Think it Through

David Brooks’ op-ed in the NY Times last week was mistaken when it asserted that this most recent election was an indication that political moderates were turning more conservative.

Brooks argues that independents who voted in the elections last week are by definition political moderates, and that the election marks a turning point in this voting bloc toward more conservative views.  He says we now know that independents do not want government to help solve the economic problems of the country, and that this will be the prevailing mood going into 2010.

Brooks’ arguments are built on a foundation of mistaken assumptions about public opinion.  First, he considers self-described independents as a static group.  Pollsters and other political observers know that the label “independent” is taken on and off by voters like a piece of clothing.  You cannot assume independents are by default moderates, because their makeup is never the same from year to year.  In 2009, we know for sure that many of today’s independents were yesterday’s Republicans.

If we compare the numbers from the Washington Post/ABC News poll in September 2008 to October 2009 we find Democratic identity has stayed about the same, 34% in 2008 to 33% today, Republican identity has dropped from 26% to 20%, and independent identification has jumped from 31% to 42%.  Clearly a sizeable number of this year’s independents were Republicans last year.

Second, the shifting of Republicans to independents is the main reason why independents as a group look more conservative.  This is not a change of attitudes among moderates, as Brooks concludes.  If the Democrats lose voters to the independent category in the future, independents will look more liberal.  That will not necessarily mean that moderates are taking more liberal positions.

Third, if you look at elections in between presidential election years, you will see that the non-presidential electorate is always more conservative, Republican, older, wealthier, and more suburban than those who vote in presidential elections.  The more privileged among us simply turn out more in these off years.  It says nothing, as Brooks argues, about the overall turn of public opinion towards conservatism.

Fourth, current reality runs contrary to Brooks’ contention that political independents are against government action on the economy.  How does he explain the huge popularity of Cash for Clunkers, which was the ultimate government intervention into the angry white man’s world – the feds will take your car and pour acid over the engine.  Also, most Americans favor better government oversight of Wall Street and some restrictions on executive pay.

What Brooks mistakes for unease with government involvement is public unhappiness with government ineffectiveness.  We have not yet seen the result of government actions that will adequately address the 17 percent of Americans – one out of six – who are unemployed, underemployed, or who have just plain given  up looking for work.

The public is unhappy that the government has spent so much money bailing out Wall Street and that Wall Street continues to be up to its old ways of risky paper and unseemly pay bonuses for failures.    The public mood in 2010 will not be anti-government if it can see results.  That is the message from the recently held elections.

Too often it seems there are two Barack Obamas steering economic policies.

First there is Obama the Reformer, who promised during the campaign that he would work toward more respect for the values of responsibility and fairness in the economy.

Then there is Obama the Wall Street Admirer, whose economic team has repeatedly acted like Hank Paulson’s interns, looking for Wall Street’s approval and pretending that it is not the administration’s role to stop policies that encourage the selfishness and irresponsibility that caused our economic downturn.

This identity crisis was in full force this past week on Capitol Hill, and it could turn into a political crisis for Democrats in 2010.

While some of the president’s lobbyists were talking to members of the House and Senate about tighter regulations on banks and other investment companies, the president’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, was on Capitol Hill to press congress to exempt public companies from the current requirement that they use independent auditing to ensure they are complying with the law.  This requirement is part of the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation of 2002 that was enacted into law as a response to the growing financial fraud in the last decade.  Emanuel calls the exemption relief for small public companies, but Washington Post reporter Zachary Goldfarb pointed out that his exemption covered all firms handling under $75 million, about half of all public companies in existence.  This is change Wall Street can believe in.

At the same time that Democratic volunteers who believed in Obama’s new politics were going door to door in New Jersey and Virginia, the White House chief of staff was going office to office on Capitol Hill to convince congress to let public companies skirt the requirement that independent professionals check their books.  Emanuel succeeded but the volunteers in New Jersey and Virginia did not.  Does anyone see a connection?

Emanuel’s victory is the type of activity that not only hurts the economy but knocks the wind out of millions of Americans who hoped – even believed – that Obama would create real change.  It saps their faith in him and their confidence in our political institutions.

If the president expects those people who believed in his message of change to be energized in the next election, he needs to keep faith with them.  They are looking for only one Obama on the economy.

The meaning of voters’ behavior in Tuesday’s elections does not lie in which political party is up and which is down at the moment, but in how government and the people who run it respond to an economy that is ruining the lives of too many people.

