Executive Summary

The move to the cloud is one of the defining information technology trends of the early 21st century. By providing businesses, universities, government agencies, and other entities with access to shared and often physically dispersed computing resources, cloud computing can simultaneously offer increased flexibility, reduced cost, and access to a wider array of services.

Cloud computing has also created a set of new challenges. For example, the issues of privacy and security in the cloud are well recognized and have been extensively discussed in the business and popular press. However, one critical issue that has received very little attention with respect to cloud computing is export control.

In the broadest sense, export control relates to regulations that the United States and many other countries have put in place to restrict the export of various sensitive items, information, and software.

There is an inherent tension between cloud computing and export control. While the concept of the cloud is centered on the premise of removing the need to track the details of data movement among various destinations, export control regulations are built largely around restrictions tied to those very movements.

If cloud computing is to reach its full potential, it is critical for providers and users of cloud services to address its implications with respect to export control. It is equally important to adapt the export control regulations to reflect the increasing prevalence of cloud computing in a manner that preserves the ability of American companies to benefit from the efficiencies of the cloud while also ensuring that American national security and foreign policy interests are adequately protected.

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Introduction:

In the ebb and flow of Middle East diplomacy, the two interrelated issues of an Israeli-Syrian peace settlement and Washington’s bilateral relationship with Damascus have gone up and down on Washington’s scale of importance. The election of Barack Obama raised expectations that the United States would give the two issues the priority they had not received during the eight years of the George W. Bush administration. Candidate Obama promised to assign a high priority to the resuscitation of the Arab-Israeli peace process, and separately to “engage” with Iran and Syria (as recommended by the Iraq Study Group in 2006).

In May 2009, shortly after assuming office, President Obama sent the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, and the senior director for the Middle East in the National Security Council, Daniel Shapiro, to Damascus to open a dialogue with Bashar al-Asad’s regime. Several members of Congress also travelled to Syria early in Obama’s first year, including the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, John Kerry, and the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Howard Berman. In addition, when the president appointed George Mitchell as special envoy to the Middle East, Mitchell named as his deputy Fred Hof, a respected expert on Syria and the Israeli-Syrian dispute. Last summer, both Mitchell and Hof visited Damascus and began their give and take with Syria.

And yet, after this apparent auspicious beginning, neither the bilateral relationship between the United States and Syria, nor the effort to revive the Israeli-Syrian negotiation has gained much traction. Damascus must be chagrined by the fact that when the Arab-Israeli peace process is discussed now, it is practically equated with the Israeli-Palestinian track. This paper analyzes the difficulties confronting Washington’s and Jerusalem’s respective Syria policies and offers an approach for dealing with Syria. Many of the recommendations stem from lessons resulting from the past rounds of negotiations, so it is important to understand what occurred.

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The 2016 presidential election confronts the U.S. electorate with political choices more fundamental than any since 1964 and possibly since 1932. That statement may strike some as hyperbolic, but the policy differences between the two major parties and the positions of candidates vying for their presidential nominations support this claim.

A victorious Republican candidate would take office backed by a Republican-controlled Congress, possibly with heightened majorities and with the means to deliver on campaign promises. On the other hand, the coattails of a successful Democratic candidate might bring more Democrats to Congress, but that president would almost certainly have to work with a Republican House and, quite possibly, a still Republican Senate. The political wars would continue, but even a president engaged in continuous political trench warfare has the power to get a lot done.

Candidates always promise more than they can deliver and often deliver different policies from those they have promised. Every recent president has been buffeted by external events unanticipated when he took office. But this year, more than in half a century or more, the two parties offer a choice, not an echo. Here is a partial and selective list of key issues to illustrate what is at stake.

The Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare or the ACA, passed both houses of Congress with not a single Republican vote. The five years since enactment of the ACA have not dampened Republican opposition.

The persistence and strength of opposition to the ACA is quite unlike post-enactment reactions to the Social Security Act of 1935 or the 1965 amendments that created Medicare. Both earlier programs were hotly debated and controversial. But a majority of both parties voted for the Social Security Act. A majority of House Republicans and a sizeable minority of Senate Republicans supported Medicare. In both cases, opponents not only became reconciled to the new laws but eventually participated in improving and extending them. Republican members of Congress overwhelmingly supported, and a Republican president endorsed, adding Disability Insurance to the Social Security Act.  In 2003, a Republican president proposed and fought for the addition of a drug benefit to Medicare.

The current situation bears no resemblance to those two situations. Five years after enactment of Obamacare, in contrast, every major candidate for the Republican presidential nomination has called for its repeal and replacement. So have the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives and Majority Leader in the Senate.  

Just what 'repeal and replace' might look like under a GOP president remains unclear as ACA critics have not agreed on an alternative. Some plans would do away with some of the elements of Obamacare and scale back others. Some proposals would repeal the mandate that people carry insurance, the bar on 'medical underwriting' (a once-routine practice under which insurers vary premiums based on expected use of medical care), or the requirement that insurers sell plans to all potential customers. Other proposals would retain tax credits to help make insurance affordable but reduce their size, or would end rules specifying what 'adequate' insurance plans must cover.

Repeal is hard to imagine if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2016. Even if repeal legislation could overcome a Senate filibuster, a Democratic president would likely veto it and an override would be improbable. 

But a compromise with horse-trading, once routine, might once again become possible. A Democratic president might agree to Republican-sponsored changes to the ACA, such as dropping the requirement that employers of 50 or more workers offer insurance to their employees, if Republicans agreed to changes in the ACA that supporters seek, such as the extension of tax credits to families now barred from them because one member has access to very costly employer-sponsored insurance.

In sum, the 2016 election will determine the future of the most far-reaching social insurance legislation in half a century.

Social Security faces a projected long-term gap between what it takes in and what it is scheduled to pay out. Every major Republican candidate has called for cutting benefits below those promised under current law. None has suggested any increase in payroll tax rates. Each Democratic candidate has proposed raising both revenues and benefits. Within those broad outlines, the specific proposals differ.

Most Republican candidates would cut benefits across the board or selectively for high earners. For example, Senator Ted Cruz proposes to link benefits to prices rather than wages, a switch that would reduce Social Security benefits relative to current law by steadily larger amounts: an estimated 29 percent by 2065 and 46 percent by 2090. He would allow younger workers to shift payroll taxes to private accounts. Donald Trump has proposed no cuts in Social Security because, he says, proposing cuts is inconsistent with winning elections and because meeting current statutory commitments is 'honoring a deal.' Trump also favors letting people invest part of their payroll taxes in private securities. He has not explained how he would make up the funding gap that would result if current benefits are honored but revenues to support them are reduced. Senator Marco Rubio has endorsed general benefit cuts, but he has also proposed to increase the minimum benefit. Three Republican candidates have proposed ending payroll taxes for older workers, a step that would add to the projected funding gap.

Democratic candidates, in contrast, would raise benefits, across-the-board or for selected groups—care givers or survivors. They would switch the price index used to adjust benefits for inflation to one that is tailored to consumption of the elderly and that analysts believe would raise benefits more rapidly than the index now in use. All would raise the ceiling on earnings subject to the payroll tax. Two would broaden the payroll tax base.

As these examples indicate, the two parties have quite different visions for Social Security. Major changes, such as those envisioned by some Republican candidates, are not easily realized, however. Before he became president, Ronald Reagan in numerous speeches called for restructuring Social Security. Those statements did not stop him from signing a 1983 law that restored financial balance to the very program against which he had inveighed but with few structural changes. George W. Bush sought to partially privatize Social Security, to no avail. Now, however, Social Security faces a funding gap that must eventually be filled. The discipline of Trust Fund financing means that tax increases, benefit cuts, or some combination of the two are inescapable. Action may be delayed beyond the next presidency, as current projections indicate that the Social Security Trust Fund and current revenues can sustain scheduled benefits until the mid 2030s. But that is not what the candidates propose. Voters face a choice, clear and stark, between a Democratic president who would try to maintain or raise benefits and would increase payroll taxes to pay for it, and a Republican president who would seek to cut benefits, oppose tax increases, and might well try to partially privatize Social Security.

On no other issue is the split between the two parties wider or the stakes in their disagreement higher than on measures to deal with global warming. Leading Republican candidates have denied that global warming is occurring (Trump), scorned evidence supporting the existence of global warming as bogus (Cruz), acknowledged that global warming is occurring but not because of human actions (Rubio, Carson), or admitted that it is occurring but dismissed it as not a pressing issue (Fiorina, Christie). Congressional Republicans oppose current Administration initiatives under the Clean Air Act to curb emission of greenhouse gases.

Democratic candidates uniformly agree that global warming is occurring and that it results from human activities. They support measures to lower those emissions by amounts similar to those embraced in the Paris accords of December 2015 as essential to curb the speed and ultimate extent of global warming.

Climate scientists and economists are nearly unanimous that unabated emissions of greenhouse gases pose serious risks of devastating and destabilizing outcomes—that climbing average temperatures could render some parts of the world uninhabitable, that increases in sea levels that will inundate coastal regions inhabited by tens of millions of people, and that storms, droughts, and other climatic events will be more frequent and more destructive. Immediate actions to curb emission of greenhouse gases can reduce these effects. But no actions can entirely avoid them, and delay is costly.  Environmental economists also agree, with little partisan division, that the way to proceed is to harness market forces to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” 

The division between the parties on global warming is not new. In 2009, the House of Representatives narrowly passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act. That law would have capped and gradually lowered greenhouse gas emissions. Two hundred eleven Democrats but only 8 Republicans voted for the bill. The Senate took no action, and the proposal died.

Now Republicans are opposing the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, a set of regulations under the Clean Air Act to lower emissions by power plants, which account for 40 percent of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. The Clean Power Plan is a stop-gap measure. It applies only to power plants, not to other sources of emissions, and it is not nationally uniform. These shortcomings reflect the legislative authority on which the plan is based, the Clean Air Act. That law was designed to curb the local problem of air pollution, not the global damage from greenhouse gases. Environmental economists of both parties recognize that a tax or a cap on greenhouse gas emissions would be more effective and less costly than the current regulations, but superior alternatives are now politically unreachable.

Based on their statements, any of the current leading Republican candidates would back away from the recently negotiated Paris climate agreement, scuttle the Clean Power Plan, and resist any tax on greenhouse gas emissions. Any of the Democratic candidates would adhere to the Clean Power Plan and support the Paris climate agreement. One Democratic candidate has embraced a carbon tax. None has called for the extension of the Clean Power Plan to other emission sources, but such policies are consistent with their current statements.

The importance of global policy to curb greenhouse gas emissions is difficult to exaggerate. While the United States acting alone cannot entirely solve the problem, resolute action by the world’s largest economy and second largest greenhouse gas emitter is essential, in concert with other nations, to forestall climate catastrophe.

If the next president serves two terms, as six of the last nine presidents have done, four currently sitting justices will be over age 86 and one over age 90 by the time that presidency ends—provided that they have not died or resigned.

The political views of the president have always shaped presidential choices regarding judicial appointments. As all carry life-time tenure, these appointments influence events long after the president has left office. The political importance of these appointments has always been enormous, but it is even greater now than in the past. One reason is that the jurisprudence of sitting Supreme Court justices now lines up more closely than in the past with that of the party of the president who appointed them. Republican presidents appointed all sitting justices identified as conservative; Democratic presidents appointed all sitting justices identified as liberal. The influence of the president’s politics extends to other judicial appointments as well.

A second reason is that recent judicial decisions have re-opened decisions once regarded as settled. The decision in the first case dealing with the Affordable Care Act (ACA), NFIB v. Sibelius is illustrative.

