President Barack Obama has established a staff position in the White House to oversee arts and culture in the Office of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs under Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser, a White House official confirmed. Kareem Dale, right, a lawyer who last month was named special assistant to the president for disability policy, will hold the new position. Mr. Dale, who is partly blind, previously served as national disability director for the Obama campaign. He also served on the arts policy committee and the disability policy committee for Mr. Obama when he was a senator from Illinois. Bill Ivey, who served as the administration’s transition-team leader for the arts and humanities, said he was encouraged by the appointment and would meet with Mr. Dale next week. “It’s a big step forward in terms of connecting cultural and government with mainstream administration policy,” Mr. Ivey said in an interview on Friday. The White House declined to describe the position in detail, since Mr. Dale’s appointment has yet to be formally announced. Mr. Ivey, a former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, said he expected that the job would mainly involve coordinating the activities of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services “in relation to White House objectives.” Although there have been staff members assigned to culture under past presidents, they usually served in the first lady’s office, Mr. Ivey said.
All posts are cross-posted to the beta version of the new Clyde Fitch Report. I'd love any thoughts on the new site -- bearing in mind we're still in beta, resolving kinks, bugs, design, functionality, etc.
I cannot tell you how many emails I get every day from organizations like MoveOn.org, imploring me to add my name to this or that cause. Many of them I support, many of them I don't, but I feel I receive entirely too many of these things, and no matter where one sits on the political/philosophical spectrum, at a certain point there's got to be the risk of diminishing returns.
Sometimes I get one of these emails and I realize that there is something far more significant going on in the background; that while I may be asked on the surface to lend my support to a cause, what's really happening is that a broader message, a broader agenda, may be moving into motion. I felt this way the other day when I got such an email regarding my new senator here in New York, Kirsten Gillibrand.
The subject of the MoveOn.org email is the housing crisis and President Obama's plan to fix it. The purpose of my post, however, is not to take a position on his plan quite yet (though it's much more intelligent than anything the Party of No has put forth) but to wonder why Gillibrand is the subject of targeting. She was, after all, sworn in to succeed Hilary Clinton just 47 days ago.
Personally, I think Gillibrand's uber-centrist positions are making her a target of the left and the right. I think the right sees a chance, albeit a slim one, to take her down in a death-by-a-zillion-cuts strategy, or at least soften her up for a hard time in 2010 if she is the nominee and/or if the GOP can come up with a candidate who could be her equal, which is where they're stalled at the moment. But I think the left is very divided about her: liberals are nauseated by Gillibrand's 100% NRA rating and worried, if not quite at the level of nauseated, by the senator's, um, let's say, evolving stance on gay rights. She's basically too centrist for New York, some say, and this may be about to cause her some problems.
Unless, that is, Gillibrand capitulates while also figuring out how to explain shifting so much to the left without leaving her vulnerable to charges of flipping and flopping. So this brings me back to this email from MoveOn.org, which clearly, I think, sends a shot right over Gillibrand's bow to hurry up and figure it out. That, in other words, she'd better vivaciously toe the Obama line or else face reelection problems next year. Now, party discipline is a Republican virtue, so efforts to instill it in the famously fractious Democrats strikes me as a net positive. But let's acknowledge that this may be what is going on here. And now, the text of the MoveOn.org email:
Dear MoveOn member,
Next week, the Senate will begin work on an important part of President Obama's plan to address the housing crisis, and your senator's vote will be key.
The bill makes a crucial change to bankruptcy law, empowering judges to help homeowners reduce their mortgages instead of losing their homes. Judges already have the ability to do this with vacation homes, cars, even yachts. But they can't take this commonsense step with primary homes.
The bill passed the House last week, but faced opposition from some Democrats. The fight in the Senate is going to be even tougher. Sen. Gillibrand needs to hear from you today so she knows constituents are counting on her to stand with homeowners, not big banks.
Can you call Sen. Gillibrand right now? Tell her: "Please pass the foreclosure bankruptcy reform that the House just passed. Stand with homeowners, not with big banks."