Tuesday’s outcomes serve as a cold reminder that the public now grades chief executives in politics – mayors, governors, presidents – according to two questions. Voters ask: 1) Have you done something constructive to deal with the need for jobs and delivery of services in my town or city or state? 2) Do you empathize with us? Do you even know what it is like to get up every day in the dark, walk a mile and wait outside in the cold for the PATH train in Jersey to take you into Manhattan — to a job that you are not sure will be there in six months? Does the person at the top understand anything about what the person at the bottom – or even the person in the middle – is going through, especially now, in this economy?

In Boston, Mayor Tom Menino won reelection on Tuesday to a fifth term. As a Boston Globe editorial this week pointed out, in hard times, Menino has shown a knack for making the city run better, with less crime, fewer divisions and better services than the city enjoyed before. He is also someone who keeps in touch with the people of Boston, understands their needs, and makes a point of showing up places that show his sensitivity to their priorities. Menino passes the grade on both of the above questions. On Tuesday, he won 57-40.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has brought about changes in nearly every part of the city bureaucracy to make it run better. New Yorkers see this and credit him, but they are blind to any empathy he might possess. His imperial style, disdain for those who disagree with him, and his heavy-handed approach to the Constitutional change that allowed him to run for a third term left voters wanting to take Mike down a peg or two. Bloomberg scores one out of two in the above criteria –- and he won by a whisker on Tuesday. His opponent had astute political advice, as his campaign took aim at the crown on the mayor’s head, instead of the stars on his record.

In New Jersey, Governor Jon Corzine is zero for two on leadership. The voters in New Jersey have no idea what he has accomplished, if anything, and they do not feel that he knows anything about their struggles. From his doomed idea to raise fees on the lifeblood of every New Jerseyan – driving on the garden state parkway – to the French cuffs he wears, Corzine has consistently sent the signal to voters that he is a Wall Street guy who makes so much money that he probably doesn’t even know how much property tax he pays, and he certainly does not worry about it. In focus groups we conducted throughout the state this year, voters’ attitudes toward the governor were polite but they asked, “what has he accomplished? We cannot think of a single thing.” They realized he was dealt a bad hand, but the only thing they could recollect about him was his highway speeding accident.

Seeing Tuesday’s election through the experiences in New Jersey and Virginia leads to the obvious conclusion that the electorate is very unhappy, and the most effective way it knows how to express itself is to act out against incumbents. This may only get worse in 2010, as long as we keep losing jobs and President Obama is seen as not taking bold enough action to turn the economy around.

In sum, candidates, parties, and the president need to recognize that now job creation is the first priority of voters, so it should be their first priority. Then they should also take a tip from Tom Menino in Boston. Show that government can do something constructive for people. Demonstrate a capacity to lead, a commitment to find governement solutions, and a compassion for the people you serve. Otherwise, get ready for a very bumpy ride in 2010.

What if we held a political party and nobody came?

This is becoming increasingly likely if your idea of a robust political party is one that includes 20 somethings or 30 somethings.

We now have historically large numbers of all age groups choosing the label “politically independent” (42%), but the number of independents stands even higher among the younger cohorts.

Just five years ago, six in ten Americans under age 40 called themselves either a Democratic or Republican, and today fewer than half of that age group chooses to align with either party, according to the latest Washington Post–ABC News poll (Oct. 15).

Among 18 to 29 year olds political party identity has dropped 13 points since 2003 (58% to 45%), and has declined 15 points among people in their 30s (from 64% to 49%).

ABC News/Washington Post data

Younger Americans’ reluctance to become members of the Democratic or Republican party does not mean, as some have suggested, that young adults are less active politically, or less likely to be joiners of causes, or less frequent volunteers at community events.

Belden Russonello & Stewart’s work for non-profits shows that younger adults are contributing time and money at a brisk pace to the causes they care about.  They are on social networking websites to get involved with issues, and in 2008 young voters were a key component of Barack Obama’s campaign – providing organizational and fundraising support nationwide.

So why are young people losing the motivation to identify as either Democratic or Republican?  The parties may be flummoxed, but if Democrats and Republicans are looking for the secret to attract young voters, there are plenty of hints.

