Issues

I don't have all the policy answers to every problem in the 7th District. But I plan to ask a lot of the right questions. I'm not a genius (but am stable). I learn every day from my students.

Good policies are critical; they’re the intrinsic, underlying, fundamental, sometimes invisible DNA of any government or organization. Successful cities, states, countries, businesses, schools, NGOs, and other organizations – even households – depend on good policies. Societies, governments, and organizations fail when policies fail, or don’t exist, or are flouted, intentionally disobeyed, evaded, or mistrusted. It’s often obvious when policies are really bad, and why. It’s not obvious what the best policies are, but it’s obvious when critical policies are absent or failing. Because policies fail in many different ways, diagnosing their causes can be difficult (from Dave's book on Policy Design)

If public policy problems were easy and simple to solve, we wouldn't need great members of Congress. If it weren't complicated to solve policy problems we wouldn't see so many policies fail. Still, many policy problems can and have been solved. We just don't hear about them anymore. They affect your life every day, in hundreds of ways, usually without your awareness. They become norms, expected and accepted but rarely noticed or acknowledged. Until they're noticeable as bad policy or obviously not solving a problem.

Policies don't always work; most are less effective than claimed, and many achieve results that are the complete opposite to those intended. Policy analysis can be used prescriptively and post-scriptively or diagnostically to evaluate it during implementation or after a policy ends. Then the decision to revise or end a policy may be clearer.

The more policy participants can analyze policies, the better they will be. The more legislators understand how policies work organizationally, politically, and use tools such s goals/alternatives matrices and logic models, the more useful and productive legislators of different ideologies can agree, talk, and negotiate. Oversight Committees need to know evaluation analytics, including financial and program metrics such as such as cost/benefit, efficiency, effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, equity, and other measures.

As a Congressman, I'll also be a policy analyst, involved in improving policies wherever I can. This section is about the policy problems that haven't been solved; problems that are bad, that are getting worse, or that might be solved or reduced. I plan to educate my colleagues where possible, convince others to more thoroughly analyze policies, and do the right thing even when it's not politically easy.

For every significant issue, policy, and program, I'll be analyzing the policy alternatives and compare their effectiveness, efficiency, equity, and other metrics. I'll also be tracking policies after they're in operation for success, failure, and changes in implementation factors.

I plan to institutionalize policy analysis more directly into the policymaking process in Congress. A highly analytical policy shop - located either in CRS, GAO, or CBO for financial issues - could incrementally improve both policy design and the implementation of ongoing policies such as Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid, and SNAP. Where a policy clearly fails or shows room for big improvement, an NTSB-type post-mortem policy shop could help institutionalize knowledge about policy success and failure to improve current and future policies.

Where possible, I prefer to use policy incentives and markets rather than mandates and requirements. That approach maximizes citizens' freedom, usually costs much less to enforce, requires fewer staff to enforce, requires less or no coercion to enforce, and tends to achieve policy results with greater consensus. This isn't always possible where the possible society harm is large, where markets don't exist, where the actor's motivation to harm society is strong, or the actor has no respect for the law. An example of incentives is offering tax incentives or expedited permitting for those who reduce or stop certain emissions. Markets include measures such as carbon taxes that are incentives to emit less.

I plan to be a bit like Dick Durbin. Once, when I was once in a policy planning meeting of House Legislative staffers, Dick Durbin came in and sat down. He was the only Member of Congress at the meeting. He cared about the policy, about getting it right, about making sure the policy would work. It's rare that a Congressman cares enough to join staff policy meetings; I never forgot that. And almost never saw it again. That's the kind of Congressman I'll be.