Mitch McConnell’s reaction to plans among some Democrats to ditch the Senate filibuster are garnering a certain amount of attention. From his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal:

Imagine a world where every single task requires a physical quorum of 51 senators on the floor—and, by the way, the vice president doesn’t count. Everything that Democratic Senates did to Presidents Bush and Trump, everything the Republican Senate did to President Obama, would be child’s play compared with the disaster that Democrats would create for their own priorities, if they broke the Senate. Even the most mundane tasks of our chamber—and therefore of the Biden presidency—would become much harder, not easier, in a postnuclear 50-50 Senate.

If the Democrats break the rules to kill Rule 22 on a 50-50 basis, then we will use every other rule to make tens of millions of Americans’ voices heard. Perhaps the majority would come after the other rules in turn. Perhaps Rule 22 would be only the first of many to fall, until the Senate ceased to be distinct from the House in any respect.

Even so, the process would be long and laborious. This chaos wouldn’t open up an express lane for the Biden presidency to speed into the history books. The Senate would be more like a 100-car pileup—nothing moving as gawkers watch.

And then there’s the small problem that majorities are never permanent. The last time a Democratic majority leader was trying to start a nuclear exchange— Harry Reid in 2013—I offered a warning. I said my colleagues would regret it a lot sooner than they thought. A few years and a few Supreme Court vacancies later, many of our Democratic colleagues admitted publicly that they did.

If the Democrats kill the legislative filibuster, history would repeat itself, but more dramatically. As soon as Republicans wound up back in control, we wouldn’t stop at erasing every liberal change that hurt the country. We’d strengthen America with all kinds of conservative policies with zero input from the other side.

How about a nationwide right-to-work law? Defunding Planned Parenthood and sanctuary cities on day one? A whole new era of domestic energy production. Sweeping new protections for conscience and the right to life of the unborn? Concealed-carry reciprocity in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Massive hardening of security on our southern border?

Even now, we saw during amendment votes days ago that certain common-sense Republican positions enjoy more support in the current Senate than some of the Democratic committee chairmen’s priorities—and this is with them in the majority.

The pendulum would swing both ways, and it would swing hard.

Speaking of collegiality.

I’ve said before that I think that the Harry Reid Senate was the worst of my memory. Reid’s use of what was called “the nuclear option” figured strongly in that assessment. You don’t just evaluate performance based on presumed good intentions but on what the actual results are and the precedents established. Ditching the filibuster might be a tactical success but it would be a strategic disaster.

I want to put in my two cents on James Joyner’s observations about our broken federal system. He attributes the problems to a loss of collegiality among the members of Congress:

What’s lacking is basic respect for ones colleagues. It’s simply impossible to work together to find common ground. And yet Senators are openly contemptuous of one another and of the opposite-party leadership even in casual conversations with reporters.

I’ve remarked on that myself, noting how it parallels similar changes in the practice of law but I think there are more basic problems. As both of our two major political parties drift away from being the “catch all” parties they’ve always been to becoming programmatic parties fundamental conflicts in goals would seem to be baked in.

But I don’t think it stops there. I don’t know where to date the change but I do know it hasn’t always been this way. I pointed it out here more than 15 years ago. The Democrats had changed from being the other party to being an opposition party. I believe now as I said then I don’t believe there is room in our system for an opposition party. The Democrats were an opposition party to the Bush Administration; the Republicans an opposition party to the Obama Administration; the Democrats were then an opposition party to the Trump Administration; now the Republicans are an opposition party to the Biden Administration. Maybe it all goes back to Bill Clinton’s impeachment but it doesn’t go back any farther than that. I note that there was bipartisan support for the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

And I see other things as well like a basic lack of understanding about how you gain support from people. When people help to build something, they’re more likely to support it. When you confront them with a finished piece of legislation which they have had no role in writing, reject the possibility of any amendments, and the only choices are take it or leave it, you are not building support.

Is that a cause or an effect of the loss of collegiality to which James points? I think it’s more a loss of political skills which I attribute to the engineering of majorities through the creation of safe districts and exploitation of targeted advertising.

