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Boston Globe
4 days ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
At ‘CPAC of the center,' Democratic moderates beat up on the left
The Democrats in the room aimed to put a new sheen on — and perhaps some more spine in — what has long been tagged as the mushy middle, arguing that they are the majority-makers the party needs in 2026 and beyond to take control of Congress. It was a wonky gathering where center-left Substack pundit Matthew Yglesias was greeted like a rock star and Lakshya Jain, a data-crunching analyst, detailed a ratings system to show which Democratic lawmakers had the highest candidate-quality WAR — Wins Above Replacement — a term borrowed from baseball analytics. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'This room may be full of nerds,' said Andrew Mamo, a Democratic strategist who attended the conference, WelcomeFest. 'But the focus is how to not look like losers and how to not be losers.' Advertisement This event was not the place to debate the finer points of policy. There was glancingly little discussion beyond what would sell with voters. If some called it the 'CPAC of the center' — after the big right-wing confab — there was far less red meat, and more crudités (a platter of chopped peppers, carrots, and cauliflower was served in the back). Advertisement Instead, the thrust of the day's discussion was dismissing the party's left wing as an anchor to Democratic chances to win national elections. Scattered potshots were aimed at the activist group Indivisible throughout the day, with Representative Jared Golden of Maine, who represents the most pro-Trump district of any Democrat in the House, calling it 'a hypernational organization with a very single-minded agenda.' One of the event's organizers wore a West Virginia University football jersey — bearing the name and number of former Senator Joe Manchin from when he played quarterback at the school. Interns distributed buttons urging people to sign up for a movement to keep the size of the Supreme Court at nine justices. Some of the advice felt like Politics 101. 'A key to success in politics is to talk to people and to find out what they're saying,' Representative Tom Suozzi of New York told the audience. 'It has to be informed by real-life experiences.' A parade of Democrats who had won in hostile districts and swing states offered paeans to pragmatism. 'Being on 'Team Normal' right now really helps,' said Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, who was tapped to deliver the party's response to President Trump's first congressional address this year. 'People want practicality.' The conference took place at the Hamilton Hotel in Washington as allies of the Blue Dog Coalition, the most moderate faction among House Democrats, are forming a new super PAC and an allied nonprofit group ahead of the 2026 midterms. The Blue Dogs have long had their own PAC, but never independent entities that can take unlimited donations. The new nonprofit, which has not been previously reported, will be called the Blue Dog Action Fund, with Aisha Woodward, a former chief of staff to Golden, serving as executive director and overseeing a staff of five. Advertisement 'We're willing to get involved in primaries, but our goal is to win the House majority,' said Phil Gardner, who will be a senior adviser to the groups and is a former campaign manager for RepresentativeMarie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state, a Blue Dog leader. 'Which is going to require winning in seats that Trump won.' The gathering Wednesday was organized by Welcome PAC and supported by an array of center-left groups on and off Capitol Hill. Notably absent from the day's panels, discussions, and side conversations, that included a handful of former Biden administration and campaign aides, was the standard Democratic talk about abortion rights, gay rights, and the importance of Black voters to the party. To a crowd that was mostly white, Jain said his research had found that the race and gender of a candidate did not matter. Michael Ceraso, a progressive operative who made his way in, quipped: 'It's a good place to source a lot of white people.' At one point, when RepresentativeRitchie Torres of New York was speaking, left-wing protesters stormed the stage chanting 'Free Palestine' and unfurling banners about genocide. The event organizers blasted the Carly Simon anthem 'You're So Vain,' from the sound system during the interruption. Liam Kerr, a cofounder of Welcome PAC who wore the West Virginia jersey, said the center was newly energized to take on the party's left. 'Going against the status quo is always fun,' he said. This article originally appeared in Advertisement
New York Times
5 days ago
- Politics
- New York Times
At ‘CPAC of the Center,' Democratic Moderates Beat Up on the Left
The centrist wing of the Democratic Party gathered on Wednesday in a hotel basement in downtown Washington with a grand plan. The party should start winning, and stop losing. Surveying the wreckage of the 2024 election, the proud moderates here pleaded that their faction should seize control of the party's messaging, stiff-arm liberal interest groups and experience the spoils of real-life victory, all while ignoring angry online activists. The Democrats in the room aimed to put a new sheen on — and perhaps some more spine in — what has long been tagged as the mushy middle, arguing that they are the majority-makers the party needs in 2026 and beyond to take control of Congress. It was a wonky gathering where the center-left Substack pundit Matthew Yglesias was greeted like a rock star and Lakshya Jain, a data-crunching analyst, detailed a ratings system to show which Democratic lawmakers had the highest candidate-quality WAR — Wins Above Replacement — a term borrowed from baseball analytics. 'This room may be full of nerds,' said Andrew Mamo, a Democratic strategist who attended the conference, WelcomeFest. 'But the focus is how to not look like losers — and how to not be losers.' This event was not the place to debate the finer points of policy. There was glancingly little discussion beyond what would sell with voters. If some called it the 'CPAC of the center' — after the big right-wing confab — there was far less red meat, and more crudités (a platter of chopped peppers, carrots and cauliflower was served in the back). Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Post
