Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
Politics Core
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
File Notes
General Stuff
This file is organized into aff and neg sections for the comprehensive immigration reform
politics scenario and aff and neg sections for politics link material relevant to the topic. You
should choose one link card from the neg link section to put in the 1NC shell before each
debate. The 1NC shell includes a U.S.-India relations impact, but you may want to
substitute it for another scenario depending on the aff you’re hitting.
Political Capital
Political capital (“PC” or simply “capital”) refers to the ability of President Obama to
influence members of Congress to vote for his agenda, in this case comprehensive
immigration reform (CIR) legislation. The argument forwarded by the negative is that
Obama has a finite amount of capital, thus he must choose where he will invest that capital.
He is currently choosing to invest it in an effort to pass CIR legislation. The affirmative’s
plan forces Obama to spend PC in order to persuade members of Congress who might
oppose said plan to vote for it. As a result, the negative argues, Obama will not have
enough capital to also overcome opposition to the CIR bill. In this way, the plan prevents
CIR from passing through Congress.
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NEG – Immigration DA
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1NC Shell
Momentum for CIR passage now, but some GOP opposition remains
Bolton 5/10 – The Hill (Alexander, “Immigration bill gains momentum,” http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/298933-gang-of-eightclaims-it-has-met-gop-demands-to-improve-immigration-bill)
The Senate’s Gang of Eight fended off a slew of poison-pill amendments aimed at the
immigration reform bill, building momentum for the legislation that has sparked strong
opposition from conservatives. Members of the gang touted the passage of a group of GOP-sponsored amendments they said had
strengthened the bill and would help address the concerns of conservatives. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted down GOP-sponsored
amendments to delay putting 11 million illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship and to dramatically increase the number of Border Patrol
agents and surveillance vehicles. The bill’s sponsors also dodged an effort from the left by Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) to halt Homeland Security
Secretary Janet Napolitano from deporting illegal immigrants to unsafe areas. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), the bill’s lead sponsor, argued that
Coons’s proposal was so broad that it could stop almost all deportations to Mexico, where more than 12,000 people died in drug-related violence
last year. The
members of the Gang of Eight on the Judiciary panel, Schumer and Sens. Dick Durbin
(D-Ill.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), hung together to knock down
amendments that could undermine bipartisan support for the bill. They also picked up support at
times from two other Republicans on the panel, Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and John Cornyn (R-Texas). Schumer
said he was encouraged by support from Republicans during the hearing and predicted it would
grow. “On occasional votes, we went beyond just the members of the Gang of Eight who voted for certain things,” Schumer told reporters. “In
the overall tone, I get the sense that even those on the other side of the aisle would like to be able to support something, many of them beyond just
Jeff Flake and Lindsey Graham.”
[Insert link]
Capital’s key to comprehensive legislation – breaking it up kills the bill
Helderman and Nakamura 13, Rosalind S. Helderman covers Congress and politics for the Washington Post, staff writer for
The Washington Post “Senators nearing agreement on broad immigration reform proposal,” 1/25,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senators-nearing-agreement-on-broad-immigration-reform-proposal/2013/01/25/950fb78a-6642-11e29e1b-07db1d2ccd5b_story.html
But obstacles abound. For instance, Rubio has said he thinks immigrants who came to the country illegally should be able to earn a work
permit but should be required to seek citizenship through existing avenues after those who have come here legally. Many Democrats and
immigration advocates fear Rubio’s approach would result in wait-times stretching for decades, creating a class of permanent legal residents for
whom the benefits of citizenship appear unattainable. They have pushed to create new pathways to citizenship specifically available to those who
achieve legal residency as part of a reform effort. It is not yet clear whether the Senate group will endorse a mechanism allowing such people to
eventually become citizens — something Obama is expected to champion. Schumer said it would be “relatively detailed” but would not “get
down into the weeds.” A source close to Rubio said he joined the group in December at the request of other members only after they agreed their
effort would line up with his own principles for reform. As a possible 2016 presidential contender widely trusted on the right, Rubio could be key
to moving the bipartisan effort. Rubio and other Republicans have said they would prefer to split up a comprehensive immigration proposal into
smaller bills that would be voted on separately, but the White House will pursue comprehensive legislation that seeks to reform the process in a
single bill. “I doubt if there will be a macro, comprehensive bill,” said Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), who supported the 2007 effort. “Anytime a
bill’s more than 500 pages, people start getting suspicious. If it’s 2,000 pages, they go berserk.” But Schumer said Friday that
a single
package will be key for passage . “We’ll not get it done in pieces,” he said. “Every time you do a piece,
everyone says what about my piece, and you get more people opposing it.” Eliseo Medina, secretary
treasurer of the Service Employees International Union, which spent millions recruiting Hispanic voters last year, said immigration advocates
expect Obama to be out front on the issue . “ The president needs to lead
and then the Republicans
have a choice,” Medina said. “The best way to share the credit is for them to step up and engage and act together with the president.”
Immigration reform expands skilled labor – key to relations with India
Los Angeles Times, 11/9/2012 (Other countries eagerly await U.S. immigration reform, p.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/11/us-immigration-reform-eagerly-awaited-by-source-countries.html)
immigration reform will see expansion of skilled labor visas ," predicted B.
Lindsay Lowell, director of policy studies for the Institute for the Study of International Migration
"Comprehensive
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at Georgetown University. A former research chief for the congressionally appointed Commission on Immigration Reform,
Lowell said he expects to see at least a fivefold increase in the number of highly skilled labor
visas that would provide "a significant shot in the arm for India and China ." There is
widespread consensus among economists and academics that skilled migration fosters
new trade and business relationships between countries and enhances links to the global
economy , Lowell said. "Countries like India and China weigh the opportunities of business
abroad from their expats with the possibility of brain drain, and I think they still see the immigration opportunity as a
bigger plus than not ," he said.
U.S.-India relations solve South Asian nuclear war
Schaffer, Spring 2002 (Teresita – Director of the South Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Security, Washington
Quarterly, p. Lexis)
Washington's increased interest in India since the late 1990s reflects India's economic expansion and
position as Asia's newest rising power. New Delhi, for its part, is adjusting to the end of the Cold War. As a result, both
giant democracies see that they can benefit by closer cooperation . For Washington, the
advantages include a wider network of friends in Asia at a time when the region is changing rapidly, as well as a
stronger position from which to help calm possible future nuclear tensions in the region .
Enhanced trade and investment benefit both countries and are a prerequisite for improved U.S.
relations with India . For India, the country's ambition to assume a stronger leadership role in the world and to maintain an
economy that lifts its people out of poverty depends critically on good relations with the United States.
Extinction
Hundley 12 (Tom Hundley is senior editor at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. This article for Foreign Policy is part of the Pulitzer
Center's Gateway project on nuclear security. Race to the End http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/05/race_to_the_end?page=0,3)
The arms race could make a loose nuke more likely . After all, Pakistan's assurances that its nuclear
arsenal is safe and secure rest heavily on the argument that its warheads and their delivery
systems have been uncoupled and stored separately in heavily guarded facilities. It would be very
difficult for a group of mutinous officers to assemble the necessary protocols for a launch and well nigh
impossible for a band of terrorists to do so. But that calculus changes with the deployment of
mobile battlefield weapons . The weapons themselves, no longer stored in heavily guarded bunkers, would be far more
exposed. Nevertheless, military analysts from both countries still say that a nuclear exchange triggered by
miscalculation, miscommunication, or panic is far more likely than terrorists stealing a weapon -- and,
significantly, that the odds of such an exchange increase with the deployment of battlefield
nukes. As these ready-to-use weapons are maneuvered closer to enemy lines, the chain of command and control would
be stretched and more authority necessarily delegated to field officers. And, if they have weapons designed to
repel a conventional attack, there is obviously a reasonable chance they will use them for that purpose. " It lowers the threshold ,"
said Hoodbhoy. "The idea that tactical nukes could be used against Indian tanks on Pakistan's territory creates the kind of atmosphere that greatly
shortens the distance to apocalypse." Both
sides speak of the possibility of a limited nuclear war. But even those
who speak in these terms seem to understand that this is fantasy -- that once started, a nuclear exchange
would be almost impossible to limit or contain. "The only move that you have control over is your first move; you
have no control over the nth move in a nuclear exchange," said Carnegie's Tellis. The first launch would
create hysteria; communication lines would break down, and events would rapidly cascade out of
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control. Some of the world's most densely populated cities could find themselves under nuclear
attack, and an estimated 20 million people could die almost immediately . What's more, the
resulting firestorms would put 5 million to 7 million metric tons of smoke into the upper
atmosphere , according to a new model developed by climate scientists at Rutgers University and the University of Colorado. Within
weeks, skies around the world would be permanently overcast, and the condition vividly described by Carl Sagan
as " nuclear winter" would be upon us . The darkness would likely last about a decade. The
Earth's temperature would drop, agriculture around the globe would collapse, and a billion or
more humans who already live on the margins of subsistence could starve. This is the real
nuclear threat that is festering in South Asia . It is a threat to all countries, including the
United States, not just India and Pakistan. Both sides acknowledge it, but neither seems able to
slow their dangerous race to annihilation .
Earliest Bird 2013
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Uniqueness
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AT: Amendment Process
Amendment process means CIR passage is likely, but opposition still needs to be swayed
Gomez 5/9 – USA Today (Alan, “Big test for immigration bill brings hope to backers,”
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/05/09/immigration-amendments-gang-of-eight/2147119/)
WASHINGTON — Senators
who back a sweeping immigration law said Thursday they were heartened
by the first big test of the proposal in which members of both parties were allowed to make
changes to the bill. The Democratic-led Senate Judiciary Committee adopted eight amendments
offered by Republicans and 13 from Democrats. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said some of the
Republican amendments have helped strengthen the bill and should encourage more GOP
members of Congress to consider voting for it. "We all know this is going to be a long, hard
road but we're off to a good start ," Schumer said. "I think our arguments are holding firm."
Earliest Bird 2013
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AT: Border Security
Border security has been resolved – gives the Dems leverage
Scotto 5/9 (Michael, “DC Lawmakers Begin Debate Over Immigration Bill Amendments,”
http://www.ny1.com/content/politics/political_news/181801/dc-lawmakers-begin-debate-over-immigration-bill-amendments)
During a marathon hearing Thursday, U.S. senators began the politically heated process of
making amendments to a landmark bill that would reform the nation's immigration laws. "We are
open to changes, but don't make an effort to kill a bill that is the best hope for immigration reform, I believe, that we've had in this country," said
Sen. Charles Schumer. At
issue was illegal immigration, along with attempts by Republicans to impose
even tougher border security measures than those currently in the bill. "I understand that we've made a
significant investment at the border. That's been very important, and I acknowledge that," said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. "But it still leaks."
Democrats, along with a couple of Republicans, were able to stop the GOP from pushing through
some stricter provisions. One would have required the Department of Homeland Security to prove that it had established control over
the entire border with Mexico for six months before allowing immigrants living in the country without legal permission to begin the legalization
process. "This amendment would set a standard that would basically delay, probably forever, any legalization in bringing people out of the
shadows," Schumer said. Democrats
did agree to an amendment that would set up stricter border security
standards before the government could begin issuing green cards to immigrants already living in
the country without legal permission. "I think this improves it and increases our
flexibility ," Schumer said.
Earliest Bird 2013
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Internal Link
Earliest Bird 2013
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PC Key
Empirics prove capital’s key to CIR
Brownstein 13 [Ronald, Editorial Director, 02/04, "Bush's immigration failure offers Obama a lesson" National Journal -www.nationaljournal.com/thenextamerica/immigration/bush-s-immigration-failure-offers-obama-a-lesson-20130204]
Already many of the same dynamics are developing, with President Obama
stamping immigration reform as a top
priority , a bipartisan Senate coalition reassembling, a broad outside alliance of support groups
coalescing—and most House Republicans rejecting anything that hints at “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. Yet the contrasts
between now and 2006, particularly in the political climate, are also significant. Understanding
both the similarities and the differences will be critical for reform advocates if they are to avoid
replicating the disappointment they suffered under Bush.¶ Presidential interest was then, as it is now,
critical in elevating immigration reform . Since his days as Texas governor, Bush had courted Hispanics,
and—even during the 2000 GOP presidential primary campaign—he strikingly defended illegal immigrants as “moms and dads” trying to make
a better life for their children. Together with his political “architect,” Karl Rove, Bush saw comprehensive reform that coupled a
path to citizenship with tougher enforcement as an opportunity to consolidate the beachhead that allowed him to capture
more than 40 percent of Hispanic voters in his 2004 reelection.¶ But Bush largely looked away when Republicans who
controlled the House channeled that impulse in a very different direction. In December 2005, they passed an
enforcement-only bill drafted by Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, that, for the first time, designated all
undocumented immigrants as felons. (Previously, illegal presence in the U.S. had been a civil, not criminal, violation.) ¶ Initially, debate
in
the GOP-controlled Senate drifted. Majority Leader Bill Frist, considering a 2008 presidential bid, pushed his own enforcementonly bill. But amid the backdrop of huge public rallies against Sensenbrenner’s proposal, Sen. Arlen Specter unexpectedly joined with three other
Republicans and all eight Judiciary Committee Democrats in late March to approve a comprehensive plan, including a path to citizenship, that
followed a blueprint negotiated by Sens. Edward Kennedy and John McCain. ¶ When broader Senate agreement teetered over the terms of
legalization, Republican Sens. Chuck Hagel and Mel Martinez devised a compromise that divided illegal immigrants into three categories,
requiring those here less than two years to leave but allowing those with deeper roots to eventually earn citizenship by paying fines and learning
English. After Bush finally delivered a national address on immigration, a bill embodying that plan cleared the Senate with 62 votes, including
support from 23 Republicans.¶ House Republicans immediately signaled their disinterest by refusing to appoint a conference committee and
instead scheduled hearings in border communities to highlight security lapses. “Border security reigned supreme,” recalls Ron Bonjean, the
communications director for then-Speaker Dennis Hastert. “I remember being in a meeting with … the leadership where pollsters came in and
said border security was the key to our reelection.Ӧ Even in 2006, something like the Senate plan likely could have attracted 218 votes in the
House—but not a majority of Republicans. Faced
with a collision between his two political imperatives—
courting Hispanics and mobilizing conservatives—Bush blinked, allowing House leaders to
replace the Senate bill with enforcement-only legislation, which he signed that fall. These choices began the GOP’s
slide among Hispanics that continues unabated: Hispanic support for Republican House candidates plummeted from 44 percent in 2004 to just 29
percent in 2006, presaging Mitt Romney’s disastrous 27 percent showing among those voters in 2012. ¶ That
slippage is one of the
two most important differences in the political environment around immigration between 2006
and today. Back then, as Bonjean notes, hardly any House Republicans argued that the GOP needed to pass a plan attractive to minorities.
But many GOP leaders now see that as self-preservation. “The political imperative has shifted the tectonic plates,”
says Frank Sharry, a key player in the 2006 debate who remains central as executive director of America’s Voice, which backs full citizenship for
immigrants. “Immigration was viewed as a wedge issue for Republicans in 2006. Now it’s viewed as a wedge issue for Democrats.”¶ The “Gang
of Eight” proposal released this week makes it likely that, as in 2006, the
Senate will eventually pass a bipartisan
immigration bill. Once again, there are probably 218 House votes for such a plan, but not a majority
of the majority Republicans. That raises another key difference from 2006: Hastert faced little pressure to
consider the Senate bill, because Bush bit his tongue when the speaker buried it. If House
Republicans shelve another bipartisan Senate plan in 2013, they should expect much more public
heat, because Obama won’t be as deferential.
Reform will only pass if Obama uses capital
Des Moines Register 1-22-13
www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20130122/OPINION03/301220049/0/NEWS/?odyssey=nav%7Chead&nclick_check=1
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Taken as an agenda for his second term, Monday’s
change, gay rights, voting rights and safe schools.
inaugural address included references to immigration, climate
Achieving those things will require the president
mounting his bully pulpit to put heat on Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform,
protections for the rights of gays and lesbians, gun control, environmental regulation and expansion of renewable forms of energy.¶ President
Obama again demonstrated his gift of oratory on Monday. He delivered a well-crafted inaugural address with inspiring themes woven throughout
and a call to action for our generation to achieve the ideals of previous generations. ¶ But Obama should have learned in his first term that
it is not enough to state lofty goals in great speeches. It takes hard work, perseverance and
tough-mindedness to deal with members of Congress who may not want him to succeed.
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Aging Crisis Impact
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1NC
Reform contains the aging crisis
Nye 12 [Joseph, former US assistant secretary of defense and chairman of the US National Intelligence Council, 12/10/12, Immigration and
American Power, www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/obama-needs-immigration-reform-to-maintain-america-s-strength-by-joseph-s--nye]
immigration strengthens US power .
It is estimated that at least 83 countries and territories currently have fertility rates that are below the level needed
to keep their population constant. Whereas most developed countries will experience a shortage
of people as the century progresses, America is one of the few that may avoid demographic decline
and maintain its share of world population.¶ For example, to maintain its current population size, Japan would have to accept
While too rapid a rate of immigration can cause social problems, over the long term,
350,000 newcomers annually for the next 50 years, which is difficult for a culture that has historically been hostile to immigration. In contrast,
the Census Bureau projects that the US population will grow by 49% over the next four decades. ¶ Today, the US is the world’s third most
populous country; 50 years from now it is still likely to be third (after only China and India).
This is highly relevant to
economic power : whereas nearly all other developed countries will face a growing burden of
providing for the older generation, immigration could help to attenuate the policy problem for the
US.¶ In addition, though studies suggest that the short-term economic benefits of immigration are relatively small, and that unskilled workers
may suffer from competition, skilled immigrants can be important to particular sectors – and to long-term growth.
There is a strong correlation between the number of visas for skilled applicants and patents filed in the US.
At the beginning of this century, Chinese- and Indian-born engineers were running one-quarter of Silicon
Valley’s technology businesses, which accounted for $17.8 billion in sales; and, in 2005, immigrants had helped to
start one-quarter of all US technology start-ups during the previous decade. Immigrants or children of immigrants founded
roughly 40% of the 2010 Fortune 500 companies.¶ Equally important are immigration’s benefits for
America’s soft power . The fact that people want to come to the US enhances its appeal, and
immigrants’ upward mobility is attractive to people in other countries. The US is a magnet, and many people can
envisage themselves as Americans, in part because so many successful Americans look like them. Moreover, connections between immigrants
and their families and friends back home help to convey accurate and positive information about the US.¶ Likewise, because the presence of
many cultures creates avenues of connection with other countries, it
helps to broaden Americans’ attitudes and views
of the world in an era of globalization. Rather than diluting hard and soft power, immigration
enhances both.¶ Singapore’s former leader, Lee Kwan Yew, an astute observer of both the US and China, argues that China will not
surpass the US as the leading power of the twenty-first century, precisely because the US attracts the best and brightest from the rest of the world
and melds them into a diverse culture of creativity. China has a larger population to recruit from domestically, but, in Lee’s view, its Sino-centric
culture will make it less creative than the US.¶ That is a view that Americans should take to heart.
If Obama succeeds in
enacting immigration reform in his second term, he will have gone a long way toward fulfilling his promise to maintain
the strength of the US.
Uncontrolled aging crisis causes nuclear war
Howe and Jackson 9 [Neil and Richard, researchers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and co-authors of "The
Graying of the Great Powers: Demography and Geopolitics in the 21st Century," “ The World Won't Be Aging Gracefully. Just the Opposite.”
Washington Post -- January 4 -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/02/AR2009010202231.html]
The world is in crisis. A financial crash and a deepening recession are afflicting rich and poor
countries alike. The threat of weapons of mass destruction looms ever larger. A bipartisan
congressional panel announced last month that the odds of a nuclear or biological terrorist attack
somewhere in the world by the year 2014 are better than 50-50. It looks as though we'll be grappling with these
economic and geopolitical challenges well into the 2010s.¶ But if you think that things couldn't get any worse, wait
till the 2020s. The economic and geopolitical climate could become even more threatening by
then -- and this time the reason will be demographics.¶ Yes, demographics, that relentless maker and breaker of civilizations. From the
fall of the Roman and the Mayan empires to the Black Death to the colonization of the New
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World and the youth-driven revolutions of the 20th century, demographic trends have played a decisive role in
precipitating many of the great invasions, political upheavals, migrations and environmental
catastrophes of history. By the 2020s, an ominous new conjuncture of these trends will once again threaten massive disruption. We're
talking about global aging, which is likely to have a profound effect on economic growth, living standards and the shape of the world order.¶ For
the world's wealthy nations, the
2020s are set to be a decade of hyperaging and population decline. Many
countries will experience fiscal crisis, economic stagnation and ugly political battles over
entitlements and immigration. Meanwhile, poor countries will be buffeted by their own demographic
storms. Some will be overwhelmed by massive age waves that they can't afford, while others will be whipsawed by new explosions of youth
whose aspirations they cannot satisfy. The risk of social and political upheaval and military aggression will
grow throughout the developing world -- even as the developed world's capacity to deal with
these threats weakens.¶ The rich countries have been aging for decades, due to falling birthrates and rising life spans. But in the 2020s,
this aging will get an extra kick as large postwar baby boom generations move into retirement.
According to the United Nations Population Division (whose projections are cited throughout this article), the median ages of
Western Europe and Japan, which were 34 and 33 respectively as recently as 1980, will soar to
47 and 52, assuming no miraculous change in fertility. In Italy, Spain and Japan, more than half of all adults will be older than the official
retirement age -- and there will be more people in their 70s than in their 20s. ¶ Graying means paying -- more for pensions,
more for health care, more for nursing homes for the frail elderly. Yet the old-age benefit
systems of most developed countries are already pushing the limits of fiscal and economic
affordability. By the 2020s, political warfare over brutal benefit cuts seems unavoidable. On one side will be young adults who face
declining after-tax earnings, including many who often have no choice but to live with their parents (and are known, pejoratively, as twixters in
the United States, kippers in Britain, mammoni in Italy, nesthocker in Germany and freeters in Japan). On the other side will be retirees, who are
often wholly dependent on pay-as-you-go public plans. In 2030, young people will have the future on their side. Elders will have the votes on
theirs. Bold
new investments in education, the environment or foreign assistance will be highly
unlikely.¶ Aging is, well, old. But depopulation -- the delayed result of falling birthrates -- is new.
The working-age population has already begun to decline in several large developed countries, including Germany and Japan. By 2030, it will be
declining in nearly all of them, and in a growing number, total population will be in steep decline as well. The arithmetic is simple: When the
average couple has only 1.3 children (in Spain) or 1.7 children (in Britain), depopulation is inevitable, unless there's massive immigration.¶ The
economics of depopulation are grim. Even at full employment, real gross domestic product may
decline, because the number of workers will be falling faster than productivity is rising. With the size
of markets fixed or shrinking, businesses and governments may try to lock in their positions through cartels
and protectionist policies, ushering in a zero-growth psychology not seen since the 1930s. With each
new birth cohort smaller than the last, the typical workplace will be top-heavy with graybeards. Looking for a
flexible, creative, entrepreneurial labor force? You'll have come to the wrong address. Meanwhile, with
the demand for low-wage labor rising, immigration (assuming no rise over today's rate) will double the percentage of Muslims in France and
triple it in Germany. By 2030, Amsterdam, Marseille, Birmingham and Cologne are likely to be majority Muslim. ¶ In
Europe, the
demographic ebb tide will deepen the crisis of confidence reflected in such best-selling books as "France is Falling,"
by Nicolas Baverez; "Can Germany Be Saved?" by Hans-Werner Sinn; or "The Last Days of Europe," by Walter Laqueur. The media in Europe
are already rife with dolorous stories about the closing of schools and maternity wards, the abandonment of rural towns and the lawlessness of
immigrant youths in large cities. A recent cover of Der Spiegel shows a baby hoisting 16 old Germans on a barbell with the caption: "The Last
German -- On the Way to an Old People's Republic." In Japan, the government half-seriously projects the date at which there will be only one
Japanese citizen left alive.¶ An
important but limited exception to hyperaging is the United States. Yes,
America is also graying, but to a lesser extent. We are the only developed nation with
replacement-rate fertility (2.1 children per couple). By 2030, our median age, now 36, will rise to only 39. Our working-age
population, according to both U.N. and census projections, will continue to grow throughout the
21st century because of our higher fertility rate and substantial immigration -- which we assimilate better
than most other developed countries. By 2015, for the first time ever, the majority of developed-world citizens will live in English-speaking
countries.¶ America certainly faces some serious structural challenges, including an engorged health-care sector and a chronically low savings
rate that may become handicaps as we age. But unlike
Europe and Japan, we will still have the youth and fiscal
resources to afford a major geopolitical role. The declinists have it wrong. The challenge facing
America by the 2020s is not the inability of a weakening United States to lead the developed
world. It is the inability of the other developed nations to be of much assistance -- or indeed, the
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
likelihood that many will be in dire need of assistance themselves. ¶ A
major reason the wealthy countries will need
strong leadership are the demographic storms about to hit the developing world.¶ Consider China, which
may be the first country to grow old before it grows rich. For the past quarter-century, China has been "peacefully
rising," thanks in part to a one-child policy that has allowed both parents to work and contribute
to China's boom. But by the 2020s, as the huge Red Guard generation born before the country's
fertility decline moves into retirement, they will tax the resources of their children and the state.
China's coming age wave -- by 2030 it will be an older country than the United States -- may weaken the two pillars
of the current regime's legitimacy: rapidly rising GDP and social stability. Imagine workforce
growth slowing to zero while tens of millions of elders sink into indigence without pensions, without health
care and without children to support them. China could careen toward social collapse -- or, in reaction, toward
an authoritarian clampdown.¶ Russia, along with the rest of Eastern Europe, is likely to
experience the fastest extended population decline since the plague-ridden Middle Ages. Amid a
widening health crisis, the Russian fertility rate has plunged and life expectancy has collapsed. Russian men
today can expect to live to 59, 16 years less than American men and marginally less than their Red Army grandfathers at the end of World War II.
By 2050, Russia is due to fall to 20th place in world population rankings, down from fourth
place in 1950. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin flatly calls Russia's demographic implosion "the most acute problem facing our country
today." If the problem isn't solved, Russia will weaken progressively -- raising the nightmarish
specter of a failed state with nukes. Or this cornered bear may lash out in revanchist fury rather
than meekly accept its demographic fate.¶ Of course, some developing regions will remain extremely young in the 2020s.
Sub-Saharan Africa -- which is afflicted with the world's highest fertility rates and ravaged by
AIDS -- will still be racked by large youth bulges. So will several Muslim-majority countries,
including Afghanistan, Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. In recent years,
most of these countries have demonstrated the correlation between extreme youth and violence.