I don’t think the editors of the Washington Post quite appreciate the present situation with respect to the AstraZeneca vaccine:

More than a dozen countries, including Germany, France, Italy and Spain, temporarily suspended the AstraZeneca rollout after reports last week that some people in Denmark and Norway who got a dose had developed blood clots. There was no evidence that the shot caused them. The company says that out of 17 million doses given in Britain and Europe as of March 8, there were only 37 incidents of blood clots, less than what would be expected to occur naturally in a population of this size. German regulators, worried about seven cases of severe cerebral venous thrombosis that occurred within four to 16 days after the vaccine, including three persons who died, said the rate was above what would be expected.

I wonder how the editors think that evidence is accumulated or what constitutes proof in a medical setting? Offhand I’d case that you start with correlation and the Germans, French, etc. have that.

Let’s recap:

• Questions were raised about the AZ vaccines clinical testing.
• After receiving the vaccine some people experienced blood clots, in a few cases leading to death.
• Norway and Denmark suspended the use of the AZ vaccine.
• Then a few other countries like Bulgaria and Ireland did the same thing.
• Then all of the major European countries followed suit.

What’s wrong with that?

The editors conclude:

A lesson of this moment is that no medicine is 100 percent safe and effective. The flu vaccine must be reformulated every year to cope with mutations. Despite widespread use of the measles vaccine, outbreaks still occur.

Europe has an enormous job ahead to vaccinate tens of millions of people. Everyone should expect speed bumps, be vigilant for serious problems — but avoid panic.

Can’t the same lesson be learned from COVID-19 itself? There is no such thing as perfect safety. A year into the COVID-19 pandemic about 9% of the U. S. population has been diagnosed as having contracted the disease (estimates are higher) and of those 1.8% have died. Not to diminish the seriousness of the disease but that’s still a small risk. There may also be a small risk in getting the AZ vaccine. We’re confronted with the problem of comparing two small risks. Now add that there are other alternative vaccines (at this point Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson) none of which have comparable reports. The actions of France, Germany, etc. don’t seem that outrageous to me under the circumstances.

Continuing on in the vein of my last post, in his Wall Street Journal column Jason L. Riley observes that the progressives who hold the reins of the Democratic Party are risking losing Hispanics with their views on immigration:

While the Department of Homeland Security is dealing with an unprecedented crush of migrants on the southern border that is straining shelter capacity and raising Covid concerns, Mr. Biden is urging his fellow Democrats in Congress to move forward with two amnesty proposals that would affect millions of people who reside in the U.S. illegally. One would provide a path to citizenship for people brought here illegally as children, the so-called Dreamers. The other would legalize the status of undocumented farmhands.

The problem with both measures has less to do with their substance than with their timing and the message to other would-be migrants considering a trek north. Immigration restrictionists with a zero-sum view of labor markets accuse foreign workers of stealing jobs and depressing wages. But the people who would benefit from these bills were already part of a thriving U.S. labor force that, before the pandemic, saw record-low unemployment rates, wages rising fastest for the less-skilled, and a pronounced worker shortage in several industries.

The question is why the Biden administration is pushing for the largest amnesty in history while Border Patrol agents are already at wit’s end and when homeland security officials are anticipating the situation will worsen as the weather gets warmer. The administration has boastfully reversed border-security policies put in place by Donald Trump, seemingly without regard for whether they were effective. This has won Mr. Biden plaudits in the media, but it also has undermined efforts on both sides of the border to reduce illegal crossings. The president should figure out which is more important.

How does this risk Hispanic votes?

The other reason Mr. Biden should be wary of moving too far left to please progressives is that it could fracture the party’s base, according to Democratic strategists who have done a deep dive into the November results. In an interview earlier this month with New York magazine, David Shor, a data analyst at the left-wing Center for American Progress, said that the party’s focus on progressive priorities cost Democrats support among blacks, Asians and especially Hispanics. “In the summer, following the emergence of ‘defund the police’ as a nationally salient issue, support for Biden among Hispanic voters declined,” Mr. Shor said. “The decline that we saw was very large. Nine percent or so nationwide, up to 14 or 15 percent in Florida. Roughly one in ten Hispanic voters switched their vote from [Hillary] Clinton to Trump.”

Mr. Shor’s comments on how the immigration issue played out in the 2020 campaign were even more illuminating. “In test after test that we’ve done with Hispanic voters, talking about immigration commonly sparks backlash,” he said. “Asking voters whether they lean toward Biden and Trump, and then emphasizing the Democratic position on immigration, often caused Biden’s share of support among Latino respondents to decline.”

