November 18, 2012

Third Way, William Daley, and the Grand Bargain.

Third Way: Friends in High Places.

Third Way is a self-described "moderate" think tank. They are currently advocating for a Grand Bargain on entitlements. Third Way was founded in 2005 but is closely linked with former Clinton staffers as well as former and current members of the Obama administration. Former Third Way Honorary Co-chairs include Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar.

The current roster of Honorary Co-chairs is: Representatives Clyburn (SC), Dingell (MI), Kind (WI), Crowley (NY), Schwartz (PA), and Polis (CO) and Senators Carper (DE), Coons (DE), McCaskill (MO), Udall (CO), Shaheen (NH), and Hagan (NC). All are Democrats. It seems reasonable to suppose that if these Democrats are willing to lend their name to Third Way they are also sympathetic to their policy positions.

Third Way's website includes the following description of their methods: "Unlike traditional think tanks, which focus on producing academic-oriented papers, we aggressively market our ideas to policymakers and advocates to maximize their impact on the national debate. Third Way’s policy and political work has been incorporated into President Obama’s State of the Union addresses, introduced in more than fifty bills in Congress, included as part of major bipartisan budget deals and the President’s Deficit Commission recommendations..." They aspire to be a neoliberal ALEC.

Third Way = Wall Street Power Play?

President Obama's former Chief of Staff, Bill Daley, is on Third Way's Board of Directors. During the Clinton administration, he served as Special Counsel and coordinated the campaign to pass NAFTA. He also served as Clinton's Commerce Secretary. Prior to joining the Obama administration he was a Vice Chairman of JP Morgan Chase.

Including Daley, Third Way has 29 Directors. The Board is dominated by representatives of the financial industry. Chairman John Vogelstein is Chairman of New Providence Asset Management and is the retired President of the private equity firm Warburg Pincus. The Vice Chairman is David Heller who was formerly the global head of equity trading for Goldman Sachs.

David Coulter is Managing Director of Warburg Pincus. He is an alumnus of JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America. Andrew Feldstein is the CEO and Chief Investment Officer of BlueMountain Capital Management. He also previously worked at JP Morgan. Derek Kaufman is Head of Global Fixed Income at Citadel LLC. He previously worked at JP Morgan. Michael Novogratz is President and Director of Fortress Investment Group LLC. He previously was a partner at Goldman Sachs.

Brian Frank is a Director and Portfolio Manager at MSD Capital and previously worked in mergers and acquisitions at Lazard Freres. Michael Goldberg is Managing Director at the private equity firm Kelso & Co. He also has prior experience in mergers and acquisitions at First Boston Co. Derek Kirkland is a Managing Director and Co-Head of the Global Financial Institutions Group at Morgan Stanley’s Financial Institutions Group in Investment Banking. He has a background in mergers and acquisitions. Joseph Zimlich is the Chief Executive Officer of Bohemian Companies, a group of family-owned real estate and private equity holdings. Mr. Zimlich also has a background in mergers and acquisitions.

John Dyson is Chairman of Millbrook Capital Management. Robert Dyson is Chairman and CEO of Dyson-Kissner-Moran Corp., a privately owned investment holding company. Andrew Parmentier is a founding partner of Height Analytics, an investment research firm. Howard Rossman is President of Mesirow Advanced Strategies, a manager of hedge fund portfolios. Kirk Radke is an internationally recognized private equity attorney. Barbara Vogelstein has a background in venture capital and private equity, including a tour as a partner at Warburg Pincus.

Two other Directors who do not have a Wall Street background are worth a mention because they help complete the picture of Third Way. Jonathan Cowan is a co-founder who also co-founded Lead...or Leave, a Generation X advocacy group that was largely financed by Pete Peterson. The other director is Ron Klain who recently served as a senior White House aide to President Obama, and Chief of Staff to Vice President Joe Biden. Pairing Klain with Daley gives Third Way recent Chiefs of Staff of both the President and Vice President. If Daley and Klain can't provide access to the administration, it's difficult to imagine who could.

This think tank/advocacy group, which seeks to shape Democratic Party policy, includes no representives from the labor movement. By contrast, individual financial firms including JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Warburg Pincus each provide more than one Director to Third Way's Board.

Pushing a Grand Bargain- the Talking Points.

