Charles L. Cochran and Eloise F. Malone

EXCERPTED FROM

Public Policy: Perspectives and Choices

FIFTH EDITION

Charles L. Cochran and Eloise F. Malone

Copyright ? 2014 ISBN: 978-1-62637-075-3 pb

1800 30th Street, Suite 314 Boulder, CO 80301 USA

telephone 303.444.6684 fax 303.444.0824

This excerpt was downloaded from the Lynne Rienner Publishers website

Contents

List of Illustrations

xi

Preface

xiii

1 Why Study Public Policy

1

What Is Public Policy? 3

Conceptual Models for Policy Analysis 4

Wedge Issues 12

Ethics and Public Policy 16

Conclusion 18

2 Tools for Policy Analysis

21

An Interdisciplinary Perspective 22

Political and Economic Anxiety: Blending Two Models 23

Adam Smith and Classical Optimism 27

Liberalism in the United States 32

Normative and Positive Analysis 36

The Problem of Scarcity 37

Public Policy Typology 41

Conclusion 44

3 Polarized Politics: The Policy Context

49

The Founders: Masters of the Art of Compromise 50

Federalism and Fragmentation 52

The Legislative Branch 53

The Filibuster: A Tool of Obstruction 55

The Executive Branch 60

Franklin D. Roosevelt Remakes the Presidency 61

The Activist Judiciary 63

vii

viii Contents

Potential Reforms in Campaign Policy 68 Increasing Inequality and Party Choices 68 From Factions to Political Parties 71 The Changing Profile of the US Electorate 74 Party Politics and Immigration Policy 76 Conclusion 77

4 Political Economy: The Basis of Public Policy

83

Adam Smith and the General Welfare 83

The Haunting Specter of Karl Marx 84

The Political Impact of the Great Depression 86

The Realist Critique of Keynes 90

Employment and Inflation 96

The Uneasy Relationship Between Politics and Economics 97

Ideology Triumphs over Policy 98

Conclusion 102

5 Funding Public Policy: From Theory to Practice

107

Taxes as a Policy Instrument 110

The Antitax Campaign 112

Federal Taxes Paid vs. Benefits Received by States 114

Who Pays Taxes in the United States? 120

Types of Taxation in the United States 121

Principles of Taxation: Fairness and Efficiency 124

The Benefit Principle 126

The Ability-to-Pay Principle 128

Government Spending as an Instrument of Public Policy 130

Social Security and Reducing Poverty Among the Elderly 131

Unemployment Insurance 136

Conclusion 137

6 The Politics and Economics of Inequality

143

The Promise of Equality in the First New Nation 144

Economic Crises Force New Public Policy Responses 147

Income Distribution and the Widening Gap 149

Income Distribution and Poverty 150

Relative vs. Absolute Poverty 154

Inequality of Wealth and Income 157

Public Policies to Reduce Inequality 159

The Living-Wage Concept 163

Immigration Policy and Inequality 164

The Bias in Favor of Equality 165

A Functional Theory of Inequality 167

Why Growing Income Inequality Is a Public Policy Problem 170

Factors Driving the Increase in Income Inequality 173 How Inequality Harms the Middle Class 174 Conclusion 176

7 Education: A Troubled Federal-State Relationship

The "Crisis" in Education and the Fear of Failure 185 Investment in Human Capital Is Essential in a Democracy 187 Costs and Benefits of Human Capital Investment 191 Five Myths About Public School Education 193 Assessing Public School Reform 203 Common Core State Standards 208 Obama's College Plan 209 Conclusion 211

8 Criminal Justice: Responding to Evolving Concerns

New Fears, Changing Attitudes 220 Federal vs. State Crimes 220 How Much Crime? 222 Crime: A Definition 226 Causes of Crime: What Do We Know? 226 Characteristics of the Criminal Justice System 229 Police Theory 234 Prisons: Perspectives on Punishment and Correction 235 The Philosophy of Reform 237 The Implications of Punishment and Reform 239 Ingredients of Violence: The War on Drugs 240 Ingredients of Violence: Gun Control 242 Ingredients of Violence: Poverty and Crime 247 White-Collar Crime 248 Cybercrime 253 Conclusion 256