That much should have been obvious from earlier polling data as well as studies by economists. Immigrants already here have more to lose from an unending torrent of new workers with whom to compete for too few jobs than other groups.

But they’re not the only ones. The most recent polling data I could find suggests that black voters recognize that they’re in competition with immigrants for jobs 3:2 compared with white voters. There’s no conflict between believing that illegal immigrants should be treated mercifully, a view held by many black voters no doubt due to their Christian faith, and believing there should be fewer of them.

As I see it progressives are engaging in a three-way gamble:

1. They’re betting that affiliation will outweigh either interest or conviction. So far it has worked out that way but the signs above suggest that the tide may be turning.
2. They’re betting that Republicans embracing racists and white supremacists or, at least, failing to reject them soundly enough will keep blacks and Hispanics in the fold. The Republicans have been cooperative in this.
3. Their media allies provide a continuing barrage of propaganda covering fire. They can probably rely on that for the foreseeable future.

but as I say, it’s a gamble. It will hold true until it doesn’t.

Things always appear larger in the rear view mirror, particularly popular support. That’s what the editors of the Wall Street Journal remind President Biden about in their editorial today:

What appears to be driving Mr. Biden is his memory of 2009, as a telling quote from two weeks ago showed. Musing on the $800 billion stimulus that Congress passed amid the financial crisis, Mr. Biden lamented Barack Obama’s mistake: He was too humble.

“He didn’t want to take, as he said, a ‘victory lap,’” Mr. Biden recalled. “And we paid a price for it, ironically, for that humility.”

Doesn’t every job candidate say excessive humility is his greatest weakness? Jokes aside, Mr. Biden must be misremembering. The 2009 stimulus was initially popular. The week it passed, Gallup showed 59% of the public as supportive. Around the same time, CNN put it at 54% favorable to 45% opposed. The law’s reputation sank later, as the money was ladled out.

By early 2010, the figures had flipped. “Nearly three-quarters believe that at least half the stimulus money spent so far has been wasted,” CNN’s polling director said. “Six in 10 believe that the projects in the stimulus bill were included for purely political reasons.”

As Abraham Lincoln famously observed you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. There’s a reason that the American people thought the ARRA was politically motivated: because it was. That’s what happens when the president delegates as much of the detail to the Congress as President Obama did with the ARRA and the bill is pass along straight party lines. We’re about to learn whether history repeats itself or merely rhymes.

The editors of the Washington Post speak out in favor of “the Quad”, the co-op of the United States, Japan, India, and Australia, revitalized by President Trump and with whom President Biden met (virtually) last week. I agree.

However, this passage struck me funny:

That said, the strength of the grouping should not be overstated. It is not a military alliance and is unlikely to become one anytime soon; if the Xi regime launches a war in the Pacific in the coming years — say, to conquer Taiwan — it might not be of much help. Under its new prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, Japan appears less invested in the initiative than it was under his hawkish predecessor, Shinzo Abe. Perhaps most troubling, the Quad casts itself as a group of democracies promoting liberal values, but Mr. Modi’s government has been so repressive of free speech and civil liberties that India was recently downgraded to “partly free” in the Freedom House survey.

for several reasons. First, the same thing could be said of our NATO allies in the event of a war with Russia. How much help would they be really? Of them only France and maybe the UK are capable of doing their own logistics and, as we learned in 2011, not for very long.

The second reason is the passage critical of India:

but Mr. Modi’s government has been so repressive of free speech and civil liberties

I think that’s a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good. I would rather India were more closely allied with the U. S. than more closely allied with China. Which would they prefer?

If they can only tolerate views of civil liberties like those we’ve historically espoused, that pretty much limits things to the Anglosphere, i.e. the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

I wanted to bring an article by Perry Bacon at FiveThirtyEight to your attention. In the article the author examines ten “increasingly influential on the left”. The ideas include a rejection of American exceptionalism, systemic racism, skepticism about capitalism, systemic sexism, and cash reparations for blacks. A table they display shows how these ideas are picking up steam in the Democratic Party:

I don’t believe that it’s a coincidence that in the week of January 21 of this year the Gallup poll of party affiliation found that 50% of those surveyed identified as independents, the highest percentage since they’ve been asking this question. If you scroll a little further down in that poll to “leaners”, it’s also clear that Democratic leaners were what made the difference. My view of what’s happening politically in the country is that both the Democratic and Republican Parties are leaving considerable fractions of their voters out in the cold. That’s real disenfranchisement.