If that correlation endures, chronic unrest and state failure could persist through the 2020s -- or
even longer if fertility fails to drop.¶ Many fast-modernizing countries where fertility has fallen very
recently and very steeply will experience an ominous resurgence of youth in the 2020s. It's a law of
demography that when a population boom is followed by a bust, it causes a ripple effect, with a gradually fading cycle of echo booms and busts.
In the 2010s, a bust generation will be coming of age in much of Latin America, South Asia and
the Muslim world. But by the 2020s, an echo boom will follow -- dashing economic
expectations, swelling the ranks of the unemployed and perhaps fueling political violence, ethnic
strife and religious extremism.¶ These echo booms will be especially large in Pakistan and Iran. In
Pakistan, the number of young people in the volatile 15- to 24-year-old age bracket will contract
by 3 percent in the 2010s, then leap upward by 20 percent in the 2020s. In Iran, the youth boomerang will be
even larger: minus 31 percent in the 2010s and plus 30 percent in the 2020s. These echo booms will be occurring in
countries whose social fabric is already strained by rapid development. One teeters on the brink
of chaos, while the other aspires to regional hegemony. One already has nuclear weapons, and
the other seems likely to obtain them.¶ All told, population trends point inexorably toward a more
dominant U.S. role in a world that will need us more, not less. For the past several years, the
U.N. has published a table ranking the world's 12 most populous countries over time. In 1950, six of
the top 12 were developed countries. In 2000, only three were. By 2050, only one developed country will remain -the United States, still in third place. By then, it will be the only country among the top 12 with a
historical commitment to democracy, free markets and civil liberties.¶ Abraham Lincoln once
called this country "the world's last best hope." Demography suggests that this will remain true
for some time to come.
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Michael Crowe
AT: Impact Defense
Aging crisis guarantees great power war – hurts U.S. standing internationally
Hass 8 assistant professor in the department of political science and the Graduate Center for Social and Public Policy at Duquesne University.
He formerly was a National Security fellow at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and an International Security fellow at the Belfer Center for
Science and International Affairs, both at Harvard University, (Mark, “Pax Americana Geriatrica,” July 14, http://www.millermccune.com/culture-society/pax-americana-geriatrica-4416/)
The Ulyanovsk initiative is just a part of Russia’s efforts to fight a looming demographic crisis that hovers over much of the world. Simply put, the world’s great powers are growing old.
Steep declines in birthrates over the last century and major increases in life expectancies have
caused the populations of Britain, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia and the United States
to age at a substantial rate. In Russia, declining birthrates and other factors are not just aging the society but actually shrinking the country’s population.¶ This
phenomenon will have critical effects on America’s international-security interests in coming decades. Most
important, global aging will be a potent force for the continuation of American military and economic
dominance. Aging populations are likely to result in the slowdown of states’ economic growth at
the same time that governments face pressure to pay for massive new expenditures for elderly
care. This double economic dilemma will create such an austere fiscal environment that the other great powers will lack the resources
necessary to overtake the United States’ huge power lead. This analysis applies even to China, which most analysts point to as
America’s most likely future rival. China’s aging problem will be particularly dramatic over the next 40 years,
which will make it difficult for it to challenge American international supremacy.¶ Meanwhile, America also
seems likely to face fewer threats from terrorism based in Islamic countries. If current demographic trends continue, many Islamic states — now in the throes of “youth bulges” — will be aging
as societies in coming decades. As active and disaffected young people have aged in other parts of the world, they have become a source of political stability and economic development. There is
Although the United States is
also growing older, it is doing so to a lesser extent and less quickly than the other great powers.
Consequently, the costs created by aging will be significantly lower for the U.S. than for potential
competitors. Global aging is therefore likely not only to extend U.S. dominance (because the other major powers
will lack the resources necessary to overtake the United States’ economic and military power lead) but also to deepen it as these other states are
likely to fall even farther behind the United States. By inhibiting the other powers from challenging American primacy, global
aging increases the odds in favor of continued peaceful relations among these states. Pax
Americana is therefore likely to extend well into the 21st century.¶ Although the United States is
in better demographic shape than the other great powers, it, too, will confront massive new costs
created by an aging population. The U.S. will be more secure from great-power rivalry than it is
today, but it (and its allies) will be less able to realize other key international objectives,
including preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, funding nation building
and engaging in humanitarian interventions, among the many costly conflict-resolution and prevention efforts it now undertakes. To protect
America’s future international interests, it is vital that the country’s current leaders adopt policies
designed to strengthen its demographic advantages. In the future, America’s ability to pay to care for its
elderly citizens will become a matter not just of compassion but of national security.¶ Something New Under
the Sun¶ The scope of the aging process in the great powers — a result of historically low fertility
rates and expanding life expectancies —is unprecedented. By 2050, at least 20 percent of the citizens in Britain, China, France,
reason to believe this pattern will hold in Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim states as their youth slip into middle age.¶
Germany, Japan, Russia and the U.S. will be over 65, according to United Nations projections. In Japan, more than one of every three people will be over this age. In 2050, China will have more
than 329 million people over 65, a total approximately equal to the entire current populations of France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom combined. As aging progresses over the next
populations in Germany, Japan and Russia are expected to shrink significantly
half-century, the
. Russia’s population
is already decreasing by nearly 700,000 people per year, and Japan, too, is experiencing population decline. Russia’s aging problem is so severe that, in 2006, The New York Times quoted
President Vladimir Putin calling demography “Russia’s most acute problem today.”¶ The aging of the world’s great powers is also happening quickly. It took France 115 years for the size of its
65-and-over age group to double from 7 to 14 percent of its population. The U.S. took 69 years to do so. China will experience this transformation in 27 years, or roughly one generation. China,
It is worth stressing that the predictions for global aging
are very unlikely to be wrong. The reason for this certainty is simple: The elderly of the future
are already born. Consequently, absent some global natural disaster, disease pandemic or other worldwide calamity (all extremely rare historically), the number of
people in the world who are over 65 will increase dramatically in coming decades. Only major increases in
in fact, will age at a pace and extent scarcely before witnessed in human history.¶
immigration rates or fertility levels will prevent this inevitable rise in the number of elderly from resulting in significant increases in median ages in these states.¶ Such outcomes are unlikely.
Over the next 50 years, immigration rates in the great powers would have to be orders of
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Michael Crowe
magnitude higher than historical levels to prevent population aging. Not only do the sheer
numbers work against such an outcome, but some countries are becoming more hostile to
immigration, despite its benefits for social aging. Both Japan and Russia passed laws in 2006 that will restrict immigration to these states, and
right-wing parties have been on the rise across Europe since the 1990s, spurred largely by hostility toward immigrants.¶ Significant increases in fertility are
also unlikely. Such an outcome would require a reversal of a centuries-long trend in the
industrialized world, and one that has existed in many states despite the existence of pro-fertility
governmental policies (perhaps the most direct of these being Russia’s “sex days”).¶ Aging in the most powerful actors in the
international system is, in short, a virtual inevitability.¶ The Costs of Growing Old¶ In its most basic formulation, a state’s gross domestic
product is a product of the number of workers and overall productivity. When a country’s work force shrinks as more people enter retirement than enter the labor market, so, too, will its GDP,
unless productivity levels rise sufficiently to compensate for the loss. Japan’s and Russia’s working-age populations (ages 15 to 64) are expected to shrink by 34 percent by 2050, Germany’s by
20 percent, France’s by 6 percent and China’s by 3 percent. To prevent these work force reductions from translating into overall GDP decline, states’ productivity must increase proportionally.
Although productivity will likely increase in most industrialized countries, work force
contraction will still act as a substantial brake on economic growth in coming decades.¶ We are already
witnessing this dynamic. Even though China is the youngest of the great powers, it is experiencing labor
shortages that are threatening economic growth. These shortages are due in large part to the aging of China and reductions in the number of 15- to
35-year-olds there. Experts predict that shrinkage in China’s working-age population will result in a loss of 1 percent per year from this state’s GDP growth by the 2020s. The economic forecasts
are even more dire for France, Germany and Japan, where massively contracting labor forces could result in overall annual GDP growth of roughly 1 percent in coming decades.¶
Significant societal aging may also limit productivity growth. The elderly are likely to be more
conservative with their investments than younger people. The more risk averse a society’s investment
portfolio is, the less entrepreneurship will be funded and, thus, the lower the gains in productivity. National savings
rates may also shrink in aging states as seniors spend down their savings. The Japanese government has already reported
that national savings rates are down substantially due to social aging. Reduced savings may lead to rising interest rates and
ultimately to reduced rates of productivity increases.¶ An even more important economic effect of societal aging is the strain that it places on
governmental resources. All governments in the industrialized world have made commitments to pay for substantial portions of the retirement and health care costs of their elderly citizens. Social
the older a society is, the greater the number of retirees and
senior citizens for which a particular government is responsible. Second, the elderly, on average,
require significantly more resources than working-age adults. Studies have shown that seniors use three to five times more medical
care than younger people, for example.¶ The pension systems across the industrialized world will be particularly taxing
on governments’ fiscal policies. The public pensions in all of the great powers are “pay as you go,” meaning that current workers are taxed to support current
aging increases these obligations in two principal respects. First,
retirees. This type of system does not place a significant strain on a state’s economy as long as relatively high numbers of workers contribute to the system in relation to retirees. This will not be
the case for much longer across the industrial world, and, in some cases, it is not true even today. France, Germany, Japan and Britain have roughly only four working-age adults per senior
citizen. By 2050, only America among the great powers will have more than three working-age adults per elderly person.¶ The projected increases in governmental spending for the elderly in
coming decades are sobering. Annual public pension and health care benefits to the elderly as a percentage of GDP are predicted to rise in 2040 by 15 percent in Japan (to an overall percentage of
27); by 13 percent in France (to an overall percentage of 29); by 11 percent in the United States (to an overall percentage of 20); by 10 percent in Germany (to an overall percentage of 26); and
costs will be an increase of hundreds of billions of dollars to
governments’ annual expenditures for many decades. To give some perspective on their magnitude, consider the following: Roughly 35 years
from now, the annual amount of money that the great powers will have to spend on elderly care is
going to increase by many times what these states currently spend on their militaries, even after adjusting for
inflation. By 2040, Germany will have to increase its annual spending on elderly care by more than
seven times what it currently spends on defense. France will have to spend more than five times as much and Japan more than 15 times as much.¶
Pax Americana Geriatrica¶ Population aging in the great powers will help prolong U.S. power dominance in the 21st
century for three primary reasons. First, the massive costs created by aging populations, especially in combination
with probable slowdowns in economic growth, will inhibit other major powers from significantly increasing military
expenditures; these factors are even likely to push many of these states to reduce military spending from current levels. Second, with aging populations
and shrinking work forces, other great powers will be forced to decide whether to spend
increasing percentages of their defense budgets on personnel costs and military pensions, at the
expense of the most technologically sophisticated weaponry. The third factor reinforces both of the previous points:
Although the U.S. population is aging, it is doing so to a lesser extent and less quickly than those
of the other great powers. The pressures pushing for the crowding out of military spending in
favor of elderly care and the increasing substitution of labor for capital within defense budgets
will be considerably smaller for the U.S. than for potential great-power competitors. By inhibiting the other
by 6 percent in Britain (to an overall percentage of 18).¶ These
powers from challenging America’s huge power lead, global aging will increase the likelihood of continued peaceful relations among these states.¶ We are, in fact, already witnessing in some
states the crowding out of military spending for elderly care. Japan reduced military spending in the 2005 and 2006 budgets explicitly to pay for costs created by its rapidly aging population. The
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Michael Crowe
Japanese government has stated that over the next decade, general expenditures will have to be cut by 25 to 30 percent to address this problem. Similar pressure for cuts in defense spending to
The decision to cut military spending to pay elderly-care costs is
likely to repeat itself in the state that is aging faster than any of the great powers: China. Rising longevity in China and the
“one-child policy,” which has helped lower dramatically China’s fertility levels, have made
China a rapidly aging society. By 2050, according to the U.N., China’s median age is predicted to be nearly 45, one of the oldest in the world. (The oldest country in
finance elderly-care costs is building in France and Germany.¶
the world today, Japan, has a median age of just under 43). The ratio of working-age adults to elderly will shrink from just under 10 in 2000 to 2.5 by 2050. China today has roughly 100 million
Despite the effects of the one-child
policy on China’s median age, China’s leaders are unlikely to repeal it in the near future. The New York
Times reports that the Chinese government significantly increased the fines this year for wealthy couples
who violate the law and have more than one child. Although some Chinese officials talk about reconsidering this law, any changes that do occur
will most likely be incremental. The longer the one-child policy stays in effect, the more quickly China will age.¶ China is particularly unprepared to pay
for the costs of its rapidly aging population. China’s elderly have very little savings. Nearly 80 percent of
citizens over the age of 65. This number will double in 20 years. Roughly 30 years from now, it is expected to triple.¶
Chinese urban households with individuals aged 55 and over today have less than one year of income saved, and only 5 percent have more than two years of income in savings, according to
The Chinese government has also failed to set aside
over the decades sufficient money to pay for elderly-care costs. Three-quarters of all Chinese workers are without any pension
coverage, yet independent estimates have found a potential shortfall between China’s governmental obligations to the elderly and saved assets to be as much as 150 percent of its GDP.¶
China will not be able to “grow” its way out of this dilemma. Despite China’s very high levels of
economic growth since the 1990s, it will become the first country to grow old before becoming an
advanced industrial state. Even if China’s economy continues to grow in coming decades at rates
similar to those it has experienced in recent years, by 2035, its median age will reach the levels
of France, Germany and Japan today but at GDP-per-capita levels significantly lower than these states
Center for Strategic and International Studies and Asian Development Bank research.
currently possess.¶ China has traditionally relied on the family unit to provide for elderly care in lieu of adequate public and private resources. But as The New York Times has noted, increasing
rates of divorce, urbanization (and related migration) and female work force participation will place significant strain on this tradition. Decreasing family size will prove especially problematic
for preserving elderly welfare within the context of the family. Demographers refer to a rapidly growing “4-2-1″ phenomenon in China, in which one child is responsible for caring for two
parents and four grandparents.¶ Within 15 years, China’s leaders will be faced with a difficult choice: Allow growing levels of poverty within an exploding elderly population, or provide the
resources necessary to avoid this situation. The Chinese government’s assumption since 2000 of unfunded pension liabilities of state-owned enterprises reveals the political and moral pressure
This pressure to significantly expand and deepen China’s welfare system will
only grow as its aging crisis becomes increasingly acute in the decades to come. In this context,
the crowding out of military and other discretionary expenditures will be likely, to the great
benefit of America’s relative power position.¶ Aging is also likely to push militaries to spend
more on personnel and less on other areas, including weapons development and procurement. This is important because no nation
will be able to challenge U.S. military dominance without the ability to wage highly
technologically sophisticated warfare. When states are forced to spend more of their military
budgets on personnel than research, development and weapons procurement, the odds of
continued U.S. military primacy increase substantially.¶ The oldest of the great powers are already devoting significantly more resources to
working for the latter outcome.
military personnel than weapons purchases and research. Over the last 10 years, both France and Germany have dedicated nearly 60 percent of their military budgets to personnel. Germany
spends nearly four times as much on personnel as weapons procurement; France, Japan and Russia roughly 2.5 times more. The U.S., in contrast, dedicates only 1.15 times more money to
Population aging is a key cause of increasing military personnel costs for two main
Increasing numbers of retirees in relation to new workers
are likely to create labor shortages relative to previous levels of employment. The result will be increased competition among businesses and organizations —
including the military — to hire workers. Consequently, if states’ militaries want to be able to attract and keep the best
employees in vital areas of operation — especially those in high-tech fields who usually have the
most employment options and can command high salaries in the private sector — they are going
to have to pay more to do so. If militaries do not increase their outlays for personnel, their effectiveness will diminish. A 2006 report endorsed by EU defense ministers made
precisely these points, stating that the aging of Europe’s people will “inevitably” lead to rising military personnel per capita costs if European forces are to remain effective.¶ Similarly, to
keep military salaries on par with wages in its expanding economy, China — even though its armed forces are
conscripted — has had to raise military wages sharply in recent years. According to the Chinese
government, growing personnel expenses are the most important factor behind the growth of
China’s defense budget in the last decade.¶ The great powers’ pension obligations to retired military
personnel are also considerable. Russia spends significantly more on military retirees than on either weapons procurement or military research and development,
personnel than weapons purchases.¶
reasons. First, as societies age, more people exit the work force than enter it.
according to its 2006 defense budget.¶ Pensions for military retirees are not one-time costs but go on for decades, doing nothing to increase states’ power-projection capabilities. Every dollar
spent on retirees is one less dollar that can be spent on weapons, research or active personnel. Consequently, every dollar spent in this area by the other great powers increases the likelihood of
continued U.S. primacy.¶ U.S. Aging: Bad, But Better Than the Rest¶ At a gala event held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 15, 2007, Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, who
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Michael Crowe
was born one second after midnight on Jan. 1, 1946, became the first baby boomer to file for Social Security. Over the next 20 years, 76 million Americans from the age cohort born between
The costs created by America’s aging population are staggering. The Congressional Budget Office
Health care costs, in particular, are
the United States’ biggest problem regarding societal aging. The United States spends more than twice as much per capita in this area
1946 and 1964 will join her.¶
projects that by 2015, spending on the elderly will total almost $1.8 trillion, nearly half of the anticipated federal budget.
than any other industrial great power (though it ranks 48th in the world in life expectancy). According to conservative estimates – absent reforms – the costs of Medicare alone will be at least
Despite these expected cost increases, the
United States is in significantly better shape to address the challenges created by its aging
population than the other powers. The U.S. is the youngest of all the G-8 nations. Because it has the highest fertility and immigration rates of these countries, it
will maintain, even strengthen, this position in coming decades. In 2050, the United States’ median age will be the lowest of any
of the great powers, in most cases by a substantial extent. (China’s median age will surpass the United States’ by 2020.) Perhaps most
$2.6 trillion in 2050, after adjusting for inflation, which is roughly the size of the current U.S. federal budget.¶
important, while the working-age populations in all the other great powers are predicted by 2050 to either decline (China, France, Germany, Japan and Russia) or increase modestly (Britain), this
The United States’ relatively youthful demographics will help
greatly with the fiscal challenges created by aging. The growing U.S. labor force over the next 50 years will contribute to an expanding
demographic group is expected to increase by 31 percent in the U.S.¶
economy, thereby providing the government with additional revenue without it having to increase taxes, borrow more money or cut other spending. In addition, the United States has a relatively
well-funded pension system (especially in relation to China, France, Germany and Russia); its public welfare commitments to the elderly are relatively modest compared with those of other
industrialized powers; its citizens work many more hours per year and significantly later in life than the average individual in the other powers; and its tax burden is low compared with those of
other powers.¶ American expectations are also comparatively favorable. In a 2008 Harris Interactive poll of citizens in the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, Americans
had the highest predictions of when they would retire (67.2 years old) and the lowest expectations — by far — regarding governmental support of their retirement. (Only 27 percent of Americans
U.S.
citizens are much more amenable to entitlement reforms and benefit cuts than are most
Europeans.¶ Again, the preceding facts do not mean that the U.S. will escape the fiscal burdens
created by aging or that this phenomenon will not create negative ramifications for U.S. security.
Rather, as burdensome as the public costs of aging will be for the United States, the public benefits owed to U.S. seniors as a
percentage of GDP will likely remain substantially lower than in most of the other great powers.
Moreover, the U.S. will be better positioned to pay for these costs than the other major actors. Global aging will therefore be a powerful force
for the continuation of the relative power dominance of the United States.¶ Population Aging and the ”War on
believed that the national government should bear most of their retirement costs; this percentage ranged from 45 to 72 in European countries.) These expectations reveal that
Terrorism”¶ Numerous studies have shown that there is a strong, positive relationship between so-called youth bulges — a disproportionately high number of young people in a society — and
political violence, including civil conflict and terrorism. Developing states’ economies frequently have difficulty creating enough jobs to accommodate the exploding work forces in very young
societies. Not surprisingly, the region that has the most youth bulges in the world — the Middle East and North Africa —also has, by far, the highest unemployment rates among young adults: 26
percent in 2006.¶ High levels of unemployment inevitably create strong grievances against existing political and economic policies, and, thus, a large pool of potential recruits for violent political
change. The young tend to be particularly idealistic, which inclines members of this demographic group to believe that major political and social change can and should be made, even if this
objective requires the use of force. The young are less likely to be married, have established careers or possess prominent positions in the community. As a result, young people, especially in the
context of economic deprivation and political oppression, frequently feel that they have little to lose by engaging in violent acts designed to change the status quo.¶ Given the relationship
between youth bulges and political violence and radicalism, it is no surprise that Islamic states in general — and Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Palestine (aka the occupied territories), Afghanistan and
Pakistan in particular — have been hotbeds for domestic violence and international terrorism in recent years. In 2000, at least 45 percent of all adults in these countries were in the 15-to-29 age
range.¶ The potential good news for the U.S. is that population aging may help alleviate, albeit slowly, the deleterious effects of youth bulges in many Islamic states. If current trends in fertility
rates continue, by 2030, the youth bulges in Iraq, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia will all have receded. Population aging and the diminishment of youth bulges have been a source of political stability
and economic development in many other countries over the last half-century, including in East Asia and Europe. There is little reason to believe that this pattern will not hold true in Islamic
Although
global population aging is likely to create substantial security benefits for the U.S. in coming
decades, the same phenomenon is also likely to threaten U.S. international interests in important ways.¶ First,
the negative impact on the other great powers’ economic growth and military spending is, in some
states, even though the transformation will require several generations.¶ Demography may ultimately hold the key for winning the “war on terrorism.”¶ The Bad News¶
respects, a double-edged sword. On the one hand, these outcomes will mean that no state will be able to overtake the United States’ position of economic and military dominance. The same
will also reduce the amount of economic or military aid that other states will be able to
contribute toward the realization of common international interests. Instead of increasing “burden sharing” with key allies,
the United States will have to pay even more of the costs of its international goals than it does
today.¶ Second, while the U.S. should expect less international aid from its allies, it, too, is likely to
experience the slowing of economic growth and the crowding out of military expenditures for
elderly care. America will in all likelihood have to scale back the scope of its international policies.
factor, though,
The United States’ current position of unprecedented power allows its leaders to pursue highly extensive global commitments. The U.S. has military personnel in more than 140 countries in the
world, and over the last 15 years, the U.S. has engaged in nearly 50 military interventions, more than any other state, by far, in the system. The primary motivation in at least four of these
operations — Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo — was humanitarian.¶ In the aftermath of many of these interventions, the U.S. devoted considerable resources to help create stable political
and civil institutions (so-called nation building). America also plays the dominant role in facilitating international trade and has borne the primary costs in trying to prevent “rogue” states —
including Iraq, Iran, North Korea and Libya — from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. The economic effects of an aging population will deny the U.S. the fiscal room necessary to maintain
the extent of its current global position, let alone adopt major new international initiatives. In the face of the exploding costs for elderly care and retirement, the crowding out of other spending
will occur even for the richest country in the history of the world, to the likely detriment of American security.¶ America’s Golden Years?¶ The policy choices that flow from this article’s
analysis are clear. Internationally, America’s long-term objective should be to help reduce fertility rates in developing countries. This outcome will likely reduce the problems created by youth
bulges, including international terrorism. Policies that increase women’s rights and educational and employment opportunities, as well as those that provide better access to birth control, are key
means to this end. International development aid designed to increase states’ GDP-per-capita levels should also be high among America’s foreign-policy priorities. The U.S., though, dedicates
relatively few resources toward these goals. A December 2005 report issued by the Council on Foreign Relations with bipartisan leadership notes that demographics continued to be a neglected
In terms of domestic policies, U.S. leaders need to
be proactive in maintaining America’s enviable demographic position. Specifically, America should reduce
area of U.S. foreign policies. This important oversight needs to be corrected, and quickly.¶
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Michael Crowe
maintain largely open immigration policies that help keep its
median age relatively low and restrain the rising costs of its health care system.
Social Security and Medicare payments to wealthier citizens,
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Economy Impact
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1NC
Reform key to the economy – decline in immigration spurs new recession
Smith 12 [Gerry, technology reporter, "Brain Drain: Why We're Driving Immigration Talent Overseas" Huffington Post -- November 5 -www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/09/immigrant-entrepreneur_n_2077183.html]
Stories like his are not unique. They’re also troubling
for the U.S. economy, advocates say. For the first time, the
number of immigrant-founded startups is in decline, as foreign-born entrepreneurs struggle to
obtain a limited number of visas and green cards and decide to launch companies in other countries that
offer perks to start businesses there. Losing founders like Darash, who launch startups that create jobs, means that America risks losing
a source of employment and a competitive edge in the global economy as the country claws its
way out of a recession, they say.¶ For years, immigrant entrepreneurs have propelled the growth of
Silicon Valley, building some of the most successful tech companies in the world: Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, was born in Russia;
Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal and Tesla, was born in South Africa; Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, was born in India. When
they immigrated, it was likely easier for them because there was not a backlog that there is today, according to Vivek Wadhwa, a professor at the
Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University who researches high-tech immigration. Immigrants
are more than twice as
likely to start a business as native-born Americans, according to a report earlier this year by the Partnership for a New
American Economy. And their companies have produced sizable economic benefits. This year, engineering
and technology companies founded in the United States employed about 560,000 workers and generated
$63 billion in sales, according to Wadhwa. About a quarter of those companies had at least one foreignborn founder.¶ An estimated three out of every four startups fail, if not more. But by the conventional wisdom of Silicon Valley, Darash’s
chances were even slimmer. For one, he does not have a co-founder. He insists he doesn’t need one. (Paul Graham, creator of the startup
incubator Y Combinator, has said having a co-founder is critical because “a startup is too much for one person to bear.”) Darash also never
worked for a major tech company before, so he did not have the network of contacts that help other entrepreneurs find engineers and meet
investors.¶ But what he has lacked in support and connections he has made up for through a work ethic that borders on obsession. ¶ “Asaf is a
stubborn guy,” said Adam Gries, a childhood friend and founder of Smart Bites, a smartphone app that teaches people English. “He gets into his
head that something is going to happen and he’s tenacious.”¶ Darash awakes every morning at 4:30 a.m., takes the BART train from his home in
Berkeley to San Francisco, and arrives at the office by 6 a.m. He works for an hour, then walks across the street to the gym to swim and lift
weights (A back injury he suffered while serving in the Israeli army requires him to stay physically strong). He typically does not go home until 9
p.m., after his children have gone to bed. Employees say he is a “total workaholic” who sends emails past midnight and sleeps just a few hours a
night.¶ “I have a one-and-a-half year old who sees his Daddy maybe three hours a week,” Darash said. “It’s hard to explain how much sacrifice
you make to bring a company from an idea to something real, especially if it’s a company with high-level technology.”¶ He is hands-on about all
aspects of the company, from courting new clients to writing code. But lately, Darash has been distracted, spending valuable hours gathering
documents and talking to lawyers, instead of running his company. His wife recently flew back to Israel to find housing and a school for their
kids in case they have to leave the United States. He describes feeling a range of emotions: anger, fear, frustration. Mostly, though, he is
confused. In his homeland of Israel, politicians fight over who can attract more foreign entrepreneurs. The United States, he says, should be
rolling out the welcome mat for him, not ushering him out the door.¶ “I could not even comprehend this would become a problem,” he said. “I’m
creating a company. I’m creating jobs. There’s nothing bad in what I’m doing and there’s nothing I’m taking away from someone else. The only
thing I’m doing is creating more!”¶ “SERIOUS ALARM”¶ Since
2005, the number of immigrant-founded startups in
Silicon Valley has declined from 52 percent to 44 percent, according to Wadhwa, who argues this drop is
cause for “serious alarm ” because America needs to attract immigrant entrepreneurs for its
economy to recover.¶ “The United States risks losing a key growth engine right at the moment
when it’s economy is stuck in a deep ditch, growing slowly and struggling to create jobs,” Wadhwa
wrote in his new book, The Immigrant Exodus.¶ Their recent decline could be linked to entrepreneurs finding better
business prospects abroad, especially in countries with growing economies like India and China. But advocates say a major
reason why immigrants are launching fewer startups in the United States is because they are
struggling to secure visas to remain in the country.