When the ACA was enacted, few observers doubted the power of the federal government to require people to carry health insurance. That power was based on a long line of decisions, dating back to the 1930s, under the Constitutional clause authorizing the federal government to regulate interstate commerce. In the 1930s, the Supreme Court rejected an older doctrine that had barred such regulations. The earlier doctrine dated from 1905 when the Court overturned a New York law that prohibited bakers from working more than 10 hours a day or 60 hours a week. The Court found in the 14^th Amendment, which prohibits any state from ‘depriving any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law,’ a right to contract previously invisible to jurists which it said the New York law violated. In the early- and mid-1930s, the Court used this doctrine to invalidate some New Deal legislation. Then the Court changed course and authorized a vast range of regulations under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause.  It was on this line of cases that supporters of the ACA relied.

Nor did many observers doubt the power of Congress to require states to broaden Medicaid coverage as a condition for remaining in the Medicaid program and receiving federal matching grants to help them pay for required medical services.

To the surprise of most legal scholars, a 5-4 Supreme Court majority ruled in NFIB v. Sibelius that the Commerce Clause did not authorize the individual health insurance mandate. But it decided, also 5 to 4, that tax penalties could be imposed on those who fail to carry insurance. The tax saved the mandate. But the decision also raised questions about federal powers under the Commerce Clause. The Court also ruled that the Constitution barred the federal government from requiring states to expand Medicaid coverage as a condition for remaining in the program. This decision was odd, in that Congress certainly could constitutionally have achieved the same objective by repealing the old Medicaid program and enacting a new Medicaid program with the same rules as those contained in the ACA that states would have been free to join or not.

NFIB v. Sibelius and other cases the Court has recently heard or soon will hear raise questions about what additional attempts to regulate interstate commerce might be ruled unconstitutional and about what limits the Court might impose on Congress’s power to require states to implement legislated rules as a condition of receiving federal financial aid. The Court has also heard, or soon will hear, a series of cases of fundamental importance regarding campaign financing, same-sex marriage, affirmative action, abortion rights, the death penalty, the delegation of powers to federal regulatory agencies, voting rights, and rules under which people can seek redress in the courts for violation of their rights.

Throughout U.S. history, the American people have granted nine appointed judges the power to decide whether the actions taken by elected legislators are or are not consistent with a constitution written more than two centuries ago. As a practical matter, the Court could not maintain this sway if it deviated too far from public opinion. But the boundaries within which the Court has substantially unfettered discretion are wide, and within those limits the Supreme Court can profoundly limit or redirect the scope of legislative authority. The Supreme Court’s switch in the 1930s from doctrines under which much of the New Deal was found to be unconstitutional to other doctrines under which it was constitutional illustrates the Court’s sensitivity to public opinion and the profound influence of its decisions.

The bottom line is that the next president will likely appoint enough Supreme Court justices and other judges to shape the character of the Supreme Court and of lower courts with ramifications both broad and enduring on important aspects of every person’s life.

***

The next president will preside over critical decisions relating to health care policy, Social Security, and environmental policy, and will shape the character of the Supreme Court for the next generation. Profound differences distinguish the two major parties on these and many other issues. A recent survey of members of the House of Representatives found that on a scale of ‘liberal to conservative’ the most conservative Democrat was more liberal than the least conservative Republican. Whatever their source, these divisions are real.  The examples cited here are sufficient to show that the 2016 election richly merits the overworked term 'watershed'—it will be the most consequential presidential election in a very long time.

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI, or “the Innovation Center”) recently announced an initiative called Comprehensive Primary Care Plus (CPC+). It evolved from the Comprehensive Primary Care (CPC) initiative, which began in 2012 and runs through the end of this year. Both initiatives are designed to promote and support primary care physicians in organizing their practices to deliver comprehensive primary care services. Comprehensive Primary Care Plus has some very promising components, but also misses some compelling opportunities to further advance payment for primary care services.

The earlier initiative, CPC, paid qualified primary care practices a monthly fee per Medicare beneficiary to support practices in making changes in the way they deliver care, centered on five comprehensive primary care functions: (1) access and continuity; (2) care management; (3) comprehensiveness and coordination; (4) patient and caregiver engagement; and, (5) planned care and population health. For all other care, regular fee-for-service (FFS) payment continued. The initiative was limited to seven regions where CMMI could reach agreements with key private insurers and the Medicaid program to pursue a parallel approach. The evaluation funded by CMMI found quality improvements and expenditure reductions, but savings did not cover the extra payments to practices.

Comprehensive Primary Care Plus uses the same strategy of conducting the experiment in regions where key payers are pursuing parallel efforts. In these regions, qualifying primary care practices can choose one of two tracks. Track 1 is very similar to CPC. The monthly care management fee per beneficiary remains the same, but an extra $2.50 is paid in advance, subject to refund to the government if a practice does not meet quality and utilization performance thresholds.

The Promise Of CPC+

Track 2, the more interesting part of the initiative, is for practices that are already capable of carrying out the primary care functions and are ready to increase their comprehensiveness. In addition to a higher monthly care management fee ($28), practices receive Comprehensive Primary Care Payments. These include a portion of the expected reimbursements for Evaluation and Management services, paid in advance, and reduced regular fee-for-service payments. Track 2 also includes larger rewards than does Track 1 for meeting performance thresholds.

The combination of larger per beneficiary monthly payments and lower payments for services is the most important part of the initiative. By blending capitation (monthly payments not tied to service volume) and FFS, this approach might achieve the best of both worlds.

Even when FFS payment rates are calibrated correctly (discussed below), the rates are pegged to the average costs across practices. But since a large part of practice cost is fixed, it means that the marginal cost of providing additional services is lower than the average cost, leading to incentives to increase volume under FFS. The lower payments reduce or eliminate these incentives. Fixed costs, which must also be covered, are addressed through the Comprehensive Primary Care Payments. By involving multiple payers, practices are put in a better position to pursue these changes.

An advantage of any program that increases payments to primary care practices is that it can partially compensate for a flaw in the relative value scale behind the Medicare physician fee schedule. This flaw leads to underpayment for primary care services. Although the initial relative value scale implemented in 1992 led to substantial redistribution in favor of evaluation and management services and to physicians who provide the bulk of them, a flawed update process has eroded these gains over the years to a substantial degree.

In response to legislation, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are working correct these problems, but progress is likely to come slowly. Higher payments for primary care practices through the CPC+ can help slow the degree to which physicians are leaving primary care until more fundamental fixes are made to the fee schedule. Indeed, years of interviews with private insurance executives have convinced us that concern about loss of the primary care physician workforce has been a key motivation for offering higher payment to primary care physicians in practices certified as patient centered medical homes.

Two Downsides

But there are two downsides to the CPC+.

One concerns the lack of incentives for primary care physicians to take steps to reduce costs for services beyond those delivered by their practices. These include referring their patients to efficient specialists and hospitals, as well as limiting hospital admissions. There are rewards in CPC+ for lower overall utilization by attributed beneficiaries and higher quality, but they are very small.

We had hoped that CMMI might have been inspired by the promising initiatives of CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield and the Arkansas Health Care Improvement initiative, which includes the Arkansas Medicaid program and Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield. Under those programs, primary care physicians are offered substantial bonuses for keeping spending for all services under trend for their panel of patients; there is no downside risk, which is understandable given the small percentage of spending accounted for by primary care. The private and public payers also support the primary care practices with care managers and with data on all of the services used by their patients and on the efficiency of providers they might refer to. These programs appear to be popular with physicians and have had promising early results.

The second downside concerns the inability of physicians participating in CPC+ to participate in accountable care organizations (ACOs). One of CMMI’s challenges in pursuing a wide variety of payment innovations is apportioning responsibility across the programs for beneficiaries who are attributed to multiple payment reforms. As an example, if a beneficiary attributed to an ACO has a knee replacement under one of Medicare’s a bundled payment initiatives, to avoid overpayment of shared savings, gains or losses are credited to the providers involved in the bundled payment and not to the ACO. As a result, ACOs are no longer rewarded for using certain tools to address overall spending, such as steering attributed beneficiaries to efficient providers for an episode of care or encouraging primary care physicians to increase the comprehensiveness of the care they deliver.

Keeping the physician participants in CPC+ out of ACOs altogether seems to be another step to undermine the potential of ACOs in favor of other payment approaches. This is not wise. The Innovation Center has appropriately not established a priority ranking for its various initiatives, but some of its actions have implicitly put ACOs at the bottom of the rankings. Recently, Mostashari, Kocher, and McClellan proposed addressing this issue by adding a CPC+ACO option to this initiative.

In an update to its FAQ published May 27, 2016 (after out blog was put into final form), CMMI eased its restriction somewhat by allowing up to 1,500 of the 5000 practices expected to participate in CPC+ to also participate in Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) ACOs. But the prohibition continues to apply to Next Gen ACOs, the model that has created the most enthusiasm in the field. If demand for these positions in MSSP ACOs exceeds 1,500, a lottery will be held. This change is welcome but does not really address the issue of disadvantaging ACOs in situations where a beneficiary is attributed to two or more payment reform models. CMMI is sending a signal that CPC+, notwithstanding its lack of incentives concerning spending outside of primary care, is a powerful enough reform that diverting practices away from ACOs is not a problem. ACOs are completely dependent on primary care physician membership to function, meaning that any physician practices beyond 1,500 that enroll in CPC+ will reduce the size and the impact of the ACO program. CMMI has never published a priority ranking of reform models, but its actions keep indicating that ACOs are at the bottom.

The Innovation Center should be lauded for continuing to support improved payment models for primary care. Its blending of substantial monthly payments with lower payments per service is promising. But the highest potential rewards come from broadening primary care physicians’ incentives to include the cost and quality of services by other providers. CMMI should pursue this approach.

Editor's note: This piece originally appeared in Health Affairs Blog.

Event Information

An American Enterprise Institute-Brookings/USC Schaeffer Initiative Event
 

For most of the last five decades, the most-discussed finding by the Medicare trustees has been the insolvency date, when Medicare’s trust fund would no longer be able to pay all of the program’s costs. Last year’s report projected that the hospital insurance trust fund would be depleted by 2030 – just 14 years from now. The report also predicted a more immediate and controversial event: the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), famously nicknamed “death panels,” would be required to submit proposals to reduce Medicare spending in 2018, with the reductions taking place in 2019. Do we remain on this path to automatic Medicare cuts next year?

The American Enterprise Institute and the Schaeffer Initiative for Innovation in Health Policy, a collaboration between the USC Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics and the Brookings Institution, hosted a discussion of the new 2016 trustees report on June 23. Medicare’s Chief Actuary Paul Spitalnic summarized the key findings followed by a panel of experts who discussed the potential consequences of the report for policy actions that might be taken to improve the program’s fiscal condition. You can join the conversation at #MedicareReport.

Video

• Introduction and keynote address
• Panel discussion

Audio

• The 2016 Medicare Trustees Report: One year closer to IPAB cuts?

Event Materials

• AEI TR16 final
• 20160623_medicaretrusteesreport_transcript

A recent article in The Guardian caught my eye: “Report accuses government of increasing inequalities in developing countries by financing academies at the expense of state schools.” The report, conducted by the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, was an attack on U.K. aid money being linked to private education providers since the rapid increase in such schools may be contributing to sub-standard education. In particular, they cited the U.K. government’s investments in the Nairobi-based and for-profit Bridge International Academies.

I’ve worked on private education extensively throughout my career and do not believe there is anything wrong with private schools, but in this particular case I couldn’t agree more. But to be clear, it’s the funding strategy that’s the problem.