Third Way recently released a Memo entitled "Six Facts About a Grand Bargain."
Link: http://www.thirdway.org/publications/609

Summary:
Claim #1: The deficit is not a real economic problem.
Fact #1. Our current fiscal path, unchanged, guarantees higher interest rates and lower economic growth.

Claim #2: Social Security and Medicare don’t contribute to the deficit.
Fact #2. Social Security and Medicare’s fiscal shortfalls directly contribute to the deficit problem.

Claim #3: A grand bargain “betrays” voters.
Fact #3. Large majorities of voters support the core principles of a grand bargain.

Claim #4: A grand bargain means austerity.
Fact #4. A grand bargain is the best alternative to austerity.

Claim #5: Taxing the rich is enough to resolve deficits.
Fact #5. Leaving Social Security and Medicare untouched guarantees middle class tax hikes, because no plausible tax increase on the wealthy, alone, can stop deficit growth.

And finally, in its entirety:
Claim #6: President Obama promised not to touch Medicare and Social Security.
Fact #6: The president has repeatedly endorsed a deal that includes reasonable savings to make Social Security and Medicare stable for future generations.

President Obama has been entirely consistent on the deficit and entitlements. He proposes to cut deficits by $4 trillion, over ten years, “in a balanced way.” There is no question as to what balance means to the president. In the midst of the 2011 debt ceiling negotiations, Obama said, “Despite what some in my own
party have argued, I believe that we need to make some modest adjustments to programs like Medicare to ensure that they’re still around for future generations.”

The president has maintained that position throughout the presidential campaign. In the first presidential debate alone, he referred to “balanced” deficit reduction seven separate times. And the transcript of his Des Moines Register interview is clear: “I am absolutely confident that we can get what the equivalent of the grand bargain that essentially I’ve been offering to the Republicans for a very long time, which is $2.50 worth of cuts for every dollar in spending, and work to reduce the costs of our health care programs.”

What does it mean to be a Third Way Democrat?

A more expansive exposition of Third Way's policy prescriptions is contained in a recently released paper entitled "The Bargain."
Link: http://content.thirdway.org/publications/613/Third_Way_Report_-_The_Bargain.pdf

Third Way's program is based on the premise that America's biggest problem going forward is a reduction in projected growth of GDP from 3.3% to 2.3% per year. This leads, in short order, to an economy that is too small to sustain promised safety net benefits. In this paper they offer a 7-point plan to spur growth in the economy and thereby save as much of the safety net as possible.

A summary of their prescription:

1. Entitlement reform and tax increases. "Democrats must accept reconfiguring the budget so that, in relative terms, the amount of spending on health care and income supports is reduced compared to public investments."

2. Become an export giant. "Democrats must accept that expanding U.S. exports comes primarily through aggressive new trade measures like the Trans Pacific Partnership."

3. Reform corporate taxes and business regulations. "Democrats must accept that a simpler tax code with a low corporate rate and a streamlined regulatory regime that helps businesses grow is good for America."

4. Increase the productivity and educational attainment of the American workforce. "Democrats must accept that education funding comes with a commitment to reform that puts student performance above all else. They must accept that it is virtually impossible to reform and improve education without restructuring the way teachers are hired, promoted, and dismissed." Third Way Directors active in the charter school movement include William Budinger, Andrew Feldstein, and Derek Kaufman.

5. Become a global magnet for talent. "Democrats must accept that legislation must tilt future immigration flows into the country decidedly in the direction of skills and education." The vague language here suggests support for expanding HB1 visas.

6. Improve infrastructure.

7. Spur breakthrough innovation.

Notably absent from the list are cuts to military spending and serious reform of our hugely expensive employment-based and private insurance-based health care system. Third Way's program appears to be indifferent to the interests of minorities and hostile to the interests of teachers and labor unions. A party that disregards the concerns of a sizeable portion of its base is likely to shatter- sooner rather than later.

November 12, 2012

Busting Allen West- a Political Diary, 2012.

I have always had an interest in politics, but work and my other commitments made it difficult for me to do much more than donate money and volunteer for some phone-banking and door-knocking in the last week or two before elections. This January I retired, moved to Florida, and decided to become more politically active. Now I had plenty of time available to pursue my interest- I just needed a candidate.

