The 2008 Colorado Ballot
 

Andrew Romanoff, Michael Bennet, and the future of our country

I think the Senate is key to the future direction of our country. In the present political environment it is the key body for legislation. Therefore who we have in the Senate determines if the country will improve, hold steady, or worsen. And what each Senator works on, what truly matters to each, how they vote - has tremendous impact. Because the difference between a yes and no vote in many cases is a handful of Senators.

As many of you know I dropped my support of Senator Bennet recently because his votes in the Senate pretty much guarantee that we will have another severe recession due to the banks. That however did not cause me to jump to support Andrew Romanoff - it put me squarely in the undecided column. Senator Bennet being bad for our long-term future does not mean Andrew Romanoff would be better.

One key issue to push aside - the argument by many is that Senator Bennet was imposed on us by Obama and Ritter and the people of Colorado deserve to select their own Senator. I'm sorry but while this might be an argument to consider Romanoff (and I don't think it's much of one), it is in no way an argument to vote for or against either candidate. This issue is not relevant to deciding who to vote for. In addition, what someone did for us yesterday is not relevant, except where it is an indicator of what they will do tomorrow (i.e., the Senate is not a thank you for a great job as Speaker).

So let's look at the key issues, in order of priority.

Financial Reform

For most of the history of the U.S. we had numerous wild swings in the business cycle and it wreaked havoc on people's lives. During the new deal FDR's administration enacted several laws that smoothed this out - making the booms much longer, the recessions shorter, and more importantly, the recessions shallower.

This system worked great for 65 years, until we loosened up the regulations, starting with the Savings & Loan mess and cumulating with the revocation of Glass-Steagall (signed by President Clinton - fucking the country at the banker's request is definitely a bi-partisan effort.) If we don't reinstitute effective reform, then we will continue to be battered by these long deep recessions every 7 - 15 years. This will be devastating to the world. Yet so far the Senate has not even been able to reinstitute the FDR laws, much less add anything new.

Senator Bennet Andrew Romanoff
On this issue Senator Bennet has been a consistent vote for the banks and against the interests of the American people. This includes:
  • Voting against reviving Glass-Steagall.
  • Voting against limiting the size of banks so a single bank cannot destroy the economy.
  • Voting against Merkley-Levin (Volker rule).
  • Voting against cram-down.
In Senator Bennet's favor he did:
  • Vote for the Dorgan amendment.
  • Voted for the final bill.
I don't think Senator Bennet voted as he did because he is in the back pocket of the banks. But I do think his years of work in the financial arena means he sees the world through the eyes of the bankers. Bennet is an example of culture capture.

But the end result is that Senator Bennet will not vote against the fundamental self-interest of the banks, because he believes what is good for the banks is good for America.

It could be as simple as having not worked closely with the titans of finance, Andrew Romanoff can clearly see what is best for America: Andrew Romanoff has come out clearly and specifically in favor of the changes needed to bring about the changes we need to insure we do not have a repeat of our current recession.

What's really sad is Andrew's proposals are good not only for the country and non-bankers, but they are best for the banks too, in the long term. But the people running the banks, and their fellow travelers, are so short-sighted they don't see the benefit they gain from a stable system.

One very interesting measure of Senator Bennet's future intentions on this subject is his own website. In his section on Economic Recovery he discusses what he has accomplished so far - the credit card holders bill of rights. That's all. And his listing of what he is working on is four vague generalities. If even on a campaign website he can't point to much, it is pretty much an admission by the Bennet campaign that Senator Bennet is not in favor of the legislation we need to avoid a repeat of the great recession.

Senator Bennet is a consistent vote to suffer a long deep financial recession every decade or so. Andrew Romanoff would be a consistent vote to restrain the banks so they cannot trash the economy. On this issue there is a stark difference between the candidates. (Hint: Unless you're pulling in million dollar bonuses at a financial institution, you want Romanoff on this issue.)

Jobs

We are at an effective unemployment/underemployment rate of 18%. And the unemployment rate is stuck there - Washington is celebrating the fact that it's stabilized (which granted is a good place to start). But continuing with 1/5 of our citizens not working is a deadly cancer that eats away at our society and our country. This is by far the biggest short-term problem our country faces, and only the federal government can get it unstuck.