Private schooling is on the rise in a number of poor countries, and Pakistan—where my education research is focused—is no exception. The majority of these schools are no longer the elite institutions of yore, but low-cost alternatives fighting for survival in a highly competitive environment. These schools have mushroomed in response to increased parental demand and poor public alternatives, but also to the greater availability of teachers in the local labor market.

More importantly, research increasingly demonstrates that there is absolutely nothing wrong with private schools. There's a summary of this research available here; specific examples on India (more here) and Pakistan are also available.

Some key are takeaways from this research are:

• Private schools charge low fees (about $1 to$2 a month in Pakistan).
• The quality is almost certainly higher compared to government schools in the vicinity.
• At least in Pakistan, there is no significant segregation between public and private schools in terms of parental wealth, education, or caste.
• The most significant barrier to attendance in low-cost private schools is not cost—it’s distance. Put simply, there just aren’t enough of them around.

If there is a cheaper and better alternative to public schooling, shouldn’t we encourage children to shift and thus improve the quality of education for all?

Perhaps. But when the rubber from these well-intentioned aid policies hits the road of rural Pakistan, Kenya, or Ethiopia, a very different sort of model emerges. Instead of supporting private schooling, donors end up supporting private schools (or at best private school chains), which is an entirely different action with little theoretical backing. In fact, economic theory screams that governments and donors should almost never do that.

Donors say the problem is that the low-cost private school market is fragmented with no central authority that can be “contracted with.” No one has a good model on how to work with a competitive schooling sector with multiple small players—ironically, the precise market structure that, according to economics, leads to efficiency.

In reality, I suspect the problem goes deeper. Most low-cost private school owners don’t do well at donor conferences. They don’t know how to tell compelling human-interest stories about the good they do. But what they are excellent at is using local resources to ensure that their schools meet the expectations of demanding parents.

The first is a problem of accountability. Public schools are accountable, through a democratic system, to citizens of the country. Private schools are accountable to the parents. And donor-funded private school chains are account to the donors. While both citizen-led accountability and direct accountability to parents have problems, they are grounded in centuries of experience. It’s unlikely that donors in a foreign land, some of whom can’t visit the schools they fund for security reasons, can do better than either citizens or parents.

The second is a problem of market structure. When one private school or private school chain receives preferential treatment and funding, without allowing other private schools to apply for the same funds, the donor is picking winners (remember Solyndra?). The need for private schools as an alternative to government schools is insufficient justification for donors to put their thumbs on the scale and tilt the balance of power towards a pre-identified entity.

In a recent experiment, my colleagues and I gathered direct proof for this assertion. We gave untied grants to low-cost private schools with a twist. In certain villages, we randomly selected a single private school for the grant. In others, we gave the grant to every private school in the village. Our preliminary results show that in villages where we gave the grant to a single school, the school benefitted enormously from an increase in enrollment. Where we gave the grant to multiple private schools, the enrollment increase was split among schools. But only in the villages where we gave the grant to every school did test-scores for children increase.

What happened? When a single private school receives the grant, knowing that the other schools cannot react due to a lack of funds, they engage in “customer poaching” to increase their profits at the expense of others. Some have argued that Uber’s recent fundraising is precisely such an effort to starve competitors of funding.

When you equally support all private schools, customer poaching does not work, and the only way to increase profits and generate returns is to increase the size of the market, either through higher overall enrollments or through new quality offerings.

The first strategy supports pre-identified private schools and concentrates market power. The second, by providing opportunities for all private schools, improves education for children.

Sure, some private school chains and schools are making positive impact and deserve the support they can get. But funding such schools creates the wrong institutional structures and are more likely to lead to disasters than successes (Greg Mortensen and 3 cups of tea, anyone?).

In general, the Government’s responsibility towards the education of children is two-fold:

• Alleviate the market constraints that hold back private schooling without favoring one school over the other—letting parents decide who succeeds and who does not.
• Support and improve public schools to provide an alternative because there will always be children who cannot enroll in private schools, either because they are too expensive or because they are too far away, or because they don’t offer the instruction “basket” that some parents want.

In short, foreign aid should play no part in supporting private schools rather than private schooling.

A recent article in The Guardian caught my eye: “Report accuses government of increasing inequalities in developing countries by financing academies at the expense of state schools.” The report, conducted by the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, was an attack on U.K. aid money being linked to private education providers since the rapid increase in such schools may be contributing to sub-standard education. In particular, they cited the U.K. government’s investments in the Nairobi-based and for-profit Bridge International Academies.

I’ve worked on private education extensively throughout my career and do not believe there is anything wrong with private schools, but in this particular case I couldn’t agree more. But to be clear, it’s the funding strategy that’s the problem.

Private schooling is on the rise in a number of poor countries, and Pakistan—where my education research is focused—is no exception. The majority of these schools are no longer the elite institutions of yore, but low-cost alternatives fighting for survival in a highly competitive environment. These schools have mushroomed in response to increased parental demand and poor public alternatives, but also to the greater availability of teachers in the local labor market.

More importantly, research increasingly demonstrates that there is absolutely nothing wrong with private schools. There's a summary of this research available here; specific examples on India (more here) and Pakistan are also available.

Some key are takeaways from this research are:

• Private schools charge low fees (about $1 to$2 a month in Pakistan).
• The quality is almost certainly higher compared to government schools in the vicinity.
• At least in Pakistan, there is no significant segregation between public and private schools in terms of parental wealth, education, or caste.
• The most significant barrier to attendance in low-cost private schools is not cost—it’s distance. Put simply, there just aren’t enough of them around.

If there is a cheaper and better alternative to public schooling, shouldn’t we encourage children to shift and thus improve the quality of education for all?

Perhaps. But when the rubber from these well-intentioned aid policies hits the road of rural Pakistan, Kenya, or Ethiopia, a very different sort of model emerges. Instead of supporting private schooling, donors end up supporting private schools (or at best private school chains), which is an entirely different action with little theoretical backing. In fact, economic theory screams that governments and donors should almost never do that.

Donors say the problem is that the low-cost private school market is fragmented with no central authority that can be “contracted with.” No one has a good model on how to work with a competitive schooling sector with multiple small players—ironically, the precise market structure that, according to economics, leads to efficiency.

In reality, I suspect the problem goes deeper. Most low-cost private school owners don’t do well at donor conferences. They don’t know how to tell compelling human-interest stories about the good they do. But what they are excellent at is using local resources to ensure that their schools meet the expectations of demanding parents.

The first is a problem of accountability. Public schools are accountable, through a democratic system, to citizens of the country. Private schools are accountable to the parents. And donor-funded private school chains are account to the donors. While both citizen-led accountability and direct accountability to parents have problems, they are grounded in centuries of experience. It’s unlikely that donors in a foreign land, some of whom can’t visit the schools they fund for security reasons, can do better than either citizens or parents.

The second is a problem of market structure. When one private school or private school chain receives preferential treatment and funding, without allowing other private schools to apply for the same funds, the donor is picking winners (remember Solyndra?). The need for private schools as an alternative to government schools is insufficient justification for donors to put their thumbs on the scale and tilt the balance of power towards a pre-identified entity.

In a recent experiment, my colleagues and I gathered direct proof for this assertion. We gave untied grants to low-cost private schools with a twist. In certain villages, we randomly selected a single private school for the grant. In others, we gave the grant to every private school in the village. Our preliminary results show that in villages where we gave the grant to a single school, the school benefitted enormously from an increase in enrollment. Where we gave the grant to multiple private schools, the enrollment increase was split among schools. But only in the villages where we gave the grant to every school did test-scores for children increase.

What happened? When a single private school receives the grant, knowing that the other schools cannot react due to a lack of funds, they engage in “customer poaching” to increase their profits at the expense of others. Some have argued that Uber’s recent fundraising is precisely such an effort to starve competitors of funding.

When you equally support all private schools, customer poaching does not work, and the only way to increase profits and generate returns is to increase the size of the market, either through higher overall enrollments or through new quality offerings.

The first strategy supports pre-identified private schools and concentrates market power. The second, by providing opportunities for all private schools, improves education for children.

Sure, some private school chains and schools are making positive impact and deserve the support they can get. But funding such schools creates the wrong institutional structures and are more likely to lead to disasters than successes (Greg Mortensen and 3 cups of tea, anyone?).

In general, the Government’s responsibility towards the education of children is two-fold:

• Alleviate the market constraints that hold back private schooling without favoring one school over the other—letting parents decide who succeeds and who does not.
• Support and improve public schools to provide an alternative because there will always be children who cannot enroll in private schools, either because they are too expensive or because they are too far away, or because they don’t offer the instruction “basket” that some parents want.

In short, foreign aid should play no part in supporting private schools rather than private schooling.

In the course of two days last week, the U.S. Congress passed two foreign aid bills.

What’s more, in the course of five months, Congress has passed three foreign aid bills!

All three bills passed with strong bipartisan leadership and support.

Equally important, all three bills reflect a new era of a more modernized approach to assistance.

The bills avoid many of the problems of past aid legislation, including micromanagement, earmarks, and requirement of frequent reports that are seldom read by members of Congress or their staffs. Each bill was developed in cooperation with the Obama administration and reflects its policies and civil society priorities. And they emphasize strategic approaches, results, use of data, monitoring and evaluation, and learning.

The Foreign Assistance Accountability and Transparency Act of 2016, sponsored by Republicans Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Ted Poe and Democrats Sen. Ben Cardin and Rep. Gerry Connolly, is grounded in important principles of foreign aid reform. It enacts into law key policies advocated by the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network and supported by the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition and many other international development and foreign policy organizations. Robust evaluation and aid transparency, first elevated as elements of the Millennium Challenge Corporation by the Bush administration and later adopted by the Obama administration across all foreign affairs agencies, are institutionalized by the bill. The bill calls for two reports 18 months after enactment, not annual, year-after-year reports, which had been the normal practice and usually resulted in shelves of unread reports. One report will be from the president outlining the monitoring and evaluation guidelines called for in the report, and the other report will be from the Government Accountability Office assessing those guidelines.

This type of independent, objective evaluation is essential to improving assistance; it assesses what we have tried and improves our understanding of what does and does not work. When aggregated across multiple evaluations of similar programs, it produces new knowledge and learning.

Transparency, another important element of aid reform, brings multiple benefits. It provides all stakeholders, including Congress, U.S. taxpayers, intended beneficiaries, government officials, and civil societies in recipient countries, with data and information that allows them to understand where and how assistance is used. It provides data that is critical to making informed decisions. And it keeps agencies and programs focused on their mission and objectives by permitting public scrutiny and accountability.

The Global Food Security Act of 2016, sponsored by Republicans Sen. Johnny Isakson and Rep. Chris Smith and Democrats Sen. Bob Casey and Rep. Betty McCollum, writes into law the administration’s initiative Feed the Future. The core of the bill is a mandate of the president to coordinate a comprehensive U.S. global food security strategy—such a forward-looking strategy will help gain stakeholder buy-in and ultimately provide more consistent, rationale policies and programs. Also included are guidelines that we know from experience produce good development—measurable goals and performance metrics, solid monitoring and evaluation, clear criteria for selecting targets, alignment with local policies and priorities, multi-sectoral approaches, building local capacity and resilience, and partnership with the private sector. The bill authorizes funding for food security but does not earmark it—meaning the funds are authorized but are not required to be expended. And the bill calls for only a single report to Congress a year after the issuance of the strategy.

The third bill, the Electrify Africa Act of 2015, sponsored by Republicans Sen. Bob Corker and Rep. Ed Royce and Democrats Sen. Ben Cardin and Rep. Elliot Engel, is centered on a comprehensive energy strategy for Africa. Similarly, the legislation calls for a strategy that is flexible and responsive to local communities and for policies that promote transparent and accountable governance, local consultation, and monitoring and evaluation. The bill requires two reports, the first within six months of enactment to transmit the strategy and the second three years after enactment to report on implementation. The bill directs U.S. government agencies to use accountable and metric-based targets to measure effectiveness of assistance and to leverage private and multilateral finance.

