THE VITAL CENTER JUNE 4, 2011
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Friday’s job growth numbers, reported by the Labor Department, present a sobering picture for President Obama and the Democrats. With the pace of hiring down and the unemployment rate above 9 percent, the report suggests that the nation’s recovery is once again faltering. These numbers only underscore our continuing economic difficulties. And for a mix of political and policy reasons, the federal government has no significant new fiscal or monetary weapons left to deploy. As they head into an election that is certain to focus on the economy, the administration and congressional Democrats have no choice but to put the best face on a bad situation. What can they do?
As it happens, two recently released reports have explored public attitudes on the economy. Taken together, they illuminate the challenges Democrats will face in framing a credible and effective economic message. But they also shed light on surprising opportunities and, read closely, they just might point to the best way forward.
On Thursday, Andrew Levison published a memo asking “Why Can’t the Dems Make Jobs a Winning Political Issue?” His answer: While Democrats’ default response to high unemployment and slow growth is Keynesian, “a very strong anti-Keynesian perspective on job creation is extraordinarily widespread among American voters.” Large numbers of voters don’t think they have to choose between spending reductions and job creation because they see the former as one of the keys to the latter. Not only is government spending seen as a drag on the private sector, but also the most prominent Keynesian stimulus in recent years—the 2009 stimulus package—is widely regarded as a failure. Although a large majority of economists have concluded that it prevented a bad situation from becoming much worse, a majority of the American people believe that it failed. From their standpoint, the fact that unemployment continues to stagnate near 9 percent is proof enough that we can’t spend our way to prosperity. And the Obama administration helped to undermine the credibility of the stimulus early on by issuing an overly optimistic assessment of its likely effects.
To be sure, there are many “ambivalent” voters who are neither Keynesians nor supply-siders but rather are cross-pressured by these competing narratives, and each party needs to win them over. For Democrats to appeal successfully to the ambivalents, Levison contends, they must grapple with four realities:
1. “Simply repeating the traditional Democratic narrative—regardless of how frequently or emphatically—will not produce significant attitude change.”
2. “Doubts about the ability of government to create jobs reflect not only a disbelief in Keynesian remedies for unemployment but also the profound doubts many Americans have about government in general.”
3. “Attempts to convince the critical group of ambivalent voters have to be based on those voters’ distinct way of thinking about political issues—the desire to find a ‘common-sense’ middle ground.”
4. “The widespread progressive assumption that job creation should necessarily be just as popular today as it was in the 1950s and 1960s is simply wrong.”
Levison concludes that any effective Democratic message must tackle the public’s deep skepticism about government and convince the ambivalent portion of the electorate that the party’s economic prescription reflects common sense rather than obsolete assumptions.
Also on Thursday, a second report was unveiled, this time from Democracy Corps, a group headed by long-time Democratic survey researcher Stan Greenberg and party stalwart James Carville. Based on a new survey, it reaches conclusions that are broadly consistent with Levison’s. The report documents a substantial fall in public confidence that Republicans have the right approach to fiscal and economic policy. But Republican losses have not translated into Democratic gains, either for the party or for President Obama. The mood of the public with regard to the economy is pretty close to “a plague on both your houses.” Neither party has an approach to recovery and growth that the public regards as inspiring or even credible.
A majority of Americans continues to believe that the economy is either stagnating or getting worse, and only 44 percent overall (and 34 percent of Independents) approves of Obama’s handling of that issue. Core economic realities shape these attitudes. Forty-three percent of respondents have experienced reduced wages and benefits; 35 percent have actually lost a job; and 27 percent have lost health insurance for some period of time. Fully 20 percent have fallen behind on their mortgage. For these reasons, talking about progress on the economy—either actual or impending—only weakens the credibility of the speaker.
The public has clear views about the major economic problems that public policy needs to address. Thirty-seven percent named “high government spending, the budget deficit, and taxes.” The same percentage cited “the middle class and working people facing rising costs and declining income.” Close behind with 32 percent was the “outsourcing of American jobs and China creating rules that block American exports,” followed by a wasteful government dominated by special interests and not accountable to the people (26 percent), falling behind India and China in education and innovation (22 percent), and taxes and regulations that prevent businesses from hiring people and expanding (19 percent).
