Cover photo credit: Sam Levitan, samlevitan.com. All contents copyright Š2008-2014 by Virginia Policy Review and its contributors. Contributors retain all rights to their work. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written consent of the Virginia Policy Review and its contributors. Nothing in this publication represents the ideas, beliefs, or positions of the Virginia Policy Review, its staff, or the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. All statements are strictly the ideas, beliefs, or positions of the authors.
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Volume VIII
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Issue 2
A student-run journal of:
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Fall 2014
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From the Editor !
Dear Reader, Policy schools like numbers. We like numbers that tell us about externalities, net present values, and residuals. With the midterm elections approaching next month, I thought I’d share a few other numbers: 80, 906, 113, 165, 82 These may not be the typical statistics we prefer, but they’re important to highlight here nonetheless. During his first presidential campaign, President Harry S. Truman famously defamed the 80th United States Congress as “Do Nothing.” The 80th Congress passed 906 pieces of legislation. Skip ahead to today’s 113th Congress. As of this writing, our current elected representatives have sent a total of 165 bills to President Obama. Not surprisingly, 82 percent of the country disapproves of their job according to Gallup. I wouldn’t claim to speak for all policy schools, but I highly doubt any like these numbers. The VIRGINIA POLICY REVIEW is not a political publication. While our organization believes the political process is an important and necessary part of our government, it’s not our primary concern. However, think about all of the issues that are currently treading water: immigration, climate change, war powers, social security, and the effects of an aging population, to name just a few. Because the political process has obstructed the advancement of some of the most crucial policies of this generation, the VIRGINIA POLICY REVIEW felt the need to make the midterm elections the focus of this year’s special release. You’ll find a lively discussion about many issues related to the election inside. With Congress physically and figuratively under construction, I’d like to personally welcome you to our “Special Issue on the Midterm
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! Elections.” Inside, you’ll find a lively discussion about many issues affected by the results on November 4th. In particular, we are very grateful to have contributions from both establishment and third party candidates for Congress. Incumbent Representative Robert Hurt (R-VA) and one of his challengers, Libertarian Party candidate Paul Jones, generously sat down with us for one-on-one interviews. Robert Sarvis, the Libertarian candidate in Virginia for the U.S. Senate, has also provided us with his thoughts about everything from ISIL to the “War on Drugs.” Since we like numbers, we’re also excited to explore more than just a subjective answer to the question: who are the most effective members of Congress? In their upcoming book, Professors Craig Volden and Alan Wiseman have used 15 different metrics to evaluate how effective members of Congress are at moving their agenda items through the legislative process. Using their model, the Professors were able to generate a Legislative Effectiveness Score (LES) for all 435 U.S. Representatives. You can compare several of these scores in the following pages, including Congressman Hurt’s on page 19 (and his thoughts about it as well). Policy schools like numbers because they provide us with tangible ways of looking at the world: through costs and benefits, surpluses and deficits. Every one of the issues I listed above can be described in this way. But numbers alone cannot move legislation through Congress. They can’t force a vote on the Senate floor. That requires strong leadership, cooperation, resolve, and—the often maligned— compromise. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen enough of this in the 113th. My hope is that we’ll see more in the 114th. All the best, Franklin Bontempo
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Staff Acknowledgements ! Editor-in-Chief: Content Director: Managing Director: Executive Director: Senior Editors:
Franklin Bontempo Rebecca Beeson Christopher Palmer Yuhuan Fu Michael Bock Graham Egan Zachary Porter Juliana Echeverri
Outreach Coordinator: Associate Editors: Anna Barber Matthew Comey Emily McLean
Alex Gregorio Topher Lancaster Baylee Molloy
The Third Rail Senior Online Editor: Staff Writers:
Joseph Liss Grady Brown Michael Mozelle
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We welcome your thoughts. Please forward any comments, questions, or concerns to virginiapolicyreview@gmail.com or visit us online at www.virginiapolicyreview.com. We also invite you to visit our blog, The Third Rail, at thethirdrail.virginiapolicyreview.com and engage further in the policy debate.!!
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Table of Contents !
I. Changing Virginia Creates Opportunities and Challenges Gerald Warburg, Assistant Dean of External Affairs at the Batten School of Leadership & Public Policy at the University of Virginia
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II. Legislative Effectiveness and the 2014 Midterm Elections Craig Volden, Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia Alan E. Wiseman, Associate Professor of Political Science and Law at Vanderbilt University
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III. An Interview with Congressman and Republican Congressional Candidate Robert Hurt (VA-5)
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IV. Addressing Comprehensive Immigration Reform Jerrod Smith, 2nd Year MPP Candidate at the University of Virginia
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V. An Interview with Libertarian Congressional Candidate Paul Jones (VA-5)
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VI. A Plan for Virginia’s Future Robert Sarvis, Libertarian Senatorial Candidate for the Commonwealth of Virginia
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VII. Social Security and the 2014 Midterm Elections Jasmine Jefferson, Legislative Associate at Social Security Works
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VIII. Regional Voting Strength in Virginia from 1968 to Today Geoffrey Skelley, Associate Editor for Sabato’s Crystal Ball
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IX. Why Students Don’t Vote—And Why They Should Zachary Cohen, 2nd Year JD Candidate at the University of Virginia
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Changing Virginia Creates Opportunities and Challenges Gerald Warburg The color purple—how Virginia is now depicted on most political maps—has made the Old Dominion a battleground state for local and national elections. It is also the harbinger of change, a dramatic alteration of Virginia’s political landscape underway right now. This change holds both promise and peril for Commonwealth interests as the bellwether state routinely becomes a focus of intense electoral competition. Its most profound effect has been the swift diminution of the Virginia delegation’s seniority in Washington, DC, a worrisome development for a state exceptionally reliant on government jobs and defense contracts. What does this new normal mean for public policy challenges ahead in the Commonwealth? And what are its implications for its lawmakers and citizens? Once upon a time, Virginia was home to presidents, the undisputed political heartland of the nation. Indeed, moving the capital to a site across the Potomac River from the Virginia port of Alexandria was a key concession New York and New England mercantile interests made to win Virginians’ support for assumption of states’ Revolutionary War debts. From 1789 to 1825, a Virginian led the nation for all but four years. Through World War II and its aftermath, the state reliably sent conservative Democrats to Washington. Indeed, from 1933 to 1965, the Virginia Senate delegation had only three members—Senators Harry Byrd Sr., Carter Glass and Willis Robertson—who accumulated considerable seniority and clout. The influence of the Byrd Machine was used over these decades—especially with Howard Smith D-VA, chairman of the House Rules Committee—to promote “massive resistance” to integration. Smith helped block progress of civil rights legislation, thereby ensuring Virginia politics would remain shamefully stuck in the past.
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! When President Lyndon Johnson of Texas pressed bold civil rights initiatives, his actions helped create a new Republican majority in Virginia and throughout most of the South. Virginia would not vote again for a Democrat in the Presidential election until 2008, even scorning southerners Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. It was the 2008 result that truly inaugurated a new era, when the home state and capital of the Confederate States of America, quite remarkably, delivered the key votes that put an African-American candidate, Barack Obama, over the 270 electoral vote threshold. The state has changed dramatically in the years since. Its demographics, its economic base, and its rural/urban mix have been transformed. Where it once was a hybrid of rural farm towns and clusters of defense jobs in Arlington and the Tidewater, today it is a state dominated by suburban and exurban voters, a more politically active African-American community, and a surge in Asian and Hispanic-American voters. The high tech boom along the Dulles Airport corridor and the continued growth of Virginia’s strong state institutions of higher education has significantly diversified its economic base. Virginia remains exceptionally reliant on federal spending. Pentagon expenditures and associated defense subcontractors account for 14 percent of the state GDP, the highest in the nation. With the expanded “global war on terror,� Virginia now houses not only the CIA and the Pentagon, but also the National Counterterrorism Center and scores of facilities and contractors committed to the effort. Today, their headquarters stretch from Rosslyn and Fort Belvoir, west on Route 66 and north on Route 28, where daily traffic jams snarl commuters traveling on lands planted with corn just a generation ago. The post-9/11 boom in counter-terrorism and the Iraq war build-up made Northern Virginia largely immune to the Great Recession. Today, Arlington and Fairfax counties are among the most prosperous in the nation with some of the highest percentages of college degree holders among their workforces. The Navy footprint in Hampton Roads has grown with new missions, from forward
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! deployment in the Persian Gulf to the dispatch of ships that recently played the central role in transporting and neutralizing Syria’s stockpiles of chemical weapons. The state is home to nearly twodozen military bases and 180,000 defense personnel, and more than 840,000 military veterans. Virginia’s population has almost doubled since 1980. Unrelenting growth in both the Tidewater region and Northern Virginia has expanded the ranks of the Commonwealth’s suburban voters and led to dizzying changes in its political line up. As recently as ten years ago, the Virginia Congressional delegation featured stalwarts like five-term GOP Senator John Warner, whose seniority granted him the chairmanship of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Richmond’s Eric Cantor rose swiftly to power in Republican ranks, emerging as the Majority Leader in the House. The state’s delegation also included powerful veteran Appropriations Subcommittee chairmen Frank Wolf and Jim Moran, and, until 2009, veteran appropriator Virgil Goode from the 5th District. Since 2012, Republican control of redistricting has yielded brilliantly gerrymandered electoral districts. This is accomplished through state of the art “packing and cracking” by Richmond legislators—packing two districts in the Arlington-Alexandria and one in the Richmond-Newport News area full of Democrats, and cracking other regions to have reliable GOP majorities. Thus, a bellwether state that twice voted for Barack Obama now consistently returns a congressional delegation that has eight Republicans, but just three Democrats. (Yes, this is standard operating procedure for both parties who employ majority domination in many other states. Similar maneuvers aid outsize Republican majorities in Ohio and Wisconsin; Democratic gerrymandering currently distorts their lead in states like Illinois, as it long did in Texas. Several of these more egregious gerrymandering efforts have faced on going court challenges, including the October 2014 federal appeals court decision which may impact central Virginia district lines.) In the fall of 2014, much has changed. The state’s political landscape is in turmoil. The loss of seniority and clout has been
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! substantial; its implication bears careful consideration by policy entrepreneurs and activists. Over the last six months, Virginia lost House Majority Leader Cantor in an unprecedented upset —never before had a majority leader lost a primary election. Then came the planned retirement of Frank Wolf and Jim Moran. Taken together, these three departures resulted in the hemorrhaging of seven decades of Virginia seniority in the House. Shortly thereafter, the felony conviction in federal court of former Governor Robert McDonnell dealt a severe blow to “the Virginia Way” and the state’s reputation for strong, ethical, fiscally sound administration. The loss of veteran legislators who hold key committee posts and have earned their colleagues’ trust will certainly harm the delegation’s ability to secure federal support for Virginia initiatives. Virginia will enter the next Congress weakened on multiple fronts, from the defense spending discussions on the Appropriations Committees to the world of the Financial Services and the Ways and Means Committees, where Eric Cantor long exercised outsize influence, first as a member then as a lead House GOP negotiator in budget summit negotiations with the Senate and the Obama Administration. To be sure, first-term senators Kaine and Warner have gained remarkable committee perches on Foreign Relations, Armed Services, Intelligence, Finance and Budget. But the loss of Virginians’ seniority even before the 2014 elections are completed will leave the state vulnerable just as a new cycle begins with discussion of military base closures, transportation funding and tax policy. In crisis, there is opportunity. The shifting political landscape creates many competitive races, which can often yield moderate consensus. Relatively junior Members, such as 2008 Freshman Class President Gerry Connolly (D-Fairfax) rise quickly in leadership ranks amidst such turmoil. Indeed, Connolly is already the second most senior Democrat in the Virginia House delegation, (behind Richmond’s veteran Bobby Scott, who holds one of the safest Democratic seats in the nation, packed with a strong liberal majority).
