The 110th Congress convened under new management last week, and in the House of Representatives, the rush was on. Led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrats got ready to plow through an ambitious pile of legislation in their first 100 hours. Among the items on their punch list: increasing the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour, expanding publicly funded embryonic stem cell research, cutting the interest rate on student loans, and imposing price controls on Medicare prescription drugs.
A more liberal policy agenda isn't all that will be moving into the spotlight. There will be a heightened focus on liberal *arguments* as well -- which means we'll be hearing more about good intentions and less about good results. Political discourse will dwell even more than it already does on "fairness" and "compassion" and "unmet needs" -- and even less on factual evidence and the historical record.
The minimum-wage issue illustrates the pattern well. Proponents of this quintessentially liberal prescription emphasize the difficulties faced by those trying to make a living and support a family while working a minimum-wage job. They point out how inflation has eroded the value of the wage. They contrast the soaring paychecks of CEOs at the top of the economic ladder with the pittance earned by those at the bottom. They frame the question as one of decency and sympathy: Don't you want to help the working poor? Don't they deserve a raise too?
"In the last nine years, Congress has voted itself seven pay increases," says Senator Edward M. Kennedy. "If a pay raise is important enough for members of Congress, then it is essential for the lowest-paid workers in this country."
Opponents, by contrast, point to data and economics. They note, for example, that most minimum-wage workers are neither poor nor family breadwinners, but singles in their teens or early 20s, often students working part-time while living with Mom and Dad. They argue that while a minimum-wage increase helps some people, it hurts others: If the cost of employing low-skill workers goes up, fewer low-skill workers will be employed. They invoke history, which shows that jobs are destroyed by minimum-wage hikes.
"The enactment of the first federal minimum wage law in 1933," writes economist Thomas Sowell, "raised the average wage rate in the Southern textile industry by 70 percent -- and half a million blacks nationwide lost their jobs."
What is true of the minimum-wage debate is true of so many others. Affirmative action, sex education, energy policy, family law, criminal procedure -- on issue after issue, people on the left are more likely to stress virtuous motives, while those on the right accentuate real-world outcomes.
Should income-tax rates be cut? Liberals say no, repelled by the apparent selfishness of enriching the well-to-do, when it is the poor who need more money. Conservatives say yes, knowing that tax relief spurs economic growth from which everyone benefits. Is bilingual education desirable? Yes, argues the left, concerned about the self-esteem of non-English-speaking children. No, insists the right, recognizing that children master English more quickly when they aren't shunted off into linguistic ghettos. Time and again, the pattern is clear: Liberals are galvanized by idealistic motives; conservatives find reality more persuasive.
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