In the face of these sentiments, what can Democrats do? Democracy Corps tested a number of possible messages. Options that focused on the past—on either what Republicans did to cause the economic mess or what Democrats have done to put things right—fell flat. While Democrats were able to run against Herbert Hoover for decades, the strategy of running against George W. Bush had a much briefer shelf-life, which has now expired. The people are dismayed by current conditions, and they are in a very sober mood. They’re interested in a serious, realistic conversation about the future of the American economy, and they want a credible plan that allows us to make progress in the face of new challenges, including international competition.
In this context, messages focused on economic nationalism (China and outsourcing), on the plight of the middle class, on government reform to reduce the influence of special interest, and on rising inequality all fared pretty well. But surprisingly, the strongest message for Democrats went as follows:
“Half the country blames George Bush for the state of the economy and the other half blames Barack Obama. But that blame game will not help to create new jobs. We face immense problems that will take years to solve. We need to start working together to reduce spending and the deficit and ask the richest to pay their fare share of taxes. We need to support education, innovation, and new American industries.”
This approach beats out all the others among the young, first-time voters who went for Obama in 2008, as well as among Independents, and white non-college voters. It even ranks second among Democrats. Notably, it achieves this result by weaving together bipartisan substance—spending reductions, as well as key investments and taxing the rich—with bipartisan politics—end the bickering and start working together to solve problems.
Granted, a message is not a plan. But a sustainable narrative can help to identify and shape the policies that a party can successfully emphasize. If Democracy Corps is right, Democrats can go to the people with proposals for increasing taxes on wealthy Americans and bolstering support for education, research, and job-creating innovation—but only if their plan for reducing spending and the budget deficit is seen as serious and credible.
Putting these two reports together points to a clear choice facing Democrats at every level: Either they default to partisan politics as usual, or they find a way of recapturing a key element of Obama’s rise and appeal in 2008—namely, overcoming divisions and reuniting the country. Claiming a monopoly on wisdom and virtue will not serve Democrats well. They must figure out how to say no to Ryan’s budget and other unacceptable proposals while communicating their willingness to meet legitimate Republican concerns halfway. Democrats will have a big problem next year unless the people see the Republicans as the greater obstacle to the united action they want.
William Galston is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing editor for The New Republic.
23 comments
"We need to start working together to reduce spending and the deficit and ask the richest to pay their fare share of taxes." But if the Keynesians/Krugman are right, won't reducing spending fuel joblessness and in turn hurt Obama and the Dems?
- Thunderroad
June 4, 2011 at 1:47am
Thunderroad, the answer is that despite what Krugman may write in his column, all government spending is not equal. Keynes thought that in a recession money spent to employ workers to dig holes that they would in turn fill, etc. was not a bad idea. I think that in today's global economy, things are more complicated than that. For example, a recent article in the NYTimes claimed that if wasteful spending by hospitals were eliminated, Medicare could save $100 billion a year. Let's assume that the number is actually $50 billion. I doubt that cutting out $50 billion in wasteful spending by hospitals would hurt the economy very much, but would help in moving toward deficit reduction. We spend tens of billions to support troops in foreign countries which -- such as Germany -- hardly need our aid. Those billions could be saved and the saving of money spent in foreign countries would not hurt our economy. Money spent in the form of tax benefits to oil companies do little to help the economy -- the money just goes into the oil companies investment accounts. So the key is carefully targeted spending cuts, not the budget slashing advocated by the Republicans. Beyond that, part of the message is higher taxes on the rich, who largely aren't spending but are just accumulating financial assets. And those higher taxes on the rich would finance expanded education, infrastructure work, and critical research. I think the Dems should throw into the mix creative ideas about mitigating the woeful effects of free trade. Galston's proposal sounds good to me.
- PeteBeck
June 4, 2011 at 8:04am
The famous quality guru Edwards Deming once said: "In God we trust. All others must provide data." Democracy Corps has done exactly that. As a result, the message that tested best transcends the value of some pundit's learned opinion. It actually got traction among a group of respondents. I hope somebody in the Obama campaign is paying attention.