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! Fresh faces, such as 7th District favorite, Republican college professor Dave Brat, can help bring new perspectives and passions to debates, ensuring grassroots voices are heard. The Tidewater region has seen swift advancement of three GOP members, Randy Forbes, Scott Rigell and Rob Wittman. Each is acutely attentive to the importance of federal spending and defense jobs to the local economy. They work unusually closely with their two Democratic Virginia senators—who invariably find sympathy with party leaders sensitive to the state’s shifting political fortunes. The state delegation also includes the chair of House Judiciary Committee, Robert Goodlatte, point man for the House GOP majority on immigration reform, border security and a host of hot button social issues. Finally, the state has arguably benefitted from vastly expanded campaigns by the national parties, meaning more activists and recruiters on the ground, along with an avalanche of political spending on local television ads. What first-time Virginia voters will see this November is dramatically unlike what state voters encountered in previous generations. Policy challenges abound. With shifting demographics, the competitive nature of Virginia elections promises to increase in the years ahead. These are interesting times for a state that is once again Ground Zero for national elections. ! Gerald Warburg is an assistant dean at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and the author of numerous works on politics and policymaking, including his recent Dispatches From the Eastern Front: A Political Education From the Nixon Years to the Age of Obama.
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Legislative Effectiveness and the 2014 Midterm Elections Craig Volden Alan E. Wiseman As the public and the press focus on the 2014 congressional elections, significant attention will be paid to the balance of power between Democrats and Republicans (especially in the Senate), as well as between Tea Party members and other Republicans. Much will be made of the polarization between the most liberal and most conservative members and of how divided and partisan our government has become. And rightly so, because party control and polarization are both important in understanding the policies that govern American society. Yet, in our view, such a focus is far too narrow. Members of Congress are not merely points on a liberal-to-conservative spectrum. They are not identical carriers of their party’s banners. Rather, they are lawmakers. They are the ones who set the terms of the debate. They choose what issues should gain attention; they formulate the proposals that are intended to solve the country’s policy problems; and they decide which bills receive a vote and are passed along for the president’s signature. As lawmakers, some members of Congress are far better than others. Just as football fans might debate over the best quarterback or wide receiver, and use a variety of statistics to back up their claims, so too can we look at members’ achievements to rate their effectiveness at lawmaking. To do so, we have spent the past several years on what we call the Legislative Effectiveness Project. This project has led to us generating a Legislative Effectiveness Score for every member of the House of Representatives, for every Congress from the 1970s through today. Our research is published in a variety of academic sources, including in our new book, Legislative Effectiveness in the United States Congress: The Lawmakers, published this fall by the Cambridge University Press. Moreover, as part of our public
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! outreach efforts around the project, we have made all of these scores and the surrounding data and interpretations available to the public through our newly released website: www.thelawmakers.org. To generate Legislative Effectiveness Scores, we compiled fifteen indicators for each member in each Congress. Specifically, we tracked each and every bill a member sponsored across five major stages of lawmaking: from introduction to action in committee (hearing, markups, subcommittee votes) to action beyond committee (onto the legislative calendar) to passing the House to finally becoming law. We also classified each sponsored bill as being one of three types: commemorative (such as naming post offices), substantive (the majority of proposals), or significant (the big contentious issues mentioned in the media). These five stages at three levels of significance give us the fifteen metrics that we combine (down-weighting commemoratives and early stages, and up-weighting significant legislation and later stages) to generate a single score for each member. These scores average one and range from zero (no bills sponsored) up to about 20. As one might expect, majority party members outperform those in the minority party. Committee and subcommittee chairs perform very well. And legislative seniority is helpful. Therefore, in addition to the raw score for each member, we also offer a “benchmark� score that captures what we would expect the member to achieve given her party status, chair position, and seniority. We therefore can assess whether each member is meeting, exceeding, or failing these expectations. As an illustration, the following table shows the five most effective lawmakers in each party for the most recently fully completed Congress (2011-12). As shown there, majority-party Republicans tend to have much higher Legislative Effectiveness Scores than do Democrats. Committee chairs fill the list for Republicans, along with Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who lost his primary election earlier this year despite his overall effectiveness. Also evident from the list is the role of seniority, with Lamar Smith having served in Congress for a quarter century and John Conyers for nearly twice that long. Being at the top of each party’s effective members, it is
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! unsurprising that all ten lawmakers in this table exceed expectations relative to their benchmark scores. Name
District
Party
Leader?
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Benchmark
Chair
Terms of Seniority 13
Lamar Smith John Mica Dave Camp Eric Cantor Doc Hastings
TX-21
Republican
16.31
4.89
FL-7
Republican
Chair
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14.37
4.80
MI-4
Republican
Chair
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11.18
4.83
VA-7
Republican
6
8.59
0.98
WA-4
Republican
Majority Leader Chair
9
7.35
4.77
John Conyers Eleanor Norton Bob Filner Silvestre Reyes Zoe Lofgren
MI-14
Democrat
No
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2.53
1.01
DC-1
Democrat
No
11
2.23
0.62
CA-51
Democrat
No
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2.10
0.59
TX-16
Democrat
No
8
1.95
0.53
CA-16
Democrat
No
9
1.86
0.56
Table 1. Top five most effective lawmakers by party—112th Congress (2011-12)
Across the decades of data that we study, we find that the highly effective members of Congress have been crucial over the years in breaking through gridlock and getting things done. They persevere with their policy ideas even in the face of long odds. They tend to reach out across party lines, especially during periods of divided government. And they use their connections and institutional powers to advance their policy proposals.
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! It is through this lens that we are interested in viewing the 2014 elections. At a time when there are major pressing issues and seemingly insufficient political will to confront them, finding and cultivating legislative effectiveness is as important as it has ever been. If the American people reelect the most effective representatives, these lawmakers can continue their efforts to break through the gridlock and change public policies. Based on our scores, such effective lawmakers are easily identified. This is because, unlike what we are told in stock market investing, past performance here is indeed indicative of future returns. The most effective lawmakers in one Congress tend to be the most effective members in the next, certainly relative to their benchmarks. Consider, for example, the three most recently completed Congresses, the 110th through 112th (2007-12). Across these Congresses, 46 lawmakers exceeded their benchmark expectations in all three (or exceeded in two and met expectations in one Congress). What will be the fate of these 46 highly effective lawmakers in the 2014 elections? The first thing to note is that only 27 of them are seeking reelection this year. Nineteen have already left Congress. Of that group, the largest set is those who left Congress to seek higher office, either in 2012 or 2014. These include now-Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Chris Murphy (D-CT), presidential candidate Ron Paul of Texas, and now-disgraced San Diego mayor Bob Filner (D-CA). Aspirations of higher office have motivated many effective lawmakers over the years. Also included in the group no longer seeking congressional reelection are those who lost in 2012, four of whom were effectively targeted in redistricting efforts. Perhaps effective members of the opposing party are prime targets for such electoral attacks. And finally, some effective members have simply reached the natural end of their careers in Congress and have therefore retired.
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! That said, of the highly effective members seeking reelection, current polls show all but one of them in safe seats, meaning they can continue to advance policy reforms in 2015 with a relatively good chance of success. Stevan Pearce’s (R-NM) reelection is somewhat contested, but he is still likely to hold onto his seat. On the flipside of the coin, 23 members of the House currently up for reelection performed below expectations in all three of the most recently completed Congresses and current polls show all of them to be in safe seats as well. Given the polarization across congressional districts, and given incumbency advantages, perhaps such high success rates should be expected. But perhaps they are also due to some lack of accountability. Members of Congress can often tell tales of their own accomplishments. Without objective measures, the voting public is left with little ability to discern the relative effectiveness of their own representatives. Beyond scholarly inquiry, of course, one potential use of our scores is to serve as a more objective indicator of legislative activity and success than the personal testimonies offered by legislators. If Congress, however, is to once again truly become an effective lawmaking institution, efforts need to be taken beyond just the electoral connection. We envision a three-part approach, and are centering our future scholarly research around these components. The first is selection. As parties, interest groups, or individuals help select, encourage, and finance new candidates for public office, they have an incentive to identify politicians who will be effective lawmakers once in Congress. Yet, little is known about what characteristics of potential candidates lead to their subsequent effectiveness. To date, our research has shown that even something as potentially uncontroversial as experience in state legislatures does not predict subsequent performance in a simple manner. Members who served in the most professional state legislatures (meeting yearround, paying enough to make lawmaking the member’s main job, and funding substantial staffs) do indeed tend to outperform those without such experience. But those with experience in citizen legislatures (like those in Virginia or North Dakota) perform worse on average in Congress than those with no prior legislative experience at all. Therefore much scholarly (and practical) work is
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! needed to help identify the characteristics of successful future legislative leaders. The second is development. As shown by members gaining greater effectiveness as they gain seniority, the habits of highly effective lawmakers can be cultivated and developed over a lawmaking career. However, such development of expertise, networking, and coalition-building tends to be accomplished on a very ad hoc basis. By studying legislator development more systematically, through the lens of Legislative Effectiveness Scores, we hope to isolate the activities that help members better advance their agendas and solve policy problems. On the practical level, such best practices and skill development could be taught or perhaps even institutionalized within lawmaking bodies such as state legislatures or Congress. Finally, coupled with selection and development is screening. It is at this point, upon attempting to select effective lawmakers for public office and to cultivate their individual legislative effectiveness, that we can identify some members as being especially good, or bad, at getting things done. Then it is back in the hands of the voters. Yet, as scholars, we do not yet know how much voters weigh the lawmaking effectiveness of their representatives when casting their ballots (or, rather, how much they would weigh such considerations when the relevant information is readily available to them). This is both an academic and a practical question. At an academic level, it is possible to run survey experiments, exposing potential voters to different levels and types of information and observing their preferred voting patterns. At a practical level, when information like our Legislative Effectiveness Scores becomes much more widely available, to what extent will voters respond? Will they hold less effective lawmakers accountable? Will they reward the most effective members? We’re looking to the 2014 elections for a first glimpse at the answers to these questions. !
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! Craig Volden is a professor of public policy and politics, with appointments in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics. He studies legislative politics and the interaction among political institutions, with a focus on what policy choices arise from legislative-executive relations and from American federalism. He has published numerous articles in such journals as: American Political Science Review; American Journal of Political Science; Journal of Politics; Legislative Studies Quarterly; Journal of Law, Economics & Organization; and Publius: The Journal of Federalism. Professor Wiseman is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Law (by courtesy) at Vanderbilt University. He has research and teaching interests in American political institutions and positive political economy, focusing on legislative and electoral politics, regulation, bureaucratic politics, and business-government relations. He is the author of The Internet Economy: Access, Taxes, and Market Structure and has published numerous articles in journals such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Theoretical Politics.
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An Interview with Congressman and Republican Congressional Candidate Robert Hurt (VA-5) Virginia Policy Review [Interview by Rebecca Beeson and Franklin Bontempo. Transcription and editing by Graham Egan and Emily McLean. Questions from VPR are not exact quotes; they are paraphrases of the questions asked. Answers from Mr. Hurt are word-for-word quotes with slight editing for clarity.] I. Health Care VPR: You have many times expressed your opposition to the Affordable Care Act and have supported, among other measures, a bill to exclude volunteer firefighters from full-time workers and another bill to add privacy protections for healthcare.gov consumers. Both were partial fixes of the ACA. Can the ACA be fixed or must it be fully repealed? Hurt: Obviously, when it was enacted, there were a lot of promises that were made about what the bill would and wouldn’t do. I think it’s fair to say that most of the people that I represent were not convinced at the time, and remain unconvinced, that this is the best health care reform for our country, and I think that over the last three years that I’ve been in office we have seen some of the negative consequences of this law. You have people who were promised that they could keep policies that now don’t exist. You have folks that were promised costs would decrease and we’ve seen costs increase. And then, when you think specifically about the rollout of the website, I think there was an overwhelming consensus—even on the part of the White House—that it was a disaster. I think that a lot of Americans still have concerns about the mechanics of the website. There’s no question it’s a huge law and
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! it’s starting to take effect. Although the President, as you know, has unilaterally delayed some of it—the employer mandate to be specific—I think that when that kicks in, you’ll see a whole lot more of the consequences that we’ve already seen as it relates to individual policies. I believe strongly that it should be repealed and I think that it can be repealed, but every day that we wait, there’s no question it gets more complicated because you have the utter destruction of insurance markets, which will be difficult to rebuild. But I do believe ultimately it can be done. I think if you look at the politics of it, clearly this President’s not going to sign a repeal. So in the meantime, what are the things that we can do to try to help ameliorate the effects of the health care law? Making sure that our volunteer firefighters are not suddenly swept into the effects of this law, I think, is one step. The second issue that you mentioned is a bill that we introduced just this last week that would allow someone who goes on the website, submits personal information, and then decides that he or she doesn’t want the product through the exchange to actually delete that information from the system. That’s another small step, but a big important step towards trying to ameliorate the effects of what I think is a bad law. So just to wind up, I would say this: I believe it should be and can be repealed. To those in Washington who wag their finger at us and say “Oh well, it’s the law of the land, get used to it,” fortunately, [while] that may be the way it works and has worked in other countries, that’s not how it works in the United States. If the people don’t want the law, they can repeal the law; that’s up to them, not Washington. I think it’s extremely important to emphasize that while we need to repeal it, we need to replace it. We need some real health care reform and I would suggest to you that the way that we get real health care reform that achieves what I think would be the objective of most Americans—probably including the President—is to instead focus on market-based reforms that will reduce the cost of health care in this country and increase quality of care. And frankly I believe, and if you look at polling most Americans believe, that the opposite is happening. Instead of lower costs, we have higher costs.
