On the global stage, no action goes without a significant reaction. Revolts in Tunisia and cries for democracy in Egypt have set off a chain reaction of protests, reforms, and unrest. As is common in American foreign policy, experts identify these reactions under the rubric of “Domino Theory: the idea that sudden change in the leadership of one nation can set off a chain reaction in its neighbors, transforming an entire region.”¹ President Eisenhower originally coined the term in reference to Indochina, claiming that if one country fell to communism, others would quickly follow.

More recently, the Domino Theory has been utilized as an explanation for the growth of democracy. President Bush hoped for a democracy domino effect in the Middle East after the invasion of Iraq, for example, much to the ridicule of the media and his political opponents. But in light of recent events in the Middle East, it appears President Bush’s may yet be fulfilled:if the Middle East is, in fact, a series of dominoes, it appears that Iraq was the first to fall.

In the present moment, as many as nine Middle Eastern countries are pushing away from autocratic regimes towards freer, more democratic governance. But to blame or credit the domino effect seems to minimize the importance of free and individual choice: are countries becoming democratic only because their neighbors are as well? Or are citizens under autocratic regimes seeing real changes and freedoms in their neighbors, and desiring that for themselves?

Winston Churchill once famously said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Since the ancient Republics, it has often been thought that power distributed amongst all people is safer, better, and freer than power confined only to a minority. Politically, it has become a powerful strategy to preach about the freedoms guaranteed by democracy. Americans may not agree on many things, but most believe strongly in the individual liberties that democracy has secured.

When it comes to other countries, however, the true hypocrisy of our faith in democracy is apparent. Americans call for democracy throughout the world, but continue to support autocratic rulers that preserve our economic interests. Especially in the contentious oil-rich regions of the Middle East, politicians would rather have an America-friendly dictator than a democracy of extremists who oppose US interests.

As such, the calls for democracy in the Middle East show us that it is time to practice what we preach. These countries are not simply dominoes falling out of control: they are communities of individuals crying for freedom. To trivialize the desire for freedom by reducing it to a mere force of gravity lessens everything that America stands for. That individuals in the Middle East have chosen to fight for their freedoms, though they may be contrary to American economic interests, is commendable. The United States should congratulate and welcome these new democracies, bearing in mind only the peoples’ best interests, and not our own games to play.

References
1 Tanenhaus, Sam. “The World: From Vietnam to Iraq: The Rise and Fall and Rise of the Domino Theory.” The New York Times, 23 March 2003.

A year after the Health Care Reform Act code named “Obamacare” was written into law, its incendiary effects continue to rage on. Much of the right-wing gripe over the law has focused on the unconstitutionality of government mandates to buy health insurance. But the more important issue, from my perspective, is the system’s failure to support and create incentives for the most crucial components in the delivery of health care: doctors.

Doctors face a slew of financial and administrative obstacles today that prevent them from providing the best possible treatment for their patients. Because the incentives provided for doctors under the health care reform law are drastically misaligned, unless more focus is placed on the issue we will be facing a shortage of 62,000 doctors by 2015, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. This massive projected shortage is only four years away. As Medicaid programs expand under the recent health care reform, only a finite number of doctors will be able to treat everyone, and this will lead to lower quality of care.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, there is currently a shortage of 16,000 primary doctors.¹ One of the driving factors of this shortage is the high cost of medical school, ranging from $120,000 to $150,000 on average.² In order to pay off their scholastic debts, doctors have an incentive to go into high-paying specialties, instead of primary care. Although Obamacare allegedly recognizes the need for more primary care physicians and includes funding for scholarships and loan forgiveness, it ignores a key part of the problem. Crucially, med students who hope to become practicing physicians must undergo a “residency” period. Residency is a stage of graduate medical training in which students or “residents” practice under fully licensed doctors in hospitals and clinics in order to get in-depth training in a specific branch of medicine. Currently, there is cap on residency funding, which means that the law’s efforts to increase the number of medical students via subsidy is useless, since there is a bottleneck in another part of the process to becoming a practicing physician.

Another way the current government strategy is punishing doctors is through Medicare payment cuts. Medicare is a federal program that provides health insurance to 45 million Americans ages 65 and older. Medicare, along with Medicaid, which provides health insurance to people with low-income and resources, are both inefficient and unwieldy programs. Both programs have very low reimbursement rates to physicians, and in January of next year, an additional 30 percent physician payment cut will be instituted. Counterproductively, this gives physicians further incentives to stop accepting Medicare patients or to drop existing ones.

