By simultaneously lifting the tax cap and means-testing benefits, virtually any demographic situation can be handled without fear of system bankruptcy. The relevant data could be reviewed every few years and modest adjustments to the thresholds made as required by changing circumstances. In other words, enacting this reform would permanently fix the problem.

And if we’re going to actually fix this right, we should at the same time ban Congress from repeatedly ransacking the fund, as it has done several times in the past, in yet another serial act of cowardice.

Of course, wealthy Americans would pay for this solution in two ways: higher taxes now and fewer eventual benefits later. They would, however, still be very affluent people by any historical standard or relative measure. I much prefer this approach to a reverse Robin Hood one, although many selfish wealthy individuals doubtless would not. Too bad: Let’s have a healthy debate over this and see where the chips fall. I doubt that, given a viable alternative, most voters would tolerate a situation in which the political power of the very wealthy causes the Social Security system to tank to the massive disadvantage of the great majority of Americans.

Third, if you haven’t noticed, we’ve just suffered yet another government shutdown. It’s not the first in recent years and unless we do something about the generic problem it won’t be the last.

The main underlying problem is that shutdowns and threats of shutdowns have become political footballs in which many ordinary Americans suffer. The two-party monopoly political class doesn’t care that ordinary Americans suffer, or if they do care they’re certainly showing it in a strange way. They care only about how to manipulate partisan optics in their favor.

This puerile gaming constitutes a completely self-inflicted wound. Lots of other democracies occasionally have trouble passing a budget in a timely fashion, but they never suffer government shutdowns because they have legislated automatic continuing resolutions. This fix, simple enough to write into law on a single sheet of paper, keeps the government open at the same basic funding level as before the budget policy crunch until a solution is reached on a new tax and spending package.

Many parliamentary systems like that of the United Kingdom use the Westminster method—no amendments allowed. So they rarely miss passing a budget in a timely fashion, for otherwise the government would fall and elections would ensue. Budgets pass because governmental majorities based on election results guarantee it.

So some have suggested that the United States adopt a no-amendments budget rule, similar to the method used in the past for BRAC and fast-track trade authority. But that doesn’t work in a presidential system. Had Congress been unable to amend the first budget put forth by the current Administration, the result would have been even more destructive than the one we did get.

The Westminster method is a bridge too far for us, but legislating an automatic continuing resolution isn’t. So why doesn’t any Senator or Congressman even suggest it? You tell me.

In normal times it would take Congress a single busy week to fix the early voting morass, solve the Social Security problem, and eliminate the damage of government shutdowns. Guess what: These aren’t normal times.

What do We the People intend to do about it? I can barely wait to find out.

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