- JackR
June 4, 2011 at 9:10am
A bi-partisan tax increase on the wealthy? When pigs fly. But I do agree with Galston that the Demcrats must have a "serious and credible" long-term plan for reducing the deficit. Here's what Henry Aaron says (in TNR no less) about the deficit: "All of the current deficit and all of the deficits projected for the next decade can be explained—fully explained—by tax cuts enacted during the Bush administration, the costs of two wars, the economic downturn and measures to counter it, and the costs of servicing the resulting debt." Of course, the Ryan budget is an extension of the same GWB tax and spend policy for another ten years (the Ryan budget actually increases the deficit during the next ten years and thereafter, magically, eliminates it with a combination of unrealistic economic growth projections and defunding of Medicare and most other government programs including defense). If Aaron is right, then extending the GWB tax and spending policy is suicide. What's needed, instead, is an anti-GWB tax and spending policy. I'd start with tax policy, replacing the current income tax cuts aimed at the wealthy with tax cuts aimed at the lower to middle class (which means a hefty but temporary cut in payroll taxes because it's payroll taxes, not income taxes, that lower to middle class folks mostly pay*). As for spending policy, while we cannot undo the the enormous deficit spending of the GWB years, we can at least stop it as the economy recovers when the anti-GWB tax policy takes effect, which means once again adopting a pay-go requirement for all spending including for defense. See, that's not so difficult. Not once the problem was correctly identified by Aaron. It makes a lot more sense than a suicidal extension of the GWB tax and spending policy, and is more likely to occur than when pigs fly. *I'd eliminate payroll taxes entirely because, as we have learned over the past 25 plus years, they are an accounting gimmick designed to shift the overall tax burden to the lower and middle class. But that's a task for another day.
- rayward
June 4, 2011 at 9:14am
That $50B in wasteful spending by hospitals is not $8000 bedpans. It's salaries and benefits for middlemen in the health care industry, who will lose their jobs when the spending is cut, and blame Obama for it. I met just such a person the other day, and surprisingly, he was not open to the argument that the job he held for 22 years was a waste of resources and its disappearance made everyone better off. Galston is probably right that a significant segment of the public is simply unable or unwilling to accept the counter-intuitive nature of macroeconomics. They gauge arguments on their ability to understand (and their desire to believe) what is being claimed, rather than those claims' reflection of reality. But a nation's budget simply is not like the one you struggle over at your kitchen table, even at the most basic level, and there is just no way to square that fact with the cherished American precept that every citizen's judgement is the equal of a trained professional's expertise. I'm growing more and more pessimistic that there is a non-tyrannical way forward. Responsible public service in this period of our history demands that we ignore the will of a strong plurality, if not a majority, of the American people, and enact policies that will be deeply unpopular; moreover, these policies must be "locked in" for several decades and protected from the machinations of our political parties and the wealthy interests that underly them. The problems facing us today are not amenable to two- or four-year plans or a government whose ability to perform the basic functions of a modern nation is susceptible to the maximalist demands of zealots and opportunists.
- austinexpat
June 4, 2011 at 9:39am
Brilliant article, very well done, and thanks for bringing in the Democracy Corps. Sure, it's possible to cut spending without having huge impact on the economy, if you cut spending on Defense. Say, by ending the war in Iraq to begin with. But the focus in the short term MUST be on returning to the Clinton era tax rates. High enough to balance the budget (assuming we end two wars, and pay down some of the Bush year borrrowing) while low enough to prevent really damaging effects on job creation. Spending cuts can occur down the road, once the economy is back on its feet and tax revenues revive. And the Republican mantra that "Governemnt will just spend everything they take in" does not have to be true, again as the Clinton years demonstrated.
- AllanL5
June 4, 2011 at 10:03am
Specifically, the twilight of the Clinton years showed that there was a big battle between Republicans pushing for tax cuts to "refund" the surplus and Democrats considering new social programs to right wrongs. If they simply had lived in today's environment of bitterness and pessimism between the two parties with a ZOMG focus on fiscal responsibility, the lack of consensus on any positive thing to do about the surplus would have meant the smart money was on paying down the debt (which, by the way, was ~80% attributable to Reagan's policies). But we're dealing with a party that only believes deficits are a problem when they're not the ones running them.