One of the main goals of the health care reform law was to target rising health care costs. Physicians today face the threat of multi-million dollar malpractice lawsuits. There has been no cap on the amount of damages that can be paid out to plaintiffs, and, as a result, physicians practice “defensive medicine:” they order more expensive tests and procedures because they must operate based on liability rather than need. According to industry experts, defensive medicine counts for about 10 percent of health care costs or $100 billion annually. Not only does the law do nothing to reduce this financial burden on physicians, it very often ties their hands in seeking the best treatment for their patients.

While Medicare and other government programs have failed, private health plans continue to innovate new payment systems. Private plans have incentives to compete for better doctors for their networks, and thus they have provide financial incentives in order to achieve better health outcomes. In a report by PriceWaterhouse Cooper, 8 out of the 10 largest community health plans in the country had implemented performance-based pay for doctors.³ In Pennsylvania, the Geisinger Health System has created a “warranty” program for heart surgery; they charge a flat fee for the heart surgery and an additional 90 days of follow-up treatment.⁴ If there is anything that goes wrong after the surgery, the responsibility is on them. Currently, the incentives for quality elsewhere are misaligned. If a physician makes a mistake the first time, they get paid more for the services incurred by a repeat visit. Conversely, these private plans are innovating strategies to cut down on costs while improving the quality of medical treatment.

It is important to acknowledge that not all of the issues of the health care system can be solved by moving it into the private market. A very large segment of our population is uninsured, which both the right and left should acknowledge as a large problem. However, redistributing the incomes of physicians to increase bureaucracies and the already inefficient and unwieldy government health programs is not the answer. There needs to be a realignment of incentives in order to increase the number of primary care doctors in our country, adequately reimburse current doctors for quality care, and untie doctors’ hands so that they can do their jobs.

References
1 Kirch, Darrell G. “How to Fix the Doctor Shortage.” Wall Street Journal. Jan. 4, 2010.
2 Kavilanz, Parija. “Doctors: 5 gripes about the health law.” CNNmoney.com. April 21, 2010.
3 Gottlieb, Scott. “How Obamacare Will Affect Your doctor.” Wall Street Journal. May 12, 2009.
4 Abelson, Reed. “In a Bid for Better Care, Surgery with a Warranty.” The New York Times. May 17, 2007.

APRIL 8 – Congressional leaders have only hours remaining to pass a new budget or face an impending government shutdown. With this swollen leverage, Republicans have the President’s party by the proverbial chestnuts. Facing the crisis of a government shutdown, Congress has a singular opportunity to restore the conservative dream of American “sanity,” passing the most comprehensive budget cuts in recent history.

So what do they do with all this power? Undermining the overriding goal of limiting government spending as much as possible, Republicans instead consent to a virtually unchanged budget proposal which cuts a meager $38 billion next year.¹ Rather than sticking to their guns and holding the Dems to a major spending cut, Congressional Republicans throw their entire leverage into withholding federal funding from “Planned Parenthood and other groups that provide abortions.”²

So congrats, Republicans. Revive the “War Against Women,” fight the good fight.³ Withhold federal spending from the rape victims and the shameless women who, for no better reason than a broken condom, seek family planning assistance. Certainly, the last thing the party should do in this situation is to take a hard stand for budget reform on a significant, national scale, one that will affect millions of Americans. Personal freedom and fiscal responsibility aren’t part of our core ideology or anything, right?

In the face of this gross mishandling, we should not rationalize our representatives’ failures by embarrassingly embellishing the difficulty of the task before them: “only YOU can prevent government spending, congressman.” People do not realize is how easy it is to balance the budget. Try playing around with one of the free simulators like balancethebudget.com. Our fiscal problems are not due to unfeasibility, but simply because of chronically misplaced priorities. Congress absolutely has the ability to balance the budget, but they fail to do so because our representatives cannot agree on where to cut spending, and are flat out unwilling to cut federal funding from the greatest subsidized institutions. Consequently, Friday night should have been a shining opportunity for the Republican party, a moment when they finally had the leverage to get things done.

So why the big letdown? Clearly, social conservatives have the party’s crown jewels in an even stronger vice grip than the Republicans’ traction with the nation as a whole. Friday’s budget legislation should be a wakeup call all of us who identify as conservative. The issue is not about whether or not one agrees with abortion, its legality, or its continued usage. Rather, the issue at stake here is that time and time again, Republicans have a big opportunity to put their money where their mouth is, and instead forfeit their own goals in favor of trivial, mindless social conservatism. Rarely have I felt so strongly that to be conservative and to be a Republican are not the same thing. Six months from now, when we face the same debt we always have and the abortions are trickling to a halt, maybe the party will get its priorities straight. After all, there’s always next time…

References
1 Hulse, Carl. “Budget Deal to Cut $38 Billion Averts Shutdown.” The New York Times, 8 April 2011.
2 Herszenhorn, David M. and Cooper, Helene. “Concessions and Tension, Then a Deal.” The New York Times, 9 April 2011.
3 Cesca, Bob. “The Republican War Against Women.” Huffington Post, 10 February 2011.

