May 2003 Archives

The Urban Institute's Leonard E. Burman and the Brookings Institution's Peter R. Orszag explain how Congress passed a tax cut that could be even more irresponsible than President Bush's original version.

E.J. Dionne found Sen. John Kerry's (D-Mass.) speech about national service yesterday quite interesting.

But Kerry gave the service idea a new twist. Drawing from fellow Vietnam veteran John McCain's rhetoric -- Americans, Kerry said, "think elected officials no longer ask them to serve a cause larger than themselves" -- the Democratic presidential candidate cast patriotism and community-mindedness as the opposites of "get-mine and get-out rhetoric" and of "a creed of greed." These he associated with Bush's overall approach to domestic policy.

Linking patriotism with an ethic of public responsibility allowed Kerry to launch a critique of the administration's tax policies -- "for the first time in this nation's history, the most privileged among us get enormous tax breaks during a time of war." It also opened the way for assaults on Enron, polluters and corporate lobbyists. As McCain has shown, populist sentiments have a broader reach when they are rooted in the national interest and the common good than when they are simply a lead-in to a catalogue of economic complaints.

The nation is ready for a call to national service. For talk again of the common good. President Bush has shown that he is unwilling to make that request or champion such policies.

Warren Buffett is only the second richest person on the planet and a legendary investor.

So one can understand why the Bush Administration thinks it prudent to ignore Buffett when he explains that:

When you listen to tax-cut rhetoric, remember that giving one class of taxpayer a "break" requires -- now or down the line -- that an equivalent burden be imposed on other parties. In other words, if I get a break, someone else pays. Government can't deliver a free lunch to the country as a whole. It can, however, determine who pays for lunch. And last week the Senate handed the bill to the wrong party.

Supporters of making dividends tax-free like to paint critics as promoters of class warfare. The fact is, however, that their proposal promotes class welfare. For my class.

Our children and grandchildren will pay for these irresponsible tax cuts. We can push off payment of these bills, but we cannot delay them forever.

I have argued on many occasions that President Bush's tax cut plan is irresponsible. It is not just because it will not stimulate the economy. The big problem lies just off into our nation's future.

When the baby boomers begin to retire.

Our government does know about this problem. President Bush surely knows it as well. That's because former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill ordered a study of our government's unfunded liabilities. That is, the difference between the benefit promises we have made to those currently alive and the taxes they are expected to pay to fund them.

The gap is quite large. Laurence J. Kotlikoff and Jeffrey Sachs explain:

Our government is going broke. The feds face bills that are far beyond our capacity to pay -- by $44 trillion to be precise. The longer we ignore them, the bigger they get. Yet President Bush is working overtime to deepen our fiscal trap. This $44 trillion figure is not ours. Nor is it some other academics' calculation. It was produced last fall by economists and budget analysts at the US Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Congressional Budget Office. The study was ordered by then Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and was slated to appear in the president's budget, released in February.

O'Neill instructed his team, led by Jagadeesh Gokhale, Federal Reserve senior economist, and Kent Smetters, then deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury, to answer the following question: Suppose the government could, today, get its hands on all the revenue it can expect to collect in the future, but had to use it, today, to pay off all its future expenditure commitments, including debt service net of any asset income. Would the present value (the value today) of the future revenues cover the present value of the future expenditures?

The answer is no, and the fiscal gap is the $44 trillion.

How bad is it?

Gokhale and Smetters asked a follow-up question: By how much would taxes have to be raised or expenditures cut on an immediate and permanent basis to generate, in present value, the $44 trillion? Their ''menu of pain'' is mind-boggling. Entree A is raising federal income tax collections (individual and corporate) by 69 percent. Entree B is raising payroll tax collections by 95 percent. Entree C is cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits by 56 percent. Entree D is cutting federal discretionary spending by more than 100 percent, which, of course, is not feasible. Combination platters are also available. For example, we might select quarter portions of entrees A through D. But no matter what combination we order, digesting this medicine is going to be plenty painful.

As I note here often, the first of 76 million baby boomers will reach Social Security's early eligibility age in just five years. That is a demographic transformation for which we refuse to prepare.

We are pushing our problems onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. Nothing could be more selfish. Few policies are more immoral.

The Los Angeles Times editorial page continues its welcome campaign explaining how California's too-strict term limits law is harming state government.