Here's where to call: Senator Kirsten Gillibrand Phone: 202-224-4451
President Obama offered a comprehensive plan to ease the housing crisis. His plan helps families refinance their mortgages to take advantage of low rates, and gives qualifying homeowners relief through loan modifications. In all, the plan is expected to help up to 9 million families stay in their homes.
Most of the plan is already being implemented, but the key provision in question needs congressional approval. By allowing bankruptcy judges to modify mortgages on primary residences, this bill provides a strong incentive for banks to work with homeowners before foreclosing.
But the mortgage industry is fighting the bill tooth and nail—they convinced 24 Democrats in the House to vote against the bill—because they don't want to take any responsibility for their role in the housing crisis. We can't afford to lose even a few votes in the Senate, and that means letting Sen. Gillibrand know now that you expect her to put her constituents ahead of the banks.
Can you call Sen. Gillibrand now and tell hers to stand with homeowners and to pass foreclosure bankruptcy reform?
Now, here's the bottom line: MoveOn.org has every right to advocate whatever position it wishes. But it seems to me there's something about the tone of this email that implied a threat to the new Senator. Welcome to the big leagues, indeed.
Sphere: Related Content
This is going to be a short post but I think it's an important one. So there's been all this chatter about how strategist James Carville and pollster Stanley Greenberg hatched the current Rush-Limbaugh-is-the-leader-of-the-GOP meme and now the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has created a whole webpage, called I'm Sorry Rush, to spotlight how the leaders of the right must kiss Pope Rush's ring whenever they deviate from Republican orthodoxy.
So I laughed at first.
Then I thought -- wait a minute, so, some of this is coming out of the White House? Isn't this what Obama said he wouldn't do? Come on -- can't the Democrats be better than this? What makes anyone think the American people won't object -- and loudly? Don't screw up this moment with such stupidity. The Republicans, it seems to me, can do all that by themselves, no?
While the Republicans are spewing hate -- at President Obama's budget and recovery plan; at their disbelief that the same free market that ushered in our economic decline cannot so readily fix it; at or toward Michael Steele or Rush Limbaugh, take your pick -- we have an actual bill in Congress that deals with some real hatred and it's time we passed it again now that we have a president who is on record as willing to sign it.
This, below, is some boilerplate from the Human Rights Campaign in support of the Matthew Shepard Act. (According to the Library of Congress website, there are actually four written versions of the bill -- you can see them here.) We all know the Party of No will rage against the bill, but their lack of a moral compass is their problem.
Please give this important legislation your unwavering support.
Hi,
Have you heard that the hate crimes bill is coming before Congress again?
I hope you'll join me in sending a message to Congress: we can't wait any longer for a federal law to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans from violent hate crimes. Take action at: http://www.hrcactioncenter.org/campaign/pass_shepard
Ordinary people are living in fear for their safety and their lives every day, in small towns and big cities. Hate crimes against LGBT people are on the rise, but the federal government has no direct authority to investigate, prosecute or help local law enforcement crack down.
We can't let this continue. We can't let friends and neighbors become targets for violence simply because of who they are.
Congress passed the hate crimes bill in 2007, but because of George Bush's veto threat, it never became law. And now, right-wing extremists are once again making outrageous claims that the bill would criminalize preachers, end free speech, and so on.
Will you help make sure their lies aren't the only things members of Congress are hearing about this bill? Please click below to send a note urging Congress to pass the Matthew Shepard Act.
As I was swamped with a project, I paid relatively little attention to the recent CPAC conference, although I'm sure it was chock-full of all the same self-aggrandizing, anti-Democratic hatred that we have come to expect from the party of tax-cut-and-spend and back-a-war-rationalized-by-lies.
