A “fresh start” is what author and nationally
syndicated columnist Matthew Miller wants for politics in the
United States.
“We need to reframe the debate between political parties
to build a better common purpose and eliminate the solutions
gap,” he said in the UCLA Public Policy Building on
Thursday.
With his book “The 2 Percent Solution: Fixing America’s
Problems In Ways Liberals and Conservatives Can Love,” Miller
hopes to bring the left, right and center together to tackle issues
such as basic health care, minimum wage and public education.
Through taxes and a shift in government spending, Miller said he
believes he could free $220 billion, 2 percent of the United
States’ $11 trillion gross domestic product, to relieve the
country’s ills.
Much of his attention is focused on the working poor.
At the forefront of his proposed solutions is a 50 percent
increase in teacher salaries at high-poverty schools. For the best
of these teachers, salary could increase by 100 percent, under his
proposals.
“We are currently relying on a missionary plan to staff
our inner city schools,” Miller said.
He said it is necessary to attract a large body of exceptional
teachers to educate the nation’s poorest children.
Under Miller’s plan, the salary increases would cost the
government $30 billion per year. Miller acknowledged that
“this is asking a lot from the right.”
Miller’s working proposal requires sacrifices from the
left as well. His teacher salary increase would come only on the
condition that unions give up their lock-step pay scale, based on
years taught and degrees held, and change the tenure policies that
make it difficult to fire bad teachers.
This example is just one of Miller’s “grand
bargains” that he hopes will help political opponents find
common ground.
“I am glad (Miller) wrote his book because its
accessibility opens up dialogue across party lines,” said
Anna Lui, a Ph.D. student in social welfare at the UCLA School of
Public Policy and Social Research.
But proposals like a 60 cents per gallon gas tax, she feared,
might trigger “visceral reactions” that would shut
discussion down.
“We must inject these controversial issues into the
political bloodstream,” Miller said.
Dan Mitchell, a professor in the Anderson School at UCLA,
acknowledged that “the 2 percent solution might be nice in
the abstract, but in reality there are competing
priorities.”
Mitchell said other federal expenditures, such as expanding
homeland security, could absorb their own percentage of the
GDP.
“Once we have got the money, the dilemma becomes where to
spend it,” Mitchell said.