In California, an individual is limited to six years (three terms) in the State Assembly and eight years (two terms) in the State Senate. That leads to inexperienced legislators and a lack of oversight and leadership. Today's editorial offers a good example of what is wrong:

Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) is candid about the difference in his effectiveness this year compared with last. Then, he was learning on the job as chairman of the Appropriations Committee, which is how it works in Sacramento these days. It took time to learn the serpentine budget process. "I was really new to it and going on instinct," Steinberg said. Now, respected and at the top of his game, he is a key figure in the painful crafting of a hard-times state budget. After next year, pfft, he's gone, forced from the Assembly by the state's term limits law. Enter the next amateur in the fiendishly complex appropriations process.

The term limits concept is not necessarily a bad one. California voters could have chosen a much more rational 12-year term limit per office. That would allow some continuity while ensuring that new people rotate through the Capitol on a regular basis.

More California leaders are coming to the conclusion that the current system does not work. The small change to 12-year limits would do much to ensure that our legislators gain the experience they need to do their jobs well.

Robert Novak reports that some Republican Congressional leaders have dared to join the unpatriotic (sic) critics of the Bush Administration's postwar policies.

Nor is Iraq the only place worrying members of President Bush's own party and even high-ranking officials in his administration. In Afghanistan, U.S. officials are experiencing the frustrations that foreign occupiers have experienced there for more than a century. The road map for Israeli-Palestinian peace shows signs of being strangled at birth. And the terrorist bombings in Saudi Arabia open the way for destabilization of the kingdom.

With desperate Democrats trying to seize on all these troubles as the 2004 presidential race gets off to an early start, no Republican is going to be popular at the White House by making rain over Bush's victory parade. Politics aside, however, the outlook is troubled.

Jackson Diehl says the world should bet that pro-democracy dissidents like Egypt's Saad Eddin Ibrahim are correct when they argue that democracy can take root in the Arab world.

The United States and the west need only take prudent steps to help the process along. Diehl writes:

Here's what Ibrahim says: The state-sponsored Arab establishment is wrong. Democracy has spread through almost every region of the world, and it can take hold in the Middle East as well. Surveys show that average Arabs hunger for greater freedom and reform of the failed regimes that rule them. Islamic movements are a minority and won't win elections; if they do, they can be obliged to follow democratic rules. If the United States presses a democratic agenda consistently and shows staying power, it can help homegrown democratic movements transform the region.

"There are obstacles, but they can be overcome if you believe in change, in the possibility of change and the necessity for change, and you work for it," Ibrahim said during a visit to Washington last week. "You persist, and if the world takes note, you ultimately triumph. It happened in the Soviet Union. It happened in Eastern Europe. It can happen anywhere."

The United States, as a global empire, needs to spread democratic ideals. If we do, the rest of the world will eventually take note and thank us. If we don't, we will guarantee the world fights us with terrorism and any other means at its disposal.

This Washington Post editorial wonders why the Bush Administration continues to tolerate and cover-up Saudi religious intolerance.

When the State Department issued its list of countries "of particular concern for religious freedom" in March, the absence of Saudi Arabia from the rogues' gallery of persecutors stood out. America's favorite brutal, theocratic monarchy had escaped designation in the past as well, so it was not a surprise. Nor was the desert kingdom the only notable absence: Another ally, Uzbekistan, which systematically oppresses Muslims who don't toe the government's official line, also got left off the list. But Saudi Arabia's escape was particularly striking, given that the discussion of Saudi religious liberty in the State Department's human rights report begins with "freedom of religion does not exist."

Then again, we are beholden to the Saudi's for oil. That is why it is so myopic, as another Post editorial notes, for our nation not to have have an energy policy designed to wean us off our collective fossil fuel addiction.

James Pinkerton wonders whether the victory in Iraq is "coming undone like a cheap cowboy boot."

Maureen Dowd reminds us of these not-so-prophetic words spoken by President Bush nine days ago:

Al Qaeda is on the run. That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly, but surely being decimated.

Buried in the rubble of Riyadh are some of the Bush administration's basic assumptions: that Al Qaeda was finished, that invading Iraq would bring regional stability and that a show of American superpower against Saddam would cow terrorists.

All the bragging in the world won't change that fact.

The Washington Post's Jonathan Weisman reports:

As the Senate begins debate on taxes today, the White House and its Senate allies have resurrected a plan to phase in a sharp reduction in the tax on dividends and then to undo the tax cuts after five years -- a proposal they believe could break the deadlock over the linchpin of President Bush's economic growth plan.

More important, one wonders if we are we really going to fall for this strategy again?