Still, if the Democrats are ascendant at the moment, surely they won't be forever -- or knowing the history of my party, for long -- so it would be smart if we paid attention to the ways in which the right-wing is trying to get itself together because someday, somehow, it will. As you all know, I am personally sickened by the hyper-radical strain of the GOP -- the side that prays to a God it thinks it knows more intimately than you do for the failure of the current president. But I'm concerned, too, because without a strong GOP, the left is going to push the Democrats too far to the left (the GOP naturally argues that this has already occurred). What we would be left with then is a president ideally hoping to govern from the center, a Democratic party standing all too much to the left of him, and a GOP standing all too much to the right of him. As per tradition, we would have gridlock -- yes, even with 60 seats in the Senate -- and who, then, would lose? Well, the American people, of course, but also Obama himself. If the GOP can hang on and never, ever give an inch, they can deny him the opportunity to turn his attempts at compromise, at solution-building, at conciliation into the same old politics as usual, which would thereby destroy the one thing that sells him better than anything else: his brand. And you can bet the GOP is betting the house that such a tactic will work. It's party above nation, and they're the masters of it.
But at the same time, the GOP does have to take long, inward look at itself in any event -- even if my cynicism about them is completely erroneous. It's almost sad watching them go after some pseudo-cosmetic fixes that would appear to address the changing landscape of our politics in the wake of electing a biracial president without actually changing any of their own. I'm not saying Michael Steele isn't a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, but I think most people in the center and on the left would find it difficult to believe that the GOP's powerbrokers did not think about the ethnicity of Steele as they elected him the de facto leader of their party. At the same time, the CPAC convention revealed, I think, how very uncomfortable -- maybe a better word could be unfamiliar -- the powerbrokers of the GOP are when it comes to race. Take a look at this video:
That was during the campaign, when Bachmann, a representative from Minnesota, continually tiptoed right up to the line of what is acceptable political discourse. However, if you take a look at this video (up until 1:30 is what's most salient):
...Congresswoman Bachmann just spills over into whitey-trying-for-blackness territory, and the effect is just awful. I'm not saying she's a racist. I'm saying she's out of her element, she's trying desperately to figure out what is politically correct. Has she ever thought of, "Michael Steele!" -- in other words, not needing to punctuate her lauding of him without slipping into ebonics?
Here is a sentence you probably never expected to read: Utah's governor supports civil unions.
Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., a spokeswoman said Monday, backs Equality Utah's Common Ground Initiative, a legislative effort that would provide some rights to gay and transgender Utahns. Even more, the Republican governor favors civil unions.
It's a position that runs counter to his political party and against the majority of Utahns -- 70 percent of whom oppose civil unions, according to a recent Salt Lake Tribune poll.
"He's long supported many of the ideas that are presented within the Common Ground Initiative," said Lisa Roskelley, the governor's spokeswoman, noting her boss waits to endorse specific bills officially until presented to him in final form. "He supports civil unions."
It's doubtful Huntsman's backing will lead to civil unions getting past the conservative Legislature. And it may not help the rest of this year's gay-rights legislative push, which already has shrunk from four bills to two.
On Day Two of the 2009 Legislature, a measure died in committee that would have allowed financial dependents -- besides spouses, parents and children -- to sue in the event of a breadwinner's wrongful death.
And last week, Rep. Jackie Biskupski, D-Salt Lake City, ditched her proposal, which would have sought the Legislature's and voters' approval to erase the second part of Amendment 3 -- Utah's constitutional gay-marriage ban -- that forbids civil unions.
Huntsman, who endorsed Amendment 3 when he ran for governor in 2004, now favors repealing that portion, Roskelley said.
She said the governor was unavailable to comment Monday.
Jeff Reynolds, spokesman for the conservative Salt Lake City-based Sutherland Institute think tank, which opposes the Common Ground Initiative, said he's "not surprised" by Huntsman's softened stand.
"He had to be dragged to the altar of Amendment 3," Reynolds said in an e-mail, "and everyone has known since then that Governor Huntsman would rather be nice than right."
