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Here we propose a theory that casts some early rays of light onto the policy consequences of polarization in Congress. Building from a simple theoretical model in which the president seeks to promote his preferred policies in the Senate (see Snyder, 1991; Groseclose, 1996), we assess differences in the chamber’s preference distribution – from normal to unanimous to bimodal – as well as the ‘political capital’ at the president’s disposal.2 Results show that absent the president, ideological polarization makes amassing the votes needed to beat the status quo difficult, so gridlock frequently prevails. The same is true when the president lacks political capital to spend. However, when endowed with abundant capital, facing a polarized legislature enables presidents to pass policies closer to their ideal than would have been possible in an assembly characterized by greater ideological homogeneity. Hence the familiar prediction of blanket ‘gridlock’ is overblown. Instead, comparative statics show that the consequences of ideological polarization in Congress are conditional: they depend on the nature of the preference distribution, the involvement of the president, and the political capital at his disposal.

Fortunately for those inside the West Wing, some researchers paint a more optimistic picture regarding presidents’ potential for passing important planks of their legislative agenda. Covington et al. (1995), Barrett and Eshbaugh-Soha (2007), Edwards III and Barrett (2000), Kellerman (1984), Light (1982), Peterson (1990), and Rudalevige (2002) all observe that presidents secure greater support for their ‘priority’ items, and when they exert ‘effort’ pushing them. In addition, Covington (1987) concludes that White House officials can occasionally win greater support among legislators by working behind the scenes, while Canes-Wrone (2001, 2005) shows that presidents can induce support from a recalcitrant Congress by strategically ‘going public’ when advocating popular proposals (see also Kernell (1993)). Sullivan (1987, 1988) finds that presidents can amass winning congressional coalitions by changing members’ positions as a bill moves through the legislative process.

At the end of 2016, after the election of President Donald Trump, Republicans across the country were elated by the perceived inevitable, imminent repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Democrats mirrored these expectations with despair.

As I wrote at the time, however, political realities and policy complexities have a way of colliding with such irrational exuberance. The infamous demise of the “Repeal and Replace” campaign bore out these verities.

Title: Someone needs to say it: Medicare-for-all is a pipe dream

Medicare-for-all is guaranteed to frighten many among the vast majority of Americans who already have health coverage. It would require a disastrously unpopular tax increase on the middle class. And it would unite a world of the special interests against us.

Fresh off securing the first big upgrade to Obamacare since its 2010 passage, Democrats are eyeing a much heavier and politically riskier lift: creating a government-run public health insurance option.

President Joe Biden campaigned on the idea, touting it as an achievable reform that would bring down costs without upending private health insurance. It consistently polls well across the political spectrum.

We wholeheartedly support any policies that would make our deeply flawed health care system more equitable and efficient. However, polling data do not reveal sufficient public support for Medicare for All to justify the claim that it is “now within the realm of political possibility.” Investing hard-earned political capital in a single-payer health plan without a popular mandate is a risky political strategy. Rather than attempt to justify massive tax increases and cancellation of millions of private insurance plans to a polarized US public, the new US House Democratic leadership should instead put forth a progressive agenda that targets the known causes of health disparities through poverty alleviation, housing assistance, and criminal justice reform, among other policies to advance health equity.

Defining “Medicare For All”

The GOP has a fresh strategy to attack Social Security: pitting older Americans against people with disabilities. The Social Security trust fund supports retired workers, while the Disability Insurance Trust Fund provides for working people of all ages who become too disabled to work full time. According to the Social Security Administration, the trust fund has enough money to pay full benefits until 2034, but the disability insurance fund will need to be replenished next year in order to avoid cuts of approximately 20 percent for its 8.9 million recipients. Congress can keep both funds solvent through 2033 by simply shifting a small percentage of money from the trust to the disability insurance fund, according to the Social Security Administration. It has done this type of reallocation routinely almost a dozen times to shore up both funds. But one of the first actions of the new House majority was to pass a rule change by a vote of 234-168 prohibiting any reallocation that isn’t accompanied by cuts to recipients or increases in revenue. Rep. Sam Johnson, R- Texas, a chief proponent of the measure, said he is trying to keep the “fraud-plagued” disability program from “raiding” the retirement fund. This assertion is nonsense. Disability insurance fraud rates are miniscule. A 2013 Government Accountability Office report concluded that only about 0.4 percent of beneficiaries may receive payments they don’t deserve. But get ready to hear politicians like Johnson peddle sensational anecdotes about scammers faking disabilities so they can collect payments. The GOP can only achieve its elusive dream of gutting and privatizing Social Security by first creating an imaginary crisis. Don’t fall for it.

