Updated at 5:38 p.m.
Join us as National Journal Editorial Director Ronald Brownstein and a panel of experts discuss common myths in K-12 education policy.
In addition to debunking myths, the panel will examine how federal investment can improve access to quality education and increase college and career preparedness rates among high school graduates.
View results from National Journal's September Education Poll
Paul G. Vallas, superintendent of the Recovery School District of Louisiana gives a keynote talk.
Brownstein and Vallas sit down for a discussion.
Education experts and policymakers discuss how to measure student achievement and teacher effectiveness.
View highlights of the event after the jump.
Continue reading Student Achievement: Myths vs. Reality.
Updated at 5:50 p.m.
As we near the end of the 111th Congress and begin preparing for the start of the 112th, comprehensive energy legislation remains high on policymakers' 'to-do' list. America faces several key challenges that raise the question: What are the best new energy solutions, and what is the right energy mix for the future?
National Journal hosts a discussion with featured guests Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, and Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., to examine the future of American energy, sustainable solutions to meet our energy needs, the viability of new energy sources, the problem of energy security and what Congress can do to set America on the path of energy independence.
Watch the entire event after the jump.
Continue reading Energy, Environment And The Economy: Innovative Solutions For America's Future.
Updated at 12:53 p.m. on Sept. 24
The health care reform bill signed into law this year places an emphasis on preventive care and wellness. But as clinicians are encouraged to spend more on early detection, many wonder how much prevention will actually save in health costs over time.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act allocates $15 billion over 10 years to the Prevention and Wellness Public Health Fund, which is designed to combat obesity, smoking and other preventable health concerns.
Though working to prevent diseases could cut costs for medication and doctor visits, according to Dan Crippen, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, disease prevention can eventually cost the government more.
Prevention increases longevity, but in the long run, more people living longer means more patients using Medicare, Crippen said today at a National Journal Live Policy Summit.
"The more [patients] you take out of the system, the more that are on Medicare and using Social Security," Crippen said. "They are taking out; they are not adding taxes. That's OK. But it means that we have this dilemma of, we're going to save money but it will cost someone else."
Still, while longevity may present problems from a federal fiscal standpoint, it is proving beneficial to employers. According to Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, who also participated in today's summit, more employers are turning to wellness programs to get their employees fit. Healthy employees drive down insurance costs, in addition to reducing absenteeism and improving productivity.
Employers who offer wellness programs will now be able to get a refund of 30 percent of the cost on insurance plans, as part of the Affordable Care Act.
"It's an incentive now for businesses to start providing preventive and wellness programs," said Senate HELP Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, at today's summit. "Twenty-seven years ago when employers began offering preventive and wellness programs, they were not given a tax credit. But what they found was productivity went up, sick days were less."
Updated at 2:00 p.m. on Sept. 20
As the six-month anniversary of the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act approaches this week, five new provisions of the bill are going into effect, and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is trying to make the case that the legislation will improve health care around the country.
"The bill is designed to put some stability around the existing market... fixing some of the features of the existing market that made health insurance really tenuous for a lot of people," Sebelius told National Journal Editorial Director Ronald Brownstein at a National Journal Live event today.
Despite efforts in the law to cut health costs for consumers, some insurance providers have warned that they will hike up premiums as much as 9 percent because of the legislation. But Sebelius said actuarial reports show that justifiable rate increases should be only around 1 or 2 percent as the law is implemented. Though she said she believes rate increases will be substantial, "it has little to do with passage of the Act and more to do with the marketplace."
Continue reading Sebelius Offers Six-Month Checkup On Reform.
When Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared war on Pentagon bloat this summer, he put Ashton Carter, the Department of Defense's top arms buyer, in charge of the campaign.
A theoretical physicist by training and former Rhodes Scholar, Carter serves as the under secretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, one of the most powerful jobs in the Pentagon. He oversees hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of programs, from the purchase of thousands of armored vehicles for Afghanistan to the hiring of the tech-savvy contractors who help manage military computer networks.
Like his boss, Carter openly acknowledges that the post-Sept. 11 spike in defense spending is rapidly coming to an end. He has worked with Gates to scrap or restructure more 30 high-profile programs, halting new purchases of the expensive F-22 fighter jet and scrapping the centerpiece of the Army's $200 billion Future Combat System.
