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The Worst of Public Policy
Year In Review
2008 saw more than its share of misguided policy. The Worst of Public Policy rounds up the year's most egregious offenders, shining a light on bad laws and government practices from across the nation.
Although energy drinks are on the rise, nobody would guess that rocket fuel might be found in their tap water. For most of us, quenching thirst doesn't mean we want to blast off. But perchlorate, a chemical found in rocket fuel (like the fuel that propels the space shuttle) and missiles (like those tested by the Department of Defense) has been found in tap water in at least 35 states. Perchlorate interferes with the thyroid, particularly in infants and pregnant mothers, which can lead to irreversible brain damage and developmental risks. So, it’s pretty clear what we should do. But here’s the rub. Cleaning up perchlorate could cost billions of dollars—money that the Pentagon has other plans for. So, after the EPA’s "preliminary regulatory determination" on perchlorate found that up to 16.6 million Americans are exposed to the chemical, the Bush administration redacted the document, taking out references to scientific studies that found "irreversible damage" and potential "loss of IQ," and even changing the method for measuring the chemical to downplay its prevalence. In October, the EPA announced that perchlorate will stay unregulated. Scary stuff. For putting incendiaries over infants, this action shoots to the top of the worst of 2008.
There has never been a documented case of voter impersonation in the State of Indiana, but that didn’t stop the state government from taking drastic steps to prevent it. The state passed one of the nation’s most restrictive voter identification laws back in 2005: every voter was required to produce a government-issued photo identification card in order to cast a ballot. This April, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law, dismissing concerns that tens of thousands of voters could be disenfranchised. And in the 2008 Indiana primaries, the consequences of the law became apparent. In South Bend, a dozen elderly nuns were turned away from the polls. The sisters didn’t drive, so they lacked drivers’ licenses, the most commonly used form of voter identification. But nuns aren’t the only Hoosiers who lack the needed credentials. A 2007 study found more than one in five African Americans registered to vote in Indiana didn’t have up-to-date photo ID, nor did 22 percent of the state’s young registered voters. Higher income individuals were more likely to have ID cards than poor folks. For disenfranchising voters, clergy and laity alike, we have no difficulty identifying Indiana’s voter ID law as one of the worst policies of 2008.
During the heat of summer 2008, as a nation of drivers groaned under the burden of $4.00 gasoline, politicians saw an opportunity for some hot air. What the nation needed, insisted officials and candidates alike, was a summer-long gas tax “holiday.” Unfortunately, the proposal itself was a vacation from reality. The federal gas tax is just 18.4 cents a gallon, so suspending it would save most drivers no more than $10 a month. What’s worse, there was never a guarantee that tax savings would be passed on to consumers at all – oil companies could simply raise prices and use the tax cut to fatten their bottom lines; in fact, many economists projected that this was the most likely outcome. Meanwhile, the lost revenue – a projected $9 billion over the course of the summer – would have been a blow to the federal highway trust fund, which finances road repairs and generally keeps the nation’s transportation systems running. It turns out to be a good thing the trust fund didn’t lose that money: even with the gas tax revenue, the highways needed an extra $8 billion from the federal Treasury to avoid going broke. The summer’s gas pain was real, but this solution was a phony – and one of the worst public policies of 2008.
In bad economic times, when budgets run short, states have to make difficult choices. Some raise taxes and fees; others take out the scissors and cut spending. Some borrow; others sell off state property and lay off public employees. Many do a combination of all of the above. But few react to a budget shortfall as poorly as Rhode Island did in 2008. The Ocean State’s most recent budget cut services to the poor, the sick, children and the elderly. State health care cuts will raise medical costs for 7,800 poor families and eliminate coverage completely for 1,000 low-income parents. Hundreds of kids will be kicked out of early education programs. College students are losing scholarships and facing higher tuition. Affordable housing funds are diminished. $10 million to local municipalities to aid the elderly, support veterans and fund police has dried up. The state transit system may have to cut service by 20 percent, despite increased demand. The state stopped funding for repairing deficient bridges. When food banks and homeless shelters are on the chopping block, it’s time to think about raising more revenue, but Rhode Island legislators ignored calls to reverse recently enacted tax breaks for the state’s wealthy residents. Governor Donald Carcieri even boasted about his accomplishment: “we have worked together to reduce spending and balance the budget without raising taxes.” For harsh service cutbacks to those who rely on state support the most, Rhode Island’s budget massacre is among the worst of 2008.
