Expert Presses Growth Economics For Democrats
HOW BOLD DO THEY WANT TO BE?
By LUIZA Ch . SAVAGE Staff Reporter of the NY Sun
WASHINGTON — A Democratic economist wants his party’s presidential candidates to stop “recycling old Democratic thought from 20 years ago” and embrace a new economic vision to compete with the Bush administration’s tax-cut agenda.
For example, he’d like them to eliminate the Department of Labor.
Robert Atkinson, the vice president of the Progressive Policy Institute, an affiliate of the Democratic Leadership Council, calls his plan “Growth Economics” and says bold ideas are needed. He wants “root and branch change” in some major government institutions.
But he is having trouble selling “bold” to Democratic presidential candidates.
Take proposal no. 16: eliminating the U.S. Department of Labor, with its 17,274 employees, a 2003 budget of $71.3 billion, and a mission of protecting the nation’s work force.
“It’s not just a question of putting in a new assistant secretary if a new president is elected,” Mr.Atkinson said in a telephone interview.
“The real key question for the next year is, how bold do the Democratic candidates want to be?”
How bold? Mr. Atkinson would also take down the Department of Commerce.
He would replace the departments with new “quasi-public” entities, known as “Quangos” in Australia where he says they exist.These entities would work with industry and labor to train workers and update their skills, for example.
“These are obviously bold ideas. Not just throwing money at the problem — as more left-wing candidates want to do,” said Mr. Atkinson. His paper is titled, “The Innovation Economy: A New Vision for Economic Growth in the 21st Century.”
Their funding tied to performance, the new organizations would be more effective at promoting technological innovation than existing government bureaucracies or tax cuts alone, he argues.
“Most federal bureaucracies are too slow, hidebound, inflexible, and rule-driven to be effective agents for change. The Bush administration’s answer is to radically downsize government, by slowly starving it of funds. The left’s answer is to maintain and protect the existing, ineffective bureaucratic status quo,” he writes in his policy paper.
“Growth economics holds that we need to replace big, slow bureaucratic agencies with more flexible, quasi-public corporations able to partner effectively with the private sector,” states Mr. Atkinson.
These organizations would be exempt from many of the “stifling” personnel and contracting rules that currently “hamstring” government agencies and would be led by a CEO whose tenure and compensation would be based on achieving results. Such entities would have industry and union leaders as well as educators on their boards of directors and work in partnership with business.
The proposal is but one of dozens aimed at embracing the “new economy” through a mix of spending on education, training, research and development. It is similar to various “innovation” plans being touted by center-left governments in Britain, Australia, Canada,and Europe whose leaders and senior officials travel to annual “third way” conferences and discuss how to update the role of government in a globally competitive economy.
Bill Clinton was active in the movement.
The Institute’s New Economy Task Force, which Mr.Atkinson directs, is cochaired by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and the CEO of the Gateway computer company,Ted Waitt.
But the current crop of candidates are not interested.
Mr. Atkinson said he discussed his ideas with the campaigns of Senator Lieberman and General Wesley Clark. He also talked to Senator Kerry before he announced his bid.
So far no one is offering to dismantle the Labor Department if elected.
“We’re not really considering these ideas at this point,” said a Lieberman campaign spokesman, Adam Kovacevich.“But it’s true we have worked with Rob in the past and think he’s great.”
A Clark campaign spokesman, Patrick Buckley, said, “We do not foresee the elimination of the department.”
Mr. Atkinson is not surprised.
“I think the left in U.S. is still in social spending, redistribution mode and hasn’t really come to grips with this new economy — not the dot-com economy, but the more knowledge-driven economy,” Mr. Atkinson said.
While he said Mr. Lieberman “gets it” and it’s “too early” to tell about General Clark, he has written off most of the other candidates.
He calls former Vermont governor Howard Dean “at best a warmed-over Keynesian.”
“If you look at Dean’s economic plan for America, it’s about short-term fiscal stimulus, about revenue sharing with the states,” he said.
Mr. Kerry, at least, is “better than Gephardt.”
“He understands that technological innovation is important, but I don’t think his campaign has articulated that,” Mr. Atkinson said.
Mr. Gephardt is a “demand-sider,” and Senator Edwards “hasn’t really focused on this.”
“This recommendation is way too radical for some in the party,” said Mr. Atkinson. “They would find that an attack on government and unions,” he said.
Indeed, eliminating a Cabinet-level department was too radical even for the Newt Gingrich era congressional Republicans. Mr. Gingrich, as House Speaker, suggested eliminating the Energy Department, and a proposal to eliminate the Commerce Department also gained traction in the mid-1990s. But neither idea made its way into law.
The AFL-CIO’s public policy director, Christine Owens, said she had not read Mr. Atkinson’s paper. However, she said the union “would not support abolishing the Department of Labor.”
“We believe the Department of Labor has an extremely important role to play in the recognizing and advancing the rights and interests of all works,” she said, citing minimum wage, safety and health, and “labor laws in the broadest sense.”
Mr.Atkinson also said past proposals for quasi-public corporations have struck government departments as “a direct attack on their interests.”
A spokesman for the Department of Labor said he had not seen the proposal and had no comment on his department’s proposed demise.
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