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! Instead of greater coverage and greater choice, we have fewer choices and we can’t all see the doctors we were promised we could continue to see. I think it’s important to say that, and I will close by saying this: While I disagree with him vehemently on this policy and I see the consequences of it every day as I travel across my district, I do think the President should be commended on wanting to tackle it because it’s a very important issue—there’s no question about it—and when you look at the spending in this country, the Medicare and Medicaid spending especially, you don’t have to be an economist to recognize that health care spending is driving our deficit. And so we do need reforms. I just think that we need to go about it in a different way, and I think frankly the American people agree. II. Foreign Affairs VPR: You co-sponsored the Iran Threat Reduction Act and have spoken about the need to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. However, in the fight against ISIL, Iran could potentially be an ally by both stabilizing Iraq and directly attacking ISIL. Do you think that the US should continue to coordinate with either Syria or Iran to defeat ISIL and similar groups? Hurt: I am not sure that there is any greater threat to the future of the Middle East and the future of American national security than the threat that is posed by Iran. I am very concerned about the negotiations that are taking place now to try to deal with the nuclear threat from Iran. It seems to me that our position should not be that we agree to allow Iran to have any nuclear energy. I believe that our position with Iran should be that they should not have access to any nuclear energy, period. There are some who believe that they should be allowed to have access to nuclear capability for the purposes of energy. I think that they cannot be trusted, and I don’t think we should agree to anything that would allow them to have any nuclear program whatsoever.
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! So I have real concerns that we would in any way take a position that would allow them to have any nuclear program at all, period. With that said, clearly ISIL is a great threat to our country and is also a threat to the Middle East—both to the peace there and to our allies there. I agree with the President’s objective that we need to crush ISIL and we need to destroy them, but I do think that it’s extremely important that the President get military authorization from the Congress. If you look at Article I, it reserves the power to wage war and declare war to Congress, not to the president. The president should certainly be able to protect our interests with the military at a moment’s notice—[the] War Powers Resolution allows for that—but I would suggest that he needs to come to us for authorization; I feel very strongly about that. VPR: Would you support President Obama if he did come to Congress requesting military authorization? Hurt: He needs to lay out the threat, which I think he’s done in a very convincing way—I agree with him on the threat. But he also needs to lay out exactly what is going to be required of the American people, what’s going to be required of our allies, and, most importantly, what’s going to be required of our brave men and women in uniform who are going to be on the front lines. And that includes having a candid and honest discussion about whether or not we are going to need boots on the ground. That’s a discussion that we need to have going into it. And then, finally, he needs to outline for us, in consultation with all of the people that work for him and work for us in the State Department, the Department of Defense, and the intelligence community, identifiable goals so that we know what victory looks like, because no one wants to be in an open-ended conflict in the Middle East for another ten years. I think the American people support action now, but I don’t think that means they support action forever. So I just think we need to be honest about it, instead of pretending that we can just do this on the cheap or we can just do this without any risk. If a navy pilot goes down in Syria or in Iraq, it’s my hope that we won’t be relying on vetted Syrian rebels to go save that pilot.
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! III. Legislative Effectiveness VPR: Our professor, Craig Volden, has just launched something called Lawmakers.org, which displays his academic research tracking the legislative effectiveness of members of Congress. Based on his scores, you ranked 140 out of the 245 Republican congressmen (with a score of 0.631). Do you think that something like legislative effectiveness can be quantified? If so, do you think you could improve your effectiveness score in the next session? Hurt: Well, what I would say is this: first of all, I was in the state legislature for nine years before I was elected. I think that the American people absolutely should expect that their member of Congress should be as effective as possible at promoting the values and the issues that they care about. We try to be effective. I don’t know how you would measure that. From my standpoint, last term was my first term and obviously effectiveness has a lot to do with seniority—how long you’ve been there—because you don’t become a chairman of a committee, which is a very good post to be effective, unless you’ve been there for a while and you have the opportunity to build those relationships. And that’s a work in progress. So I certainly recognize that to the extent that I am there for another term, obviously I would hope that my effectiveness would go up. I will say this though, and I don’t know how you measure it, but one thing that I think is important is that I know that my constituents expect [me] to go to Washington and represent them, not a political party. I’ve always believed from the time I was first elected to the Virginia General Assembly that we need to work together on things that we can. If you look at the legislation I have introduced in this Congress, you’ll find that every single bill that we’ve put in has been bipartisan in nature—we’re proud of that. Part of that’s philosophical or ideological, and I think that’s what people expect, but the other side of it is very practical, because if I want to get something passed in a Democratically-controlled Senate, then I probably need to show some bipartisan support. So it’s got philosophical as well as practical roots.
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! VPR: How will the loss of Virginia’s seniority affect the legislative effectiveness for Congressmen from Virginia? Hurt: It’s a very serious issue and there’s nothing you can do about it. But it is certainly too bad that we’ll see that because, when you think about the challenges we face and you think about our proximity to Washington, especially as it relates to defense issues, we have a lot at stake and we want to preserve as much [seniority] as possible. IV. Education VPR: Senator Warner (D-VA) has been campaigning a lot on several bipartisan bills he co-sponsored in Congress related to student debt. Are there House education bills you might support? How do you think Congress should respond to the dramatic rise in student debt? Hurt: I think it’s always important to start out saying that we have a constitutional form of government and that we have separation of powers between Article I, Article II, and Article III branches of government. We also have a system of federalism, so the idea being that the federal government has limited powers and those that the federal government is not specifically responsible for fall to the states and subsequently the localities. Education has historically been, and I think properly, most often the jurisdiction of the states. I think that’s where it should be because parents and teachers need to have a very robust role in education policy, and the closer you get to the people the better. And I think that’s why historically [local control] has worked. It concerns me very much that education is so expensive. I think that there are things that can be done at a state level and a federal level to try to help address some of those concerns. One of the things that we’ve introduced with John Delaney from Maryland is a bill related to 529 plans, which are the college savings plans that different states have promoted—Virginia has one. Our bill would make it so that control of those funds, which have a lot of money obviously, would be treated in a way that would give them more flexibility in terms of
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! the investments they make and hopefully the returns that they get. It would give them higher rates of return if they were able to be given more flexibility, and that’s the purpose of our bill. What we hope is that it enures the benefit of Virginia, or at least in my case Virginia families who are setting aside money and that [529 plans] have a higher rate of return, [which] will help pay for these costs. But it’s a complicated issue in terms of why it costs so much. I hope that as time goes on we’ll see more innovation in terms of distance learning and those sorts of things that help reduce costs for education. And also I think that at the end of the day taxpayers, parents, and students have to demand more accountability in terms of what you’re getting. Is what you’re getting what you’re paying for? I think that the more that you have free market pressures in that regard hopefully the better quality product you have, and hopefully you have a lower cost. VPR: Do you feel that the schools themselves have a responsibility to try to keep the costs of tuition down? One of the reasons that universities increase tuition is because they keep offering more perks to all of their students, from great food in the dining halls to new buildings. Hurt: They’re answering a demand. There’s no question that there’s a demand for those services. But I do think that the universities struggle, especially the land grant universities, with the idea—and obviously state legislatures have some input in this—that they want to keep those tuitions low. It’s complicated, but also very important. Clearly when young people get out of school and they’re saddled with this tremendous burden in a lot of ways they start behind the eight ball. That’s not good for the economy and that’s not good for them personally. It just creates a real burden right out of the gate when instead you would hope they would start with a clean slate and a net positive balance going forward.
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! V. House Committee Assignments VPR: You serve on the House Committee for Financial Services, formerly as Vice Chair of the Insurance, Housing, and Community Opportunity Subcommittee and currently as Vice Chair of the Capital Markets and Government-Sponsored Enterprises Subcommittee. Are there other committees of which you might be interested in becoming a member? Hurt: There are considered in Washington “A Committees” and then “B Committees”. “A” Committees are Appropriations, Ways and Means, Financial Services, and Energy and Commerce—so those are the four “A” Committees. If you’re a freshman and you’re put on one of those four committees then you can’t be on any others, so that’s why I’m on one committee and would have to get a waiver to be able to get on another committee. That’s not impossible. It’s something that we talk about and it would be something that I would like to do in the future. VPR: Is there any specific committee about which you’re really passionate? Hurt: When I was in the state legislature, I was on the [Courts of Justice Committee], which is sort of [like] the judiciary committee for the House of Representatives, and that would be something that would be interesting to me because I have a legal background. I was a lawyer and very active in the law, so that could be interesting to me. I’m also very interested in Foreign Affairs. I think being on that committee would be something that would be fascinating to me, and I would hope to be able to offer some contributions. VPR: The district you represent, Virginia’s 5th, is extremely big and there’s a very large agrarian population. Do you feel that your committee assignments accurately represent a lot of your constituents?
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! Hurt: I do get that question from time to time because I have a district that covers 10,000 square miles, almost the same size as Massachusetts. By the way, it’s larger than Vermont, New Hampshire, and several other states. And it is largely agriculture. If you look at the economy in Virginia it is predominantly agriculture. Sometimes people are surprised to find that out, but agriculture and forestry together make up an $80 billion dollar economic output for the state of Virginia, and the 5th district, being the largest of Virginia’s districts, has a tremendous amount of agriculture and forestry in it. So you ask, well, why aren’t you on the [Agriculture] Committee? Fair question. When I look at the biggest issues facing our district, job creation is the biggest issue. We have places in our district where we still have ten percent unemployment—that is one in ten people—and under the [Bureau] of Labor Statistics, that doesn’t even count the number of people who’ve given up [seeking employment]. So I imagine that the real unemployment [rate] in places like Danville, Virginia is probably twice that. I say all that to say that if you’re interested in job creation, as I am, there’s nothing that’s more important to creating jobs than having access to capital. Having access to private sector capital, that means through banks and equity, and public markets, and being able to access capital through investment or credit are both extremely important to small businesses, family farms, main street businesses, and frankly working Virginians who depend on jobs. There’s nothing that’s more important. So, being on the Financial Services Committee we have a tremendous jurisdiction responsibility over the banking industry, the credit unions, the public markets, and the equity markets, which provide that capital. So we can make things easier for banks to be able to get that private sector capital to the customer that needs the capital or we can make it easier for small companies to be able to access our equity markets so that they can find those investors that will give them the cash to expand their operations. Then we’re doing what I think is good for the 5th district. And so, that’s my answer when I have people say, ‘well you know, country boy from Chatham, [Virginia] what’re you doing on the banking committee?’ That’s my answer and I think it’s true.
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! VI. Immigration VPR: Do you expect immigration reform to pass in the 114th Congress? Hurt: I don’t think it’s probably going to happen this year, that’s just my ballpark. I would be surprised. But look, we need immigration reform. My belief is that we need to pass things that everybody can agree on and I feel certain that there would be bipartisan support for securing our border and for making sure we know who is coming in and out of this country. And then also, at the same time, making sure that those who need workers in the 5th district—again we talked about our agriculture—so grape producers, fruit producers, tobacco producers, which require a tremendous amount of labor...we need to make sure that there is available labor for those farms and producers. I hear from businesses here in Charlottesville, from folks who say “you know, we really need more people with a very high ‘tech’ education to focus on writing apps for instance.” It’s very hard to find qualified people here. We need to have an education system that supplies all that that person needs, but by the same token we don’t want to see those kinds of companies leave Charlottesville and go overseas because they can’t get what they need here. Frankly, we need to have a visa system that accommodates those needs. Now, those are two simple issues that I think we can find bipartisan support for. When it comes to what you do with folks that are here illegally, when you start talking about giving people who have come here illegally the benefit of full citizenship and saying “welcome, we know you broke the law but here you are” and without any consequences, it gets kind of sticky pretty quickly. So I think that we ought to be focusing, at least in the short term, on things that we can agree on and not get wrapped around the axle about things that are more impossible to agree on.