For those who say that Congress does not support foreign assistance, let’s hope this legislative triple-hat puts that to rest. Similarly, for those who say the Congress does not understand a more effective approach to development, maybe it’s time to become a believer.

Even in comfortable times, the service cutbacks and fare increases being proposed by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority would have sparked outrage from New Yorkers. Coming in the depths of the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression, things seem that much worse.

Not that it's any consolation to frustrated New York transit riders and taxpayers, but you are not alone. Transit agencies like the MTA are reeling nationwide; all are suffering from factors at least some of which they really can't control without some legislative help.

This is not to deny the pain that could occur unless the state comes up with a rescue plan. In its 2009 budget, the agency proposes painful service cutbacks and fare increases to help cover a projected deficit of around $1.5 billion.

No fewer than 51 transit agencies around the country are in the same financial situation. For example, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority that runs Boston's smaller transit system is chewing over major service cuts and fare increases if the state doesn't help cover its $160 million deficit.

The fact that so many transit agencies are struggling may come as a surprise. After all, didn't Washington just pump a lot of money into infrastructure as part of the $787-billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act? Wasn't public transit a big part of that law?

Yes. The stimulus package provides $8.4 billion to be spent on transit this year. That's a helpful shot in the arm to metropolitan transit agencies that Washington ordinarily relegates to second-class status. And the MTA will receive the largest portion of this money: more than $1 billion. Even by today's standards, that's nothing to sneeze at.

But how much will it really help? Federal rules in effect since 1998 stipulate that this money can be spent only on capital improvement projects and not to finance gaps in day-to-day operating expenses.

Surely there is no transit service without capital - the buses, trains, tracks and other facilities that make the system run. However, operating costs - which are generally about twice as high as capital expenses for the largest transit agencies - cover the salaries of the workers who keep the system running, as well as the debt contracted to pay for capital projects.

So as the federal government aims to put Americans back to work on shovel-ready, temporary construction jobs, transit agencies are looking at the likelihood of laying people off from stable, permanent positions.

Why the disconnect?

The response in Washington is predictably stubborn: Recovery money cannot be used for operating expenses because operating is not a federal role.

You would think that the pressure of this policy would lead to transit agencies that are self-sufficient - where passenger fares pay the full costs of operating the system.

But large metropolitan transit agencies generally "recover" only about one-third of their costs from subway riders and about one-quarter from bus passengers. The MTA has the highest cost-recovery ratio among all subway operators - its fares pay for two-thirds of operating costs.

For large bus systems, the MTA's New York City Transit ranks second only to New Jersey's in terms of the share of operating costs paid for by riders. The Long Island Rail Road is the seventh among the 21 commuter rail systems in the country, recovering from fares close to half of its operating costs.

So what should be done to close the MTA's budget gap?

For one thing, lawmakers in Albany need to recognize that the state contributes a lower proportion of the MTA's budget from its general revenue than other states provide to their transit agencies from general revenue. In New York, about 4 percent of all the MTA operating costs are covered by the state budget; in other states, transit agencies are getting closer to 6 percent.

Raising state general fund support to national levels would be a good place to start helping the MTA.

Another idea is to get Washington to help. Not in doling out more money, but in stepping aside and empowering metropolitan agencies to spend their federal money in ways that best meet their own needs.

Specifically, the federal rules could be changed to allow transit agencies to spend their transit capital stimulus dollars on operating expenses. Certainly, agencies have capital needs as well, but particularly in these stressful economic times they should have the short-term flexibility to use those federal dollars to meet their immediate problems.

Over the long term, some form of federal competitive funding for operating assistance also might provide the right incentive - or reward - to states and localities to commit to funding transit.

Based on their level of commitment, metropolitan agencies, localities and states that legislatively dedicate a stable stream of funds could potentially receive federal operating assistance, perhaps as a matching grant. The federal government would be helping those who help themselves.

The New York metropolitan area cannot afford to have a transit system that is hampered from operating at its fullest and most efficient potential.

An extensive transit network like the MTA provides important transportation alternatives to those who have options and basic mobility for those who don't. It can help mitigate regional air-quality problems by lowering overall automobile emissions and slowing the growth in traffic congestion.

It also can provide economic benefits by creating development opportunities around transit stations and help enhance regional economic competitiveness as an important and attractive metropolitan amenity.

Such a functioning network plays a fundamental role in attracting highly skilled labor and talent, which we know is so important in 21st century metropolitan America.

The United States exported and imported $4.0 trillion worth of international goods in 2014, making it the world’s second-largest trader, after China. The responsibility for moving all those products falls to the country’s 400-plus seaports, airports, and border-crossing facilities, though a smaller group does most of the country’s heavy lifting. In fact, ports in just 10 metropolitan areas move 60 percent of all international goods by value.

This level of concentrated port activity creates a spatial mismatch in the country’s trade flows. While a few ports handle a majority of international trade, few of the goods leaving or entering those ports start or end their journey in that port’s local market: 96 percent actually move to or from other parts of the United States. As a result, problems within and outside certain port facilities—whether a labor dispute like the recent West Coast port strike or congestion near Philadelphia’s seaport or airport—quickly become logistical costs borne by the entire country.

The 10 largest metropolitan port complexes represent a wide range of U.S. geographies, modal specialties, and international connections. Total volumes for these port complexes, listed below, are based on an aggregation of imports and exports across all sea, air, truck, rail, and pipeline facilities in each region. All data are from 2010, and you can find more detailed metrics within the Metro Freight interactive.

10. Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI

Total Value: $92.8 billion
Local Share: 4.6 percent
Top Trade Region: Asia Pacific ($41.5 billion)

A traditional Midwest powerhouse of production, metropolitan Chicago is home to a variety of industries and infrastructure assets that connect it to the Midwest and global marketplace. The proximity of factories, warehouses, and rail lines to its major port facilities, particularly O'Hare International Airport, places Chicago at a strategic crossroads for goods distribution.

9. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA

Total Value: $103.9 billion
Local Share: 4.4 percent
Top Trade Region: Asia Pacific ($77.6 billion)

The San Francisco metro area—and the Bay Area as a whole—may be more well-known as a center for tech innovation, but it also contains some of the largest port facilities in the country. The Port of Oakland and the Port of San Francisco  account for the bulk of water traffic ($55.3 billion overall) moving through the area, while Oakland International Airport and San Francisco International Airport help transport nearly $48.6 billion in electronics, precision instruments, and other high-value goods.

8. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA

Total Value: $116.9 billion
Local Share: 8.2 percent
Top Trade Region: Asia Pacific ($89.4 billion)

The Seattle metro area plays a critical role cycling goods throughout the Pacific Northwest and the rest of the country, largely owing to the key connections its port facilities have forged with China ($47.9 billion) and Japan ($22.0 billion). Valuable transportation equipment and electronics represent a large chunk of these port volumes ($52.7 billion), although sizable amounts of machinery, textiles, and agricultural products are also processed through area facilities. The Port of Seattle and the Port of Tacoma are especially important in this respect, as they look to partner more closely in years to come.

7. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL

Total Value: $123.7 billion
Local Share: 2.0 percent
Top Trade Region: Latin America ($97.2 billion)

Miami is the country’s primary gateway to Latin America, especially when excluding petroleum-related trade moving through Gulf Coast ports. And while the region and state have made impressive investments at the Port Miami seaport, it is actually Miami International Airport that generates the most regional trade ($74.8 billion). Miami’s facilities are a key component of Florida’s statewide strategy to use trade and logistics to grow local industries.

6. Laredo, TX

Total Value: $124.4 billion
Local Share: 0.0 percent
Top Trade Region: NAFTA ($121.0 billion)

Laredo may only house 250,000 people, but it might be the most important Texas metro area you’ve never heard of, considering that virtually every international good passing through it heads somewhere else in the U.S. The border town is the southernmost point of Interstate 35—the so-called NAFTA superhighway—and handles almost half of U.S./Mexican surface trade. With automotive and other supply chains continuing to stretch across the binational border, Laredo is poised to grow in importance over the coming years.

5. Anchorage, AK

Total Value: $137.4 billion
Local Share: 0.2 percent
Top Trade Region: Asia Pacific ($136.0 billion)

Anchorage may be thousands of miles from the closest U.S. market, but it has a long legacy as a major connector to the Pacific marketplace, resting less than 9.5 hours by air from 90 percent of the industrialized world. In particular, Ted Stevens International Airport was the cargo hub for Northwest Airlines Cargo, once the country’s largest carrier, and still has a vibrant freight business led by FedEx Express and UPS hubs. Continued growth in high-value, low-weight goods trade with Asia can only benefit Anchorage’s cargo business.

4. Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX

Total Value: $168.1 billion
Local Share: 10.6 percent
Top Trade Region: Latin America ($48.3 billion)

As one of the world’s leading centers for energy and chemical production, the Houston metro area—along with other parts of the Gulf Coast region—depends on an enormous set of seaport facilities to transport these goods. Collectively, $100.6 billion of energy products and chemicals/plastics pass through these ports annually, accounting for about 60 percent of all their international goods. Stretching more than 25 miles in length and situated close to the Gulf of Mexico, the Port of Houston houses many of the area’s marine terminals.

3. Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI

Total Value: $206.7 billion
Local Share: 4.9 percent
Top Trade Region: NAFTA ($186.6 billion)

Although the Detroit metro area contains a number of freight facilities, such as the Port of Detroit, that unite the Great Lakes region, its land border crossings to Canada make it one of the busiest sites of commerce in North America and beyond. Each year, nearly $175.8 billion in international goods travel by truck and rail between Detroit and Canada—relying almost exclusively on the aging Ambassador Bridge and the Michigan Central Railway Tunnel. The planned New International Trade Crossing (NITC), however, holds promise for expanding capacity at this crucial junction.

2. New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA

Total Value: $349.2 billion
Local Share: 9.7 percent
Top Trade Region: Europe ($153.9 billion)

The Port of New York and New Jersey, which spans several marine facilities including the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal, is one of the biggest freight assets in the country, cementing the New York metro area’s role as the chief East Coast seaport complex ($185.0 billion). Remarkably, almost the same value of goods ($162.7 billion) flows through the area’s expansive air cargo facilities, including John F. Kennedy International Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport. Combined with New York’s enormous amount of global corporate headquarters, New York is the country’s most globally fluent metro area.

1. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA

Total Value: $417.5 billion
Local Share: 6.0 percent
Top Trade Region: Asia Pacific ($362.2 billion)

The Los Angeles metropolitan area not only boasts two of the largest seaports in the Western Hemisphere—the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach—but also has one of the busiest cargo airports nationally, Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). Together, these port facilities channel a wide range of international goods like electronics, machinery, and textiles across the country, many of which come from Asian trade partners like China ($211.3 billion) and Japan ($58.5 billion). Still, only a fraction of these goods actually start or end locally (6 percent), speaking to the port complex’s extensive geographic reach in the U.S.

Event Information

Full video archive of this event is also available via C-SPAN here.

The drawing of legislative district boundaries is arguably among the most self-interested and least transparent systems in American democracy. Every ten years redistricting authorities, usually state legislatures, redraw congressional and legislative lines in accordance with Census reapportionment and population shifts within states. Most state redistricting authorities are in the midst of their redistricting process, while others have already finished redrawing their state and congressional boundaries. A number of initiatives—from public mapping competitions to independent shadow commissions—have been launched to open up the process to the public during this round of redrawing district lines.