21-05-2025
- Health
- New York Post
GOP's Medicaid trims won't tame the beast — here's how to restore sanity
This week, House Republicans are laboring to pass proposals to reform Medicaid, the fast-growing system of federal funding for states to deliver health care to low-income Americans, as part of President Trump's 'big beautiful' budget bill. Their proposal creates the appearance of generating substantial savings by nudging states to restrict enrollment — notably by mandating an 80-hour-per-month work requirement for able-bodied adults to receive the benefit. Liberals responded to the House's modest proposals with predictable outrage. Advertisement Matthew Yglesias called it a 'war on the poor,' arguing that the bill's cuts 'will cause 8.6 million people to lose their health insurance.' Massachusetts Rep. Lori Trahan deemed it 'federal overreach, plain and simple, with devastating consequences for the people we represent.' Advertisement Critics' outrage is surely overblown: From 2003 to 2023, Medicaid's annual cost to federal taxpayers surged from $161 billion to $616 billion. The Republicans' proposals would merely slow the program's further spending growth over the coming decade, from 4.6% per year to 3.7% — and even that reduction in growth is likely to overestimate the savings that would occur. To offset the cost of extending the 2017 tax cuts, the House GOP has attempted to maximize the Congressional Budget Office's estimate of savings resulting from its proposed reforms to Medicaid. But CBO estimates don't account for likely hurdles to implementation, such as states finding ways to evade intended cost controls. Advertisement Given such hurdles, the savings and coverage loss are both much less than they're cracked up to be. This is by design — and it reflects the GOP's tiny majorities in both houses of Congress, combined with political pressure from governors and health-care providers who stand to lose revenues. Take those work requirements: The bill allows part-time 'community engagement' activities to satisfy the obligation — and states have proven adept at using token employment arrangements to nullify similar mandates in the past. Advertisement The bill, as it stood late Wednesday, would not even allow states to implement work requirements until 2029. The House GOP bill may nonetheless generate some modest genuine savings through its tightened enforcement of means tests, for example. But it doesn't do nearly enough to address the fact that Medicaid spending is skyrocketing because liberal states can claim several dollars in federal aid for every dollar they spend on the program – without any upper limit. From 2019 to 2023, for example, New York's level of Medicaid spending per person increased by more than the entire cost of Florida's program. The Empire State now spends three times as much. In 2023, New York's Medicaid program paid family members $9 billion to look after their elderly relatives, which even Gov. Kathy Hochul labeled 'a racket.' Get opinions and commentary from our columnists Subscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter! Thanks for signing up! Enter your email address Please provide a valid email address. By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Never miss a story. Check out more newsletters Yet her recent budget proposes a further 17% increase in such spending — which the federal government will have to match. Instead of struggling to make tiny cuts to Medicaid, conservatives in Congress should instead focus on stopping states from further expanding it with programs that prove politically irreversible once they go into effect. Advertisement Medicaid spending is rising so fast because the federal government provides between $1 and $9 for every $1 that states spend, without any cut-off mechanism. This offers all states a fantastic return on investment — offering the most profitable benefits to the wealthiest states. States like New York are increasingly trying to get federal Medicaid funding for housing, transportation and other welfare services, by citing incidental benefits to health. Advertisement Since 2016, they have dodged federal rules by overpaying private insurers, with the understanding that the insurers will use the funds for normally prohibited purposes. In 2024, insurers made $110 billion in these 'state-directed payments.' Republicans have long sought to cap the growth of Medicaid funding for each state — but they have struggled to identify a numerical cap flexible enough to let states cover basic costs during economic recessions, when enrollment increases. Such a cap would do nothing to stop states from expanding their benefits during business-cycle upturns, when the program's cost is falling and they have spare funds to spend. Advertisement It's time for Congress to simply ban high-spending states from unilaterally expanding Medicaid benefits and eligibility. An outright ban would be easier to administer than state-by-state spending caps, and would avoid the need to debate funding limits. Federal law already stops low-spending states from cutting Medicaid benefits, eligibility and payments below a set floor. It only makes sense to set similar rules establishing a ceiling for high-spending states as well. Advertisement Benefit expansions enacted by spendthrift states account for much of Medicaid's runaway growth. Republicans won't slow that growth by taking access to care away from existing Medicaid beneficiaries — they just need to cut off the cash spigot and stop states from claiming ever more money via brand-new benefits. Chris Pope is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Adapted in part from City Journal.