Nuclear war
ROYAL 10 – Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of Defense (Jedediah, “Economic Integration, Economic
Signaling and the Problem of Economic Crises,” in Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, ed. Goldsmith and
Brauer, p. 213-215)
Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external conflict. Political
science literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the security and defence behaviour of
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
interdependent states. Research in this vein has been considered at systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions follow.
First, on the systemic level, Pollins (2008) advances Modelski and Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that rhythms
in the global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often
bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as economic
crises could usher in a redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin. 1981) that leads to uncertainty about power
balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation (Feaver, 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain
redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to
challenge a declining power (Werner. 1999). Separately, Pollins (1996) also shows that global economic cycles combined with parallel leadership
cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small powers, although he suggests that the causes and connections between
global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown. Second, on a dyadic level, Copeland's (1996, 2000) theory of trade
expectations suggests that 'future
expectation of trade' is a significant variable in understanding economic
conditions and security behaviour of states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from trade
so long as they have an optimistic view of future trade relations. However, if the expectations of future trade decline,
particularly for difficult to replace items such as energy resources, the likelihood for conflict increases, as states will be
inclined to use force to gain access to those resources. Crises could potentially be the trigger for
decreased trade expectations either on its own or because it triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states.4 Third, others
have considered the link between economic decline and external armed conflict at a national
level. Blomberg and Hess (2002) find a strong correlation between internal conflict and external
conflict, particularly during periods of economic downturn. They write: The linkages between internal and external
conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing. Economic conflict tends to spawn internal conflict, which in turn returns the favour.
Moreover, the presence
of a recession tends to amplify the extent to which international and external
conflicts self-reinforce each other. (Blomberg & Hess, 2002. p. 89) Economic decline has also been linked
with an increase in the likelihood of terrorism (Blomberg, Hess, & Weerapana, 2004), which has the capacity to spill
across borders and lead to external tensions. Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a sitting government. “Diversionary
theory" suggests that, when facing unpopularity arising from economic decline, sitting governments
have increased incentives to fabricate external military conflicts to create a 'rally around the flag' effect. Wang
(1996), DeRouen (1995). and Blomberg, Hess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that economic decline and use of force are
at least indirectly correlated. Gelpi (1997), Miller (1999), and Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that
the tendency towards
diversionary tactics are greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are
generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence
showing that periods of weak economic performance in the United States, and thus weak Presidential popularity, are
statistically linked to an increase in the use of force. In summary, recent economic scholarship positively correlates
economic integration with an increase in the frequency of economic crises, whereas political science scholarship links
economic decline with external conflict at systemic, dyadic and national levels.5 This implied connection
between integration, crises and armed conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security debate and deserves more attention. This
observation is not contradictory to other perspectives
that link economic interdependence with a decrease in
the likelihood of external conflict, such as those mentioned in the first paragraph of this chapter. Those studies tend to
focus on dyadic interdependence instead of global interdependence and do not specifically
consider the occurrence of and conditions created by economic crises. As such, the view presented here should
be considered ancillary to those views.
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CIR Solves Economy
Reform controls the internal link to the economy – jobs, innovation, and market demand
Krudy 13 [Edward, correspondent, "Analysis: Immigration reform could boost U.S. economic growth" Reuters -- January 29 -www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/29/us-usa-economyimmigration-idUSBRE90S06R20130129]
The sluggish U.S. economy could get a lift if President Barack Obama and a bipartisan group of senators succeed in what
could be the biggest overhaul of the nation's immigration system since the 1980s.¶ Relaxed immigration rules could
encourage entrepreneurship, increase demand for housing, raise tax revenues and help reduce the
budget deficit, economists said.¶ By helping more immigrants enter the country legally and allowing
many illegal immigrants to remain, the United States could help offset a slowing birth rate and
put itself in a stronger demographic position than aging Europe, Japan and China.¶ "Numerous industries in the
United States can't find the workers they need, right now even in a bad economy, to fill their orders and
expand their production as the market demands," said Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration specialist at the libertarian Cato
Institute.¶ The emerging consensus among economists is that immigration provides a net benefit. It increases demand and
productivity, helps drive innovation and lowers prices, although there is little agreement on the size of the impact on
economic growth.¶ President Barack Obama plans to launch his second-term push for a U.S. immigration overhaul during a visit to Nevada on
Tuesday and will make it a high priority to win congressional approval of a reform package this year, the White House said.¶ The chances of
major reforms gained momentum on Monday when a bipartisan group of senators agreed on a framework that could eventually give 11 million
illegal immigrants a chance to become American citizens.¶ Their proposals
would also include means to keep and attract
workers with backgrounds in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. This would be aimed
both at foreign students attending American universities where they are earning advanced degrees and high-tech workers abroad.¶ An
estimated 40 percent of scientists in the United States are immigrants and studies show
immigrants are twice as likely to start businesses, said Nowrasteh.¶ Boosting legal migration and
legalizing existing workers could add $1.5 trillion to the U.S. economy over the next 10 years, estimates Raul
Hinojosa-Ojeda, a specialist in immigration policy at the University of California, Los Angeles. That's an annual increase of 0.8
percentage points to the economic growth rate, currently stuck at about 2 percent.
Immigration key to the economy – competitiveness, growth, jobs, innovation
Palomarez 3-6-13 [Javier, President & CEO of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce., "The pent up entreprenuership that
immigration reform woudl unleash" Forbes -- www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/03/06/the-pent-up-entrepreneurship-that-immigration-reformwould-unleash/]
Out of countless conversations with business leaders in virtually every sector and every state,
a consensus has emerged: our
broken and outdated immigration system hinders our economy’s growth and puts America’s
global leadership in jeopardy.¶ Innovation drives the American economy, and without good ideas
and skilled workers, our country won’t be able to transform industries or to lead world markets as
effectively as it has done for decades.¶ Consider some figures: Immigrant-owned firms generate an estimated $775
billion in annual revenue, $125 billion in payroll and about $100 billion in income. A study conducted
by the New American Economy found that over 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies were started by
immigrants or children of immigrants.¶ Leading brands, like Google, Kohls, eBay, Pfizer, and AT&T, were founded by
immigrants. Researchers at the Kauffman Foundation released a study late last year showing that from 2006 to 2012, one in four
engineering and technology companies started in the U.S. had at least one foreign-born founder
— in Silicon Valley it was almost half of new companies.¶ There are an estimated 11 million undocumented workers currently in the U.S.
Imagine what small business growth in the U.S. would look like if they were provided legal status, if they had an opportunity for citizenship.
Without fear of deportation or prosecution, imagine the pent up entrepreneurship that could be unleashed. After all, these are people who are
clearly entrepreneurial in spirit to have come here and risk all in the first place. ¶ Immigrants
are twice as likely to start
businesses as native-born Americans, and statistics show that most job growth comes from small businesses.¶ While immigrants
are both critically-important consumers and producers, they boost the economic well-being of
native-born Americans as well.¶ Scholars at the Brookings Institution recently described the
relationship of these two groups of workers as complementary. This is because lower-skilled immigrants largely
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
take farming and other manual, low-paid jobs that native-born workers don’t usually want.¶ For example, when Alabama passed HB 56, an
immigration law in 2012 aimed at forcing self-deportation, the state lost roughly $11 billion in economic productivity as crops were left to wither
reform would also address another important angle in the debate – the
need to entice high-skilled immigrants. Higher-skilled immigrants provide talent that high-tech
companies often cannot locate domestically. High-tech leaders recently organized a nationwide “virtual march for
and jobs were lost.¶ Immigration
immigration reform” to pressure policymakers to remove barriers that prevent them from recruiting the workers they need. ¶ Finally, and perhaps
most importantly, fixing
immigration makes sound fiscal sense. Economist Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda calculated in 2010 that
comprehensive immigration reform would add $1.5 trillion to the country’s GDP over 10 years
and add $66 billion in tax revenue – enough to fully fund the Small Business Administration and the Departments of the
Treasury and Commerce for over two years.¶ As Congress continues to wring its hands and debate the issue, lawmakers must understand what
both businesses and workers already know:
The American economy needs comprehensive immigration
reform.
Immigration reform spurs 1.5 trillion growth in GDP
Escalona 13 [Alejandro, writer and editor, 01/24, "Time Is Ripe for Immigration Reform" Huffington Post -www.huffingtonpost.com/alejandro-escalona/time-for-immigration-reform_b_2533806.html]
As the U.S. economy continues to improve, there will be a greater need for labor and the deport-all
approach to illegal immigration will start to subside. Our country should not have millions living in the shadows. It is a matter of national
security, but also of economic opportunity.¶ In 2010, the Center for American Progress concluded that immigration
reform would lead to a $1.5 trillion growth in gross domestic product over the next ten years.
Legalized immigrants would buy homes and cars generating new revenues for the private sector
and more taxes for governments.¶ Comprehensive immigration reform makes sense. Obama
should work with Congress to approve a path to legalize those undocumented immigrants who work
hard and have not committed serious crimes.
CIR is key to the economy – capital injection, work force, tax base
Ojeda 12 (Raul Hinojosa, “The Economic Benefits of Comprehensive Immigration Reform”)
http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/2012/1/cj32n1-12.pdf
The results of our modeling suggest that comprehensive immigration reform would increase U.S.
GDP by at least 0.84 percent per year. Using 10-year GDP projections prepared by the Congressional Budget Office, this
translates into a steadily increasing amount of added annual GDP over the coming decade. The 10-year total is at least $1.5
trillion in added GDP, which includes roughly $1.2 trillion in additional consumption and $256 billion in additional investment.
Comprehensive immigration reform brings substantial economic gains even in the short run—
during the first three years following legalization. The real wages of newly legalized workers increase by roughly
$4,400 per year among those in less-skilled jobs during the first three years of implementation, and $6,185 per year for those in higherskilled jobs. The higher earning power of newly legalized workers translates into an increase in net personal income of $30 billion to $36 billion,
which would generate $4.5 to $5.4 billion in additional net tax revenue nationally, enough to support 750,000 to 900,000 new jobs.
It accesses every sector
Ojeda 12 (Raul Hinojosa, “The Economic Benefits of Comprehensive Immigration Reform”)
http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/2012/1/cj32n1-12.pdf
The benefits of additional U.S. GDP growth under the comprehensive immigration reform
scenario are spread very broadly throughout the U.S. economy, with virtually every sector expanding. Particularly large
increases occur in immigrant-heavy industries such as textiles, ferrous metals, transportation
equipment, electronic equipment, motor vehicles and parts, nonelectric machinery and
equipment, capital goods, mineral products, and construction. In comparison, every sector experiences significantly
smaller gains 32739_Ch12_Hinojosa_19016_Cato 12/29/11 2:13 PM Page 190191 Comprehensive Immigration Reform under the temporary
worker scenario, while every sector contracts under the mass deportation scenario.
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Wages I/L
Comprehensive reform solves the economy – wages, revenue, jobs
De Los Santos 13 [Michael, political writer, contributor @ Policy Mic, 02/09, "3 Ways Immigration Reform Will Lead to a Stronger
American Economy" Policy Mic -- www.policymic.com/articles/25301/3-ways-immigration-reform-will-lead-to-a-stronger-american-economy]
Immigration, immigration, immigration: it seems that reform has become the hot topic of the day now that the debt ceiling debate is temporarily
over. PolicyMic has published at least 16 articles over the last week that dealt with the topic. We have had a bipartisan panel and President
Obama release ideas for immigration reform, and you can expect it to play a significant role in his upcoming State of the Union address. With the
economy still the biggest driver of dissatisfaction in this country, how
will passing immigration reform impact the
economic recovery? Passing a comprehensive package will positively impact the economy in
three key areas: consumption, tax revenue and job creation.¶ 1. Consumption:¶ Consumption is driven
by wages, and so to understand how consumption will improve, we have to look at wage increases. Immigration reform does
not just impact the immigrant community, but U.S.-born workers as well. Our first glimpses are the effects of
President Reagan's Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. While immigrants still made less than their U.S. borncomrades, they still saw their incomes increase by 15% years following their legalization. While anti-immigration
reform groups will dispute the effectiveness of the reforms of 1986, they can’t refute the increase in wages. ¶ These wage increases also
extended to U.S.-born workers. The Economic Policy Institute looked at the impact immigration had on wages of the nonimmigrant community. What they found was that between 1994 and 2007, wages increased by 0.4% over foreign-born workers. This also
extended to those with less than a high school education, who still saw a 0.3% increase during that same time as a result of immigration. These
aren't huge gains, but the size of the gains wasn't as important as what they indicated: more
workers mean a bigger economy.
The influx of immigrant workers meant more people were earning wages, and therefore spending
more and growing the economy, which in turn meant higher wages and more opportunities for
everyone.¶ 2. Tax Revenue:¶ The increase in wage earners, wages, and spending leads to higher tax
revenues. A 2010 study by the University of Southern California estimated that undocumented Latino workers missed out on $2.2 billion in
income. As a result, the state of California missed out on $310 million in income taxes. They also determined that the federal government lost out
on $1.4 billion in taxes.¶ Furthermore, the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that the
Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 would have generated $66 billion in new
revenue between 2007 and 2016. This increase in revenue would have more than offset the estimated increase in entitlement
spending of $54 billion.¶ 3. Job Creation:¶ The final area for consideration is job creation. Ezra Klein of The Washington Post examined this in a
recent post. Small
businesses are drivers of the economy, and as Klein points out, immigrants start business
and file patents at a much higher rate than the non-immigrant community.¶ Our economy is
struggling to create jobs and encourage consumer spending, and all levels of government are
struggling to generate the necessary revenues and right spending cuts to tackle growing debt.¶ These factors
make immigration reform a nobrainer . A comprehensive immigration plan addresses all
three of these key areas to fixing our economy. In fact, immigration reform should be looked at as more than just
immigration policy – it's economic policy. The economy and our country will be better because of it.
Wages are key to the economy
Isidore 10 [Chris, senior writer, "Good job news: Wages are rising. Really" CNN Money -- March 5 -money.cnn.com/2010/03/04/news/economy/better_paychecks/index.htm]
Despite the millions of people who have lost jobs during the past year, there
are signs that personal income is increasing.
Even a small gain in income is significant . If consumers have more money in their pocket,
that can help to boost consumer spending and create the demand that will prompt a resumption of
hiring. "At the end of the day, we need income so people can spend money," said Sung Won Sohn,
economics professor at Cal State University Channel Islands. "It is a sign that things are beginning to improve." According to the
government's monthly job report for February, average hourly earnings have risen by 1.9 percent over the past 12 months.
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
Turns Democracy
Growth is a pre-condition for democracy – empirically demonstrated across regions
Acemoglu 8 – Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Daron, with Simon
Johnson, James A. Robinson, and Pierre Yared. “Income and Democracy.” The
808-842. JSTOR.)
American Economic Review, Vol. 98, No. 3, pp.
One of the most notable empirical regularities in political economy is the relationship between income
per capita and democracy. Today, all OECD countries are democratic, while many of the
nondemocracies are in the poor parts of the world, for example sub-Saharan Africa and
Southeast Asia. The positive cross-country relationship between income and democracy in the 1990s
is depicted in Figure 1, which shows the association between the Freedom House measure of democracy and log income per
capita in the 1990s.1 This relationship is not confined solely to a cross-country comparison. Most countries
were nondemocratic before the modern growth process took off at the beginning of the
nineteenth century. Democratization came together with growth. Robert J. Barro (1999, 160), for example,
summarizes this as follows: "Increases in various measures of the standard of living forecast a gradual
rise in democracy. In contrast, democracies that arise without prior economic development...
tend not to last."2 This statistical association between income and democracy is the cornerstone of the influ ential modernization
theory. Lipset (1959) suggested that democracy was both created and consolidated by a broad process
of "modernization" which involved changes in "the factors of industrialization, urbanization, wealth,
and education [which] are so closely interrelated as to form one common factor. And the factors subsumed under economic
development carry with it the political correlate of democracy" (80). The central tenet of the modernization theory,
that higher income per capita causes a country to be democratic, is also reproduced in most major
works on democracy (e.g., Robert A. Dahl 1971; Samuel P. Huntington 1991; Dietrich Rusechemeyer, John D. Stephens, and Evelyn
H. Stephens 1992).
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
Turns Heg
Economic collapse kills heg
Pietroburgo 9 (Anthony, Political Scientist, “The End of American Hegemony,” April 10http://ezinearticles.com/?The-End-of-AmericanHegemony&id=2207395: Ad 7-6-9)
However we can learn from past hegemonic states, all of which, withered away with time just as the
American one is currently in the process of doing. Great Britain was perhaps the last true hegemon before that of the United States. Back in 1890
the collapse of their empire had just began. David A. Lake's research on the issue is work that should be greatly analyzed due to the illustrious
similarities between the British recession in to retirement and the United States' as well. For much of the 19th century Great Britain was
dominating in the same fields as the U.S. did so in the 1950's through the late 1970's. Soon in the later 1800's The United States and Germany
moved to a protectionist system to plant their economic seeds and soon after were surpassing British industries and abilities. The
industrial
base of Great Britain crumbled and forced them to invest heavily in the service, shipping and
insurance sectors of the economy just to break-even when concerning their balance of payment statistics. For the time being the
British were able to carry on with the pound as the dominant world currency. The frail system was already on the thinnest
of ice, when WWI confounded the weak British economy (Lake 122). At the time of Great Britain's reign of power
they also pursued operations to completely open up and liberalize the world economy. This did lead to substantial brief economic abundance but
eventually the struggles of remaining a strong enough power to be considered an absolute hegemon wore off. Hegemonic
powers are
only sustainable during periods of constant economic growth. When growth is no longer the
complete and utter status of the hegemony's economic functionality the power ceases to be
consistent. We see this to be the case with Great Britain, as other world powers emerged and
caught up in terms of economic status and influence, British power that was exerted was much more explicit and
coercive, just like it was during the American hegemonic era under President Nixon (Lake 121). It is safe to say that the U.S. is
headed down the same path that will eventually end up being the ultimate de-throning of the
American empire and it's hegemonic capabilities. If you think back to all the complications that the United States is
experiencing in this very moment concerning obvious financial difficulties and others in the areas of education, technological innovation and
healthcare respectively. Other nations have clearly started their own catch up phase and are impeding on American power as we speak. The irony
between the situations leading up to the collapse of the British hegemonic state and the current burdens that are being placed upon a
contemptuous American hegemon are too similar for coincidence. It
took the disaster of WWI to finally destabilize the
British hegemon and the United States is one major crisis away from experiencing the same fate
(Bartilow Lecture).
Economic collapse destroys military strength
Thompson 9 (Loren, chief executive officer of Lexington, “America’s economic decline, Armed Forces Journal, March 9,
http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2009/03/3922551)
The negative economic news has not yet had much impact on the thinking of military analysts. They are accustomed to thinking of defense as one
if the country’s
economy continues to weaken, it is inevitable that the resulting scarcity of funds will force
reductions in military outlays. Furthermore, the decline of specific industrial sectors such as
steelmaking, electronics, chemicals and pharmaceuticals will limit the options military planners
have for sustaining the most demanding military campaigns. So policymakers need to take a hard look at what
of the few sectors in the national economy driven by noneconomic forces, namely threats and politics. But
current economic trends mean for the nation’s future military preparedness.
Growth is key to great power status
Pape 9 (Robert, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago “Realities and Obama's diplomacy,” Chicago Tribune, March 8,
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-perspec0308diplomacymar08,0,4785661.story)
From Rome to the United States today, the
rise and fall of great nations have been driven primarily by
economic strength. At any given moment, a state's power depends on the size and quality of its military
forces and other power assets. Over time, however, power is a result of economic strength—the
prerequisite for building and modernizing military forces. And so the size of the economy
relative to potential rivals ultimately determines the limits of power in international politics.
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
Turns Terrorism
Economic decline causes nuclear terrorism
Bremmer 9 (Ian, President of the Eurasia Group, sr. fellow @ World Policy Institute, “Call: Global Recession = More Terrorism,” Foreign
Policy, March 4, http://eurasia.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/03/04/the_global_recession_heightens_terrorist_risks)
The security deterioration of the past year in Pakistan and Afghanistan reflects exactly the
opposite phenomenon. In the region along both sides of their shared border, local tribal leaders have yet to express much interest in
helping Pakistani and NATO soldiers target local or foreign militants. For those with the power to either protect or betray the senior al-Qaeda
leaders believed to be hiding in the region, NATO
and Pakistani authorities have yet to find either sweet
enough carrots or sharp enough sticks to shift allegiances. The slowdown threatens to slow the
progress of a number of developing countries. Most states don't provide ground as fertile for militancy as places like
Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen. But as more people lose their jobs, their homes, and opportunities for
prosperity -- in emerging market countries or even within minority communities inside developed states -- it becomes easier for
localmilitants to find volunteers. This is why the growing risk of attack from suicide bombers
and well-trained gunmen in Pakistan creates risks that extend beyond South Asia. This is a
country that is home to lawless regions where local and international militants thrive, nuclear
weapons and material, a history of nuclear smuggling, a cash-starved government, and a
deteriorating economy. Pakistan is far from the only country in which terrorism threatens to spill
across borders. But there's a reason why the security threats flowing back and forth across the Afghan-Pakistani border rank so highly on
Eurasia Group's list of top political risks for 2009 -- and why they remain near the top of the Obama administration's security agenda.
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
Food Prices Impact
Earliest Bird 2013
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1NC
Immigration reform is key to food security
ACIR 7 (December 4, 2007 THE AGRICULTURE COALITION FOR IMMIGRATION REFORM
Dear Member of Congress: The Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform (ACIR) is deeply concerned with pending immigration
enforcement legislation known as the ‘Secure America Through Verification and Enforcement Act of 2007' or ‘SAVE Act’ (H.R.4088 and
S.2368). While these bills seek to address the worthy goal of stricter immigration law enforcement, they fail to take a comprehensive approach to
solving the immigration problem. History shows that a one dimensional approach to the nation’s immigration problem is doomed to fail.
Enforcement alone, without providing a viable means to obtain a legal workforce to sustain economic growth is a formula for disaster.
Agriculture best illustrates this point. Agricultural industries that need considerable labor in order to function include the fruit and vegetable,
dairy and livestock, nursery, greenhouse, and Christmas tree sectors. Localized labor shortages have resulted in actual crop loss in various parts
of the country. More broadly, producers are making decisions to scale back production, limit expansion, and leave many critical tasks unfulfilled.
Continued labor shortages could force more producers to shift production out of the U.S., thus stressing already taxed food and import safety
systems. Farm lenders are becoming increasingly concerned about the stability of affected industries. This problem is aggravated by the nearly
universal acknowledgement that the current H-2A agricultural guest worker program does not work. Based on government statistics and other
evidence, roughly 80 percent of the farm labor force in the United States is foreign born, and a significant majority of that labor force is believed
to be improperly authorized. The bills’ imposition of mandatory electronic employment eligibility verification will screen out the farm labor force
without providing access to legal workers. Careful study of farm labor force demographics and trends indicates that there is not a replacement
domestic workforce available to fill these jobs. This feature alone will result in chaos unless combined with labor-stabilizing reforms. Continued
failure by Congress to act to address this situation in a comprehensive fashion is placing in jeopardy U.S. food security and global
competitiveness. Furthermore, congressional inaction threatens the livelihoods of millions of Americans whose jobs exist because laborintensive
agricultural production is occurring in America. If production is forced to move, most of the upstream and downstream jobs will disappear as
well. The Coalition cannot defend of the broken status quo. We support well-managed borders and a rational legal system. We have worked for
years to develop popular bipartisan legislation that would stabilize the existing experienced farm workforce and provide an orderly transition to
wider reliance on a legal agricultural worker program that provides a fair balance of employer and employee rights and protections. We
respectfully urge you to oppose S.2368, H.R.4088, or any other bills that would impose employment-based immigration enforcement in isolation
from equally important reforms that would provide for a stable and legal farm labor force.
Food insecurity sparks World War 3
Calvin 98 (William, Theoretical Neurophysiologist – U Washington, Atlantic Monthly, January, Vol 281, No. 1, p. 47-64)
The population-crash scenario is surely the most appalling. Plummeting crop yields would cause some powerful countries to try to take over their
neighbors or distant lands -- if only because their armies, unpaid and lacking food, would go marauding, both at home and across the borders. The
better-organized countries would attempt to use their armies, before they fell apart entirely, to take over countries with significant remaining
resources, driving out or starving their inhabitants if not using modern weapons to accomplish the same end: eliminating competitors for the
remaining food. This would be a worldwide problem -- and could lead to a Third World War -- but Europe's vulnerability is particularly easy to
analyze. The last abrupt cooling, the Younger Dryas, drastically altered Europe's climate as far east as Ukraine. Present-day Europe has more than
650 million people. It has excellent soils, and largely grows its own food. It could no longer do so if it lost the extra warming from the North
Atlantic.
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
AT: Food Shortages Inevitable
US agriculture can prevent global food shortages
Bidinotto 10 (How to Cultivate a Food Crisis December/29/10 How to Cultivate a Food Crisis by Robert James Bidinotto
As any shopper knows, food prices this past year have been rising faster than the overall rate of inflation. “Fears of a global food crisis swept the
world’s commodity markets as prices for staples such as corn, rice and wheat spiraled after the U.S. government warned of ‘dramatically’ lower
supplies,” the Financial Times reported in early October. “There is growing concern among countries about continuing volatility and uncertainty
in food markets,” said World Bank president Robert Zoellick later that month. “These concerns have been compounded by recent increases in
grain prices.” Confronting this looming food-supply crisis is the American farmer. His productivity is such that the United States is the
world’s largest agricultural exporter, with $108.7 billion in farm products shipped abroad in 2010. Helping him increase the supply of
agricultural products is the key to addressing both rising food prices and global shortages. His productivity is also critical to our country’s
broader economic recovery.