President Bush flies around the country arguing that the temporary tax cuts passed last year should be made permanent. The fact that the last round of tax cuts were made temporary at his suggestion in order to allow them to appear affordable is lost in the mists of time.

Does anyone doubt that this time next year, in the midst of his campaign for reelection, that this president and his supporters will campaign in favor for making this temporary cut permanent? For the sake of the economy and (wrongly) American workers?

If Democrats fall for this gambit again, then they deserve to lose.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and the House Republicans: making the nation safe for Uzi and automatic weapons sales.

President Bush campaigned in favor of the ban, but reportedly will not lobby to keep it in place. Remember when Republicans hated a president who supposedly said one thing and did another?

I guess that conviction is no longer operable.

In the wake of the car bombings in Saudi Arabia, one sees this headline on a Reuters story:

Saudis Vow to Make Al Qaeda 'Sorry' for Bombings

The Saudis have had years to deal with Al Qaeda. We have heard promises of action before. Now we are supposed to believe that they are going to act?

Perhaps I shall be pleasantly surprised. But as the Saudi government is one of the most repressive and pro-terror regimes on the planet, I won't lie awake waiting for action.

The Washington Post's Peter Slevin reports:

Baghdad residents and U.S. officials said today that U.S. occupation forces are insufficient to maintain order in the Iraqi capital and called for reinforcements to calm a wave of violence that has unfurled over the city, undermining relief and reconstruction efforts and inspiring anxiety about the future.

Remember, the Bush Administration told us that they had the post-war situation handled. That we would not need 200,000 troops to keep the peace. (There are 150,000 in Iraq today.) Remember how the White House sharply disputed the Congressional testimony given by Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki after he said that "something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" would be needed after the war.

We need to get our act together in Iraq quickly or the world will get much more dangerous.

Some Texas Democrats are actually fighting House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's (R-Texas) attempt to redraw Texas' Congressional Districts just two years after the latest reapportionment plan went into effect.

Noted Constitutional scholar DeLay (hah!) must have forgotten that redistricting plans are generally passed right after the census is completed. Which is what Texas did two years ago.

But DeLay does not like those lines. He wants more Republicans. So he has hatched this plan to carve up the Democratic seats. He wants his allies in the Texas legislature to pass a new redistricting plan this week. A plan that would go into effect four years after the census.

DeLay's goal is simple to understand. He wants to add five to seven GOP seats in Congress. That result would go far toward ensuring DeLay's majority power through the decade.

DeLay, in other words, is again playing hardball. In recent years, Democrats would have simply accepted DeLay's antics with meek opposition.

The Democrats in the Texas State Legislature, however, have opted to fight. The Washington Post's Lee Hockstader reports:

Moving with exceptional stealth and tactical coordination, more than 50 Democratic state lawmakers in Texas packed their bags and quietly slipped out of the state under cover of darkness late Sunday and early today.

Republican Gov. Rick Perry immediately dispatched police to track down the missing legislators, arrest them and bring them back to do the state's business -- even asking neighboring New Mexico if the Texas Rangers were empowered to make arrests there. (New Mexico's attorney general -- a Democrat -- said no.) But all signs were that the legislators were on the lam -- some, perhaps, fleeing to Mexico -- putting them beyond the reach of Lone Star justice and of GOP ambitions.

The walkout deprived the 150-seat Texas House of a quorum and effectively shut down its legislative work just as lawmakers were preparing to vote on a contentious Republican plan orchestrated by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Tex.) designed to add five to seven seats to the 15 the GOP controls in the state's 32-member congressional delegation.

Charles Kuffner has a roundup of Texas editorial reaction to the Democrats' walkout. (Be sure to check his posts at the Political State Report as well.) It is mostly positive. Most papers note they were driven to doing it by such a nakedly partisan plan.

So, Tom DeLay may not get his way. What a refreshing change. This episode, moreover, is a prime example showing why redistricting reform is so vital.

Nonpartisan commissions should determine these lines as they do in Iowa. Then electoral competition could happen in the districts and be decided at the polls instead of in Washington, D.C.'s backrooms.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted today that the Congressional Budget Office is already expecting a significant decline in tax revenues -- even before another irresponsible tax cut is passed.