• First, emulate Barack Obama’s leadership:  confident, cool, deliberate, and active.  Young voters continue to have more confidence in President Obama than do older voters, but this has not fully helped the Democratic Party. The Democratic identity among 18 to 29 year olds is down to 27% from 29% six years ago.  Republican identity in the same period has dropped even further among 18 to 29 year olds, from 29% to 18%.
• Second, do not back off from key positions that are important to young people and that tend to be more liberal than conservative.  The younger generation has shown consistently in polls to be more pro-gay rights, more interested in promoting renewable energy as a priority for government, more supportive of a government role in health care and help for the economy, and less supportive of a government role in dictating morality.  They are also less tax averse than older voters.
• Third, focus less on argument and more on solution.  Since Ronald Reagan convinced most the country that government could not solve big problems, this idea became associated with political parties.  This suited the Republican Party perfectly since it defined itself by its social conservatism and its anti-tax philosophy.  The Democrats, cowed by Reagan’s popularity, generally just went along with the idea that government was not part of the solution to problems.  Remember President Clinton’s second inaugural speech, in which he stated emphatically, “the era of big government is over.”

Younger generations have been attracted by Barack Obama’s intention to replace Reagan’s society of individualism and freedom, with one of fairness and collective responsibility.  In this type of society, government – and political parties – must play a role in solving problems.

In the current climate, young voters might be ready to become Democrats, but they have yet to commit, and their political identity is still up for grabs.  Will they become Obama Democrats?  Will they become loyal to him but not to his party?  Will they become more Republican whenever the Republican Party moves into the 21st century?

As young voters consider settling down with one family politically, right now there is no place that feels like home.

In June, I telephoned an old New Jersey friend – a Republican lawyer from Totowa who has been active in Passaic county politics for decades and whose views I respect – to ask his views about the governor’s race between incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine and Republican challenger Chris Christie.

At the time, Christie was ahead by over 10 points in the New Jersey polls.  I asked my friend of 33 years, “What do you think will happen in the governor’s race in November?”  He answered without hesitation, “Corzine should win because the Republican base has been shrinking in this state, and the party has not done much to broaden the base.  In many places in New Jersey, the Republican Party does not exist.  The Republican label has become toxic in this state.”

My friend’s political sense is confirmed by recent national surveys, and speaks to the burden that all Republicans will face in the 2010 elections.  The latest ABC News – Washington Post poll indicates Republican identification is down to 20% nationally, the lowest in over three decades.  In the northeast, Republican I.D. is 13%.

These numbers suggest that the summer of tea parties, testy town hall meetings, threats of death panels in the health care bills, the rantings of Beck and Limbaugh, and the efforts of NBC-TV’s Today Show to revive Newt Gingrich’s political career have all had zero positive benefit to Republicans.

If Christie wins on Tuesday he will enjoy the sweet taste of knowing he defeated two foes:  the ever-unpopular Jon Corzine and the increasingly unpopular national Republican Party.  If Christie loses, he has himself – and his national party label – to blame.

The most recent Rutgers Eagleton poll shows that in New Jersey, Republican identification stands at 22% among the population.  This means when Chris Christie walks into a supermarket or a restaurant, or stands at an office park to campaign, the first 10 people he is likely to encounter will include four independents, four Democrats, and two members of his own party.  It is a wonder he did not just pack it in.

Christie’s burden of Republican identification in Jersey towns like Bloomfield, Edison, and Mt. Laurel could be repeated for Republican candidates across the country in 2010 in places like Shaker Heights, Ohio, to Brown County, Wisconsin, to Riverside and San Bernardino in California.

It may be time for the Republicans to admit there is no future in claiming that the president is not a citizen or that congressmen are trying to kill grandma, or that the Catholic bishops should decide what health care women can obtain.  Instead, Republicans might try to get beyond 20% identity by offering reasonable alternatives rather than killing President Obama’s proposals for America.

Not everyone agrees with the president, but most want him to succeed.  Associating themselves with those who hurl exaggerated attacks at the president has only succeeded in making the Republican Party, in the words of a wise Republican, “toxic.”

Note:  Our firm, Belden Russonello & Stewart, is working for the New Jersey Education Association, which has endorsed Corzine.

Ted Kennedy is gone but he is still helping Barack Obama. The person who Kennedy tutored and entrusted with the job of chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee during the 70’s and early 80’s has taken the first meaningful step to bring about a correction in the way Wall Street compensates its executives.

Kenneth Feinberg, the administration’s pay czar has ordered companies who have received taxpayer bailout money to cut the pay to their highest executives.