Meet Joe Arpaio, Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona. He calls himself “the toughest sheriff in America,” and that reputation has gotten him re-elected in this conservative region since 1992. But the crimes he’s most interested in aren’t murders, rapes, burglaries or assaults: they are violations of immigration law. And many of the county’s Latino residents – regardless of their immigration status – appear to be targets. So says the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), which sued Arpaio this July for racial profiling. At issue are the sheriff’s broad “crime suppression” sweeps through Latino neighborhoods and locations where day laborers seek employment. According to MALDEF, residents who appear to be Latino are stopped on the slightest pretext – a broken taillight, perhaps, or walking outside the crosswalk – or for no reason at all, and interrogated about their immigration status. And a stop may be enough to detain citizens and legal residents for hours while their immigration status is verified. What a way to spend an afternoon! The sweeps have spread fear and mistrust of law enforcement through the county’s Latino communities, but there’s little evidence they have affected criminal activity. For discriminatory policing that has nothing to do with public safety, Arpaio’s biased crime sweeps are among the worst of 2008.
One in five Georgia residents under age 65 lacks health insurance, and most of the uninsured live in poverty. So one might expect that the state’s new health care policy – expected to cost $223 million by 2013 – would address this population. Unfortunately, state lawmakers had a different beneficiary in mind: the insurance industry. The new law, signed by Governor Sonny Perdue in May, cuts taxes for individuals and small businesses that buy high-deductible health plans and the insurance companies that sell them. According to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 67 percent of the benefits will go to the insurers. CBPP also finds that the policy is unlikely to reduce the number of uninsured Georgians. But it is likely to shift some people with other health care coverage into high-deductible plans. So what’s the prognosis for those that make the switch? A higher bill for their medical care. High-deductible health plans move costs from employers, who may previously have paid for comprehensive health care benefits, to employees, who must now pay high health care deductibles out-of-pocket. Studies suggest cash-strapped patients tend to skimp on needed care as a result. For generous public subsidies to lousy insurance plans, Georgia’s new health insurance law is a prescription for poor health and one of the worst of 2008.
For years, telecommunications companies spied on Americans without warrants. At the behest of the Bush Administration, the companies illegally monitored citizens’ private e-mail correspondence, phone calls, password protected internet activity, and other personal communications. The surveillance violated Americans’ Fourth Amendment right against unwarranted searches and seizures, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the contractual rights of private customers who signed privacy agreements with these companies. But in July 2008, Congress announced that it was all good. A new law reauthorizing domestic surveillance authority included provisions granting retroactive immunity from lawsuits to telecommunications companies that illegally cooperated with the Bush Administration. In short, the telecoms could never be held accountable for their actions. National security experts were at a loss to explain why the Bush Administration had to dodge flexible surveillance laws to gather intelligence in the first place – or how granting impunity to private companies would make the public safer. But Bush insisted, and ultimately Congress caved. The result sets a dangerous standard for public and private power that victimizes ordinary Americans – and never has to answer for it. For undermining the rule of law and setting a perilous precedent, there’s no need for a wiretap to find out that this is one of the worst policies of 2008.
Read The Worst of Public Policy in its entirety
Year In Review
2008 saw more than its share of misguided policy. The Worst of Public Policy rounds up the year's most egregious offenders, shining a light on bad laws and government practices from across the nation.