On July 18, Brookings hosted a panel of experts to review the results coming in from the states and discuss how the rest of the process is likely to unfold. Panelists focused on evidence of partisan or bipartisan gerrymandering, the outcome of transparency and public mapping initiatives, and minority redistricting.

After the panel discussion, participants took audience questions.

Video

• Full Event Video Archive

Audio

• A Status Report on Congressional Redistricting

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20110718_congressional_redistricting

Executive Summary

During the first decade of the 21^st century the six states of the Mountain West — Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah — experienced unprecedented political and demographic changes. Population growth in all six states exceeded the national average and the region is home to the four states that underwent the largest population gains between 2000 and 2010. As a consequence, the region is now home to some of the most demographically diverse and geographically concentrated states in the country— factors that helped to transform the Mountain West from a Republican stronghold into America’s new swing region. This paper examines the impact that increased diversity and density are exerting on reapportionment and redistricting in each Mountain West state and assesses the implications that redistricting outcomes will exert both nationally and within each state in the coming decade.  Nationally, the region’s clout will increase due to the addition of three seats in the House of Representatives (one each in Arizona, Nevada, and Utah) and electoral contexts in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico that will result in competitive presidential and senate elections throughout the decade. At the state level, the combination of term limits, demographic change, and the reapportionment of state legislative seats from rural to urban areas will alter the composition of these states’ legislatures and should facilitate the realignment of policy outcomes that traditionally benefitted rural interests at the expense of urban needs.

Introduction

As reapportionment and redistricting plans across the 50 states are finalized and candidate recruitment begins in earnest, the contours of the 2012 election are coming into focus. One region of the country where reapportionment (redistributing seats to account for population shifts) and redistricting (drawing boundaries for state legislative and congressional districts) are likely to have significant consequences in 2012 and beyond is in the six states of the Mountain West: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. Driven by explosive growth during the past decade, the Mountain West is now home to some of the most demographically diverse and geographically concentrated states in the country. As a consequence, the region has increasingly become more hospitable to Democrats, particularly Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico and to a lesser extent Arizona. In this paper, I examine how these changes are affecting reapportionment and redistricting across the region. Specifically, after summarizing some of the key regional demographic and political changes, I offer a brief overview of the institutional contexts in which the maps are being drawn. This is followed by an assessment of outcomes in each state. I conclude with a discussion of the national and state level implications that reapportionment and redistricting are likely to engender across the Mountain West.

A Region in Transition

Between 2000 and 2010 population growth in all six Mountain West states outpaced the national average of 9.7 percent and the region contains the four states that experienced the largest percent population increase in the country (Nevada = 35.1 percent; Arizona = 24.6 percent; Utah = 23.8 percent, and Idaho = 21.1 percent).[i] As a consequence, Nevada and Utah each gained their fourth seats in the House of Representative and Arizona was awarded its ninth. Beginning with the 2012 election, the Mountain West will have 29 U.S. House seats (Idaho has two House seats, New Mexico has three, and Colorado has seven) and 41 Electoral College votes.

Across the Mountain West, population growth was concentrated in the region’s largest metropolitan statistical area (MSA).[ii] Most notably, the Las Vegas metro area is now home to nearly three out of four Nevadans — the mostly highly concentrated space in the region. In Arizona, roughly two-thirds of the population now resides in the Phoenix MSA, which grew by nearly 30 percent. The Albuquerque MSA experienced the largest overall increase as a share of total population (nearly 25 percent) and now contains 44 percent of New Mexico’s population. And while Idaho remains the state in the region with the least dense population, growth in the Boise MSA significantly outpaced that state’s overall population gain and nearly 40 percent of all Idahoans reside in and around Boise. On the other end of the spectrum are the Salt Lake City and Denver MSAs, which as shares of the Colorado and Utah populations decreased slightly from 2000. Still, better than half (50.57 percent) of all Coloradoans live in Denver and its suburbs and around 41 percent of Utah’s population is concentrated in the Salt Lake City MSA.

In addition to further urbanizing the region, the prior decade’s growth continued to transform the region’s demographics as all six Mountain West states are now more ethnically diverse as compared to a decade ago.[iii] The largest changes occurred in Nevada where the minority population increased by over 11 percent and now better than 45 percent of Nevadans are classified as non-white. While the bulk of this growth was among Hispanics, whose share of the population increased by 7 percent and are now 26.5 percent of all Nevadans, the Silver State also recorded large increases among Asian and Pacific Islanders. Arizona experienced similar increases as that state’s minority population mushroomed from 36.2 percent to 42.2 percent with Hispanics now constituting 30 percent of the population. In Colorado, the minority population increased by 3.5 percent to 30 percent. Nearly all of this change was caused by an increase in Hispanics, who now constitute 20.7 percent of the state’s population. New Mexico continues to be the Mountain West’s most diverse state as nearly three out of five New Mexicans are minorities and the state contains the region’s largest Hispanic population (46 percent). And while Idaho and Utah remain overwhelmingly white, both states’ non-white populations grew at levels similar to Colorado. Idaho is now 16 percent non-white (including a Hispanic population of 11.2 percent) and nearly one in five Utahans is a minority. Between 2000 and 2010, Hispanics increased by 4 percent to constitute 13 percent of Utah’s population.

Politically, these changes helped to create competitive electoral contexts across the region. Indeed, with the obvious exceptions of Idaho and Utah, the Mountain West is now more hospitable to the Democratic Party than it was in 2000. In particular, Democrats were able to make significant gains in Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico and effectively flipped those states from Republican leaning in 2000 to Democratic leaning in 2010. In Arizona, the Democratic performance was highly variable and moved in near perfect tandem with the broader national political environment. At the same time, the downturn in Democratic support in 2010 indicates that the party has not yet consolidated its gains. Riding a favorable 2010 macro-environment, Mountain West Republicans gained one governorship (New Mexico), seats in ten of the region’s 12 state legislative chambers, and seven House seats (out of a total of 26 in the region).[iv] Thus, heading into the 2011 redistricting cycle, Republicans control the executive and legislative branches in Arizona, Idaho, and Utah and there are no Mpuntain West states where the Democrats have unified control as the partisan composition of the Colorado legislature is divided and Nevada and New Mexico have Republican governors and Democratic legislatures.

The Institutional Context

Because of variation in the institutional arrangements governing how each state approaches reapportionment and redistricting, the impact that the demographic and political changes outlined above are exerting on map drawing differs across the region. To be sure, there are a number of commonalities across the states such as requirements of equally populated U.S. House districts, minimum population variation for state legislative districts, and boundary lines that are compact, contiguous, and maintain communities of interests. 

Beyond these constraints, mapmakers across the region are afforded different degrees of latitude in how they go about doing their work. For instance, in Nevada and New Mexico, the residency of incumbents can be considered, while Idaho forbids it. Idaho allows for twice as much inter-district population variation for state legislative districts as Colorado and New Mexico, and Idaho only allows state legislative districts to cross county lines if the counties are linked by a highway. Arizona and Idaho mandate that two lower chamber districts be nested within the boundaries of a state senate seat, while Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah do not. Nevada also allows for multi-member member state legislative districts. Lastly, Arizona’s redistricting plans must be pre-cleared by the U.S. Department of Justice. While Arizona is the only state in the region subject to preclearance, protection of minority voting rights also has been a point of contention in prior redistricting cycles in New Mexico.

The Mountain West states also vary in terms of who oversees the redistricting process. State legislators control the process in Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah, while Arizona and Idaho use commissions. In Colorado, the General Assembly draws the map for the state’s seven U.S. House seats, while a commission oversees the drawing of state legislative maps. For the three states that use commissions for either all or part of their processes, commission size and composition differs significantly and only the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (AIRC) is charged with drawing maps that are competitive.[v] 

However, the most significant constraint on reapportionment and redistricting in the Mountain West is the small size of the region’s state legislatures.[vi] The mix of small chambers, increased urbanization, and large geographic spaces means very large and increasingly, fewer and fewer stand- alone rural districts. This dynamic also helps to explain the region’s history of malapportionment that often allocated seats by county regardless of population.[vii] 

State Summaries

Based upon the overview presented above, expectations about the general contours of reapportionment and redistricting in the Mountain West are fairly straightforward: the clout of urban and minority interests will increase and to the degree that those factors benefit the Democrats, the Democrats should gain some partisan advantage. Realizing these outcomes, however, has proven to be less than amicable. With the exception of Utah, all other states in the region have had various aspects of their processes litigated, and map drawing for Colorado’s U.S. House seats and all of Nevada and New Mexico’s redistricting is being completed in state courts. Below, I summarize the status of reapportionment and redistricting in each state.

Arizona

Beginning its work amid criticism of its composition, calls for its abolishment, and an investigation by the Arizona attorney general, the voter-initiated Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (AIRC) has struggled to balance the conflicting demands of drawing competitive districts with the protection of minority voting rights. The commission’s work has been further hindered by Republican Governor Jan Brewer’s unsuccessful attempt to impeach the commission’s nonpartisan chair. In addition, Arizona has filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the state’s preclearance requirement.

Republican attempts to undermine the AIRC stem from the fact that given unified Republican control of the Arizona governorship and legislature, Republicans would otherwise be in a position to implement a partisan gerrymander. At the same time, the GOP’s present dominance is partially an artifact of the 2001 redistricting. To gain preclearance in 2001, the AIRC’s maps created a large number of majority-minority state legislative districts and minority-friendly U.S House seats by packing Democratic voters into these districts. In so doing, Democratic support in the surrounding districts was weakened; allowing Republicans to more efficiently translate their votes into seats.[viii] Thus, despite a slight partisan voter registration advantage (4.35 percent as of July 2011), Republicans presently hold more than two-thirds of the state legislative seats and five of eight U.S. House seats.

Given Arizona’s growth patterns between 2000 and 2010 coupled with the AIRC’s charge of creating competitive district, drawing a map as favorable to the GOP in 2011 is virtually impossible unless the size of the Arizona legislature is increased. Still, in order to protect minority voting rights, Arizona’s final maps are likely to tilt in favor of the GOP — just not to the degree that they have in the past. In particular, the elimination and consolidation of rural state legislative districts and a more urban orientation for Arizona’s nine U.S. House districts should provide the Democrats with electoral opportunities that will only increase as Arizona’s population continues to diversity and urbanize.

Colorado

As noted above, Colorado uses a commission (the Colorado Redistricting Commission) for redistricting state legislative seats and the Colorado General Assembly draws the maps for the state’s seven U.S. House seats. Neither process has gone smoothly. For the state’s seven U.S. House seats, the Democratic-dominated state senate and the Republican-controlled lower chamber failed to find common ground after exchanging two rounds of maps. Because Democratic governor John Hickenlooper refused to call a special session, redistricting of Colorado U.S. House seats was completed in state court. After a good deal of legal wrangling, the Colorado Supreme Court upheld a map favored by Colorado Democrats that creates two safe Republican districts, one safe Democratic district, and four districts where neither party’s registration advantage exceeds 4 percent. As a consequence, Colorado will feature a number of competitive U.S. House elections throughout the coming decade.

Map drawing for state legislative seats by the CRC has also been hindered by partisanship. Hoping to break a partisan stalemate, in late summer the nonpartisan chair of the CRC offered maps that combined parts of prior Democratic and Republican proposals to create thirty-three competitive seats (out of a total of 100) and twenty-four seats with Hispanic populations of 30 percent or more. After being approved by the CRC with some Republican dissents, the plan was rejected by the Colorado Supreme Court, which must sign-off on the CRC’s plans before they can be implemented. By attempting to draw more competitive maps — a criterion that the CRC is not obligated to consider – the CRC’s maps undermined its charge of producing districts that keep communities of interest intact. The CRC’s second set maps, which were widely viewed as favoring the Democrats, were upheld by the Colorado Supreme Court.

