Nelson, Collins Slash Education Funding in Stimulus While Touting Stimulus’ Boost to Education
I’m really shocked by the extent to which the architects of the Senate cuts to the recovery package aren’t being made to offer any kind of justification for their actions. And in the absence of pressure, they certainly aren’t doing it of their own accord. I wanted to see, for example, what Ben Nelson (D-NE) had to say for himself, and what he had to say was this, with his partner in crime Susan Collins (R-ME) chiming in:
“This bipartisan agreement delivers the help millions of Americans need in this time of economic turmoil,” said Senator Nelson. “It fuels two powerful engines: major tax cuts for the middle class, and targeted investments in American infrastructure and job growth. It also pares back $110 billion of spending that didn’t belong in the bill. We’ve trimmed the fat, fried the bacon, and milked the sacred cows. What remains will fund education, an energy Smart Grid, tax credits for homebuyers and other critical infrastructure.”
“This deal represents a victory for the American people,” said Senator Collins. “We came together to tackle the most immediate problem facing the nation. This package cuts $110 billion in unnecessary expenditures. These are not minor adjustments, but major changes. It contains robust spending on infrastructure to create jobs, $87 billion in assistance for states, and assistance to schools, especially for special education and Pell grants. This bill is not perfect, but it represents a bipartisan, effective and targeted approach to the crisis facing our country.”
Would you ever in a million years have guessed from this rhetoric that the primary change Collins and Nelson made was to implement big reductions in aid to states and, especially, in funding for education? I think not. In their rhetoric, Collins and Nelson preserved vital education funding and state assistance while eliminating various metaphorical animal products. Meanwhile, actual changes Collins and Nelson made include:
- Elimination of $25 billion in flexible funding for state governments.
- Cut $7.5 billion in funding for “state incentive grants” to help states make progress toward NCLB goals.
- Eliminated $19.5 billion in construction aid for schools and colleges.
- Reduced new aid for the Head Start early childhood program by $1 billion.
Nowhere in their statement do Nelson and Collins make any effort to justify these decisions. Indeed, they don’t even seem prepared to admit that they made these decisions. And some of them seem like really crazy decisions. Many stimulus skeptics such as Arnold Kling have been calling attention to the difficulty involved in dealing with sectoral shifts in the economy. One such shift is that we’ve seen a lot of job losses in the building trades industry. Funding school construction would directly target those idle resources and put them to work—something you’d like to do with stimulus but that’s often hard to execute. And if we don’t do school construction in the stimulus, we’ll still need to do school construction at some point. But instead of doing it now when it would help the economy, we’ll be doing it at some future point when construction projects are more expensive to undertake.
47 Responses to “Nelson, Collins Slash Education Funding in Stimulus While Touting Stimulus’ Boost to Education”
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February 8th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Maybe they won’t piss around with education and state funding in the regular budget process? It’s the only thing I can say to give consolation.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Are there quite a lot of conservative Dem senators who would jump ship on this–i.e., more than seven? Because if not, I think it’s time for the WH to tell these folks to take a hike. No support from you? Fine, we’ll do it through the budget reconciliation process, for which we only need 51 votes. At present, they appear to be wielding more leverage than they’re entitled to.
I guess it’s possible that that would significantly slow things down. I dunno. But there comes a point when they’re making the bill significantly worse, and less fair, and if we haven’t reached that point, we’re getting close.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
I’m more than a little surprised to read comments from people who think that getting those done through the budget reconciliation process is a wise move. Obama has more on his agenda than just this stimulus bill, and antagonizing members of your own party usually doesn’t work out for you in the long-term. It’s an extreme example, but you might want to remember GWB and Jim Jeffords.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
And some of them seem like really crazy decisions.
It’s becoming clear that they had a magic number they wanted to hit, and a list of constituencies it was safe to screw over, and they — or more likely a boiler room full of staffers — parleyed those two things into the details of the cut.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
I understand that the reason school construction was cut is because of the Republican view that schools are a local responsibility. They are not infrastructure like roads. Huh? This argument makes no sense to me, since the federal government is not forcing new schools on communities but providing money for something that they need but can’t currently afford. The spending is both useful (will contribute to the common good for a long time) and stimulative (timely, targeted, temporary).