US agriculture can prevent food shortages
Matz 9 (U.S. farmers feed the planet Marshall Matz Sept. 26, 2009 Marshall Matz, former counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on
Agriculture, is the founding chairman of Friends of the World Food Program. He practices law in Washington, D.C.
Most Americans give little thought to agriculture policy or food production, except perhaps when deciding what to eat for dinner. We are spoiled.
America's capacity to produce food is so advanced that we can purchase virtually any food we want, anywhere, at any time. Such productivity is
unprecedented. Even with the recent spike in food costs, Americans spend only 10% of disposable income on food. It is the productivity of our
farmers that allows us the disposable income to purchase those BlackBerries and flat screens that have become a necessity. In recent days,
however, this food production system has come under attack. Both Time magazine and Michael Pollan, writing in The New York Times, have
raised the question of whether low food prices are responsible for obesity and whether we should address it by reducing production to increase
the cost of food. This question deserves an answer. The world's population is over 6 billion people, soon to be 7 billion or 8 billion. Norman
Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution to agriculture, passed away recently at the age of 95. Last year, Borlaug wrote to
then-Sen. Barack Obama, noting, "Over the next 50 years, the world's farmers and ranchers will be called upon to produce more food than has
been produced in the past 10,000 years combined, and to do so in environmentally sustainable ways." We can meet this challenge, but only if
we use all the tools at our disposal. The "Green Revolution" and the use of biotechnology, which earned Borlaug the Nobel Peace Prize, must
be transported to Africa and all countries with the land and climate necessary to grow food. Biotechnology will help us reduce the use of
fertilizers, protect the environment and use less water. The demands on our agriculture sector also will increase with the need to become
energy independent. We can, literally, grow energy. Cellulosic fuels can be produced from trees, grass and a host of renewable crops. Obesity is
the nation's No. 1 public health problem. It cannot and should not be minimized. Former Sens. George McGovern of South Dakota and Bob Dole
of Kansas, who have led the country on nutrition policy for the past 30 years, have urged President Obama to convene a White House Conference
on Obesity. But reducing agricultural production as a strategy to fight obesity ignores the needs of the poor both here and abroad. According to
the United Nations, 1 billion of the world's 6 billion people do not have enough to eat. As is usually the case, children are the most vulnerable. In
developing countries, many millions of children go to school hungry. Every day, 18,000 children die due to hunger - more people than live in
many Wisconsin towns. That is why, according to the World Food Program, "In the poorest countries, school feeding programs are emerging as a
common social safety net." Food is the critical tool for improving education, reducing the birth rate and helping in the fight against AIDS. We
must consider agriculture policy from this vantage point. Our natural resources are, indeed, being depleted every day. Many experts expect that
by 2100 water will be more precious than oil. Our soil, water and energy supply must be conserved. Last year, in the 2008 Farm Bill, Congress
created a new National Institute of Food and Agriculture specifically to focus on nutrition, food safety, renewable energy, natural resources and
how these impact agriculture. The bottom line is this: Farmers and ranchers feed the world, and they need to do more, not less. Agriculture
policy in the United States must protect the environment and be based on science, but its primary goal is to feed the planet. The new secondary
goal is to assist in energy independence. Let's keep our eye on the ball.
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AT: Impact Defense
Food insecurity kill billions through starvation
Brown 5 (Lester Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute, February 7, 2005, People and the Planet, “Falling water tables 'could hit food
supply',” http://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=2424
Many Americans see terrorism as the principal threat to security, but for much of humanity, the effect of water shortages and rising temperatures
on food security are far more important issues. For the 3 billion people who live on 2 dollars a day or less and who spend up to 70 per cent of
their income on food, even a modest rise in food prices can quickly become life-threatening. For them, it is the next meal that is the overriding
concern."
Food insecurity causes government collapse –extinction
Zeitvogel 11 (World is 'one poor harvest' from chaos, new book warns By Karin Zeitvogel (AFP) – Jan 16, 2011
What distinguishes "World on the Edge" from his dozens of other books is "the sense of urgency," Brown told AFP. "Things could start
unraveling at any time now and it's likely to start on the food front. "We've got to get our act together quickly. We don't have generations or even
decades -- we're one poor harvest away from chaos," he said. "We have been talking for decades about saving the planet, but the question now
is, can we save civilization?" In "World on the Edge", Brown points to warning signs and lays out arguments for why he believes the cause of
the chaos will be the unsustainable way that mankind is going about producing more and more food. Resources are already beginning to be
depleted, and that could cause a global "food bubble" created by overusing land and water to meet the exponential growth in demand for food -grain, in particular -- to burst. Two huge dustbowls have formed in the world, one in Africa and the other in China and Mongolia, because of soil
erosion caused by overplowing. In Lesotho, the grain harvest has dropped by more than half over the last decade or two because of soil erosion,
Brown said. In Saudi Arabia, grain supplies are shrinking as a fossil aquifer drilled in in the 1970s to sustain domestic grain production is running
dry after years of "overpumping" to meet the needs of a population that wants to consume more meat and poultry. Global warming is also
impacting the global supply of grain, which Brown calls the foundation of the world food economy. Every one-degree-Celsius rise above the
normal temperature results in a 10 percent fall in grain yields, something that was painfully visible in Russia last year, where a seven-week
heatwave killed tens of thousands and caused the grain harvest to shrink by 40 percent. Food prices soared in Russia as a result of the poor
harvest, and Russia -- which is one of the top wheat exporters in the world -- cut off grain exports. Different grains are staple foods in most of the
world, and foods like meat and dairy products are "grain-intensive." It takes seven pounds (3.2 kilograms) of grain fed to a cow to produce a
pound of beef, and around four pounds (1.8 kilograms) of grain to produce a pound of cheese, Brown told AFP. In "World on the Edge", Brown
paints a grim picture of how a failed harvest could spark a grain shortage that would send food prices sky-rocketing, cause hunger to
spread, governments to collapse and states to fail. Food riots would erupt in low-income countries and "with confidence in the world
grain market shattered, the global economy could start to unravel," Brown warned.
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U.S.-Indian Relations Impact
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1NC
Immigration reform expands skilled labor – key to relations with India
Los Angeles Times, 11/9/2012 (Other countries eagerly await U.S. immigration reform, p.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/11/us-immigration-reform-eagerly-awaited-by-source-countries.html)
immigration reform will see expansion of skilled labor visas ," predicted B.
Lindsay Lowell, director of policy studies for the Institute for the Study of International Migration
at Georgetown University. A former research chief for the congressionally appointed Commission on Immigration Reform,
Lowell said he expects to see at least a fivefold increase in the number of highly skilled labor
"Comprehensive
visas that would provide "a significant shot in the arm for India and China ." There is
widespread consensus among economists and academics that skilled migration fosters
new trade and business relationships between countries and enhances links to the global
economy , Lowell said. "Countries like India and China weigh the opportunities of business
abroad from their expats with the possibility of brain drain, and I think they still see the immigration opportunity as a
bigger plus than not ," he said.
U.S.-India relations solve South Asian nuclear war
Schaffer, Spring 2002 (Teresita – Director of the South Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Security, Washington
Quarterly, p. Lexis)
Washington's increased interest in India since the late 1990s reflects India's economic expansion and
position as Asia's newest rising power. New Delhi, for its part, is adjusting to the end of the Cold War. As a result, both
giant democracies see that they can benefit by closer cooperation . For Washington, the
advantages include a wider network of friends in Asia at a time when the region is changing rapidly, as well as a
stronger position from which to help calm possible future nuclear tensions in the region .
Enhanced trade and investment benefit both countries and are a prerequisite for improved U.S.
relations with India . For India, the country's ambition to assume a stronger leadership role in the world and to maintain an
economy that lifts its people out of poverty depends critically on good relations with the United States.
Extinction
Hundley 12 (Tom Hundley is senior editor at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. This article for Foreign Policy is part of the Pulitzer
Center's Gateway project on nuclear security. Race to the End http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/05/race_to_the_end?page=0,3)
The arms race could make a loose nuke more likely . After all, Pakistan's assurances that its nuclear
arsenal is safe and secure rest heavily on the argument that its warheads and their delivery
systems have been uncoupled and stored separately in heavily guarded facilities. It would be very
difficult for a group of mutinous officers to assemble the necessary protocols for a launch and well nigh
impossible for a band of terrorists to do so. But that calculus changes with the deployment of
mobile battlefield weapons . The weapons themselves, no longer stored in heavily guarded bunkers, would be far more
exposed. Nevertheless, military analysts from both countries still say that a nuclear exchange triggered by
miscalculation, miscommunication, or panic is far more likely than terrorists stealing a weapon -- and,
significantly, that the odds of such an exchange increase with the deployment of battlefield
nukes. As these ready-to-use weapons are maneuvered closer to enemy lines, the chain of command and control would
be stretched and more authority necessarily delegated to field officers. And, if they have weapons designed to
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repel a conventional attack, there is obviously a reasonable chance they will use them for that purpose. " It lowers the threshold ,"
said Hoodbhoy. "The idea that tactical nukes could be used against Indian tanks on Pakistan's territory creates the kind of atmosphere that greatly
shortens the distance to apocalypse." Both
sides speak of the possibility of a limited nuclear war. But even those
who speak in these terms seem to understand that this is fantasy -- that once started, a nuclear exchange
would be almost impossible to limit or contain. "The only move that you have control over is your first move; you
have no control over the nth move in a nuclear exchange," said Carnegie's Tellis. The first launch would
create hysteria; communication lines would break down, and events would rapidly cascade out of
control. Some of the world's most densely populated cities could find themselves under nuclear
attack, and an estimated 20 million people could die almost immediately . What's more, the
resulting firestorms would put 5 million to 7 million metric tons of smoke into the upper
atmosphere , according to a new model developed by climate scientists at Rutgers University and the University of Colorado. Within
weeks, skies around the world would be permanently overcast, and the condition vividly described by Carl Sagan
as " nuclear winter" would be upon us . The darkness would likely last about a decade. The
Earth's temperature would drop, agriculture around the globe would collapse, and a billion or
more humans who already live on the margins of subsistence could starve. This is the real
nuclear threat that is festering in South Asia . It is a threat to all countries, including the
United States, not just India and Pakistan. Both sides acknowledge it, but neither seems able to
slow their dangerous race to annihilation .
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AT: Impact Defense
Escalation is highly probable
Geller 5 (Daniel S. – Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Wayne State University, The India-Pakistan Conflict: An
Enduring Rivalry, Ed. T. V. Paul, p. 99)
In fact, both
the May-July 1999 military engagement between India and Pakistan over Kashmir and the crisis of
December 2001-June 2002 after the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament mirrored the conflict escalation
pattern for nuclear-armed states. Each side initiated troop mobilization and general military alerts, coupled with the evacuation of
civilians from border-area villages. However, the outcome of the future confrontations for India and Pakistan
may not adhere to the pattern established by other nuclear dyads. Elements are present in this
dyad that were largely absent between other nuclear-armed antagonists and that make the
escalation of war more probable . Among those factors are the presence of a contiguous
border between India and Pakistan, a history of multiple wars, and an ongoing territorial dispute.
These factors, among others,79 increase the likelihood that an Indo-Pakistani dispute will turn
violent and that the violence will escalate to war irrespective of the presence of nuclear
weapons .
That escalation has a high probability of being nuclear
Raghavan, Fall-Winter 2001 (Lieutenant General V. R. – former Director General of Military Operations for India, Limited War and
Nuclear Escalation in South Asia, The Nonproliferation Review, p. 1)
The status of India and Pakistan as declared nuclear powers with growing nuclear arsenals has
raised the risks of a nuclear exchange between them, if the two countries engage in a large military conflict. The
political leadership in both countries does not seem to have fully grasped the implications of
nuclear weapons in relation to the ongoing conflict in Jammu and Kashmir. This conflict could lead to a limited war,
as it has triggered three wars in the past. The risks involved in fighting a limited war over the Kashmir issue and the potential for such a war to
escalate into a nuclear exchange are at best inadequately understood, and at worst brushed aside as an unlikely possibility. Despite this official
stance, however, a
close examination of Indian and Pakistani military and nuclear doctrine reveals
elements that could contribute to the rapid escalation of a limited war to include nuclear
weapons . Strikingly, India and Pakistan have not revealed warfighting doctrines for the post-1998 condition of nuclear weapons readiness.
It is not clear, for example, what threats to its security would compel India to declare a state of war with Pakistan. There is also no indication of
the circumstances that would induce Pakistan to seek a larger war with India. The political objectives that a limited war might seek to achieve
have also not been articulated in official and public discourse in the two countries. This article examines the possibility of limited war between
India and Pakistan, and the potential of such a conflict triggering a nuclear war. It examines the considerations that could push each of the two
countries to fight a limited war. It discusses how such a war might be waged and the circumstances that would likely precipitate an escalation to a
nuclear exchange. The doctrinal beliefs and decisionmaking processes of the two countries are examined to trace the likely escalatory spiral
towards a nuclear war. The article concludes that the
high
probability of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan is
in the event the two countries engage in a direct military conflict.
Indo-Pak war is the most probable scenario for extinction
Fai 1
(Ghulam Nabi, Kashmiri American Council; July 8, Washington Times)
The foreign policy of the United States in South Asia should move from the lackadaisical and distant (with India
crowned with a unilateral veto power) to aggressive involvement at the vortex. The most dangerous place on the
planet is Kashmir, a disputed territory convulsed and illegally occupied for more than 53 years and sandwiched between nuclear-capable
India and Pakistan. It has ignited two wars between the estranged South Asian rivals in 1948 and 1965, and a third could trigger
nuclear volleys and a nuclear winter threatening the entire globe. The United States would enjoy no sanctuary. This
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apocalyptic vision is no idiosyncratic view. The Director of Central Intelligence, the Department of Defense, and world experts
generally place Kashmir at the peak of their nuclear worries. Both India and Pakistan are racing like thoroughbreds to bolster
their nuclear arsenals and advanced delivery vehicles. Their defense budgets are climbing despite widespread misery
amongst their populations. Neither country has initialed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, or indicated
an inclination to ratify an impending Fissile Material/Cut-off Convention.
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AT: Relations Don’t Solve
Relations are key to prevent Indo-Pak war
Riedel 6
Senior Fellow @ Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution (Bruce, 12/18, Global Politics, “India and the United States: A New
Era,” http://www.brookings.edu/ views/op-ed/fellows/ riedel20061218.htm)
Now that President Bush has built on this foundation, he should use the new strategic partnership to move beyond crisis management between
India and Pakistan to try to help the two countries resolve the underlying issue that has brought them repeatedly to conflict: Kashmir. America
has avoided dealing with the Kashmir issue for decades, both because of its complexities and because India opposed outside involvement,
preferring to deal bilaterally with Pakistan. This approach has not worked; the problem has gotten worse and has repeatedly taken the
subcontinent to the brink of disaster. Now is the time for quiet American diplomacy to exploit our stronger ties with India and our improved
relations with Pakistan since 9/11 to try to resolve the Kashmir quarrel. It is in the self interest of all three nations to do so. The timing is
particularly fortuitous since India and Pakistan have begun their own bilateral dialogue to improve relations since they were last at the brink of
war in 2003. That dialogue has already produced some modest confidence-building measures in Kashmir but has not really engaged the
underlying issues. Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf says he is ready to engage India on Kashmir and has put some interesting ideas on the
table. He should be tested now by both the U.S. and India. Helping him resolve Kashmir would also help him end Pakistan's long relationship
with jihadist terror groups which have dangerous relationships with al-Qaeda. If Kashmir moved toward peace, Pakistan could more easily put
those groups out of business and isolate al-Qaeda. A deal should not threaten India's territorial integrity; rather it should focus on improving the
Kashmiri's lives.
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AT: Relations Resilient
U.S.-India relations are not resilient
Tellis 12 – Senior Associate, South Asia Program (Ashley J., 11/29, “A New Friendship: U.S.-India Relations,”
http://carnegieendowment.org/globalten/?fa=50147)
Building on this evolution in American policy toward India since Bill Clinton, President Barack Obama
has already underscored
India’s strategic and economic significance for the U nited S tates. Future policies should build on Obama’s
vision but even more importantly translate it into an “all of government” effort that deepens the partnership on multiple dimensions. This
goal, however, could prove challenging and will require strong resolve. The second Obama term will likely confront a series of
potentially serious dangers relating to Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, and possibly China—in addition to all the domestic challenges of
accelerating a slow economic recovery. Given these realities, it is possible that the task of exploiting breakthroughs will be shortchanged amid the
struggle to overcome calamities. In Washington, as in many other capitals, addressing the urgent invariably dominates engaging the important.
Strong U.S.-India relations will continue to be important for American interests in the years ahead. But continuing
the renovation of
U.S.-India ties represents an opportunity to be realized rather than a crisis to be overcome. The
difference between a distracted and a concerted effort to sustain a favorable Asian geopolitical equilibrium could
set the course for the relationship. The evolving U.S.-India strategic partnership could simply languish
as yet another historical curiosity embodying some vague potential or it could actually advance important common
interests.
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Turns Heg
Stable India and Pakistan key to check rising challengers
Glardon 5 (Thomas L., Lt. Colonel for USAF, http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/ksil12.pdf) GAT
In addition to resolving the above threats, the U.S. has an unprecedented opportunity to improve U.S.
security and economic prosperity through improved relations with India and Pakistan. In security, a
stable and friendly Pakistan and India will provide a counterbalance to the regional powers of China,
Russia and Iran.
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Turns Terrorism
Indo-Pak war turns terrorism – ruins any chance at winning the War on Terror
Koshy 9 (Nina, former Director of International Affairs, Mainstream Weekly, Vol 42, No 11,
http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article1199.html) GAT
THE war on terror has refashioned conflict situations in the region. Two of the most prominent conflict
situations may be examined: Kashmir and Sri Lanka. M.K. Narayanan, currently the National Security
Adviser, in an article written less than a month after the terror attacks in the USA (in Asian Age online)
argued that there was “a connection between the September 11 attacks in the US” and “the ongoing conflict
in Jammu and Kashmir”. He concluded that a war against terrorism must address the violence in
Kashmir well as in Afghanistan. “Something drastic needs to be done to curb Islamist outfits currently
engaged in cascading violence in J&K. ..The Alliance for the Battle Against Terrorism must gear itself to
deal with a situation which is fraught with dangerous possibilities.” The dynamics of the Kashmir conflict
underwent a drastic change since 9/11 due to dramatic changes wrought by the US war on terror in the
region. Three competing perspectives emanated from Islamabad, New Delhi and Washington. Pakistan
continued to describe the happenings in Kashmir as ‘liberation struggle’ and insisted Washington should
solve the Kashmir problem so that Pakistan can fully participate in the war on terror. India’s support to the
war on terror proceeded on the assumption that the US would have to accept that the happenings in Kashmir
are due to ‘cross-border terrorism’. India thus tried to combine the issues of war on terror and Kashmir so as
to draw the maximum benefit from the changed international opinion in favour of fighting terrorism lock,
stock and barrel. India strongly challenged Pakistan’s credentials to be partner of the US in the war on
terror and repeatedly urged on the US to include Kashmir in its war on terror. The US, which needed
both Pakistan and India in the war on terror, did not do so. A recent statement by David Miliband, the
British Foreign Secretary, gave rise to high level of moral indignation in New Delhi. He said in an article in
The Guardian: “Although I understand the current difficulties, resolution of the dispute over Kashmir
would help deny extremists in the region one of their main calls to arms.”. Actually this statement did
not warrant the kind of reaction that came from New Delhi. It only reinforced the impression that when it
comes to Kashmir, our rulers adopt a denial mode—that there is no dispute and that if at all there is any
problem we know how to deal with it. Indian sensitivities on the Kashmir issue are understandable. India can
legitimately take credit for the apparently new political climate in J&K. But to treat the Kashmir problem as
solely or primarily due to “international terrorism” is to invite the kind of international intervention which
India says it does not want. In spite of the present rupture in relationship between India and Pakistan,
diplomacy and peace are the only options.
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NEG – Link Debate
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Cuba
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General Cuba Links
Plan saps Obama’s capital
Birns and Mills 13 (Larry, Director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Frederick B., COHA Senior Research Fellow, 01/30, “Best
Time for U.S.– Cuba Rapprochement Is Now,” http://www.coha.org/best-time-for-u-s-cuba-rapprochement-is-now/)
Despite the basic intransigence of US policy towards Cuba, in recent years, important changes have been introduced by Havana: state control
over the economy has been diminished; most travel restrictions affecting both Americans and Cubans on the island have been lifted; and the
“group of 75” Cuban dissidents detained in 2003 have been freed. Washington has all but ignored these positive changes by Havana, but when it
comes to interacting with old foes such as those of Myanmar, North Korea, and Somalia, somehow constructive dialogue is the order of the day.
One reason for this inconsistency is the continued opposition by the anti-Castro lobby to a
change of course by Washington. The anti-Castro lobby and their allies in the US Congress argue
that the reforms coming out of Havana are too little too late and that political repression
continues unabated. They continue to see the embargo as a tool for coercing either more dramatic
reforms or regime change. It is true that the reformist tendency in Cuba does not include a qualitative move from a one party system
to political pluralism. Lamentably, Cuba reportedly continues to use temporary detentions and the occasional jailing of non-violent dissidents to
limit the parameters of political debate and total freedom of association. The authors agree that no non-violent Cuban dissident should be
intimidated, detained or jailed. But continuing to maliciously turn the screws on Havana has never provided an incentive for more democracy in
any sense of the word nor has it created a political opening into which Cuba, with confidence, could enter. The easing of tensions between
Washington and Havana is more likely to contribute to the evolution of a more democratic form of socialism on the island, the early stages of
which we may presently be witnessing. In any case the precise form of such change inevitably should and will be decided in Cuba, not in
Washington or Miami. To further moves towards rapprochement with Cuba, the U.S. State Department should remove the country from the list of
state sponsors of terrorism. It is an invention to depict Havana as a state sponsor of terrorism, a charge only levied by the State Department under
pressure from Hill hardliners. As researcher Kevin Edmunds, quite properly points out: “This position is highly problematic, as the United States
has actively engaged in over 50 years of economic and covert destabilization in Cuba, going so far as blindly protecting wanted terrorists such as
Luis Posada Carilles and Orlando Bosch, both former CIA agents accused of dozens of terrorist attacks in Cuba and the United States ” (Nov. 15,
2012, Kevin Edmonds blog). It was precisely the propensity of some anti-Castro extremists to plan terrorist attacks against Cuba that urgently
motivated the infiltration of such groups by the Cuban five as well as the close monitoring of these organizations by the FBI. Another gesture of
good will would be for the White House to grant clemency to the Cuban five: Gerardo Hernandez, Ramón Labañino, Fernando Gonzalez,
Antonio Guerrero and René Gonzalez. They are Cuban nationals who were convicted in a Miami court in 2001 and subsequently sentenced to
terms ranging from 15 years to double life, mostly on charges of conspiracy to commit espionage. Despite requests for a change of venue out of
Miami, which at first was granted and later denied, the trial took place in a politically charged Miami atmosphere that arguably tainted the
proceedings and compromised justice. Supporters maintain that the Cuban five had infiltrated extremist anti-Castro organizations in order to
prevent terrorist attacks against Cuba and did not pose any security threat to the United States. It would be an important humanitarian gesture to
let them go home. Perhaps such a gesture might facilitate reciprocity on the part of Cuban authorities when it comes to American engineer Alan
Gross who is presently being detained in a Cuban jail. There
would probably be a political price to pay by the
Obama administration for taking steps towards reconciliation with Havana, but if Obama’s election to a
second term means that there is to be a progressive dividend, surely such a dividend ought to include a change in US policy towards the island.
Mirabile dictu, the Administration can build on the small steps it has already taken. Since 2009, Washington has lifted some of the restrictions on
travel between the US and Cuba and now allows Cuban Americans to send remittances to relatives on the island. The Cuba Reconciliation Act
(HR 214) introduced by Representative Jose Serrano (D-NY) on January 4, 2013, and sitting in a number of congressional committees, would
repeal the harsh terms of the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 and the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, both of which toughened the embargo during the
special period in Cuba. The Cuba Reconciliation Act, however, is unlikely to get much traction, especially with ultra-hardliner Representative
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), chairing the House Foreign Relations Committee, and her counterpart, Robert Menendez (D-NJ), who is about to
lead the Senate Foreign Relations Body. Some of the anti-Castro Cuban American community would likely view any of the three measures
advocated here as a capitulation to the Castro brothers. But as we have argued, a pro-democracy and humanist position is not in any way
undermined, but might in fact be advanced by détente. An end to the embargo has been long overdue, and the judgment of history may very well
be that it ought never to have been started.
Plan guarantees congressional backlash
Hanson and Lee 13 (Stephanie, associate director and coordinating editor at CFR.org, Brianna, Senior Production Editor, 01/31,
“U.S.-Cuba Relations,” http://www.cfr.org/cuba/us-cuba-relations/p11113)
Many recent policy reports have recommended that the United States take some unilateral steps
to roll back sanctions on Cuba. The removal of sanctions, however, would be just one step in the process of normalizing relations.
Such a process is sure to be controversial , as indicated by the heated congressional debate
spurred in March 2009 by attempts to ease travel and trade restrictions in a large appropriations
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bill. "Whatever we call it--normalization, détente, rapproachement-- it is clear that the policy
process risks falling victim to the politics of the issue," says Sweig.
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GOP Link
Empirics prove stiff GOP opposition to the plan
Griswold 5 – director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute (Daniel, 10/12, “Four Decades of Failure: The U.S.
Embargo against Cuba,” http://www.cato.org/publications/speeches/four-decades-failure-us-embargo-against-cuba)
For all those reasons, pressure has been building in Congress for a new policy toward Cuba. In
the past five years, the House
and occasionally the Senate have voted to lift the travel ban to Cuba, and also to lift the cap on
remittances and even to lift the embargo altogether. Yet each time efforts in Congress to ease the
embargo have been thwarted by the administration and the Republican leadership . Support
for the embargo certainly does not come from the general American public, but from a group of
Cuban-American activists concentrated in southern Florida. By a fluke of the electoral college, Republican
presidents feel obligated to please this small special interest at the expense of our broader national interest.