Rep. John Larson wants to reform Social Security, improving the program’s benefits and solvency, but is facing steep resistance from the GOP.

For years, as a member of the minority party, Larson, D-1st District, could not get traction on his ambitious plan. But after Democrats won control of the U.S. House last year, everything changed and Larson expects his Social Security 2100 Act to pass the chamber after Congress returns from its summer break in September.

Dear Weary Worker: I don’t suggest changing your strategy due to fears of Social Security not being there – it will be. Although the program is facing some future financial issues, the very worst that could happen is that everyone’s benefits might be cut by 20 percent or more if Congress fails to act to restore the program to solvency before the Trust Funds are depleted in the early to mid-2030s.

In my opinion, Congress will not likely fail to act because to do so would be political suicide. The fact is, they already know how to fix Social Security’s financial issues; they just lack the bipartisan spirit and political fortitude to do so until they extract every possible ounce of political capital from the issue. So, it’s largely a matter of how long Congress will wait to reform the program.

On Wednesday, Larson reintroduced the Social Security 2100 Act, a bill that first emerged nearly seven years ago that now has nearly 200 Democratic co-sponsors in the House. Companion legislation was introduced in the Senate last year.

With more Democratic sponsors than there are Republican members and already nearly enough support to claim a simple majority to pass out of the House, Democrats could jam the 2100 Act through, where it would likely be dead on arrival in the Senate.

One of the reasons that reform is difficult is because if either Democrats or Republicans advance a Social Security reform bill, it is easy for the other party to oppose it for political advantage. It is a truism, therefore, that Social Security reform must be bipartisan. And today somehow, despite our polarized politics, Joe Biden and Donald Trump actually share a Social Security plan. This could be good.

Except their plan is to do nothing. Under their “Do-Nothing” plan, Social Security will be insolvent in nine years. As required by law, solvency must be restored by benefit cuts, in this case, of 24 percent. These dramatic cuts will double poverty among the elderly. Alternatively, Congress could increase the payroll tax as much as 27 percent — which is highly regressive and punishes poorer people — to avoid this outcome.

Are there serious plans out there that you could see forming the basis of some sort of agreement?

Right now? I think the answer to that is, no. There are two main plans out there. There is a proposal called the Social Security 2100 Act. It’s been co-sponsored by maybe 90 percent of House Democrats. It’s as close to a consensus reform bill among Democrats as you’re ever going to find. And that not only pays full promised benefits to everyone in perpetuity, it actually increases benefits for everyone. It finances that by raising taxes and raising taxes some more. They’ve all gotten on the bandwagon, “We like this bill” and all that. The reason the Social Security 2100 Act never came up for a committee markup when Democrats controlled the house, much less going up for a full vote, is that they know that raising taxes that much is a political loser, just as fixing the system entirely by cutting benefits is a political loser. If you’re at a period where you don’t have to do anything, it’s just much easier politically to kick the can down the road.

James G. Chappel is Gilhuly Family Associate Professor of History at Duke University. The Froze Politics of Social Security, Feb 13, 2023 dmr

Despite this dire situation, there has not been a congressional vote, even in committee, on major reforms to Social Security since 1983. This has not been for lack of trying, at least among Democrats. In both the House and the Senate, there are serious bills, with significant support, to salvage the program. The most well-developed, known as Social Security 2100, has more than 200 cosponsors in the House. It’s an audacious bill, planning to expand Social Security benefits for the first time since the 1970s, focusing especially on the caregiving workforce. And in the Senate, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have put forth an even more ambitious plan, which would raise taxes and benefits while expanding the program’s solvency for decades. Still, the odds of anything happening with these bills are low, at least for now. In addition to the expected Republican intransigence, Democrats themselves are not united. The relevant division is between a politics of incrementalism and a politics of bold reform and expansion. Social Security 2100 is on the less ambitious end of the spectrum, especially as it has recently been rewritten to keep Biden’s promise of not raising taxes on people making less than $400,000 per year. As such, the bill does little to address the solvency issue. The Social Security Expansion Act in the Senate is bolder and does more to address both equity and solvency—but few Democratic senators have cosponsored the bill, leaving it oceans away from the required votes. For all their differences, these bills in the aggregate show that Social Security is perfectly capable of providing a vehicle for progressive welfare reform: any of them would do wonders, most obviously for seniors and disabled workers. But all of us, too, would benefit from knowing that something like a livable income was headed our way at the tail end of a serpentine labor market that has almost completely stopped providing traditional pensions. Despite all this, the enormous energy in recent years around expanding Medicare and Medicaid has not been matched by attention to Social Security: the politics around it have languished. Why? One major reason is that Social Security has a marketing problem. It seems like a boring, wonky program, and one that is in any case unlikely to survive much longer. (A 2015 Gallup poll showed that more than half of Americans did not expect to receive benefits when they retired.) This situation has left the door open for conservatives, who have been baying to privatize Social Security, or at least cut benefits, since the 1970s. However impractical and unpopular this idea is, it is at least an ethos. And it has kept liberals on the defensive: again and again, they rest content by (rightly) showing that privatization would be a disaster and then insisting that Social Security can be “saved,” perhaps with some tinkering to keep it solvent.