But you see these kinds of arguments against projects in the stimulus package all over the web. Anderson Cooper had a story on CNN.com about a small city with an antiquated radio system. Fire and police didn’t always respond to emergency calls because they didn’t hear them. Installing the new system citywide would create temporary jobs for installation, configuration, and training while saving lives. The radio system would be US made. The common reaction from readers on Cooper’s blog, though, was that this project was a local responsibility. Sure, they supported federal spending for public safety, just as long as that meant the FBI or some other federal level program. Any federally supported local spending is automatically considered pork and is by definition wasteful. In this way, people and politicians can say that they support the goals of the stimulus, but object to any line item.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
At some point, we have to just trust what our lyin’ eyes are telling us. The regular budgeting process will be another disaster for progressives, simply because there really is a permanent conservative majority in Washington. Worse, the beltway media and power elites EXPECT this to be true and will report it daily, hourly even. Look at Obama’s cabinet; do you see even a slightly progressive agenda coming from them? Finally, Rahm is already starting to undercut Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. That is his sense of loyalty, insulate his boss from blame. It is just a bonus for him to return to the House in 2 or 4 years and become the next Speaker. These are ambitious politicians, not altruistic democratic leaders. We have definitely punked!!! Again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
February 8th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Sometimes it’s pointless to find good-faith explanations for things, and it’s disingenuous to pretend that it’s some kind of mystery. Nelson and Collins are just liars–whether you use Occam’s Razor or some other heuristic tool, I’m pretty sure that’s the only explanation that holds water.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
Actually, on further review, I think the reconciliation process wouldn’t be the savior I suggested it was; the issue here is the pay-go rule, which requires 3/5 to waive. So forget the above. Nelson et al. do have leverage here.
But if saying “changes X and Y that you’re suggesting are bad ideas and I’m not going to include them in the bill” is needlessly antagonistic, Obama may as well give up now. The man was just elected with 67 million votes. He’s got huge economic problems to fix that will be hung around his neck, and “I didn’t want to antagonize Ben Nelson” will not be an excuse. He’s not looking at a 50-50 split. If 51 votes were an option, he should take it.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
The upshot of this is that they don’t probably really care what is in the bill. The just wanted to be the great centrist deal makers. THe milkers of sacred cows. Now the conferance committee can put all the spending back in and I bet these sacred cow milkers wouldn’t care. They would vote for the final bill, and frame their Washington Post editorials. The fat trimming bacon frying milkers of sacred cows have saved the day. Or at least maybe people think that.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
BTW, Conrad and Dorgan have been touring ND to promote the stimulus package, but they are failing badly because North Dakota has a budget surplus currently.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
Matt,
Perhaps it would be a good exercise for you to propose where you think they should compromise and make cuts rather than railing against every cut. Complaining is easy.
February 8th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
“We’ve trimmed the fat, fried the bacon, and milked the sacred cows.”
What an awful, lying scumbag. What a miserable, pathetic excuse for a public servant.
Sorry… I don’t have anything more clever. This is just despicable.
February 8th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
In CA, a good portion (perhaps a majority) of the new school construction is due to MassiveAndOrIllegalImmigration.
I look forward to MattY and CAP calling for a reduction in that flow in order to reduce the necessity of spending that money.
WARNING: Do not hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
On a wider note, MattY should take heart that there’s an additional way that money will flow to China and Mexico under the stim plan, and it’s one I haven’t heard anyone else discuss. It’s almost like a free gift, except someone’s going to pay for it.
One of these days the American people are going to regret giving so much power to the ChiMexDem Party.
February 8th, 2009 at 10:44 pm
I’m really shocked by the extent to which the architects of the Senate cuts to the recovery package aren’t being made to offer any kind of justification for their actions.
You’re shocked that bipartisan centrists aren’t being asked to justify bipartisan centrism?
How long were you away from the Goode Village of Broderton, anyway?
February 8th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
What are our middle class tax cuts and what are they going to do for us and the economy.We need jobs, construction,electricians plumbers and so on.State after state is in the red and these guys just trimmed the fat, they have to be kidding, why is education whether it`s head start or futher up is always the first to get cut.A at head start job is going to go further than no job no unemployment for a lot of teachers who will lose their jobs.
February 8th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Well in THAT case. . .