To expand on some of the issues gaining ascendancy in the Democratic Party, I think that many are born of ignorance and propaganda. Take capitalism, for example. There are only two known ways of allocating resources: markets and a command economy. Most national economies including the U. S. economy are hybrids. Our problem is not too much capitalism; it’s too little. What we have now is highly financialized crony capitalism, barely recognizeable as capitalism at all. Giving politicians and bureaucrats more power in the economy won’t improve things.

I think that “systemic racism” has no referent. AFAICT all it means is that blacks are not a majority in the U. S., a fact I will concede. For me the question is how can the circumstances of blacks, the descendants of American slaves, be improved? I believe that’s going to take a combination of policy changes and social changes among blacks themselves. It can’t be accomplished through preferences, set-asides, or patronization.

And cash reparations? It’s a nonsensical idea, unsupported by most Americans, and unjust to boot. That it is taken seriously at all is not a mark of contrition but one of opportunism.

What the editors of the Wall Street Journal miss in their lament about the tax increases looming on the horizon:

Democrats are elated with the popularity of their $1.9 trillion spending bill, which they passed under the political cover of the Covid emergency. Handing out money is always popular, especially when there appear to be no costs.

Enjoy the moment because the costs will soon arrive in the form of tax increases. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen put that looming prospect on the table on Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

[…]

So Ms. Yellen won’t even rule out Ms. Warren’s wealth tax that would hit all assets above $50 million each year and that Mr. Biden didn’t campaign on. The Treasury Secretary is also floating a global minimum tax on corporations, which would reduce the tax competition among countries that is a rare discipline on political tax appetites.

Expect more such taxing surprises, as Democrats debate which taxpayers to gore, but one sure bet is that this won’t be as popular as passing out money. Paying the bill never is.

which is that a tax increase at this point is bad policy. To understand why you’ve got to understand more about the economic and politics of tax increases.

Taxes are by definition taking money out of the private sector. The effect of removing money from the private sector is to slow economic growth. But what if you plan to spend more money in the private sector (I hear someone ask)? It results in less economic growth than would otherwise be the case. The difference is deadweight loss.

There’s a big different between the policy of just issuing credit (described in the previous post) and taxing and spending. The former is risky but it might increase economic growth. Not as much as just dropping money from a helicopter but it might increase economic growth. The latter just reduces potential economic growth.

Do we really need less economic growth?

But what about income and wealth inequality (I hear someone else ask)? Although changing marginal rates is within the power of the government, realizing additional revenue by doing it is an if-come. However you may try you may not be taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor. You probably won’t be doing much about income inequality.

Here’s what the editors of the Wall Street Journal have to say about the challenge that Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell faces now that the Biden Administration has passed its COVID-19 “relief bill”:

The sheer magnitude of the deficits to be financed is a rare experiment in U.S. fiscal history. Even before the $1.9 trillion spending bill passed, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the deficit as a share of GDP would be 10.3% in fiscal 2021. With the Pelosi-Schumer-Biden blowout, the deficit this fiscal year will now be in the neighborhood of 18% of GDP. That’s the highest by far since the four wartime years of 1942-1945.

That’s also a lot of Treasury bills, notes and bonds to sell. U.S. investors have historically been able to finance about 4%-5% of GDP. The appetite of foreign buyers will depend on relative interest rates, currency values and confidence in the U.S. economy. Treasury’s Feb. 25 auction of seven-year notes was a warning sign as low demand almost led to failure.

Treasury auctions since have been more robust, but there’s little doubt that the Fed will be a bulk purchaser of U.S. debt for years to come. The Fed is currently buying $120 billion a month of Treasurys and mortgage securities, and (unlike in Europe) there is no limit on the amount it can buy.

plus this

The Biden Treasury and Powell Fed are joined at the policy hip.

concluding:

Good luck to Chairman Powell and the FOMC in this brave new world in which politicians believe they can spend as much as they want without policy consequences. Mr. Powell won’t be able to say he warned us.

The real challenge is that we’ve never run such large deficits other than in wartime and there’s no obvious escape plan. We’ve started an enormous realworld test of Modern Monetary Theory. If it succeeds it will be a new world in policy-making. If it fails, as most economists including those aligned with the Biden Administration have predicted, it will be painful in the extreme. As usual the poorest will be hurt the most.