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Cuban-American Lawmakers Link
Powerful opposition to the plan from Cuban-American lawmakers
White 13 – senior fellow at the Center for International Policy (Robert E., 03/07, “After Chávez, a Chance to Rethink Relations With Cuba,”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/opinion/after-chavez-hope-for-good-neighbors-in-latin-america.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)
Throughout his career, the autocratic Mr. Chávez used our embargo as a wedge with which to antagonize the United States and alienate its
The embargo no longer
serves any useful purpose (if it ever did at all); President Obama should end it, though it would
mean overcoming powerful opposition from Cuban-American lawmakers in Congress.
supporters. His fuel helped prop up the rule of Mr. Castro and his brother Raúl, Cuba’s current president.
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Link Magnifier/AT: Link Turns
Link outweighs – embargo advocates have more influence than the plan’s supporters
Karon 10 – senior editor at TIME (Tony, 04/21, “Do We Really Need an Embargo Against Cuba?”
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,48773,00.html)
And that has prompted a growing movement in the corridors of power to reconsider the policy. Once the preserve of dedicated liberals and lefties,
opposition to the U.S. embargo on Cuba these days is an ever-expanding tent. The recent
congressional effort to relax aspects of the embargo was led by farm-state Republicans and
echoed a growing consensus even inside the GOP. The National Bipartisan Commission on Cuba, whose calls for a
comprehensive review of U.S. policy have thus far been rebuffed by President Clinton, includes not only 16 GOP Senators (and eight
Democrats), but also some of the GOP foreign policy heavyweights lined up by the Bush campaign, including former Secretaries of State
Kissinger, Schultz and Eagleburger. And that's hardly surprising, since ending the embargo has long been advocated by groupings as diverse as
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Vatican and, reportedly, the bulk of democracy activists still living in Cuba. While previous embargoes of
countries such as Iran and Iraq have had the support of most of the industrialized world, the only country consistently backing Washington's Cuba
policy is Israel. Yet,
despite the burgeoning opposition, advocates of the embargo continue to
hold sway with the leadership of both parties on Capitol Hill , and with both presidential
candidates. Elian's enduiring legacy, however, may be that he reopened a national debate in the U.S. on the future of Cuba policy.
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Mexico
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
General Mexico Links
Economic engagement with Mexico is politically divisive
Wilson 13 – Associate at the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International. Center for Scholars (Christopher E., January, “A U.S.Mexico Economic Alliance: Policy Options for a Competitive Region,”
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/new_ideas_us_mexico_relations.pdf)
At a time when Mexico is poised to experience robust economic growth, a manufacturing renaissance is underway in North America and bilateral
trade is booming, the United States and Mexico have an important choice to make: sit back and reap the moderate
and perhaps temporal benefits coming naturally from the evolving global context , or implement a robust agenda to improve the competitiveness
of North America for the long term . Given
that job creation and economic growth in both the United States
and Mexico are at stake, t he choice should be simple, but a limited understanding about the
magnitude, nature and depth of the U.S.-Mexico economic relationship among the public and
many policymakers has made serious action to support regional exporters more politically
divisive than it ought to be.
NAFTA proves economic engagement sparks divisive debates over job losses
Villarreal and Fergusson 13 – Specialists in International Trade and Finance (M. Angeles, Ian F., 02/21, “NAFTA at 20:
Overview and Trade Effects,” http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R42965.pdf)
NAFTA was controversial when first proposed , mostly because it was the first FTA
involving two wealthy, developed countries and a developing country. The political debate
surrounding the agreement was divisive with proponents arguing that the agreement would
help generate thousands of jobs and reduce income disparit y in the region, while opponents
warned that the agreement would cause huge job losses in the United States as companies moved
production to Mexico to lower costs. In reality, NAFTA did not cause the huge job losses feared by the critics or the large
economic gains predicted by supporters. The net overall effect of NAFTA on the U.S. economy appears to have been relatively modest, primarily
because trade with Canada and Mexico account for a small percentage of U.S. GDP. However, there were worker and firm adjustment costs as
the three countries adjusted to more open trade and investment among their economies.
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
Energy Cooperation Link
Technical cooperation in Mexico’s energy infrastructure is politically controversial
Committee on Foreign Relations 12 – standing committee of the United States Senate (12/21, “OIL, MEXICO, AND THE
TRANSBOUNDARY AGREEMENT,” http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CPRT-112SPRT77567/html/CPRT-112SPRT77567.htm)
The TBA further contains requirements of data sharing and notification of likely reserves
between the United States and Mexico, opening the opportunity for increased government-togovernment collaboration on strategic energy policy choices. Mexico and the United States are
relatively less advanced in effective communication and linkages of our energy systems than we
are in less politically-controversial economic areas. Improved ties can improve understanding and galvanize
cooperation in often unexpected ways. In the immediate term, closer oil sector communication will be beneficial in case of accidents in the Gulf
of Mexico or in case of significant disruptions to global oil supplies.
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
Venezuela
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
General Venezuela Links
Plan’s unpopular for a laundry list of reasons, and it’s a flip flop for Obama
Sullivan 13 – Specialist in Latin American Affairs (Mark P., 01/10, “Venezuela: Issues for Congress,”
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R40938.pdf)
U.S. Policy The
United States traditionally has had close relations with Venezuela, a major supplier
of foreign oil to the United States, but there has been significant friction with the Chávez government.
For several years, U.S. officials have expressed concerns about human rights, Venezuela’s
military arms purchases (largely from Russia), its relations with Cuba and Iran, its efforts to
export its brand of populism to other Latin American countries, and the use of Venezuelan
territory by Colombian guerrilla and paramilitary forces. Declining Venezuelan cooperation on
antidrug and antiterrorism efforts also has been a U.S. concern. Since 2005, Venezuela has been
designated annually (by President Bush and President Obama ) as a country that has failed to
adhere to its international anti-drug obligations. Since 2006, the De partment of State has
prohibited the sale of defense articles and services to Venezuela because of lack of
cooperation on antiterrorism efforts.
Venezuelan engagement is stigmatized in Congress – multiple issues are prerequisites
Sullivan 13 – Specialist in Latin American Affairs (Mark P., 01/10, “Venezuela: Issues for Congress,”
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R40938.pdf)
in past years, there were concerns in the 112 th Congress regarding the
state of Venezuela’s democracy and human rights situation and its deepening relations with Iran,
and these concerns will likely continue in the 113 th Congress. The 112 th Congress
approved H.R. 3783 (P.L. 112- 220), which requires the Administration to conduct an
assessment and present “a strategy to address Iran’s growing hostile presence and activity in the
Western Hemisphere.” Other initiatives that were not approved include: H.R. 2542, which would have withheld some assistance to the
Legislative Initiatives As
Organization of American States unless that b ody took action to invoke the Inter-American Democratic Charter regarding the status of
democracy in Venezuela; H.R. 2583, which included a provision prohibiting aid to the government of Venezuela; and H.Res. 247, which would
have called on the Secretary of State to designate Venezuela as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
Flip Flop Link
Plan’s unpopular for a laundry list of reasons, and it’s a flip flop for Obama
Sullivan 13 – Specialist in Latin American Affairs (Mark P., 01/10, “Venezuela: Issues for Congress,”
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R40938.pdf)
U.S. Policy The
United States traditionally has had close relations with Venezuela, a major supplier
of foreign oil to the United States, but there has been significant friction with the Chávez government.
For several years, U.S. officials have expressed concerns about human rights, Venezuela’s
military arms purchases (largely from Russia), its relations with Cuba and Iran, its efforts to
export its brand of populism to other Latin American countries, and the use of Venezuelan
territory by Colombian guerrilla and paramilitary forces. Declining Venezuelan cooperation on
antidrug and antiterrorism efforts also has been a U.S. concern. Since 2005, Venezuela has been
designated annually (by President Bush and President Obama ) as a country that has failed to
adhere to its international anti-drug obligations. Since 2006, the De partment of State has
prohibited the sale of defense articles and services to Venezuela because of lack of
cooperation on antiterrorism efforts.
Flip-flops wreck political capital
Jeffrey E. Cohen, professor of political science at Fordham University, 19 97
(Presidential Responsiveness and Public Policy Making, p. 123)
A president cannot, without good reason, alter his policy stance. And even if he has good reason to change his policy position on an issue, he may
have to bear some costs from doing so. The public and other political elites may view him as waffling, indecisive, weak, uncommitted, and/or
duplicitous. This seems very much to be one of the major charges against Bill Clinton’s presidency. After abandoning his campaign promise of a
middle-class tax cut because of budget deficit pressures, Clinton reoffered a tax cut in the wake of the devastating 1994 midterm elections, in
which his party lost control of Congress. From being publicly cool toward the North American Free Trade pact during his presidential election
campaign, he became an ardent promoter of that policy once in the Oval Office. From these, and many other occasions, Clinton has developed an
image of a waffling politician, one who is forever changing his mind, perennially trying to stake out the most popular position with the public and
not necessarily a president who is able to lead.
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
AT: Chavez’s Death = No Link
Political polarization over Venezuela is increasing despite Chavez’s death
Schultz 13 – The International (Kylie, 03/17, “The Rocky U.S.-Venezuela Relationship: What Both Countries Could Learn,”
http://www.theinternational.org/articles/370-the-rocky-us-venezuela-relationship-wh)
While the United States sent a representative, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the
Obama administration itself offered no
condolences. “At this challenging time of President Hugo Chavez’s passing, the United States reaffirms its support for the Venezuelan
people and its interest in developing a constructive relationship with the Venezuelan government,” said a statement released by the White House.
“As Venezuela begins a new chapter in its history, the United States remains committed to policies that promote democratic principles, the rule of
law, and respect for human rights.” Criticized by many Chavez supporters for its unsympathetic and, some claim, contemptible tone, the
White House statement and the reactions it has elicited are representative of the divide between
the United States and Venezuela which emerged during Chavez’s presidency. The influence and
standing of the United States in Latin America has decreased in recent years as domestic
inequality and political polarization in America rise . There seem but few signs that
Chavez’s death will spark a shift in U.S.-Venezuelan relations. As Venezuela enters into the post-Chavez era with
a struggling economy, high inflation, and some of the worst crime rates in the world, why do both countries continue to demonize one another?
Chavez’s successor only magnifies the controversy
Washington Post 13 (03/06, “A misguided U.S. strategy for Venezuela,” http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-0306/opinions/37497866_1_nicolas-maduro-apartments-and-appliances-henrique-capriles)
ANTICIPATING THE death of Hugo Chavez, the Obama administration began reaching out
months ago to his designated successor, Nicolas Maduro, in the hope of bettering U.S.Venezuelan relations. On Tuesday, that strategy absorbed a body blow : Hours before
revealing that Mr. Chavez had died of cancer, Mr. Maduro tried to blame the United States for
his illness, and he expelled two U.S. military attaches on charges of “proposing destabilizing
plans” to the armed forces. So much for the “reset” with Caracas. The ludicrous and crude
propaganda launched by Mr. Maduro was a sign that Mr. Chavez’s successors will be more
thuggish and less politically adept than he was — and, if anything, more inclined to
scapegoat the United States and Venezuela’s democratic opposition for the horrendous problems
the caudillo leaves behind.
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
Miscellaneous
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
AT: PC Theory Wrong
Polarization makes political capital more effective – allows Obama to concentrate his
resources
Beckmann and McGann 8 (http://jtp.sagepub.com Journal of Theoretical Politics DOI: 10.1177/0951629807085818 2008; 20;
201 Journal of Theoretical Politics Matthew N. Beckmann and Anthony J. McGann Navigating the Legislative Divide: Polarization, Presidents,
and Policymaking in the United States, MATTHEW N. BECKMANN is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California,
Irvine. He is currently working on a book-length project that explains and tests a new theory of presidents’ influence on Capitol Hill, 1953–
2004. ANTHONY J. MCGANN is Associate Professor of Political Science at theUni- versity of California, Irvine and Reader in Government at
the University of Essex.)
We can generalize these findings to the case where the president needs to target more than one vote, as would be the case in this example if a
super-majority was required. If the president needs n votes to pass measure o1 and C(o, si Þ is linear, then he will need to pay 2n times the cost
of a median senator. In this case it is not clear that it is cheaper for the president to get his measure passed in the polarized case; it depends on
the number of votes he has to buy. In the polarized case each vote is relatively expensive, so if the president has to buy many votes, it may be
more expensive than in a more homogenous case. Polarization’s advantage to the president, after all, was that it allowed him to concentrate his
resources on the few senators who will have a very significant effect. Therefore, polarization generally works to the president’s advantage
pro- vided the president is in a situation where winning over a few voters can signifi- cantly change the outcome (i.e. the polarization is
distributed around the pivotal voter). If many members are clustered at the pivot point, any additional polariza- tion will limit presidential
influence, produce policy stalemate, and reinforce legislative gridlock. Discussion By all indications, the partisan and ideological
polarization that has come to characterize officials in Washington shows no signs of abating. If anything, it appears that the schism
between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, will only continue to grow. The simple but important question that many have
asked is, so what? How does polarization affect the policymaking process and the outcomes that result? While Mayhew’s initial study proved
important laws continue to prevail even in the face of divided government and polarization, subsequent research has indicated that partisan and
ideological polarization does encourage legislative gridlock, which, in turn, privileges the status quo. This happens partly by germinating
partisanship and posturing over negotiation and compromise, and partly by leaving ideologically distant pivotal voters unable to find an
alternative they prefer even when they seek compromise and negotiate sincerely. By contrast, we theorize that polarization’s impact on US
lawmaking is conditional. Instead of hypothesizing gridlock monotonically increases with polari- zation, our model predicts polarization’s
policymaking impact depends on three elements: the default preference of the pivotal voter, the extent of polarization around the pivotal voter,
and the president’s willingness (and ability) to spend his capital to win. Depending on the particular constellation of these factors, predictions
range from the familiar one of gridlock on through to a president who not only avoids stalemate, but actually signs into law bills that are closer to
his preference than we would otherwise expect. Drawing from this model, then, a more nuanced view of presidential influ- ence emerges.
Assuming today’s White House officials are eager to promote the president’s legislative agenda, we can now see when those efforts are likely
to pay off – namely, when the president enjoys ample political capital and confronts a polarized legislature (i.e. one where there are few
legislators sitting between the pivotal voter and some point much closer to the president). Con- versely, when the president does not get involved
or lacks political capital when he does, all the conventional wisdom about pivotal voters and gridlock holds. Also, any president promoting
his agenda before a homogenous Senate (say, one characterized by a normal distribution of preferences) is highly constrained by its
predispositions. Therefore, as future researchers revisit presidents’ potential influence in Congress, accounting for its conditional nature should
provide more discriminating results and permit more judicious inferences.
Best studies go neg – capital is key
Beckmann and McGann 8 [Matthew, Associate Professor of Political Science at UC Irvine, Anthony, “Navigating the Legislative
Divide: Polarization, Presidents, and Policymaking in the United States” Journal of Theoretical Politics Vol 20]
Building from a
simple theoretical model in which the president seeks to promote his preferred policies in the Senate
(see Snyder, 1991; Groseclose, 1996), we assess differences in the chamber’s preference distribution – from
normal to unanimous to bimodal – as well as the ‘political capital’ at the president’s disposal.2 Results show
that absent the president, ideological polarization makes amassing the votes needed to beat the
status quo difficult, so gridlock frequently prevails. The same is true when the president lacks political capital to spend.
However, when endowed with abundant capital , facing a polarized legislature enables
presidents to pass policies closer to their ideal than would have been possible in an assembly
characterized by greater ideological homogeneity. Hence the familiar prediction of blanket
Here we propose a theory that casts some early rays of light onto the policy consequences of polarization in Congress.
‘gridlock’ is overblown . Instead, comparative statics show that the consequences of ideological
polarization in Congress are conditional: they depend on the nature of the preference
distribution, the involvement of the president, and the political capi- tal at his disposal.
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
AT: Winners Win
Spin game means winners lose for Obama
Baker 10 [Peter, foreign policy reporter, author of Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin and Russian Counter-Revolution, “Education of a
President” New York Times]
But it is possible to win the inside game and lose the outside game. In their darkest moments, White House aides wonder aloud whether it is
even possible for a modern president to succeed, no matter how many bills he signs. Everything seems to conspire against the idea: an
implacable opposition with little if any real interest in collaboration, a news media saturated with triviality and conflict, a culture that
demands solutions yesterday, a societal cynicism that holds leadership in low regard. Some White House aides who were ready to carve a new
spot on Mount Rushmore for their boss two years ago privately concede now that he cannot be another Abraham Lincoln after all. In this
environment, they have increasingly concluded, it may be that every modern president is going to be, at best, average. “We’re all a lot more
cynical now,” one aide told me. The easy answer is to blame the Republicans, and White House aides do that with exuberance. But they are also
looking at their own misjudgments, the hubris that led them to think they really could defy the laws of politics. “It’s not that we believed our own
press or press releases, but there was definitely a sense at the beginning that we could really change Washington,” another White House official
told me. “ ‘Arrogance’ isn’t the right word, but we were overconfident.” The biggest miscalculation in the minds of most Obama advisers was
the assumption that he could bridge a polarized capital and forge genuinely bipartisan coalitions. While Republican leaders resolved to stand
against Obama, his early efforts to woo the opposition also struck many as halfhearted. “If anybody thought the Republicans were just going to
roll over, we were just terribly mistaken,” former Senator Tom Daschle, a mentor and an outside adviser to Obama, told me. “I’m not sure
anybody really thought that, but I think we kind of hoped the Republicans would go away. And obviously they didn’t do that.” Senator Dick
Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the upper chamber and Obama’s ally from Illinois, said the Republicans were to blame for the absence of
bipartisanship. “I think his fate was sealed,” Durbin said. “Once the Republicans decided they would close ranks to defeat him, that just made it
extremely difficult and dragged it out for a longer period of time. The American people have a limited attention span. Once you convince them
there’s a problem, they want a solution.” Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, though, is among the Democrats who grade Obama harshly for
not being more nimble in the face of opposition. “B-plus, A-minus on substantive accomplishments,” he told me, “and a D-plus or C-minus
on communication.” The health care legislation is “an incredible achievement” and the stimulus program was “absolutely, unqualifiedly,
enormously successful,” in Rendell’s judgment, yet Obama allowed them to be tarnished by critics. “They lost the communications battle
on both major initiatives, and they lost it early,” said Rendell, an ardent Hillary Clinton backer who later became an Obama supporter. “We
didn’t use the president in either stimulus or health care until we had lost the spin battle.”
Empirics disprove winners win
Ryan 9 Professor of Social Science at the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, University of West Indies.
Ph.D. in
Political Science from Cornell [Selwyn, 1/18. http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_opinion?id=161426968]
Like many, I expect much from Obama, who for the time being, is my political beast of burden with whom every other politician in the world is
unfavourably compared. As a political scientist, I however know that given the structure of American and world politics, it would be difficult for
him to deliver half of what he has promised, let alone all of it. Reality will force him to make many "u" turns and detours which may well land
him in quick sand. Obama will, however, begin his stint with a vast accumulation of political capital, perhaps more than that held by any other
modern leader. Seventy-eight per cent of Americans polled believe that his inauguration is one of the most historic the country will witness.
Political capital is, however, a lumpy and fast diminishing asset in today's world of instant communication, which once misspent, is rarely ever
renewable. The world is full of political leaders like George Bush and Tony Blair who had visions, promised a lot, and probably meant well, but
who did not know how to husband the political capital with which they were provided as they assumed office. They squandered it as quickly as
they emptied the contents of the public vaults. Many will be watching to see how Obama manages his assets and liabilities register. Watching
with hope would be the white young lady who waved a placard in Obama's face inscribed with the plaintive words, "I Trust You." Despite the
general optimism about Obama's ability to deliver, many groups have already begun to complain about being betrayed. Gays, union leaders, and
women have been loud in their complaints about being by-passed or overlooked. Some radical blacks have also complained about being
disrespected. Where and when is Joshua going to lead them to the promised land, they ask? When is he going to pull the troops out of Iraq? Civil
rights groups also expect Obama to dis-establish Guantanamo as soon as he takes office to signal the formal break with Dick Cheney and Bush.
They also want him to discontinue the policy which allows intelligence analysts to spy on American citizens without official authorisation. In
fact, Obama startled supporters when he signalled that he might do an about-turn and continue this particular policy. We note that Bush is
signalling Obama that keeping America safe from terrorists should be his top priority item and that he, Bush, had no regrets about violating the
constitutional rights of Americans if he had to do so to keep them safe. Cheney has also said that he would do it again if he had to. The safety of
the republic is after all the highest law. Other groups-sub-prime home owners, workers in the automobile sector, and the poor and unemployed
generally all expect Obama to work miracles on their behalf, which of course he cannot do. Given the problems of the economy which has not yet
bottomed out, some promises have to be deferred beyond the first term. Groups, however, expect that the promise made to them during the
campaign must be kept. Part of the problem is that almost every significant social or ethnic group believes that it was instrumental in Obama's
victory. White women felt that they took Obama over the line, as did blacks generally, Jews, Hispanics, Asians, rich white men, gays, and young
college kids, to mention a few of those whose inputs were readily recognisable. Obama also has a vast constituency in almost every country in the
world, all of whom expect him to save the globe and the planet. Clearly, he is the proverbial "Black Knight on a White Horse." One of the
"realities" that Obama has to face is that American politics is not a winner-take-all system. It is pluralistic vertically and horizontally, and getting
anything done politically, even when the President and the Congress are controlled by the same party, requires groups to negotiate, bargain and
engage in serious horse trading. No one takes orders from the President who can only use moral or political suasion and promises of future
support for policies or projects. The system was in fact deliberately engineered to prevent overbearing majorities from conspiring to tyrannise
minorities. The system is not only institutionally diverse and plural, but socially and geographically so. As James Madison put it in Federalist No
10, one of the foundation documents of republicanism in America, basic institutions check other basic institutions, classes and interests check
other classes and interests, and regions do the same. All are grounded in their own power bases which they use to fend off challengers. The
coalitions change from issue to issue, and there is no such thing as party discipline which translated, means you do what I the leader say you do.
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
Although Obama is fully aware of the political limitations of the office which he holds, he is fully aware of the vast stock of political capital
which he currently has in the bank and he evidently plans to enlarge it by drawing from the stock held by other groups, dead and alive. He is
clearly drawing heavily from the caparisoned cloaks of Lincoln and Roosevelt. Obama seems to believe that by playing the all-inclusive,
multipartisan, non-ideological card, he can get most of his programmes through the Congress without having to spend capital by using vetoes,
threats of veto, or appeals to his 15 million strong constituency in cyberspace (the latent "Obama Party").
Health care disproves winners win
Galston 10 [William, Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, Brookings, “President Barack Obama’s First Two Years: Policy
Accomplishments, Political Difficulties” Brookings Institute -- Nov 4]
The legislative process that produced the health care bill was especially damaging. It lasted much too long and featured side-deals with
interest groups and individual senators, made in full public view. Much of the public was dismayed by what it saw. Worse, the seemingly endless
health care debate strengthened the view that the president’s agenda was poorly aligned with the economic concerns of the American
people. Because the administration never persuaded the public that health reform was vital to our economic future, the entire effort
came to be seen as diversionary, even anti-democratic. The health reform bill was surely a moral success; it may turn out to be a policy
success; but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that it was—and remains—a political liability. Indeed, most of the Obama agenda turned
out to be very unpopular. Of five major policy initiatives undertaken during the first two years, only one—financial regulatory reform—
enjoyed majority support. In a September 2010 Gallup survey, 52 percent of the people disapproved of the economic stimulus, 56 percent
disapproved of both the auto rescue and the health care bill, and an even larger majority—61 percent—rejected the bailout of financial
institutions.[v] Democrats’ hopes that the people would change their minds about the party’s signature issue—universal health insurance—after
the bill passed were not fulfilled. (It remains to be seen whether sentiment will change in coming years as provisions of the bill are phased in—
that is, if they survive what will no doubt be stiff challenges in both Congress and the states.)
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
AFF – Immigration DA
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
2AC Frontline
[Insert impact defense]
Backlash to the Gang of Eight means CIR won’t pass
Silverleib 5/15 – CNN Congressional Producer (Alan, “Immigration bill is Democratic plot, House conservative says,”
http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/14/politics/congress-immigration-reform/index.html)
The bill is winding its way through the Senate Judiciary Committee. Two
committee Republicans from the "Gang of
Eight," Arizona's Jeff Flake and South Carolina's Lindsey Graham, have been working with the
panel's Democratic majority to prevent any major changes to the bill. Another House conservative at the press
conference with King, Louisiana GOP Rep. John Fleming, noted the length of the proposal by the "Gang of Eight," 844 pages "When in
recent years have we passed such a large bill and had a good outcome?" Fleming asked. "I'll give
you Obamacare and Dodd-Frank (financial reform) as good examples of that. I really think we
need to tear this thing up and start from the beginning." Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, said the
"Gang of Eight" would be defeated by a "gang of millions." "They will rise up against (the
Senate bill) and it will fail because the people are stronger than the 'Gang of Eight,'" Stockman
said.
Amendment debates prevent CIR passage
McCord 5/9 – Anchor/Reporter KSL 5 News Weekends (Keith, “Lawmakers halt immigration reform bill with 300 proposed
amendments,” http://www.ksl.com/?sid=25118812&nid=148&title=lawmakers-halt-immigration-reform-bill-with-300-proposedamendments&fm=home_page&s_cid=queue-1)
SALT LAKE CITY — Lawmakers
waded through 300 amendments to the proposed immigration reform
bill on Thursday, and it looks like it's going to take a long time before anything is settled.
Utah's senators are right in the middle of this as well, since they've introduced a few amendments of their own. Thursday was the deadline for
filing amendments and in the hearing room today, some senators accused their colleagues of trying to derail the whole reform bill. The
room
was packed with plenty of disagreements from the start. "There's some simple math here," said Sen. Charles
Schumer, D-N.Y., to Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. "You're adding 11 million. They're already here." "Well, they're going to be given full legal
status," Sessions said to Schumer. The
immigration reform bill is already 844 pages long and now there are
several hundred amendments that have to be considered, one by one. Some lawmakers claim
many of the amendments are aimed at killing the legislation all together . "There are some here who've
already decided they're going to vote against this measure no matter what it says," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. "That is their right."
Schumer agreed with Durbin that the amendments will slow or stop the process.