Gulf Today
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Gulf Today
If your commute is a nightmare, blame Congress
Matthew Yglesias, Tribune News Service America's mass transit agencies are teetering on the brink of collapse. The money they got from Congress to help them through COVID-19 is running out, but ridership remains below what it was before the pandemic. Lower fare revenue plus higher wage costs equals a bigger deficit. Unless state governments fill that gap, agencies will need to dramatically curtail service. Yet service levels are one of the primary determinants of ridership. Hence the increasing risk of a 'death spiral,' where revenue shortfalls lead to service cutbacks, which lead to lower revenue, which lead to service cuts, and so on. State legislatures should try to avoid this doom cycle, even though finding the money may be difficult. But there is a deeper issue here, beyond the question of less funding versus more, or higher versus lower levels of service: the declining labor productivity of transit agencies. The tasks performed by transit workers have remained basically the same for decades even as wages have risen to keep up with economy-wide trends. The agencies themselves deserve some blame for not finding ways to modernize operations and improve efficiency. But Congress itself is a major culprit — specifically, and sorry to wonk out here, Section 13(c) of the Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964. This provision, as Marc Scribner of the Reason Foundation points out, makes cost-saving reforms difficult if not impossible. Some background: In the early 1960s, many private transit companies were being taken over by state or city governments. The rise of the automobile greatly had reduced the commercial viability of these networks, yet then as now they were seen as important public services. Private transit companies were widely unionized at the time, but public sector unions were rare. There was a (quaint-sounding by contemporary standards) concern that taking agencies public would serve as a form of union-busting. So the law required that agencies which receive federal funding, which was essentially all of them, to protect collective bargaining rights, guarantee re-employment of workers who lost their jobs, and safeguard employees 'against a worsening of their positions.' The upshot is that not only do transit agencies face all the usual obstacles to making their workforce more efficient, they are in many respects prohibited from doing so. For example, there are basically two ways that a transit agency can provide bus service. The standard way in the U.S. is that the transit agency owns and maintains the buses and employs the drivers. In the rest of the world, however, it is more common for the transit agency to act as a contractor: It draws up the service map and frequency it wants, and lets private companies bid on the job. As a striking paper published in 2017 notes, by fully switching to a contracting model, U.S. transit agencies could reduce bus operating costs by 30% with no reduction in service. That sounds like an almost ridiculously large cost saving. Yet the result doesn't stem from any magic privatization fairy dust — it's simply that union contracts pay bus drivers (and other transit employees) above-market wages. So transit agencies could privatize in order to avoid the union premium and save money. Or they could deprive workers of their collective bargaining rights and save money. Except that under federal law, they can't actually do either of those things. In the longer term, of course, there is incredible promise in autonomous driving. Right now in San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles, it's possible to ride in a driverless taxi. It will soon be possible in other cities. Creating a driverless car that works is a difficult engineering challenge. A self-driving train, by contrast, is fairly trivial — it turns on tracks and does not need to steer around objects or even engage with other vehicles except to have an emergency stopping function. Precisely because the driverless train is a much simpler problem, the technology is neither new nor particularly exotic. The subway systems of Dubai and Copenhagen are fully automated, and the Paris Metro is partially so. Automated train systems are used in many US airports. Automated trains provide a kind of double dividend — they are both cheaper to operate and, since they can drive safely with less spacing between them, allow for more frequent service.
