Daily Archives: September 24, 2021

Let the public service be a proud and lively career, President John F. Kennedy proclaimed in his January 1961 message to Congress. Let every man and woman who works in any area of our national government, he continued, say with pride and with honor in future years: I served the United States government in that hour of our nations need.

Kennedys message succeeded: Young Democrats, heeding his call, filled the offices of the nations executive agencies. And yet just 20 years later, Ronald Reagan, another newly elected president, stood in front of the U.S. Capitol and declared a kind of war on the values Kennedy vaunted. Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem, Reagan said, a statement that marked a definitive break with the big-government liberalism of the postwar period.

How did government go from being the solution to societys ills to being the cause of its problems? The answer, paradoxically, lies with the political left as well as the right. In the 60s and 70s, as the federal government expanded its reach, and as a growing conservative movement fulminated against it, many liberals also grew disillusioned with the governments unchecked bureaucratic power. The postwar liberal faith in government crashed against the realities of how that government was working, its excessively close ties with industry, and what it was doing to the American people and to the land itself. Citizen advocates turned to new nonprofit organizations to protect a public interest that the government, they argued, did not reliably serve.

Under pressure from both the left and the right, the traditional liberal establishment fell into disarray. Given the Biden administrations efforts to pass trillion-dollar infrastructure and social-welfare legislation, harkening back to the New Deal, its worth revisiting this earlier time, when liberals themselves helped break apart the postwar liberal coalition which had supported a strong and active federal government, and helped make it harder for the government to do big things. Have liberals learned to embrace big government again? And should they? The answer hinges, in part, on whether they can reconcile themselves to governments imperfectionsor make big government better than it was in the past.

Luke Savage: Why liberals pretend they have no power

The New Deal and Second World War created a kind of managed capitalism in the United States that generated rising wages and strong economic growth. In his influential 1952 book, American Capitalism, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith articulated a liberal conception of countervailing powers held in balance by the regulatory state. Large businesses would check one anothers excesses through competition, and powerful unions would represent the interests of workers. Government would play a crucial role, ensuring that the system did not tilt too far in one direction or the other. Galbraith called this balancing role perhaps the major peacetime function of the federal government.

In this economic system of the 50s, the federal government actively partnered with industries and frequently initiated transformative infrastructure projects. Major hydroelectric-dam construction accelerated in the 40s and 50s, spurred on by agencies such as the Bureau of Reclamation and the Tennessee Valley Authority and following the triumphant completion of Hoover Dam and Grand Coulee Dam. Kaiser, Bechtel, and other leading engineering and construction companies used government dam contracts to expand domestically and overseas. Writing in 1950, the historian and prominent liberal Henry Steele Commager celebrated the Tennessee Valley Authority as the greatest peacetime achievement of twentieth-century America. TVA, Commager said, triumphantly allied science and politics and showed that public intelligence can operate most effectively through government and that government can be more efficient than business.

The federal highway program further accelerated a postwar construction boom, as it established toll-free highways linking major cities. President Dwight Eisenhower declared that highways were an obligation of Government at every level. The highway system is a public enterprise. Labor, capital, and government worked in tandem to fuel the postwar economic boom, remaking the American landscape to manage water, energy, transportation, and housing.

It was against this conjunction of administrative powerthe postwar alliance of big government, big business, and big laborthat best-selling writers such as Rachel Carson and Ralph Nader rose up in full-throated opposition in the early 60s. Excessively close ties between government and industry, Carson argued in her 1962 best seller, Silent Spring, exacerbated a misguided vision of a simplified, pest-free environment. Government campaigns against the gypsy moth and fire ant, Carson wrote, were ill-conceived, badly executed, and thoroughly detrimental. Carsons critique of the quest for biological control attacked the concentrated power of government institutions that too often represented industrys perspective. The fundamental wrong, Carson explained in a 1963 speech, is the authoritarian control that has been vested in the agricultural agencies.

Carsons skepticism about the government adequately representing the public interest echoed through the growing environmental movement over the next decade. People are beginning to ask questions instead of meekly acquiescing, Carson wrote of mounting citizen opposition to pesticide-spray programs. Americans had to wake up to their civic responsibilities and stop trusting the government to act responsibly, she argued. Until very recently, Carson said, the average citizen assumed that someone was looking after these matters and that some little understood but confidently relied upon safeguards stood like shields between his person and any harm. Now he has experienced, from several different directions, a rather rude shattering of these beliefs.

In his 1965 book, Unsafe at Any Speed, Nader, like Carson, blamed the government as well as industry for the problems he identified. The traffic-safety establishment, Nader wrote, was a great power with no challengers. Nader called on active citizensincluding independent, civically active lawyers, engineers, and scientiststo force the government to protect American consumers from dangerous cars and badly designed roads. He urged a bodily rights revolution that would protect American citizens against manifold external threats from industry and government. Automobile accidents were one of the most serious manmade assaults on the human body. Naders safety campaign later extended to his advocacy for clean air, clean water, and safer workplaces, and to his fervent opposition to toxic chemicals and nuclear power.

