Month: November 2017

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U.S. Journalism Loses its Way, Part 2

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government concludes its two-part examination of how deeply biased journalism has come.

 

Examples of bias against candidate Trump were abundant.  Just a few examples: Public Integrity describes:

“New Yorker television critic Emily Nussbaum, a newly minted Pulitzer Prize winner, spent the Republican National Convention pen-pricking presidential nominee Donald Trump as a misogynist shyster running an ‘ugly and xenophobic campaign.’ What Nussbaum didn’t disclose in her dispatches: she contributed $250 to Democrat Hillary Clinton in April…Carole Simpson, a former ABC “World News Tonight” anchor who in 1992 became the first African-American woman to moderate a presidential debate, is not moderate about her personal politics: the current Emerson College distinguished journalist-in-residence and regular TV news guest has given Clinton $2,800.” The vast majority of journalist who supported either candidate supported Clinton, according to Public Integrity. “In all, people identified in federal campaign finance filings as journalists, reporters, news editors or television news anchors — as well as other donors known to be working in journalism — have combined to give more than $396,000 to the presidential campaigns of Clinton and Trump, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis. Nearly all of that money — more than 96 percent — has benefited Clinton: About 430 people who work in journalism have, through August, combined to give about $382,000 to the Democratic nominee, the Center for Public Integrity’s analysis indicates.”

Fox News has generally been viewed as more conservative outlet, and was regularly criticized by former President Obama. In the aftermath of the 2016 campaign, it reported:

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A Media Research Center report  provides an extraordinary example of bias: “Sneaky Russian influence in American politics is a huge story if it involves Republicans/Donald Trump, but a non-story if it involves Democrats/Hillary Clinton… The Hill published new information about Russian efforts to infiltrate the American uranium industry, including $31.3 million in payments to the Clinton Foundation, as well as a huge speaking fee delivered to Bill Clinton personally, while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. In eight days, the network evening news coverage of this story amount to a mere 20 seconds on ABC’s World News Tonight…But Bill Clinton’s big payday has generated ZERO network news coverage this week, and only a single reference on ABC’s This Week back in 2015, when the book Clinton Cash first disclosed the potential scandal.In fact, from April 2015 through [October 24] the Clinton/Uranium/Russia story has been granted only 3 minutes, 21 seconds of evening news coverage — less than one-half of one percent of the coverage doled out just this year to the conspiracy theories surrounding Trump and Russia…Combined, the three evening newscasts have aired a total of 5,015 minutes of coverage of the Trump administration since Inauguration Day, which means the Russia story alone has comprised almost exactly one-fifth of all Trump news this year.

Some media notables have spoken up. The Washington Times  reported that “Journalist Bob Woodward of Watergate fame has some advice for his younger peers — stop “binge drinking the anti-Trump Kool-Aid.”

Far too often, the argument over biased media is framed in terms of  Democrat vs. Republican, liberal vs. conservative. Lately, it has also included pro-Trump vs. “Never Trumpers.” That misses the point entirely.  Journalists are human, bound to have personal biases and developed points of view. What distinguishes the current state of the profession is the phenomenon of so many being of the same political mindset.

A vigorous and independent media is vital to the success of a free people. An abundance of perspectives and, most importantly, a devotion to truth, regardless of one’s own political biases, is desperately needed.  It is a need that is going largely unfilled by many media outlets.

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U.S. Journalism Loses its Way

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government examines how deeply biased journalism has become in this two-part series.

What is the appropriate response to the biased and sloppy journalism that diligently sought to overturn the results of the 2016 election, and which ignored the offenses of the elected officials and appointees whom they supported?

Recent revelations have been truly extraordinary: It was Hillary Clinton’s campaign that “colluded” with Moscow. The Charges against the Trump campaign appear to be little more than an attempt to coverup unlawful surveillance by the Obama Administration. The Justice Department has apologized for its harassment, under the former President, of the Tea Party.  The FBI, under James Comey, squashed the Clinton email investigation. The Democrat National Committee inappropriately “fixed” the primary process to ensure that Bernie Sanders lost. In terms of the politicians and bureaucrats involved, Congress will investigate, the wheels of justice will turn.  But what of a media that intentionally or negligently propagated falsehoods?