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! VPR: If the House and the Senate can’t come together to pass an immigration bill, the President has said that he might change immigration policy using an Executive Order. Do you think he has the responsibility and authority to do that? Hurt: No, I think that this President has demonstrated time and time again that he, with all due respect, doesn’t have what I think is a proper appreciation for the separation of powers. He has certain powers under Article II and we have certain powers under Article I. Generally speaking it’s our job to propose laws and to pass laws, and to legislate and to make policy, and it’s his job to execute the policy that we lay out. And he may not like the fact that we haven’t done what needs to be done on immigration—I don’t like the fact that we haven’t done what we need to do on immigration. There are certain things that he can do to probably help the debate along and help encourage a resolution. There are things he can do to engage, but I feel very strongly, as strongly as I feel that he needs to get authorization from Congress before going and waging war, that he needs to stay in his lane and not act beyond what I think is his Constitutional authority. VII. Sexual Misconduct & Campus Safety VPR: The University of Virginia community is currently grieving about the disappearance of one of its students. Is there anything you think that the federal government can do to improve campus safety? Hurt: Again, typically when you think about the Constitutional powers of the federal government, we typically think of public safety as being largely a local or state issue. Trying to look for ways to help create awareness for young people who are at school and looking for ways to help with the investigation and enforcement of the laws, certainly there’s a place for the FBI and other federal resources to be used. I think that federal law enforcement needs to offer every single piece of help it can in this specific investigation, but also to help generally speak about and promote safety on our campuses. It’s a terrible situation and I know everybody grieves about it, but I do think it’s largely a state issue. To the extent the
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! federal government can be helpful and can be useful in dealing with [this issue], I think it needs to be. VPR: Congressman, thank you very much. Hurt: Thank you guys! I appreciate it, my pleasure! Good luck! ! Robert Hurt currently represents Virginia’s 5th District in the House of Representatives. He is a member of the Financial Services Committee, which has jurisdiction over all aspects of the nation’s financial and housing sectors. He is also Vice Chairman of the Capital Markets and Government Sponsored Enterprises Subcommittee and will serve a second term on the Housing and Insurance Subcommittee.
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Addressing Comprehensive Immigration Reform Jerrod Smith Executive Summary Reform of the immigration system within the United States requires immediate attention. A survey completed by the Brookings Institute indicates that only six percent of Americans believe that the immigration system is generally working. 1 The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that fixing the broken immigration system will reduce the deficit by $200 billion over the next ten years.2 The president’s current comprehensive proposal focuses on four key categories of immigration reform. These categories are: strengthening border security, streamlining legal immigration, earned citizenship, and cracking down on employers hiring undocumented workers. 3 The Senate should pass the Secure the Southwest Border Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2014 (H.R. 5230). The passage of this Act serves as an incremental step towards completing the goals outlined in President Obama’s comprehensive proposal.
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Robert P. Jones et al., “What Americans Want from Immigration Reform in 2014,” The Brookings Institution, accessed October 20, 2014, http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2014/06/10-americans-immigrationreform-2014-survey-panel-call-back. 2 “CBO Report: Immigration Reform Will Shrink the Deficit and Grow the Economy | The White House,” accessed October 20, 2014, http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/06/18/cbo-report-immigration-reform-willshrink-deficit-and-grow-economy. 3 “U.S. Immigration Reform at a Glance,” accessed October 20, 2014, http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/immigration.
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! Background The Immigration Act of 1990 is the current comprehensive piece of legislation addressing immigration. Signed into law on November 2, 1990, this legislation increased the limits on legal immigration into the United States, revised all grounds for exclusion and deportation, authorized temporary protected status to aliens of designated countries, revised and established new nonimmigrant admission categories, revised and extended the Visa Waiver Pilot Program, and revised naturalization authority and requirements.4 This legislation has remained unchanged and fails to address the malfunctions that exist in the immigration system today. A number of issues plague the current system and have been perpetuated by inaction of congress to compromise and get a comprehensive resolution completed. The Executive Office has outlined issues that include: continuing to strengthen border security, streamlining legal immigration, earned citizenship, and cracking down on employers that hire undocumented workers. Legislation, such as the Dream Act, has attempted to address specific issues within the system, but failed to gain support of both the House and Senate. Immigration issues have continued to widen as Congress has failed to draw consensus. Both the House and the Senate have instead focused on passing their own pieces of legislation on immigration reform. In an attempt to address concerns of the immigration system, the House has recently passed the H.R. 5230. This Act is designed to provide funds to agencies such as Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the Department of Human and Health Services (HHS) for expenses related to the rise in unaccompanied undocumented children and undocumented adults accompanied by children at the southwest border. This Act also seeks to change the screening procedures for unaccompanied
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“Immigration Act of 1990,� accessed October 20, 2014, http://www.uscis.gov/tools/glossary/immigration-act-1990.!
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! immigrant children who arrive at the border from many Central American countries such as Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala, and El Salavdor. This Act also allows the National Guard to support operations on the southern border. H.R. 5230 serves to address the specific issue of border control, which is of great concern to a nation looking to square its social policy and maximize taxpayer funds. Advocate for the Southwest Appropriations Act of 2014
Border
Supplemental
This legislation seeks to address a key component of the President’s comprehensive immigration reform proposal. This act serves as an incremental measure to address long-standing flaws that exists in the immigration system and shows constituents that action is being taken to address immigration reform amid the present gridlock in Congress. A unified effort for the passage of this Act will help both parties around this legislation find consensus. Uniting both parties around this legislation serves as a positive example of action that can be accomplished through compromise. Support of H.R. 5230 will serve as a mutual benefit to the initiatives of the President’s proposal, and helping curtail the problems of the failing immigration system. ! Jerrod Smith received his undergraduate degree from Bucknell University in 2011 and is currently a 2nd year student at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. A native of Barboursville, Virginia, Jerrod’s areas of focus include U.S. foreign policy, economic development, and local politics. Jerrod recently completed a fellowship with the City of Chicago Mayor’s Office and will be looking to enter the world of policy and make a difference post-graduation in 2015.
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Interview with Libertarian Congressional Candidate (VA-5) Paul Jones Virginia Policy Review [Interview by Joseph Liss and Franklin Bontempo. Transcription and editing by Joseph Liss, Grady Brown, and Mike Mozelle. Questions from VPR are not exact quotes; they are paraphrases of the questions asked. Answers from Mr. Jones are word-for-word quotes with slight editing for clarity.] I. Top Priorities VPR: What issues do you believe are important to the fifth district? JONES: The most important to issues to me are the size and expense of government and taxation. I believe that the government is hurting the economy. The tax burden that the taxpayers have to pay is astronomical and its going to get worse, if and when we start to pay off our debt, which no one seems to want to talk about. To me, if we could get taxes down, control our deficits, get more taxpayer dollars back in the pockets of the taxpayers, I think that would be the best thing we could do for the economy. II. Health Care VPR: Should hospitals have to assure that a minimum level of care is provided to all patients in the case of an emergency? JONES: I do think hospitals should have to supply emergency care. The consumer ends up paying for it one way or another, whether it’s through higher premiums for their insurance policies, or through the government paying for the care. It still comes out of the consumers’ pocket. It’s just a matter of which road you want to go on. I do think that society should pay for emergency care for people that cannot afford it.
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! VPR: Is it fair or reasonable that people can receive free emergency medical care and be permitted to not have insurance? JONES: Yes. The government doesn’t have the right to mandate that people buy insurance. Society has always paid for people’s health care, indigent people. It’s either paid through higher prices by the provider, the hospital, or the government picks up the tab. Society pays for it one way or another. It’s no more expensive one way than the other way. VPR: Should society still pick up the tab for a family making $100,000 per year that could easily afford an insurance policy, but chooses not to buy one and then faces a major medical expense? JONES: Well those people are taking the risk and the responsibility for not having insurance, and presumably they would lose everything they have before society would step in and pick up the rest. People are free to make their own decisions, but they have to be responsible for their own decisions. They can’t run up a tab on the public and then still get to keep their house and cars and everything. They’re responsible for their decisions. VPR: Do you think that exchanges on which people can compare similarly designed health care plans is a good idea, why or why not? JONES: Absolutely. The laws restricting insurance companies from state to state where people cannot buy out-of-state are just absolutely ridiculous. The only reason that they are put in place is that the insurance companies in that state do not want competition, so they lobby the legislatures for each state to make sure only certain companies can sell in each state, which gives them a good, solid market. It’s absolutely ridiculous. Anybody should be able to buy policies from anywhere they want.
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! VPR: Do you think that it’s appropriate that the federal government run these exchanges? JONES: I don’t know why the government would need to be involved at all. I can’t think of a reason why the government should be involved in that. People can compare plans without the government. VPR: Do you think that consumers are well educated enough about health insurance to compare plans? JONES: Yes. I think that people can handle that. They handle everything else in their lives. They buy automobiles and automobile insurance. I think that there will be exceptions, but that the vast majority of people can handle their own insurance. III. Campaign Strategy VPR: Who do you feel you are your main or target group of voters in this campaign? JONES: I’m going after Republican voters, and Democrat[ic] voters and independents. I’m going after everyone. I get a lot of feedback from members of both major parties that they are very unsatisfied with their representation. A lot of the people over the years are starting to lean more Libertarian and be more open to libertarian solutions, so I really try to appeal to everybody that is dissatisfied. Both parties have hardcore bases, which I don’t worry about; they’re not going to switch no matter what. But a lot of people are dissatisfied. Some are independents, which [is] a great place for me to get votes, but there are a lot of dissatisfied Republicans and Democrats that have indicated they are open to my solutions. So it’s wide open. I think, if I had the money and could give my message to everyone in the district, I could win the election. But, as a third party, I don’t have the money necessary to reach everyone. But I believe the 5th District would vote Libertarian if everyone could hear the message of libertarianism.