Gulf Today
18-04-2025
- Business
- Gulf Today
Can Democrats and big tech get back together?
Matthew Yglesias, Tribune News Service Despite the various frictions, America's technology sector did pretty well during Joe Biden's presidency — and despite the various warnings about his mercurial opponent, many tech executives supported Donald Trump in his 2024 campaign. After his victory, even more rushed to Trump's side, with Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg going on Joe Rogan's podcast to talk about his admiration for the president-elect and the need for more 'masculine energy' in U.S. corporate culture. Then came the Liberation Day tariffs, and then Obliteration Day in markets, and finally the Equivocation Day partial tariff rollback. Meanwhile Meta shares are trading below their price on the day of Zuckerberg's appearance on Rogan. It turns out that whatever the merits of masculine energy, a global trade war is not good for the tech industry. The whole episode ought to be an opportunity for a mutual reconsideration from both Democrats and the technology world: How did they come to be so alienated from each other, and isn't it past time for a rapprochement? It's not just that tech benefits, probably more than any other sector, from the globally integrated cooperative economy that Trump disdains. It's that the underlying motives for Trump's trade policies are rooted in nostalgia economics, which is antithetical to any vision of progress. For starters, even though Trump's 'reciprocal' tariff strategy has now been withdrawn, it's notable that his formula simply ignored the existence of services exports. From Hollywood to Silicon Valley to Wall Street, many of America's most successful companies are service exporters. It should be concerning to everyone — especially executives and investors in the service sector — that the US has a president who believes that these industries somehow don't count. Consider that amid the tariff chaos, Trump took the time last week to sign some executive orders that he claims will promote a revival of the coal industry. He rightly pointed out that Democrat-supported initiatives to help retrain miners did not resonate in coal country, where voters preferred his pitch that he would keep the mines open. 'You could give 'em a penthouse on Fifth Avenue and a different kind of job and they'd be unhappy,' Trump said, surrounded by miners. 'They want to mine coal. That's what they love to do.' As an observation about voter psychology, it may well be true — and it may even have implications for trade policy. Communities that have lost factories to China or Mexico don't want to hear that openness to trade makes Americans better off on average. And they don't want sophisticated plans for retraining or economic revival. They just want their jobs back. But as the basis for economic policy, it's a dead end. An approach designed to stop anything from ever changing is irreconcilable with economic growth — and toxic to the spirit of innovation and disruption that is at the core of Silicon Valley. Trump is of course not entirely consistent in his application of these anti-progress views. When it comes to classes of people that he disdains — government workers, academics, researchers — he is happy to see them lose their jobs. But if it's people he has cultural affection for, he is eager to stand athwart history shouting 'no' — supporting dockworkers in their opposition to port automation, for example. A 2017 paper from Stanford Business School found that technology entrepreneurs had broadly liberal views on cultural issues, favored globalization, were open to redistributive taxation, and were extremely hostile to regulation. This worldview is in many ways the opposite of Trump's sentiment-driven, nostalgia-soaked outlook. It broadly favors a competitive economy open to technological change and foreign competition, but with progressive taxation that finances a generous social safety net. That generally tracks the approach to economic policy taken by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and — along with Silicon Valley's location in Democratic California — it helped create the tech sector's alignment with the party. During the Biden years, with several notable exceptions, much of the tech world seems to have forgotten exactly how crazy and backward-looking Trump is. Biden, meanwhile, won a Democratic Party primary by promising wealthy donors that he would make them pay higher taxes but would not 'demonize' the rich and that 'nothing would fundamentally change' for them. Leftists weren't happy, but it was a perfectly reasonable pitch. Once in office, however, Biden appointed regulators who weren't just interested in tax progressivity but wanted to rein in the power of large US. businesses. This did not amount to very much in practice, but many tech entrepreneurs and investors found it threatening, insulting or both. Paired with the backlash to the excesses of left-wing cultural politics and Biden's personal lack of interest in technology, the stage was set for a rightward turn. But Trump himself has not changed his spots. He remains hostile to scientific research as well as trade. He's made it harder to hire skilled immigrants while turning America into a markedly less desirable place for foreigners to study. Business leaders did eventually denounce Trump's tariffs, which may have played a role in his announcement of a 90-day suspension. But their initial reluctance to vocally criticize a decision that was catastrophic for their own share prices reveals a deeper concern.