A study by the Pew Research Center found that “Allegations about Russia and the 2016 election tied to Trump and his administration, as well as the White House’s relationship with Moscow, dominated stories on U.S.-Russia relations…, only about one-in-ten stories (11%) delivered an overall positive assessment of the [trump] administration’s words or actions. Four times as many (44%) offered a negative assessment, while the remaining 45% were neither positive nor negative.”  In total, the early coverage of the Trump Administration by the media was 62% negative versus only 5% positive.  That contrast sharply with the coverage of former President Obama’s coverage, which was 42% positive and only 20% negative.

A similar result was found by a Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy study, which noted that “Trump has received unsparing coverage for most weeks of his presidency, without a single major topic where Trump’s coverage, on balance, was more positive than negative, setting a new standard for unfavorable press coverage of a president.”
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Anthony Fisher reported for Reason about the coverage of the events surrounding President Trump’s inauguration. “One journalist…was Natasha Lennard, who penned a popular article for The Nation wherein she writes about how she actively participated in the ‘anti-capitalist, anti-fascist bloc’ which rejected ‘polite protest’ in favor of tactics such as ‘human blockades, smash[ing] corporate windows, trash-can fires, burning [a] limousine…”

Is it intentional bias or something else that has divorced accuracy from media reports? Politico notes that the outcome of the 2016 election, which most of the media was convinced would be a landslide victory for Clinton was “an outcome that arrived not just as an embarrassment for the press but as an indictment. In some profound way, the election made clear, the national media just doesn’t get the nation it purportedly covers…”  The website cites FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, who pointed out that the ideological clustering in top newsrooms led to groupthink. ‘As of 2013, only 7 percent of [journalists] identified as Republicans,’ Silver wrote in March, chiding the press for its political homogeneity. Just after the election, presidential strategist Steve Bannon savaged the press on the same point but with a heartier vocabulary. ‘The media bubble is the ultimate symbol of what’s wrong with this country,’ Bannon said. ‘It’s just a circle of people talking to themselves who have no f***** idea what’s going on.”

The Federalist, in a Feburary 2017 article by Daniel Payne,  reported that “16 fake news stories reporters have run since Trump won…Since at least Donald Trump’s election, our media have been in the grip of an astonishing, self-inflicted crisis…there is no greater enemy of the American media than the American media. They did this to themselves…day after day, even hour after hour, the media continue to broadcast, spread, promulgate, publicize, and promote fake news on an industrial scale. It has become a regular part of our news cycle, not distinct from or extraneous to it but a part of it, embedded within the news apparatus as a spoke is embedded in a bicycle wheel… Why are our media so regularly and so profoundly debasing and beclowning themselves, lying to the public and sullying our national discourse—sometimes on a daily basis? How has it come to this point?”

The Report concludes tomorrow.

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American Education: Spending More, Getting Less, Part 2

Americans pay more for education at all levels than most other nations, but the results are inadequate.  The New York Analysis of Policy and Government concludes its two-part look at the reasons.

The excessive bureaucratization of public schools was accelerated by the increased role of the federal government. Earlier this year, reported the Washington Times  President Trump signed an “ Education Federalism Executive Order”  initiating the process of returning more authority to state governments in K-12 education. “He said that previous administrations had increasingly forced schools to comply with ‘whims and dictates’ from Washington, but his administration would break the trend.”

The problem, of course, extends beyond K-12.

It’s certainly not for a lack of resources, not for K-12, and certainly not at the college level.  A Brookings study revealed that:

“Education costs have soared…College tuition, net of subsidies, is 11.1 times higher in 2015 than in 1980, dramatically higher than the 2.5 increase in overall personal consumption over the period.  For private education, from pre-K through secondary, prices are 8.5 times higher now than in 1980. For public schools, the rise is lower—4.7 from 1980 to 2013—but still far above general inflation.

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“The sources of educational failure: For higher education, a major factor driving up costs has been a growth in the number of highly-paid non-teaching professionals. In 1988, for every 100 full-time equivalent students, there were on average 23 college employees. By 2012, that number had increased to 31 employees, with a shift toward the highest paying non-teaching occupations. Managers and professionals now outnumber faculty, who comprise just a third of the higher education workforce. To a large extent, rising costs have been absorbed by increased student borrowing, subsidized by the federal government, and supplemented through grant aid.”

