Capitol Hill leaders serve up proposals and warnings

At #NACoLeg: Mark Warner: new social contract needed, Rob Bishop: Congress getting power back 

Capitalism, immigration and the decentralization of government power were among some of the topics touched on by Capitol Hill leaders who addressed county officials at the 2017 NACo Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C.

 

New social contract needed for America’s ailing middle class

 At the Opening General Session, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) argued that the changing business environment demanded an updated and more flexible safety net.

The former governor and tech investor, who considered a run for the presidency in 2006, described himself as proud capitalist, but admitted that the current capitalist system in America wasn’t working for enough people.

“At the macro level, I can give you numbers,” about a strong economy, he said. “All of those numbers, statistics and data points don’t mean squat if you lost a factory in town.

“We need a Capitalism 2.0.”

His proposal focused on three ways the government safety net could be updated to match current national economic conditions and trends.

“Social insurance programs, like unemployment benefits and workman’s compensation,  allowed you to get through bad times, but in the Gig Economy, work brings no social insurance,” he said. The ‘Gig’ economy features a labor market characterized by the prevalence of short-term contracts or freelance work as opposed to permanent jobs.

He stressed that the local government level is ideal for experimenting.

Warner also said businesses see better returns on investment in worker training than the government, and finding a way to incentivize private spending on training, possibly with a tax credit versus a tax deduction, would lead to better results.

“We can’t just give someone a voucher for training and no direction, and be surprised when they don’t have a job in the end,” he said.

The shift to a short-term approach to corporate management has created a dynamic Warner likened to renting versus owning a house. “CEOs don’t have owners, they have renters,” he said. “Something is wrong when 95 percent of earnings are spent on share buybacks and dividends.”

He suggested mandating a longer timeframe, possibly three years, to earn breaks from capital gains taxes.

Warner is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and called out the Russian manipulation of the news media Americans were viewing, not in support of the Republican party but to generally weaken American interests for Russia’s gain.

For residents of certain Midwestern states, he said, “If you searched for “hacking in the election,” you wouldn’t get Fox News, or NBC or CNN; you would literally get — for the first five stories — Russian propaganda ... You’d get stories about Hillary Clinton being sick.”

He advised county leaders to take a stand and speak out if they saw those kinds of manipulations and “fake news” taking root in their communities, echoing a warning by Jim Vandehei, who spoke before him.

“If we don’t get our arms around it, it’s only going to get worse,” he said. “People (in your counties) still know you as human beings and you can push back.”

Minnesota senator: federal changes will impact counties

Former Hennepin county attorney and current Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D) spoke to the General Session about how federal issues affect local governments.

The senator warned county leaders to be very concerned about federal proposals that will inevitably, “land in the counties’ laps,” such as the upcoming healthcare reform.

“This really isn’t a joke,” she said. “Sometimes laws can pass without anyone noticing and then there is a big effect on the local level. As we go through this tumultuous time, we need to be thinking about people in counties and how this all works in local government.”

Klobuchar noted that it is important to keep an eye on upcoming changes to tax policy and how it will impact local governments.

For example, brick and mortar storefronts face more taxation than online retailers. Klobuchar described this situation as “ridiculous,” as “you want to have competition but you want to have fair competition.” Under the new tax system, this may change so online retailers face similar taxes.

Klobuchar also emphasized the impact immigration reform will have on counties.

“This is a workforce issue as well as a social issue. But I like to talk to my constituents about it as an economic issue,” Klobuchar said, explaining that Trump’s caps on refugees will eventually trickle down to hurt states and counties that struggle to find workers to fill certain jobs.

She concluded, “Thank you so much for still having faith in the work you do, having faith in our country and having faith in a country that, as Barbara Jordan once said, is ‘as good as its promise.’”

Utah congressman: ‘Choice is the important part’

Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) told a General Session audience that returning regulatory authority to Congress as proposed in House Speaker Paul Ryan’s “Better Way” plan would ultimately mean more responsive federal policy making. “In the horizontal division of powers … if the executive bureaucratic agencies make a decision … and you don’t like it, what recourse do you have?” he said.  “If you want a system so that people’s voices are heard, you have to go through that nasty thing called politics.”

Ryan’s A Better Way plan, Bishop said, has nothing to do with an “inter-branch” power struggle, he said. “It’s based on the principle that people are better heard through their elected representatives.”

He emphasized his case for de-centralized government power. “If the government was about making stuff, then there’s an economy of scale that is significant,” he said. “But we’re not creating a product, we’re delivering a service,” and in that case, more local control is appropriate.”This concept is not Republican or Democrat, it’s not even conservative or liberal,” he said. “There are some areas of the country that may want robust government and indeed if they want it and are willing to pay for it and not impose it on anybody else, let them do it ... That’s the way it’s supposed to work.”

To illustrate his point, he related a story of an East German child who marveled at the many flavors of ice cream offered in a West German store, and while his own preference was vanilla, he liked that he had his choice of 31 flavors.

“The choice is the important part,” he said. “And that is what we need to be doing to make sure that power and ability and regulations are moved back to state and local governments where they are closer to the people and can be done in a better way.”

Charlie Ban, senior staff writer, and Ariel Cohen, special correspondent, contributed to this report.