- chaitless
June 4, 2011 at 10:07am
Austin, if your friend is someone preparing the kind of four color magazines that I get from local hospitals, or maybe is involved in the marketing of fancy but essentially unnecessary surgeries, then I won't feel sorry for him if he loses his job because the taxpayers stop subsidizing that nonsense. (I know a bit about losing -- in my case a business. But since then I've turned things around by working hard in a new low overhead consulting business. Anyone smart enough to be in middle management at a hospital is smart enough to generate something on his own without taxpayer subsidy of wasteful work.) Yes, his and his fellows' reduced spending until they find something more productive and not paid for by our taxes would be negative for the economy, but if in the meanwhile the revenues from increased taxes (mainly but not exclusively on the rich and very rich) would be financing productive investments in infrastructure, education, and research to largely offset the drain. And reduction in money spent in foreign economies would help cut the deficit, as would reduction in wasteful and unproductive tax subsidies. Equally important, as the deficit goes down, confidence would go up, which will be reflected in more business spending, more IPO's to finance new businesses, rising house prices, and the other things that will help boost the economy and in turn generate more income across the board and as a result generate more tax revenues.
- PeteBeck
June 4, 2011 at 10:36am
This article illustrates exactly what is wrong with the Democrats. Instead of making good policy and trying to move public opinion, they enslave themselves to the latest polls and try to find a way to choose the least objectionable options in a framework carefully constructed by the GOP over the last two decades. Following GOP-lite policies will help neither the middle class nor their electoral possibilities. The problem with the economy is lack of demand, and the more we cut spending, the more people lose their jobs (whether govt bureaucrats or health care providers) and the deeper the hole. The fact is that no "serious" democratic candidate has even tried the "traditional" democratic (ie, Keynsian) message in ages, they're too busy trying to triangulate with the ever right-moving conservative movement, which has produced consistent effective messaging since Reagan. The democrats will have to shift public opinion to the left, just as the GOP did in the 80s and 90s. It's not a fix for 2012, but as they saw in 2008 just winning a majority (supposedly filibuster-proof none the less) isn't enough. In the 40s-70s, the conventional wisdom was that government could improve middle class lives. People were convinced then, they can be convinced now.
- stanalama
June 4, 2011 at 1:01pm
My advice is for President Obama to hold an economic summit with widely diverse views from respected economists. Spend a weekend at Camp David either coming up with a recommendation or coming up with a plan on a way to come up with a recommendation. This is not Simpson-Bowles, the Gang of Five or the Biden Study Group who are focused only on the national debt. This is President Obama acting capably as a CEO. Paul O'Neill compared an economic summit under Ford to one under Bush II; Unlike Bush, Ford assimilated diverse views. That's what I'm talking about.
- Nusholtz
June 4, 2011 at 1:13pm
The Democrats need to present an exciting alternative vision of America's future. That is the best way to get public support for investments that will take us out of the recession and cuts in spending for no longer useful programs. This will take a lot of political courage. But we can't talk about budgets in a vacuum. Today's arguments about "spending" are like 18th century battlefields where opposing lines of soldiers fire muskets at each other. Also, the Democrats must make a strong case for purposeful government spending. Did private enterprise send men to the moon, invent the Internet, or build the Hoover Dam? What the heck is Google, the latest private sector sensation? Just a glorified ad agency.
- amidut
June 4, 2011 at 5:00pm
"To be sure, there are many “ambivalent” voters who are neither Keynesians nor supply-siders but rather are cross-pressured by these competing narratives, and each party needs to win them over" In a very fundamental sense the inanity and insanity of this article and many commentors is deeply depressing. Economics has been a science for over 75 years and Keynesian Economics have the only theories that fit the data, especially for macro-economies in liquidity traps. The problem being discussed is the equivalent of that NOT faced by Q Eliz I in 1575 if Drake and Hawke had to convince her, her advisors, Parliament and most Englishman that the earth wan't flat--- and that sailing west to rob Spanishish galleons wasn't a devious plot devised by King Phillip to get the English fleet to sail off the end of the flat earth. Dominence of flat earth geophysics was NOT a problem for QEI. Keynesian economics should not be a problem adopting today. But it is, thanks to the ignorance and agressiveness of the Repubs, and the ignorance and/or the timidity of the Dems, starting with BHO. BHO and many Dems need be replaced by those who undertand Keynesian economics and reject Hooverian economics -- and educate their citizens as to why. In the absence of that result, we're all just re-arranging the deck chsairs on nthe Titanic. Palin and her ilk are as disasterous as BHO and many Dems with respect to final economic status of the US. One woiuld sink us real quick, the other just a bit more slowly.