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! VPR: In an August article in The Atlantic, the well-known conservative political writer and commentator David Frum wrote “Young voters are not Libertarian or even trending Libertarian...the ‘Libertarian moment’ is a phase in internal Republican factionalism. Libertarianism is not pushing Republicans towards a more electable future. It is pushing them sideways to extremist margins.” Do you agree with Mr. Frum? Do you believe libertarianism has a problem with young voters as well? JONES: No I do not agree with him at all. I don’t think that the Democrats or the Republicans are appealing to young voters at all. Libertarianism is the only party that is appealing to young voters, and I think that the more success libertarians have in these elections, the more you are going to see Republicans and Democrats start espousing our solutions and trying to take them as their own. They're not stupid. Politicians know which way the wind blows, and when they see that libertarians are gaining more and more every election, they’re going to start leaning that way. I think that libertarianism is perfect for young people in this day and age, and also for immigrant Americans. Most immigrants who come into the country are honest, hard-working people that just want an opportunity to make a living, and libertarianism is perfect for that. IV. Immigration VPR: On that issue of immigration, can you speak to what part of the libertarian platform is speaking to immigrants? What does libertarianism offer that would address what some would call the crisis around illegal immigration? JONES: I think our big appeal is liberty. Libertarianism is all about liberty. We believe that people should be allowed to make their own decisions on the important things in their lives. They should be able to work and keep more of their tax money. Most of the immigrants that come to the United States are escaping repressive regimes, away from the drug wars and the graft and corruption from some of these South American countries. The Libertarian Party is offering them liberty. Come and work, be peaceful, and enjoy yourself. That is
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! what they are coming here for, liberty. So, what party represents liberty more than the Libertarian Party? VPR: And do you believe that people who come across the border illegally should have some path to attain citizenship? JONES: Yes. A path to citizenship. Maybe not all of them will become citizens, but they should certainly be made legal, and given green cards and permission to work and pay taxes, absolutely. VPR: As you said, many people coming across the border simply want a better life in America. But how can you balance the desire to help them with legitimate concerns about people seeking government assistance and seeking to do the country harm? JONES: Right. I differ from a lot of Libertarians in that I am enough of a realist to know that the borders have to be made secure. Nothing will get passed in Congress unless we secure the borders. And I don’t want to secure the borders solely to stop illegal immigration, but also to stop terrorists from being able to waltz across the borders. So I think that we have to secure our borders. Once the American people realize that the borders are secure, they will calm down a bit. Another thing is, I think it’s been overblown by politicians and the press that people are coming here for handouts. I think the vast majority of immigrants coming into this country are looking for work. They’re making more money than they’ve ever made in their life doing anything in Ecuador or El Salvador, or wherever they came from. And they’re able to live cheaply and actually send money back to support their families. So they’re not coming up here trying to get free hospitalization or something. Most are coming here because they want to work. And we certainly have jobs for them, because most of them are doing something. They might be low paying jobs that some Americans don’t want, but to them, they’re the best jobs they’ve ever had. I do think if we give the immigrants that are already here green cards and a path to citizenship, like you said, it will encourage more people to come to the United States, which is the reason I say we really need to secure the borders to prevent that, and to get any reform passed at
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! all. Nothing will get passed unless people are certain that the borders are secure. V. Foreign Affairs VPR: What do you believe is the United States’ role in international affairs and how does this belief inform your preferred policies in response to recent international developments, including ISIL [or ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria] or the Russian occupation of Crimea and the use of soldiers in Ukraine? JONES: I believe that National Defense obviously provides a public good. We have to have national defense. We need to deter enemy attacks, we need to respond to attacks, but I am against these preemptive wars and pre-emptive strikes. Where is it written that we have the authority or responsibility of traveling around the world, getting into wars with other countries and factions? That doesn’t keep us safe. It probably has the opposite effect. I am totally against war in the Middle East. I think we should bring our troops home from there to protect our borders and our shores. We’ve had troops stationed in Japan and Germany since World War II, for a reason I don’t understand. But it costs the taxpayer billions of dollars and doesn’t keep us any safer, especially having troops stationed in Germany and Japan. I don’t think we have to worry about them going to war with us again. It seems that the United States always focuses on the last thing that happened, either the last war or in this case, the last attack we had on our homeland. The government seems to exaggerate the threat that we face, and, by exaggerating the threat, causes unease and fear in the public, and then the public goes along with them getting into these wars. In fact, we really don’t have that much of a threat coming at us. In the Middle East, you have Saudi Arabia, [with] their huge wealth, the Egyptian military, the Iranians; they’re all against ISIS or ISIL. Let them handle it. They have the means to do it. It’s their problem, so I don’t understand why we’re still there, why we keep getting into these little wars and conflagrations. It makes no sense to me.
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! VPR: If there is a vote on the authorized use of military force (AUMF) in Congress, is it safe to say you would not authorize and would vote against it? JONES: I would vote against it, yes. VPR: Do you think that it is reasonable that the United States tries to play by this international norm that you say exists when China and other big powers, like Russia, aren’t going to play by those rules? JONES: Well I’m not worried about Korea and Japan. I’m sure they can jointly take care of themselves against China or Russia. I don’t see China as a big threat to them other than economically. I don’t think, militarily, China wants to get into a war with Japan and Korea, and I don’t think Russia does either. I’m not worried about the security of Japan and Korea at all. I think they can defend themselves VPR: Do you think it is reasonable for the United States to act on Israel’s behalf or act to help and defend Israel in the international community, since it is a much smaller nation? JONES: That’s a really tough question; I wished you hadn’t asked me (laughs)...In the first place, I think Israel can defend itself. It’s fought its neighbors before and ended the wars very quickly. I think the administration has to set foreign policies that don’t exacerbate grievances and legitimize terrorism. I think that is part of the problem. Since we do support Israel so strongly, we become the Arabs’ [enemy]. You know, they hate us almost as much as they hate Israel. I think it’s a lot to do with our foreign policy. We go over there [and] support Israel, always support Israel against any Arab state and that just exacerbates the problem. I think the Arab states are smart enough that, if we pulled back and got out of there, that they would know better than to attack Israel. Israel could defend itself, probably against any coalition over there. I would hope so.
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! VPR: Do you trust Ayatollah Khamenei, the religious leader of Iran, to have such a rational and reasoned decision process? JONES: I think he is a rational person, and he’ll only do it because it’s to his benefit...to refrain from attacking Israel. I mean, people do what works for them, what works best, and a war with Israel does not work for him. So I think he would refrain, yes. I think the leaders of the other countries would. I don’t think Egypt has any desire to go to war again with Israel; it doesn’t work out well for them. Every government, their first job is self-preservation, and that’s first and foremost in their mind. They want to keep their government, they want to keep their job. If they know they’re going to be wiped out by another military force that stops them from going to war. It’s not because they’re nice people, it’s because they know the consequences. VI. Opposition to Corporate Welfare VPR: On your website you state that you stand for ending corporate welfare. How do you define this and what specific policy changes would you make to bring about this effect? JONES: Corporate welfare I would define as taxpayer money invested or given to corporations to do things like research and development. The government, like they did with Solyndra, the government goes in and gives hundreds of millions of dollars. Special tax breaks for corporations. As I study more and more departments of our government and agencies, I discover that most of them only have one job, and that’s to give away tax money. The Department of Commerce is nothing but a Santa Claus to corporations. The [Export-Import] Bank is not needed. The American taxpayer takes all the risks and the business gets all the benefit. All these departments that give away money would have to be eliminated because they serve no purpose, other than to soak the taxpayer and help businesses that don’t deserve the help. There are over 100 departments that the Cato Institute has identified that can be eliminated immediately, and I would agree to eliminate those, [and] that would save the American taxpayers over $6,000 each, each year, which they could then spend on their bills. Just do away
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! with these give-away programs: the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, the Department of Education. There are so many, I don’t have my list with me, but there are so many that I can’t remember them all. But they are just give-away programs. They give power to the people in Congress that appoint the people that work for them and run those agencies. Government just grows bigger and bigger. If there was an agency that wanted to close down, Congress would not let it, because it would diminish their power. So those things just have to be eliminated. A lot of them are counterproductive, many of them are outdated, and they are just ridiculous agencies. That would end corporate welfare. Our [Department of Agriculture] gives billions of dollars to farmers that don’t need it. Most small farmers don’t get the benefit of it; it’s the big agri-businesses that get it. It’s just people buying influence and power with taxpayer dollars, that’s what it is and it should be ended. VII: Continuing Resolution in the Lame Duck Session VPR: Congressman Hurt voted against the [September 2014] continuing resolution (CR), which funds the government at current levels through December 11. If you were in his position, how would you have voted on the CR and what do you think the outcome is going to be when Congress votes on the next one? JONES: Well, I think if you’re a representative of people in this district, which in this district is over 700,000 people that are paying all the bills, I think you have to do anything you can to lower the cost of government and to return tax dollars to the people. It’s the only fair thing to do; it’s the only thing that will grow our economy. Every time the debt ceiling gets hit and they want to raise the debt ceiling, Congress always goes along with it. There should be a balanced budget amendment that would put a stop to this. It would take it out of the hands of the politicians to decide, politically, whether it’s better to raise the debt ceiling, and just set a limit, set a law, and let them work with what they’ve got without borrowing more money. I’m against anything that increases spending or increases taxes.
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! VPR: You would have voted no on the CR in September? JONES: Yes VIII. Personal Experience VPR: Is there some experience that you can point to from your own personal career that you think makes you the best candidate to represent this district? JONES: I’ve been in business all my life, so I know how hard it is to run a business profitably. I’ve had to deal with government rules and regulations, plus my competition. It’s like you got competition on one side and the government on the other side that you’re fighting all the time. I know that the government costs the taxpayers a lot of money through their regulations. I saw a recent study where someone tried to put a dollar or a percentage of our money that actually covers not only the taxes that all of us pay, but the cost of compliance for government regulations. They figure that we spend 59 percent of our income on taxes and government regulations, IRS compliance, that type of thing. I’m the only one running that is going to fight to make a smaller government. The Democrats aren’t going to do it, the Republicans won’t do it. They’re both big government parties that have been running the country for over 150 years. They got us where we are right now. I want the government to obey the law. It used to be, when I was young, the government was like this nice, old uncle that was there protecting you and was there to help you if you needed it. Now the government is just a separate thing: we’ve got our country and we’ve got our government. And the government does not seem to be on our side, the working man’s side. I will fight any tax increase, I will fight any increase in spending and I’m sure that neither the Republican nor the Democrat that is running will say that. Unless people like more taxes, more government, and more intrusion in their life. I’m really the only choice they have to vote for.
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! VPR: What businesses have you worked in? JONES: I owned a printing company. I owned a shipping store, like a Mail Boxes Etc., except it was an independent, it wasn’t a franchise. I’ve owned a self-defense products company. I’ve been in the grocery business, office supplies, and book store business[es]. I’ve been a teacher, a realtor. I’ve done a lot of different things. VPR: Mr. Jones, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us and for sharing a third perspective on this very important Congressional race. ! Paul Jones received his LL.B. in 1971 from John Marshall University in Atlanta, Georgia. He started his business career in Charlottesville at the old Anderson Brothers Bookstore on the UVA corner. He went on to own or manage many other businesses around Charlottesville, including an office supply store, a grocery store, a printing company, and a shipping store. He lives in Charlottesville with his wife, Judy, and their two dogs and cats. Together they have five children and seven grandchildren. He is a proud Libertarian and is honored to be their candidate for the U. S. House of Representatives. You can learn more about Paul at www.pauljonesforcongress.com
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A Plan for Virginia’s Future Robert Sarvis Political pundits and analysts are once again breaking down polling data and making presumably educated predictions about individual races and the overall partisan makeup of the U.S. Senate. But on a number of important issues, it simply does not matter whether Harry Reid or Mitch McConnell runs the Senate.! ! The political establishment in both major parties is on the same page and won’t bring about meaningful reform of the surveillance state, the $17 trillion debt, America’s interventionist foreign policy, the failed drug war, or even the healthcare system.! ! Undoubtedly, the rhetoric about healthcare paints a different, but misleading, picture. In this campaign, my Republican opponent Ed Gillespie is predictably relying on the same playbook GOP candidates are using across the country. He wants the election to be a referendum on Obamacare.! ! But merely focusing on Obamacare is little more than partisan tunnel vision. Obamacare was not the first market-distorting, costincreasing regulation of the healthcare system. Both Republicans and Democrats have contributed to a century’s worth of bad regulations at both the federal and state level. Republicans are not serious about reform if all they do is see who can yell the loudest about Obamacare. Equally problematic is the Democrats’ insistence that Obamacare was real reform. The Affordable Care Act only exacerbated the pathologies in our healthcare system by pushing more people into paying for healthcare through comprehensive health insurance. But Obamacare meets that end only by increasing government-architected cross-subsidies. It doesn’t make health insurance look more like real insurance, such as automobile insurance, which covers accidents, not routine maintenance. Catastrophic insurance is increasingly difficult to find,
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! and Obamacare perpetuates the complete lack of price transparency in healthcare.! ! There was a time when Republicans and Democrats could come to the table and work together to deregulate entire sectors of the economy, such as trucking and airlines. Federal boards, not market participants, previously set routes and prices until deregulation in those sectors in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Private businesses, healthcare professionals, and entrepreneurs need economic freedom to innovate, which is how we will achieve quality healthcare that is affordable and available to all. Through deregulation in healthcare, we could see the kind of innovation we have in technology and communications.! ! The government needs to get out of the way and open up markets. That means taking on the special interests that have turned to government to insulate themselves from competition and raise costs. Licensing and medical school accreditation rules limit the supply of doctors and restrict nurses and physician assistants from opening independent practices to provide basic care. Laws, like Virginia’s “Certificate of Need” regime, which force healthcare entrepreneurs who want to open new facilities to get permission from bureaucrats — who are lobbied by established firms — should be repealed. We need price transparency to promote the economizing of healthcare resources, and we need to stop incentivizing overconsumption of health insurance and health care through subsidies and the tax code’s treatment of employer-provided health insurance. ! ! On other vital issues, the rhetoric and actions of the establishment in both parties, including both of my opponents, is virtually identical. ! ! Perhaps most notably, Election Day is nearly a year and a half after the revelations about the size and scope of the mass surveillance of innocent Americans. No real reforms or protections of our civil liberties have made their way through Congress. The US House of Representatives passed a watered-down version of the USA Freedom Act, originally written to curtail these abuses and end bulk data collection, and civil libertarian groups and privacy
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! advocates objected to new open-ended language in the bill that would allow continued bulk data collection. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has addressed many of these concerns with a new version of the bill (S. 2685), which indeed is a marked improvement, but still contains many serious defects, including an exemption for the Federal Bureau of Investigation from new transparency requirements. ! The bill would also extend some controversial provisions of the socalled “Patriot” Act through 2017. This extension would deny any civil libertarians newly elected this November the opportunity to offer more reforms when the controversial provisions would otherwise expire in June of next year. Even with these limitations, I doubt the bill could get through the Senate, never mind the House.! ! Unfortunately, neither of my opponents is even talking about mass surveillance, and both have records of supporting intrusions into our civil liberties. Warner has repeatedly voted to reauthorize the legislation that enables the mass surveillance state and voted against bipartisan reforms to better protect our civil liberties. Notably, Warner voted against Senator Ron Wyden’s (D-OR) amendment to require the executive branch to provide a report assessing the impact of surveillance policies on the privacy of Americans, and against Senator Jeff Merkley’s (D-OR) amendment to require the release of significant secret court opinions so Congress and the public could evaluate them. In effect, Warner voted to keep Americans in the dark about programs we later only learned about through leaks. Meanwhile, Gillespie has praised Barack Obama for continuing the surveillance policies of Gillespie’s former boss, George W. Bush.! ! There’s also no daylight of difference between Warner and Gillespie on foreign policy. Both are squarely in lock step with the interventionist establishment. Americans are rightfully wary of new long-term involvement in the Middle East, particularly when there is no clear or immediate national security interest. Warner is even open to boots on the ground against ISIS. Gillespie supports the bombing operations and ignores the disastrous foreign policy of the Bush Administration that created the power vacuum in Iraq filled by ISIS.! !