9 Health Care: Diagnosing a Chronic Problem

The Quality of Health Care in the United States 265 Comparing Health Care Costs in OECD Countries 266 What the United States Receives for Its Health Care Spending 267 Should Health Care Be a Right or Privilege? 273 Health Care and the Tragedy of the Commons 275 Why Health Care Only Recently Became a Major US Policy Issue 277 How Employer-Sponsored Insurance Became the Norm 277 Who Really Pays for Employer-Sponsored Insurance? 281 How the Profit Motive Influences the Health Insurance Market 282 Medicare: The Expansion of Government-Sponsored Health Coverage 284 Medicaid 286

Contents ix 183 219

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x Contents

The Uninsured 287 The Pressure Builds for Health Care Reform 289 The Individual Mandate 294 Why the Republican War on the ACA? 295 Conclusion 297

10 Housing: Public Policy and the "American Dream"

305

The Housing Bubble and the Financial Crisis of 2007?2009 310

TARP, HAMP, and HARP 316

Long-Term Housing Policy Considerations 318

Rental Housing 320

The Homeless 321

Conclusion 324

11 The Environment: Issues on a Global Scale

329

Evolving Environmental Themes 330

Market Failure and the Environment 332

Environmental Politics in the United States 335

The New Climate Plan 342

Policy Debates on Environmental Issues 342

Hazardous Wastes 351

Population Growth 353

International Population and Environmental Policies 356

Ethics and Environmentalism 363

Conclusion 365

12 Foreign Policy: Rethinking National Security

369

The Major Goals of US Foreign Policy and Security 370

Foreign Policy Until World War II 371

The United Nations and the Renunciation of the First Use of Force 372

George W. Bush and a New Justification of Force as an Instrument of Policy 375

Obama's First-Term Course Correction 379

Evolving Foreign Policy Problems 380

US Military Spending 389

Spending for War and Peace 392

The US Obsession with the Notion of Its Own Decline 393

Conclusion 396

Bibliography

403

Index

415

About the Book

425

1

Why Study Public Policy

Citizens of the United States are characterized by their optimism

grounded in a notion of progress: the present is better than the past, and the future will be better than the present. This optimism was reinforced by several "narrow escapes" that seemed to validate the notion that "despite its imperfections, the system works."1 However, since the turn of the present century, one seems to find an increasing anxiety that the United States might be running out of luck. The future may not be better than the past. The first session of the 113th US Congress was so gridlocked that just sixty-five bills became law, fewer than in any other year in recorded congressional history. Many members of Congress exhibit an antigovernment populism that views government as no more than a necessary evil.

The nation's involvement in two unpopular wars, budget deficits, the deepest recession since the Great Depression, growing economic inequality, and political gridlock have left many citizens resigned to elections that fail to bring the hopedfor change. Politicians are increasingly unwilling to set politics aside in seeking "common ground" for the greater good. A view that the nation's political and private leadership is concerned primarily with protecting their own interests at the expense of average (and even comfortable) citizens appears to be widely shared. As a result, many in the United States no longer think of government as a precious national institution. They are alienated from political and nonpolitical institutions and, in frustration, increasingly forgo participation in those institutions and focus on their more immediate concerns.

Public opinion polls consistently indicate that people worry about their economic well-being more than anything else. They worry about educating their chil-

1

2 Public Policy

dren and meeting their mortgage payments. They worry about the high cost of health care for their families and the needs of elderly parents. They are concerned about the possibility of another economic slowdown and the threat of unemployment. Economic concerns cut across all age groups. Students worry about high tuition rates, paying their rent, and finding employment and paying off student loans when they graduate. Many people also express concern for broader economic issues like federal budget deficits, taxes, interest rates, and inflation. Many are increasingly aware that their own personal well-being is somehow related to broader social trends and government policymaking decisions.