Significantly, the CBPP explains that when compared with the size of the economy, tax revenues are falling to their lowest levels in decades. That fact may come as something of a surprise to those who think that the only answer to any policy problem is a tax cut. Analyst Isaac Shapiro writes:

In combination, the deterioration in federal revenues reflected in the new CBO report and the additional tax cuts contained in legislation likely to be enacted within the next few weeks will lead taxes to fall this year to their lowest level as a share of the economy since 1959, the next-to-last year of the Eisenhower administration. This finding applies regardless of whether Congress ultimately approves the Senate tax-cut level or the House level. The new CBO figures also have disturbing implications for revenue collections and deficits for years to come.

Our tax revenues are falling despite the need to fund a war on terrorism, homeland security, and Iraq's rebuilding. The first baby boomers are also just five years away from becoming eligible for early Social Security benefits.

Remember, President Bush in January promised during his State of the Union message that:

This country has many challenges. We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents, and other generations. (Applause.) We will confront them with focus and clarity and courage.

National Public Radio and Slate are joining together to produce a new one-hour daily program targeting midday audiences.

NPR News and Slate Magazine will collaborate to bring Day to Day to the radio and the Web. A full-time editor from Slate will join the show's production staff, and each show will feature contributions from Slate reporters. NPR and Slate will also co-produce online features for the program and cross-promote their Web sites, slate.com and npr.org, with content links.

Day to Day is the first program collaboration NPR has initiated with a commercial media outlet in its 33-year history. It is also NPR's first new newsmagazine since Weekend Edition, which began in 1985.

Fred Hiatt wonders about the inconsistency shown by the Business Roundtable in its simultaneous advocacy of a new national effort to educate 3- and 4-year-olds and President Bush's irresponsible tax cut plan.

They made no mention of how much it might cost to guarantee high-quality preschool for all children -- nor of where such funds might come from.

Click over to the Roundtable Web site and you get some clue as to why. When not touting their social responsibility, the chief executives are busy lobbying for the full Bush tax cut. At a time when only one out of seven children eligible for federal child-care assistance actually receives it (according to the Children's Defense Fund), the chief executives are working to diminish further the government's ability to help.

Since President George W. Bush took office, the national debt has increased by $732.721 billion (from $5,727,776,738,304.64 on January 20, 2001, to $6,460,497,884,145.02 on May 8, 2003).

Our nation has found itself needing to fight a war on terrorism. It should be spending billions more on homeland security measures. It decided to fight a war against Iraq and is left with the obligation to lead the rebuilding of that country.

Dreams of over $5 trillion in surpluses have been replaced by the reality of record-sized deficits for at least the next decade. This change has happened at an inopportune time in our nation's fiscal history.

In just five years, the first members of the baby boom generation will reach the early eligibility age for receiving Social Security benefits. As the boomers reach the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare benefits, those entitlement programs will place unprecedented pressures on the rest of the federal budget. The Concord Coalition recently described this projected phenomenon:

Just beyond the ten-year budget horizon, America’s age wave begins to roll in. Over the entire decade of 2003 to 2013, the CBO projects that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will grow by less than 1 percent of GDP. But from 2013 on, they will be growing by 1 percent of GDP every three and one-half years. If senior entitlements are left on autopilot, all projections—by the CBO, the GAO, and OMB—indicate that deficits will eventually rise to economy-shattering levels. (emphasis added)

Given the grim outlook described above, tax cuts today are nothing more than tax increases on our children and grandchildren. We are passing our problems onto future generations because we are so monumentally selfish.

Annual tax cuts. This is the immoral policy offered by the Republican Party's leadership.

Pete Hamill decries the lack of shame among our political leaders.

The sense of shame is a kind of cement in any decent society. The fear of shame reminds each of us that some things must not be done. You don't become a criminal because you would bring shame to your family. You don't employ muscle against the weak. You don't beat up women or prey on the old. You don't father children and then abandon them. You don't cheat or swindle because exposure would coat you with the tar of shame. You don't preach high ideals and live a lie.

But it's clear that we are now awash in shamelessness. It's clear that the sense of shame needs to be revived and the shameless held to account.

One could easily cite similar liberal examples, and Hamill should have mentioned at least one. (The argument over judicial nominations provides examples from all sides of the political spectrum.)

A lack of shame, moreover, is not something new to our political system.

Thomas Oliphant describes how Attorney General John Ashcroft's PATRIOT ACT could lead to the deportation back to Indonesia of hundreds of hard-working immigrants.