As a wave of new Republican lawmakers enters the legislative experience, we look back on a decade of important but misguided legislation. Hopefully these newly elected delegates will avoid some of the missteps made mostly by their conservative predecessors.

1. Iraq Resolution. The war in Iraq has been, in the eyes of most, a huge debacle for the United States. Not only were no weapons of mass destruction found, thus invalidating the government’s rationale for invasion, but thousands of American lives were lost and billions upon billions of tax dollars spent. In a recent interview with Dateline NBC, Bush defended his decision to Matt Lauer. He says that he trusted the intelligence reports that claimed Iraq did indeed have weapons of mass destruction and believed his first obligation was to protect the U.S. But good intentions are no excuse for what was ultimately very bad decision-making.

2. Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001, “USA Patriot Act.” Signed into legislation in October 2001, only a month after the Sep. 11 attacks, by President Bush, the Patriot Act gave the government the authority to wiretap phone lines, delve into financial and medical records, and violate privacy rites in numerous other ways. The bill has been heavily criticized for violation of civil rights, but is nevertheless still in effect as President Obama extended parts of the bill in 2010.

3. Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act. In a decidedly un-Republican move, President Bush extended the Medicare program to include prescription drugs as an entitlement benefit. The bill was highly contested in the House, where some controversy arose over Republican leadership coercing dissenting party members into changing their votes and supporting the legislation. The voting records in both the House and Senate are also surprising in that the vast majority of the bill’s supporters were Republicans (204-25 for House Republicans vs. 16-189 for their House Democrats). Considering that, in just the first 10 years of administration, the changes will cost taxpayers an additional $500 billion, shouldn’t Republicans have voted in a manner that better befits their fiscally conservative roots?

4. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. The health care bill, more often known as the “universal health care” initiative, represents the government’s intrusion into the private health care. The eventual consequences of the legislation are still unknown, but it radically restructures the insurance business and will ultimately require everyone to purchase insurance. The bill can have an especially large impact on young adults, the demographic group with the highest uninsured rate . Young adults often choose to not buy health insurance because they have relatively few health concerns, but will be forced to either obtain insurance or pay a hefty tax under the new policy.

5. No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. While No Child Left Behind received widespread, bi-partisan support when President Bush first introduced it, the legislation is now often viewed as an ineffective policy that detracts from education rather than adds to it. No Child Left Behind was supposed to raise education standards as well as school accountability by administering tests towards the end of each academic year. The intent of the bill is good, but realistically, the standardized testing has caused numerous problems: from teachers teaching to the test, to time wasted preparing for the tests instead of actually learning, to the reduction of arts and music programs.

Trivia: Ron Paul voted against all five of these bills.

With the advent of the 112th Congress, the U.S. House of Representatives will see a Republican majority for the first time since 2006. These newly elected conservatives represent constituencies who were angered by perceived failures of the Obama administration and Democrats at large.
After years of bemoaning the Democratic establishment, this new wave of conservative leaders is under immense pressure to perform. Here, then, are some key items of legislation to keep an eye on.

John Boehner had barely raised his oversized gavel before the Republicans of the House successfully voted for the repeal of the health-care law. The vote has been widely dismissed as a symbolic measure, because it is unlikely that any repeal will pass through the Democratic Senate (and subsequently not be vetoed by the President). But it was the House’s first, quick demonstration of goodwill toward constituents, especially to the growing number of Tea Party supporters. And though this initial flat-out repeal will go nowhere, it is possible that smaller and more piece-meal amendments to the health-care law will take shape in the future.

Republicans will also aim to reduce the deficit and revitalize the economy. These efforts will take multiple forms, but the main war will be fought over reducing both taxation and expenditures.

Kenneth Rogerson, a professor at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy, states, “They will try hard to keep [raising] taxes off the table. [For Republicans], the revenue raising will come from cutting spending,” rather than increasing taxes and maintaining current spending levels. The fight over taxation has already begun with the compromise to extend the Bush tax cuts at the cost ofextending unemployment benefits. Expect to see legislation calling for further reductions in areas such as the capital gains tax and the corporate tax rate, in an effort to stimulate the private market.

Cutting expenditures, however, will be a different and more difficult goal to work toward. “They want to cut spending, but the issue is cutting spending where? This is a big deal for them. They need debt control, deficit control,” says Rogerson.