I suppose we should keep the children of immigrants from learning anything. That way they will be able to not find good jobs and go on Welfare instead.
Yeah, who needs a new generation of doctors, engineers, diplomats, etc? When we get old and retire there’s always faith-healers.
February 8th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
Wait, didn’t Bush sr. propose NAFTA? So it’s just the Democrats who favor free trade, and NOT the Republicans?
February 8th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
We see two Senators who put their press clippings above their country. They have demonstrateed that moderation for its own sake is more powerful than logic, expertise or public opinion.
February 8th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Did education funding really get “slashed,” or did it not expand at the rate you hoped?
I seem to recall progressives crying foul when the GOP does this. It usually goes like this: Some defense people cook up some numbers saying that the Pentagon will hit the skids unless its annual budget increases by 30 percent. The politics shakes out and the increase is only 25 percent. Defense types cry that someone slashed their budget by 5 percent. Smart people point out that didn’t really happened.
And in this case… I am pretty sure there is a whole bunch of extra money for education in the stimulus bill.
February 8th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
I think what this incident shows is the complete moral and intellectual bankruptcy of these so-called Centrists, especially Nelson and Collins.
Basically, all they care about is posturing for the cameras. Their “centrism” isn’t some kind of commitment to pragmatism. It’s a pose to get them plaudits from the media. They don’t give a fuck about the actual content of any policy; they just care about splitting the difference so that David Broder and the Washington Post editorial board will praise them as heroes.
And the thing is that there’s not much that can be done about. We need their votes to get the stimulus through the Senate. So we have to give in to them, for now at least.
The question now is what happens in conference. Can they put the cuts back in and get these people to vote for the bill anyway? Or will they rebel and kill it out of pique? I think this is where getting the governors to start putting the pressure on would be a good idea, if that’s possible. But I don’t know.
February 8th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
At the risk of sounding like a centrist morally bankrupt appeaser (and I hope a cursory reading of my work over the years would dispel the notion that I’m USUALLY singing such a tune, regardless of what you think of my POV at this instant) I think this is one of those moments where we’re all getting a bit hot and bothered because we’re refusing to see this in terms of political interests rather than policy principles.
I was as disappointed as anyone to see that so much aid to the states had been cut. Just about all liberals seem to be in agreement that such a thing makes no sense. I am in wholehearted agreement with that assessment, and I also share a lot of the angst over some of the smaller cuts that were made as well.
But the reality is that Senate rules and recent Senate practices make it the case that a committed minority of at least 40 Senators can block legislation. The current GOP Senate caucus constitutes such a committed minority.
What the Democrats did in this case was allow a detachment of the Democratic caucus made up of members who, for whatever reason, don’t like the stimulus that much but who are willing to go along with it if they get something out of it to get together with a detachment of Republicans who don’t like the stimulus that much but who are willing to go along with it if they get something out of it.
What I’m hearing from a lot of liberals is that the Democrats should instead have forced the GOP into a game of chicken where we would have risked deep-sixing this stimulus bill on the theory that some Republicans would cave anyway, and that if they didn’t we could try to ram it through under budget rules. That may well have worked. But we can’t know. More importantly, OBAMA can’t know. And that’s why, obviously, he’s going to prefer this shitty compromise to a coordinated PR high-wire act that could doom his presidency if it were to fail.
The bottom line is that passing this bill strengthens (in this order) Obama, wishy-washy center-right pseudodemocrats like Ben Nelson, and wishy-washy center-right Republicans like Olympia Snowe. Is that a perfect outcome, even in political terms? Hell, no. But guess what? The people who have the power to decide what happens with this bill are Obama, wishy-washy center-right pseudodemocrats like Ben Nelson, and wishy-washy center-right Republicans like Olympia Snowe.
That’s life in 2009. To change it, we need a powerful Democratic President and more and better Democrats. Full stop.
I’m all for bringing this all up again when Nelson or any of the other “moderate” Dems are running in Democratic primaries down the road. They should of course face angry Democrats in those primaries, and if the Democrats of their states are angry enough, we’ll throw them out and get some real Democrats.
But right now, at least by all appearances, THIS fight is over. And we won. Let’s act like it.