During the spring and summer of 1966, Nader emerged as a spokesperson and key broker on important new highway-safety legislation. In the closing moments of legislative drafting, Nader sat in one Senate anteroom while Lloyd Cutler, a Democratic lobbyist representing the auto industry, stayed in another. A Senate aide went back and forth between Nader and Cutler as they hammered out the bills final details. The old Democratic Party establishment, with its governmental and business ties, was being forced to negotiate with one of its new liberal critics.

Lessons from Nader: How not to be a bully-coward

Nader and other citizen activists searched for ways to build something larger than individual crusades. They aimed to enlist energetic young researchers and professionals to press government agencies to fulfill their public missions and regulatory roles. The media, the courts, and administrative and legislative processes would be their field of operation. Civil-rights and anti-war movements fueled their belief that the government could not be trusted and needed to be watched over and held accountable. Notable liberal foundations, including Ford and Carnegie, played important roles launching this new public-interest law movement. Fords generous grants, totaling more than $2 million from 1967 to 1972, helped establish the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, and other new law groups with significant environmental portfolios. The new legal defense organizations, as their names suggest, were directly inspired by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Funds landmark civil-rights litigation against government institutions.

Gordon Harrison, the Ford program officer who oversaw the foundations environmental-law grants, viewed government agencies as the primary target. The law firms, Harrison explained, needed to bring suits against government agencies, to oversee the performance of government agencies and take other legal actions to provide the agencies with a broader view of social interests than they normally get. Government, Harrison argued, should not be all-powerful. Society needed a counterforce to government that was not beholden to the government in any way. Fords public-interest grants aimed to create an antagonist of government that would stay clearly within the bounds of the American legal systemin fact becoming an integral part of that system.

These activists outlined a new understanding of political economy that saw both business and government as flawed institutions that needed to be counterbalanced by a third sector consisting of nonprofit and public-interest organizations. Liberals had long emphasized that market failures and inefficiencies justified the governments regulatory role. The new environmental regulations of the early 70s appropriately aimed to remedy classic examples of market failure, such as air and water pollution. But public-interest advocates aimed at a different problem: what some observers called government market failure. As a seminal 1978 study of public-interest law sponsored by the Ford Foundation explained, the public-interest movement assumed both types of failuresthe market and the government. The movements adherents believed that political and economic pressures on the decision-making process caused failures that could be solved only by extra-governmental efforts.

The public-interest movement reconceptualized the policy process. James Moorman, an early innovator in environmental law, described the new situation as a triangular public interest model of governmentone that he considered far better than the earlier regulated vs. regulator model. The triangular model pitted public-interest groups against corporations and others in a contest to direct government policy. In the 1950s, Moorman said, it was assumed that government lawyers were public interest lawyers. But that assumption no longer held, Moorman explained. The public interest existed separately from the government. Citizens who wanted clean air and water, for example, needed lawyers of their own to represent them before the government. During the 70s, policy advocacy and litigation by public-interest groups proliferated across a range of issues, including womens rights, civil rights, mental health, poverty, and criminal justice.

Louis Hyman: The new Deal wasnt what you think

The field of public-interest environmental law that appeared at the close of Lyndon Johnsons presidency thus constituted an attack on federal agencies from within the liberal establishment itself. Environmental lawyers created new independent law firms to hold government true to a public purpose that was going unfulfilled, either because private interests dominated and captured the agencies or because the agencies themselves were isolated and misguided bureaucratic fortresses.

David Sive, a pioneering environmental lawyer active in the Sierra Club who was an early NRDC trustee, described the problem of pervasive bias toward industry on the part of regulatory agencies: The Federal Power Commission is power-oriented, the Atomic Energy Commission is atom-oriented, the Interstate Commerce Commission is railroad-oriented. By embracing the private objectives of the companies that they were meant to regulate, Sive and others argued, federal agencies themselves had become an environmental threat. Citizen groups had to fight not only the developer, which may be a private company, but the very governmental agency which is supposed to regulate that company.

The newfound liberal faith in courts reversed 30s New Deal thinking, when liberals touted independent executive agencies as the solution to major social problems. We must use the courts because administrative agencies are not working properly, Moorman said. When public-interest lawyers boasted of their eagerness to sue the bastards, they referred to lawsuits against government officials and agencies. In one typical early report, 90 percent of the accomplishments cited by the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund sought to block government actions, intervene in public proceedings, or influence government regulatory and permitting practices. The government projects under attack included new highways, bridges, airports, and dams; the dredging of harbors; pest-control efforts, such as DDT-spray campaigns; and water-management plans.