Bad Boss? Deport the Workers
Rocket Fueled Water
Although energy drinks are on the rise, nobody would guess that rocket fuel might be found in their tap water. For most of us, quenching thirst doesn't mean we want to blast off. But perchlorate, a chemical found in rocket fuel (like the fuel that propels the space shuttle) and missiles (like those tested by the Department of Defense) has been found in tap water in at least 35 states. Perchlorate interferes with the thyroid, particularly in infants and pregnant mothers, which can lead to irreversible brain damage and developmental risks. So, it’s pretty clear what we should do. But here’s the rub. Cleaning up perchlorate could cost billions of dollars—money that the Pentagon has other plans for. So, after the EPA’s "preliminary regulatory determination" on perchlorate found that up to 16.6 million Americans are exposed to the chemical, the Bush administration redacted the document, taking out references to scientific studies that found "irreversible damage" and potential "loss of IQ," and even changing the method for measuring the chemical to downplay its prevalence. In October, the EPA announced that perchlorate will stay unregulated. Scary stuff. For putting incendiaries over infants, this action shoots to the top of the worst of 2008.
The Paulson Doctrine
Disenfranchised Nuns
There has never been a documented case of voter impersonation in the State of Indiana, but that didn’t stop the state government from taking drastic steps to prevent it. The state passed one of the nation’s most restrictive voter identification laws back in 2005: every voter was required to produce a government-issued photo identification card in order to cast a ballot. This April, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law, dismissing concerns that tens of thousands of voters could be disenfranchised. And in the 2008 Indiana primaries, the consequences of the law became apparent. In South Bend, a dozen elderly nuns were turned away from the polls. The sisters didn’t drive, so they lacked drivers’ licenses, the most commonly used form of voter identification. But nuns aren’t the only Hoosiers who lack the needed credentials. A 2007 study found more than one in five African Americans registered to vote in Indiana didn’t have up-to-date photo ID, nor did 22 percent of the state’s young registered voters. Higher income individuals were more likely to have ID cards than poor folks. For disenfranchising voters, clergy and laity alike, we have no difficulty identifying Indiana’s voter ID law as one of the worst policies of 2008.
Bad Deal with Colombia
Gas Tax Cuts Run on Empty
During the heat of summer 2008, as a nation of drivers groaned under the burden of $4.00 gasoline, politicians saw an opportunity for some hot air. What the nation needed, insisted officials and candidates alike, was a summer-long gas tax “holiday.” Unfortunately, the proposal itself was a vacation from reality. The federal gas tax is just 18.4 cents a gallon, so suspending it would save most drivers no more than $10 a month. What’s worse, there was never a guarantee that tax savings would be passed on to consumers at all – oil companies could simply raise prices and use the tax cut to fatten their bottom lines; in fact, many economists projected that this was the most likely outcome. Meanwhile, the lost revenue – a projected $9 billion over the course of the summer – would have been a blow to the federal highway trust fund, which finances road repairs and generally keeps the nation’s transportation systems running. It turns out to be a good thing the trust fund didn’t lose that money: even with the gas tax revenue, the highways needed an extra $8 billion from the federal Treasury to avoid going broke. The summer’s gas pain was real, but this solution was a phony – and one of the worst public policies of 2008.
Rhode Island Runs with Scissors
In bad economic times, when budgets run short, states have to make difficult choices. Some raise taxes and fees; others take out the scissors and cut spending. Some borrow; others sell off state property and lay off public employees. Many do a combination of all of the above. But few react to a budget shortfall as poorly as Rhode Island did in 2008. The Ocean State’s most recent budget cut services to the poor, the sick, children and the elderly. State health care cuts will raise medical costs for 7,800 poor families and eliminate coverage completely for 1,000 low-income parents. Hundreds of kids will be kicked out of early education programs. College students are losing scholarships and facing higher tuition. Affordable housing funds are diminished. $10 million to local municipalities to aid the elderly, support veterans and fund police has dried up. The state transit system may have to cut service by 20 percent, despite increased demand. The state stopped funding for repairing deficient bridges. When food banks and homeless shelters are on the chopping block, it’s time to think about raising more revenue, but Rhode Island legislators ignored calls to reverse recently enacted tax breaks for the state’s wealthy residents. Governor Donald Carcieri even boasted about his accomplishment: “we have worked together to reduce spending and balance the budget without raising taxes.” For harsh service cutbacks to those who rely on state support the most, Rhode Island’s budget massacre is among the worst of 2008.