Republican attempts to cut spending will likely be more hype than substance, as any Republican legislation will call for a freeze to all nondefense discretionary expenditures until 2014. As the current military expenditures comprise over half of all federal discretionary spending, freezes on nondefense discretionary spending will be more lip-service to the budget-reduction cause than anything else.

There has also been considerable talk about job creation, although the mechanism for this remains vague. Since freezes in discretionary spending may offer little in the way of direct relief to struggling business-owners, Republicans will need to devise new strategies to create jobs that present viable alternatives to the Democratic stimulus plan. As it is, there hasn’t been much in the way of a concrete job creation plan.

And while the House Republicans have yet to explain the implementation of their key talking points, the party has already stated its desire for an investigation of the Obama administration. Primary areas for investigation include the debate over the legitimacy of global warming, economic stimulus expenses, and the Obama Administration’s handling of the BP oil spill.

“They’ve made a promise to provide a better check on white house initiatives and a promise is to pay more attention to what the white house proposes,” says Rogerson. “They can do their investigations and cause some great PR headaches for Obama administration.”

All of these efforts, however, will have to contend with a still-Democratic Senate and a Democratic President. Whatever the Republicans wish to accomplish will have to be tempered by that knowledge. Regardless of the outcome, it will be interesting to watchjust how the Republicans of the House and Senate handle this forced bipartisanship and whether they are able to accomplish any of their goals within these constraints.

References:
Anande, Rady. “More than 50% of US Government Spending Goes to the Military.”
Global Research. April 25, 2010. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18852.
“GOP Solution For America.” http://www.gop.gov/solutions.

The average age of Republican congressmen and women is markedly lower than the average age of their Democratic counterparts. As a recent Wall Street Journal article pointed out, Republicans are significantly younger: 54.9 (R) and 60.2 (D) in the House, and 61.4 and 63.1 respectively in the Senate.1

While the age gap in the Senate is not especially remarkable, the over-five-year difference in the House is unusual, with the age divide normally hovering around two years. And not only is this gap strange, it also reverses the age roles that the parties have historically taken.

The Democratic Party has historically been and continues to be favored by younger voters. However, since the 2008 election, the gap between young Democrat and young Republican voters has narrowed.2

In 2008, 30% of Millennials (people born between the late 1970s and early 2000s) identified as Republican/leaning Republican compared to 62% for Democrat/leaning Democrat.3 Now, just two years later, the numbers have shifted to 36% and 56% respectively. While once there was a 32% margin between the parties among young voters, the gap has now shrunk to 20%.4

Interestingly, the numbers for active participants in the electoral debate are skewed largely in favor of Republicans, even amongst younger voters. For the under-30 crowd, only 27% of Democrat/leaning Democrat voters say that they’re giving much thought to the elections compared to 39% of Republican/leaning Republican under-30 voters. These numbers are a drastic change from 2006 where the respective groups were 47% and 31%.

The cause for this apparent shift is largely up for speculation. Undoubtedly, dissatisfaction with the economy plays a role. While Millennials remain the most optimistic about the economic situation, they too have felt the pain of a 10% unemployment rate. The recent surge in younger voters and younger congressmen could reasonably be explained by youthful impatience with Democratic policies that failed to produce results as fast as expected.5

Another potential contributor: the technology curve. Although frequently caricatured as slow to embrace change, the Republican Party has been far quicker than its counterpart to embrace the newest technological media. For example, the National Republican Party has produced 320 twitter posts in the past six months.6 Compare this to the National Democratic Party: 0. To this day, there is not even a twitter account for the National Democratic Party. Furthermore, more Republican congressmen have active accounts on twitter than their Democratic counterparts.7

Whatever the reason, the Republican party, both in Congress and in its voters, seems youthful and fresh in 2011.

References
1 Seib, Gerald F. “In With the New—and Young—Republicans.” Wall Street Journal. January 6, 2011. http://online.wsj.com/
2 “Lagging Youth Enthusiasm Could Hurt Democrats in 2010.” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. October 7, 2010. http://pewresearch.org/
3 “Lagging Youth Enthusiasm,” Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 http://twitter.com/RepublicanGOP
7 “Who’s Winning the Twitter Wars?” Newsweek, December 8, 2009. http://www.newsweek.com/

Despite international sanctions, North Korea continues down the same threatening path regarding its nuclear program. Last November, American nuclear scientist and Stanford professor Siefried S. Hecker visited North Korea where officials showed him a large new facility they had secretly built to enrich uranium.i

The facility, which did not exist when inspectors visited the country in April 2009, is indicative of North Korea’s increasing military aggression. The country is in the midst of a leadership transition from Kim Jong-il to his son Kim Jong-un, who is the grandson of the founder of the country. The new leadership is trying to become more militaristic and to establish itself as one of the world’s nuclear powers.