The very success of public-interest law led its elite founders away from a movement-centered approach to social change, which was more time-consuming, harder to control, and unfamiliar. The Environmental Defense Fund argued in an early fundraising pitch that the groups litigation produced results faster than by lobby, ballot box, or protest. Public-interest groups embraced professional expertise and inside-the-Beltway strategies rather than mass protests and political action. Lawyers often could halt proposed development projects, at least temporarily, by intervening in administrative processesfor example, by demanding and then contesting the environmental-impact statements required by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969.

In one early demonstration of these legal superpowers, the Center for Law and Social Policy, a tiny law firm then just a few months old, won a court order in March 1970 that halted construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. At that moment I was so overcome that all the voices and the scene just faded into the distance, Moorman, the lead lawyer on the suit, later recalled of this seductive moment when David defeated Goliath. Ive never had an experience quite like it. Never have I accomplished anything in the practice of law which has had such an emotional impact on me as that injunction did. From a dingy office of only a handful of lawyers in Washingtons Dupont Circle, Moorman had helped stopalbeit temporarilyone of the most costly and ambitious engineering projects in U.S history.

Running for office in the aftermath of the deceptions of Watergate and the Vietnam War, Jimmy Carter promised to take a new broom to Washington and sweep the house of Government clean. As president, Carter sought to incorporate the 1970s public-interest critique of government into a positive vision for government action and reform. Carter placed dozens of public-interest lawyers in important government positions where they could shape the agencies that they had been suing and pressuring. He took to heart the idea that the government might be responsible for wasteful and environmentally destructive projects, and he was willing to spend valuable political capital clashing with powerful congressional Democrats over the construction of big dams. He also shared the view that federal regulation had resulted in cartel-like control of major industries, including the airline sector, telecommunications, and trucking, and he supported the breakup of those arrangements. Many regulatory agencies, Carter said bluntly in 1980, protect monopolies. Carter also sought to introduce more flexible regulatory strategies that could achieve environmental and health-protection goals at lesser economic cost.

Yet Carter ultimately failed to create a new liberalism that could champion federal action while also recognizing governments flaws and limitations. Although public-interest advocates outside the administration sometimes supported aspects of the presidents reform efforts, they more often harshly criticized his administration for its compromises and inadequacies. Attacking the government was what they knew how to do, the role that they had defined for themselves. As Carters term in office proceeded, the public-interest movements support for the Democratic president diminished. In 1979, for instance, Carter reluctantly signed a bill authorizing a controversial dam project despite environmental litigation under the Endangered Species Act. Marion Edey, the director of the League of Conservation Voters, announced that Carter could not feel assured of active support. Edey, a former ally whom Carter had tried unsuccessfully to appoint to the Council on Environmental Quality, now declared, I cannot say we will or will not support the president for re-election. Nader similarly wondered aloud that same year, What more could Ronald Reagan do?

Disappointed liberals flirted first with Ted Kennedys unsuccessful challenge to Carter in the Democratic primary. Kennedys robust effort to push the sitting Democratic president off the ticket, recalled one Carter appointee who had come out of the Nader network, helped strip away the traditional support that the left had, and it left the reelection campaign somewhat without a theme. The public really didnt have anything to hang on to as sort of their reason in wanting to reelect this President. In a rousing speech at the Democratic Convention in Madison Square Garden in August 1980, Kennedy suggested that Carter, the Democratic nominee, was no standard-bearer for liberal values. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, Kennedy proclaimed to great applause. The cause endures. The hope still lives. And the dream shall never die. In a symbolic rejection of the Democratic president, Kennedy took the stage with Carter but refused to join hands in a show of party unity.

Disappointment with the Carter administration also fed a broad critique of both parties and the political establishment. Rather than boost Carters efforts to stay in power, Nader declared in mid-1979 that the two-party system was crumbling and bankrupt, and that the differences between the two major parties were like those between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. A new political party was needed, Nader said. Its time to replace the two-party system with new parties, new spirit, new programs, new constituencies, new optimism. Some liberal critics of Carter embraced the independent candidacy of John Anderson, a Republican who had opposed the Vietnam War and embraced the Equal Rights Amendment, gay rights, and environmental causes. The ecologist Barry Commoner also plunged into a third-party presidential campaign on the new Citizens Party ticket. The third-party campaigns illustrated a disunity on the left that weakened Carters reelection campaign, and they foreshadowed Naders 2000 run undercutting Al Gore 20 years later.

Liberal disarray was hardly the only reason that Carter lost to Reagan in 1980 and that the Republican Party took control of the U.S. Senate for the first time since 1955. High inflation and unemployment and the Iran hostage crisis created stiff headwinds for Carters reelection and for the Democratic Party. The Republican Partys continuing southern strategy on civil rights remade both parties coalitions and further contributed to Carters defeat. But Kennedys primary challenge and Andersons third-party candidacy took their toll. The public-interest critique of government held up those in power against a model of what they might be, rather than what the push and pull of political compromise and struggle allowed. Could liberals and the left build political power and govern? Carters failure to hold together the Democratic coalition and to win reelection suggested that the answer might be no.

