Jerry Brito

Not all commissions are created equal

Yesterday President Obama issued an executive order creating a National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. The idea that a commission independent of partisan politics can help solve intractable political problems draws much of its inspiration from the success of the various BRAC military base closing commissions. Unfortunately, some of the key ingredients that made BRAC successful are missing from the President’s plan.

First, the president’s commission will be largely composed of sitting members of Congress. BRAC’s membership, on the other hand, included only former members of Congress and former DoD officials and military leaders. The idea being that they did not have political careers to protect. A deficit commission would benefit from the same instinct.

Second, as spelled out in the executive order, the mission of the president’s commission is “identifying policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run.” Identifying policies is too amorphous a charge to result in anything meaningful. The BRAC commissions, by contrast, were given a very clear and discrete mission: identify military bases to be closed or realigned.

Once Congress voted to create BRAC, there was no question that military bases would be closed. On the need for closures they could all agree. The only question that remained, and which was the charge of BRAC, was which ones to close. That was the politically difficult quandary that was delegated to BRAC.

A proper role for a new deficit reduction commission truly inspired by BRAC would be do identify which federal programs to cut or reform. That is the politically tricky question that a commission can help solve. Asking a deficit commission to “identify policies to improve the fiscal situation” is the same as creating a base commission and asking it what we should do about a glut of military bases. There’s nothing tricky about that.

Finally, the president’s new commission has no teeth. All it can do is issue a final report. Congress is under no obligation to do anything about it and it likely won’t. After all, it’s not for lack of ideas about how the deficit can be constrained that Congress has done nothing. The problem is politics.

The new commission will likely be a replay of the late 80’s National Economic Commission. Created by Congress, it was composed of blue-ribbon experts from both sides of the aisle and was similarly charged with developing a plan to reign in the deficit. It never reached consensus and it issued two reports along party lines in large part because Republican members would not consider tax increases.

However one may feel about the need for tax increases, the reality is that Republicans are unlikely to accept a commission that could potentially recommend them. Better to use a commission structure for what it is best suited—making tough decisions that members of parties agree need to be made but which they are not willing to make. In this case that means deciding which federal programs should be cut or reformed. This is not to say that tax increases should not be considered, but simply that it will likely be impossible to delegate that task to a commission.

Open for questions, but answers not so much

The Obama transition team made a big deal about the “Open For Questions” feature on its Change.gov website. Essentially users could submit questions and fellow citizens would vote those questions up or down using a Digg-like mechanism. The top questions would be answered by the team. Real citizen engagement and direct democratic participation yadda yadda.

Today the team released its first round of answers and it leaves a lot to be desired. Here is the fourth most popular question (with 5,376 votes in favor) and the team’s full answer:

Q: “Will you lift the ban on Stem Cell research in your first 100 days in office?” James_M, Nashville, TN

A: President-elect Obama is a strong supporter of Federal funding for responsible stem cell research and he has pledged to reverse President Bush’s restrictions.

Wow. The question was pretty direct, but all they could muster was an artless dodge. Citizen engagement is a two-way street. No amount of wizbang technology is going to manufacture transparency unless both sides are forthcoming. Even if the team didn’t want to commit to anything within the first 100 days, they could have just been honest and said that. “While we can’t promise anything within 100 days because we have other priorities, we believe that…” But no, given an opportunity to show off change, they chose to go old-school.

The one-sentence answer to the top question from users was this: “A: President-elect Obama is not in favor of the legalization of marijuana.” How about treating us like adults and maybe giving us a little context for that position. Given that this is the most requested question on the site, you think they would have given it more attention than a sentence. Unless, of course, they don’t buy into the idea of a wisdom of the crowd, in which case they shouldn’t be bothering with these social media tools.

So, this is all to say that I plan to submit a question of my own in the next round: Are you going to take the “Open for Questions” project seriously and respond to our questions thoughtfully, or are you going to continue to give us short, half-hearted answers?