Feinberg is the first person in the Administration to take action that responds to the bitterness felt by Americans toward government enabling Wall Street executives to reap millions of dollars in pay after they have caused the ruination of the economy. This resentment could possibly deepen as the recession hangs on and the dollars and cents concerns of voters dominate the 2010 elections – more so than Afghanistan or health care.

When Feinberg says the government will “order” reductions in pay to executives of bailed out companies, it represents the first time anyone associated with the Obama administration has used such a verb. In New York a few days ago, President Obama’s message to Wall Street was: “I would ask that you join us” in reforming Wall Street practices. Last Sunday on the ABC news show This Week the President’s closest political advisor David Axelrod, when asked about the Wall Street bonuses, said: “we have, as I said, limited sway other than moral suasion with some of these – a lot of these institutions.”

Feinberg is someone who is more adept at using the law to achieve a specific goal than relying on an “ask:” or an appeal to one’s sense of morality. He has a reputation as a tough negotiator who knows Wall Street but is not a person of Wall Street.

As the press secretary for the House Judiciary Committee at the same time that Feinberg was running Kennedy’s Senate Judiciary Committee, I noticed that staffers on the committees would call him Senator Feinberg behind his back – sometimes jealously, but always with an acknowledgement of some truth to the label.

Ted Kennedy, being secure and smart, promoted this because it made him a more effective senator. Since Kennedy trusted Feinberg’s skills and integrity the Senator could be several places at once and get more done.

Today, over 30 years later, Obama is indicating the same type of confidence in Feinberg. The announcements this week by the pay czar represent just the beginning of reforms on executive pay. Perhaps most importantly, they start to move away from the idea that Wall Street will – or even should – be moved by moral suasion. Stephen Labaton reports for the New York Times that the federal government asked the insurance industry to repay $45 million dollars in bonuses, and so far only $19 million has been paid back. I am surprised that it is as high as $19 million. You cannot blame Wall Streeters for being greedy — they are in the business of making money. That is what they do. It is up to the government to keep them honest through tough regulation and oversight.

Much more is needed than Feinberg’s first step. In June I posted an idea that would apply a direct correction to Wall Street bonuses. Under my proposal, corporations that pay their top executives bonuses while the companies are losing money would be required to pay the federal government a tax worth ten times the bonus. It is a conservative idea, to incentivize sound business practices. It might have made a number of corporations think twice before handing out bonuses last year. For example, AIG gave $38 million to top executives while it was losing $99 billion, and Citigroup handed out $60 million in bonuses while it was losing $18 billion.

After months of hearing Larry Summers and Tim Geithner make excuses for the government’s failure to force reforms on executive pay, Ken Feinberg is a breath of fresh air. We can only hope that he takes an increasing role in the Treasury Department’s dealings with Wall Street, to the point where the Summers and Geithner acolytes begin to refer to him as Secretary Feinberg.

With little debate and even less reasoning the Senate Finance Committee recently included in its health care legislation 50 million dollars for teaching abstinence only sex education classes in schools.  These programs teach students to avoid having sex as the only way to avoid pregnancy and stay healthy.

By definition, these programs are not reality-based and, therefore, have proven to be ineffective.  They deny the existence of condoms, birth control pills, and other proven ways to stay healthy and avoid pregnancy.  They are ineffective because many young people will have sex even if you warn them about the dangers, and not educating them about the number of options available to have safe sex unnecessarily places their health at risk.

You might call these “ignorance only” programs because their objective is to keep young people ignorant of the facts of sex and prevention of medical conditions that could harm them.

In 1996, Congress mandated that the federal government conduct a nationwide study over many years of the effectiveness of abstinence only programs in schools.  Mathematica Policy Research Inc, conducted the study from 1997 to 2007, and found that abstinence only classes for middle school students had no impact on their sexual activity in middle school or later in high school.

The public recognizes what the abstinence only amendment sponsor Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah fails to see – that young people need to hear all the facts about their bodies, their sexuality, medical threats, and how to prevent illness. In a Belden Russonello & Stewart survey, conducted nationwide in 2008, 71% of adults in the country disagreed that “public high school sex education programs should only teach abstinence, not other ways of preventing pregnancy and disease;” a majority of 51% disagreed strongly.

The Mathematica study and the public opinion data show that the Congress in Washington should not be subjecting our children to a program that does not work.

I have a suggestion for Senator Hatch, other Republicans, and some blue dog Democrats who feel the need to record a “yes” vote for “abstinence only” to satisfy the extreme groups in their states that want to impose their brand of morality on the rest of us.