Idaho

While partisan considerations have loomed large in the reapportionment and redistricting processes in Arizona and Colorado, in Republican-dominated Idaho the main points of contention have been spatial. Indeed, because of the difficulty of satisfying a constitutional requirement limiting county splits and a state law constraining how geographic areas can be combined, the Idaho’s Citizen Commission for Reapportionment (ICCR) failed to reach an agreement before its constitutionally imposed deadline. After sorting through a number of legal and constitutional questions, a second set of commissioners were impaneled and completed their work in less than three weeks. Given Idaho’s partisan composition, the final maps are a regional anomaly as they benefit the GOP while being somewhat more urban oriented. This was accomplished by moving rural Republican voters into urban Democratic state legislative districts and adjusting the lines of Idaho’s 1st House district to shed roughly 50,000 citizens. At the same time, because of Idaho’s strict constraints on how cities and counties can be divided, the map for the state legislature paired a number of incumbents in the same district and one district contains the residences of five incumbents, setting up a number of competitive primary elections.

While growth patterns and demographic and partisan change in Nevada between 2000 and 2010 insured a redistricting process that would favor Democrats, Nevada Republicans sought to delay this inevitability as long as possible. The state’s Republican governor, Brian Sandoval, vetoed two sets of maps passed by the Democratic controlled legislature and Sandoval refused to call a special session to complete redistricting. Instead, he and his party hoped for a better outcome in state court. Despite drawing a supervising judge who was the son of a former Republican Governor, Nevada Republicans fared no better in state court. Ultimately, the process was turned over to three special masters who rejected Nevada Republicans’ claim that section 2 of the Voting Rights Act required a majority Hispanic U.S. House district.[ix] As a consequence, two of Nevada’s U.S. House seats favor Democrats, one is safely Republican, and the fourth is a swing district. In the Nevada legislature the representation of urban interests will increase as parts of or all of forty-seven of the sixty-three seats in the Nevada legislature are now located in the Democratic stronghold of Clark County. 

New Mexico

The 2011 process in New Mexico has essentially been a rerun of the gridlock that engulfed the state’s 2001 redistricting debate. Once again, the Democrats sought to use their control over both chambers of the New Mexico legislature to preserve their majorities and draw the boundaries for the state’s three U.S. House seats in manner favorable to the party. However, because of bickering among Democrats the legislature failed to approve its map for the state’s three U.S. House seats prior to the end of the special session and the plans for the state legislature that were passed on party line votes were vetoed by Republican governor Susana Martinez. Thus, once again, New Mexico’s divided state government coupled with the state’s history of litigating redistricting plans (in 2001 map drawing and court battles cost the state roughly $3.5 million) means that redistricting will be completed in state court. While the Republicans may be able to gain some concessions through the courts, New Mexico is the most Democratic state in the Mountain West and, as noted above, the state’s growth during the prior decade was concentrated in heavily Democratic Albuquerque and its suburbs. Thus, as in 2001, the likely outcome in New Mexico is a redistricting plan that will be favorable to the Democrats and weaken the influence of rural interests.

Utah

Utah is the only state in the region where conditions exist (e.g., unified partisan control in a non-commission state) for the implementation of a partisan gerrymander. However, to accomplish this end required the slicing and dicing of communities and municipalities particularly those in and around the state’s urban center. Most notably, in drawing the state’s four U.S. House seats, Republicans divided the Utah’s population center (Salt Lake City County) into four districts by combining parts of the urban core with rural counties - a plan that, not coincidentally, cracks the only part of the state where Democrats are able to compete. Similarly, maps for state legislative districts increase the number of seats that favor the GOP and, in many instances, protect incumbents from potential primary challengers by dividing communities into multiple districts. Democrats in Utah are so depleted that they were unable to get the Republicans to even agree to include recognition and protection of minority communities of interest to in Utah’s redistricting guidelines. Thus, despite constituting nearly 20 percent of the state’s population, minorities received no consideration in Utah’s 2011 redistricting.

Implications and Conclusions

Reapportionment and redistricting are often regarded as the most political activities in the United States; an expectation that is certainly being realized across the Mountain West. In the swing states where legislators draw the maps (for example, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico) but where state government is divided, partisan considerations loomed large, causing all of these states to conclude all or parts of their redistricting processes in the courts. The conflicts between Arizona’s preclearance requirement and the AIRC’s commitment to drawing competitive districts have partisan consequences as well. In one-party Idaho and Utah, the politics of space were at issue.  Geographic constraints on district boundaries imposed through statute and the Idaho constitution ensured that more rural seats were preserved and that the growing influence of urban interests will be checked. In Utah, Republicans moved in the opposite direction by carving up the very communities from which they are elected in order to implement a partisan gerrymander. 

Another school of thought, however, argues that the most typical redistricting outcome is not partisan gain or loss, but an uncertainty that shakes up the state political environment and facilitates political renewal. In the case of the Mountain West, there is evidence to support that claim as well. The biggest source of uncertainty will continue to be growth. While the economic downturn has slowed migration to the region, the Mountain West states remain poised to keep expanding in a manner that will further concentrate and diversify their populations. A second source of uncertainty is the region’s large number of nonpartisans. While redistricting is often framed as a zero-sum game played between Democrats and Republicans, the electoral hopes for either party hinges on its ability to attract the support of the region’s expanding nonpartisan demographic.[x] 

At the state level, with the exception of Idaho, the most significant consequence will be a reduction in rural influence. The combination of term limits in Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado, small legislative chambers, and fast growing urban populations will continue to decrease the number of entrenched rural legislators and the number of stand-alone rural districts. Consequently, urban interests should be positioned to align state policy with demographic reality. The void created by the demise of rural legislators will be filled by minorities, particularly Hispanics. To date, the increased political activism of Hispanic communities across the region has primarily benefited Democrats; helped in no small part by the hard-line rhetoric and policies championed by some Mountain West Republicans.[xi] More generally, depending on growth patterns, by 2020 Nevada and perhaps Arizona may join New Mexico as states with majority-minority populations. Thus, with or without Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, minority legislators, primarily Hispanics, will increase their ranks significantly. The only question is whether all of these politicians will be taking office with a “D” next to their names or whether some will be elected as Republicans.  

Nationally, the impact of reapportionment and redistricting is mixed. Certainly, the addition of three U.S. House seats after the 2010 census will give more voice to regional issues in Washington D.C. At the same time, because the Mountain West’s House delegation will continue to be split along partisan lines and many of the region’s competitive House seats will rotate between the parties throughout the decade, it may be difficult for any but the safest Mountain West representatives to accrue the requisite seniority to become players in the House. Also, because of pending retirements in Arizona and New Mexico, a successful 2010 primary challenge in Utah, and a resignation in Nevada, the region’s influence in the U.S. Senate is likely to decline in the near term. Indeed, after the 2012 election the only senators from the region who will have served more than one term will be Nevada’s Harry Reid, Arizona’s John McCain, Idaho’s Mike Crapo, and Utah’s Orrin Hatch (presuming a successful 2012 reelection).

Thus, the arena where the region is likely to garner the most attention is in the coming decade’s three presidential elections. Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico were all battleground states in 2004 and 2008, with Republican George W. Bush narrowly winning all three in 2004 and Democrat Barack Obama flipping them blue in 2008 by wider margins. Obviously, Idaho and Utah will remain out of reach for the Democrats in statewide contests for some time.  However, Arizona is likely to become the region’s fourth swing state in the near future. Thus, continued investment in Arizona and throughout the region will allow the Democrats to further expand the number of Mountain West states in play while forcing the GOP to spend resources to defend turf that it once could safely call its own.

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• The Impact of Density and Diversity on Reapportionment and Redistricting in the Mountain West

At the time that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran was being debated here in Washington, I felt that the terms of the deal were far less consequential than how the United States responded to Iranian regional behavior after a deal was signed. I see the events of the past 12 months as largely having borne out that analysis. While both sides have accused the other of "cheating" on the deal in both letter and spirit, it has so far largely held and neither Tehran nor Washington (nor any of the other signatories) have shown a determination to abrogate the deal or flagrantly circumvent its terms. However, as many of my colleagues have noted, the real frictions have arisen from the U.S. geostrategic response to the deal.

I continue to believe that the Obama administration was ultimately correct that signing the JCPOA was better than any of the realistic alternatives—even if I also continue to believe that a better deal was possible, had the administration handled the negotiations differently. However, its regional approach since then has left a fair amount to be desired:

• The president gratuitously insulted the Saudis and other U.S. allies in his various interviews with Jeff Goldberg of The Atlantic. 
• After several alarming Iranian-Saudi dust-ups, administration officials have none-too-privately condemned Riyadh and excused Tehran in circumstances where both were culpable. 
• Washington has continued to just about ignore all manner of Iranian transgressions from human rights abuses to missile tests, and senior administration officials have turned themselves into metaphorical pretzels to insist that the United States is doing everything it can to assist the Iranian economy. 
• And the overt component of the administration's Syria policy remains stubbornly focused on ISIS, not the Bashar Assad regime or its Iranian allies, while the covert side focused on the regime remains very limited—far smaller than America's traditional Middle Eastern allies have sought. 

To be fair, the administration has been quite supportive of the Gulf Cooperation Council war effort in Yemen—far more so than most Americans realize—but even there, still much less than the Saudis, Emiratis, and other Sunni states would like. 

To be blunt, the perspective of America's traditional Sunni Arab allies (and to some extent, Turkey and Israel) is that they are waging an all-out war against Iran and its (Shiite) allies across the region. They have wanted the United States, their traditional protector, to lead that fight. And they feared that the JCPOA would result in one of two different opposite approaches: either that the United States would use the JCPOA as an excuse to further disengage from the geopolitical competition in the region, or even worse, that Washington would use it to switch sides and join the Iranian coalition. Unfortunately, their reading of events has been that this is precisely what has happened, although they continue to debate whether the United States is merely withdrawing or actively changing sides. And as both Bruce Reidel and I have both stressed, this perception is causing the GCC states to act more aggressively, provoking more crises and worsening proxy warfare with Iran that will inevitably aggravate an already dangerously-unstable Middle East and raises the risk of escalation to something even worse.

U.S. President Barack Obama walks with Saudi King Salman at Erga Palace upon his arrival for a summit meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia April 20, 2016. Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque.

Looking to year two

All that said, I wanted to use the first anniversary of the JCPOA to think about where we may be on its second anniversary. By then, we will have a new president. Donald Trump has not laid out anything close to a coherent approach to the Middle East, nor does he have any prior experience with the region, so I do not believe we can say anything reasonable about how he might handle the region if he somehow became president. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, has had considerable experience with the region—as first lady, senator, and secretary of state—and she and her senior aides have discussed the region to a much greater extent, making it possible to speculate on at least the broad contours of her initial Middle East policy. 

In particular, Clinton has been at pains to emphasize a willingness to commit more resources to deal with the problems of the Middle East and a fervent desire to rebuild the strained ties with America's traditional Middle Eastern allies. From my perspective, that is all to the good because an important (but hardly the only) factor in the chaos consuming the Middle East has been the Obama administration's determination to disengage from the geopolitical events of the region and distance itself from America's traditional allies. The problem here is not that the United States always does the right thing or that our allies are saints. Hardly. It is that the region desperately needs the United States to help it solve the massive problems of state failure and civil war that are simply beyond the capacity of regional actors to handle on their own. The only way to stop our allies from acting aggressively and provocatively is for the United States to lead them in a different, more constructive direction. In the Middle East in particular, you can't beat something with nothing, and while the United States cannot be the only answer to the region's problems, there is no answer to the region's problems without the United States.