Liberals attacked and criticized, and then lost control of both the government and the narrative that surrounded it. Nonprofit, issue-based advocacy had become a potent and permanent force in U.S. politics, but now an emboldened and ever more conservative Republican Party threatened the public-interest movements fight to protect health, safety, and the environment. Reagan also attacked government agencies, but his policy solutions differed radically from the ones touted by liberals and the left. Reagan and other market-oriented conservatives sought to liberate the private sector from regulation. Reagan acted to undermine, rather than invigorate, federal oversight. Instead of seeing a role for citizen activists who were pressing the government to do more and do better, Reagan embraced a simple duality of state versus market. He sided with regulated industries against government regulators, and also against labor unions.

Reagans election thus definitively marked the end of the era of New Deal liberalism, during which Americans had optimistically looked to the federal government for solutions. Focusing solely on Reagans flaying of big government and the growing strength of the conservative movement, however, overlooks exactly how the postWorld War II administrative state lost its footing. Liberal advocates had spent the 60s and 70s amply and harshly documenting the governments problems. Now many public-interest advocates found themselves making a kind of about-face. Their efforts to safeguard the governments regulatory role after Reagans election pushed them to defend the administrative state theyd so recently treated as the problem. In the stark right-left stalemate that ensued, liberals could easily lose sight of their 70s dilemma: How could liberals make a strong case for the government as an essential solution to societal problems while continuing to expose all the ways that government agencies could wield destructive power against citizens, communities, and the environment?

Public-interest advocates showed how both markets and government are inherently limited and flawed. Yet so, too, was the public-interest advocacy that Nader and others helped pioneer. The movements emphasis on purity and its frequent disdain for traditional institutions, including political parties and unions, turned a generation of liberals away from local and state politics, and from the pursuit of the institutional power necessary to make political change. Policy gains reliant on professional expertise and administrative maneuvering failed to inspire a broad and powerful movement that could bridge gaps across class and race. The movements litigation strategies, strikingly successful for the left in the 70s, also were soon adopted by conservative antagonists and stifled by a conservative judiciary. Additionally, citizen-based strategies used to prevent overdevelopment and protect the environment, including such legislative crown jewels as NEPA, have made it difficult to respond to major societal problems by building housing, transportation, and energy infrastructure, such as the electrical grid or offshore wind power. Empowering citizen activism and amplifying citizen voices, seen from another vantage point, also could shift power from broadly representative government bodies to narrow, self-organized groups that protect a particular interest, such as the value of private property.

By primarily playing the role of uncompromising outside critic, the public-interest movement neglected to build support for government in a way that could facilitate policy making in a politically divided nation or that could support internal reforms that might improve government operations. Americans continue to struggle to formulate an approach to governance that acknowledges, and strives to balance, the inherent limitations of government, markets, and citizen action. A half century later, the regulatory accomplishments of the early 70s have provided a legal framework that somewhat constrains U.S. capitalism. The nations air and water are cleaner, and its workplaces are safer. At the same time, government itself is unpopular and often incapable of action that addresses new threats, especially climate change. We need to reinvigorate the government and also continue fighting to improve it and hold it accountable. The struggle to remake liberalism for a new age endures.

Original post:

How Liberals Killed the New Deal - The Atlantic

We all of us, Black, white, poor, rich live in the golden age of voting opportunities. Bearing nothing but proof that you exist (if that), millions of us can vote early, at home, overseas, late at night, on bilingual ballots and without any pre-registration or forethought. None of these niceties are historically mandatory. Im old enough to remember when I had to show up on election day to vote and I a confused and incomeless first-time young biracial voter survived it. Yet, Democrats, corporate America and the media would have us believe that without free meals and outdoor drop boxes (Georgia), or drive-through and overnight voting (Texas), states are disfranchising minorities. The day it was signed into law, at least five lawsuits were filed against Texass voting law. The many lawsuits allege that, because fraud is rare, any attempt by the state to reduce or prevent it must be discriminatory.

The endgame is obvious: Firing up the base and increasing Democratic turnout. (Weird, I dont seeany lawsuitschallenging Wyomings voter ID law. I wonder why?)

These lawsuits are not based on legitimate concerns that election integrity measures might limit voting access. They are about inflaming the racial divide, securing minority votes and securing Democrat control, in what activist lawyers perceive as swing states. And so the litigators target winnable states with lower Black and minority turnout than white turnout Georgia had 68% white vs. 64% Black turnout, and Texas had 65% white vs. 61% Black turnout in the November 2020 election.

Securing more minority votes should be about actually earning more votes by, for example, identifying a problem plaguing our cities and actually solving it. But instead of increasing voter turnout, liberal litigators have chosen to sue to eliminate voting rules that they describe as burdensome. This strategy may well backfire.