Gerard Robinson, writing for the American Enterprise Institute  notes: “…a look back at the progress we’ve made under reformers’ traditional response to fixing low-performing schools – simply showering them with more money – makes it clear that this approach has been a costly failure…Since World War II, inflation-adjusted spending per student in American public schools has increased by 663 percent. Where did all of that money go? One place it went was to hire more personnel. Between 1950 and 2009, American public schools experienced a 96 percent increase in student population. During that time, public schools increased their staff by 386 percent – four times the increase in students. The number of teachers increased by 252 percent, over 2.5 times the increase in students. The number of administrators and other staff increased by over seven times the increase in students…This staffing surge still exists today. From 1992 to 2014 – the most recent year of available data – American public schools saw a 19 percent increase in their student population and a staffing increase of 36 percent.

“This decades-long staffing surge in American public schools has been tremendously expensive for taxpayers, yet it has not led to significant changes in student achievement. For example, public school national math scores have been flat (and national reading scores declined slightly) for 17-year-olds since 1992. In addition, public high school graduation rates experienced a long and slow decline between 1970 and 2000. Today, graduation rates are slightly above where they were in 1970…

“It is long past time to try something new to improve American schools. To give all students an opportunity to succeed, public education needs innovative approaches for the delivery of teaching and learning … Money, while important, cannot solve our nation’s public school challenges alone: It will take new and creative approaches that involve parents and communities, too.”

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American Education: Spending More, Getting Less

Americans pay more for education at all levels than most other nations, but the results are inadequate.  The New York Analysis of Policy and Government takes a two-part look at the reasons.

There are few areas of governmental endeavor within the United States that have fared as poorly as the education system.  Despite committing vast sums, American schools have produced stunningly poor results.

Marc Tucker, writing for Education Week, l has noted: “…high school textbooks that used to be written at the 12th-grade level for 12th graders are now written at the 7th– or 8th-grade level.  I cited a report that said that many community college teachers do not assign much writing at all to their first-year students because they cannot write.  I revealed that the community college course called College Math is not college math at all, but is in reality just a course in Algebra I—a course that is supposed to be passed in middle school in most states—with a few other topics thrown in, and many community college students cannot do the work.  I pointed to data that says that the students who go to the typical four-year college are no better prepared than those attending community colleges.  I then pointed to another study that says that for close to 40 percent of our college students, the first two years of college add virtually no value at all, and ‘not much’ value for the rest.  I ended by pointing out that, if this is all true, then colleges are typically teaching most students what we used to teach in the high school college-bound track and are not doing it very well…What I have just described amounts to an across-the-board collapse of standards in American education over the last 40 to 45 years…”

The problem is not new.  In 2012, James Marshall Crotty, writing in Forbes,   summarized findings from the Council on Foreign Relations:

  1. The United States invests more in K-12 public education than many other developed countries, yet U.S. students remain poorly prepared to compete with global peers.
  2. More than 25 percent of U.S. students fail to graduate high school in four years; for Hispanic and and African-American students, the number approaches 40 percent.
  3. Only 25% of U.S. students are proficient or better in civics, as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
  4. Only eight in ten Americans only speak English (with no foreign language capability at all).

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  5. According to a recent report by the not-for-profit testing organization, ACT, only 22 percent of U.S. high school students met “college ready” standards in all of their core subjects; these figures are even lower for Hispanicand African-American students.
  6. 63% of aerospace and life science firms report shortages of “qualified workers.”
  7. 75% of U.S. citizens ages 17-24 cannot pass military entrance exams because they are not physically fit, have criminal records, or because they lack critical skills needed in modern warfare, including how to locate on a map military theaters in which the U.S. is fulsomely engaged.

The culprit is not something inherent in the national character.  Nonpublic schools, including many parochial schools with far less financial resources, produce superior results.

The problem is one of priorities. As the New York Analysis of Policy and Government has previously noted, within the public educational system the actual task of educating students is the lowest priority.  Fulfilling union contracts for principals, teachers, janitors and custodians and responding to the ideological whims of progressive politicians are higher on the list, as is engaging in noneducational activities more appropriate for social welfare agencies.  Add in the increasingly politicized bent of the standard curriculum, a problem exacerbated by Common Core, and the recipe for failure becomes obvious.