February 9th, 2009 at 1:29 am
Matt says funding school construction would target idle resources. I’m not sure that those idled by the collapse in housing are perfect fits for construction of schools–framing a house isn’t the same thing as building a school, and the crews have never looked the same or been paid the same. I’m guessing the skills are actually different. (I think that’s probably true for the Wall Streeters out of work. The guy who did structured finance and the guy who did M&A are both former Wall Streeters idled by the recession, but it isn’t like they have the same skills in any particularized sense.)
More importantly, Matt misses Kling’s point. Kling is worried that a stimulus won’t help redirect idled resources to new productive uses. Folks who were building houses or making cars or doing structured finance don’t need encouragement to keep doing the same or very similar things. And they don’t need a temporary subsidy to stay in those lines. They need help and encouragement to do something else on a long term basis. And the stimulus just won’t help them with that process.
Finally, there’s no reason to think that school construction will be more expensive at some future point. Certainly it isn’t likely to be more expensive to the taxpayers. There’s no discount for recession-timed work. The prevailing wage will be paid, without discounting. It isn’t as if this is being done in the private sector. And Matt would say that’s how it should be–the idea is to spend money, so getting a good deal for taxpayers really isn’t the point. Ok, but then you can’t say you’re going to get a good deal for taxpayers.
February 9th, 2009 at 1:38 am
This whole compromise stuff is just a dance, compromise for the sake of compromise. For all the opposition to the bill, it had less to do with real-world issues, or with economics, or with ideology and beliefs, or even with genuine opposition to the bill, than with power games and press releases. So, in this case, the Dems needed 60 and didn’t have it. Numbers are a bitch, and Senate egos are even bitchier. So we had to play the compromise game to get 60. Great job, hurray, let’s pat ourselves on the back. But we shouldn’t forget that this is a weaker bill because of that dance. The real goal, after all, isn’t 60 in the Senate. The goal is good legislation. Nelson and the centrists on both sides forgot that part.
February 9th, 2009 at 4:05 am
My personal favourite is the Nelson-Collins increase of $900m for that urgent and job-intensive necessity, better nuclear weapons.
State-of-play spreadsheet here.
February 9th, 2009 at 4:57 am
You guys should have been touting “human infrastructure.” It’s a great buzzphrase, but you didn’t pick up on it enough.
February 9th, 2009 at 7:50 am
I posted about the education cuts yesterday, based on what I read the a NY Times article. I’m not nearly as connected as Matt, and I don’t know nearly as much about how Washington works, but I did a bit of research and came up with some startling information about those cuts. As a former NYC public school teacher, I used some of my experiences teaching to inform my outrage. For instance, these senators (I focused on Collins and Specter) would rather NOT be part of “bringing public schools into compliance with fire, health, and safety code” or engage in “upgrading or installing educational technology infrastructure.” I did a bit more of a rundown of what I found in H.R.1 that got cut here. I hope it’s okay to post a link to my own blog – I’m a bit new to serious blogging and don’t know the rules and etiquette yet.
February 9th, 2009 at 8:10 am
Sam M, the headline says “slash education funding in stimulus.” There was more education funding in the stimulus package before Collins and Nelson got their hands on it than after. So yes, they did slash the education funding in the stimulus package, as Yglesias said they did, even if the revised stimulus package would increase federal education funding over what there would be with no stimulus.
This is relevant for two reasons. First, because the senators say that one of the good things about the bill is that it funds education. Yet they made sure that it did not fund education as much as it would’ve without their intervention. So it’s difficult to understand, on the merits, why they decided to cut the amount of education funding in the stimulus.
The second reason is that state and local governments are facing a tremendous revenue gap, so they are likely to be cutting back on education spending. So even if the federal government puts some additional education spending in the stimulus bill, total education spending may drop. I don’t have exact numbers, but this link contains stories about many states that are considering cutting education spending, such as Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina, and California.
February 9th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
When was Fred Flintstone elected to the senate?
February 9th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
WackoTheWhore is descending into even further solipsistic gibberish. He really just needs to fly to New Jersey and get a room with Lou Dobbs.
Lonewacko, are you a neo-Nazi? Just out of curiosity.
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April 10th, 2009 at 6:26 am
I didn’t say I favored cuts to education in general, or indeed that I actually favored this cut.
But the fact is that the funding for new school construction in particular is going to have very little impact on education output in the short term.
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