For one, the litigators suffer from unmistakable bigotry in their ivory tower. It turns out, you see, that strict voting laws do not depress minority turnout. For proof, lets take Mississippi. Mississippi had a higher percentage of Black voter turnout than white voter turnout in 2020. But Mississippi also has one of the most restrictive voting laws in the country: No early voting, no online registration, no same-day registration, and IDs are mandatory. If youre surprised, consider why.

To say out loud that minority voters are unable to secure identification or need someone to collect their ballots or provide them food while they wait in line to vote has the abject tinge of racial stereotyping and low expectations. As I can attest, minorities are fully capable of slightly burdening themselves (leaving the house to vote on a Saturday rather than a Sunday) for something that they feel is worth it.

Its no doubt true that minorities in America are disproportionately poor and have suffered historical discrimination. These are facts. But were not talking about great-great-great-grandfather clauses, poll taxes or terrorist groups blockading the polls. Were talking about Texass law that allows voting until 10 p.m., but not overnight.

This need to claim that minorities are disproportionately unable to vote on account of election integrity laws overshadows an underlying reality. Todays octogenarian liberal ruling class does not have a slate of passion-inspiring policies to drive Democrat voters to the polls organically. A 2019 survey showed beating Trump as the top motivator for Black voters. That worked for 2020, but what now? Affordable housing, affordable college and affordable healthcare all rank as top issues, but they tend not to draw the passion of Republican focal points like the Second Amendment, pro-life policies or terrorism and safe communities. A Democrat candidate can promise more free government programs until the cows come home, but color me unsurprised if his rally turnout is low.

May Davis is a visiting fellow at Independent Womens Forum and a former legal adviser to President Donald J. Trump. This column provided by InsideSources.

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Davis: Soft bigotry of liberal election lawyers will backfire - Boston Herald

John Elliott, the controversial Australian businessman and former federal president of the Liberal party, has died aged 79.

Elliott was also president of the Carlton football club for two decades before being sacked in 2002 after the club breached salary cap rules.

He was federal president of the Liberal party in the late 1980s. He tried to stage a political comeback in 2012 by running for Melbourne city council.

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Elliotts son, broadcaster Tom Elliott, confirmed the death.

Sadly, my father, John Elliott, died just a couple of hours ago, he told 3AW radio in Melbourne on Thursday night.

He had been ill for a few weeks. He had a bad fall a little while back and had been at the Epworth hospital at Richmond. We got the very sad news this afternoon that he had taken his last breath.

The current federal treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, on Thursday night tweeted: Very sad to learn of the passing of former Liberal Party & @CarltonFC President John Elliott. He was a proud Victorian and a larger than life figure.

Elliott quit Elders IXL, the former jam company he turned into Australias biggest brewery, in May 1990. Earlier that year, the National Crime Authority had started investigating the management buyout of Elders.

When it finally came to nothing, Elliott launched an unsuccessful damages action.

He later moved into rice milling through Water Wheel Holdings, which collapsed in 2000. In 2003, the Victorian supreme court ordered him to pay $1.4m in compensation after finding hed allowed the company to trade while insolvent.

Thank you for your feedback.

Elliott declared himself bankrupt in 2005. After the bankruptcy was lifted, he maintained a public profile, including with speaking engagements.

- additional reporting Australian Associated Press

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Former Liberal party president and Carlton boss John Elliott dies aged 79 - The Guardian Australia

After one of the tightest races in the country,Taleeb Noormohamed has won the seat for the Liberal Party in the Vancouver Granville riding.

Projections for the riding had the NDP, Liberal and Conservative candidates in a near three-way tieover the past two weeks.As polls were counted, Noormohamed and NDP candidate Anjali Appadurai were at times just one or two votes apart.

Thirteen ridings in Canada were considered too close to call on election night, as Election Canada continued ballot counts through Tuesday and Wednesday.

Noormohamed was elected with 17,055 votes. Appaduraireceived 16,619, and Conservative candidate Kailin Che finished with 13,290.

The riding's last MP was Jody Wilson-Raybould, who won the seat as a Liberal in 2015 but was expelled from the Liberal caucus in the House of Commons in 2018 and stripped of the Liberal Party nomination for the 2019 election, following the SNC Lavalin affair. She won the seat for Vancouver Granville in 2019 as an Independent, beating Noormohamed, who took over as Liberal candidate for the riding in 2018.

She announced she would not be seeking re-election in July of this year.

Gabe Garfinkel, the B.C. campaign co-chair of the Liberal Party of Canada, said the win was part of the strong mandate British Columbianshad given to Justin Trudeau and the Liberals.

"Our entire team of Liberal MPs from the west coast will work to ensure that B.C. voices are at the heart of our work to build a better future for all Canadians," Garfinkel said in a statement.

Noormohamed served as a senior official in the federal government from 2002 to 2007. He thenwent on to work as an advisor to Bob Rae.