[Insert link defense/turns]
PC theory is wrong – winners win
Hirsh 13 – National Journal chief correspondent, citing various political scientists
[Michael, former Newsweek senior correspondent, "There’s No Such Thing as Political Capital," National Journal, 2-9-13,
www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/there-s-no-such-thing-as-political-capital-20130207, accessed 2-8-13, mss]
The idea of political capital—or mandates, or momentum—is so poorly defined that presidents and pundits often get it wrong. On Tuesday, in his State of the
Union address, President Obama will do what every president does this time of year. For about 60 minutes, he will lay out a sprawling and ambitious wish list
highlighted by gun control and immigration reform, climate change and debt reduction. In response, the pundits will do what they always do this time of year: They
will talk about how unrealistic most of the proposals are, discussions often informed by sagacious reckonings of how much “political capital” Obama
possesses to push his program through. Most of this talk will have
no bearing on what actually happens
over the next four
years. Consider this: Three months ago, just before the November election, if someone had talked seriously about Obama having enough political capital to oversee
passage of both immigration reform and gun-control legislation at the beginning of his second term—even after winning the election by 4 percentage points and 5
million votes (the actual final tally)—this person would have been called crazy and stripped of his pundit’s license. (It doesn’t exist, but it ought to.) In his first term,
in a starkly polarized country, the president had been so frustrated by GOP resistance that he finally issued a limited executive order last August permitting
immigrants who entered the country illegally as children to work without fear of deportation for at least two years. Obama didn’t dare to even bring up gun control, a
Democratic “third rail” that has cost the party elections and that actually might have been even less popular on the right than the president’s health care law. And yet,
for reasons that have very little to do with Obama’s personal prestige or popularity—variously put in terms of a “mandate” or “political capital”—chances are fair that
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
both will now happen. What changed? In the case of gun control, of course, it wasn’t the election. It was the horror of the 20 first-graders who were slaughtered in
Newtown, Conn., in mid-December. The sickening reality of little girls and boys riddled with bullets from a high-capacity assault weapon seemed to precipitate a
sudden tipping point in the national conscience. One thing changed after another. Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association marginalized himself with poorly
chosen comments soon after the massacre. The pro-gun lobby, once a phalanx of opposition, began to fissure into reasonables and crazies. Former Rep. Gabrielle
Giffords, D-Ariz., who was shot in the head two years ago and is still struggling to speak and walk, started a PAC with her husband to appeal to the moderate middle
of gun owners. Then she gave riveting and poignant testimony to the Senate, challenging lawmakers: “Be bold.” As a result, momentum has appeared to build around
some kind of a plan to curtail sales of the most dangerous weapons and ammunition and the way people are permitted to buy them. It’s impossible to say now whether
such a bill will pass and, if it does, whether it will make anything more than cosmetic changes to gun laws. But one thing is clear: The political tectonics have
shifted dramatically
in very little time . Whole new possibilities exist now that didn’t a few weeks ago. Meanwhile, the Republican members of
the Senate’s so-called Gang of Eight are pushing hard for a new spirit of compromise on immigration reform, a sharp change after an election year in which the
GOP standard-bearer declared he would make life so miserable for the 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. that they would “self-deport.” But this turnaround
has very little to do with Obama’s personal influence—his political mandate, as it were. It has almost entirely to do with just two numbers: 71 and 27.
That’s 71 percent for Obama, 27 percent for Mitt Romney, the breakdown of the Hispanic vote in the 2012 presidential election. Obama drove home his
advantage by giving a speech on immigration reform on Jan. 29 at a Hispanic-dominated high school in Nevada, a swing state he won by a surprising 8 percentage
points in November. But the movement on immigration has mainly come out of the Republican Party’s recent introspection, and the realization by its more thoughtful
members, such as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, that without such a shift the party may be facing demographic death in a country
where the 2010 census showed, for the first time, that white births have fallen into the minority. It’s got nothing to do with Obama’s political capital or,
indeed, Obama at all. The point is not that “political capital” is a meaningless term. Often it is a synonym for “mandate” or “momentum” in the aftermath of a
decisive election—and just about every politician ever elected has tried to claim more of a mandate than he actually has. Certainly, Obama can say that because he
was elected and Romney wasn’t, he has a better claim on the country’s mood and direction. Many pundits still defend political capital as a useful metaphor at least.
“It’s an unquantifiable but meaningful concept,” says Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. “You can’t really look at a president and say he’s got 37
ounces of political capital. But the fact is, it’s a concept that matters, if you have popularity and some momentum on your side.” The real problem is that the idea of
political capital—or mandates, or momentum—is so poorly defined that presidents and pundits often get it wrong. “Presidents usually over-estimate
it,” says George Edwards, a presidential scholar at Texas A&M University. “The best kind of political capital—some sense of an electoral mandate to do something—
is very rare. It almost never happens. In 1964, maybe. And to some degree in 1980.” For that reason, political capital is a concept that misleads far more than it
enlightens. It is distortionary. It conveys the idea that we know more than we really do about the ever-elusive concept of political power, and it
discounts the way unforeseen events can suddenly change everything . Instead, it suggests, erroneously, that a political
figure has a concrete amount of political capital to invest, just as someone might have real investment capital—that a particular leader can bank his gains, and the size
of his account determines what he can do at any given moment in history. Naturally, any president has practical and electoral limits. Does he have a majority in both
chambers of Congress and a cohesive coalition behind him? Obama has neither at present. And unless a surge in the economy—at the moment, still stuck—or some
other great victory gives him more momentum, it is inevitable that the closer Obama gets to the 2014 election, the less he will be able to get done. Going into the
midterms, Republicans will increasingly avoid any concessions that make him (and the Democrats) stronger. But the abrupt emergence of the immigration and guncontrol issues illustrates how suddenly shifts in mood can occur and how political interests can align in new ways just as suddenly. Indeed, the pseudo-concept of
political capital masks a larger truth about Washington that is kindergarten simple: You just don’t know what you can do until you try. Or as Ornstein himself
once wrote years ago, “ Winning wins.” In theory, and in practice, depending on Obama’s handling of any particular issue, even in a polarized time, he could still
deliver on a lot of his second-term goals, depending on his skill and the breaks. Unforeseen catalysts can appear, like Newtown. Epiphanies can dawn, such as when
many Republican Party leaders suddenly woke up in panic to the huge disparity in the Hispanic vote. Some political scientists who study the elusive calculus of
how to pass legislation and run successful presidencies say that political capital is, at best, an empty concept, and that almost nothing in the
academic literature successfully quantifies or even defines it. “It can refer to a very abstract thing, like a president’s popularity, but there’s no mechanism
there.
That makes it
kind of
useless ,” says Richard Bensel, a government professor at Cornell University. Even Ornstein concedes that the
calculus is far more complex than the term suggests. Winning on one issue often changes the calculation for the next issue; there is never any known
amount of capital. “The idea here is, if an issue comes up where the conventional wisdom is that president is not going to get what he wants, and
[they]he gets it, then each time that happens, it changes the calculus of the
other actors ” Ornstein says. “If they think he’s going to win,
change positions to get on the winning side . It’s a bandwagon effect.” ALL THE WAY WITH LBJ
Sometimes, a clever practitioner of power can get more done just because [they’re]he’s aggressive and knows the hallways of Congress well.
they may
Texas A&M’s Edwards is right to say that the outcome of the 1964 election, Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory over Barry Goldwater, was one of the few that
conveyed a mandate. But one of the main reasons for that mandate (in addition to Goldwater’s ineptitude as a candidate) was President Johnson’s masterful
use of power leading up to that election, and his ability to get far more done than anyone thought possible, given his limited political capital. In the newest
volume in his exhaustive study of LBJ, The Passage of Power, historian Robert Caro recalls Johnson getting cautionary advice after he assumed the presidency from
the assassinated John F. Kennedy in late 1963. Don’t focus on a long-stalled civil-rights bill, advisers told him, because it might jeopardize Southern lawmakers’
support for a tax cut and appropriations bills the president needed. “One of the wise, practical people around the table [said that] the presidency has only a certain
amount of coinage to expend, and you oughtn’t to expend it on this,” Caro writes. (Coinage, of course, was what political capital was called in those days.) Johnson
replied, “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?” Johnson didn’t worry about coinage, and he got the Civil Rights Act enacted, along with much else:
Medicare, a tax cut, antipoverty programs. He appeared to understand not just the ways of Congress but also the way to maximize the momentum he
possessed in the lingering mood of national grief and determination by picking the right issues, as Caro records. “ Momentum is not a mysterious mistress,” LBJ said.
“It is a controllable fact of political life.” Johnson had the skill and wherewithal to realize that, at that moment of history, he could have unlimited coinage if he
handled the politics right. He did. (At least until Vietnam, that is.)
Capital’s not key to immigration reform
Soto 13, Dr. Victoria M. DeFrancesco Soto, NBC Latino and MSNBC contributor, Senior Analyst for Latino Decisions and Fellow at the
Center for Politics and Governance at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, at Austin, “Opinion: Immigration reform will
not be easy, but it’s not impossible,” January 4th, http://nbclatino.com/2013/01/04/opinion-immigration-reform-will-not-be-easy-but-its-notimpossible/
Unlike in his first administration, the
president seems to be on board and ready for rolling up his sleeves and getting into
immigration reform, but that won’t cut it. The problem for immigration reform in 2013 is rooted in Capital Hill. The
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
president’s support is a necessary condition for any major policy overhaul, but it is not a sufficient condition. Let’s just
assume the president can arm-wrestle the Senate Democrats and a few Senate Republicans into
supporting his immigration reform. Two out of three won’t cut it. The Republican-controlled House is what stands
in the way of immigration reform. More specifically, the GOP’s split mindset regarding Latinos and immigration is
what will likely prevent the president from crossing off immigration reform from his 2013 to-do
list.
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
Uniqueness
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
Gang of Eight
Backlash to the Gang of Eight means CIR won’t pass
Silverleib 5/15 – CNN Congressional Producer (Alan, “Immigration bill is Democratic plot, House conservative says,”
http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/14/politics/congress-immigration-reform/index.html)
The bill is winding its way through the Senate Judiciary Committee. Two
committee Republicans from the "Gang of
Eight," Arizona's Jeff Flake and South Carolina's Lindsey Graham, have been working with the
panel's Democratic majority to prevent any major changes to the bill. Another House conservative at the press
conference with King, Louisiana GOP Rep. John Fleming, noted the length of the proposal by the "Gang of Eight," 844 pages "When in
recent years have we passed such a large bill and had a good outcome?" Fleming asked. "I'll give
you Obamacare and Dodd-Frank (financial reform) as good examples of that. I really think we
need to tear this thing up and start from the beginning." Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, said the
"Gang of Eight" would be defeated by a "gang of millions." "They will rise up against (the
Senate bill) and it will fail because the people are stronger than the 'Gang of Eight,'" Stockman
said.
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
Amendment Process
Amendment debates prevent CIR passage
McCord 5/9 – Anchor/Reporter KSL 5 News Weekends (Keith, “Lawmakers halt immigration reform bill with 300 proposed
amendments,” http://www.ksl.com/?sid=25118812&nid=148&title=lawmakers-halt-immigration-reform-bill-with-300-proposedamendments&fm=home_page&s_cid=queue-1)
SALT LAKE CITY — Lawmakers
waded through 300 amendments to the proposed immigration reform
bill on Thursday, and it looks like it's going to take a long time before anything is settled.
Utah's senators are right in the middle of this as well, since they've introduced a few amendments of their own. Thursday was the deadline for
filing amendments and in the hearing room today, some senators accused their colleagues of trying to derail the whole reform bill. The
room
was packed with plenty of disagreements from the start. "There's some simple math here," said Sen. Charles
Schumer, D-N.Y., to Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. "You're adding 11 million. They're already here." "Well, they're going to be given full legal
status," Sessions said to Schumer. The
immigration reform bill is already 844 pages long and now there are
several hundred amendments that have to be considered, one by one. Some lawmakers claim
many of the amendments are aimed at killing the legislation all together . "There are some here who've
already decided they're going to vote against this measure no matter what it says," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. "That is their right."
Schumer agreed with Durbin that the amendments will slow or stop the process.
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
Internal Link
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
PC Not Key
Capital’s not key to immigration reform
Soto 13, Dr. Victoria M. DeFrancesco Soto, NBC Latino and MSNBC contributor, Senior Analyst for Latino Decisions and Fellow at the
Center for Politics and Governance at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, at Austin, “Opinion: Immigration reform will
not be easy, but it’s not impossible,” January 4th, http://nbclatino.com/2013/01/04/opinion-immigration-reform-will-not-be-easy-but-its-notimpossible/
Unlike in his first administration, the
president seems to be on board and ready for rolling up his sleeves and getting into
immigration reform, but that won’t cut it. The problem for immigration reform in 2013 is rooted in Capital Hill. The
president’s support is a necessary condition for any major policy overhaul, but it is not a sufficient condition. Let’s just
assume the president can arm-wrestle the Senate Democrats and a few Senate Republicans into
supporting his immigration reform. Two out of three won’t cut it. The Republican-controlled House is what stands
in the way of immigration reform. More specifically, the GOP’s split mindset regarding Latinos and immigration is
what will likely prevent the president from crossing off immigration reform from his 2013 to-do
list.
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
Impact
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
AT: Aging Crisis
No aging crisis impact – aging crisis exaggerated, no dependency, cross-country studies prove
Hamilton 1 – Institute director, citing Dr. Kinnear
[Dr. Clive, “Ageing Crisis A Myth,” 12-16-1, accessed 2-10-13, mss]
The paper shows that the expected costs of retirement incomes and health for the elderly have been exaggerated, and that popular solutions to the
perceived problem of ageing, such as slashing public expenditure and increasing immigration, are misplaced. “Dr Kinnear’s detailed examination
of population and health data shows that an ageing population will not create an unsustainable burden on a shrinking workforce,” Dr Hamilton
said. “She has presented a very convincing argument to demonstrate that alarm over the ‘ageing crisis’ is not justified by the evidence.” Dr
Kinnear found that the three main assumptions on which the ‘ageing crisis’ is based are largely flawed. The paper shows that: Older people are
not a social and economic burden. The vast majority of older Australians enjoy healthy, active and independent lives, with 93 per cent living in
private homes and only 7 per cent in residential care. Many make significant financial contributions to their families and participate in voluntary
community activities. Concern about a future ‘dependency ratio’ imbalance forms the basis of the crisis rhetoric. But the dependency ratio is a
misleading measure and falsely equates dependency with age. It ignores the significant contributions of older people as well as the dependency of
many working age people. Cross-country comparisons reveal that the size of the aged population does not necessarily impose a disproportionate
burden on taxpayers. Although there is a clear relationship between ageing and costs of pensions, analysis does not show a corresponding
relationship between ageing and total social costs. The new paper challenges the belief that an older population will see health costs rise to
unsustainable levels. Rising health costs are caused mainly by factors other than ageing such as the growth of medical technology, rising
consumer demand and escalating prices.
Best data disproves aging crisis
Whiston 11 [Lucy, "The 'ageing crisis' thesis is exaggerated," www.scribd.com/doc/104290973/The-ageing-crisis-thesis-is-exaggeratedCritically-discuss, accessed 2-10-13, mss]
‘A gray dawn fast approaches. It is time to take an unflinching look at the shape of things to come’ (Peterson, 1999, p.43). The ‘gray dawn’ to
which Peterson is referring to is the global problem of the ‘ageing crisis’. Rapid demographic transitions of rising life expectancyalongside
declining fertility result in a dramatic increase in the proportion of the populationover sixty-five. This population ageing will reduce the working
population as a percentage of the population as a whole which will in turn constrain economic growth, increase socialexpenditure and lead to
intergenerational conflict. This is both an economic and a politicalproblem which even the wealthiest countries cannot afford, described as a
‘crisis scenario’where ‘an aging population overburdening the individual taxpayer, bankrupting the country and creating extreme social and
political tensions leading to a ‘war’ between various agegroups’ (Northcott, 1994, p. 67-68). As alarming as this prospect sounds while it is
logicaland may present problems this thesis appears to be somewhat exaggerated. There has been much research carried out in this area and a
considerable body of literature available on this topic much of which finds fault with statistical data on which this argument is based and
refutes the main problems which the ‘ageing crisis’ presents while evidence is put forward to show that we do not need to worry about an ageing
crisis that we may in actual fact benefitfrom an ageing population.
Fertility rates mean no aging crisis
Whiston 11 [Lucy, "The 'ageing crisis' thesis is exaggerated," www.scribd.com/doc/104290973/The-ageing-crisis-thesis-is-exaggeratedCritically-discuss, accessed 2-10-13, mss]
The first reason why the ‘ageing crisis’ theory is exaggerated is the shaky statistics from which this argument stems. The ageing crisis is based on
transitions in demographic trends from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates. This transition is as a result of decreasing mortality
rates, lower fertility rates alongside increasing life expectancy whichtogether result in increasing dependency ratios. Based on these statistics the
ageing crisis ispresented as inevitable. However, when you look at the statistics in detail they are based on anumber of unguaranteed assumptions
about fertility, mortality and net migration levels whichare only assumptions not guarantees that have proven to be wrong in the past. New
disease smay emerge or re-emerge influencing mortality rates. Fertility rates do not have a great record of accuracy and a small change in fertility
rates can have a sizable impact on the paceof ageing. Fertility rates are viewed as especially hard to predict due to a complex interaction of a
number of forces such as family-friendly policies, laws affecting abortion, contraceptionor increased nationalism, the affects of which were seen
after 9/11 with increases in fertility(Gee, 2002, p. 751). The same can be said for dependency ratios which depicts the numericalrelationship
between the number of people of working age and the number of people assumedto be economically dependent based on their age. This equation
assumes that certain agegroups are either productive or dependent leaving out unemployment, illness or those inemployment after sixty-five
(Timonen, 2008, p. 91). It is argued by some that this assumptioncreates a false relationship between those who are dependent and those who are
not ignoringthe dichotomy of interdependence and reciprocity (Gee, 2002, p. 753). Demographic indicators also leave out some important
elements. The dependency ratio doesn’t take into account the contributions of older people to society. Although a very smallminority, some
people over sixty-five do remain in employment after they become eligiblefor retirement. The vast majority contribute in other ways through
voluntary work, care work,grandparenthood, unpaid work or the redistribution of resources to younger family members(Timonen, 2008, p. 92). In
addition, while there is too much emphasis on the old agedependency ratio, the total and youth dependency ratio also need to be taken into
account, as the youth and old age dependency ratios have a counterbalancing effect on the totaldependency ratio. For example, in Canada in 1951
there was a total dependency ratio of 0.83.By 2041 the old age dependency ratio is expected to increase by .32 whilst the youthdependency ratio
is estimated to drop by .33 resulting in an actual decrease in the totaldependency ratio (Gee, 2002, p. 752). In Germany this pattern is expected to
lead to a reduction in social expenditure by 2040 as ‘the rise in the cost of programs for older people is at least partly and may be totally offset by
declines in the cost of supporting fewer children’ (Mulllan, 2000, p. 120). Dependency ratios also fail to take into account growth in theeconomy
which is linked with the final problem of the influence of non-demographic factors,which is addressed in the next section of this essay.
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
Empirics – Japan and Denmark prove
Whiston 11 [Lucy, "The 'ageing crisis' thesis is exaggerated," www.scribd.com/doc/104290973/The-ageing-crisis-thesis-is-exaggeratedCritically-discuss, accessed 2-10-13, mss]
Second, the ‘ageing crisis’ thesis also seems to be exaggerated when you look at the majorproblems of this approaching time bomb in detail. The
‘ageing crisis’ proposes that due to changing demographics social expenditure will increase dramatically developing into an ‘unaffordable
burden’ especially in the areas of pensions and he alth. However, when thisproposition is further analysed, this does not appear to be the case. To
begin with, there is aweak, if any, correlation between population ageing and social expenditure with research by Castle concluding that there is
‘no apparen t association between changes in age structure and in total social security spending’ ( cited in Kinnear, 2001, p. 15). This can be
clearly seen in the case of Japan. Although Japan is a prime example of a country with a high proportion of older people, its social expenditure as
a proportion of GDP sits comfortably at only 14.4%. In contrast, in Denmark where population ageing is moderate it has social expenditure is as
highas 30.5% of GDP (Kinnear, 2001, p. 15). Within the social security budget the proportion of spending on the pensions has not risen with the
growth in the numbers of older people(Mullan, 2000, p. 146). Linked with this is the fact already highlighted above that non-demographic factors
take precedence over demographic factors especially in the area of social expenditure. Whilst average pension spending in OECD countries
doubled, only onequarter of this spending is attributed to demographic changes with the remainder beingassociated with increases in benefits and
widening eligibility (Mullan, 2000, p. 153).
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
AT: Economy
No economic benefit to CIR
Hill et al 10 [Laura E., research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, a National Institute of Aging postdoctoral fellow,
Magnus Lofstrom, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, Joseph M. Hayes, a research associate at the Public Policy
Institute of California, where he studies migration and population change throughout the state, “Immigrant Legalization Assessing the Labor
Market Effects,” Public Policy Institute of California, www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_410LHR.pdf#ppic]
Legalization of the estimated 12 million unauthorized immigrants residing in the United States would lead to
both
economic benefits and
costs for the nation. Some arguments for comprehensive immigration reform suggest that legalizing immigrants will help end the current
recession.
This seems unlikely.
Our research suggests that earlier findings from the IRCA era may
overstate
anticipated earnings from a new reform, at least in the short run. ¶ We do expect occupational mobility to improve for formerly
unauthorized immigrants with higher skill levels. When compared to the continuously legal, their occupational earnings growth was about 9 to 10
percent. These higher-skill unauthorized immigrants are more likely to be overstayers than crossers, but unauthorized immigrants with college
degrees are found in both groups. Lower-skill unauthorized immigrants are not likely to experience strong occupational mobility as a result
of a legalization program (although their occupational earnings grow over time in the United States). It will be important that any new
legislation give legalized immigrants incentives to improve their skills, especially in English. ¶ The majority of studies investigating the effect of
legalizing immigrants on natives’ earnings suggest that the effects are slightly negative for workers with low skill levels. Since we find
no
improvements in occupational mobility or wages for the lowest skill levels in the short run, we do not expect
that legalizing immigrants would place any increased pressure on the wages of low-skill natives or low-skill legal immigrants. Tax revenues may
increase, although many unauthorized immigrants already file federal and state tax returns and pay sales and payroll taxes. We found that
about
90 percent of unauthorized immigrants filed federal tax returns
in the year before gaining LPR
status. We expect that increases in tax revenues resulting from increased earnings among the formerly unauthorized
would be
modest.
No econ impact
Miller 2k – economist, adjunct professor in the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Administration, consultant on international development
issues, former Executive Director and Senior Economist at the World Bank (Morris, Winter, “Poverty as a cause of wars?”)
The question may be reformulated. Do wars spring from a popular reaction to a sudden economic crisis that exacerbates
poverty and growing disparities in wealth and incomes? Perhaps one could argue, as some scholars do, that it is some dramatic event or sequence
of such events leading to the exacerbation of poverty that, in turn, leads to this deplorable denouement. This exogenous factor might act as a
catalyst for a violent reaction on the part of the people or on the part of the political leadership who would then possibly be tempted to seek a
diversion by finding or, if need be, fabricating an enemy and setting in train the process leading to war. According to a study under- taken by
would not appear to be any merit
in this hypothesis. After studying ninety-three episodes of economic crisis in twenty-two countries in Latin
America and Asia in the years since the Second World War they concluded that:19 Much of the conventional wisdom about the
political impact of economic crises may be wrong ... The severity of economic crisis – as measured in terms of
inflation and negative growth – bore no relationship to the collapse of regimes ... (or, in democratic states, rarely) to
an outbreak of violence ... In the cases of dictatorships and semi-democracies, the ruling elites responded to crises by increasing repression
Minxin Pei and Ariel Adesnik of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, there
(thereby using one form of violence to abort another).
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
AT: Food Prices
Reform cant’ solve the ag industry – worker shortage inevitable
Plumer 13 [Brad, energy and environment reporter, "We’re running out of farm workers. Immigration reform won’t help." Washington
Post -- January 29 -- www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/29/the-u-s-is-running-out-of-farm-workers-immigration-reformmay-not-help/]
Farmers have long grumbled about a
shortage of labor, and they’ve asked for policies that make it easier to hire foreign workers from places like
Mexico. But looser immigration laws may not be able to keep our food cheap forever. A recent study
suggests that U.S. farms could well face a shortage of low-cost labor in the years ahead no
For years, one of the groups pushing hardest for immigration reform has been the U.S. food industry.
matter what Congress does on immigration . That’s because Mexico is getting richer and
can no longer supply as many rural farm workers to the United States. And it won’t be nearly as easy to
import low-wage agricultural workers from elsewhere.¶ For decades, farms in the United States have
relied heavily on low-wage foreign workers — mainly from Mexico — to work their fields. In 2006, 77 percent of all
agricultural workers in the United States were foreign-born. (And half of those foreign workers were undocumented immigrants.) All that cheap
labor has helped keep down U.S. food prices, particularly for labor-intensive fruits and vegetables.¶
But that labor pool is now
drying up . In recent years, we’ve seen a spate of headlines like this from CNBC: “California Farm Labor Shortage ‘Worst It’s Been,
Ever’.” Typically, these stories blame drug-related violence on the Mexican border or tougher border enforcement for the decline. Hence the call
for new guest-worker programs.¶ But a new paper from U.C.
Davis offers up a simpler explanation for the labor
shortage. Mexico is getting richer. And, when a country gets richer, its pool of rural agricultural
labor shrinks. Not only are Mexican workers shifting into other sectors like construction, but Mexico’s own farms are increasing wages.
That means U.S. farms will have to pay higher and higher wages to attract a dwindling pool of available Mexican farm workers. ¶ “It’s a simple
story,” says Edward Taylor, an agricultural economist at U.C. Davis and one of the study’s authors. ”By the mid-twentieth century, Americans
stopped doing farm work. And we were only able to avoid a farm-labor crisis by bringing in workers from a nearby country that was at an earlier
stage of development. Now that era is coming to an end.Ӧ Taylor and his co-authors argue that the United States could face a sharp adjustment
period as a result. Americans appear unwilling to do the sort of low-wage farm work that we have long relied on immigrants to do. And, the paper
it may be difficult to find an abundance of cheap farm labor anywhere else — potential
targets such as Guatemala and El Salvador are either too small or are urbanizing too rapidly.¶ So
notes,
the labor shortages will keep getting worse . And that leaves several choices. American farmers could simply stop
growing crops that need a lot of workers to harvest, such as fruits and vegetables. Given the demand for fresh produce, that seems unlikely.
