Congressional Quarterly Weekly

Steve Burd in CQ Weekly | "In Student Loan Market, A Direct Approach"

Communications — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 13:51:00 -0400

New America in the News:

In Student Loan Market, A Direct Approach (CQ Weekly)

. . . But private lenders who need help face a dilemma. "Lenders are sort of putting themselves in this weird spot, where on the one hand they're raising huge alarms on the viability of their program, and on the other hand are trying to make sure they don't scare schools into the direct loan program," said Steven Burd, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation. more

Sherle Schwenninger in CQ Weekly | 'Congress' Role: Help Or Hinder'

Communications — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 16:13:00 -0500

New America in the News:

Congress' Role: Help Or Hinder (CQ Weekly)

"Giving the economy a temporary sugar high of trying to boost consumption will not sustain an economic growth path," said Sherle R. Schwenninger of the New America Foundation, a public policy think tank. "We see a longer-term program being required, which involves public infrastructure. It's more efficient and effective in stimulating both investment and demand and creating jobs." ...

Maya MacGuineas in CQ Weekly | 'Candidates' Plans Sketched in Red Ink'

Communications — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 12:14:00 -0500

New America in the News:

Candidates' Plans Sketched in Red Ink (Congressional Quarterly Weekly)
"You can't say you're going to repeal something that you're already going to let expire," says Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a fiscal policy watchdog group. Obama and Clinton both describe their policies as paying for themselves. But the candidates' definition of paid-for differs from the definition used by the Democratic leadership, which reintroduced the pay-as-you-go concept when it took over Congress a year ago. In Congress, following the pay-as-you-go rule requires new spending cuts or tax increases to offset any changes in federal policy that would deviate from the CBO baseline. ...

Flynt Leverett in CQ Weekly on the Bush Administration and Iran

Communications — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 13:44:00 -0500

New America in the News:

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has held only one hearing on Iran this year; its House counterpart has held five. ...

The hearings that have been held have exposed lawmakers to some alternative views of Iran’s intentions. Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations, for example, told House Foreign Affairs that Iran might want nuclear weapons to deter attacks and enhance its power rather than to actually use them, and that its support of Shiite militias has historical roots and probably is not intended to incite a broader conflict with the United States.

But many of the other witnesses have been administration officials or conservative analysts. For example, Ilan Berman, vice president for policy at the American Foreign Policy Council, a group known for its hawkish views, has testified twice. By contrast, Flynt Leverett of the New America Foundation, who served as an Iran expert on the National Security Council staff under Bush and has accused the administration of ignoring important diplomatic overtures from Iran after Sept. 11, is scheduled to testify for the first time later this week.

Leverett says there is little evidence that Iran is sending sophisticated weapons, such as powerful explosives, into Iraq specifically to kill U.S. soldiers, noting that Iraqi militias could just as easily be piecing them together from weapons and ammunition looted from Saddam Hussein’s regime after it was overthrown. ...

For the complete article, please follow this link.

Douglas Rediker in CQ Weekly on Sovereign Wealth Funds

Communications — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 13:25:00 -0500

New America in the News:

Last week, the New York hedge fund Och-Ziff Capital Management disclosed that it was selling a $1.3 billion ownership stake to an investment firm controlled by the government of Dubai. In September, another Dubai-controlled fund announced that it was buying about a fifth of the Nasdaq stock exchange. A Chinese government bank just entered into a partnership with the investment bank Bear Stearns Companies Inc. And the Blackstone Group private equity firm recently sold a $3 billion ownership stake to China's state investment company.

Flush with cash thanks to big trade surpluses and high oil prices, some foreign governments are looking for new ways to invest. Instead of playing it safe and buying U.S. Treasury securities, many are using special investment arms known as sovereign wealth funds to take ownership stakes in U.S. companies in such sectors as financial services and technology to maximize their returns. Many of the deals will not be subject to government review because, while the dollar amounts are large, the purchasers won't be controlling the companies.

The buyout activity is nonetheless posing a dilemma for Congress, which just addressed concerns about foreign investment that grew from a deal last year, quickly scuttled, that would have given a firm linked to the Dubai government control of operations at some U.S. ports. Last month a new law took effect to strengthen and clarify the rules governing the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, a panel of executive branch agencies that screens the sale of American businesses to foreign interests; the Bush administration is now developing regulations to implement it.

The rapid growth of sovereign wealth funds is prompting some U.S. officials and policy experts to question whether the nation needs to consider more safeguards -- or at least a more consistent approach to regulating foreign acquisitions that would both assuage national security concerns and enable foreign investors to know what to expect when they contemplate making a deal in the United States. ...