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! Barack Obama ran on changing our foreign policy and even won the Nobel Peace Prize, but now he is claiming that he has authorization for new operations in Syria without Congressional action, despite an expert consensus that the existing authorizations for the use of force are not sufficient. Neither major party, and neither Warner nor Gillespie, will rein in the imperial presidency or bring about a more responsible foreign policy. ! Finally, no matter who controls the Senate, the establishment won’t touch the issue that contributes to so many other problems: the failed War on Drugs. The drug war and its accompanying mass incarceration bloat our budgets, perpetuate racial inequality and poverty, and break up families. It’s embarrassing for a nation that prides itself on being a leader in freedom and equality to have the highest incarceration rate in the world.! ! Sadly, even modest reform supported by libertarians, progressives, and conservatives cannot get a vote in the Senate. The Smarter Sentencing Act (S. 1410) was a piece of bipartisan legislation that would cut federal mandatory minimums for drugs sentences in half and give judges greater flexibility when sentencing low-level offenders. The act was widely expected to receive a vote over the summer, but Harry Reid never scheduled one (perhaps to protect incumbent Democrats like Warner from being forced to take a position in an election year). The Richmond Times-Dispatch even called Warner out for his refusal to definitively take a position on the stalled bill. A related issue is marijuana reform, which has now become a mainstream issue. The New York Times recently endorsed full legalization at the federal level, a position I share. But even efforts to merely respect duly-enacted state medical marijuana laws have stalled. ! Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced an amendment to an appropriations bill that would block the Drug Enforcement Administration from using appropriated funds to interfere with implementation of state medical marijuana laws. Forbidding the DEA from conducting raids that would deny patients
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! their medicine is the least the federal government can do, and it would send a strong message of support to the more than 80 percent of Virginians who support medical marijuana. ! ! But there has not been and will not be a vote on the amendment. Reid and McConnell are in another all-too-common partisan fight about amendments to appropriations bills. Instead, Congress passed another continuing resolution to fund the government.! ! Those partisan games contribute to the dysfunction of Congress and they will continue regardless of who becomes Senate Majority Leader come January. This particular race won’t affect the Senate makeup either because of Warner’s persistent and large lead over Gillespie. The only way that Virginians who want real reform can send a message is by voting for me on November 4. The only “wasted vote” is voting for the status quo. !! ! Robert Sarvis is Virginia’s Libertarian candidate for the U.S. Senate. Sarvis, a Virginia native, ran for Governor of Virginia in 2013. His gubernatorial campaign earned major political and newspaper endorsements and turned in the best third-party gubernatorial showing in a Southern state in forty years. Sarvis is a software developer, entrepreneur, and lawyer. He studied mathematics at Harvard and Cambridge, law at New York University, and economics at George Mason University. He is married to a pediatrician and has two children. His campaign website is www.robertsarvis.com.
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Social Security and the 2014 Midterm Elections Jasmine Jefferson Introduction Election season is upon us and with a strong Republican majority in the United States House of Representatives and a Democratic White House, all eyes are on the United States Senate. Democrats have a slim majority in the upper house, and the Republicans are six seats away from a full takeover of the entire legislature. The results of the 2014 elections will define the final legacy of the Obama Administration and set the stage for the 2016 presidential election. During this midterm election candidates will tactfully consider several issues to use as the basis for their political platform. There are numerous controversial topics to choose from this election cycle including the war on terror, the Affordable Care Act, as well as equal pay. Candidates pick platforms for a variety of reasons; they want to pick topics they are passionate about, an issue they can identify with, and also a platform that inspires voters to support them. Mainstream Democrats fear that, like other midterm elections, voter turnout will significantly decrease. 1 Low voter turnout typically gives Republicans an advantage.2 The Republican base, composed of conservatives and older voters, is often more enthusiastic and more engaged during these elections.3 Rightfully, the Democratic National Committee is making efforts to tackle the expected low
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Drew DeSilver, “Voter Turnout Always Drops off for Midterm Elections, but Why?” Pew Research Center, July 24, 2014, http://www.pewresearch.org/facttank/2014/07/24/voter-turnout-always-drops-off-for-midterm-elections-but-why/. 2 “GOP Has Midterm Engagement Advantage,” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, July 24, 2014, http://www.people-press.org/2014/07/24/gop-hasmidterm-engagement-advantage/. 3 Ibid.
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! voter turnout through a national media campaign targeted at voters of color, who boosted the Obama campaign to victory twice. 4 Strategic investments in voter turnout campaigns are important, but in order for the Democrats to maintain their majority in the Senate, candidates must create a platform that includes protecting and increasing Social Security benefits. Recent polling by Social Security Works (SSW) and the Center for Community Change Action (CCC) demonstrates the public’s strong support for the Social Security system. Seventy-nine percent of survey participants support expanding Social Security benefits by requiring that wealthy Americans pay the same tax rate into Social Security as everyone else. The data also suggests that nearly twothirds of American voters are more likely to vote for their member of Congress if he or she voted for increasing Social Security benefits and seventy percent of voters would be likely to vote against their member of Congress for voting to cut benefits.5 A political platform involving Social Security expansion takes the Democrats off the edge and over into the Senate majority for another two years. Social Security The Social Security system stands as a societal pillar and testament to our nation’s value for hard work in America for nearly eighty years. Signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935, Social Security is a social insurance program that protects American laborers and their families from any permanent declines in income stemming from retirement, disability, or death. The compulsory nature of this insurance program makes it one of the most successful in American history.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !Diana Ozemebhoya Eromosele, “Dems Roll Out New 7-Figure Ad Campaign Ahead of Midterms,” The Root, September 15, 2014, http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics/2014/09/dnc_announces_new_7_figure_nati onal_media_buy.html.! 5 Center for Community Change Action & Social Security Works, “National Survey,” August 22, 2014, http://www.socialsecurityworks.org/wpcontent/uploads/2014/09/toplines.CCC-Action-SSW.National.082214.pdf. 4
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! In 2013, 58 million Americans received Social Security benefits.6 Social Security also lifted 22 million Americans, including 1 million children, out of poverty in 2012. 7 It is likely that nearly every American knows someone who receives Social Security or plans to receive Social Security. Unlike many other government programs, citizens feel a personal attachment to Social Security, because often they are the person they expect to receive benefits. Workers earn their Social Security benefits through the Federal Insurance Contributions Act payroll taxes. When workers become disabled, retire, or pass away they or their dependents become eligible to receive their previous investment back based on how much they invested. Low-income workers receive the smallest benefits, and as workers’ salaries increase their future benefit also increases. Another unique aspect to note is the bipartisan appeal of Social Security; it is important for families regardless of socioeconomic status, race, or political party affiliation. Polling shows that Social Security has strong support from a significant number of voters representing all political parties. Ninety percent of Democrats and nearly three-quarters of Independents and Republicans support Social Security.8 These numbers demonstrate Americans’ desire for Social Security’s retirement fund, survivor’s insurance, and disability insurance programs. They also reveal that in order for elected officials to truly represent all of their constituents, they must commit to supporting and strengthening Social Security.
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U.S. Social Security Administration, “Total Beneficiaries: Table 5.J2—Number, by State or Other Area, Program, and Type of Benefit, December 2013,” July 2014, http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/supplement/2014/5j.html#table5.j2; U.S. Census Bureau, “Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for Selected Age Groups by Sex for the United States, States, Counties, and Puerto Rico Commonwealth and Municipios: April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2012,” Amiercan Fact Finder, n.d., http://factfinder2.census.gov/. 7 Paul N. Van de Water, Arloc Sherman, and Kathy Ruffing, “Social Security Keeps 22 Million Americans Out Of Poverty: A State-By-State Analysis,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, October 25, 2013, http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=4037. 8 Center for Community Change Action & Social Security Works, “National Survey.”
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! Social Security in the Primary Elections Several political candidates took advantage of a Social Securitycentered platform during the primary races in early 2014. For example, in Hawaii during the August Senate Democratic primary Senator Brian Schatz continuously ran campaign advertisements on Social Security expansion. His opponent, a Hawaiian Congresswomen and also a supporter of Social Security, only highlighted her efforts to protect Social Security rather than expand Social Security. While the Social Security expansion narrative is not the sole reason for Senator Schatz’s victory in Hawaii, he can attribute much of his success to his explicit support of expanding the system. Senator Mark Begich of Alaska is another candidate who won the Democratic primary while promoting a Social Security expansion agenda more progressive than his opponents. Looking Forward Polling continuously fluctuates between favoring Republicans and Democrats. It appears that the November elections will be decided by a slim margin. Democratic candidates in states such as Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Michigan, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Maine must distinguish themselves from their Republican opponents and run campaigns that emphasize maintaining and expanding Social Security. Social Security is a dependable system with backing from all demographics in America. When voters head to the polls on November 4, 2014, they should feel that the candidate they select will truly represent and maintain their best interests. Data show that Social Security is an important issue that will push Democrats ahead in the polls and on Election Day.
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! Beyond Election Day, Social Security should stand as one issue that a potentially divided Congress can rally around, protect, and strengthen. Regardless of who controls the legislature, there is great respect for our Social Security system throughout America. Representatives should find themselves in line with their constituents, advocating for a strengthened and expanded Social Security system. ! Jasmine Jefferson is currently the Legislative Associate at Social Security Works, a non-profit dedicated to strengthening and expanding Social Security. Jasmine is a 2012 graduate of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and a 2011 graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia.