Christian immigrants (one might think that would get Ashcroft's attention). As Oliphant explains, however:

But thanks to the policies and attitudes handed down by a willfully myopic Attorney General John Ashcroft, this jewel of hope is threatened with decimation at any moment by the possible deportation of virtually all of its adult members and their children. For devout Christians, deportation to Indonesia is literally life-threatening, not from the vast majority of observant Muslims, but from murderous groups of extremists. Information about their constant attacks is available to anyone who peruses human rights literature.

Escaping religious persecution and worse is what has brought so many Indonesians here in recent years. For Americans, that story ought to be a tad familiar. (emphasis added)

David Broder takes another look at the Bush tax cut plan. He uses a little common sense to debunk the justification that the president's plan will help create jobs:

If jobs really are the goal, it might be much more powerful to help out state and local governments, which are raising taxes and cutting jobs left and right because of their wretched budgets. Saving teachers, police and firefighters from layoffs might not bolster the stock market. But those are jobs, and jobs are what President Bush says he really wants.

"If jobs really are the goal..." Your skepticism is warranted.

Here is another story highlighting the promise of compassionate conservatism and responsible business leadership. Mike Allen reports:

About 340 workers at an Omaha plastics factory will lose pay or have to work next Saturday to make up for time lost during a visit by President Bush on Monday to promote his "jobs and growth plan," their boss said today.

Brad Crosby, president of Airlite Plastics Co., said about 170 of his workers will lose a full day's pay and another 170 will be docked for part of their pay for Monday unless they make up the time they spend attending Bush's speech.

Decisions (to host the gathering) have consequences (the production line is shut down). The smart businessman would have decided that the benefit (the mention of the company on every newscast and in every newspaper the next day in connection with President Bush) was worth that cost or would have not accepted the invitation to host the event. Docking the workers pay is simply a pathetic attempt to pass responsibility down the chain.

But the White House staff should have made sure this was not the case. I am sure the Bush Administration would not want to cost workers their salary or see them forced to work on an off day just to get a photo-op about a tax cut plan that primarily benefits the wealthy.

That would, after all, be an extraordinary expression of this White House's priorities.

When questioned about why the United States has so far failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Bush Administration officials will often argue that the search has not really begun.

For example, during his "Top Gun" victory photo-op speech from the USS Abraham Lincoln earlier this month, President Bush said:

We've begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated.

The group directing all known U.S. search efforts for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is winding down operations without finding proof that President Saddam Hussein kept clandestine stocks of outlawed arms, according to participants.

The 75th Exploitation Task Force, as the group is formally known, has been described from the start as the principal component of the U.S. plan to discover and display forbidden Iraqi weapons. The group's departure, expected next month, marks a milestone in frustration for a major declared objective of the war.

Leaders of Task Force 75's diverse staff -- biologists, chemists, arms treaty enforcers, nuclear operators, computer and document experts, and special forces troops -- arrived with high hopes of early success. They said they expected to find what Secretary of State Colin L. Powell described at the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5 -- hundreds of tons of biological and chemical agents, missiles and rockets to deliver the agents, and evidence of an ongoing program to build a nuclear bomb.

Scores of fruitless missions broke that confidence, many task force members said in interviews.

But we should care. Because the rest of the world does. I really hope we find some WMD. Our security in no small part depends upon our leaders being able to justify the Iraq war based on the arguments they made prior to the initiation of combat operations.

The Boston Globe's Scot Lehigh gives a needed dressing down to the supply-side enthusiasts at the Club for Growth.

You may recall that the Club for Growth's Stephen Moore decided to run ads comparing two Republican Senators with the French because they were unwilling to support President Bush's irresponsible tax cut.

Moore at the time said that he had tacit White House approval for the attack ads. Lehigh notes that presidential advisor Karl Rove has subsequently said that the ads "were stupid and counterproductive and not helpful.'' This gets Lehigh to wondering:

Why will the Club for Growth continue to target Snowe even after Rove has made the White House's sentiments clear, first in a call to Moore and now in public comments to the Globe?

''Well, we have a strategic disagreement on this,'' says Moore.

Just the way Snowe has a strategic disagreement with the White House about how best to help the economy. Question: Why is it fine for the Club for Growth to disagree with the White House but not for Snowe, a respected senior senator, to hold a contrary opinion? Without being compared to Jacques Chirac, that is?

There is, thankfully, an obvious answer. Moore can get away with it because he is -- like many of his supply-side and Republican compatriots -- a colossal hypocrite.

Paul Krugman wonders if everyone is going to fall for the Republicans' tax cut sunset ruse yet again.