My best guess is that our traditional allies will enthusiastically welcome a Hillary Clinton presidency, and the new president will do all that she can to reassure them that she plans to be more engaged, more of a leader, more willing to commit American resources to Middle Eastern problems, more willing to help the region address its problems (and not just the problems that affect the United States directly, like ISIS). I think all of that rhetorical good will and a sense (on both sides) of putting the bad days of Obama behind them will produce a honeymoon period. 

[T]he second anniversary of the JCPOA could prove even more fraught for America and the Middle East than the first.

But I suspect that that honeymoon will come to an end after 6 to 18 months, perhaps beginning with the second anniversary of the JCPOA and occasioned by it. I suspect that at that point, America's traditional allies—the Sunni Arab States, Israel, and Turkey—will begin to look for President Clinton to turn her words into action, and from their perspective, that is probably going to mean doing much more than President Obama. I suspect that they will still want the United States to join and/or lead them in a region-wide war against Iran and its allies. And while I think that a President Clinton will want to do more than President Obama, I see no sign that she is interested in doing that much more. 

Syria is one example. The GCC wants the United States to commit to a strategy that will destroy the Assad regime (and secondarily, eliminate ISIS and the Nusra Front). Clinton has said she was in favor of a beefed-up covert campaign against the Assad regime and that she is in favor of imposing a no-fly zone over the country. If, as president, she enacts both, this would be a much more aggressive policy than Obama's, but as I have written elsewhere, neither is likely to eliminate the Assad regime, let alone stabilize Syria and end the civil war—the two real threats to both the United States and our regional allies (and our European allies). 

Even more to the point, I cannot imagine a Hillary Clinton administration abrogating the JCPOA, imposing significant new economic sanctions on Iran, or otherwise acting in ways that it would fear could provoke Tehran to break the deal, overtly or covertly. That may look to our traditional allies like Washington is trying to remain on the fence, which will infuriate them. After Obama, and after Clinton's rhetoric, they expect the United States to stand openly and resolutely with them. At the very least, such American restraint will place further limits on the willingness of a Clinton administration to adopt the kind of confrontational policy toward Tehran that our regional allies want, and that her rhetoric has led them to expect. 

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton (C) speaks with Jordan's Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh (L) and United Arab Emirates Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash as they participate in the Libya Contact Group family photo at the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi June 9, 2011. Photo credit: Reuters/Susan Walsh.

Reconcile, or agree to disagree?

Let me be clear, I am not suggesting that the United States should adopt the GCC analysis of what is going on in the region wholeheartedly. I think that it overstates Iran's role as the source of the region's problems and so distracts from what I see as the region's real problems—state failure and civil wars—even if the Iranians have played a role in exacerbating both. 

Instead, my intent is simply to highlight that there are some important strategic differences between the United States and its regional allies, differences that are not all Barack Obama's fault but reflect important differences that have emerged between the two sides. If this analysis is correct, then the second anniversary of the JCPOA could prove even more fraught for America and the Middle East than the first. The honeymoon will be over, and both sides may recognize that goodwill and rousing words alone cannot cover fundamental divergences in both our diagnosis of what ails the region and our proposed treatment of those maladies. If that is the case, then both may need to make much bigger adjustments than they currently contemplate. Otherwise, the United States may find that its traditional allies are no longer as willing to follow our lead, and our allies may discover that the United States is no longer interested in leading them on the path they want to follow.

The United States exported and imported $4.0 trillion worth of international goods in 2014, making it the world’s second-largest trader, after China. The responsibility for moving all those products falls to the country’s 400-plus seaports, airports, and border-crossing facilities, though a smaller group does most of the country’s heavy lifting. In fact, ports in just 10 metropolitan areas move 60 percent of all international goods by value.

This level of concentrated port activity creates a spatial mismatch in the country’s trade flows. While a few ports handle a majority of international trade, few of the goods leaving or entering those ports start or end their journey in that port’s local market: 96 percent actually move to or from other parts of the United States. As a result, problems within and outside certain port facilities—whether a labor dispute like the recent West Coast port strike or congestion near Philadelphia’s seaport or airport—quickly become logistical costs borne by the entire country.

The 10 largest metropolitan port complexes represent a wide range of U.S. geographies, modal specialties, and international connections. Total volumes for these port complexes, listed below, are based on an aggregation of imports and exports across all sea, air, truck, rail, and pipeline facilities in each region. All data are from 2010, and you can find more detailed metrics within the Metro Freight interactive.

10. Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI

Total Value: $92.8 billion
Local Share: 4.6 percent
Top Trade Region: Asia Pacific ($41.5 billion)

A traditional Midwest powerhouse of production, metropolitan Chicago is home to a variety of industries and infrastructure assets that connect it to the Midwest and global marketplace. The proximity of factories, warehouses, and rail lines to its major port facilities, particularly O'Hare International Airport, places Chicago at a strategic crossroads for goods distribution.

9. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA

Total Value: $103.9 billion
Local Share: 4.4 percent
Top Trade Region: Asia Pacific ($77.6 billion)

The San Francisco metro area—and the Bay Area as a whole—may be more well-known as a center for tech innovation, but it also contains some of the largest port facilities in the country. The Port of Oakland and the Port of San Francisco  account for the bulk of water traffic ($55.3 billion overall) moving through the area, while Oakland International Airport and San Francisco International Airport help transport nearly $48.6 billion in electronics, precision instruments, and other high-value goods.

8. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA

Total Value: $116.9 billion
Local Share: 8.2 percent
Top Trade Region: Asia Pacific ($89.4 billion)

The Seattle metro area plays a critical role cycling goods throughout the Pacific Northwest and the rest of the country, largely owing to the key connections its port facilities have forged with China ($47.9 billion) and Japan ($22.0 billion). Valuable transportation equipment and electronics represent a large chunk of these port volumes ($52.7 billion), although sizable amounts of machinery, textiles, and agricultural products are also processed through area facilities. The Port of Seattle and the Port of Tacoma are especially important in this respect, as they look to partner more closely in years to come.

7. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL

Total Value: $123.7 billion
Local Share: 2.0 percent
Top Trade Region: Latin America ($97.2 billion)

Miami is the country’s primary gateway to Latin America, especially when excluding petroleum-related trade moving through Gulf Coast ports. And while the region and state have made impressive investments at the Port Miami seaport, it is actually Miami International Airport that generates the most regional trade ($74.8 billion). Miami’s facilities are a key component of Florida’s statewide strategy to use trade and logistics to grow local industries.

6. Laredo, TX

Total Value: $124.4 billion
Local Share: 0.0 percent
Top Trade Region: NAFTA ($121.0 billion)

Laredo may only house 250,000 people, but it might be the most important Texas metro area you’ve never heard of, considering that virtually every international good passing through it heads somewhere else in the U.S. The border town is the southernmost point of Interstate 35—the so-called NAFTA superhighway—and handles almost half of U.S./Mexican surface trade. With automotive and other supply chains continuing to stretch across the binational border, Laredo is poised to grow in importance over the coming years.

5. Anchorage, AK

Total Value: $137.4 billion
Local Share: 0.2 percent
Top Trade Region: Asia Pacific ($136.0 billion)

Anchorage may be thousands of miles from the closest U.S. market, but it has a long legacy as a major connector to the Pacific marketplace, resting less than 9.5 hours by air from 90 percent of the industrialized world. In particular, Ted Stevens International Airport was the cargo hub for Northwest Airlines Cargo, once the country’s largest carrier, and still has a vibrant freight business led by FedEx Express and UPS hubs. Continued growth in high-value, low-weight goods trade with Asia can only benefit Anchorage’s cargo business.

4. Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX

Total Value: $168.1 billion
Local Share: 10.6 percent
Top Trade Region: Latin America ($48.3 billion)

As one of the world’s leading centers for energy and chemical production, the Houston metro area—along with other parts of the Gulf Coast region—depends on an enormous set of seaport facilities to transport these goods. Collectively, $100.6 billion of energy products and chemicals/plastics pass through these ports annually, accounting for about 60 percent of all their international goods. Stretching more than 25 miles in length and situated close to the Gulf of Mexico, the Port of Houston houses many of the area’s marine terminals.

3. Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI

Total Value: $206.7 billion
Local Share: 4.9 percent
Top Trade Region: NAFTA ($186.6 billion)

Although the Detroit metro area contains a number of freight facilities, such as the Port of Detroit, that unite the Great Lakes region, its land border crossings to Canada make it one of the busiest sites of commerce in North America and beyond. Each year, nearly $175.8 billion in international goods travel by truck and rail between Detroit and Canada—relying almost exclusively on the aging Ambassador Bridge and the Michigan Central Railway Tunnel. The planned New International Trade Crossing (NITC), however, holds promise for expanding capacity at this crucial junction.

2. New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA

Total Value: $349.2 billion
Local Share: 9.7 percent
Top Trade Region: Europe ($153.9 billion)

The Port of New York and New Jersey, which spans several marine facilities including the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal, is one of the biggest freight assets in the country, cementing the New York metro area’s role as the chief East Coast seaport complex ($185.0 billion). Remarkably, almost the same value of goods ($162.7 billion) flows through the area’s expansive air cargo facilities, including John F. Kennedy International Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport. Combined with New York’s enormous amount of global corporate headquarters, New York is the country’s most globally fluent metro area.

1. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA

Total Value: $417.5 billion
Local Share: 6.0 percent
Top Trade Region: Asia Pacific ($362.2 billion)

The Los Angeles metropolitan area not only boasts two of the largest seaports in the Western Hemisphere—the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach—but also has one of the busiest cargo airports nationally, Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). Together, these port facilities channel a wide range of international goods like electronics, machinery, and textiles across the country, many of which come from Asian trade partners like China ($211.3 billion) and Japan ($58.5 billion). Still, only a fraction of these goods actually start or end locally (6 percent), speaking to the port complex’s extensive geographic reach in the U.S.

Summary: Why digital skills matter

As the influence of digital technologies in the global economy expands, metropolitan areas throughout the United States face the task of preparing residents for an increasingly technology-powered world. Most jobs now require basic computer literacy to operate email and other software, while jobs specific to information technology (IT) require advanced skills such as coding. At home, residents need access to the Internet and consumer technologies to do homework, shop at online retailers, communicate with one another, or check real-time traffic and transit conditions.

Digital technologies hold out the promise of more widely shared prosperity, but achieving that vision will require every person to have basic digital skills—the ability to use digital hardware and software to manage information, communicate, navigate the web, solve problems, and create content.¹

While some metro areas have made important advances on digital skills acquisition, the effects are not ubiquitous. The Census Bureau found that only 73 percent of U.S. households subscribed to in-home broadband service in 2013, leaving 31 million households without a high-speed in-home connection.² Pew Research Center finds that over one-third of U.S. adults doesn’t own a smartphone, while 7 percent of smartphone owners lack high-speed Internet access at home and have few ways to get online beyond their smartphone.³ Another survey finds that 29 percent of Americans have low levels of digital skills, and many of these persons tend to be older, less educated, and lower-income.⁴

In an advanced economy, all residents deserve an opportunity to obtain digital skills. It is up to leaders in each U.S. metropolitan area to determine how best to meet this need. As with any social challenge of this scale, meeting it will require pragmatic problem-solving and deep collaboration across the public, private, and civic sectors.

This brief summarizes the results of a workshop held in Seattle to explore these issues. While the findings from the workshop discussions are unique to the Seattle region—making its leaders and residents the primary audience for this brief—the workshop approach can be replicated in any metropolitan area interested in addressing digital skills shortfalls and developing solutions tailored to residents’ needs.

