Michael Mandel for the Progressive Policy Institute: Senator Schumer has made a plausible argument for why Obamacare was a political mistake. I disagree. Democratic politicians have mainly defended Obamacare on the grounds of access, fairness and cost containment. But in the process, Democrats have missed an opportunity to show how Obamacare is a platform for entrepreneurial growth. Framed correctly, Obamacare could turn out to be the heart of the new pro-growth, pro-middle class, pro-production Democratic Party.
Consider this. When I left BusinessWeek in 2009, I started my own company, Visible Economy, making news and education videos (the website and the business, alas, are no longer active). As a budding not-so-young entrepreneur, the only reason I had that choice was because I could carry over healthcare coverage from my previous employer. If I had no health insurance, I couldn’t have started the business.
Obamacare allows almost anyone who wants to start a business to do so, without fear of being excluded from healthcare coverage because of age or pre-existing conditions. This is a big deal, for two reasons. First, because any sane middle-class person will think twice about starting a new business if they can’t get healthcare coverage (“entrepreneur lock”).
Second, Democrats who embrace a pro-growth, pro-innovation message can go to voters with Obamacare as an opening example of what the party is willing to do for the middle class. The pro-growth message will increasingly resonate over time, especially if the party backs up Obamacare with additional pro-growth reforms, such as smart regulation and less reliance on onerous and regressive fees and fines on the local level.
From a political perspective, Obamacare can unite the Democratic Party.
THE BIGGEST EMPLOYERS
Andrew Lundeen and Kyle Pomerleau for the Tax Foundation: While over 90 percent of all firms have between zero and 20 employees, these firms only employ 19.2 percent of all private-sector workers. These small firms can be anything from coffee shops to small car dealerships and are organized as both pass-through businesses and C corporations.
On the other hand, while only 0.4 percent of all firms have over 500 employees, this small group of businesses employs 50.6 percent of the nation’s private-sector workforce, with most of those employees working for C corporations. In fact, some of the world’s largest companies employ nearly a quarter of a million people each.
SECOND CHANCES IN FRANCE
Philippe Le Corre for the Brookings Institution: On Nov. 28, Nicolas Sarkozy was elected leader of the center-right party Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) exactly 10 years after he won the job the first time. The former French president, who lost the 2012 election to his Socialist Party opponent, Francois Hollande, is clearly attempting a comeback.
He joins the ranks of the numerous former French presidents, prime ministers and senior politicians who all chose to exit what they had once called “retirement” and rejoin the political arena. Sarkozy’s predecessor, Jacques Chirac, was elected president in 1995 after two consecutive failures against Francois Mitterrand in 1981 and 1988. Valery Giscard d’Estaing, who was elected president of France in 1974, failed to be re-elected in 1981. Giscard attempted a long-shot return in 1986, first by winning a parliamentary seat, then by getting himself elected leader of his old party, the Union pour la Democratie Francaise (UDF), in 1988. However, he failed to win enough consensus from his own camp to run for president in the following elections.
Today, it is 59-year-old Sarkozy’s turn to step out of retirement, less than three years after announcing he was “quitting political life.” …
How is it that so many senior French politicians never actually leave national politics? In modern times, most other democracies do not give their leaders a second chance. With its current constitutional set-up and political elite, France remains peculiar in that respect.
The Constitution of France’s Fifth Republic was designed around postwar figure Charles de Gaulle, and thus created a unique, immensely powerful chief executive role. Since 1959, the French public has always held a fascination with the position, which has been occupied by only seven men. Unlike other Western nations, the French electorate seems to be sensitive to the appeal of the “providential man,” the statesman above party politics capable of taking decisions in the interest of the nation and not only of one party.
Compiled by Joseph Lawler from think tank research.