Congressional Republicans are again relying on the sunset trick to make their irresponsible tax cut appear slightly more affordable. But, as an old political saying reminds us: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Are we going to fall for this again? Krugman reminds us what happened the last time:

Here's the story: in 2001, as now, some swing senators insisted on a budget resolution limiting the size of any tax cut. No problem. House-Senate negotiators pushed through a huge tax cut anyway, "saving" several hundred billion dollars by making the whole thing expire in the 10th year. Among other things, this "sunset clause" implied that heirs to large estates would pay no tax if their parents died in 2010, but would face significant taxes if their parents made it into 2011. At the time I suggested that it be renamed the Throw Momma from the Train Act of 2001.

Needless to say, the bill was silly by design. The administration didn't intend to compromise: it fully expected to get the sunset clause repealed in a future Congress. And President Bush was soon out there ridiculing the way the tax cut was programmed to expire, implying that the expiration date was imposed by scheming liberals, when in fact it was a trick perpetrated by his own Congressional allies.

Of course, if Democrats fail to stop the sunsets this time, they will deserve blame for falling for this fiscal trick again.

David Ignatius urges hi-tech leaders Bill Gates, John Chambers, and Scott McNealy to collaborate on a digital Marshall Plan. One that world transform Iraq into a high-tech nation using equipment Ignatius figures is in warehouses waiting for an economic upturn.

The proposal is a bit outlandish. Which is why it is worth a second look. What we are doing so far, after all, is not working all that well.

Brookings Institution Fellow Paul Light gives the defense department's civil service reform package a qualified endorsement. The current system is broken, and Light is impressed with the people behind the new plan.

Additional safeguards are needed and Light argues for a few other tweaks to the plan. Most important, our civil servants need budget support in order to do their jobs well. As Light explains:

No amount of reform will work, however, if agencies do not have the dollars for better training and more staffing. If Congress and the president move ahead with reform, they need to provide the dollars to make it work. Why bother otherwise?

The White House's original explanation for why President Bush had to make his dramatic fighter landing on the carrier Abraham Lincoln last week is no longer operable.

Why the lie, Ari? Perhaps, given the new information, we can get an agreement from Karl Rove not to use any of the footage of the landing in the campaign next year.

Okay, I know. Now I'm the one being naive...

Richard Perle was, as you may remember, one of the prominent advisors that urged the White House to wage war with Iraq.

Keep that fact in mind as you read this report from the Los Angeles Times' Ken Silverstein and Chuck Neubauer:

Last February, the Defense Policy Board, a group of outside advisors to the Pentagon, received a classified presentation from the super-secret Defense Intelligence Agency on the crises in North Korea and Iraq.

Three weeks later, the then-chairman of the board, Richard N. Perle, offered a briefing of his own at an investment seminar on ways to profit from possible conflicts with both countries.

Perle and his fellow advisors also heard a classified address about high-tech military communications systems at the same closed-door session in February. He runs a venture capital firm that has been exploring investments in that very area.

Thomas Friedman provides a needed reminder that while elections are important, the focus in Iraq must first be on building up the liberty's foundation -- the rule of law, a free press, respect for free speech, civic institutions.

The question, of course, lies in whether the United States will have the necessary attention span to stay engaged long enough to nurture them. One need only look at history and around the world today to see how elections can lead to autocratic regimes if this foundation is not created first.

There are several recent commentaries worrying that President Bush was the winner of Saturday's Democratic presidential debate because the candidates spent so much time sniping with one another.

Robert Kuttner, for example, thinks that the Democrats need to keep their eyes on the ultimate target: President Bush.

Yet all of them have more in common with each other than with George W. Bush. If Bush is reelected, he will complete the job of packing the federal courts, privatizing social insurance, and making public investment a fiscal impossibility. It matters less which Democrat emerges as survivor than that the nominee not be damaged goods.

The primary process is a democratic way of airing issues and of taking the eventual choice of party nominee out of smoke-filled rooms. But if the next 12 months produce mainly infighting, the party's standard-bearer will limp into the general election bruised, battered, and ineffective. The Democrats ought to remember that they are auditioning for the job of party nominee, not for the post of savaging the rest of their own field. They need a pact to ignore the goading and keep their fire trained on Bush.

One need only look back to the 2000 Republican primaries to see how important Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) vigorous challenge was to then Governor Bush. Remember the Bush in the early debates? Remember the Bush campaign in New Hampshire? Those early setbacks forced new strategies, new ideas, and prepared Bush for the fall campaign.

