A Letter to the President

So, for those of you that haven't been paying much attention to politics lately, President Obama is going to give a much-hyped speech about jobs to Congress on Thursday. Three things precipitated this: first, the political universe spent most of June and July collectively being disgusted with all of Washington while Republicans effectively threatened to destroy the U.S.'s credit rating and spiral the government into a shutdown by refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless the president agreed to massive long-term spending cuts, which he eventually did; the "rigidity of the political culture" (read: Republicans' unwillingness to compromise) in Congress was one of the two big factors that S&P cited when it downgraded the U.S.'s credit rating in spite of the deal a few days later (the other being our massive national debt). Second, in the wake of this, a slew of polls showed the popularity of all the elected officials in Washington, both the President and Congress, at all time lows. Third, the economy has shown no signs of getting better, with a net of zero new jobs created last month (this is an estimate, and might actually be revised into negative territory at the end of the month).

The debt ceiling debacle was dismal to watch. In the weeks after it, after being inspired by a conversation with my friend Sam, I drafted a letter to President Obama, which started out timid, but became more and more critical and negative through successive versions. Then, the President announced his speech during a bus tour of the Midwest. My letter suddenly seemed unnecessary, since he was doing pretty much what I had hoped he would do. I revised it to be a bit more positive, and I've decided to post it here, rather than actually sending it (letters to the president at whitehouse.gov aren't allowed to be more than 2500 characters, and if I sent it physically, it would be weeks before it arrived, and probably wouldn't get read).

I recognize that the substance of my letter is pretty much what Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Paul Krugman has been saying for the last two years in his weekly New York Times columns: government needs to spend more to rebuild infrastructure and put people back to work, not cut spending by taking away benefits from the poor, old, and sick while giving the savings to the rich (as Republicans argue in favor of). But I think that it's never been the substance Obama's had trouble with as much as the messaging and branding of his programs. Remember "Winning the Future" from his State of the Union address earlier this year? What does that even mean? It's almost certainly not grammatically correct. No wonder everyone remembered Salmon instead.

So, without any more preamble, here's my letter to the President. Like Mr. Krugman, I hope that for the sake of all those out of work in our country right now, he gets it right on Thursday.

August 20, 2011

Dear Mr. President,

I’m a former Obama Organizing Fellow who volunteered for two months for your campaign in Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Virginia in 2008. I’m currently serving in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua teaching English. I’m lucky in that I get pretty fast internet in my town, and I’ve been following the news throughout my two years down here. I heard that during your bus tour last week, you promised to unveil an economic plan to help the 25 million Americans who are unemployed or underemployed. I appreciate this, and think that it is absolutely the right thing to do.

I’m writing to share my opinion on how best to make this happen. It’s become clear to me (as I’m sure it has to you), that it’s really hard to get people to understand government policy. When your stimulus bill passed into law and saved or created 3 million jobs, people thought it didn’t work because unemployment remained high. Some people still think of health care reform as a “government takeover” of the healthcare system, despite that the bill actually puts millions more people onto private insurance plans. And saddest of all, during the debt ceiling debate, Republicans were able to convince many people to be against raising the debt ceiling just because it sounds like a bad thing to have to do; clearly, few people understood that the borrowing the treasury had to do was to pay for spending already authorized by congress, and that it would have been an even bigger disaster not to raise the debt ceiling than to sign the ugly, trillion-dollar spending cuts bill you ended up signing.

So, the question now is: what can you do differently this time around? In terms of substance, the types of things you talked about doing in your State of the Union address this year are the things that I think most people want government to invest in: putting people to work on infrastructure projects (building or repairing schools, roads, bridges, airports, nuclear power plants, and weatherizing homes and businesses); education (hiring and training good teachers, especially pre-school teachers, especially in low-income areas); and job training (guaranteeing loans or grants to people who are unemployed who need to go back to school to learn skills that are more in demand than the ones they currently have, or creating programs to do this). Big investments (more than a trillion dollars) in projects like these, coupled with a program to re-work mortgages for people who are underwater on them right now, would put people back to work immediately, get them spending and get the economy going again. You yourself have said so.

However, getting the message right is just as important as the size and substance. The other side is really good at vilifying you, and making your programs sound scary. Desperately needed revenue-raising tax increases on the rich are “job-killing tax hikes,” sensible end-of-life counseling got turned into “death panels” during the healthcare debate, and stimulus spending “failed,” and is “socialist” to boot.

How to cut through all of this to reach the average person? Don’t call it “stimulus spending” or “winning the future.” That hasn’t worked. I like the idea of calling it the “New WPA.” It at once recalls the big, successful programs FDR instituted that built our highways and Hoover Dam among other things, and also implies that just like during the Great Depression, America needs the government to take desperate measures to help its people in a time of crisis.

Another term that I think would be hard to argue with is “Direct Job Creation.” The benefits of this language would be twofold: to describe what the programs actually do (create jobs in construction, education, and other fields), and most importantly, it’s unambiguously positive and simple (it would take quite a bit of rhetorical jujitsu for opponents to convince people that “Direct Job Creation” is actually “Job-Killing Big Government Spending”).

Finally, after getting the substance and the message right, you still need to get the strategy right for passing the plan through Congress. No matter what you do, this probably isn’t possible with the Tea Party more or less controlling the House of Representatives, and Republicans everywhere automatically opposing anything you propose as much because they disagree with it as to make you look weak.

But I believe there are things you could do on this front as well. The other side will surely point out that these measures add to the deficit. You should argue that your plan will actually bring in revenue, because more people working at once means more people paying taxes and fewer people drawing unemployment benefits from the government, as well as increased spending in the broader economy, which will in time lead to the private sector hiring more people. Suggest that this does not go far enough, though, and that all the spending in your bill will be paid for by cutting spending on things that aren’t creating jobs (agriculture subsidies, defense spending on huge weapons systems, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq), closing tax loopholes you tried to close in the debt ceiling debate, and allowing the Bush Tax Cuts to expire on time for high-wage earners (the things you’ve argued for all along). Be very specific, and very visual about the way you present all the trillions of dollars that would be saved by these measures.

It’s important not just to make speeches to tell people this. It would make a huge impact if you sat down with congressional Democrats, and helped them draft the legislation transparently on C-SPAN. Call on the American people to help pass the legislation. Ask everyone in the country to flood their congresspersons’ inboxes demanding “Direct Job Creation, NOW!” Refuse to sign anything else until a “Direct Job Creation Bill” is passed and the other side “gets serious about Job Creation.” Force Republicans to vote against “The Direct Job Creation Act” if they want to keep automatically voting against anything you propose.

I know it’s hard to make these things happen. It might be impossible to get the other side to cooperate. But I steadfastly believe that these measures would be good for the country. I also believe that presenting them this way could change the terms of the debate in Washington, and provide a very clear narrative and choice for people going into the 2012 election: Democrats want the government to work better, and Republicans want the government not to exist. I’m positive that most people in our country would prefer a functioning government to a non-existent one.

I hope to work again for your campaign when I come back to the States this December. I still believe in you, and believe that you can change things, as ugly as they’ve been lately. As long as you keep fighting for the people, Mr. President, I will keep fighting for you.

Sincerely,

PCV Steve Carpenter

Peace Corps Volunteer

Teaching English as a Foreign Language

Jalapa, Nicaragua

(011) (505) 8713-0951

stevenmcarpenter@gmail.com