In October, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, in a speech to the Washington Policy Center, noted “ the American Federation of Teachers tweeted at me. The union wrote ‘Betsy DeVos says public should invest in individual students. NO we should invest in a system of great public schools for all kids.’ The union bosses made it clear: they care more about a system – one that was created in the 1800s – than they do about students. Their focus is on school buildings instead of school kids. Isn’t education supposed to be all about kids?”

The Report Concludes Tomorrow.

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Identity Politics Harmed Black Americans

Stephen Moore, writing for The Hill notes that “Barack Obama, our first black president, won well over 90 percent of the black vote, yet from an economic perspective he delivered poor results. Black incomes from 2009 to 2014 fell more for blacks than any other racial or ethnic group.”

Moore was not alone in his observation.  Deroy Murdock, writing in 2016 for National Review reported that “Based on the Obama administration’s own latest-available statistics by the most basic economic-performance metrics — with one key exception — black Americans are worse off now than when Obama was sworn in on January 20, 2009. During Obama’s tenure, the percentage of black Americans struggling below the poverty line has advanced, according to the most recent Census Bureau data, from 25.8 in 2009 to 26.2 in 2014 — up 1.6 percent. Real median income among black households during those years, according to the Census Bureau, sank from $35,954 to $35,398 — down 1.5 percent. RELATED: Obama’s Legacy Is Already Collapsing The number of black food-stamp participants exploded across that time frame from 7,393,000 to 11,699,000, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports — up 58.2 percent. Also, from Obama’s oath of office through the fourth quarter of 2015, the percentage of black Americans who own homes foundered from 46.1 percent to 41.9 percent, according to the Census — down 9.1 percent.”

As a whole, “Identity politics,” voting for a candidate because he shares racial or ethnic background with a voter, has not produced desired results. Jason Riley writes in the New York Post  “The proliferation of black politicians in recent decades — which now includes a twice-elected black president — has done little to narrow racial gaps in employment, income, homeownership, academic achievement and other areas.”

One specific example has been provided by the left-wing website Black Agenda Report , written during the Obama Administration.  “President Obama’s economic stimulus was very kind to the general category of education. But Black higher education got the butt end of his budget, with a net of $73 million in cuts, while traditionally Hispanic schools got an increase in funding. “It would be difficult to find anyplace in the federal budget where $73 million has a more concentrated impact on the fortunes of a particular ethnic group.” Even southern Republican lawmakers are wondering aloud about Obama’s priorities.”
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Clearly, President Obama’s delivery of poor results for Black Americans was not an intentional move.  It was the result of policy errors, the same policy errors that prevented the United States from adequately recovering from the Great Recession. Moore also writes: “Just as an example of good intentions run amok: policies like raising the minimum wage increases had a statistically significant negative effect on black teenage labor force participation rates. I would argue that two factors hold back economic progress for blacks: a lack of jobs in inner cities and poor educational opportunities.” In contrast, Moore reports, “On both of these, Trump is delivering positive results. The black unemployment rate has fallen by a full percentage point in the last year, black labor force participation is up, and the number of black Americans with a job has risen by 600,000 from last year. Preliminary data show black wages and incomes up since the election.It’s early for sure, but so far Trump has done more for black economic progress in six months than Obama did in eight years. The other issue that is critically important to black and Hispanic economic progress is good schools. No president has done more to advance school choice so that every child can attend a quality school public or private.”

The assessment that the Black community is faring better after Obama’s departure  is the focus of a statement by the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Project 21.

According to the organization,  “Recently released unemployment statistics showing black unemployment at a 17-year low are being applauded by members of the Project 21 black leadership network as a triumph of the ‘commonsense’ policies and economic confidence brought about by the Trump Administration…In its most recent report on employment statistics, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics set black unemployment for September 2017 at 7.0 percent – down from 8.3 percent a year ago.  It is down from a modern high of 16.8 percent in March 2010…’With the black unemployment rate falling to its lowest point since April 2000, and considering the persistently high levels of double-digit employment that existed during most of the previous administration, this news should really be garnering more attention,’ said Project 21 member Dr. Derryck Green, who has written extensively on black unemployment and the economy.  ‘This should be a source of economic optimism because the job market is expanding and improving overall – particularly among American blacks who were hit hard during the sluggish, so-called economic ‘recovery’ touted by our previous president.  It bears remembering that the black unemployment rate at that point had skyrocketed.  It was at or near 15 percent on nine occasions, and near or above 16 percent 24 other times.  While still too high for my liking at seven percent, the black unemployment rate has significantly improved since the days of double digits.’ The overall new low black unemployment rate isn’t the only good news.  Largely unreported is the fact that black teen unemployment fell even more precipitously – from 28.1 percent in September 2016 to 22.4 percent last month.  The ‘unemployment gap’ between black and white workers has also been steadily decreasing.”