Introduction: Digital skills and the Seattle metropolitan economy

Metropolitan Seattle is well positioned to prosper in the information era. Advanced industries—including global leaders in aerospace and IT—power the regional economy and have created an impressive network of patent-producing firms that employ over 295,000 people.⁵ The region’s households actively participate in the digital economy as well, as evidenced by a broadband adoption rate of 82 percent.⁶ Collaborations bringing together firms, public utilities, and government institutions make Seattle a national leader in the use of data monitoring to reduce energy usage.

However, for the region to maintain its position in the years ahead, it will need to cultivate a more inclusive economy that gives every resident the opportunity to acquire the skills needed to succeed in the digital era.

Like most U.S. metro areas, metropolitan Seattle continues to struggle with digital inclusivity. Strong broadband adoption across the region masks lagging adoption rates in many low-income neighborhoods and communities of color.⁷ A skills mismatch between job openings requiring digital skills and the education and skills training of area residents contributes to income inequality.⁸ This inequality, though less marked than in other cities with similar high-tech economies, continues to increase, with the highest-earning households experiencing rising incomes while lower-income households’ earnings stay relatively flat.⁹ Meanwhile, more than 45 percent of jobs in the region are more than 10 miles from downtown Seattle and Bellevue, and over two-thirds of poor households now live in the suburbs.¹⁰ This kind of job sprawl and suburban poverty limit many residents’ physical access to economic opportunity.

But the Seattle area has the assets to address these challenges. The region has a legacy of direct private-sector support for professional skills development and a huge network of IT firms that can expand such efforts. Government agencies and civic institutions already manage programs to promote digital skills acquisition. In addition, there is a regional ethic of supporting equitable economic growth, seen most recently in Seattle’s landmark living wage policy and Sound Transit’s discounted fee system for lower-income riders.¹¹

In an effort to address Seattle’s digital skills gap, the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program convened a group of leaders from the public, private, and civic sectors to discuss how to continue building a regionally inclusive digital skills infrastructure. The workshop consisted of brief presentations from Brookings experts and local leaders, group discussions of current efforts and challenges, and break-out groups to identify specific barriers and discuss strategies and next steps to improve future outcomes.

The following is a distillation of the key themes and lessons from the workshop.

1. Commit to ongoing collaboration

There is a clear consensus among Seattle-area leaders that basic digital skills are essential for everyone. The tough part is ensuring that all residents in the region have the opportunity to acquire these skills.

This challenge implicates a wide range of stakeholders, from municipal and county government, public libraries, and universities to area businesses, education and training providers, philanthropies, and nonprofits.

Many of these actors already manage their own initiatives, to great effect. Programs like the Seattle Goodwill’s Digital Literacy Initiative are working to increase the number of people with 21st-century digital skills, particularly among traditionally underserved populations. The private sector is advancing a similar agenda with major initiatives, such as Microsoft IT Academy and Google’s Made With Code, that promote computational thinking through computer science. Meanwhile, nonprofit training programs like the Ada Developers Academy as well as for-profit training providers such as Code Fellows and General Assembly are getting more people on pathways into tech-intensive careers that pay well.

However, despite this demonstrated willingness to act, coordination of activities across the region remains a challenge. Most initiatives operate independently from one another, often resulting in duplicative efforts and missed opportunities for greater impact. Furthermore, current efforts often concentrate activities in either the central cities or specific portions of the three-county region, thereby excluding those who live in other parts of the metro area. For example, the city of Seattle’s excellent digital equity programs extend only to the city limits and are not available in South King County. Without more collaboration, the region will not be able to take full advantage of its creativity, resources, and capacity for pragmatic problem-solving.

By committing to ongoing collaborative action, leaders in the Seattle region will be well positioned to design, launch, and maintain smart solutions to the digital skills challenge today and in the future.

2. Identify a convener and organize for action

Once stakeholders commit to collaborative problem-solving, they must then determine how best to organize for action. Identifying a neutral convener organization can help expedite this process. Designating a convener ensures that there is a single organization tasked with driving the group’s agenda forward and fostering greater collaboration among stakeholders.

The role of convener involves a handful of specific tasks that help keep the group on track and in regular contact. Organizing regular group meetings, delegating critical tasks like research into best practices, and managing communication within the group are all critical functions for the convening organization. To take just one example, the Community Center for Education Results (CCER) fills the convener role for the many stakeholders involved in the Road Map Project, which is working to improve student outcomes in South Seattle and South King County.¹²

The Seattle area is fortunate to have a number of organizations that could act as convener. Potential candidates include the Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County (WDC), the Seattle Public Library, the University of Washington, or one of the many large philanthropies in the region.

Regardless of which organization ultimately takes on this role, selecting a convener marks a crucial first step toward an actionable, collaboratively developed digital skills agenda for the Seattle region.

3. Develop a shared vision for digital skills acquisition

Crafting a shared vision for digital skills acquisition will strengthen the group’s work by ensuring that all involved are on the same page. That vision can support the creation of a coordinated regional plan, which will help stakeholders take advantage of economies of scale and ensure the greatest return on resources invested. This plan should take particular care to address challenges faced by traditionally underrepresented groups, including women and people of color as well as those in lower-income communities.¹³ Ending the persistent lack of diversity in tech-oriented careers will require a concerted effort on the part of all stakeholders involved.¹⁴

To start, the convener’s first task should be organizing a time for stakeholders to sit down, develop a shared vision, and determine the next steps necessary to achieve that vision. Conducting an audit of existing programs in the region that support digital skills acquisition can be a good place to begin. This inventory will highlight any overlapping initiatives while also providing information on gaps in the digital skills infrastructure that will need to be addressed.

In addition, the group should work with the private sector to identify the digital skills needed in various industries and begin to map out pathways into tech-oriented careers. This information will ensure that the solutions developed are informed by current and projected industry demand.

The industry-sector panels convened by WDC offer one possible approach. Under this model, WDC serves as convener, bringing together key stakeholders from industry, education, workforce development, labor, nonprofits, and other relevant areas to identify shared challenges and engage in collaborative problem-solving. The outcomes and activities of the sector panel are determined by the group, with WDC facilitating the process throughout. WDC has a demonstrated record of success in organizing sector panels for the maritime and health care industries, and it could apply the same techniques to industries requiring digital skills.

Preliminary research will provide the data and analyses necessary for truly evidence-based solutions that respond directly to specific challenges in the region. Once this baseline research is completed, the group can begin problem-solving in earnest. To start, the group should identify a punch list of action items that can be easily accomplished in order to start building a record of successful collaborations.

As the group designs these solutions, it should also take care to establish performance management systems that track progress over time. Monitoring the performance of each solution implemented will also support efforts to refine and course-correct programming over time.

4. Adopt new roles to accomplish regional goals

With a new, shared vision of the community’s digital skills infrastructure in hand, stakeholders will need to align their individual initiatives to that goal and, in some cases, redefine their roles in order to support the broader vision.

These new roles should leverage each organization’s core strengths rather than require them to develop new ones. For example, metropolitan Seattle’s public libraries are already community-meeting spots that specialize in information exchange, offer free access to the Internet, and host a variety of classes for the public. This current work positions the libraries to serve as an information clearinghouse for digital skills programs offered in the region, ranging from job-skills training to classes on smartphone use. Likewise, academic experts at the University of Washington and other postsecondary institutions could help create a new curriculum for teaching applied digital skills to diverse populations.

At the same time, organizations should be open to adapting their core projects in order to fill gaps in the region’s digital skills infrastructure. For example, technology firms like Microsoft and Google could draw on their extensive civic philanthropic efforts and employee skills-training programs to provide basic, applied digital skills and computer science training that enhances the regional workforce. Such efforts could build on Microsoft’s IT Academy model and Google’s support for programs at the Boys and Girls Clubs, which could be repurposed to address adult needs rather than those of children and teens.

As individual organizations adopt new roles, they will need to ensure that services are available to residents across the entire metropolitan area. Anchored by its Department of Information Technology and its Digital Equity Initiative, the city of Seattle has an impressive record of boosting digital skills within the city proper. But the vast majority of area residents live outside Seattle. Furthermore, over 60 percent of the region’s poor households now live in the suburbs. As a result, regional actors like Puget Sound Regional Council, Sound Cities, and county governments face enormous pressure to serve residents across the three-county metro area.

To start, organizations should work together to conduct metrowide surveys of digital equity issues, perhaps following the model employed by Seattle’s Digital Equity Initiative. This quantitative and qualitative data will set the baseline for the entire region and will help organizations set achievable benchmark goals for the years ahead.

5. Create a regional digital skills brand and marketing strategy to galvanize action

In order to communicate the shared vision to area residents, stakeholders should develop and publicize a new regional brand that positions the Seattle region as a leader in digital skills adoption and more equitable economic outcomes.

The associated marketing campaign can counter misconceptions about digital skills and the tech industry, maximize awareness of individual stakeholders’ projects, and minimize costs for each organization. Working together, stakeholders can reach the broadest possible pool of local residents with a cohesive message that encourages digital skills and computer science skills acquisition. Furthermore, by directing residents to centralized

information centers like local public libraries, the campaign will connect individuals with experts who can help them find the best programs for their needs.

In crafting this branding effort, the Seattle area should look to similar campaigns for inspiration. One example is Portland, Ore.’s We Build Green Cities campaign, a trade-based effort to leverage Portland’s international reputation for environmental sustainability and design in order to increase the region’s exports. Baltimore’s Opportunity Collaborative offers a more equity-focused model that brings together local and state public agencies, nonprofit organizations, and universities to solve common workforce, housing, and transportation challenges. A digital skills marketing campaign patterned after existing efforts will allow the region to capitalize on proven models when positioning itself as a leader in digital skills adoption that supports more widely shared prosperity.

Conclusion

The Seattle region stands at a crossroads. It has the industrial assets for continued growth that fosters ongoing innovation and provides jobs that pay well. It also has a commitment to shared prosperity, best represented by the public, private, and civic actors that support better wages, affordable transportation options, and education and training focused on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) occupations. The region should build on these efforts by advancing a shared vision for digital skills and undertaking the sustained collaboration necessary to make that vision a reality.

Additional resources

The Boston Consulting Group, “Opportunity for All: Investing in Washington State’s STEM Education Pipeline” (2014).

The Boston Consulting Group and the Washington Roundtable, “Great Jobs Within Our Reach: Solving the Problem of Washington State’s Growing Job Skills Gap” (2013).

Capital One and Burning Glass, “Crunched by the Numbers: The Digital Skills Gap in the Workforce” (2015).

City of Austin, “Digital Inclusion Strategy 2014” (2014).

City of Seattle Department of Information Technology, Community Technology Program, “Information Technology Access and Adoption in Seattle: Progress Towards Digital Opportunity and Equity” (2014).

Communities Connect Network, “Defining Digital Inclusion for Broadband Deployment & Adoption” (2014).

Maureen Majury, “Building an IT Career-Ready Washington: 2015 and Beyond” (Seattle: Center of Excellence for Information & Computing Technology, 2014).

Seth McKinney, “Economic Development Planning in Seattle: A Review and Analysis of Current Plans and Strategies” (Seattle: University of Washington Evans School of Public Policy, 2013).

Seattle Goodwill, “Digital Literacy Initiative: Overview” (2014).

Seattle Goodwill, “Digital Literacy: Theoretical Framework” (2014).

Angela Siefer, “Trail-Blazing Digital Inclusion Communities” (OCLC and Institute of Museum and Library Services, 2013).

Tricia Vander Leest and Joe Sullivan, “ICT Training and the ABCs of Employability: YearUp’s Jobs Program for Urban Youth” (Seattle: University of Washington Center for Information & Society, 2008).

Authors

• Jessica A. Lee
• Adie Tomer