This week, he announced dozens of contracting changes designed to help Gates wring $100 billion in savings out of the Pentagon's budget over the next five years. Carter sat down with National Journal to discuss what will likely be the biggest challenge of his professional career.
Edited excerpts of the interview follow.
Continue reading Pentagon's Top Arms Buyer On Cutting Back.
Updated at 4:20 p.m. on Sept. 16
White House officials anticipate that the new health care law will stimulate growth in the health industry and create jobs across other industries.
According to White House Office of Health Reform director Nancy-Ann DeParle, the estimated 3.2 million jobs that will be created in the health sector through 2018 will be augmented by investments and savings in the Affordable Care Act.
"If we are able to restrain costs by eliminating the waste and inefficiency, not eliminating the important and critical care, we can have the same real amount of health care with resources left over to produce other things that we value," DeParle said in prepared remarks at a National Journal Group Policy Summit on Wednesday.
Continue reading White House Offers Prescription For Growth.
Updated at 9:05 a.m. on Sept. 13.
As the United States undergoes the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, experts say the changes in social climate are what set this recession apart.
Atlantic Media Political Director Ronald Brownstein moderated a panel discussion at the National Press Club today that assessed the results of the latest Allstate-National Journal Heartland Monitor poll. The survey was conducted across the country to gauge how middle-class Americans are experiencing the economy.
A jarring 70 percent of Americans said that a relative or close friend has lost his or her job as a result of the downturn. Brownstein noted in his analysis that those "who responded to the poll from the upper rungs of the income ladder are as likely to say they know someone who has lost a job as are those on the lower steps; whites are as likely to have friends or relatives who have been displaced as are minorities."
Continue reading What's Next For Middle America?.
Congress will not act on comprehensive climate legislation for at least the next two years, and longer if a Republican becomes president in 2012, says environmental activist Bill McKibben. So McKibben, who founded the international climate campaign 350.org, is advising his fellow green groups to stop worrying about lawmakers for now and start working to change the minds of the voters who elect them.
McKibben, who will be in Washington this week to advocate action on global warming, said climate talks on both the domestic and global levels have all but shut down since Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid punted on a climate bill this summer. "I think, frankly, the next couple years will be a quiet time legislatively given the likely outcome of the November elections," McKibben told NationalJournal.com late last week. "And we better use that time to build a real movement -- the thing we haven't had in the past."
He says environmental groups should drop green jobs and national security from their messaging strategy and warn voters that the planet is facing a worsening environmental peril, a striking difference from what members of Congress -- especially key Republicans, like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina -- have favored.
Edited excerpts of the interview follow.
Continue reading Time For Greens To Focus On Voters, Not Pols.
In late August, Americans watched as the last U.S. combat brigade rolled out of Iraq, officially ending Operation Iraqi Freedom. The withdrawal of 50,000 troops and the closing or transferring of hundreds of military bases in Iraq this year is one of the largest post-combat redeployments of U.S. forces in decades.
Remarkably, the withdrawal from Iraq that culminated on August 31 was not even the primary focus of the support officers at U.S. Central Command. They were more concerned with the flooding that had deluged huge swaths of Pakistan, displacing millions of people and restricting one of two major supply arteries in the south that support roughly 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan.
There's an old military adage that amateurs talk strategy, while professionals talk logistics. The simultaneous withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq and the surge of more than 30,000 troops into Afghanistan is a case study in modern military logistics destined for future textbooks. For an early review of the largest such movement in recent years, National Journal Correspondent James Kitfield spoke with Lt. Gen. Mitchell Stevenson, Army deputy chief of staff for logistics.
Subscribers to National Journal can read the full interview here.
Contrary to popular opinion, Sarah Palin is not the leader of the Tea Party movement, says Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots. And, although his organization bills itself as the "official home" of the movement, Meckler is quick to point out that he is not the leader, either. While Palin and D.C.-based organizations like FreedomWorks soak up most of the publicity, Meckler says the Tea Party is a truly grassroots phenomenon led by its members.
Fresh off the Tea Party-centered activity in Washington last weekend, Meckler spoke with NationalJournal.com about what he sees as misconceptions surrounding the movement, its differences with the Republican Party, and why Nov. 2 could mark "the first shot in the second American Revolution."
Continue reading Meckler: Tea Party Is About People, Not Palin.