He was alsopart of the organizing committee for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

He eventuallyreturned to work in the tech sector, andheis currently the Chief Executive Officer foronline boutiquemarketplace Jane.

Noormohamed was criticized during the campaign for his real estate ventures he has flipped more than 20 properties after less than a year of ownership since 2005, which has raised questions about his commitment to the Liberal platform on housing.

According to B.C. assessment records, Noormohamed has sold 41 properties since 2005, making $4.9 million in the process.

The Liberal Party platform on housing proposes an "anti-flipping tax" on residential properties, requiring that such properties be held for at least a year. That would mean 21 properties Noormohamed sold would have been subject to the proposed tax.

Continued here:

Liberals win Vancouver Granville after one of the tightest races in the country - CBC.ca

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau waves following his victory speech at campaign headquarters in Montreal on Sept. 21, 2021.

Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press

The Liberals have a carefully crafted plan to slowly pare Ottawas relative debt burden over the next five years, even as they spend tens of billions of dollars to fulfill campaign promises.

The party laid out detailed costing during the campaign that would see it add tens of billions in revenue and spend even more, but still keep the growth in the net federal debt slightly lower than the growth in gross domestic product. That would allow the Liberals to hold to their fiscal anchor of gradually reducing the ratio of net federal debt to GDP.

But that plan is about to crash into the reality of minority government, as both the NDP and Bloc Qubcois push for enormously expensive measures that would send the deficit skyrocketing, and set the federal debt burden on an upward march.

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Beyond the cost of buying support in the Commons, the Liberal plan is built on less-than-concrete assumptions about new sources of revenue, beyond those forecast in the pre-election baseline scenario from the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

Federal debt is manageable with GDP growth, Poloz says

Federal budget debt burden projections rely on rosy assumptions

The biggest source of new revenue is also the most uncertain: billions of dollars a year to be reaped from tax dodgers. But the PBO has already flagged its concerns that the Canada Revenue Agency may not be as successful as it has been in the past in being able to use new funding to crack down on tax avoidance.

Also uncertain are the billions of dollars forecast to come from what the Liberals call a Canada Recovery Dividend. It would be a temporary tax on banks and financial institutions, distinct from a separate 3-per-cent levy on profits above $1-billion for the largest banks and financial institutions. But the Liberals have yet to say how it would be structured, beyond a broad statement that they would consult with the Superintendent of Financial Institutions.

Together, those two tax measures are projected to raise $17.4-billion over the next four years, more than two-thirds of the new revenue appearing in the Liberals campaign platform.

But those projections are uncertain enough that some economists are already discounting how much tax revenue the two measures will actually end up generating. Both of these are questionable to a degree, said Stephen Brown, senior Canada economist for Capital Economics.

He has adjusted his own model to reduce by half the amount of revenue coming from the CRA crackdown and the Canada Recovery Dividend. That results in higher deficits, and a small rise in the ratio of net debt to GDP, in part because he is forecasting weaker economic growth than the PBO. Even so, the Liberals would not be straying too far from their promised fiscal anchor of a declining debt burden.

But the spending demands from the smaller opposition parties would exact a much higher fiscal toll, and likely result in the government breaking its pledge of a falling debt burden, relative to the economy.

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The most costly by far is the Blocs demand for steep increases in the Canada Health Transfer, the cash that Ottawa pays each year to the provinces and territories. In a postelection news conference on Tuesday, Bloc Leader Yves-Franois Blanchet told reporters that health care funding is the most pressing issue in the country.

The Bloc wants the federal government to agree to the demand from the premiers for an immediate increase of $28-billion in the CHT, nearly a two-thirds increase to the $43.1-billion currently budgeted for fiscal 2022. In addition, the Bloc wants to see those transfers increase by at least 6 per cent a year, up from the current floor of 3 per cent. (During the campaign, the Liberals proposed increased targeted spending on health care, but the price tag of those proposals is far smaller.)

Together, the two measures that the Bloc is pushing for would send the cost of federal health transfers skyrocketing over the next four years, as the chart below shows. The CHT would hit $90-billion in fiscal 2026, a 75-per-cent increase from the $51.7-billion cost projected by the PBO last month.

If the Liberals acceded to that demand, the deficit in fiscal 2026 would more than double from the $32-billion that the partys campaign costing forecasts, rising instead beyond $70-billion. And that scenario would see the ratio of net debt to GDP rising over the next four years.

For its part, the NDP campaigned on targeted health care spending that would fund specific priorities, most notably a pharmacare program that would ramp up to an annual cost of $11.4-billion by fiscal 2026. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh told reporters on Tuesday that he wanted to work with the Liberal government on implementing pharmacare.

The Bloc says it will also push for recent increases in Old Age Security benefits to apply to all seniors, not just those over 75. Extending those benefits would cost $1.6-billion in the next fiscal year, and at least $6.6-billion a year after that.