No food impacts
Allouche 11, research Fellow – water supply and sanitation @ Institute for Development Studies, frmr professor – MIT
(Jeremy, “The sustainability and resilience of global water and food systems: Political analysis of the interplay between security, resource
scarcity, political systems and global trade,” Food Policy, Vol. 36 Supplement 1, p. S3-S8, January)
The question of resource scarcity has led to many debates
on whether scarcity (whether of food or water) will lead to
conflict and war. The underlining reasoning behind most of these discourses over food and water wars comes from the
Malthusian belief that there is an imbalance between the economic availability of natural resources and
population growth since while food production grows linearly, population increases exponentially. Following this reasoning, neoMalthusians claim that finite natural resources place a strict limit on the growth of human population and aggregate consumption; if these limits
are exceeded, social breakdown, conflict and wars result. Nonetheless, it seems that most empirical studies do not support any of
these neo-Malthusian arguments. Technological change and greater inputs of capital
have dramatically increased
neo-Malthusian view has suffered because during the last two
centuries humankind has breached many resource barriers that seemed unchallengeable. Lessons from history:
alarmist scenarios, resource wars and international relations In a so-called age of uncertainty, a number of alarmist scenarios have linked
the increasing use of water resources and food insecurity with wars. The idea of water wars (perhaps more than food
labour productivity in agriculture. More generally, the
wars) is a dominant discourse in the media (see for example Smith, 2009), NGOs (International Alert, 2007) and within international
organizations (UNEP, 2007). In 2007, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon declared that ‘water scarcity threatens economic and social gains and
is a potent fuel for wars and conflict’ (Lewis, 2007). Of course, this type of discourse has an instrumental purpose; security and conflict are here
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
used for raising water/food as key policy priorities at the international level. In
the Middle East, presidents, prime ministers and foreign
ministers have also used this bellicose rhetoric. Boutrous Boutros-Gali said; ‘the next war in the Middle East will be over
water, not politics’ (Boutros Boutros-Gali in Butts, 1997, p. 65). The question is not whether the sharing of transboundary water sparks political
tension and alarmist declaration, but rather to what extent water has been a principal factor in international conflicts. The
evidence
seems quite weak. Whether by president Sadat in Egypt or King Hussein in Jordan, none of these declarations have
been followed up by military action. The governance of transboundary water has gained increased attention these last decades.
This has a direct impact on the global food system as water allocation agreements determine the amount of water that can used for irrigated
agriculture. The likelihood of conflicts over water is an important parameter to consider in assessing the stability, sustainability and resilience of
global food systems. None
of the various and extensive databases on the causes of war show water as a
casus belli. Using the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) data set and supplementary data from the University of Alabama on water
conflicts, Hewitt, Wolf and Hammer found only seven disputes where water seems to have been at
least a partial cause for conflict (Wolf, 1998, p. 251). In fact, about 80% of the incidents relating to water were
limited purely to governmental rhetoric intended for the electorate (Otchet, 2001, p. 18). As shown in The Basins At Risk (BAR)
water event database, more than two-thirds of over 1800 water-related ‘events’ fall on the ‘cooperative’ scale
(Yoffe et al., 2003). Indeed, if one takes into account a much longer period, the following figures clearly demonstrate this argument. According to
studies by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), organized
political bodies signed between the year 805
and 1984 more than 3600 water-related treaties, and approximately 300 treaties dealing with water management or allocations
in international basins have been negotiated since 1945 (FAO, 1978 and FAO, 1984). The fear around water wars have been driven by a
Malthusian outlook which equates scarcity with violence, conflict and war. There is however no direct correlation between water
scarcity and transboundary conflict. Most specialists now tend to agree that the major issue is not scarcity per se but rather the
allocation of water resources between the different riparian states (see for example Allouche, 2005, Allouche, 2007 and [Rouyer, 2000] ).
Water rich countries have been involved in a number of disputes with other relatively water rich
countries (see for example India/Pakistan or Brazil/Argentina). The perception of each state’s estimated water needs really constitutes the
core issue in transboundary water relations. Indeed, whether this scarcity exists or not in reality, perceptions of the amount of
available water shapes people’s attitude towards the environment (Ohlsson, 1999). In fact, some water experts have argued that scarcity
drives the process of co-operation among riparians (Dinar and Dinar, 2005 and Brochmann and Gleditsch, 2006). In terms of
international relations, the
threat of water wars due to increasing scarcity does not make much sense in the light of the
recent historical record. Overall, the water war rationale expects conflict to occur over water, and appears to suggest that violence is a
viable means of securing national water supplies, an argument which is highly contestable. The debates
over the likely impacts of
climate change have again popularised the idea of water wars. The argument runs that climate change will precipitate
worsening ecological conditions contributing to resource scarcities, social breakdown, institutional failure, mass migrations and in turn cause
greater political instability and conflict (Brauch, 2002 and Pervis and Busby, 2004). In a report for the US Department of Defense, Schwartz and
Randall (2003) speculate about the consequences of a worst-case climate change scenario arguing that water shortages will lead to aggressive
wars (Schwartz and Randall, 2003, p. 15). Despite
growing concern that climate change will lead to instability
and violent conflict, the evidence base to substantiate the connections is thin ( [Barnett and Adger, 2007]
and Kevane and Gray, 2008).
Tons of alt causes to food prices – extreme weather, long-term supply/demand crunch, population growth, speculative
“futures” investing, disease, less available land, feedstock competition from the biofuels industry, warming
Wall 13 – personal finance reporter for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph and Telegraph.co.uk, citing Baring Asset Management (Emma,
03/02, “As the price of food rises, is there profit to be made?” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/investing/9902374/As-theprice-of-food-rises-is-there-profit-to-be-made.html)
Noticed the price of sugar lately? Potatoes? Fresh fruit? A weak pound, US drought and one of the wettest years on record for Britain have all
contributed to the cost of your shopping basket soaring. When sterling falls, your money buys fewer of the commodities that need to be imported.
In fact, the recent sharp falls probably haven't had their full impact in yet. But the story of rising food prices is about much more than currency
swings. And it provides tempting possibilities for investors. Extreme
likes of corn, wheat and soya beans, and
weather in 2012 led to sharp price rises
in the
these prices look likely to remain elevated for the next six
months , according to Baring Asset Management. There is also a long-term crunch between supply and
demand. In fact, food production must increase by at least 70pc by 2050 to meet global demand. According to the United Nations, the
world's population is forecast to increase from 7 billion to 9.3 billion over the next 40 years, and to meet
this demand investment in food production is needed. The Ecclesiastical Investment Management Amity Insight report Hungry Planet warned
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that our current food supply is just not sustainable in the medium to long term, and can only be solved through
extensive investment in global agriculture, which will help increase crop yields. Neville White, socially responsible investment analyst at
Ecclesiastical, said: "Increased food production will have to be achieved with less land, water and people. Investing in companies with a focus on
mechanisation, crop production and fertilisation that aim to increase food production can not only have a real impact on food but can also ensure
that investors profit with principles." There are two ways to invest in food: you can buy commodities through trading on the future price of a
grain or crop and/or buying an exchange-traded fund. Or you can buy shares in agriculture and food-production related companies. Sarasin
AgriSar invests in the entire supply chain, from grain to supermarkets. This means that although you may miss out on large upsurges in the soft
commodities market, growth should be smoother. Henry Boucher, manager of the AgriSar fund, said that holding food-related shares was a more
ethical way of investing – handing your money to companies in the chain reduces their capital cost and helps them invest to improve food supply.
"Some speculators invest in food itself, which takes supply out of the market [if they store it for later sale at higher prices]," said Mr Boucher.
"Commodity traders invest directly in corn, pork bellies, wheat and sugar. We're more interested in finding companies that help improve global
productivity." He cites investments like Japan's Kubota, which makes small rice transplanters, or Indian company Syngenta, whose fertiliser and
seed pre-mix is designed to improve productivity by up to four times. "Both make products for the small farmer – they can be used on land as
little as one acre," he said. "This is not about mass-farming but helping the small businesses left in the Asian countryside." Speculative
"futures" investing in food markets can also be more volatile . Futures are short-term punts – one bad crop
season, due to disease or extreme weather, may mean significant losses . Agriculture-related shares are held for
longer and are less affected by natural disasters. Jonathan Blake, manager of the Baring Global Agriculture fund, said last year's weather had
enhanced the investment appeal of those companies providing the likes of seeds, herbicides and fertilisers, which will enable farmers to maximise
their crop output. "It will take time to address the shortfalls caused by the severe weather events of 2012, from droughts in America to washout
conditions in the UK and Europe," said Mr Blake. "We do, however, expect crop prices to come down later in 2013, providing we have a year of
'normal' weather, as significantly improved output will allow inventory levels to begin to be rebuilt." The Baring fund has a sizeable proportion of
listed fertiliser, herbicide and seed producers. "Crop production, through the continuous cycle of planting, growing and harvesting, robs the soil
of nutrients," said Mr Blake. "As a result, these nutrients need replenishing through the application of fertilisers. Additionally, for many farmers
these nutrients are highly affordable given the current high prices farmers are able to get for their crops." Schroders Climate Change manager
Simon Webber also likes investing in companies that offer productivity solutions which will help bring down the price of food through use of
their products to increase farming production. He also invests in Syngenta and US company Trimble Navigation, which provides solutions for
levelling fields. It is not just population growth that provides investment opportunities in the food sector, but the change in global diets. As
disposable incomes swell in emerging markets, diets tend to become more Westernised. The AgriSar fund invests in Asian supermarket chain
Dairy Farm, whose revenues have risen as the expanding middle classes change their dietary and shopping habits. "Incomes in China are
increasing at 10pc a year," said Mr Boucher. "People are no longer going to the market daily but visit a supermarket once a week, where they will
be buying more meat, dairy products and imported vegetables." Mr Webber said that on top of the global demand for more agricultural produce
are the effects on supply, where available productive land
is in decline, yield growth is reducing and there is a growing
competition from the biofuel industry for feedstock. "Climate change acts as a threat
multiplier to the sector on top of the dual impacts of increased demand and decreased supply, presenting
various investment opportunities. The sectors that will benefit from this are companies involved in agricultural production as well as food
retailers, whose share price will increase as food prices inflate."
Population growth alone swamps the internal link – so does ag slowdown – USDA forecast, 70-100%
increase in demand by 2050
Johnson 13 – writer for the Council on Foreign Relations (Toni, 01/16, “Food Price Volatility and Insecurity,” http://www.cfr.org/foodsecurity/food-price-volatility-insecurity/p16662)
The Global Food Market Just fifteen food crops make up 90 percent of the world's energy intake, according to the UN Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO), with rice, maize (corn), and wheat comprising two-thirds of that number. The world grows more grains (PDF)--also known
as cereals--than any other crop type. Much of the global increase in food prices stems from staple grains, which in some countries can represent
more than half of calorie intake. According to the World Bank, due to an incredibly dry summer in the United States and Europe, global corn and
soybean prices reached all-time highs in July 2012, while wheat soared to prices comparable to 2011 peaks. Because grains also represent a major
food source for livestock, higher grain prices have contributed to higher dairy and meat prices. The
prices will continue to rise in 2013
USDA predicts that domestically,
at a rate of 3 to 4 percent. A June 2011 report to G20 agriculture ministers from ten
by 2050, food
demand (PDF) will have increased by between 70 percent and 100 percent to meet a projected population
growth of at least 2.5 billion additional people. " This alone is sufficient to exert pressure on commodity
prices," the report said. Growth in agriculture production is largely expected to come from increased crop yields and will primarily be located
major NGOs, including the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the UN World Food Program, noted that
in developing countries, according to a 2009 UN report (PDF). Experts say there is plenty of opportunity to improve farming techniques in the
developing world. Meeting projected demand will require increasing cereal production by an additional one billion tons, up from more than two
billion tons currently, and more than doubling meat production from current levels. However, according to a 2011 report by the OECD, annual
growth in agriculture production (PDF) in the next decade is forecast to be a third less than the annual growth
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in the previous decade. The report estimates that a 5 percent increase or decrease in harvest yield in major grains can lead to as much
as a 25 percent difference in price. Food Price Volatility According to the FAO, price volatility has been extremely rare in agricultural markets,
but the global food system is becoming increasingly vulnerable to it. The 2011 NGO report argued that
"volatility becomes an issue for concern and for possible policy response when it induces risk-adverse behavior that leads to inefficient
investment decisions and when it creates problems that are beyond the capacity of producers, consumers, or nations to cope."
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AT: U.S.-Indian Relations
Relations inevitable, there’s no impact, and they don’t solve
Joshi 13
Yogesh, doctoral student in international politics at the Center for International Politics, Organization and Disarmament (CIPOD), School of
International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi studying post-Cold War transitions in Indian foreign policy. He is a CSIS-Pacific
Forum young leader and also represented India at Global Zero World Summits in Paris (2010) and London (2011). Recently, he joined the
steering committee of the International Network of Emerging Nuclear Specialists (INENS) as a career and professional development liaison,
03/01, “U.S.-India Relations: New Delhi's Responsibility,” http://www.diplomaticourier.com/news/regions/brics/1372-us-india-relations-newdelhis-responsibility
While the U.S. presidential candidates were slugging it out during the debates on foreign policy, India remained
conspicuously absent from the narrative. At face value, the omission of India from the debates gave an impression that the country
hardly matters in U.S. foreign policy. However, the case was exactly opposite. If there was one foreign policy issue where the
Republicans and Democrats had more or less similar views, it was the role of India in the future of U.S.
Grand Strategy. In some sense, the presidential elections settled the debate on India’s importance in the U.S.'s
world view and future strategic plans. While the campaign was reaching its crescendo, India and the U.S. were engaged in their third
annual strategic dialogue–an event of immense geo-political significance first started in 2010. The annual strategic dialogue clearly
indicates the level of strategic convergence between New Delhi and Washington, DC. It was therefore not surprising to
see that during the recently concluded Asia-Pacific summit, President Obama called upon Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to
reveal that India is a "big part" of his second term foreign policy plans. In his first term, President Obama continued the strategic
engagement with India initiated by his predecessor, President George W. Bush. The highlight of U.S.-India relations during Obama's first term
was his visit to India, in which for the first time the U.S. supported India’s candidacy for a permanent seat at the UN Security Council (UNSC).
However, for many critics, Obama has failed to capitalize on the momentum generated in the bilateral relationship by
addressing the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal. The reasons for such pessimism are multi-faceted. First, the promise of the Indo-U.S.
nuclear deal remains unrealised. Though the U.S was instrumental in manipulating the global nuclear regime to
allow India to trade in nuclear material and technologies, its own nuclear industry has not benefited much out of the
agreement. India’s killer nuclear liability law, with provisions for supplier culpability, has hindered the participation of
nuclear consortiums such as Westinghouse and General Electric in India’s vast nuclear energy market. Second, the strategic
partnership has failed to convince India to tow the U.S. line on a number of issues, including a nuclear Iran and a more
robust alliance against China. Though India has repeatedly declared that it opposes Iran’s development of a nuclear bomb, the suggestion of
military action against Iran finds no traction with Indian policymakers. Similarly, India remains cagey about consummating the
military component of its strategic relationship with the U.S. insofar it wants to keep China in good humour.
Tit-for-tat disputes don’t spillover
Daniel Twining and, Senior Fellow for Asia at the German Marshall Fund, Richard Fontaine 11, Senior Fellow at the Center for a
New American Security, “The Ties that Bind? U.S.—Indian Values-based Cooperation”, The Washington Quarterly 34:2 pp. 193-205 Spring
2011
Iran and Burma underscore the limits to the argument that India and the United States, as democracies, define their interests in similar ways.13
But they may be special cases
like U.S. alliances with non-democracies such as Saudi
Arabia as well as Washington’s occasional support for military rule in Pakistan
that do not
vitiate the possibilities for Indo—American values-based cooperation elsewhere. Indeed, India has defined its
relations with the world’s leading democracies as more important than with non-democracies such as Iran,
Burma, and China. A leaked Indian Ministry of External Affairs memo in 2006 identified relations with the United States,
Britain, France, Germany, and Japan as being more strategically important to India’s future than ties to other
states
presumably not simply because of their power or wealth but because of a basic
alignment of interests, reinforced by a set of common values, that India does not share with other countries.14
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AFF – Link Debate
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Cuba
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Link Defense
No political support for the embargo
Brush 13 – MSN Money (Michael, “Time to invest in Cuba?” http://money.msn.com/investing/time-to-invest-in-cuba)
Political support for the embargo is eroding. Another problem for embargo aficionados is
that younger Cuban Americans in Florida, the all-important next generation of voters, just aren't
as passionate about it as their parents and grandparents were. "When I lecture down there, they couldn't care less
about Castro and the embargo," says Roett. A recent poll by Florida International University in Miami bears
this out. It found that just 50% of Cuban-Americans still support the embargo, and 80% think it
has failed. It's also worth noting that Obama got a lot more of the Cuban-American vote in Florida in the 2012 election, despite the
awareness that he is more willing to lift the embargo, says Hidalgo. With their constituents defecting on the issue,
congressional backers of the embargo may be losing ground. "The Cuban vote in Florida
is changing, thus sticking with the embargo doesn't makes sense," believes Hidalgo.
2.
Opposition to the plan is diminishing
Bandow 12 – senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a former special assistant to former US president Ronald Reagan (Doug, 12/11, “Time
to End the Cuba Embargo,” http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/time-end-cuba-embargo)
The embargo survives largely because of Florida’s political importance. Every presidential
candidate wants to win the Sunshine State’s electoral votes, and the Cuban American community
is a significant voting bloc. But the political environment is changing. A younger, more
liberal generation of Cuban Americans with no memory of life in Cuba is coming to the fore. Said
Wayne Smith, a diplomat who served in Havana: “for the first time in years, maybe there is some chance for a change in policy.” And there
are now many more new young Cuban Americans who support a more sensible approach to
Cuba. Support for the Republican Party also is falling. According to some exit polls Barack Obama narrowly carried
the Cuban American community in November, after receiving little more than a third of the vote four years ago. He received 60 percent of the
votes of Cuban Americans born in the United States. Barack
Obama increased his votes among Cuban Americans
after liberalizing contacts with the island. He also would have won the presidency without Florida, demonstrating that the
state may not be essential politically. Today even the GOP is no longer reliable. For instance, though
Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan has defended the embargo in recent years, that
appears to reflect ambition rather than conviction. Over the years he voted at least three times to
lift the embargo, explaining: “The embargo doesnt work. It is a failed policy. It was probably justified when the Soviet Union existed and
posed a threat through Cuba. I think its become more of a crutch for Castro to use to repress his people. All the problems he has, he blames the
American embargo.”
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Mexico
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Oil Lobby Turn
Plan’s popular with oil and gas lobbies – outweighs the link
Porretto 9 – Associated Press (John, 06/19, “Oil lobby floods D.C.,” http://www.telegram.com/article/20090619/NEWS/906190443/1002)
HOUSTON — Oil and gas companies have accelerated their spending on lobbying faster than any
other industry, training their gusher of profits on Washington to fight new taxes on drilling and slow efforts to move the nation off fossil
fuels. The industry spent $44.5 million lobbying Congress and federal agencies in the first three
months of this year, on pace to shatter last year's record . Only the drug industry spent more. Last year's
total of $129 million was up 73 percent from two years earlier. That's a faster clip than any other
major industry, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. From the late 1990s through the
first half of this decade, the oil industry spent roughly $50 million to $60 million a year on lobbying. It ramped up lobbying in 2006, when
Democrats retook Congress, and further as President Barack Obama took office. “They're under attack, they're
ramping up their
operations and they've got money to spend,” said Tyson Slocum, who runs the energy program at
watchdog group Public Citizen. “They're in a much better position than other industries to draw
upon financial resources for their lobbying effort.” Billions of dollars in oil profits in recent years have made the
industry a target for new and higher taxes on exploration and drilling. Oil companies and refiners are also trying to blunt the impact of costly
climate change legislation pushed by Obama. While most oil and gas executives acknowledge the nation needs cleaner energy, they say
lawmakers are misguided about how quickly it can happen. They warn that taxes and tighter rules on exploration could cripple the industry before
new technology is developed. Complex issues like that “require additional communication and effort to ensure lawmakers understand our
positions,” said Alan Jeffers, a spokesman for Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest publicly traded oil company. Exxon
Mobil was
the biggest spender in the first quarter, pumping $9.3 million into Washington — three times
what it spent a year ago, according to House disclosure reports. In its House filing, Exxon noted it lobbied on
high-profile topics such as climate and tax legislation, as well as provisions regarding the chemical industry, education and health care.
Combined, the three largest U.S. oil companies — Exxon, Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips —
spent about $22 million on lobbying in the first quarter. Smaller, independent companies that
produce the bulk of the nation's crude and natural gas are spending millions, too. They're
spending more even as profits have subsided. The big three U.S. oil companies spent just $12.4 million on lobbying in the
fourth quarter. First-quarter spending on lobbying by the oil industry trailed only drugmakers and health products companies, which spent $66.6
million. “I can tell you, I've had substantially more visits than usual,” said Rep. Gene Green, whose south Texas district is in the heart of oil
country. Among his callers, he said, have been representatives of ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil to discuss climate-change legislation and
a degree, the investment appears to be paying off. On Wednesday, a Senate
committee voted to lift a ban on drilling across a vast area in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. The
other matters. To
provision, which the industry pushed for, is included in a bill that would expand the use of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. The
bill now goes to the full Senate. Democrats from oil states have also managed to get rid of a provision in an anti-pollution bill to require refiners
to meet a standard on low-carbon motor fuel. Refiners say the bill would still be devastating to business. Most
major industries have
increased what they spend on lobbying, but no one has done so at a faster clip over the past two
years than oil and gas companies, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. The
enormous amount of money funneled to Washington by energy companies comes after some members of Congress suggested slapping the big oil
— who also took
the majority of state legislatures and governorships in 2006 — traditionally have not been as
cozy with the oil sector as Republicans, and the energy lobby has spent the past few years trying
to make inroads. “You'll often see a correlation between spending and an industry or company
that's in the hot seat,” said Sheila Krumholz, the Center for Responsive Politics' executive
director. “That will be enough to get them to hire additional guns and direct more money to
lobbying.”
companies with a windfall profits tax last year, when Americans were seething over $4-a-gallon gas. Democrats
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Venezuela
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Chavez’s Death = No Link
Chavez’s death kills political opposition to the plan
Clarke 13 – editor and contributor to Salt of the Earth magazine, MA in International Studies from DePaul University (Kevin, 03/25,
“Chavez Death Brings New Chance For U.S.-Venezuela Engagement,” http://americamagazine.org/issue/chavez-death-brings-new-chance-usvenezuela-engagement)
Father Carnes said Chávez’s
passing offers an opportunity for the United States, politically and
economically, to revive its relationship with Venezuela. Occasionally “capricious and doctrinaire,” Chávez was
“someone the United States had a hard time negotiating with,” according to Father Carnes. Whether his designated
political heir, Vice President Nicholas Maduro, or an opposition candidate, most likely Henrique Capriles Radonski, governor of the Venezuelan
state of Miranda, is elected to replace Chávez, Father Carnes
expects a more pragmatic and less confrontational
leadership to emerge. That could mean improved ties not just with Venezuela but throughout the
region, he said, and a possible opening for renewed U.S. investment and partnership with
the Venezuelan state oil industry . Despite Chávez’s notorious distaste for U.S. political leaders, under his leadership
Venezuela remained one of the largest suppliers of oil to the United States. This is likely to continue.
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Miscellaneous
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PC Theory Wrong
PC theory is wrong – winners win
Hirsh 13 – National Journal chief correspondent, citing various political scientists
[Michael, former Newsweek senior correspondent, "There’s No Such Thing as Political Capital," National Journal, 2-9-13,
www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/there-s-no-such-thing-as-political-capital-20130207, accessed 2-8-13, mss]
The idea of political capital—or mandates, or momentum—is so poorly defined that presidents and pundits often get it wrong. On Tuesday, in his State of the
Union address, President Obama will do what every president does this time of year. For about 60 minutes, he will lay out a sprawling and ambitious wish list
highlighted by gun control and immigration reform, climate change and debt reduction. In response, the pundits will do what they always do this time of year: They
will talk about how unrealistic most of the proposals are, discussions often informed by sagacious reckonings of how much “political capital” Obama
possesses to push his program through. Most of this talk will have
no bearing on what actually happens
over the next four
years. Consider this: Three months ago, just before the November election, if someone had talked seriously about Obama having enough political capital to oversee
passage of both immigration reform and gun-control legislation at the beginning of his second term—even after winning the election by 4 percentage points and 5
million votes (the actual final tally)—this person would have been called crazy and stripped of his pundit’s license. (It doesn’t exist, but it ought to.) In his first term,
in a starkly polarized country, the president had been so frustrated by GOP resistance that he finally issued a limited executive order last August permitting
immigrants who entered the country illegally as children to work without fear of deportation for at least two years. Obama didn’t dare to even bring up gun control, a
Democratic “third rail” that has cost the party elections and that actually might have been even less popular on the right than the president’s health care law. And yet,
for reasons that have very little to do with Obama’s personal prestige or popularity—variously put in terms of a “mandate” or “political capital”—chances are fair that
both will now happen. What changed? In the case of gun control, of course, it wasn’t the election. It was the horror of the 20 first-graders who were slaughtered in
Newtown, Conn., in mid-December. The sickening reality of little girls and boys riddled with bullets from a high-capacity assault weapon seemed to precipitate a
sudden tipping point in the national conscience. One thing changed after another. Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association marginalized himself with poorly
chosen comments soon after the massacre. The pro-gun lobby, once a phalanx of opposition, began to fissure into reasonables and crazies. Former Rep. Gabrielle
Giffords, D-Ariz., who was shot in the head two years ago and is still struggling to speak and walk, started a PAC with her husband to appeal to the moderate middle
of gun owners. Then she gave riveting and poignant testimony to the Senate, challenging lawmakers: “Be bold.” As a result, momentum has appeared to build around
some kind of a plan to curtail sales of the most dangerous weapons and ammunition and the way people are permitted to buy them. It’s impossible to say now whether
such a bill will pass and, if it does, whether it will make anything more than cosmetic changes to gun laws. But one thing is clear: The political tectonics have
shifted dramatically
in very little time . Whole new possibilities exist now that didn’t a few weeks ago. Meanwhile, the Republican members of
the Senate’s so-called Gang of Eight are pushing hard for a new spirit of compromise on immigration reform, a sharp change after an election year in which the
GOP standard-bearer declared he would make life so miserable for the 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. that they would “self-deport.” But this turnaround
has very little to do with Obama’s personal influence—his political mandate, as it were. It has almost entirely to do with just two numbers: 71 and 27.
That’s 71 percent for Obama, 27 percent for Mitt Romney, the breakdown of the Hispanic vote in the 2012 presidential election. Obama drove home his
advantage by giving a speech on immigration reform on Jan. 29 at a Hispanic-dominated high school in Nevada, a swing state he won by a surprising 8 percentage
points in November. But the movement on immigration has mainly come out of the Republican Party’s recent introspection, and the realization by its more thoughtful
members, such as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, that without such a shift the party may be facing demographic death in a country
where the 2010 census showed, for the first time, that white births have fallen into the minority. It’s got nothing to do with Obama’s political capital or,
indeed, Obama at all. The point is not that “political capital” is a meaningless term. Often it is a synonym for “mandate” or “momentum” in the aftermath of a
decisive election—and just about every politician ever elected has tried to claim more of a mandate than he actually has. Certainly, Obama can say that because he
was elected and Romney wasn’t, he has a better claim on the country’s mood and direction. Many pundits still defend political capital as a useful metaphor at least.