Mark J. Warshawsky, 3-21-2022, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, "Reforming Social Security," American Enterprise Institute, https://www.aei.org/articles/reforming-social-security/, KL

Social Security reform is no longer in vogue these days, even on the right. Across the political spectrum, ignoring the program’s fiscal challenges and design flaws is now taken to be politically astute. It isn’t hard to see why: Turning a blind eye to [Ignoring] problems that can only be addressed by expending political capital has short-term appeal. Being irresponsible is easy — until it comes time to pay the price. While we ignore the program’s ills, that price keeps growing. Social Security’s finances continue to worsen, as has the overall fiscal capacity of the federal government. Labor markets and social and demographic conditions continue to diverge from the assumptions that originally underpinned the program, and policymakers continue to miss opportunities to build considerable savings for the poor through financial markets. But the past few years were not wasted entirely. I served as deputy commissioner for retirement and disability policy at the Social Security Administration (SSA) from July 2017 through January 2021, where my colleagues and I were able to develop some ideas, data, and research to inform future reform efforts and strengthen Social Security. Our research reveals that Social Security plays a relatively smaller role in the financial security of older Americans than commonly thought, making reform easier from a policy perspective, if not politically. No such reform is remotely likely in the Biden era. Would-be reformers should use this time to prepare the ground for essential arguments to come. It is worthwhile, therefore, to review the design and fiscal condition of Social Security, account for the changing character of retirement security in America, and consider a potential path for, and the nature of, reform.

1. Shore up funding As I mentioned above, the biggest problem facing Social Security right now is that the OASDI trust fund will soon be out of money. When that happens, the Social Security Administration (SSA) only expects to be able to cover 77% of scheduled benefits. The main way the SSA funds Social Security[1] is through payroll taxes. Individuals and employers each must pay a 6.2% Social Security tax on their earned wages. Self-employed individuals must pay a 12.4% Social Security tax. The idea is that you pay into the program while you are younger and working full time and then collect benefits once you retire or are close to retirement. But there is a limit on how much of an individual's earnings can be taxed for Social Security. In 2023, that limit will be $160,200. These payroll taxes, however, haven't been enough to cover scheduled benefits, which is why the OASDI trust fund has been drained. One idea by many Democratic politicians is to increase the amount of an individual's earnings that can be taxed to $250,000 or more. Biden does seem to agree with the idea in general, noting in his plan that he wants high-earning Americans to pay the same taxes on their earnings as middle-class families do. But he hasn't gone as far as some Democratic proposals and has also said that "nobody earning less than $400,000 a year will pay an additional penny in new taxes. Nobody." Former SSA Deputy Commissioner Andrew G. Biggs earlier this year stated in an op-ed that Biden's position could actually lead to a bipartisan solution. However, big tax hikes are usually difficult to push through Congress, so if something like this is going to happen, I suspect it's going to take a lot of political capital.

Some unions don’t think that the Green New Deal can pull off its pro-union agenda. But others are optimistic.

The UMWA and other energy unions are skeptical that the Green New Deal builds a bridge sturdy enough to carry workers over to a future with cleaner energy. While there’s language about a jobs guarantee, there is no mechanism in the resolution to fund those jobs nor any specifics about how much they will pay, where they will be, and what benefits will be provided. The average starting salary for a coal mine worker is $60,000, while the average salary for a solar installer is $53,000, so for some workers, a straight switch would be a downgrade.

It took a half-century of growing inequality, a massive recession, a spoiler primary campaign by a self-proclaimed socialist, and the election of a quasi-fascist, but big ideas are here again for Democrats. Medicare for All, paid family leave, tuition-free college—not since the late 1960s and ’70s has the Democratic Party had such a bold, liberal agenda. Now, likely presidential candidates are even talking about job guarantees and universal basic income. The future seems left indeed.

But before assuming that anything is possible, it is worth considering just how bad things had to get for these goals, many of which were first proposed long ago, to be revived—and what destroyed these causes in the past, when the progressive coalition was much stronger. Major reform of the kind now under consideration has only passed in times of extreme crisis. (Think about how much of the liberal Democratic state was enacted in a mere six years, shared between the New Deal and Great Society.) And while the party appears to have decided to “lurch left” to win back the blue-collar whites who voted for Donald Trump after voting for Barack Obama, there is no shortage of  demonstrating that American economic policy has long been well to the right of where voters actually want it.