Most voters did not see Saturday's debate. Fewer will remember it when the general election campaign starts. One can be sure that Karl Rove is already well aware of each candidate's probable weaknesses.

The primary process needs to prepare the nominee for the toughest fight that candidate has ever faced. Politics is rough. Bush plays for keeps. The only way the Democrats can be prepared for what Rove has planned is to have a vigorous policy debate now.

Richard Cohen takes a peek back at the justifications the Bush Administration used for going to war with Iraq and is troubled by what he sees.

Reason No. 1, you will remember, was the link between Hussein and al Qaeda. None has been found. Reason No. 2 -- and the preeminent one in my mind -- was that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program that posed, if not an imminent danger, then surely one that was more than theoretical. It now appears that Iraq had no nuclear weapons program worth speaking of.

But one can -- and should -- remain disturbed about how the Bush Administration fought the rhetorical war to justify its actions. Cohen writes about the troubling conclusions a person could draw:

The first is that the administration exaggerated the Iraqi threat and hyped the sense of urgency because it wanted Saddam Hussein deposed for other reasons. Those reasons are not necessarily nefarious. Hussein was (or is) a bad guy whose nuclear weapons program was merely a matter of grammatical tense: He had one once and would certainly try to have one again.

The second possibility is that an administration bent on war interpreted every morsel of intelligence to buttress its case. After a while, intelligence officers may have learned not to bring the White House information it didn't want and tailored their reports to fit the preconceived notions of administration officials. Anyone who's ever had a boss knows how this works.

Nothing succeeds like success -- and the war in Iraq was a splendid success. But we have an understanding in this country that a war will be waged only with the consent of the people and only after the people have been honestly told why. (emphasis added)

But as many people, including me, have noted over the past months that this administration seems to have missed that particular civics course.

Whether it was (to mention a few examples) inquiries into the energy plan's formulation, the 9-11 investigation, evidence about Iraq, or our plans for Iraq's future, this White House has shown little but contempt for Congress or the need to provide the public with background information.

The Washington Post's editorial writers want Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to provide some details about our military's plans for rebuilding Iraq.

What do the Washington Post's editorial writers think this is, a Democratic Republic? One where public opinion and Congressional oversight have proper and vital roles in our governance? Even if the executive branch would love to rule without answering to anyone?

How naive. The Washington Post's editorial writers argue:

The Bush administration hasn't been willing to be any more forthcoming about what the U.S. commitment to Iraq will amount to. In fact, says Mr. Rumsfeld, anyone who dares think the administration should offer more specific answers "just doesn't understand the variables that are involved." No doubt many factors are in play; among them should be congressional and public opinion. But the administration doesn't want to account to Congress or the public in any detail, and so far Congress hasn't tried very hard to elicit an accounting.

They must not simply accept Rumseld's vague "answers" about how they plan to spend the taxpayer's money to stabilize Iraq. The Bush Administration has shown nothing but contempt for the Legislative Branch since taking office. It is time for Congress to fight back.

A new World Health Organization (WHO) study of the SARS epidemic in Hong Kong indicates that the death rate from this new virus could be higher than analysts previously believed.

You really should be checking out Tim Bishop's SARSWatch.org for daily updates about the SARS situation. His post about the above BBC story is also excellent and includes links to some who think the BBC story may be alarmist.

Michael Powell, the Washington Post's New York City bureau chief, recalls when President Ford refused to help New York City as it faced a mammoth fiscal crisis during the 1970s:

For anyone who came of age here in the 1970s, the moment endures as part of a primal political narrative. Its coffers busted, New York City leaders carried a beggar's cup to the nation's capital in hopes of securing a $2-billion loan guarantee. President Gerald Ford listened, and offered nothing.

The Daily News headline the next day had the aphoristic brevity of graffiti: "FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD."

Unfortunately, they may have reason to rerun some of those greatest hits. The Bush Administration, as noted here before, is in the process of saying "drop dead" to the struggling cities and states. It is not just that the White House refuses to support any aid package. The Bush Administration is also loading up on new unfunded mandates and pushing legislation that will further reduce the amount of tax revenue the states generate. Powell explains:

White House officials could glance last week at a potholed national terrain, with more than half of the states bracing for staggering deficits this year and next. California faces a $34-billion hole, New York's is $12 billion and President George W. Bush's home state of Texas anticipates a $9.9-billion shortfall through 2005.