“It’s an unquantifiable but meaningful concept,” says Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. “You can’t really look at a president and say he’s got 37
ounces of political capital. But the fact is, it’s a concept that matters, if you have popularity and some momentum on your side.” The real problem is that the idea of
political capital—or mandates, or momentum—is so poorly defined that presidents and pundits often get it wrong. “Presidents usually over-estimate
it,” says George Edwards, a presidential scholar at Texas A&M University. “The best kind of political capital—some sense of an electoral mandate to do something—
is very rare. It almost never happens. In 1964, maybe. And to some degree in 1980.” For that reason, political capital is a concept that misleads far more than it
enlightens. It is distortionary. It conveys the idea that we know more than we really do about the ever-elusive concept of political power, and it
discounts the way unforeseen events can suddenly change everything . Instead, it suggests, erroneously, that a political
figure has a concrete amount of political capital to invest, just as someone might have real investment capital—that a particular leader can bank his gains, and the size
of his account determines what he can do at any given moment in history. Naturally, any president has practical and electoral limits. Does he have a majority in both
chambers of Congress and a cohesive coalition behind him? Obama has neither at present. And unless a surge in the economy—at the moment, still stuck—or some
other great victory gives him more momentum, it is inevitable that the closer Obama gets to the 2014 election, the less he will be able to get done. Going into the
midterms, Republicans will increasingly avoid any concessions that make him (and the Democrats) stronger. But the abrupt emergence of the immigration and guncontrol issues illustrates how suddenly shifts in mood can occur and how political interests can align in new ways just as suddenly. Indeed, the pseudo-concept of
political capital masks a larger truth about Washington that is kindergarten simple: You just don’t know what you can do until you try. Or as Ornstein himself
once wrote years ago, “ Winning wins.” In theory, and in practice, depending on Obama’s handling of any particular issue, even in a polarized time, he could still
deliver on a lot of his second-term goals, depending on his skill and the breaks. Unforeseen catalysts can appear, like Newtown. Epiphanies can dawn, such as when
many Republican Party leaders suddenly woke up in panic to the huge disparity in the Hispanic vote. Some political scientists who study the elusive calculus of
how to pass legislation and run successful presidencies say that political capital is, at best, an empty concept, and that almost nothing in the
academic literature successfully quantifies or even defines it. “It can refer to a very abstract thing, like a president’s popularity, but there’s no mechanism
there.
That makes it
kind of
useless ,” says Richard Bensel, a government professor at Cornell University. Even Ornstein concedes that the
calculus is far more complex than the term suggests. Winning on one issue often changes the calculation for the next issue; there is never any known
amount of capital. “The idea here is, if an issue comes up where the conventional wisdom is that president is not going to get what he wants, and
[they]he gets it, then each time that happens, it changes the calculus of the
other actors ” Ornstein says. “If they think he’s going to win,
change positions to get on the winning side . It’s a bandwagon effect.” ALL THE WAY WITH LBJ
Sometimes, a clever practitioner of power can get more done just because [they’re]he’s aggressive and knows the hallways of Congress well.
they may
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Texas A&M’s Edwards is right to say that the outcome of the 1964 election, Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory over Barry Goldwater, was one of the few that
conveyed a mandate. But one of the main reasons for that mandate (in addition to Goldwater’s ineptitude as a candidate) was President Johnson’s masterful
use of power leading up to that election, and his ability to get far more done than anyone thought possible, given his limited political capital. In the newest
volume in his exhaustive study of LBJ, The Passage of Power, historian Robert Caro recalls Johnson getting cautionary advice after he assumed the presidency from
the assassinated John F. Kennedy in late 1963. Don’t focus on a long-stalled civil-rights bill, advisers told him, because it might jeopardize Southern lawmakers’
support for a tax cut and appropriations bills the president needed. “One of the wise, practical people around the table [said that] the presidency has only a certain
amount of coinage to expend, and you oughtn’t to expend it on this,” Caro writes. (Coinage, of course, was what political capital was called in those days.) Johnson
replied, “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?” Johnson didn’t worry about coinage, and he got the Civil Rights Act enacted, along with much else:
Medicare, a tax cut, antipoverty programs. He appeared to understand not just the ways of Congress but also the way to maximize the momentum he
possessed in the lingering mood of national grief and determination by picking the right issues, as Caro records. “Momentum is not a mysterious mistress,” LBJ said.
“It is a controllable fact of political life.” Johnson had the skill and wherewithal to realize that, at that moment of history, he could have unlimited coinage if he
handled the politics right. He did. (At least until Vietnam, that is.)
Issues are compartmentalized
Dickinson 9 – professor of political science at Middlebury College and taught previously at Harvard University where he worked under
the supervision of presidential scholar Richard Neustadt (5/26/09, Matthew, Presidential Power: A NonPartisan Analysis of Presidential Politics,
“Sotomayor, Obama and Presidential Power,” http://blogs.middlebury.edu/presidentialpower/2009/05/26/sotamayor-obama-and-presidentialpower/)
As for Sotomayor, from here the path toward almost certain confirmation goes as follows: the Senate Judiciary
Committee is slated to hold hearings sometime this summer (this involves both written depositions and of course
open hearings), which should lead to formal Senate approval before Congress adjourns for its summer recess in
early August. So Sotomayor will likely take her seat in time for the start of the new Court session on October 5. (I
talk briefly about the likely politics of the nomination process below). What is of more interest to me, however, is
what her selection reveals about the basis of presidential power. Political scientists, like baseball writers evaluating
hitters, have devised numerous means of measuring a president’s influence in Congress. I will devote a separate post
to discussing these, but in brief, they often center on the creation of legislative “box scores” designed to measure
how many times a president’s preferred piece of legislation, or nominee to the executive branch or the courts, is
approved by Congress. That is, how many pieces of legislation that the president supports actually pass Congress?
How often do members of Congress vote with the president’s preferences? How often is a president’s policy
position supported by roll call outcomes? These measures, however, are a misleading gauge of presidential power –
they are a better indicator of congressional power. This is because how members of Congress vote on a nominee or
legislative item is rarely influenced by anything a president does. Although journalists (and political scientists) often
focus on the legislative “endgame” to gauge presidential influence – will the President swing enough votes to get his
preferred legislation enacted? – this mistakes an outcome with actual evidence of presidential influence. Once we
control for other factors – a member of Congress’ ideological and partisan leanings, the political leanings of her
constituency, whether she’s up for reelection or not – we can usually predict how she will vote without needing to
know much of anything about what the president wants. (I am ignoring the importance of a president’s veto power
for the moment.) Despite the much publicized and celebrated instances of presidential arm-twisting during the
legislative endgame, then, most legislative outcomes don’t depend on presidential lobbying. But this is not to say
that presidents lack influence. Instead, the primary means by which presidents influence what Congress does is
through their ability to determine the alternatives from which Congress must choose. That is, presidential power is
largely an exercise in agenda-setting – not arm-twisting. And we see this in the Sotomayer nomination. Barring a
major scandal, she will almost certainly be confirmed to the Supreme Court whether Obama spends the confirmation
hearings calling every Senator or instead spends the next few weeks ignoring the Senate debate in order to play Halo
III on his Xbox. That is, how senators decide to vote on Sotomayor will have almost nothing to do with Obama’s
lobbying from here on in (or lack thereof). His real influence has already occurred, in the decision to present
Sotomayor as his nominee. If we want to measure Obama’s “power”, then, we need to know what his real
preference was and why he chose Sotomayor. My guess – and it is only a guess – is that after conferring with
leading Democrats and Republicans, he recognized the overriding practical political advantages accruing from
choosing an Hispanic woman, with left-leaning credentials. We cannot know if this would have been his ideal
choice based on judicial philosophy alone, but presidents are never free to act on their ideal preferences. Politics is
the art of the possible. Whether Sotomayer is his first choice or not, however, her nomination is a reminder that the
power of the presidency often resides in the president’s ability to dictate the alternatives from which Congress (or in
this case the Senate) must choose. Although Republicans will undoubtedly attack Sotomayor for her judicial
“activism” (citing in particular her decisions regarding promotion and affirmative action), her comments regarding
the importance of gender and ethnicity in influencing her decisions, and her views regarding whether appellate
courts “make” policy, they run the risk of alienating Hispanic voters – an increasingly influential voting bloc (to the
extent that one can view Hispanics as a voting bloc!) I find it very hard to believe she will not be easily confirmed.
In structuring the alternative before the Senate in this manner, then, Obama reveals an important aspect of
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Michael Crowe
presidential power that cannot be measured through legislative boxscores.
Earliest Bird 2013
Michael Crowe
Winners Win
Winners win – empirically proven, and compromises don’t work
Gergen 13 – CNN Senior Political Analyst
(David, “Obama 2.0: Smarter – but wiser?”, CNN, 1-19-2013, http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/18/opinion/gergen-obama-two/index.html)
Obama appears smarter, tougher and bolder than ever before. But
It is clear that he is consciously changing his
leadership style heading into the next four years. Weeks before the November elections, his top advisers were
signaling that he intended to be a different kind of president in his second term. "Just watch," they said to me,
in effect, "he will win re-election decisively and then he will throw down the gauntlet to the Republicans ,
On the eve of his second inaugural, President
whether he is also wiser remains a key question for his new term. ¶
insisting they raise taxes on the wealthy. Right on the edge of the fiscal cliff, he thinks Republicans will cave." ¶ What's your Plan B, I asked. "We
don't need a Plan B," they answered. "After
the president hangs tough -- no more Mr. Nice Guy -- the
other side will buckle ." Sure enough, Republicans caved on taxes. Encouraged, Obama has since made
clear he won't compromise with Republicans on the debt ceiling, either. Obama 2.0 stepped up this
past week on yet another issue: gun control. No president in two decades has been as forceful or sweeping in challenging
the nation's gun culture. Once again, he portrayed the right as the enemy of progress and showed no interest
in negotiating a package up front. In his coming State of the Union address, and perhaps in his inaugural, the president will begin
a hard push for a comprehensive reform of our tattered immigration system. Leading GOP leaders on the issue -- Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida,
Obama wants to go for broke in a single package,
and on a central issue -- providing a clear path to citizenship for undocumented residents -- he is uncompromising.¶ After
for example -- would prefer a piecemeal approach that is bipartisan.
losing out on getting Susan Rice as his next secretary of state, Obama has also shown a tougher side on personnel appointments. Rice went down
after Democratic as well as Republican senators indicated a preference for Sen. John Kerry. But when Republicans also tried to kill the
nomination of Chuck Hagel for secretary of defense, Obama was unyielding -- an "in-your-face appointment," Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-South
Carolina, called it, echoing sentiments held by some of his colleagues. Republicans would have preferred someone other than Jack Lew at
Treasury, but Obama brushed them off. Hagel
and Lew -- both substantial men -- will be confirmed, absent an
unexpected bombshell, and Obama will rack up two more victories over Republicans. Strikingly,
Obama has also been deft in the ways he has drawn upon Vice President Joe Biden. During much of the campaign, Biden appeared to be kept
under wraps. But in the transition, he has been invaluable to Obama in negotiating a deal with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on the
fiscal cliff and in pulling together the gun package. Biden was also at his most eloquent at the ceremony announcing the gun measures.¶ All of
this has added up for Obama to one of the most effective transitions in modern times. And it is paying rich dividends: A CNN poll this past week
pegged his approval rating at 55%, far above the doldrums he was in for much of the past two years.
Many of his long-time
supporters are rallying behind him . As the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to score back-to-back election
victories with more than 50% of the vote, Obama is in the strongest position since early in his first year.¶
Smarter, tougher, bolder -- his new style is paying off politically . But in the long run, will it also pay off in
better governance? Perhaps -- and for the country's sake, let's hope so. Yet, there are ample reasons to wonder, and worry. Ultimately, to
resolve major issues like deficits, immigration, guns and energy , the president and Congress need to find ways to work together
much better than they did in the first term. Over the past two years, Republicans were clearly more recalcitrant than Democrats, practically
declaring war on Obama, and the White House has been right to adopt a tougher approach after the elections. But a
growing number of Republicans concluded after they had their heads handed to them in November that they had to move away from extremism
toward a more center-right position, more open to working out compromises with Obama. It's not that they suddenly wanted Obama to succeed;
they didn't want their party to fail.¶ House Speaker John Boehner led the way, offering the day after the election to raise taxes on the wealthy and
giving up two decades of GOP orthodoxy. In a similar spirit, Rubio has been developing a mainstream plan on immigration, moving away from a
ruinous GOP stance.¶ One senses that the hope, small as it was, to take a brief timeout on hyperpartisanship in order to tackle the big issues is
conservatives increasingly
believe that in his new toughness, he is going overboard, trying to run over them . They don't see a president
who wants to roll up his sleeves and negotiate; they see a president who wants to barnstorm the country to beat
them up. News that Obama is converting his campaign apparatus into a nonprofit to support his second term will only deepen that sense. And
it frustrates them that he is winning : At their retreat, House Republicans learned that their disapproval has risen to 64%.¶
now slipping away. While a majority of Americans now approve of Obama's job performance,
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Michael Crowe
tactics could pressure Republicans into capitulation on several fronts. More
likely, they will be spoiling for more fights. Chances for a "grand bargain" appear to be hanging by a thread.
Conceivably, Obama's
Winners win – the bully pulpit outweighs
Kuttner 11 (Robert, Co-Founder and Co-Editor – American Prospect and Distinguished Senior Fellow – Demos (Think Tank), “Barack
Obama’s Theory of Power”, The American Prospect, 5-16,http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=barack_obamas_theory_of_power)
Obama’s critics contend that his prolonged fantasy of bipartisanship, his failure to lay the blame for the depressed economy squarely on the
Republicans, and his reluctance to use his bully pulpit to tell a coherent story, particularly about jobs, needlessly weakened the
Democrats and led to avoidable losses in the 2010 midterm. More fundamentally, under Obama government has lost credibility as a necessary force for
economic recovery and fairness, undermining the Democrats’ core appeal to voters. At the very least, Obama failed to drive the agenda or
exploit the full possibilities of presidential leadership in a crisis. In the formulation of the political historian James MacGregor Burns,
Obama ran and inspired voters as a “transformational” figure but governed as a “transactional” one. Notwithstanding a vow to profoundly change
Washington, Obama took the Washington power constellation as a given. Despite an economic emergency, he moved neither Congress nor public opinion
very much and only seldom used his oratorical gifts. “He is so damned smart and confident that he thinks he just has to explain things to the American
people once,” says former House Appropriations Chair David Obey. “He doesn’t appreciate that you have to reinforce a message 50 times.” Obama’s
reticence, his reluctance to lay blame, make sharp partisan distinctions, or practice a politics of class, reflects the interplay of his
personality and his tacit theory of power—one that emphasizes building bridges to opponents, defying ideological categories, shying
away from the kind of mass mobilization that swept him into office, and practicing a kind of Zen detachment. At moments in American
history, that conception of the presidency has suited the times. This doesn’t seem to be one of those moments . Yet in the third year of
his presidency, there are signs of a learning curve. It may be that Obama
is playing his own elegant brand of rope-a-dope,
lead with their chins, waiting for just the right moment to dramatize their extremism and exploit their
schisms—then demonstrating a toughness that has largely eluded him until now and reshaping the political center as a
biding his time, letting the Republicans
more progressive one. The hope of a new, more combative Obama was kindled by portions of his April 13 speech at George Washington University, which
showed an Obama that we’ve seldom seen during his presidency. “The man America elected president has re-emerged,” exulted The New York Times’
lead editorial. Obama departed from his usual reluctance to be partisan, explicitly criticizing the self-annihilating Republican designs so usefully spelled
out in Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposed 10-year budget. The president resorted to a formulation he seldom uses—the injustices of class: “The top 1 percent saw
their income rise by an average of more than a quarter of a million dollars each. That’s who needs to pay less taxes?” Obama said. “They want to give
people like me a $200,000 tax cut that’s paid for by asking 33 seniors each to pay $6,000 more in health costs. That’s not right. And it’s not going to
happen as long as I’m president.” At last, Obama shifted the mind-numbing debate from the scale of the budget and its deficits to its content and political
meaning. He did what his progressive critics have long advocated, drawing a clear, bright, partisan line and pledging to defend Medicare, Medicaid, and
Social Security. But the budgetary details of the speech showed an Obama who was still the transactional leader of the Burns paradigm. Obama devoted
most of the speech to his own plans for cutting the deficit. Jobs and recovery were hardly mentioned. Most of the proposed deficit reductions came from
cuts to programs rather than from tax increases. And Obama was far too generous with the word, we. As in: But after Democrats and Republicans
committed to fiscal discipline during the 1990s, we lost our way in the decade that followed. We increased spending dramatically for two wars and an
expensive prescription-drug program—but we didn’t pay for any of this new spending. Instead, we made the problem worse with trillions of dollars in
unpaid-for tax cuts. [Emphasis added.] As Tonto said to the Lone Ranger, What do you mean, we? This fiscal deterioration, of course, was the
Republicans’ handiwork. Why not point that out? Obama seemed to come to his partisanship reluctantly, almost apologetically. At one point in the speech,
having just flayed the Republicans for their sheer extremism, he added, “I’m eager to hear other ideas from all ends of the political spectrum.” He further
mixed his own message by declaring, “We will all need to make sacrifices.” Indeed, the main ideological themes of the speech had been undermined by
Obama’s earlier compromises. The left pole that Obama defined in the budget debate had already been moved to the right by his yearlong emphasis on
deficit reduction; his prior concessions in the December 2010 tax deal, which failed to restore higher tax rates on the rich; and the 2011 budget deal, which
cut $38 billion in programs. If the bipartisan Gang of Six, spawn of Obama’s own Bowles-Simpson commission, does reach agreement, it will only add
pressure to alter Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for the worse—thus fatally blurring Obama’s bright line. Was Obama’s speech—the most
resolutely political, partisan, progressive, and effective in recent memory—a turning point or a one-off? Is Obama now revising his theory and practice of
presidential power? As the political scientist Richard Neustadt observed in his classic work, Presidential Power, a book that had great influence on
essence of a president’s power is “the power to persuade.” Because our divided
amass power by making strategic
choices about when to use the latent authority of the presidency to move public and elite opinion and then use that
added prestige as clout to move Congress . In one of Neustadt’s classic case studies, Harry Truman, a president widely
President John F. Kennedy, the
constitutional system does not allow the president to lead by commanding, presidents
considered a lame duck, nonetheless persuaded the broad public and a Republican Congress in 1947-1948 that the Marshall
Plan was a worthy idea. As Neustadt and Burns both observed, though an American chief executive is weak by constitutional design,
a president possesses several points of leverage. He can play an effective outside game, motivating and shaping public sentiment, making clear the
differences between his values and those of his opposition, and using popular support to box in his opponents and move them in his direction. He can
complement the outside bully pulpit with a nimble inside game, uniting his legislative party, bestowing or
withholding benefits on opposition legislators, forcing them to take awkward
votes, and using the veto. He can also enlist the support of interest
of this signals leadership that often moves
groups to pressure Congress, and use media to validate his framing of choices. Done well, all
the public agenda. The most effective presidents have worked all these levers. Think of Franklin Roosevelt, or Ronald Reagan, or Lyndon B. Johnson
during the era of the War on Poverty and the civil-rights crusade. But
defending Medicare, Obama
except in the endgame of the battle for health care and his recent turnabout in
has been relatively disengaged on all of these fronts. He left the details of his signature
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Michael Crowe
legislation and attendant bargaining to his staff. Says a senior Democrat who speaks frequently to Obama, “He is just not someone who enjoys
what most of presidential politics entails.” Reviewing Obama’s relatively short career, a few core principles emerge in which he deeply believes. These
have remained constants. Building Bridges. Obama, famously, is convinced both by his life journey and his prior experience in politics that he can
persuade almost any adversary to find areas of common ground. “Much of Obama’s self-confidence,” wrote David Remnick in his biography of Obama,
The Bridge, “resided in his belief that he could walk into a room, with any sort of people, and forge a relationship and even persuade those people of the
rightness of his position.” From the Harvard Law Review, to the Illinois Senate, to the Iowa precinct caucuses, Obama’s political life before his presidency
only strengthened that conviction. Obama has a deep certitude that the voters, especially political independents, are sick of partisan division and want a
leader who will rise above it to solve practical problems. In service of that goal, he has bent over backward to praise his opposition rather than attack it,
frequently offering concessions in advance. Mostly, he has pursued common ground by giving ground. The experience of his first two years, when
Republicans wanted nothing so much as to destroy him, did not shake Obama from these strategic beliefs. “He doesn’t have a fighter’s instinct, but he is in
the middle of a hugely consequential fight,” says a veteran Senate Democrat. “They will keep pushing him as long as he keeps backing up.” His drawing of
bright lines in the April 13 speech was very much the exception. Defying Categories. This core political instinct interacts with, and is reinforced by,
Obama’s personal reticence and determination not to be the angry black man. From his first entry into electoral politics, he defined himself as a different
sort of African American and a different sort of liberal. Even though his voting record as a U.S. senator was one of the most progressive, as president he
has almost gone out of his way to distance himself from the liberal base. In an interview with The New York Times’ Peter Baker on the eve of the 2010
elections, Obama expressed regrets for looking too much like “the same old tax-and-spend liberal Democrat.” Courting Elites, Wary of Mass Mobilization.
Obama and his campaign staff brilliantly enlisted an army of volunteers who thought of themselves as a movement built on the values of sweeping change
and the tactics of community organizing. Obama repeatedly vowed that he would use these engaged citizens to press Congress to enact health reform and
other urgent priorities. But once elected, Obama’s political staff quickly downgraded Obama for America into Organizing for America, a denatured arm of
the Democratic National Committee—out of concern that an independent movement might be more of a pressure group than an amen chorus. While he has
maintained a close—and politically damaging—alliance with Wall Street (and lately, under Chief of Staff Bill Daley’s tutelage, has reached out to the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce), Obama has been detached from the one recent popular rising that could help him win lost ground in the crucial states of the
Midwest—the backlash against union busting and draconian budget cuts by Midwestern Republican governors and legislators. Though the line attributed to
FDR speaking to supporters—“Now, make me do it”—is probably apocryphal, Roosevelt did make good use of popular groups to his left, as did Lyndon
Johnson in his complex alliance with Martin Luther King. Obama and his political staff are distinctly uncomfortable with independent mobilizations
making him do anything. At a time when progressive movements lack the energy of the 1930s or 1960s, the president has not chosen to help animate them.
Zen Leadership. The adjectives widely used to describe Obama are words like diffident, detached, aloof, professorial. Obama practices restraint to a fault.
As a policy expert and intellectual, he is hands-on when it comes to White House deliberation but mostly hands-off with Congress. As Burns
demonstrated, power
is enhanced in the course of its exercise. But Obama, despite his eloquence and capacity to
motivate, seems to believe that power should be conserved and presidential leadership reserved for emergencies. He
waited long and disabling months before becoming personally engaged in the health-reform battle. This left the details
obscure, voters anxious, and Democrats at the August 2009 town meetings playing the role of pinata. By the time the bill finally passed, the
victory was politically Pyrrhic. An exasperated David Obey told me, “Obama sat and let Jubilation T. Cornpone tie up Max Baucus
for all those months. Hell, Chuck Grassley made it clear to me that he’d never vote for the thing.” Obama and his team never embraced such strategies as
forcing Republicans (and conservative Democrats) to take awkward votes or using the veto to define clear and principled differences. David Axelrod told
me that the White House considered it futile and self-defeating to bring up measures in the Senate that couldn’t win. This stance, the opposite of Harry
Truman’s, has infuriated Obama’s allies in the House. During the last session, important progressive legislation on jobs and energy independence
passed the House but was never even brought to a vote in the Senate. In one emblematic episode in December 2009, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pulled
out all the stops to get the House to narrowly pass a $154 billion public-investment, jobs, and unemployment-extension bill. The White House, however,
rebuffed Pelosi’s entreaties to urge Majority Leader Harry Reid to bring the measure to a vote in the Senate. At the time, Obama’s aides were convinced
that job growth was around the corner, had already moved on to deficit reduction as the theme of the 2010 State of the Union address, and were laying
plans for “Recovery Summer,” a conceit that entirely backfired. Except on such rare occasions at late stages of the health debate, it was not Obama’s style
to call in wavering Democrats to give them an LBJ-style treatment—or to call them in at all, even to discuss major pending policy decisions. A number of
senior Democrats were livid that they were kept in the dark about the April 13 budget speech, which had evidently been months in preparation. They first
heard about it when David Plouffe, the White House political director, made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows, three days before the speech. “You’ve
heard of the ‘great man’ theory,” says Robert Borosage, who co-directs the progressive Campaign for America’s Future. “They believe in the ‘great
speech’ theory.” Obama’s stirring speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention established the novice as presidential timber. During the campaign,
his superb address on race, a subject he dearly wanted to avoid, saved his candidacy from being destroyed by the controversy over the Rev. Jeremiah
Wright. But as president, much of the time Obama has been AWOL rather than a defining presence driving the debate. His great speeches, like April’s
budget address, often come late in the game, after concessions have been made and damage done. Obama seems to relish demonstrating that he can score
the occasional touchdown run starting from his own end zone. But politics,
like football, is a game of cumulative scoring. If
you keep giving ground, the clock eventually runs out. Hands off, above the fray, turning the other cheek, representing decency
and common purpose,conserving
rather than wielding power, uncomfortable with popular movements he doesn’t control—by some
alchemy, this style of leadership is expected to produce the voter approval that puts polite pressure on the other party to join the quest for
consensus. Reciprocity and compromise then result in effective government and popular adulation. This has been Obama’s operating theory of power. For
the most part, it hasn’t worked.
Empirics prove winners win
Green 10 [David, professor of political science at Hofstra University, "The Do-Nothing 44th President", 6/11 -http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Do-Nothing-44th-Presid-by-David-Michael-Gree-100611-648.html]
Moreover, there
is a continuously evolving and reciprocal relationship between presidential boldness
and achievement. In the same way that nothing breeds success like success, nothing sets the president up for
achieving his or her next goal better than succeeding dramatically on the last go around. This is absolutely a
matter of perception, and you can see it best in the way that Congress and especially the Washington press corps fawn over bold and
intimidating presidents like Reagan and George W. Bush. The political teams surrounding these presidents understood the psychology of power
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Michael Crowe
all too well. They knew that by simultaneously
creating a steamroller effect and feigning a clubby atmosphere
for Congress and the press, they could leave such hapless hangers-on with only one remaining way to pretend to
preserve their dignities. By jumping on board the freight train, they could be given the illusion
of being next to power, of being part of the winning team. And so, with virtually the sole exception of the now
retired Helen Thomas, this is precisely what they did.