So far, members of Congress have primarily focused on individual deals. That will have to change, said Douglas Rediker, a global finance expert at the New America Foundation, a public policy think tank. Sovereign wealth funds bring "this whole level of influence that's brought to bear on the markets as a whole, that involves currencies and the subtleties of specific investments and broader investment classes," he said. "That traditionally has not been within the realm of what Congress deals with." ...

Rediker notes must purchasers in several high-profile deals, including the Chinese purchase of part of Blackstone and the agreement between Dubai and Och-Ziff, each took 9.9 percent stakes of the U.S. firm. He speculates that the acquiring companies reasoned that a 10 percent stake constituted a de facto threshold for heightened scrutiny.

Rediker and his wife, Heidi Crebo-Rediker, recently wrote a paper arguing that the United States needs a comprehensive review of all its legislation and regulations governing foreign investment, then needs to develop a policy for monitoring foreign government investments smaller than the "controlling" interest that triggers a CFIUS review.

The Redikers contend that this would not scare away foreign investors but encourage more deals, as long as funds were certain about the treatment they would receive.

"You put some vigorous rules in place, but they are absolute, so people know [if] they make X investment, there's going to be Y result. Right now the area below which a full-blown CFIUS review is triggered is fraught with political risk, and political risk takes its toll on investment," Douglas Rediker said. ...

For the complete article, please visit CQ.com. (subscription only)

Congressional Quarterly Weekly's Exclusive Interview with Steve Coll

Communications — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 14:00:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Coll, a writer for the New Yorker and a former Washington Post managing editor, takes over next month as the new head of the nonpartisan public policy institute. He's following the footsteps of other journalists turned policy wonks, such as Walter Isaacson, the former Time magazine editor who runs the Aspen Institute, and Strobe Talbott, a former Time journalist who was Bill Clinton's deputy secretary of State and now presides over the Brookings Institution.

Q. How did you come to take the job?

A. It seemed a little bit hard to get my mind around initially. I had been very happy just writing, but I did miss collaborating as I had done at the Post. I started to think that I could collaborate with people at New America who could also teach me something. After a couple of weeks' thought I said yes.

Q. What are the foundation's successes?

A. One of the biggest is its ability to attract and hold talent. It doesn't start with an ideology; it's not connected to the rhythms of political parties; and it's very much not a parking place for people rotating in and out of government.

Q. What do you plan to change?

A. The most important initial priority I have is to improve the way the foundation communicates -- and uses new media. I think that the era of the op-ed-driven think tank is fading, and that the model of what will replace it isn't clear yet.

Q. What media strategies will you pursue?

A. This isn't just a question of redesigning the home page: It's also a question of thinking about the characteristics of the Web and how they could change New America's core work, for example by using the Web site's ability to instantly create global communities that could start to shape the ideas that New America generates.

Q. What kind of people would make up those global communities?

A. There are already some real innovators -- for example, New America's Steven Clemons at The Washington Note. A more scholarly example is Jeffrey Lewis' blog armscontrolwonk.

For the complete article, please visit the Congressional Quarterly Weeky web site.

CQ Weekly Quotes Peter Bergen on Afghanistan, Poppies

Communications — Fri, 04 May 2007 10:37:00 -0400

New America in the News:

International occupation forces in Afghanistan recently drew unwelcome attention to one of the dirty secrets of that country's post-war economy: The opium poppy trade, a linchpin in global heroin traffic, is very much alive and flourishing.

NATO inadvertently touched off a new firestorm in the battle over Afghan poppy cultivation with propaganda it broadcast over the radio in the poppy-rich province of Helmand, vowing to leave farmers' fields intact.

"Respected people of Helmand," the radio spot reportedly said, "the soldiers of the International Security Assistance Force and the Afghan National Army do not destroy poppy fields. They know that many people of Afghanistan have no choice but to grow poppies...

Rand Beers, who pushed for a swift implementation of incentive and eradication programs when he served as the Bush administration's assistant secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, says he can't figure out what NATO officials were getting at..."It sounds to me like the administration and the government are still struggling with all of the basic questions of trying to contain and reduce cultivation of a drug crop," he says...

Peter Bergen, a senior fellow specializing in terrorism issues at the centrist New America Foundation who recently spent four weeks in Afghanistan, says the Karzai government policy of eradication is "bananas" on all fronts. Bergen says the government has been spending about the same on anti-drug programs as the farmers were making growing poppies in the first place.

Administration officials concede that eradication alone isn't the answer...