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Regional Voting Strength in Virginia from 1968 to Today: How Northern Virginia Has Become the State’s Dominant Area Geoffrey Skelley Introduction Up until the 2008 election, Virginia had long been considered a relative certainty for Republicans in presidential elections. From 1968 to 2004, the GOP nominee for president won the state, usually by a comfortable margin. Then in 2008, Barack Obama became the first Democratic nominee to win the state’s electoral votes since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. As president, Obama repeated the feat, winning Virginia once again in his 2012 reelection victory over Mitt Romney. This sea change in Virginia politics begged the simple question: what changed in Virginia? The answer to this question isn’t exactly simple — it involves major demographic shifts and changing political dynamics – but in one sense there is a straightforward explanation for Democrats’ newfound success in federal elections in Virginia: the increased proportion of the state’s vote in northern Virginia and the Urban Crescent as a whole compared to the rest of the state. While the three metropolitan areas that make up the Urban Crescent – Northern Virginia, Greater Richmond, and Hampton Roads – have long been the major population centers in the state, the Crescent’s comparative size to the rest of Virginia has ballooned, almost entirely through the growth of Northern Virginia, giving it a larger say in election outcomes. As these areas have grown, particularly northern Virginia, they have also become exceedingly more Democratic-leaning in their voting habits. This has given statewide elections in Virginia a much sharper urban-rural dichotomy, with all sorts of ramifications. For example, because of their strong performance in the Urban Crescent, Democrats currently hold all statewide offices in Virginia. However,
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! because their voters are over concentrated in the urban and suburban areas of the state, Republicans control the state’s U.S. House delegation eight to three, hold a narrow 21-19 edge in the Virginia Senate, and dominate the House of Delegates 68-32. This mirrors the nation: Democrats appear to have something of a structural problem in the U.S. House because their voters are so overly concentrated in urban areas. Although other factors, such as gerrymandering, have played a role in the seemingly incongruent results of Democratic statewide victories and Republican control of legislative offices, even with “fairer” districts it seems likely Republicans would still have an edge in both the state House of Delegates and the federal U.S. House delegation. After all, Republicans hold fifteen seats in the House of Delegates that Obama won in 2012 (Democrats hold zero that Romney won), and the GOP also controls Virginia’s three most competitive U.S. House districts by 2012 presidential vote, the Second, Fourth, and Tenth districts – all of which were decided by about a point in one party’s direction or the other. By looking back at Virginia’s presidential election history from 1968 (the first presidential election after the Voting Rights Act of 1965) to 2012, we can see the significant increase in the Urban Crescent’s percentage of the state’s total vote in each election, and particularly the inverse relationship between Northern Virginia’s sway in elections and that of the rest of the state outside of the three major metropolitan regions. The Urban Crescent For the purposes of this article, Northern Virginia, Greater Richmond, and Hampton Roads are defined by the most recent Office of Management and Budget standards. Obviously, these definitions have changed over time. For instance, no one in 1968 would have considered Warren County to be a part of Northern Virginia, but today it is included in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan statistical area (MSA), even though it is about 75 miles west of Washington. For the purposes of comparison, it’s easiest and most straightforward to make apples-to-apples comparisons across time by using the same geographical definitions.
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Map 1. The Urban Crescent and the rest of Virginia
In the map above, the dimensions of the three components of the Urban Crescent are laid out. Northern Virginia, as defined by the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, Va. MSA, stretches west from inside the Beltway through Fairfax County, the largest locality in the state population-wise, to the edge of the Blue Ridge in Clarke and Warren counties and south down Interstate 95 to Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County. Greater Richmond, as defined by the Richmond-Petersburg, Va. MSA, reaches all the way north to Caroline County and as far south as Sussex County. Hampton Roads, defined by the Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News, Va. MSA, goes as far north as Gloucester and Mathews counties and includes the largest city in the state, Virginia Beach.
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! These three regions now form a sort of key to unlocking statewide wins in Virginia politics: Win all three and it’s very difficult to lose. Obama’s 2012 victory over Mitt Romney illustrates this. As shown in Table 1, Obama lost the rest of the state by a large margin, but carried the Urban Crescent handily, thus winning the state.
Table 1. Region vote, 2012
Table 1 shows Northern Virginia had 34.0 percent of the vote in 2012, the most of any area in the state. The region’s population growth has been explosive, particularly focused in Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William counties, respectively the first, third, and fifth-ranked localities by population in the state. In fact, between 1970 and 2010, Loudoun County’s population grew an astounding 741 percent, from just 37,150 to 312,311. Although Fairfax and Prince William’s growth has been less dramatic, each had far larger population than Loudoun in 1970 to begin with, and as a whole, Northern Virginia’s population growth provided almost half (48.5 percent) of the state’s overall growth between 1970 and 2010.
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! Correspondingly, Northern Virginia’s percentage of the state’s total votes cast in presidential elections grew as well, expanding from 20.9 percent in 1968 to 34.0 percent in 2012. During this time period, the Greater Richmond and Hampton Roads areas have remained relatively stable in this regard, with voters in the capital region casting around 16-17 percent of the total vote in each presidential election and voters in Hampton Roads providing 19-21 percent of the statewide ballots. Thus, the big loser in voting influence has been the rest of the state. In 1968, voters outside the Urban Crescent (again, based on today’s boundaries) cast 41.1 percent of the state’s votes. That percentage fell to 29.0 percent by 2012. Figure 1 illustrates the changes during this 44-year period.
Figure 1. Change in percentage of total statewide presidential votes cast by region, 1968-2012
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! In just over four decades, the percentage of votes cast in the Urban Crescent grew from about 59 percent to 71 percent. Gigantic changes were afoot in Virginia but few pundits around the country realized just how large the demographic shifts were during this time period because Republicans continued to win the state in presidential elections. They were able to win the state because the GOP routinely won majorities not only in the rest of the state, but also in the major metropolitan areas. As Table 2 indicates, Republicans have won the rest of the state in every election between 1968 and 2012, and up until 2004 they also won Northern Virginia and Greater Richmond in every contest. Only the Hampton Roads area occasionally backed Democrats, albeit Democratic candidates from the South – Jimmy Carter won the region in 1976 and Bill Clinton did as well in 1996.
Table 2. Presidential vote by region, 1968-2012
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! Conditions subtly changed in 2004, when John Kerry narrowly won Northern Virginia by 2.6 percentage points, the first time a Democrat had won the region since Johnson’s landslide win in 1964. But Kerry still lost the Old Dominion by almost exactly the same margin as Al Gore had four years before, masking to some degree the political evolution occurring in that part of the state. By 2008, the transition became impossible to ignore as Obama won 58.5 percent of the Northern Virginia vote. He also won the other two metropolitan regions, becoming the first Democrat to win all three since LBJ. Democrats have made gains in this region in part because of an increasingly diverse population, in terms of origin (whether from abroad or other parts of the U.S.) and in terms of ethnicity and race. For example, Fairfax County, the state’s largest locality, saw the nonwhite portion of its population double between 1990 and 2010, growing from 18.6 percent to 37.3 percent. As nonwhite voters tend to vote heavily Democratic, these changes have aided Democrats and hurt Republican performance in Northern Virginia. While there has typically been a fairly steady relationship between the statewide Democratic percentage and the Democratic vote of each region, this statistic also demonstrates the increasing divide between the rest of Virginia and the statewide result. As shown in Table 3, the correlation between the statewide vote and the vote in Richmond and Hampton Roads has been almost 100 percent; that is, the vote percentages in those regions have generally been very close to the overall statewide result. Northern Virginia’s has been less so, mostly because of a noticeably stronger downtick in Democratic support in 1980 and a strong uptick in support in 2004. But the lowest correlation has been between the rest of the state and the statewide result, clearly because of the worsening Democratic performance beginning in 2000. Up until that time, the rest of the state’s correlation with the statewide result was R=0.97.
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Table 3. R of regions’ Democratic vote percentage and statewide vote percentage
What These Trends Mean Going Forward The growth in voting power in Northern Virginia and the general alignment of the three urban areas toward Democrats in recent federal elections has large consequences for the state. As mentioned earlier, Democrats control all five of the Old Dominion’s statewide offices in part because of this trend. While nothing is certain in politics, should Republicans continue to struggle in the Urban Crescent, it will be very hard for them to win statewide office in Virginia and the state’s electoral votes. Logically, winning the regions with the most voters leads to winning elections. A tidy concluding example of this is a comparison between the 2014 Senate campaign of Sen. Mark Warner (D) and his 2001 gubernatorial victory. When Warner won the governorship, he did so by building a strong foundation in many rural parts of the state, particularly in the southwest. While Warner won Fairfax County and inside the Beltway, he lost fairly handily to thenAttorney General Mark Early (R) in Loudoun and Prince William Counties. But Warner cleaned up in Coal Country and won other rural counties such as Appomattox, Franklin, Giles, Henry, and Pulaski counties. However, in the Age of Obama, the Democratic brand in much of rural Virginia is in tatters. Thus, there is no expectation that Warner will do well in the rural parts of the state, though he will likely perform somewhat better than President Obama did in 2008 and particularly 2012. To ensure victory, Warner will aim to do what all recent Democratic statewide candidates have done: run up the margins in Northern Virginia, Greater Richmond,
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! and Hampton Roads. Rocks and trees can’t vote, and with the strong urban-rural divide in the state, Democrats presently have an edge. Warner will be only the latest to take advantage. ! Geoffrey Skelley joined the staff of the University of Virginia Center for Politics in November 2011. Working as a political analyst, Skelley is the Associate Editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, the Center’s weekly political newsletter. He also serves as the Center’s Media Relations Coordinator, helping manage its communications. A native of Harrisonburg, VA, Skelley received an M.A. in Political Science (with a focus on the European Union) from James Madison University in 2011, and is a graduate of the University of Virginia, receiving a B.A. in History in 2009.
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Why Students Don’t Vote—And Why They Should Zachary Cohen I. Introduction There are roughly the same number of Americans between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four as there are Americans above the age of 65,1 yet the political influence of these groups could not be more disparate. 2 While people over the age of sixty-five have a disproportionate amount of influence in American politics, people under the age of 24 are oftentimes something of an afterthought to our elected leaders. While youth participation in 20083 and 2012 4 had dramatic and, potentially, even an outcome determinative effect on President Obama’s election and reelection, the influence of young voters on Congressional, state, and local elections is less clear. Despite the large number of policy issues that face young people directly as students – higher education funding, financial aid, and federal sexual assault rules – and the number of policy issues that we overwhelmingly support as a class – same sex marriage, for example – our needs are given less relative attention. Furthermore, and equally as troubling, when important decisions with long-term
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United States Census Bureau, "ACS 2013 Demographic and Housing Estimate," American FactFinder, http://factfinder2.census.gov/ (accessed October 7, 2014). 2 For the purpose of this article, I will refer to Americans over 65 as “the elderly” and Americans under 24 as “students.” Undoubtedly, not everyone over the age of 65 is “old,” and especially, not everyone under the age of 24 is a student, but these descriptions represent the primary feature of each of these classes. 3 Amanda Ruggeri, "Young Voters Powered Obama's Victory While Shrugging Off Slacker Image," US News. http://www.usnews.com/news/campaign2008/articles/2008/11/06/young-voters-powered-obamas-victory-while-shruggingoff-slacker-image (accessed October 8, 2014). 4 Tufts University, "At Least 80 Electoral Votes Depended on Youth," Civic Youth. http://www.civicyouth.org/at-least-80-electoral-votes-depended-on-youth/ (accessed October 7, 2014).
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! implications are being made, policymakers prefer maintaining the status quo on programs like Social Security and Medicare at the expense of future generations – i.e. us. Over the course of this piece, I hope to provide a survey that covers why students have less influence than the elderly, why students should care, including examples of policy issues at the federal and state levels, and, finally, discuss what students can do and are currently doing to solve the problem of disparate influence. I do not think it is necessary or appropriate for me to take substantive policy positions. Rather, I contend that there are important issues affecting us as a class that we should take an active role in pursuing. II. The Problem – Voter Participation and Interest Groups The “gray vote” is among the most influential blocs, if not the most influential bloc, in American politics.5 Andrea Campbell and Julia Lynch of Harvard cite two primary reasons for this influence in their research on the topic – the consistency of elderly voters and the power of elderly political interest groups, such as AARP. 6 For example, during the 2012 election, 72 percent of the voting-age population over the age of 65 voted. Furthermore, to Campbell and Lynch’s second point, AARP, the American Association of Retired Persons, is widely considered to be one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the nation,7 boasting over 37 million members. 8 The result of this influence has been that politicians, afraid of being the person to “push grandma off of a cliff,”9 have been much kinder
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Frederick R. Lynch, One Nation Under AARP: The Fight Over Medicare, Social Security, and America's Future (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2011). 6 Andrea Campbell and Julia Lynch, "The Two Faces of ‘Gray Power’: Elderly Voters, Elderly Lobbies and the Politics of Welfare Reform," Harvard, 2002. http://www.rwj.harvard.edu/papers/lynch/campbellLynch%20Gray%20Power%20Jul %2002.pdf. 7 Charles R. Morris, The AARP: America's most powerful lobby and the clash of generations (New York: Times Books, 1996). 8 "AARP's Mission, Vision, Advocacy, Community Service," AARP. http://www.aarp.org/about-aarp/ (accessed October 7, 2014). 9 “Granny Off a Cliff,” YouTube video, posted by "The Agenda Project," May 17, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGnE83A1Z4U.
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! to programs like Social Security and Medicare than they otherwise may have been.
Figure 1. Voter Turnout Rates by Age in Presidential Elections—Pew Research Center.