Breathing While Latino
Meet Joe Arpaio, Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona. He calls himself “the toughest sheriff in America,” and that reputation has gotten him re-elected in this conservative region since 1992. But the crimes he’s most interested in aren’t murders, rapes, burglaries or assaults: they are violations of immigration law. And many of the county’s Latino residents – regardless of their immigration status – appear to be targets. So says the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), which sued Arpaio this July for racial profiling. At issue are the sheriff’s broad “crime suppression” sweeps through Latino neighborhoods and locations where day laborers seek employment. According to MALDEF, residents who appear to be Latino are stopped on the slightest pretext – a broken taillight, perhaps, or walking outside the crosswalk – or for no reason at all, and interrogated about their immigration status. And a stop may be enough to detain citizens and legal residents for hours while their immigration status is verified. What a way to spend an afternoon! The sweeps have spread fear and mistrust of law enforcement through the county’s Latino communities, but there’s little evidence they have affected criminal activity. For discriminatory policing that has nothing to do with public safety, Arpaio’s biased crime sweeps are among the worst of 2008.
Georgia Uncovered
One in five Georgia residents under age 65 lacks health insurance, and most of the uninsured live in poverty. So one might expect that the state’s new health care policy – expected to cost $223 million by 2013 – would address this population. Unfortunately, state lawmakers had a different beneficiary in mind: the insurance industry. The new law, signed by Governor Sonny Perdue in May, cuts taxes for individuals and small businesses that buy high-deductible health plans and the insurance companies that sell them. According to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 67 percent of the benefits will go to the insurers. CBPP also finds that the policy is unlikely to reduce the number of uninsured Georgians. But it is likely to shift some people with other health care coverage into high-deductible plans. So what’s the prognosis for those that make the switch? A higher bill for their medical care. High-deductible health plans move costs from employers, who may previously have paid for comprehensive health care benefits, to employees, who must now pay high health care deductibles out-of-pocket. Studies suggest cash-strapped patients tend to skimp on needed care as a result. For generous public subsidies to lousy insurance plans, Georgia’s new health insurance law is a prescription for poor health and one of the worst of 2008.
No Warrants? No Problem!
For years, telecommunications companies spied on Americans without warrants. At the behest of the Bush Administration, the companies illegally monitored citizens’ private e-mail correspondence, phone calls, password protected internet activity, and other personal communications. The surveillance violated Americans’ Fourth Amendment right against unwarranted searches and seizures, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the contractual rights of private customers who signed privacy agreements with these companies. But in July 2008, Congress announced that it was all good. A new law reauthorizing domestic surveillance authority included provisions granting retroactive immunity from lawsuits to telecommunications companies that illegally cooperated with the Bush Administration. In short, the telecoms could never be held accountable for their actions. National security experts were at a loss to explain why the Bush Administration had to dodge flexible surveillance laws to gather intelligence in the first place – or how granting impunity to private companies would make the public safer. But Bush insisted, and ultimately Congress caved. The result sets a dangerous standard for public and private power that victimizes ordinary Americans – and never has to answer for it. For undermining the rule of law and setting a perilous precedent, there’s no need for a wiretap to find out that this is one of the worst policies of 2008.
Go to next section: Presidential Election 2008: Highs, Lows and Opinion Polls
Read The Worst of Public Policy in its entirety