Notice that last line of what I quoted -- that Gov. Huntsman would "rather be nice than right." To turn that around, the social-issue ultra-conservatives that have driven the GOP would rather preach hate than accept that a majority of the nation does not stand with them. Curiously, by the way, notice how one of the party's not-so-scary new darlings, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, deftly deals with the question of how to make the GOP more inclusive, even if it means acceding to the center on the question of gay rights:
As for Rush, feh. There's nothing I can add to the discussion of him except to say that I hope his oxycontin supplier keeps him happy.
Sphere: Related Content
That's right -- Fox News has asked me to live-blog the President's address to Congress tonight, starting at 8:55pm. I will post again with the specific website link once I have it.
Sorry, too, for not posting for a few days. Been knee-deep in assignments and stuff. Forgive me!
The Fox Forum asked me today if I'd be interested in writing something about the housing stabilization plan offered by the President, and here is what I wrote. It's very short, but I think it does make the point.
Here's the tease:
The proactive and progressive nature of President Obama’s plan should give Senator McCain a bit of pause, for it was he, let’s recall, who placed squarely within the center of the national spotlight his belief that the recovery of the economy would not be possible without the immediate stabilization of the housing market.
I have in my possession an advance copy of the speech President Obama is due to deliver later today in Arizona, announcing his plan to forestall more foreclosures in the national housing market and thereby begin to stabilize the housing situation.
The speech itself was embargoed until 9am EST this morning; he's delivering the speech at 12:15. Here it is:
I’m here today to talk about a crisis unlike any we’ve ever known – but one that you know very well here in Mesa, and throughout the Valley. In Phoenix and its surrounding suburbs, the American Dream is being tested by a home mortgage crisis that not only threatens the stability of our economy but also the stability of families and neighborhoods. It is a crisis that strikes at the heart of the middle class: the homes in which we invest our savings, build our lives, raise our families, and plant roots in our communities.
So many Americans have shared with me their personal experiences of this crisis. Many have written letters or emails or shared their stories with me at rallies and along rope lines. Their hardship and heartbreak are a reminder that while this crisis is vast, it begins just one house – and one family – at a time.
It begins with a young family – maybe in Mesa, or Glendale, or Tempe – or just as likely in suburban Las Vegas, Cleveland, or Miami. They save up. They search. They choose a home that feels like the perfect place to start a life. They secure a fixed-rate mortgage at a reasonable rate, make a down payment, and make their mortgage payments each month. They are as responsible as anyone could ask them to be.
But then they learn that acting responsibly often isn’t enough to escape this crisis. Perhaps someone loses a job in the latest round of layoffs, one of more than three and a half million jobs lost since this recession began – or maybe a child gets sick, or a spouse has his or her hours cut.
In the past, if you found yourself in a situation like this, you could have sold your home and bought a smaller one with more affordable payments. Or you could have refinanced your home at a lower rate. But today, home values have fallen so sharply that even if you made a large down payment, the current value of your mortgage may still be higher than the current value of your house. So no bank will return your calls, and no sale will return your investment.
You can't afford to leave and you can't afford to stay. So you cut back on luxuries. Then you cut back on necessities. You spend down your savings to keep up with your payments. Then you open the retirement fund. Then you use the credit cards. And when you’ve gone through everything you have, and done everything you can, you have no choice but to default on your loan. And so your home joins the nearly six million others in foreclosure or at risk of foreclosure across the country, including roughly 150,000 right here in Arizona.
But the foreclosures which are uprooting families and upending lives across America are only one part of this housing crisis. For while there are millions of families who face foreclosure, there are millions more who are in no danger of losing their homes, but who have still seen their dreams endangered. They are families who see “For Sale” signs lining the streets. Who see neighbors leave, and homes standing vacant, and lawns slowly turning brown. They see their own homes – their largest single assets – plummeting in value. One study in Chicago found that a foreclosed home reduces the price of nearby homes by as much as 9 percent. Home prices in cities across the country have fallen by more than 25 percent since 2006; in Phoenix, they’ve fallen by 43 percent.