But rather than the sort of rescue package much wished for by the states, the administration is suggesting additional responsibilities. It proposes to replace the $13-billion Section 8 housing voucher program - the country's main form of housing assistance for the poor - with one that the states would run. The federal government would provide a lump-sum payment to the states each year, but it has offered no assurances that enough federal funding will follow to keep the program whole. Federal officials already whisper their hope that hard-pressed state officials might prune back this "entitlement" program in the future.

So the traditional conversation heard during national recessions - in which the federal government, Republican or Democratic, talks of rescuing state and local governments - is turned on its head. While cities and states slash budgets for public hospitals, firehouses and schools even as they raise taxes to make ends meet, the Bush administration talks of cutting more taxes. Federal tax cuts enacted under Bush have led to a $10-billion drop in total revenue for the states, many of which link their taxes to those of the federal government.

When the nation was running surpluses in the late 1990s boom years, we were told we had to cut taxes to return surpluses to the people. Promises were made that they would be restored if necessary. Now we hear that cutting taxes again is necessary despite large deficits and the impact slashing programs will have. Very different situations, but the same policy. Making good on those promises to restore the tax revenues lost from cutting taxes in the boom years is, of course, largely out of the question.

Our cities and states are slashing programs and jobs while seeking to raise taxes in response to the Bush Administration's fiscal war on them. How long will it take responsible politicians to fight back?

Thomas Oliphant notices that President Bush and his potential Democratic opponents are struggling in the post-Iraq War political environment:

As the presidential campaign sputters to a start, these two points have something in common. Both the most vociferous proponents of the war in the Republican Party and the most vociferous opponents of the war in the Democratic Party are having trouble pivoting to a new reality now that the major fighting has concluded.

Campaigns are about more than issues. A candidate needs to outline a grander theme that voters can understand in their guts. You may be surprised with the candidate to whom Oliphant gives his highest marks on this point:

The point is that Edwards has a thematic wrapping that transcends the specifics of policy debates: that the most important of America's problems can be traced to special interest excess. It is no accident that he remains the Democrat who both puzzles Bush's reelection managers the most and causes them the most concern. He is, to oversimplify, a populist moderate.

Looking back at the Iraq war justifications is ineffective. Looking forward to how the United States should manage this new Imperium would be much better. There are numerous domestic themes and issues that provide "big idea" opportunities. It is time to hear some of them.

David Broder provides his Democratic debate scorecard and wonders if moderator George Stephanopoulos actually gained the most from it.

E.J. Dionne writes that the three-judge panel that ruled last week on the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law made a clear, if confusing, case for reform.

While election lawyers are going to earn their pay figuring out exactly what the judges did -- and wait for a hopefully expeditied Supreme Court review of the decision -- the panel made a clear case for reform's necessity. Dionne writes:

But when they finally came forth with 1,638 pages of legal opinionating, the panel majority strongly endorsed the idea that Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) have insisted on for years.

It is not a violation of free speech rights for Congress to regulate the role of big money in politics. On the contrary, regulating that money is essential to curbing corruption and preserving the speech rights of those who lack large piles of cash. When money shouts, quieter voices with limited funds are often drowned out.

Nick Nyhart and Joan Claybrook make a vital observation about presidential campaigning:

In every presidential race since 1984, the candidate who had raised the most money by the end of the year prior to the election -- before a single primary vote had been cast -- went on to win his party's nomination.

Our electoral system is ill-served by a process that allows fundraising to so limit the field before a single vote is cast. It wrongly leaves the determination of the party's presidential nominees to a small number of fundraisers.

Nyhart and Claybrook argue for a voluntary public campaign financing system. Such an idea has great merit. The time for half-hearted reforms has passed. Fundamental reform is needed.

Former Paul Tsongas staffer Joe Edelheit Ross analyzes whether former Vermont Governor Howard Dean (D) has the elements needed not only to win the New Hampshire primary but then sustain that momentum into the national contests that follow.

Ross believes that Dean may enjoy three elements that eluded contenders like Sen. Paul Tsongas (D-Mass.) and Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.) after their upset New Hampshire wins.

It comes down to organization, success in attracting liberal votes, and ability to gain positive media coverage. Dean is working on all three.

Michael Kinsley enjoys a little schadenfreude over reports about culture czar William "Book of Virtues" Bennett's gambling problems. He puts the dagger to Bennett's moralism by noting that:

Working his way down the list of other people's pleasures, weaknesses and uses of American freedom, he just happened to skip over his own. How convenient. Is there some reason why his general intolerance of the standard vices does not apply to this one? None that he's ever mentioned.