Senator Bennet Andrew Romanoff
On Michael Bennet's list of issues on his website, this comes tenth - as part of the page titled Economic Recovery. Clearly not a high priority, which has also been clear from his efforts in the Senate where he has been mostly silent on this issue. His efforts to date have been:
  • Voting in favor of ARRA which provided desperately needed short-term relief and provides jobs.
  • Several laws to help people hang on to their homes (these have been mostly ineffective but I don't think that is the fault of the Senate).
  • Free up credit for small businesses and farms so they stay in business (and keep people employed).
Senator Bennet also discusses two key points for improving our economy:
  • Transforming our educational system to meet the needs of today. This is absolutely the most critical part of a long term answer.
  • American industries that have fallen behind must learn to be innovative and create products that are in demand (I'd call this transforming GM to Apple). Again, a key part of the long term solution (although Senator Bennet did pressure the Obama administration to fund the Orion project - so apparently this rule does not hold for federal money going to Colorado jobs).
What is really interesting here is the dog that didn't bark. Senator Bennet in his efforts in the Senate, in his speeches, in his website, with the exception of his ARRA vote - does not speak to the issue of how we reduce unemployment today (and tomorrow).

Senator Bennet does have a strong grasp of what we need to do medium term to have a strong growing productive economy. But I don't think he will be involved in how we address the short term problem of high unemployment.

On the flip side, Senators cannot be experts on everything. And Senator Bennet's vote on ARRA shows that he will support jobs legislation.

On Andrew Romanoff's list of issues on his website, this comes first. And in Andrew's case with the focused title of Putting America Back to Work. Andrew has a strong legislative effort on this from his time in the house:
  • He was one of the leaders on referendum C that delivered a substantial increase in jobs. And did so through investments in Colorado that will pay off for years (in some cases decades).
  • Along with Ref C there was a massive bond proposal that also would have been a big win for both the economy and long term investment.
Andrew also lists a number of specific actions he would take as a Senator to reduce unemployment. The biggies are:
  • Increasing access for job training and vocational rehabilitation. This is key for people in industries where the jobs will never come back. It also reduces unemployment by pulling those people temporarily out of the job market.
  • Repair and rebuild our infrastructure. This should be a no-brainer (but apparently is not for many - especially Republicans) as it provides jobs, pays back the cost many times over, is desperately needed, and is cheap right now because of the economy.
  • Get the banks to start lending to small businesses again. The present lack of credit is holding back business expansion - which holds back new jobs.
Andrew Romanoff has the standard list of progressive answers to the job crisis. The good news is he clearly sees this as the biggest short-term problem this country faces. And he wants to address it, and do so without unending debt. As a Senator I think he will focus on this.

Part of what we presently face is 80% of the workforce can produce what 100% wants. I call this the Craigslist issue where 27 employees at Craigslist have replaced the 100,000+ who worked for newspapers selling and producing classified ads. Assuming China no longer wishes to fund our over-consumption by purchasing our second mortgages, how do we address this conundrum? I'm not sure how we do so, but I'd sure like to see our candidates speaking to this problem.

What is absolutely clear is that we are not going to get this 18% unemployed unstuck without major focused directed effective effort by the federal government. FDR's New Deal was looking to take decades to bring us back to full employment when WWII occurred - and so the recovery was "only" 1 decade. Duplicating the New Deal (and we're not even doing that yet) means a very long road to recovery.

On Michael Bennet vs Andrew Romanoff - I think with Michael you will get someone more focused on what we need to fix medium term while Andrew will be more focused on reducing unemployment tomorrow. But both will clearly vote for legislation to address this issue. And both short and medium term are critically important. (Or to put it another way, if you're unemployed Andrew is your guy while if you're worried the company you work for may go the way of Chrysler, Michael's your guy.)

My $0.02: I think what would go a long way to pulling us out of this is to send 5% of the workforce to college on a system like the G.I. Bill. That would drop the unemployment rate by 1/3 (including additional people the colleges would have to hire to teach all the new students). It would also increase the number of workers trained for the jobs of today and tomorrow - which we desperately need. Like the G.I. Bill, it would be implemented to reduce unemployment, but would deliver an ROI many times over from the increased education of our workforce.