Florida redrew its congressional map last year based on the 2010 census. In February, Tom Rooney, the current congressman for Martin County, announced that he would run for re-election in the new District 17 which he expected to be more favorable territory for a Republican. Soon after, Allen West announced that he would move his campaign north and run for re-election in the new District 18 which included Martin County, St. Lucie County, and northern Palm Beach County. He wanted to be my new congressman. His likely Democratic opponent was a 29-year-old political neophyte, Patrick Murphy. In June I received a phone call from a Murphy campaign intern. The only thing I knew for sure about Mr. Murphy was that he was not Allen West. That was enough- I had found my candidate.

Though neither candidate had been officially nominated (the primary would be held in August) Murphy already had an active phone-banking operation up and running. I volunteered and started the next day. The office was in Palm Beach Gardens- 40 minutes away. I got into a routine of volunteering on Mondays and Fridays and mostly kept that schedule through election day. Fortunately, after a month the campaign opened another office in Martin County and I was able to cut down my commuting time significantly.

My prior volunteer experience was limited to working with other union members and calling from AFL-CIO generated lists. This was different. Now I was working mostly with younger people who had taken a temporary job with the campaign. In many cases they were just out of school and were expecting to return later to graduate school or law school. The internship was a temporary diversion from their career path but they still approached their task with enthusiasm and dedication. Most days that meant calling 400 strangers- a grueling and thankless job. I usually worked half days and found even that level of engagement mind-numbing.

The lists we used were generated from voter registration information. We called a lot of Republicans and independents. Many of those conversations were less than cordial. In the handful of calls on a given day that turned into an actual discussion of issues, I found myself talking a lot about Medicare. West had twice voted for Ryan's budget bills, which called for turning Medicare into a voucher system, and I knew that vouchers were politically toxic in the retiree haven of South Florida.

The formality of the primaries was dispensed with on August 14 and the campaign began in earnest. As the summer wore on and turned to fall, I got to know Patrick. He was young, energetic, driven, and accessible. He was merely adequate as a public speaker, but won people over with his enthusiasm. He came from a prominent and wealthy South Florida family- something that the West campaign would use against him in their relentless series of negative commercials. He graduated from a prep school in New Jersey and the University of Miami and then became a CPA. Later, he joined the family construction business. The highlight of his business career was putting together a fleet of skimmers and spending 6 months in New Orleans working on the oil cleanup after the BP catastrophe.

Politically, he is a self-proclaimed centrist- occupying a still largely undefined area someplace to the right of my preferred positions but well to the left of the ground staked out by Allen West. He is a strong advocate for the environment and women's rights. He is against turning Medicare into a voucher program. He touts his CPA background and states that he is pro-business. He makes a general distinction between short-term needs of the economy and long-term needs, suggesting that he recognizes the macroeconomic case for stimulus when appropriate. He is in favor of restoring higher taxes on those earning over $1,000,000 a year. Patrick Murphy is not my ideal candidate, but he is a huge improvement over Alan West and I had no reservations about working for his election.

In September, the campaign suggested topics for letters to the editor and I was happy to oblige. Two of my letters were published in local papers. Here's a reprint of one, a letter on Medicare:

Rep. Allen West likes to quote the Medicare Trustees Report from 2012 that states that the Medicare trust fund will be exhausted by 2024. What he doesn't mention is that the same report also states that without the savings made in the Affordable Care Act, which he wants to repeal, the trust fund will be exhausted 8 years earlier.

Rep. West says that he is in favor of prohibiting insurance companies from excluding people with pre-existing conditions, and he too would close the prescription drug "doughnut hole." He's in favor of extending the benefits promised by Obamacare, just not in paying for them. He says they will be paid for by private insurance company competition. That's the miracle we can expect to witness right after we've seen Rep. West walk on water.

It's telling that when Rep. West addresses seniors on "defined contribution," he's careful to say that it would not affect anyone 55 and over. If defined-contribution is better, why exclude seniors? And if it is worse, does he really think seniors are so selfish that they want a better plan for themselves than for their children and grandchildren?

The other letter was on sequestration, highlighting the fact that West sponsored the National Security and Job Protection Act- a measure which would exempt all defense spending from the across-the-board cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act.

While I was gradually getting to know Patrick Murphy, Allen West was using his massive war chest to paint a completely different picture of the candidate. West enjoyed a $17 million to $3.6 million advantage in fund-raising and he spent a large portion of it attacking his opponent. One television ad in particular drew a lot of attention nationally- the "contrast" ad that featured a mug shot of Murphy when he was arrested outside a nightclub. Murphy was 19 at the time and all charges stemming from the incident were dropped, but those facts were not mentioned in the spot. The contrast provided in the ad was a picture of Alan West in uniform from the same time period as he was preparing to deploy to Iraq.