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Crime and Non-punishment

The political scandals of 2017 are unlike anything seen before in American history. They include the  continued lack of indictment concerning the personal enrichment of a sitting Secretary of State via the provision of  key nuclear weapons material to a hostile nation; the unaddressed abuse of federal intelligence agencies to surveil political rivals in the 2016 campaign; and the apparently baseless charges of “Russian Collusion” against the current president being investigated (despite a lack of any substance to the allegation) by a politically biased special prosecutor who has hired supporters of the defeated candidate to do the research.

Liability for the acts in question are not limited to the direct perpetrators.  It extends to an entire network of federal officials who facilitated, through assistance, acquiescence, or neglect, the crimes in questions. Former FBI Director James Comey, despite the obvious nature of Clinton’s acts regarding both the uranium deal and her mishandling of emails, completely failed in his duty. Revelations that he prepared to exonerate the former Secretary of State before a formal investigation was even partially completed have provided even greater weight to the increasingly abundant body of evidence that he replaced his loyalty to the FBI and the American people with partisanship. Despite that reality, the media severely criticized President Trump for firing him.

While misdeeds by government are frequently exposed through the media, in this case, a very substantial portion of the press, through its refusal to provide honest journalistic practices, has become a party to them.

Some outlets, however, have done exceptional due diligence.  The Hill deserves particular credit for its ongoing expose of events surrounding Hillary Clinton’s uranium-related transactions with Moscow—and the complicity of Obama Administration officials. John Solomon and Alison Spann recently wrote: “the FBI had gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering.”  Their report notes that there was a “violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,” according to official document.  “Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit the Clinton Foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill…Rather than bring immediate charges in 2010, however, the Department of Justice (DOJ) continued investigating the matter for nearly four more years, essentially leaving the American public and Congress in the dark about Russian nuclear corruption on U.S. soil during a period when the Obama administration made two major decisions benefiting Putin’s commercial nuclear ambitions.”

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Despite the Obama/Clinton Administration’s tenure-wide tilt towards Moscow, including giving Russia, for the first time in history, a lead in nuclear weapons, providing only weak sanctions in response to the invasion of Ukraine, and giving in to Putin’s demands about America’s missile defense, a myth was propagated that Trump’s campaign colluded with the Kremlin to win the 2016 election.  The desperate to find something—anything—to provide some substance to the charge has been an embarrassment both to those who first propagated the story and to those journalists who ignored the lack of evidence and continue to tout it.

Cheryl K. Chumley, writing for the Washington Times notes that “The tables have turned and what was once the media’s favorite message — President Donald Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election — has now grown silent. Apparently, it’s Bill and Hillary Clinton who’ve been doing the behind-scenes and suspicious dealings with Russia all along. Oh, and perhaps others in the Barack Obama administration, too.”

While official Washington has dragged its heels on indicting Hillary Clinton for any of the misdeeds she is implicated in, James Comey may have to worry about action from an unexpected direction.  Stephen Dinan  of The Washington Times  reports that Ty Clevenger, a New York attorney, has filed a grievance with his state’s bar association on the grounds that Comey lied to Congress and allowed the destruction of evidence in the Clinton email investigation. Clevenger’s actions could result in Comey losing his license to practice law.

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Should the State and Local Tax Deduction be Eliminated?

The continued existence of a deduction for state and local taxes is shaping up to be the most contentious issue in the drive to enact tax reform and reduction.