On the surface, the politics seem as stuck as ever. Senator Cory Booker, the New Jersey Democrat, introduced bills in 2018 and 2019 to set up pilot programs in 15 cities and regions that would offer training and a guaranteed job to all who sought one, at federal expense. Both efforts failed. And after progressive Democrats in Congress proposed a federal jobs program as part of their Green New Deal in 2019, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 House Republican, asked, “Are you willing to give the government and some faceless bureaucrats who sit in Washington, D.C., the authority to make those choices for your life?” But when it comes to government intervention in the economy, the political parameters have shifted. A system that balked at passing a $1 trillion stimulus after the financial crisis of 2008 had no problem passing a $2.2 trillion rescue last March, and $900 billion more in December. President Biden is pushing to supplement that with a $1.9 trillion package. “The bounds of policy discourse widened quite a bit as a consequence of the pandemic,” said Michael R. Strain, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. On the left, there is a sense of opportunity to experiment with the unorthodox. “A job guarantee per se may not be necessary or politically feasible,” said Lawrence Katz, a Harvard professor who was the Labor Department’s chief economist in the Clinton administration. “But I would love to see more experimentation.”

A third political economy concern is the productivity of guaranteed employment jobs. A JGP will be sold politically to the public on grounds that JGP workers are productive. However, delivering productivity requires organisational and managerial capacity that the public sector may not have. In that case, there is a risk that such jobs become perceived as “make work”. That would play into the political economy of animus to government, and it could boomerang back in the form of politics opposed to government provision of public goods and services and opposed to macroeconomic stabilisation policy. Careful what you wish for In sum, the debate over JGPs is fraught. Even those who support the aims of a JGP, and are favourably inclined to activist public policy, may still be wary of a JGP for economic and political economy reasons. Implementing a JGP will require political capital and the right political conditions. It might be better to use that favorable moment to introduce new policies (e.g. a UBI) and upgrade a collection of existing different policy modalities that together deliver the same or more benefits without the political economy risks.

Every administration since the Progressive Era has sought to create more jobs through the promise of tax breaks to businesses; subsidizing job opportunities; infrastructure, tax, and housing incentives; and leveraging resources from the private sector. But these incremental reforms have not fixed the broken talent marketplace that now exists in our country, nor have they corrected the mismatches in the labor market. While political constraints may prevent a large federal jobs guarantee program from becoming law anytime soon, it behooves both Democrats and Republicans — whether already in or aspiring to office — to create and champion local and state job-retraining initiatives that could be used as the foundation for a more comprehensive jobs program in the future. Consider what a localized, guaranteed job-retraining program could look like. Modeled after the GI Bill, states could use a combination of private-sector funding and a portion of workforce and training money to create a Dignity of Work Fund. These competitive grants would provide funding to regions and localities to offer free training to displaced Americans at community colleges that would prepare them for local in-demand middle-skills jobs. Employers would help design curriculum and collaborate with community colleges and proven training providers like Year Up, a national job-training organization that works to catapult opportunity youth — young adults who are out of school and out of work — from minimum wage jobs to meaningful careers in a single year. Our country’s community colleges are often the easiest place for Americans seeking opportunity to find a training provider. Guaranteeing job retraining at our community colleges — a postsecondary system with substantial investments in work-based learning — would be both smart policy and good politics, immediately improving career pathways for all community college students and appealing to the majority of Americans who support making college tuition free. A Dignity of Work Fund would also influence training programs across the country to become more effective at preparing Americans for jobs. It would do so by demonstrating the need for public funding for market-based practices and programs aligned to employer demand. Just as President Obama’s Race to the Top program incentivized states to change their education policies when applying for funds, these competitive grants would incentivize regional workforce development boards to become more accountable for producing market-based outcomes. This allows employment outcomes — not compliance provisions — to be used as the metric for negotiating training provider contracts and awarding any future public funding. States that implement a Dignity of Work Fund could also launch hiring campaigns focused on mobilizing statewide employers to make changes to legacy hiring practices, such as removing four-year degree requirements as a proxy for hire. With over two-thirds of the job openings in this country created by 2020 expected not to require a bachelor’s degree, this campaign could expand the economy for Americans who have not finished college — a key constituency of President Trump’s base. It would also increase the likelihood of reaching the 5 million apprenticeships goal the Trump administration embraced last year. To be sure, competitive grant programs would not serve every American looking for gainful employment; greater federal investment would eventually be needed. For that, we would likely need a president and Congress willing to use all available political capital to implement a federal guaranteed jobs program.