- drofnats1
June 4, 2011 at 8:29pm
Drof: I don't entirely agree; there are two problems. Keynesian spending is counterintuitive, to an extent, and the economics discipline has largely abandoned it since 1970, in favor of models that assume markets are nigh-perfect and let them play with numbers to their hearts' content. In any case, economics isn't much of a science, as far as I can tell--freshwater economists strike me as at least borderline delusional, and I'm not actually sure how much better saltwater economists are. Another problem: the time to defend or expand the stimulus was a while ago. No one led on that (though the media environment for it was horrible), and the opposite narrative is now entrenched. It seems to me that it would take a Herculean effort to push things the other way; a wiser choice might be to, at least rhetorically, take Galston's suggestion on rhetoric. Policywise, further stimulus is off the table anyway, so I'm not sure I see the damage. Adding in a dose of the 'economic nationalism' message would be a good idea, too, doing what Galston suggests: convince voters Dems have a credible plan. Overall, the message sounds like 'cut to invest,' and I've heard worse ones. It would be a huge triumph for the nation if we could get intelligent investment in new industries for the future, no? It won't help much in the short term, but, like I've been saying, the short term is sort of fucked anyway. Obama can hold the line on policy (i.e. keep the budget fairly flat in the short term), and use this to make political points in the medium term that could easily translate into good policy a ways down the road (say, 2013 or 2015 if things go well). In any case, we know Obama isn't going to come out for Keynesian economics now--it's not in his nature. This seems to me much better than several alternatives.
- Curran1
June 4, 2011 at 9:55pm
There's a reason we're a republic and not a democracy: the founders had a slight demophobia. The current mania for economic idiocy, such as the popularity of the notion that cutting spending creates jobs, shows that they had a point As far as listening to the people goes, I'd say listen to the people for what they're competent. The people are competent to evaluate whether $1 trillion is a tolerable cost to have unemployment 3 percentage points lower than it otherwise would be. They are not competent to evaluate what the employment situation with stimulus would be relative to without. With that said, a better polling approach than asking about stimulus in a vacuum would be polling about acceptable costs for various economic growth targets (included all economic indicators, most notably employment). With that information, it would be possible to craft a stimulus package that would meet a growth target that once reached would retroactively gain public approval for the stimulus even if it wasn't approved by the public when enacted. In the meantime, what's needed is some basic economics education for the public. Topics to include: The basic identity Spending=Income. If anyone questions that, answer this question: have you ever earned a single dollar in your life that was not spent by someone? The history of the Great Depression. In 1937, the government cut back on stimulus, sending the economy back into a depression. In 1942, the government went on a spending binge, buying tanks, planes and ships which put an end to the depression. Failure to fix the problems in our infrastructure now could easily cost us more later, think the Minneapolis bridge collapse. This is big. People say we should budget responsibly so as not to saddle our children with our debts. So we should burden them with the cleanup costs from failing infrastructure instead?
- sighthnd
June 4, 2011 at 10:59pm
The problem with Keynesian economics is that it doesn't work. Obama gave it the college try, and unemployment hasn't budged. Paul Krugman can advocate borrowing more and doubling up on a losing bet. Ask Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal how well that approach works. Liberalism is about politicians staying in power by spending other people's money to buy votes. But as Margaret Thatcher so aptly put it, sooner or later they run out of other people's money to spend.
- bulbman1066
June 5, 2011 at 12:29am
Of course we need to repair our infrastructure. Tell that to Obama. He prefers to pour money into bloated mostly useless government bureaucracies, with their outrageous pensions. Worst of all he insists on feeding the public education racket, which is all about the teachers' unions protecting lazy, stupid, greedy and incompetent teachers and administrators at the expense of America's children.
- bulbman1066
June 5, 2011 at 12:42am
Paraphrasing Galston: An important minority if voters believe the earth is flat, therefore Democrats should claim the earth is flat.