Education

This is our future. We must fix out K-12 system and rein in the cost of Higher-Ed.

Senator Bennet Andrew Romanoff
On education Senator Bennet rocks! Bennet has a great record here from when he was Superintendent of the Denver Public Schools, bringing in a lot of needed improvements over great opposition. He clearly has great passion on this subject and is willing to do things that are unpopular but necessary.

Senator Bennet can't point to any great legislation on this issue because the Senate hasn't done much on education. This does not reflect on Senator Bennet, it's due mostly to Race to the Top being the main effort at present and that's done.

It's interesting that on his website he does not call out education specifically but instead is listed as a key part of most of the issues he lists. I think this speaks well of Senator Bennet's understanding that education is key to our future throughout our system.

When Senator Bennet speaks he almost always dives in to education, and does so in depth. This clearly is an area where he has a lot of passion and puts in a lot of effort.

Critically important, Senator Bennet has shown he's willing to take on the entrenched interests in the educational system. Not rolling over for the teachers unions is very difficult politically for a Democrat, but also absolutely necessary to fix our schools.

Andrew Romanoff also has a great record on schools. In the legislature he led the efforts on numerous educational bills. (I'm not listing the specific bills here because I would probably miss half of what he did.)

He also led the efforts for A59 which would have undone some of the damage due to TABOR and provided additional funding to our K-12 system. It was a well designed and strongly supported amendment - on the ballot in a year virtually everything got a no.

Andrew's proposals on education are all good. And he does have the word accountability in there - but once and in a very general usage. Fixing our K-12 system requires a radical change of the basic system. And doing that is very upsetting to the people who do well under the current system.

Fixing this will require doing so over the strong opposition of many invested in the present system. I haven't seen anything in Andrew's efforts to date that says he's willing to take that on. On the flip side, I haven't seen anything that says he would not do it either. So they jury's out on this issue.

I hate to see the difference here reduce to one issue. But that is the giant difference between Bennet & Romanoff. Both are very strong supporters of education. Both have worked in the educational system. Both understand that this issue alone determines where our country is 100 years from now. Both are great on this issue.

But we have a giant roadblock to improving our K-12 schools, and that is the people invested in the present system. This is not just teachers, it is administrators, parents, consultants, vendors, educational schools, the list goes on and on. But the teachers unions with their insistence on ironclad job security is one of the major barriers. And you are not going to convince most teachers that giving up ironclad job security is a good thing (how can you - it is a good thing for them). So it has to be done over their strong opposition.

Senator Bennet has shown that he is willing to push on over the opposition of the teachers unions. Andrew Romanoff has not. And this is the significant different between the two on education. So on the issue of K-12 Senator Bennet is better (unless you're a teacher - then Andrew is better).

Healthcare

I think Senator Bennet was great on this issue. He pushed hard to get HCR through and never asked for a quid-pro-quo for his vote. He was a loud voice for single payer and Medicare buy-in. He also put a lot of effort into cost containment which is the unaddressed half of our healthcare crisis. That is not addressed yet but Bennet tried and that is all we can ask.

At the same time, Andrew Romanoff is saying much the same thing as Senator Bennet. I'm not bothering to put up a table comparing them on this issue because they are essentially identical. (Yes Andrew has claimed he would have done better if he was Senator for the last year - I put that down to standard politicking.)

But the big question for both is reigning in costs. The ongoing costs increases for healthcare are no longer sustainable. How are you going to address this? Because until you do, we have growing deficits and an inability to fund other efforts. And the end result is a wildly inflated currency and a severe depression. (Which would be very bad.)

Who to Vote For?

Ok, so come August we can't put the two of them in a blender and compose the perfect candidate. So who to vote for?

First, yes there are a number of other issues from energy, the environment (BP managed to fuck up both), two wars, immigration, and a dysfunctional political system. And you probably have 3 or 4 other items that are important to you. But I don't see any of them as having as much impact as the issues I listed.

On financial reform and short term resolution of the unemployment rate it's clearly Andrew Romanoff. On medium term changes in the economy and transforming K-12 schools it's clearly Michael Bennet. Which leaves me undecided (and August is rapidly approaching - help!).