Murphy's campaign responded within a week with an ad that pointed out that West's deployment had resulted in an Article 15 hearing, a $5,000 fine, and his removal from command. The only problem was that West was able to carpet bomb the airways with his ad while Murphy's ad aired infrequently and was little more than a blip on the media radar screen.

West appeared to have grabbed the advantage and led in the polls. The West campaign continued to hammer away with negative ads up to and past the point of saturation. They were joined in the fray by outside groups, such as the Treasure Coast Jobs Coalition, which launched ludicrous broadsides against Murphy for supporting, among other things: the stimulus, $1 million bonuses for insurance executives, ant research, and using taxpayer money to send jobs to China. Anyone who realized that Murphy was a private citizen during the time that these supposed outrages were perpetrated was likely to be puzzled or even offended by the attacks.

West's momentum was blunted by the one televised debate which took place on October 19. An accomplished public speaker, West was expected by many to dominate in the debate, but did not. He looked foolish on at least a couple of occasions- when he unsuccessfully attacked Murphy's CPA credentials and when he tried to doubletalk his way out of his Medicare votes.

Murphy also won a lukewarm endorsement from the area's largest newspaper- the Palm Beach Post. It was better than not being endorsed and much better than anybody did in adjacent District 22 where the Post refused to endorse either candidate.

The campaign lurched into the final weeks. Many more volunteers climbed aboard for the final push. The phone-banking was transformed into a GOTV effort promoting both voting by mail and early voting. The West campaign continued to fill the airways with negative ads which, through sheer overexposure, seemed to have lost their power to do little more than irritate viewers.

Election day arrived and the race had tightened. The GOTV effort continued right up until the polls closed at 7 p.m. Murphy's election night party was held at the Double Tree in Palm Beach Gardens. Patrick showed up around 9:30 and mixed with everybody, thanking them for their hard work and patiently had his photo taken dozens of times with his supporters. By 10:30, over 80% of the vote was counted and West was up by about 2,000 votes. A glimmer of hope remained in the fact that many of the uncounted votes were in St. Lucie County, a Democratic stronghold. Most of the remaining St. Lucie votes came through around 1 a.m. and Murphy vaulted into the lead.

Meanwhile, Allen West's troops were holed up on Hutchinson Island. West never showed his face to thank his supporters, including over 100 volunteers who had traveled from Texas to knock on doors for his campaign. When West finally did make an appearance the following day it was to announce that he was filing suit to challenge the results of the election in Palm Beach and St. Lucie Counties. Florida law calls for automatic recounts when the margin of victory is 0.5% or less. Murphy's lead is currently greater than that and is expected to hold up.

I helped clean up the Stuart office after the election and then went around and collected and returned all the leftover Murphy roadside signs from my area. During the campaign, when I put out signs I checked on them from time to time. Some got vandalized, some got stolen, and some were obscured when West supporters placed their signs directly in front of mine. West's most avid supporters evidently shared their candidate's arrogance. The roads in my area are now mostly empty of Murphy signs while many West signs remain in place, neglected reminders of a lost battle.

The campaign is over and I have mixed feelings about my first intensive electoral experience. The good part was winning. The best part was beating Allen West and it felt really great to contribute to that victory. I know Patrick Murphy could have won without my help, but I also know he couldn't have won without the combined efforts of all the people like me. Close races increase the value of each vote and every volunteer.

The tale is incomplete, however, without recognizing the rest of the story. I spent a lot of time during the campaign talking to the people who gave Allen West 49.6% of the vote. They are detached from reality and one lost election is not going to change that for most of them. One of the darker truths emerging from the election is that Allen West could easily have prevailed in spite of our efforts if he had run a smarter campaign. His defeat was in large part a function of his flawed character- his propensity for self-righteous bullying.

Our win was one small victory, but our democracy as a whole remains in disrepair. Our electoral system is perverted by money, our media fail to inform the public on important issues, and the overall result is that the majority of voters are poorly equipped to defend their own interests and function as responsible citizens.

July 19, 2012

The collapsing middle class- now they are going after pensions.

The story as reported.