The student vote, however, is more complicated. Traditionally, young voters not only represent a small minority among all voters but also have the lowest turnout of any age group.10 In 2008, during President Obama’s first election, while young voters saw a peak turnout in recent history, they still represented the lowest turnout of any age group, at just 49 percent.11 In 2012, turnout among young
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Paul Taylor and Mark Lopez, "Six Takeaways from the Census Bureau's Voting Report," Pew Research Center. http://www.pewresearch.org/facttank/2013/05/08/six-take-aways-from-the-census-bureaus-voting-report/ (accessed October 6, 2014). 11 Tom Edwards, "Voter Turnout Increases by 5 Million in 2008 Presidential Election, U.S. Census Bureau Reports," United States Census Bureau.
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! voters declined to 45 percent.12 However, while the turnout rate among young voters was relatively low in these elections, it is notable that the youth vote may have been outcome determinative in the presidential races in both 200813 and 2012.14 Despite this positive trend, the long-term effects of increased youth engagement in 2008 and 2012 remain to be seen. First, it is unclear if the trend will continue. Without Barack Obama on the ballot in 2016, will young voters simply not turn out? Further, even if young voters do turn out to vote for the top ticket, how do they effect Congressional, state, and local elections? Additionally, despite the best efforts of student advocates, young voters have no interest group commensurate with the likes of AARP. People under the age of twenty-four have traditionally not been viewed as an important voting bloc for elections.15 III. Why Students Should Care Section II begs the question – so what? Why should we care? Many students go through school without understanding – or, to give some more credit, they go through with a limited understanding – how the government affects our day-to-day lives. For some, it is true that the connection is more attenuated – if you come from a well-to-do family that is paying your way, perhaps government decisions do not affect you as often. However, for the vast majority, government decisions make a substantial difference. The U.S. Congress, for example, has handled everything from changes to student financial aid and student loan programs to legislation to address sexual assault on college campuses over the past year. At the same time, state and local governments have an even more substantial effect on higher
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/voting/cb09-110.html (accessed October 8, 2014). 12 U.S. Department of Commerce. U.S. Census Bureau. Young Adult Voting: An Analysis of Presidential Elections, 1964-2012. By Thom File. 13 Tufts, “At Least 80 Electoral Votes Depended on Youth.” 14 Lynch, One Nation Under AARP. 15 David Drehle, "The Year of the Youth Vote," Time. http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1708836,00.html (accessed October 9, 2014).
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! education, particularly at public universities. From setting tuition to making policy decisions, state governments have perhaps the most influence on students’ higher education experience. A. The Federal Level The Federal Government is responsible for a wide-range of policies that effect students. Since recounting all of them is more a topic for a dissertation than a short article, I am going to highlight three main policies and issues that have recently seen, or are currently seeing, movement in Congress – federal student loans, student financial aid, and sexual assault legislation. These selections highlight issues that directly affect college students but do not address the wide-range of policies from Social Security to taxes that will undoubtedly effect our generation in the future. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, 47.6 percent of incoming full-time, first time students received federal student financial aid during the 2011-2012 school year, the most recent data available.16 The students receiving federal financial aid were awarded an average of about $4,400 for the year.17 Likewise, student loans have virtually exploded. According to the project on student debt, roughly two-thirds of undergraduates leave school with debt, averaging $29,400. 18 Cumulatively, student debt has now overtaken credit card debt in total amount owed, topping $1.2 trillion.19
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U.S. Department of Education. "Full-time, first-time degree/certificate-seeking undergraduate students enrolled in degree-granting postsecondary institutions, by participation and average amount awarded in financial aid programs, and control and level of institution: 2000-01 through 2011-12." National Center for Education Statistics. http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_331.20.asp (accessed October 6, 2014). 17 Ibid. 18 The Institute for College Access & Success. "State by State Data." Project on Student Debt. http://projectonstudentdebt.org/state_by_state-data.php (accessed October 8, 2014). 19 Forbes Magazine, "How The $1.2 Trillion College Debt Crisis Is Crippling Students, Parents And The Economy," Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/sites/specialfeatures/2013/08/07/how-the-college-debt-iscrippling-students-parents-and-the-economy/ (accessed October 8, 2014).
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! During the summer of 2013, Congress, after creating a great deal of uncertainty, passed landmark legislation altering the way that student loan rates are calculated.20 The Department of Education, rather than using a fixed number, must set the rate for student loans, beginning in 2013, to match the market rate, although it will fix its rate for the lifetime of the loan.21 The changes that Congress made affect all students receiving such aid retroactive to July 1, 2013.22 Moreover, during the budget crisis of 2013, sequestration greatly affected higher education. Federal student aid programs saw large cuts; for example, Congress cut the Federal Work Study Program by approximately $49 million. 23 Universities had to cut back on research and even lay off research related staff as a result of decreased funding for the sciences.24 Finally, in light of recent news coverage and increased movement by interest groups, Congress has begun to examine sexual violence in higher education. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly one in five women in America’s colleges and universities report having been sexually assaulted since entering college.25
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H.R. 1911, 113th Congress (U.S. 2013), https://www.congress.gov/bill/113thcongress/house-bill/1911 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 Diane Reese, "Sequester hits work-study funds — and impacts this family," Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-thepeople/wp/2013/05/29/sequester-hits-work-study-funds-and-impacts-this-family/ (accessed October 9, 2014). 24 Michael Stratford, "As Congress Negotiates Budget, new Survey Highlights Strain of Sequester Cuts on University Research," Inside Higher Education. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/11/12/congress-negotiates-budget-newsurvey-highlights-strain-sequester-cuts-university (accessed October 9, 2014). 25 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Centers for Disease Control. Sexual Violence Facts at a Glance. http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/svdatasheet-a.pdf. 21
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! Based upon a perceived lack of response to reports of sexual violence on college campuses, the Campus Safety and Accountability Act would, among other things: •
•
• •
Require colleges and universities to designate staff as “confidential advisors” to coordinate services for survivors and provide information about options for reporting; Require a standardized disciplinary process across each college campus. For example, the college could not have special proceedings for student athletes, for example; Require campuses to create memorandums of understanding with local police departments; and, Enforce penalties against funding for schools that are not compliant with the Clery Act, which mandates institutions notify students of crime on and around campuses.26
Again, these examples are hardly exhaustive, but the Federal Government does directly impact college students. In addition to these examples, countless other decisions that Congress and federal agencies routinely make will have long-term effects on the nation that future generations – our generation – must address. B. The State Level Perhaps no level of government has a greater effect on higher education than state governments. With, nationally, about 20 percent of public university budgets coming from the states,27 totaling a staggering $72 billion during the 2012-2013 school year, the cost of attending public universities is directly related to year-to-year changes in state operating funds.28
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"The Bipartisan Campus Accountability and Safety Act," Senator Claire McCaskill, http://www.mccaskill.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/CampusAccountabilityAndSafetyAc t.pdf (accessed October 5, 2014). 27 Virginia General Assembly. Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee, Trends in Higher Education Funding, Enrollment, and Student Costs, http://jlarc.virginia.gov/reports/Rpt441.pdf. 28 College Board, Trends in College Pricing, 2013, http://trends.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/college-pricing-2013-full-report140108.pdf
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! The Commonwealth of Virginia has not made higher education the budget priority other states have. Virginia currently has the thirteenth highest average tuition for four-year colleges in the nation.29 While the national trend has been for states to reduce per full-time equivalent student (FTES) funding, Virginia has had a particularly large drop. Between 1991 and 2011, Virginia decreased funding per FTES by 20 percent, adjusted for inflation.30 As a result, Virginia institutions receive far less money from the Commonwealth than peer institutions from their respective states.31 This trend has continued in Virginia. Just this past month, Governor McAuliffe and the General Assembly announced midyear cuts to higher education, including a 6.6 percent cut in state funds to UVA, to make up for non-performing revenue. I should note that the Commonwealth has gone to extraordinary measures to ensure that students do not see the effects of these cuts.32
Figure 3. JlLARC change in per FTES funding
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College Board, Trends in College Pricing – Data Set, 2013. http://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/tuition-and-fees-sectorand-state-over-time 30 College Board, Trends in College Pricing, 2013. 31 Ibid. 32 Steve Szkotak, "Higher Education Cuts Likely to Spare Virginia Students," The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/higher-education-cutslikely-to-spare-va-students/2014/09/17/00352b98-3e83-11e4-a430b82a3e67b762_story.html (accessed October 9, 2014).
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Figure 4. State revenue as a proportion of total revenue.
Meanwhile, in states that have made higher education a budget priority, funding over the past few years has actually increased, even during the “great recession.” In Maryland, for example, by providing additional funds for higher education each year, Governor Martin O’Malley was able to freeze tuition for four straight years beginning in 2007 and then, after the freeze, instituted increases no greater than three percent per year.33 State legislatures also have wide discretion to pursue higher education policy. For example, during the 2014 legislative session, the Virginia General Assembly considered a bill that would have mandated that students, under certain conditions, be permitted to have outside counsel for judicial hearings. 34 Had this legislation
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Erin Cox, "Governor to Propose 3 Percent Tuition Hike, No Tax Increase." Baltimore Sun. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-budgetpreview-20140114,0,5546555.story (accessed October 9, 2014). 34 H.B. 1123, 2014 Regular Session (V.A.), http://lis.virginia.gov/cgibin/legp604.exe?141+sum+HB1123
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! passed, the University of Virginia would have had to dramatically alter the way it conducts judicial hearings, undermining, in my opinion, its century-old system of student self-governance. This is just one example of the literally thousands of bills that state legislators propose around the country each year addressing higher education policy. IV. What Students Can Do (And What Students Actually Do) So we have all of these issues that effect students, but what can students do about them? The answer depends on how much time students have to get involved. The first and easiest way is simply to vote for the candidate that is most in line with your priorities on Election Day – regardless of party. While, as a proponent of public higher education, my preferences for candidates are at least partially based on higher education issues, the really important part is that candidates and parties take notice that young people are voting. While youth, as a class, undoubtedly disagree widely, particularly on the complicated and controversial issues, youth voters also have certain shared general priorities emphasized by exercising the franchise. Moreover, if you are willing to give more time, you can write your federal, and especially, your state representatives on higher education issues. Representatives want to hear from students, and, if interest comes in large enough volumes, may actually be swayed by student opinion. This is especially true at the state and local level, where constituents can considerably sway their legislators. Students can also join organizations like the University of Virginia Student Council’s Legislative Affairs Committee. These organizations, be them through student government, partisan or policy-oriented groups, or otherwise, give participants direct access, depending on their focus, to state or local government to pursue student interests. Despite their often-small size and limited budget, especially compared to monstrosities like the AARP and NRA, these organizations can make real, substantial impacts for students. While
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! serving as President of the University System of Maryland Student Council, I had several such experiences. During the January 2013 legislative session, several members of each house of the Maryland General Assembly submitted the “College Completion and Readiness Act,” which contained a wide variety of solutions to improve higher education efficiency in the state. While many of these provisions were good, and all were well intentioned, there were a few requirements that would not have boded well for students. For example, one rule required a “block schedule,” or a pre-set schedule, for first year students. Furthermore, the bill, in our view, failed to reach the heart of the deficiencies in advising in the state. In response, our Student Council met with the sponsors of the bill, talked to members of the relevant committees, testified in committee, and proposed amendments during numerous committee work sessions to remove the bad sections and provide suggestions to further the goals of the legislation. Ultimately, the committee adopted our amendments and the bill passed into law. This experience is just one of the many successes of student advocacy around the nation. Students are on the front line of higher education. While legislators and their staff may have the best of intentions while drafting legislation, they often do not have the perspective of someone sitting in the classroom every day. By monitoring bills, tracking budget proceedings, and proposing legislation, student leaders can ensure that state policy is in line with what is best for their constituents.
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! V. Conclusion Youth participation may never be as high as elderly participation, and in many respects, that’s okay. However, the reason for a lack of influence should not be apathy. The number of ways that federal, state, and local governments affect students is expansive. By voting, interacting with elected officials, and participating in organized advocacy groups, students can ensure that their voices are heard. I urge you to go out and vote. ! Zachary Cohen is a second year student at the University of Virginia School of Law and graduate of the University of Maryland. He has been involved in student government since the fall of 2009 and previously served as the President of the University System of Maryland Student Council. He is currently the co-chair of the University of Virginia Student Council’s Legislative Affairs Committee.
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