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Rebekah Young, director of fiscal and provincial economics at Bank of Nova Scotia, said she believes the Liberals will ultimately resist pressure to significantly add to their spending plans, adding she does not see the net-debt-to-GDP ratio changing much from the partys projections.

The Liberals have shown a strong resistance to increasing unconditional health transfers, Ms. Young said. As for pharmacare, the Liberals may well keep that as a program to promise in the next election, she said.

But Ms. Young said the Liberals have demonstrated a willingness to spend any fiscal windfall that arrives from stronger-than-expected economic growth, allowing them both to launch new programs and adhere to their fiscal anchor.

Long-term interest rates are also running slightly below the forecasts of both the April budget and the PBO election baseline, potentially reducing debt servicing costs in coming years.

And the Liberals cost projections from the campaign include $15-billion in contingencies, nominally for costs created by the coronavirus. But if those costs do not arise, the Liberal government would have substantial funds to spend without fouling its fiscal anchor.

Tax and Spend examines the intricacies and oddities of taxation and government spending.

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Liberal Party's plan to cut federal debt burden may clash with NDP, Bloc support in a minority government - The Globe and Mail

Almost two days after the federal election, the Quebec riding of Trois-Rivires has finally declared a winner.

Bloc Qubcois candidate Ren Villemurefinished 93 votesahead of Conservative Yves Lvesque in Trois-Rivires as the counting endedWednesday afternoon.

Trois-Rivires has generallyvoted Bloc since 1993, but got caught up in the so-called NDP "orange wave"of 2011 and continued to support the New Democratic Party in 2015. Louise Charbonneau won the seat back for the Bloc in 2019 butopted out of running againthis election.

The Bloc win inChteauguayLacollehas been confirmed, according to Elections Canada. With all the ballots tallied,Patrick O'Hara beat theLiberal incumbent Brenda Shanahanby 606 votes.

In Longueuil-Saint-Hubert, it was announced late Wednesday that theBloc's Denis Trudel beatLiberal Florence Gagnon.

That gives the Bloc 33 seats in the House of Commons.

In the riding of Brome-Mississquoi, the counting continued until a winner was announced Thursday evening.

Liberal candidate Pascale St-Ongewon with 186 votes more than Bloc QubcoiscandidateMarilou Alarie.

So, what's taking so long? Elections Canada says there were still 850,000 postal votes uncounted after Monday night Canada-wide.

The agency expects the results to be tallied by the end of Wednesday but it haswarned that some ridings may have to wait until Friday for a winner.

In some constituencies, verifying mail-in ballots took all day Tuesday, before counting could start, a spokesman for Elections Canada said.

Mail ballots have to be carefully checked to ensure they have been signed and that people have not already voted in person, or sent in more than one ballot by post.

Matthew McKenna, a spokesman for Elections Canada, said verifying huge numbers of ballots delayed counting in some areas.

"The counting of local ballots will take place throughout the day local offices also had to do verifications of special ballots, and for many, that took all day yesterday, and may still be going,'' he said Wednesday.

"We do expect the vast majority to be counted by the end of the day.''

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Bloc Qubcois wins one tight race, Liberals take another - CBC.ca

Media top headlines September 23

In media news today, 'The View' co-host Joy Behar claims Hillary Clinton was the 'real victim' of the Monica Lewinsky affair, Trump sues The New York Times and Mary Trump for 100 million dollars, and the ACLU gets pummeled for altering a Ruth Bader Ginsburg abortion quote

The recent developments in the investigation spearheaded by Special Counsel John Durham is already a distant memory to the liberal networks after they spent years hyping the Russia investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Democratic attorney Michael Sussmann was charged with lying to the FBI over allegedly not disclosing his ties to the Hillary Clinton campaign after pushing for an investigation into then-candidate Donald Trump's ties to Russia in 2016, specifically over a server connection between the Trump Organization and a Russian bank.

This marked the second indictment to come from the Durham probe that is looking into the origins of the Russia investigation. Trump-era Attorney General William Barr appointed Durham to investigate where the Trump-Russia collusion narrative came from in April 2019.

The coverage the Sussmann indictment received was fairly minimal across the five TV networks.

MSNBC'S RACHEL MADDOW MINIMIZES DURHAM PROBE INDICTMENT TIED TO FAKE TRUMP-RUSSIA STORY SHE PROMOTED

CBS and NBC offered zero coverage to the controversy last week while ABC addressed it once for roughly 70 seconds on "World News Tonight."

Meanwhile, CNN and MSNBC, the two cable networks that drove the Russian collusion narrative throughout the Trump presidency, minimized their coverage of the Durham probe.

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, who became a liberal icon in the Trump era for her unrepentant airtime discussing all things Russia, mocked the "outlandish" suggestion the Alfa Bank story was "fabricated" and a "product of a conspiracy theory orchestrated by the Clinton campaign and the Democrats and the Deep State to frame Donald Trump," something the bank has since alleged in defamation lawsuits.