On July 6th, President Obama signed the "Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act", also known as MAP-21. Headlines chronicling the event focused on the extension of lower interest rates on student loans. Second billing on this bipartisan legislation went to the reauthorization of federal funding for transportation programs, which was touted by the administration for creating jobs. The law also dealt with various unrelated matters, including taxation of roll-your-own cigarette machines and changes in pension regulations...
Typical coverage of the bill here: http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/29/politics/congress-highway-bill/index.html

The very last paragraph of the article includes a single sentence on pension funding: "During negotiations this week, legislators decided the revenue to pay the $6 billion cost should come from changes to the way companies fund pension programs..." The media focus on student loan rates meant that the change in pension funding went mostly unnoticed and unremarked.

Pension fund "stabilization."

An AP article in the Money section of USA Today gives the new pension legislation more coverage, including this summary of its content and effects (emphasis added): http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/story/2012-07-09/New-law-gives-companies-pensions-break/56114600/1



The cover story.

The Pension Fund Stabilization provision in the new law is a compromise primarily designed to serve two purposes- to provide more revenue for existing government programs and to reduce annual pension contributions for companies. From the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/business/tweak-in-a-pension-rule-could-finance-roads-and-student-loans.html



Estimates of the near-term savings on corporate contributions vary. According to Jacques Goulet, US leader of Mercer's Retirement, Risk & Finance, "...relief could be in the range of $40 to $50 billion for S&P 1500 plan sponsors for 2012 and could total well over $100 billion through 2014." The Society of Actuaries, quoted in the AP article in USA Today, estimates that the reduction in contributions will be $35 billion this year and will peak at $73 billion next year.

Just three days after the bill was signed, the first shoe dropped when AK Steel announced it was cutting its planned pension contribution for 2013 from $300,000,000 to $200,000,000.

What it means.

While the legislation was tailored to suit the needs of Congress and corporations, it did so by shortchanging the needs of pension plan participants and, quite possibly, taxpayers. Congress and the companies got a quick cash infusion while the public got more risk and less solvent pension plans. The loosening of funding standards comes at a particularly bad time as far as the plans are concerned. Milliman, Inc. reports on the condition of the largest pension plans: http://www.businessinsurance.com/article/20120709/NEWS03/120709911



This is a continuation of the recent trend as shown in the chart below (also from Milliman):

It is difficult to believe that relaxing contribution requirements at this time will not exacerbate the trend toward pension fund insolvency. Perversely, the cash injection into corporate coffers comes at a time when companies are already sitting on record amounts of cash. From the Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903927204576574720017009568.html



In short, this is money that many companies don't need. But in a business culture in which the only acceptable motive is profit, leaving money on the table is viewed as weak, foolish, or irresponsible, and greed trumps decency.

If the economy continues to wallow in a long-term recession, the Fed is likely to extend its zero interest rate policy (ZIRP). As it is, the Fed has already announced that it will extend ZIRP through late 2014. Facing continuing low returns on their pension fund assets, companies will surely want to extend their benefit contribution holiday. Given the bipartisan support for MAP-21, it is difficult to imagine that companies would not get an extension if they lobbied for it. Recent history reinforces this point. The Pension Protection Act of 2006 tightened pension funding requirements. The provisions of the PPA were supposed to be phased in gradually, including a stipulation that any "funding shortfall" would be amortized over a seven year period starting in 2008. Additionally, the act provided for accelerated funding requirements for "at risk" plans- where "at risk" is defined as less than 80% funded. Sadly, the good intentions of these reforms disintegrated with the passage of MAP-21.

Artificially inflating the "expected" return on existing pension fund assets serves no useful purpose except to reduce current employer contributions. The contribution shortfall is then replaced by projecting increases in asset appreciation and interest income which are counted on to make up the difference. Sound financial practice is abandoned and replaced with an appeal to wishful thinking or the power of prayer. This is exactly the sort of thing that someone with questionable motives might do with other people's money. Nobody in their right mind would do it with their own money, especially if they were relying on those funds for retirement.


For those interested in the subject, more reading:
http://www.investopedia.com/university/financialstatements/financialstatements9.asp#axzz20ejQiuKf
http://www.pensionrights.org/issues/legislation/pension-provisions-hr-4348-%E2%80%93-moving-ahead-progress-21st-century-map-21-act
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/04/pension-funding-issues-hidden-in-transportation-highway-bill
http://blog.ebeclaw.com/2011/02/summary-of-pension-protection-act-of.html