Last month, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that “North Korea is becoming a direct threat to the U.S.” due to the fact that it will develop an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) within five years.ii North Korea tested its first nuclear devices in 2006, in violation of previous U.N. Security Council sanctions established to punish the country for its continuing enlargement of its nuclear program. They have continually proven unwilling to cooperate with the international community. In April 2009, for example, North Korea ousted U.S. and international inspectors from the country. The country’s 2009 Taepodong 2 test flight fell short of its expected range, but still traveled far enough to hit Hawaii.

In other words, North Korea has maintained a consistently belligerent stance and seems unwilling to back down in the near future. In March 2010, the South Korean government blamed a North Korean torpedo for the explosion and subsequent sinking of a South Korean warship. The explosion claimed the lives of 46 sailors. The United Nations Security Council voted to condemn the sinking of the warship but elected not to place the blame on North Korea, due to resistance from China. Later, in November 2010, North Korea shelled a South Korean island after it claimed that South Korea had fired first. The South claimed that they had engaged in an artillery test, but that it had not been directed toward the North.i

As this credible threat looms larger, the Obama administration continues to cower in the corner. According to the 2010 U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense Review, U.S. missile defense capabilities “exist in numbers that are only modest in view of the expanding regional missile threat.”iii Thus, the government has allowed North Korea to gain the upper hand. In the March 2010 warship attack and November 2010 shelling, the U.S. and South Korea could not respond with adequate force because they feared the possibility of the escalation of conflict.

The Obama administration needs to take concrete measures to secure our country and invest in technology. Allegedly, new talks on North Korea will be initiated when Chinese President Hu Jintao makes a state visit to the U.S. from Jan. 18-21.iv Hopefully these talks will be more successful than the stalled six-nation which in 2005 produced an agreement for North Korea to dismantle its nuclear programs in exchange for economic aid and diplomatic concessions. South Korea has shown resistance to engaging in more talks with North Korea, saying that the neighboring country has repeatedly shown aggression followed by a request for talks and economic aid. Obama hopes to convince China, North Korea’s largest political and economic supporter, to take a harder line against the rogue country. China in turn claims that its influence over North Korea is limited and it fears that withdrawal of aid from the nation will result in a collapse that will destabilize the entire region.iv

Against this bleak landscape, it is crucial that the U.S. enlists help from the international community in order to ensure that North Korea’s threat is contained. Japan has made many technological advances in missile defense strategies and the Obama administration should be utilizing these further. Additionally, the administration should push South Korea to join in a comprehensive regional missile defense network along with Japan and the U.S. Limited sanctions and negotiations have not worked with North Korea in the past, and therefore, the U.S. needs to change its strategy in dealing with the unpredictable country. The U.S. should refuse to accept China’s hollow excuses for backing North Korea politically and financially. And if China refuses to take a harder line and withdraw all financial support to the rogue country, the U.S. must be willing to send its own troops to the region to ensure our country’s security.

i The New York Times. countriesandterritories/northkorea/index.html>
ii Wall Street Journal.
iii Ballistic Missile Defense Review. < http://www.defense.gov/bmdr/ >
iv Washington Post.

by Matthew Leonard

President Obama and the Democrat majorities in Congress have amassed $3 trillion in deficit spending in just twenty-three months since taking the reins of Washington in 2008.[i]

The Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), a nonprofit watch group, think the president’s fiscal strategy for the country spells doom, and they have unleashed a public awareness campaign to express their indignation.[ii] The 60 second message set 20 years into the future features a Communist Chinese professor lecturing an auditorium of college students on the history of failed civilizations.  In subtitled Mandarin, he explains all the great empires of history collapsed because their leaders turned away from the principles that made them great.  He points to the United States as the most recent example of a nation that tried to “tax and spend” its way out of a recession, nationalizing industries and health care.  The professor quips, “Now they work for us,” and the students erupt into laughter.[iii]

The effectiveness of the message depends on the American public connecting the dots between debt and lost autonomy.  CAGW argues the United States government cannot continue to spend more money than it collects because borrowing subjugates future generations to the whim of the financier, which in this case is China.  CAGW recognizes cutting federal spending inflicts short term economic pain on those segments of society accustomed to government support, but the alternative is the likelihood of lost national sovereignty.  What happens, CAGW asks, when no country will fund our deficits?  What happens when the United States cannot pay the interest on its debt?  The U.S. would be forced to declare bankruptcy and to opt to pay China a portion of the debt or none at all — either option presenting an international diplomacy disaster.  It is a sobering truth that CAGW condenses into one minute of hard-hitting prescience.