Even if your neighborhood hasn’t been hit by foreclosures, you’re likely feeling the effects of the crisis in other ways. Companies in your community that depend on the housing market – construction companies and home furnishing stores, painters and landscapers – they’re cutting back and laying people off. The number of residential construction jobs has fallen by more than a quarter million since mid-2006. As businesses lose revenue and people lose income, the tax base shrinks, which means less money for schools and police and fire departments. And on top of this, the costs to a local government associated with a single foreclosure can be as high as $20,000.
The effects of this crisis have also reverberated across the financial markets. When the housing market collapsed, so did the availability of credit on which our economy depends. As that credit has dried up, it has been harder for families to find affordable loans to purchase a car or pay tuition and harder for businesses to secure the capital they need to expand and create jobs.
In the end, all of us are paying a price for this home mortgage crisis. And all of us will pay an even steeper price if we allow this crisis to deepen – a crisis which is unraveling homeownership, the middle class, and the American Dream itself. But if we act boldly and swiftly to arrest this downward spiral, every American will benefit. And that’s what I want to talk about today.
The plan I’m announcing focuses on rescuing families who have played by the rules and acted responsibly: by refinancing loans for millions of families in traditional mortgages who are underwater or close to it; by modifying loans for families stuck in sub-prime mortgages they can’t afford as a result of skyrocketing interest rates or personal misfortune; and by taking broader steps to keep mortgage rates low so that families can secure loans with affordable monthly payments.
At the same time, this plan must be viewed in a larger context. A lost home often begins with a lost job. Many businesses have laid off workers for a lack of revenue and available capital. Credit has become scarce as the markets have been overwhelmed by the collapse of securities backed by failing mortgages. In the end, the home mortgage crisis, the financial crisis, and this broader economic crisis are interconnected. We cannot successfully address any one of them without addressing them all.
Yesterday, in Denver, I signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act which will create or save three and a half million jobs over the next two years – including 70,000 in Arizona – doing the work America needs done. We will also work to stabilize, repair, and reform our financial system to get credit flowing again to families and businesses. And we will pursue the housing plan I am outlining today.
Through this plan, we will help between seven and nine million families restructure or refinance their mortgages so they can avoid foreclosure. And we are not just helping homeowners at risk of falling over the edge, we are preventing their neighbors from being pulled over that edge too – as defaults and foreclosures contribute to sinking home values, failing local businesses, and lost jobs.
But I also want to be very clear about what this plan will not do: It will not rescue the unscrupulous or irresponsible by throwing good taxpayer money after bad loans. It will not help speculators who took risky bets on a rising market and bought homes not to live in but to sell. It will not help dishonest lenders who acted irresponsibility, distorting the facts and dismissing the fine print at the expense of buyers who didn’t know better. And it will not reward folks who bought homes they knew from the beginning they would never be able to afford. In short, this plan will not save every home.
But it will give millions of families resigned to financial ruin a chance to rebuild. It will prevent the worst consequences of this crisis from wreaking even greater havoc on the economy. And by bringing down the foreclosure rate, it will help to shore up housing prices for everyone. According to estimates by the Treasury Department, this plan could stop the slide in home prices due to neighboring foreclosures by about $6,000 per home.
Here is how my plan works:
First, we will make it possible for an estimated four to five million currently ineligible homeowners who receive their mortgages through Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac to refinance their mortgages at lower rates.
Today, as a result of declining home values, millions of families are “underwater,” which means they owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. These families are unable to sell their homes, and unable to refinance them. So in the event of a job loss or another emergency, their options are limited.
Right now, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – the institutions that guarantee home loans for millions of middle class families – are generally not permitted to guarantee refinancing for mortgages valued at more than 80 percent of the home’s worth. So families who are underwater – or close to being underwater – cannot turn to these lending institutions for help.
