Christina Romer is a distinguished economist and, or at least this is the impression I have gotten from her public appearances, a very nice person. But as a member of an administration that, like all administrations, makes some policy decisions for political reasons, it falls to her sometimes to justify the unjustifiable. Case in point: her opinion article in today’s Washington Post supporting the administration proposal for $23 billion in aid to school districts to prevent layoffs of teachers. Er, not exactly teachers, though but “education positions,” the term Romer uses when claiming that the 2009 stimulus package saved 400,000 “education positions” from layoffs.
The $23 billion is, of course, a political payoff to the teacher unions who pumped tens of millions of dollars into Democratic campaigns in the 2008 cycle. It is a way of keeping union dues pouring in from teachers—er, “education positions”—to the unions. Romer scarcely makes a stab at arguing that “education positions” are more important to society than the number of jobs that could be saved by alternative ways of spending $23 billion—or that could be generated by reducing taxes by something like that figure. Is student achievement going to plunge sharply if class size is increased slightly in response to layoffs? Numerous studies indicate there is little relationship between class size and student achievement. Is student achievement going to plunge sharply if the number of “education positions” is reduced? I’m not sure anyone has even bothered to run a study to see if achievement is improved by increasing the number of administrators. How could you get funding to test a proposition that is so obviously absurd?
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The American private sector has lost 8 million jobs over the last two years or so. The American public sector has lost just about zero jobs. One-third of the stimulus money went to state and local governments, to prevent layoffs of public employee union members and to keep the flow of dues money to unions who have contributed tens of millions of dollars to Democrats. The $23 billion the Obama administration is seeking for teachers would be just another installment of this political payoff.
Apparently some congressional Democrats are bridling. In the news pages of the Post is a story by the Associated Press headlined “Payout to save teacher jobs gets mild support from White House.” But the real story is that Democrats in Congress don’t have the votes for this political payoff. Here are the first two paragraphs of the story:
“A $23 billion payout to save thousands of educators’ jobs faltered Thursday — perhaps for good — to election-year jitters among moderate Democrats over deficit spending and only lukewarm support from the White House.
“The proposal’s chief advocate in the House abruptly canceled a committee meeting to put the money in a war spending bill. Its lead sponsor in the Senate gave up trying to do it, acknowledging that he lacked the necessary votes.”
My guess is that someone in the White House yesterday or the day before decided it would be a good idea for Romer to author an opinion article on this issue for the Post, and that she dutifully complied. But it’s a pretty wan effort, particularly considering Romer’s considerable intellectual heft.