Bergen suggests the Karzai government subsidize farmers who grow substitute crops, even though that would involve other logistical difficulties. But why wait, he says, for "a 100 percent perfect solution when the current policy is 100 percent wrong? I don't understand why we put so many eggs in the eradication basket. It's basic common sense that you're going to tick people off."

For the complete article, please visit the Congressional Quarterly Weekly website.

Len Nichols; Peter Harbage on CA Health Care in CQ Weekly

Communications — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 23:15:00 -0500

New America in the News:

If Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of the biggest state, with one of the most diverse economies in the nation, can bring about a program of universal health insurance, then it stands to reason that other states can as well.

Or can they?

California does represent a broad cross-section of the country. But the Schwarzenegger plan is a delicately hung chandelier of federal matching dollars and mutual sacrifice, much of it carefully arrayed about that state's unique political and health care landscape...

Part of the plan's lure is that it will inject billions into the state's health care economy. By taxing businesses and doctors to increase state health care funding, California will receive nearly $3.7 billion in new federal matching funds -- most of which will be spent back to the state's medical providers and industry.

The prospect of the social and political win gained from covering the uninsured, as well as the economic win from billions of federal dollars, may make other states take a look at the idea, says the New America Foundation's Len Nichols. "Massachusetts makes you think you can reach across a partisan divide. California makes you think, hey, if they can do it with 20 percent uninsured, we can do it in Minnesota."

But for many states, even billions in federal matching funds wouldn't be enough...

Much of the uninsured population falls into the category of working poor. In California, the program is therefore targeted at those who are between 100 percent and 250 percent of the poverty level. Because of California's relatively high median per-capita income -- which is $26,800, or 7 percent higher than the rest of the country -- the state has a smaller proportion of its population that will need help. In comparison, median per-capita income in Louisiana is only $20,322 -- meaning the bill would be heftier there for the same program.

California would pay part of the cost with a tax on employers meant to level the playing field between companies that don't offer health insurance and those that do. Businesses with more than 10 employees that don't offer health insurance will pay a 4 percent fee on their payroll spending. That is designed to end the perverse economic consequence of having businesses that pay for insurance subsidize those that don't, says the New America Foundation's Peter Harbage, one of the architects of the California plan.

"Hospitals and doctors are like any other business, in that when they have a client who can't pay, they have to recoup those losses from elsewhere. So they charge higher rates to insurance companies," who then pass on the cost to business in the form of rising insurance premiums...

For the complete article, please visit the Congressional Quarterly Weekly website.

CQ Weekly Quotes Michael Dannenberg on Cutting Student Loan Rates

Communications — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 05:10:00 -0500

New America in the News:

Democrats railed against the high cost of education during the elections and proposed cutting interest rates on federal student loans in an attempt to connect with debt-laden students and their families. But so far, the Democrats haven’t come up with a clear-cut plan for following through on the promise. What’s even less apparent is how they would find the money to finance what is likely to be a hugely expensive undertaking.

“We don’t necessarily have exactly what we’re going to do nailed down,” said Drew Hammill, a spokesman for incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi....

[Yet] if Democrats come up with a feasible plan, it will be hard for Republicans to oppose it, said Michael Dannenberg, director of the education policy program at the nonpartisan New America Foundation. The proposal “could be structured any number of ways to affect its budget cost and the need for an offset. It can be done. It is certainly an achievable goal,” Dannenberg said....

For the complete article, please visit the CQ website (subscription required).

Len Nichols on the Uninsured in CQ Weekly

Communications — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 05:35:00 -0400

New America in the News:

The common perception of an uninsured American has long been that of a low-wage worker unable to obtain employer-sponsored health coverage or a jobless person who must rely on hospital charity care when ill. And for good reason: The vast majority of uninsured citizens have always come from low-income families.

But the lack of health coverage is becoming a far more complex problem that cuts through socioeconomic strata. New census statistics show that the fastest-growing segment of the uninsured is, in fact, Americans from households with annual incomes of $50,000 or more.

Some experts have predicted that this would happen as employers cut health care costs and dropped workers from coverage. But now that it is a documented trend, it is placing a decidedly middle-class cast on the long-running but as yet inconclusive debate over how to expand health coverage -- and is prompting an election year reckoning for some in Congress....

"The unaffordability of health care insurance is coming to an employer near you," said Len Nichols, director of the health policy program at the nonpartisan New America Foundation. "The problem is not a lack of jobs per se, but rather that more and more workers are in jobs with wages too low to support rising health insurance premiums."

Nichols said the statistics bear out arguments for overhauling the traditional employer-based system and replacing it with a public-private system that includes government-sponsored insurance pools for those in need...

For the complete article, please visit the Congressional Quarterly website.