My plan changes that by removing this restriction on Fannie and Freddie so that they can refinance mortgages they already own or guarantee. This will allow millions of families stuck with loans at a higher rate to refinance. And the estimated cost to taxpayers would be roughly zero; while Fannie and Freddie would receive less money in payments, this would be balanced out by a reduction in defaults and foreclosures.
I also want to point out that millions of other households could benefit from historically low interest rates if they refinance, though many don't know that this opportunity is available to them – an opportunity that could save families hundreds of dollars each month. And the efforts we are taking to stabilize mortgage markets will help these borrowers to secure more affordable terms, too.
Second, we will create new incentives so that lenders work with borrowers to modify the terms of sub-prime loans at risk of default and foreclosure.
Sub-prime loans – loans with high rates and complex terms that often conceal their costs – make up only 12 percent of all mortgages, but account for roughly half of all foreclosures.
Right now, when families with these mortgages seek to modify a loan to avoid this fate, they often find themselves navigating a maze of rules and regulations but rarely finding answers. Some sub-prime lenders are willing to renegotiate; many aren’t. Your ability to restructure your loan depends on where you live, the company that owns or manages your loan, or even the agent who happens to answer the phone on the day you call.
My plan establishes clear guidelines for the entire mortgage industry that will encourage lenders to modify mortgages on primary residences. Any institution that wishes to receive financial assistance from the government, and to modify home mortgages, will have to do so according to these guidelines – which will be in place two weeks from today.
If lenders and homebuyers work together, and the lender agrees to offer rates that the borrower can afford, we’ll make up part of the gap between what the old payments were and what the new payments will be. And under this plan, lenders who participate will be required to reduce those payments to no more than 31 percent of a borrower’s income. This will enable as many as three to four million homeowners to modify the terms of their mortgages to avoid foreclosure.
So this part of the plan will require both buyers and lenders to step up and do their part. Lenders will need to lower interest rates and share in the costs of reduced monthly payments in order to prevent another wave of foreclosures. Borrowers will be required to make payments on time in return for this opportunity to reduce those payments.
I also want to be clear that there will be a cost associated with this plan. But by making these investments in foreclosure-prevention today, we will save ourselves the costs of foreclosure tomorrow – costs borne not just by families with troubled loans, but by their neighbors and communities and by our economy as a whole. Given the magnitude of these costs, it is a price well worth paying.
Third, we will take major steps to keep mortgage rates low for millions of middle class families looking to secure new mortgages.
Today, most new home loans are backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which guarantee loans and set standards to keep mortgage rates low and to keep mortgage financing available and predictable for middle class families. This function is profoundly important, especially now as we grapple with a crisis that would only worsen if we were to allow further disruptions in our mortgage markets.
Therefore, using the funds already approved by Congress for this purpose, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve will continue to purchase Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage-backed securities so that there is stability and liquidity in the marketplace. Through its existing authority Treasury will provide up to $200 billion in capital to ensure that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can continue to stabilize markets and hold mortgage rates down.
We’re also going to work with Fannie and Freddie on other strategies to bolster the mortgage markets, like working with state housing finance agencies to increase their liquidity. And as we seek to ensure that these institutions continue to perform what is a vital function on behalf of middle class families, we also need to maintain transparency and strong oversight so that they do so in responsible and effective ways.
Fourth, we will pursue a wide range of reforms designed to help families stay in their homes and avoid foreclosure. My administration will continue to support reforming our bankruptcy rules so that we allow judges to reduce home mortgages on primary residences to their fair market value – as long as borrowers pay their debts under a court-ordered plan. That’s the rule for investors who own two, three, and four homes. It should be the rule for ordinary homeowners too, as an alternative to foreclosure.
In addition, as part of the recovery plan I signed into law yesterday, we are going to award $2 billion in competitive grants to communities that are bringing together stakeholders and testing new and innovative ways to prevent foreclosures. Communities have shown a lot of initiative, taking responsibility for this crisis when many others have not. Supporting these neighborhood efforts is exactly what we should be doing.