Implicit in their campaign is the alternative to the current crisis, namely, the same low taxation and limited regulation that founded America’s rise to prominence.  Time and again the American economy has flourished when this country has reduced the size of government, cut taxes, and eliminated burdensome regulation.  The choice is open again to Congress and the administration to pursue a path of entrepreneurship and creativity that ensures the future vitality of the country and bequeaths prosperity instead of bondage.  But, politics is an ugly business.  Turning around the nation’s staggering profligacy will take the same grit that it took to settle the west, rebuild from the Civil War, and mend the wounds of two world wars.

The first step in fixing the problem is stopping the bleeding.  Government must stop spending more than it collects.  However, a balanced budget imposes difficult choices regarding entitlements.  The massive unfunded liabilities of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are on track to consume the entire federal budget and leave nothing for interest payments on the debt, defense, education, or anything else.  Social Security was originally designed to supplement retirement income by taxing the wages of younger workers to pay toward the income of retirees.  When Social Security began, the average lifespan of an American worker was nearly a decade shorter than it is today.[iv] Moreover, the number of retirees relative to young workers has increased several fold.[v] These dynamics magnified by the increased benefits Congress has granted retirees over the last 50 years have combined to create the current fiscal dilemma.  The only solution available to bureaucrats under the current scenario is raising taxes, instituting price controls, and denying care—all of which are virtually exhausted at this point.

Fixing the budget morass requires Congress to return entitlement programs to their original intent.  Social Security can effectively supplement a worker’s retirement without requiring payments from the federal budget by converting the program from its current Ponzi scheme setup to one of individually held savings accounts.  Not only would privatizing Social Security eliminate the future liabilities burning a hole in the federal budget, it would also pay workers more than what they now receive from the program.[vi] The Cato Institute has a library of studies that show, had the money been privately invested, the return on the Social Security taxes a worker pays would be significantly higher than what he can expect under the current system.[vii] Moreover, individually owned accounts are part of a worker’s estate that can be passed onto heirs, a wealth producing advantage currently unavailable to many of the nation’s poorest citizens.[viii]

Personal ownership is also the answer to the country’s health care challenges.  For the poor and the elderly, Congress should convert the current policy of subsidizing health care benefits to one of supplementing private insurance policies for those who can’t afford them.  Funding individually owned health savings accounts for poor citizens to cover co-payments would also negate their out-of-pocket expenses while creating an incentive to be cost conscious and to conserve the money in their account, all the while substantially reducing the liability of the federal government for health care.  In addition to these policy improvements, Congress should allow individuals to purchase medical insurance across state lines to increase the competition nationally.  Insurance companies should also be allowed to sell policies free of state mandated coverage to increase the variety of policies available and to reduce the cost of bare-bones and catastrophic insurance.  Combined, these changes in policy would assure widespread access to care while closing the hole in the federal budget.

There are solutions to the problem of deficit spending and the debt facing the country.  The Citizens Against Government Waste want to restore the hope of future prosperity that Americans have enjoyed for generations.  There is no cause for despair, only the need for principled politicians who embrace the virtue of free enterprise and individual responsibility.  For in the end, Americans would prefer children learn Mandarin for its cultural intrigue, not in order to talk to their boss.

[ii] Citizens Against Government Waste. http://www.cagw.org/about-us/missionhistory.html.

[iii] “Chinese Professor.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN-LFK6fa44.

[iv] Melissa M. Favreault and Richard W. Johnson. “Raising Social Security’s Retirement Age.” Urban Institute, http://www.urban.org/publications/412167.html.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Gokhale, Jagadeesh. “Social Security Status Quo versus Reform: What’s the Tradeoff?” Cato Institute, http://www.cato.org/pubs/ssps/html/ssp35/ssp35index.html.

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] Ibid.

Watch out, Ben Bernanke.

Ron Paul, the 2008 Presidential candidate and Texas Congressman (and Duke Med grad), may become the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology on the House Financial Services Committee.  For Paul who has long advocated for the dissolution of the Federal Reserve, leading the committee responsible for overseeing the Fed, along with U.S. financial policies, represents a golden opportunity.

Here are three good questions concerning Ron Paul and the Fed for the next year:

Why does Ron Paul want to dissolve the Federal Reserve?  Paul, a strong supporter of Austrian economics, believes that the Federal Reserve destabilizes the natural business cycle. Austrian economics has strong ties with laissez-faire and the free-market and, perhaps not so coincidentally, is often associated with Libertarian political candidates.