Precisely because of the current stresses in US society, a course on public policy may be the most timely social science course a student can take. More important than ever is that citizens understand the importance of the communitarian idea of the framers of the constitution: that citizens of this country have inalienable rights and social responsibilities for each other. The society they bequeathed to the following generations has the difficult mission of balancing three elements that frequently conflict: the state, the market, and the community. The challenging task is to encourage each of these elements to flourish in its appropriate role. As a whole, a public pursues the ideal of the good society, or an improvement in "the general welfare." While the vision of the good society may never be quite attainable, it guides policy efforts, and it provides a metric by which progress can be measured.

Virtually every aspect of an individual's life from birth to death is affected in countless ways by public policy decisions of government. Most citizens are born in hospitals that are subsidized by the government through statutes such as the Hospital Survey and Construction Act of 1946, which provides public subsidies for the construction of hospitals. Over 90 percent of US children attend public schools. Practically every citizen will, at some time, receive money from the government through college student loans, unemployment compensation, antipoverty programs (e.g., food stamps, earned income tax credits), Medicaid, Medicare, or Social Security. All will pay some form of taxes to the government. More than one of every six US workers are employed by the government. Who makes public policy decisions, as well as how these decisions are made, is thus of utmost importance. Today, public problems are more complex, interconnected, and global than in the more agrarian society at the turn of the nineteenth century. These policy problems require rigorous analysis along with an understanding of the strategies needed to turn imaginative policy ideas into practical problem solving in making policy choices.

Why does the government engage in some public policies and not others? Why has the scope of public policies changed over the past century, and why are the policy roles of government different in different countries?

Why Study Public Policy 3

What Is Public Policy? No unanimity can be found on a precise definition of public policy. Public policy* can be described as the overall framework within which government actions are undertaken to achieve public goals, with a good working definition of public policy, for our purposes, being the study of government decisions and actions designed to deal with a matter of public concern. Policies are purposive courses of action devised in response to a perceived problem. Public policies are filtered through a specific policy process, adopted, implemented through laws, regulatory measures, courses of government action, and funding priorities, and enforced by a public agency. Individuals and groups attempt to shape public policy through the mobilization of interest groups, advocacy education, and political lobbying. Official policy provides guidance to governments over a range of actions and also provides mutual accountability links between the government and its citizens. The policy process includes several key aspects: a definition of the problem to be addressed, the goals the policy is designed to achieve, and the instruments of policy that are employed to address the problem and achieve the policy goals.

Public policy is the heart, soul, and identity of governments everywhere.2 Elected officials are voted into power by the sovereign citizens of a country due to those citizens' desire to affect public policy. The potential policies advertised by candidates and the party in question during the election campaigns, as well as previous policies espoused and their implementation or nonimplementation when each side was in power, influence citizens to vote for (or against) placing candidates in a position of authority. Policy analysis describes the investigations that produce accurate and useful information for decisionmakers. The importance of sound public policy analysis in achieving various goals related to the growth and development of a nation and its citizens cannot be overemphasized. For example, the adoption and implementation of public policies helped the nation recover from the Great Depression and mobilized the country to respond to acts of aggression in World War II. Public policies passed key social welfare legislation such as the Social Security Act of 1935, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, along with the legislation that created the Medicare and Medicaid programs, to cite just a few. Conversely, without sound public policy planning, a nation languishes and cannot keep up with an ever-changing world. The recent politics of obstruction in Washington is alarming to many public policy scholars and is reflected in the disapproval of the performance of Congress by the public in opinion polls, precisely because it threatens the ability of the nation to keep up with the changing global scenario.

* Key concepts are indicated in boldface at first definition in the book.

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