Taken together, the provisions of this plan will help us end this crisis and preserve for millions of families their stake in the American Dream. But we must also acknowledge the limits of this plan.
Our housing crisis was born of eroding home values, but also of the erosion of our common values. It was brought about by big banks that traded in risky mortgages in return for profits that were literally too good to be true; by lenders who knowingly took advantage of homebuyers; by homebuyers who knowingly borrowed too much from lenders; by speculators who gambled on rising prices; and by leaders in our nation’s capital who failed to act amidst a deepening crisis.
So solving this crisis will require more than resources – it will require all of us to take responsibility. Government must take responsibility for setting rules of the road that are fair and fairly enforced. Banks and lenders must be held accountable for ending the practices that got us into this crisis in the first place. Individuals must take responsibility for their own actions. And all of us must learn to live within our means again.
These are the values that have defined this nation. These are values that have given substance to our faith in the American Dream. And these are the values that we must restore now at this defining moment.
It will not be easy. But if we move forward with purpose and resolve – with a deepened appreciation for how fundamental the American Dream is and how fragile it can be when we fail in our collective responsibilities – then I am confident we will overcome this crisis and once again secure that dream for ourselves and for generations to come.
For the Fox Forum. My gratitude to the editor, Lynne Jordal Martin, for her help and advice on this one. I appreciate the opportunity very deeply.
Here's an extended tease:
As of today, more than 224,000 people have signed a petition asking President Obama to create a Secretary of the Arts. I signed the petition, but reservedly: At the federal level, I prefer the arts to stay depoliticized. What I favor more is a public policy toward the arts that emphasizes its impact on jobs and economic growth. The numbers may pique both left and right.
According to a 2007 report by Americans for the Arts, the arts generate $166.2 billion in annual fiscal activity-$63.1 billion in jobs, $103.1 billion in consumer spending. This translates into 5.7 million jobs, $7.9 billion in local tax revenues, $9.1 billion in state tax revenues and $12.6 billion federal tax revenues.
Given these statistics–and the Obama campaign’s articulation of a cultural policy as part of its national vision–arts advocates are eager for their part of whatever stimulus finally emerges from Congress. But arts advocates must be careful what they wish for, how hard they push and what language they employ in their cause.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. In a recent New York Times story, “Arts Leaders Urge Role for Culture in Economic Recovery,” Robert L. Lynch, president of Americans for the Arts, expressed fear that artists could be “left out of the recovery.” Any stimulus, he said, must show an “artist’s paycheck is every bit as important as the steelworker’s paycheck or the autoworker’s paycheck.”
Certainly Lynch is doing his job by saying that. But it would serve him well to heed the long tradition of American antipathy toward public arts funding. Later in The Times story, Lynch said that the Labor and Transportation Departments should also think about artists as they ponder their slice of the stimulus. So hypothetically, let’s say it authorizes new high-speed train stations to be built. Ideally for Lynch, there might be a mandate for those train stations to feature taxpayer-funded art. While I am all for the many “percent for art” programs that some states and cities use as part of their capital spending projects, Lynch inches close to favoring a 21st century version of the Works Progress Administration, a signature effort of the Roosevelt era. And that would likely mean war with conservatives. A quick primer on W.P.A. will explain why.
During the worst stretch of the Great Depression, the W.P.A. literally saved the nation’s creative economy-the Federal Theatre Project and Federal Art Project, to name two of its efforts, put tens of thousands back to work. When the Living Newspaper, a W.P.A.-sponsored performance piece, offered a work excoriating the Supreme Court for striking down aid for farmers, conservatives were furious. Already wary of federally funded art, this was the heyday of red scares, so the right rose in protest. Soon, Congress de-funded the W.P.A., satisfying those who saw in it only a slippery slide into socialism.