My proposal could benefit individual Senators and cost the federal government a lot less money:  For $50,000 instead of $50 million we can start an “abstinence only” class in the senate to help Senators not to succumb to temptations of the flesh.

Although its impact on the senators will likely be the same as on early teenagers, it may mollify some voters in the belief that a senate program on abstinence only could have prevented Republican Senators John Ensign of Nevada and David Vitter of Louisiana from falling into scandals of sexual impropriety, and maybe with the right kind of instruction, Republican Senator Larry Craig of Idaho would still be in the United States Senate.

If we must have an abstinence only program in the health care bill to satisfy a constituency, then I would rather experiment with the egos of United States senators than with the health and lives of our children.

Not since the Medal of Freedom ceremonies in 2004, when President George W. Bush praised General Tommy Franks for his failure in school – “You weren’t the brightest bulb in the socket…ain’t this a great country?” – has a high government official sent such a powerfully wrong message to America’s school children as Education Secretary Arne Duncan did this week.

He chose to open a multi-city tour to sell his education program by showcasing Newt Gingrich and Al Sharpton. Duncan proudly proclaimed that, although these two celebrities disagree on most issues, they did agree on Duncan’s plan to turn some public schools  over to for-profit companies, close the ones that perform badly, and emphasize student test scores for grading teachers.  These are serious issues, which is why when many of us heard about the Gingrich-Sharpton show we said, “He cannot be serious?”

Sharpton and Gingrich share many values:  Their ideology – face time.  Their strategy – outrage.  Their code of ethics – personal attacks and a disregard for truth.  Like stand-up comics that have their own followings, they may play to different crowds on different nights, but they are the same act.

Sharpton came to national attention by urging a teenager named Tawana Brawley to lie about a rape charge, and became a nightly figure on New York TV news because of his baiting of the police.  Sharpton, whose statements ruined many lives in the glare of the media, was convicted of lying to a grand jury but admits nothing.

About the same time that New York City was discovering Al Sharpton, Newt Gingrich decided that he would lead the House Republicans back into power through the doorway marked character assassination.  Every day, for about a year, Gingrich would viscously attack the ethics of the Speaker of the House, Rep. Jim Wright of Texas, because Wright had written a book that he pressured lobbyists and foundations that received federal funds to purchase. Gingrich’s attacks on Wright were just the beginning.  For more than a decade he kept up a steady drumbeat attacking the motives and character of Democrats.

His tactics worked: Wright resigned, the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 1994, and they made Gingrich their leader. Predictably, Gingrich went too far.  His own ethical problems, involving improper funds going to political foundations he set up in Georgia (Jim Wright must have smiled), and his political missteps of shutting down the government because of his dislike for President Clinton and of insisting on Clinton’s impeachment for having an affair (Gingrich later admitted to having affairs when he was married), eventually led to his departure from Congress.

If Duncan feels he needs celebrities from both parties to sell his education plan – a conservative Republican and liberal Democrat – what does it say about his plan that the only two people he can enlist are those with the ethical backgrounds of Gingrich and Sharpton? Their public lives have exemplified the opposite of the values of responsibility, fairness, of respecting the views of people who are different from you, and working for the common good.

We know Duncan is a friend of President Obama, but we do not know how serious he is as an educator. This week’s display of poor judgment places some doubt on his seriousness.

At least President Bush’s remarks about Tommy Franks were spontaneous.  Duncan actually thought about and planned his act of foolishness.

With all of the attention given to the Pew poll’s recent finding that support for abortion has declined, one key point gets lost: the question of whether the country should “keep abortion legal” does little to explain the views of a majority of Americans.  According to Pew’s survey, over eight in ten Americans do not want to outlaw abortion; for most of them, circumstances are what matters.

When Pew released its numbers this week asserting that support has dropped for abortion because 47% of the public now says abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while  45% says it should be illegal in all or most cases (down from 54-40 a year ago), it reinforced the misperception that abortion opinions are two dimensional. At BRS, we learned a while ago that opinions on abortion are not bipolar – yes/no – but rather on a continuum, based on how restrictive people want to be.

We developed a four-part question that reflects this continuum, and we found that, given the choice, more Americans took a middle position that would place some restrictions on – but not outlaw – abortion.

Our new poll of Catholics nationwide, released yesterday and conducted for Catholics for Choice, uses an almost identical question highlighting those in the middle:  21% of Catholics told us they believe abortion should be legal in all cases, 27% said legal in most cases, 37% said legal in just a few cases, and 14 % said they believed abortion should never be legal.