RUSSIAGATE MEDIA CRITICS REACT TO SUSSMANN INDICTMENT: REGURGITATION OF COLLUSION CLAIMS DISCREDITS INDUSTRY

"And the Trump Justice Department appears to have sort of run with that," Maddow smirked on the eve of the indictment.

Maddow's primetime colleagues, Chris Hayes and Lawrence O'Donnell, skipped the subject entirely while CNN's Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon each addressed it once, according to Grabien transcripts.

Both MSNBC and CNN have already moved on. MSNBC's last mention of the Durham probe was Friday while CNN's most recent mention was on Sunday when "Reliable Sources" host Brian Stelter, CNN's left-wing media guru, attempted to downplay Durham's findings, calling the investigation a "total bust" despite how it is still ongoing.

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In the past week, only five individual programs on MSNBC mentioned the investigation while eight addressed the subject on CNN, a far cry from the wall-to-wall coverage every development in the Russia probe received.

Read more from the original source:

Liberal networks already move on from Durham probe following wall-to-wall coverage of Russia investigation - Fox News

While many may be tempted to characterize the Liberals' repeat minority government a "loss", the future could be positive, if they can rally support in parliament.

"The Liberals have to be breathing at least a sigh of relief," Dr. Stewart Prest, political science lecturer at Simon Fraser University, told Yahoo News Canada. "They avoided the worst case outcome, it seems like it was quite possible that they would actually lose control of the legislature, the way things were going the middle of the campaign."

"I don't think Id characterize it as a total loss but it's certainly a disappointment, given where it seemed like the party was positioned at the start of the campaign."

The Liberal Party looked quite strong at the beginning of the election campaign, but as time progressed, the party was statistically tied in the polls with the Conservatives, up until the eve of the election.

"Its possible that they are, in their current incarnation, somewhat limited," Prest explained. "It seems like they are going to either have to rethink the way that they are presenting themselves to Canadians or they're going to have to get used to, perhaps, being the leading party in a divided parliament."

"That can mean working with the NDP on a regular basis and resigning themselves to the fact that it's going to be a minority, more often than not, or they're going to have to go back to the drawing board and that,...at some point down the road, may mean a change in leadership. I don't think that will be the immediate conversation."

Conservative Party leader Erin OToole waves as he speaks to supporters at the Conservatives Election Night Party in Oshawa, Ontario on September 21, 2021. - Canadians returned Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to power on September 20 in hotly contested elections against rookie conservative leader Erin O'Toole, according to projections by television networks. (Photo by Geoff Robins / AFP) (Photo by GEOFF ROBINS/AFP via Getty Images)

Looking to the Conservatives, who once again won the popular vote over the Liberals, it seems the party is split. They are "being pulled in two different directions," Prest states, between Erin O'Toole's more moderate conservatism and more "true blue" or principled Conservatives, closer to the leaning of the People's Party of Canada (PPC).

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"It's clear the People's Party, as they are constituted, are not going to win any seats, but they are able to pull some votes in some important ridings away from the Conservatives, when even a few can make a difference," Prest identified. "I think it's a safe assumption that a good number of them would have gone to the Conservatives if the PPC wasn't there."

"The choice is not an easy one for the Conservatives because it seems like they were able to make some modest inroads into some of the Liberal support... But they have this problem that a move in either direction means a loss in another, so it's not an easy problem to resolve."

The New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jagmeet Singh, saves after talking to media once votes were counted in Canada's 44th general election in. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, September 20, 2021. - Canadians returned Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to power on September 20 in hotly contested elections against a rookie conservative leader, but he failed to gain an absolute majority, according to projections by television networks. (Photo by Don MacKinnon / AFP) (Photo by DON MACKINNON/AFP via Getty Images)

The NDP were able to see some growth in support in this election, but looking to the future, they will need to look at their strategy.

"It may continue to evolve in incremental ways, in the same sort of way, appealing to younger voters," Prest said.

"Or do they need to also find something of a change in message to try to broaden the appeal to some voters who continue to gravitate towards the Liberals, even if they are getting somewhat tired of the Trudeau brand and Trudeau incarnation of the party."

In terms of leadership, Jagmeet Singh is quite a liked leader, both with Canadians and within his own party, so Prest expects, at this point at least, that he will remain the leader of the NDP.

"I would be quite surprised if we started to hear challenges to his leadership, given that the party has quite effectively unified behind him as leader," Prest said.

"It seems more likely that the party may go back and under his leadership, try to find different ways to present their party and their message, and perhaps providing additional detail about some of the policies they are presenting. They're presented in a fairly abstract way without a lot of detail and perhaps they can find ways to assure Canadians of just what some of those alternatives and programs would look like, more concretely, and that kind of strategy may help them out."

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After Canada's election: Liberal win isn't a 'total loss', Conservatives need to keep eye on People's Party stealing votes, expert says - Yahoo News