Federal arts funding has been a thorny, touchy issue ever since. President Johnson signed legislation creating the National Endowment for the Arts in 1965, but the agency’s name is a misnomer: the NEA is not an endowment in the sense of a pile of cash invested in the market with a percentage of returns annually dispersed to worthy recipients. Instead, the NEA relies on annual Congressional appropriations-another hand in the Treasury’s till. So when we’re discussing the fiscal impact of the arts, when we’re thinking about it in a stimulus-plan context, I believe Congress would be wiser to approve an appropriation of sufficient size and heft so the NEA could be made autonomous of the federal budget. For the left, a genuine endowment would ensure American creative professionals receive the support they need and deserve. For the right, an NEA that manages it’s funding through the market, like any endowment or foundation, would comport with conservative ideals.
Well, one can dream, right? Tentative plans for the stimulus call for an appropriation of $50 million on top of the current $144 million annual NEA budget. And that returns us to the subject of the economic impact of the arts. Another $50 million will generate fiscal growth, sure: Arts advocates have proven statistically for years that every dollar spent by the NEA returns a multiple of that dollar to state and local economies. But over the long term, don’t we also have to recognize that at some point, someday, somehow, the federal deficit will need addressing? What will become of federal arts funding then?
This video has already had wide distribution, but the question is whether the things that the President has put into this bill, which is what he talks about in this video, represents what the American people need and want. If it is, some form of a stimulus package must pass. If it is not, the GOP will have won through their rhetoric and their agenda, which will unquestionably boil down to the nation's continued suffering. But that's doesn't bother the GOP. After all, inflicting pain upon those who need an activist government at times of crisis is virtually all the politics they know. I guess you can't help the way you're raised.
I watched John Boehner, minority leader of the House, on Meet the Press this morning and began experiencing last night's lovely dinner in honor of our friends' 20th anniversary rising back up through my esophagus and begin choking me with its well-digested foulness. The guy says he's all for helping the new president succeed, but, as is his wont as the supposedly loyal opposition, he notes how he and his cackling caucus have "problems" with the stimulus package as presented. What he means -- since GOP-ers tend to corrode good policies in code -- is that the GOP will do anything it can to derail the efforts of the new administration, and if that means the American people have to starve, suffer, or, God help us, die, that's just ducky with them.
Here's a headline from the Washington Times: McCain, Boehner oppose Obama stimulus plan. Big surprise. More pointedly, though, here is Boehner, looking gloomy and hardly statesmanlike, sending the American people gleefully into the economic gallows because all he knows is wrong:
To quantify what I mean -- that is, what's really at stake here -- look at this headline from a recent analysis posted by the Economic Policy Institute:
Let's burrow down and put some numbers on what the EPI means:
This analysis sketches a picture of how much worse we can expect things to get—both for the nation as a whole and for groups of Americans that are already suffering depression-level unemployment—unless the new administration and Congress act quickly with a recovery package that is big enough and well-targeted enough to counteract these trends. The authors recommend government spending on the order of $600 billion per year for the next two years to head off the otherwise inevitable catastrophe. Their analysis notes that without timely and adequate government intervention:
Overall unemployment, after peaking at about 10.2% in mid-2010, could still be as high as 7.6% four years from now.
Underemployment could reach 17.9% overall in 2010 (18.8% for women), affecting over 27 million workers.
More than one out of every three working Americans would experience unemployment or underemployment at some point during the year 2010.
Nearly one in five African Americans in the labor force would be unemployed (18.2%). More than half of all black teens would be jobless.
Hispanic unemployment would reach 13.1% overall, and more than one-third among teens.
Unemployment would reach a record high of 5.1% among the college-educated, 1.2 points above the previous high of 3.9% in the depths of the 1980s recession.
All families would experience wage declines because of weakened labor market conditions and reduced hours and wages. On average, middle-income families would earn about $4,700 less per year in 2010 than in 2007 (a loss of 7.7%) Low-income families would lose an average of 9.8%, or nearly $1,600, per year.
May God bless him and keep him and give him the strength and wisdom to lead.
But let our president's words speak for him:
So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:
Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it].
America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.
This post is cross-posted at the beta Clyde Fitch Report. Do check it out and send comments.