When we compare our Catholic results with the results from another BRS nationwide poll of Catholics in 2005, we find that the proportion of Catholics who say that abortion should be legal in all or almost all cases has increased by five points (from 16% to 21%) and those on the other end of the spectrum have depleted by about the same proportion (from 21% to 14%).  Those who say abortion should be legal in most cases rose by five points (from 22% to 27%) and those who say abortion should be legal in just a few cases rose from 34% to 37%.  All of these results fall within the margins of error and, therefore, we need to continue to monitor opinions for evidence of trends.

The importance of circumstances when it comes to abortion is reflected in questions we asked Catholics about abortion and health care reform.  We asked, “Do you think health insurance policies – whether they are private or government – should cover abortions under each of the following circumstances?”

• When a pregnancy poses a threat to the life of a woman (84% say yes; 15% say no)
• When a pregnancy is due to rape or incest (76%; 23%)
• When a pregnancy poses long-term health risks for a woman (73%; 25%)
• When test results show a fetus has a severe abnormal condition (66%; 31%)
• Whenever a woman and her doctor decide it is appropriate (50%; 50%)

The debate over abortion continues to be dominated by the absolutists from the conservative side who will not be satisfied until abortion goes away entirely.  We do not hear much from those Americans in the middle. The media pollsters fan the flames of this bipolar politics of abortion.

If pollsters begin to ask questions that look at abortion on a continuum, we could lessen the artificial categorization of public opinion, which allows conservatives to obscure the important point that eight in ten Americans believe abortion should not be outlawed.

Hypocrisy is once again on display in the United States Senate. Creating competition in the health insurance industry is the one goal that Congressional Democrats and Republicans can say they agree upon, even if they disagree about how to bring about this competition.

Senators have been scrambling to create new and ever-more complicated systems – public insurance option, and cooperative exchanges – that only theoretically would infuse the health insurance markets with more competition.

But the truth is that we can lower insurance rates immediately by repealing the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1952, which has allowed insurance companies to operate outside the federal antitrust laws for the past 57 years. So far, the Senate has been unwilling to end the insurance industry’s baseless exemption from the antitrust laws.

A recent statement by Senator Evan Bayh exemplifies the doublespeak that characterizes the Senate pronouncements on the health insurance industry. “Normally in our country we like the free market system to operate and to efficiently allocate resources. Now from time to time to where there is a problem with that if you have something called a natural monopoly, well then the government steps in to regulate that to make sure they don’t gouge consumers and if you have to use the antitrust laws or other steps to make sure that there is robust competition, that people get the choices and the lower costs that they deserve, well you use the law for that purpose. So I think we ought to try, first, aggressive market reforms to give that competition and lower price that the American people want. I think that is what the President was alluding to in his speech. If that does not work, well then there is an appropriate role for government to step in, but that should not be the first choice. That should be only if the free market cannot be reformed sufficiently.”

The clarity of remarks like those of Senator Bayh is one reason many Americans are indeed skeptical that Congress really means what it says about competition. They have good reason to be skeptical.

The antitrust exemption for insurance left it up to each state to regulate insurance carriers. Insurance commissioners and commissions in the states have been notoriously cozy with the insurance industry. The result has given us health insurance monopolies in some states and price agreements among insurance companies in others to keep prices high. Ronald Brownstein recently reported in the National Journal “the American Medical Association reported recently that insurance markets lack robust competition in more than 90% of metropolitan areas; in 16 states one insurer writes at least half the policies.”

I recently asked a Washington lobbyist who spent years on the Senate Banking Committee if anyone over the past two decades ever introduced legislation to repeal the McCarran Act. His answer: “Sure a few senators, but never anyone on the banking committee.” In other words, the senators such as Banking Committee Chairman, Democrat Chris Dodd of Connecticut, who were in a position to change the laws, who could move a bill through the Senate, were too close to the insurance industry to want to upset the status quo.

Won’t someone in the Senate step us and say: Let’s do something simple that will reduce insurance rates immediately. Let’s end the fiction and acknowledge that insurance companies are national businesses (one is even called “nationwide”) that should be subject to the national antitrust laws.

Repealing McCarran-Ferguson would be a simple, effective solution to lower insurance rates.

It would be good for the public but a little unsettling for the senators who speak sanctimoniously of the promise of competition, but are unwilling to act to keep the promise.