Washington Monthly - September/October 2020 - 12

Editor's Note

Paul Glastris

Biden Needs Bigger (Smarter) Ideas
J

oe Biden enters the final two months of the 2020 campaign
about as well positioned ideologically as any Democratic presidential nominee in decades. Over the summer he and Bernie Sanders negotiated a set of policy positions in which the former vice
president moved to the left on everything from climate change
to immigration. But he conspicuously stopped short of signing on
to the most controversial "big ideas" of his socialist rival, such as
Medicare for All and decriminalizing illegal border crossings.
This new agenda, because it's been blessed by Sanders and other progressives, gives left-leaning Democrats reason to hold their
noses and vote for Biden. It also makes it harder for Donald Trump
to persuade wavering Republicans and Independents that Biden is
a tool of the extreme left. That-plus the smoldering ruin Trump
has made of the country-should, with luck, be enough to secure
the White House and a Senate majority for the Democrats.
But even Biden's Pretty Darned Progressive agenda will be no
match for the catastrophic situation he and the Democrats will
inherit should they win back power. The young voters who rallied
around Sanders during the primaries weren't wrong that America
needs root-to-branch change, not marginal reform. And that was
before the killing of George Floyd focused the nation's attention
on its deep and abiding racial injustices in ways not seen since the
civil rights era. It was also before Trump's bungled management of
the pandemic created 1930s-level mass unemployment.
These huge, intertwined crises will present Biden, if he wins,
with the responsibility, and possibly the opportunity, to enact
much bolder changes than he has dared contemplate. The question is, what are the big ideas he should pursue?
Certainly not the ones Sanders himself couldn't sell. Remember
how, during the debates, the more Sanders argued for Medicare
for All, the more its political flaws became obvious-that it would
require huge new taxes on the middle class and take away private
health insurance for 150 million Americans, all on the promise
that most people would come out ahead?
Instead, on health care, Biden should champion a smarter big
idea, one this magazine has dubbed "Medicare Prices for All":
In a nutshell, the federal government would set uniform (and generally lower) prices for all medical procedures. Doing so is the single best way to discipline our increasingly costly, monopolized,
predatory, and discriminatory health care system. It could also deliver lower out-of-pocket health care costs to voters, with no tax
increases, before the 2024 elections.
On higher education, Biden needs a similarly smarter big idea
than the one Sanders has been peddling, universal free public college. The Sanders plan would essentially pump enough federal

12  September/October 2020

money into states to allow their public universities to charge zero
tuition, regardless of the different amounts those states currently
spend on higher education. But that would unjustly reward states
(mostly red ones) that currently underinvest in their public college
systems, while penalizing other states (mostly blue ones) that provide more generous subsidies to keep tuition low. It would also direct comparatively more funds to elite flagship universities that
disproportionately serve upper-middle-class whites, while shortchanging under-resourced open-access colleges that cater to lowerincome and minority students.
In this issue, Kevin Carey lays out a better big idea to transform
higher education while avoiding these flaws ("How to Save Higher
Education," page 30). Under Carey's plan, individual colleges (not
states) would be offered a direct annual federal subsidy of $10,000
per full-time student. In exchange, they'd have to offer free college tuition to students with an annual household income below
$75,000, meet minimum standards for graduation rates and postgraduation earning, and accept credits from every other college
that takes this deal, including from online classes.
While not every college would take the deal, hundreds around
the country probably would, since most Americans attend colleges
where the revenue per full-time student is less than $10,000. Participating schools would have plenty of extra money to invest in
better outcomes. (As Jamaal Abdul-Alim reports in "Higher Ed's
Most Successful Failure," page 36, there are already proven ways of
achieving those outcomes.) And the requirement to share credits
would create strong incentives for colleges to cooperate with each
other to improve student success rates.
The end result, Carey writes,
would be a new network of affordable, well-resourced, deeply interconnected colleges and universities that combine the virtues
of traditional higher education diversity and autonomy with
consumer protection, information technology, and cutting-edge
education practice. Instead of letting some colleges collapse into
bankruptcy while the rest struggle and claw in a failed system of
free market chaos and declining public support, some of the most
vital and distinctly American institutions in our nation's history
would be repositioned for even greater success.
If he is going to meet the demands of this moment in history,
Biden will (like FDR) have to govern more ambitiously as president than he is running as a candidate. This magazine will continue to try to fashion the big-but-smart ideas he'll need.
But first, of course, he has to win.
Washington Monthly - September/October 2020

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