According to the Tax Policy Center “Taxpayers who itemize deductions on their federal income tax returns can deduct state and local real estate and personal property taxes as well as either income taxes or general sales taxes…State and local income and real estate taxes make up the bulk of total state and local taxes deducted (about 60 percent and 35 percent, respectively), while sales taxes and personal property taxes account for the remainder. The state and local tax (SALT) deduction is one of the largest federal tax expenditures, with an estimated revenue cost of $96 billion in 2017 and $1.3 trillion over the 10-year period from 2017 to 2026. (Tax expenditures are defined as “those revenue losses attributable to provisions of the federal tax laws which allow a special exclusion, exemption, or deduction from gross income, or which provide a special credit, a preferential rate of tax, or a deferral of tax liability.”)… about one-third of tax filers opt to itemize deductions on their federal income tax returns (figure 1), and virtually all who do itemize claim a deduction for state and local taxes paid. High-income households are more likely than low- or moderate-income households to benefit from the SALT deduction. The amount of state and local taxes paid, the probability that taxpayers itemize their deductions, and the reduction in federal income taxes for each dollar of state and local taxes deducted all increase with income. About 10 percent of tax filers with incomes less than $50,000 claimed the SALT deduction in 2014, compared with about 81 percent of tax filers with incomes exceeding $100,000. The latter group, which made up about 16 percent of tax filers, accounted for about 75 percent of the total dollar amount of SALT deductions claimed. The average claim in this affluent group was of about $12,300.”

There are widely diverse views on the wisdom of eliminating the deduction.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)  notes that “more than 100 American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) state legislators signed a letter to Congress urging the elimination of state and local tax (SALT) deduction… Eliminating the state and local tax (SALT) deduction would provide upwards of $1.5 trillion over the next decade to implement broad-based tax cuts nationally. This overhaul would spur the growth in economic output needed to jolt business investment, personal income growth, and job growth.”

The Tax Foundation notes that “The state and local tax deduction disproportionately benefits high-income taxpayers, with more than 88 percent of the benefit flowing to those with incomes in excess of $100,000. The deduction favors high-income, high-tax states like California and New York, which together receive nearly one-third of the deduction’s total value nationwide. Six states—California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Texas, and Pennsylvania—claim more than half of the value of the deduction. The state and local tax deduction in New York and California represents 9.1 and 7.9 percent of adjusted gross income respectively, compared to a median of 4.5 percent. The deduction reduces the cost of state and local government expenditures, particularly in high-income areas, with lower-income states and regions subsidizing higher-income, higher-tax jurisdictions.”

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Those favoring the move ask why frugal states should subsidize high-spending states that show lesser fiscal prudence. They note that the overall reduced federal tax rate made possible in part by eliminating the deduction would more than make up for any burden placed on those in high state and local tax states.  those opposing removing the deduction point to the burden that would be placed on residents in high-tax states who would, in essence, pay double taxation.

While finance plays the central role in the debate, differences in philosophy about what government should do, and the relationship between the states both amongst themselves and Washington is also a key to understanding both points of view. Interestingly enough, the lines blur sharply and don’t necessarily follow typical liberal vs. conservative or Democrat vs. Republican lines. Some conservative GOP leaders might believe that the federal government shouldn’t have a deduction that, in essence, forces his or her constituent to pay for the expenses of another state government that their constituent has no voice in electing, and for programs in those other states that they object to. One example comes from New York City, where, as noted for the New York Post, Mayor de Blasio is spending $3.5 million a year to spare thousands of repeat offenders a trip to [jail] instead sending them to group counseling and job-readiness workshops…The program — quietly launched this month in Manhattan, Brooklyn and The Bronx — lets recidivists avoid jail time by spending as little as one day undergoing ‘motivational interviewing’ and psychological ‘interventions.”

Another conservative perspective, however, could be that Washington shouldn’t usurp the financial abilities of states to tax their own citizens by also taxing the same income already taxed. Similarly, many liberals, who believe that Washington should have a more direct role in governance, might believe that eliminating the deduction gives the federal government more revenue for nationwide programs.  Others on the left note that the higher spending states generally spend more on their favored social welfare programs, and should not be hampered by eliminating the deduction.

While proponents of either perspective have voiced passionate arguments, the potential of compromise is high.  There could be a maximum amount of taxes that could be deducted, so the highest-spending states would not be able to have a massive advantage over lesser spending states. Another alternative in discussion concerns ending or limiting the deduction for higher earners.