- AaronW
June 5, 2011 at 5:11am
bulbman: The problem with Keynesian economics is that it doesn't work. Obama gave it the college try, and unemployment hasn't budged No, he did NOT give it a try. A net stimulus of $150 billion, after you remove the state and local anti-stimulus, is NOTHING. It was the point that Krugman said from the very beginning. If you think Krugman doesn't know what he was talking about, then how did Krugman get it right about the internet bubble in the 90s, the housing bubble in th 00s and Enron and the California energy market? When Krugman first described those situations, people called him crazy, especially those who didn't like the policy conclusions his descriptions pointed to, but subsequent events and disclosures proved him absolutely correct. "Ask Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal how well that approach works." The fact that you include Spain and Portugal on that list shows how clueless you are. Greece and Italy were clear examples of fiscal profligacy, but Spain and Portugal were examples of fiscal rectitude. No matter. They got hit with inflated housing values during the bubble, and when the bubble deflated, they went into recession tanking their revenues. Let facts guide your conclusions rather than letting conclusions guide your facts.
- sighthnd
June 5, 2011 at 8:32pm
Zing!
- Curran1
June 5, 2011 at 9:19pm
Yeah, right, Spain and Portugal were examples of fiscal rectitude. If you believe that you deserve credit for originality, if nothing else. Spain in particular is an object lesson to which followers of Obama should pay attention. Spain spent itself into bankruptcy investing in "alternative energy", the biggest scam to come along in decades. As for Krugman, back in the nineties he was a talented mainstream economist, and he did work for which won a deserved Nobel Prize. Today he has lost the respect of most of his colleagues by becoming a political hack who courts the popularity of New York Times and New Republic readers and NPR listeners by catering to their political prejudices and their economic illiteracy. The irony is that when he was still a serious economist he condemned the sort of pandering to the middlebrow liberal audience in which he indulges today.
- bulbman1066
June 5, 2011 at 11:06pm
Yeah, right, Spain and Portugal were examples of fiscal rectitude. If you believe that you deserve credit for originality, if nothing else You are entitled to your own opinions bulbman. You are NOT entitled to your own facts. Try googling "spain budget 2007." The first hit is this "Spain posts a 23.4bn-euro budget surplus for 2007 - the second largest in the eurozone, figures show." from the BBC. If that's not fiscal rectitude, I don't know what is. Yes Spain subsequently went into a deficit, starting in 2008. What changed between 2007 and 2008 other than increased spending on social insurance because more people were out of work and less revenue because the tax base shrunk. If you want to be accepted as one who draws conclusions, the CITE NUMBERS. "Spain spent itself into bankruptcy investing in 'alternative energy', the biggest scam to come along in decades." Is every investment that every company ever makes that doesn't pan out a boondoggle? If that was so, then capitalism would be stagnant because the bread and butter of business is betting on a lot of things most of which are lemons but a fraction of which are blockbusters. If at worst, alternative energy is one of those lemons, then just so long as other projects bring in a windfall, such as hypothetically levee improvements that prevent cities from being wiped out in a flood. Also, do you care to cite any numbers as to how much is actually spent on alternative energy compared to other items in the budget, in a time series before the deficit and after? "Today he has lost the respect of most of his colleagues by becoming a political hack" Actually, he has not lost the respect of his colleagues. He HAS lost the respect of right-wing hacks who liked him when he validated their prejudices. That does not count for much in my book. If you're going to attack Krugman, where are his FACTS wrong? Where is his ANALYSIS OF HISTORY wrong? As I said, let facts determine your conclusions rather than conclusions determine your facts. I see no evidence from anything you wrote that your thought process is anything other than "his conclusion is wrong, therefore his facts must be hocus-pocus to cater to NPR listeners' political prejudices."
- sighthnd
June 5, 2011 at 11:43pm
Ho, schmack! sighthnd: 2 Bulbman: 0 (but style points for unfounded arrogance and contempt)
- Curran1
June 6, 2011 at 12:43am
Bulbman, you don't even know what the heck you are talking about. The problems of Greece, Spain and other Eurozone countries are not due to Keynesian economics, because they don't have anything to do with the attempts to re-invigorate aggregate demand during a recession. They have to do with a combination of profligate spending and low net tax colleciton during good times followed by a loss of aggregate demand when a recession hit (or, in the case of Spain and Portugal, a loss of income and jobs tied to housing bubbles). To the extent Keynsianism has to do with economics during the good times, it urges countries to budget responsibly and collect tax revenues for the invetibable recession. Which was quite the opposite of what Greece and Italy did in 2007, when their economies were doing quite well. Come to think of it, this was also the opposite of what the Bush Administration and many US states were doing at that time too.
- wildboy
June 6, 2011 at 1:26pm