Most recently, Paul spoke out against the Fed’s decision to buy $600 billion worth of Treasuries in an effort to lower interest rates.[i] Theoretically, if the Federal Reserve decides to buy Treasuries, the increased demand for Treasuries will cause the price to rise and the yield to fall, and interest rates will be kept low as more capital is injected.[ii] Paul argues that the Fed’s actions, part of a strategy generally termed “quantitative easing,” will eventually lead to a total devaluation of the dollar.[iii] If the Federal Reserves continues to put more dollars into circulation by buying bonds, existing dollars are devalued because the supply of dollars is now greater.[iv]

Paul has been a longtime supporter of the gold standard and would like the U.S. government to move away from fiat money, government issued money that has no intrinsic value, and return to the gold standard.  The merits of returning to the gold standard have been heavily debated: it is true that money backed by gold is more difficult to manipulate (one would not be able to simply print more money because the quantity of gold remains constant).  But, the lack of flexibility in the finite supply of gold keeps the supply of money rigid and can lead to depressions and deflation.[v]

What he has done in the past regarding the Fed? Paul submitted legislation to the House that proposed increased oversight of the Fed in 2009.  The bill, titled “Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009” and part of a wider “Audit the Fed” initiative backed by Paul, gained significant support and had 319 co-sponsors, and was ultimately passed by the House.  However, by the time voting took place, the bill had been revised, with much of the original intent phased out.  As a result, Paul actually voted against the legislation.[vi] So while Paul has demonstrated the ability to introduce new ideas and draw attention to them, he may not have the mainstream support necessary to see these ideas carried out.

What does Paul want to do if he becomes an overseer of the Fed? Increased transparency remains Paul’s primary goal if he were to gain oversight of the Federal Reserve. [vii] Increased transparency means that the Fed’s financial transactions and dealings with private corporations and institutional investors would become public information.  Some have argued that the Fed needs to remain independent from Congress because a relationship between the two bodies could lead to political influences on important financial decisions that should be non-partisan.[viii] On the other hand, it has also been argued that lack of oversight has allowed the Fed to spend irresponsibly and given Fed chairman Bernanke too much power.

We’ll have to wait until the next term of Congress to see how this plays out.

[ii] http://seekingalpha.com/article/235002-how-qe-works

[iii] http://www.ronpaul.com/2009-05-16/ron-paul-on-austrian-economics-vs-keynesian-economics/

[iv] http://seekingalpha.com/article/234666-9-reasons-why-quantitative-easing-is-bad-for-the-u-s-economy

[v] http://seekingalpha.com/article/132166-gold-standard-and-the-definition-of-price-stability

[vi] http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/12/11/qa-ron-paul-explains-why-he-cant-vote-for-his-own-fed-audit/

[vii] http://www.cnbc.com/id/40013227/

[viii] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/23/AR2009072303004.html

Edit: As of 12/18/2010, both the House and the Senate have officially voted to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Congratulations to the LGBT community on this resounding victory!

The U.S. military’s longstanding ban on gay servicemen (and women) is over — for the moment. On Sep. 9, U.S. District Court Justice Virginia Phillips called for a “permanent injunction” barring the enforcement of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy.[i]

DADT, crafted by the Clinton Administration in 1993, is the most lenient treatment of homosexuality in the military to date. The law provides that a servicemember will be discharged if he/she has “engaged in, attempted to engage in, or solicited another to engage in a homosexual act or acts.” Additionally, discharge is required if the person has “stated that he or she is a homosexual or bisexual, or words to that effect,” or if the person has married or attempted to marry a person “known to be of the same biological sex.” The policy has been coined “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” because it protects gay servicemembers from discharge, provided they are not open about their homosexuality.[ii]

In her ruling in Log Cabin Republicans v. United States, a case originally filed in 2004, Justice Phillips called for an end to the policy on First and Fifth Amendment grounds. She argued, in the memorandum opinion, that “the Act’s restrictions on speech are broader than reasonably necessary to protect the Government’s interest,” demanding that First Amendment rights take precedence.[iii] Following the trial proceedings and the filed testimony of numerous servicemembers and experts, including General Colin Powell, the court ruled that allowing gay people to openly serve in the military would neither undermine “unit cohesion” nor “military readiness.”[iv] Thus, because no overwhelming state interest in maintaining DADT can be determined, the plaintiffs’ First and Fifth Amendment rights must take priority.

This case is the latest and most potent iteration in a decade of promising reform on behalf of LGBTQ. Begun in 2003 by the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which ruled that state laws prohibiting sodomy are unconstitutional, the last 10 years have gone a long way towards ending discrimination against homosexuals. Perry v. Schwarzenegger, a District Court case decided in August of 2010, similarly ruled that California Proposition 8, a law prohibiting same-sex marriage, was unconstitutional.

The legal argumentation at work in each case is strikingly similar. All U.S. citizens are entitled to “Due Process” of law, guaranteed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Due Process means, essentially, that to take away your rights, the government has to have a good reason. The more “fundamental” the right, the harsher “scrutiny” with which the courts will inspect any policy that curtails it. In order to withstand scrutiny, any law restricting rights must serve a compelling “government interest,” otherwise it is unconstitutionally restrictive. In deciding that anti-sodomy laws, laws banning same-sex marriage, and the military’s DADT policy were all unconstitutional, the courts have simultaneously ruled that there is no government interest in continuing to support those policies.

In other words, the legal conclusion is: gay rights don’t hurt anyone. The government, as a purveyor of rights, does more harm than good by discriminating against LGBTQ. But legal reform is only half of the battle. Even though Brown v. Board of Education outlawed the “Separate but equal” doctrine in 1954, de facto segregation continued undiminished well into the 1960s and following the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968.

The issue in Log Cabin Republicans v. United States is not simply a question of whether gay rights are violated by open homosexuality meriting military discharge. DADT is a constitutional issue because many servicemembers were quietly persecuted for their sexual orientation, but were afraid to report the abuse to their commanding officers for fear of discharge under the policy.

One particularly compelling story cited in the memorandum opinion comes from Naval Officer Joseph Rocha. While serving in the Middle East, Rocha’s sexuality came to light when he refused to copulate with a prostitute. Labeling him gay, his commanding officer “ordered all of the other men in the unit to beat Rocha on the latter’s nineteenth birthday…had Rocha leashed like a dog…tied to a chair, force-fed dog food, and left in a dog kennel covered with feces.”[v] Rocha’s human rights were repeatedly violated during his time in office and he never reported the mistreatment, because to do so would result in his discharge from the Navy under DADT.

His story is only one of many, but as Justice Phillips points out, Rocha was not an anonymous serviceman: he was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, and the Navy Expert Rifleman Medal during his time in office. DADT, in addition to simply curtailing the rights of LGBTQ, commits them to experience discrimination in silence. But will that discrimination vanish along with the policy? And if the government has no compelling interest in subjugating gay Americans, does it not have an interest in protecting their rights?

Evidently not. President Obama, with midterm elections on the horizon, requested that Justice Phillips halt her injunction against DADT, on the basis of military readiness. On Oct. 20, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to suspend the injunction against DADT until further notice.[vi] The court’s decision that DADT does nothing to help military readiness, after extensive review of the available military documentation, didn’t faze the current administration or the federal appeals court.

Despite the fact that the repeal of DADT was one of Obama’s campaign points, he has insisted that the reform take place in Congress, and not through the courts. Democrats tried to repeal DADT legislatively in September 2010, only to be denied by a Republican filibuster. If they couldn’t get the job done in September, how does Obama plan to repeal DADT in November, with a Republican majority in the House?

Ironically, this situation pits the GOP group as the champion of gay rights against the first liberal president of the twenty-first century. The Log Cabin Republicans, founded in 1978, is the nation’s only Republican gay rights group. President Obama, on the other hand, was elected on a campaign platform demanding the “implementation of policies to allow qualified men and women to serve openly regardless of sexual orientation.”[vii] The same President Obama who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for his efforts to strengthen, among other things, “cooperation between peoples.”[viii]

Admittedly, legal reform is not tantamount to comprehensive social change. Much to the chagrin of those who elected Obama in 2008, change takes time. But Brown v. Board was an important step in the right direction. Roe v. Wade was a crucial decision for women’s rights. And Log Cabin Republicans v. US should be celebrated as the current pinnacle of LGBTQ legal reform, rather than bemoaned for being ahead of its time. Sometimes, social power requires juridical power. Instead of condemning Justice Phillips for doing Congress’s job for them, Log Cabin Republicans v. US should be lauded as the most concrete evidence to date that all people are equal under the law.

References

[i] Log Cabin Republicans v. United States (2010). http://online.logcabin.org/assets/pdf/log-cabin-order.pdf.

[ii] LCR v. U.S.

[iii] LCR v. U.S.

[iv] LCR v. U.S.

[v] LCR v. U.S.

[vi] Tiron, Roxana. “Gates issues stricter rules for discharges of gay, lesbian troops.” The Hill. http://thehill.com/news-by-subject/defense-homeland-security/125339-gates-issues-stricter-rules-for-discharges-of-gay-troops.

[vii] Obama Campaign Holds Policy Briefing on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The Advocate. http://www.advocate.com/Politics/Election/Obama_Campaign_Holds_Policy_Briefing_on_DADT/.

[viii] The Nobel Peace Prize 2009 :Barack Obama. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/.