Gene Sperling - Economic Dignity

What Works in Girls Education (with Rebecca Winthrop and Barbara Herz)

The Pro-Growth Progressive

In the fall of 2009, it was not unusual for me to get a call from a congressman or senator wanting to complain about President Barack Obamas economic policy. I was doing a stint as a senior counselor to the secretary of the Treasurypart of the special firefighting team brought in during the worst of the financial crisis. As I had previously been President Bill Clintons White House national economic adviser and had worked in the West Wing every day of his eight years, many members of Congress knew me wellcertainly well enough to feel comfortable complaining.

One call that fall got right to the point: Gene, a few of us were talking, and we were hoping you could help convince President Obama that he should be focusing only on the economynot health care!

The congressman was not claiming that President Obama had not thrown his heart and soul into saving the economy from the most devastating financial crisis since the Great Depression. Clearly, he had. Nor was he asking for a dramatic second stimulus plan. This member of Congress, like many others, was already petrified about a political backlash over the false notion that too much had already been spent. What he wanted was better optics. He wanted President Obama to demonstrate that he was focused solely on the economyto use President Clintons famous linelike a laser beam. And that meant that he should stop talking about his fight for universal health care and talk only about jobs and growth.

At one level, this was just another call you get in the government that makes you want to scream in frustration. But there was something else that struck me more deeply: the unexamined assumption that guaranteeing health-care security for every American was somehow not about the economy.

In the over two decades since I started my policy career on the 1988 presidential campaign of Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, I had been privileged to be on the field or at least in a good box seat for most of our national economic policy debate. I had been blessed to work for leaders truly committed to economic justice, from Mario Cuomo to Bill Clinton to Barack Obama. Yet I had also come to see that even for well-meaning policymakers, it was too easy to take your eye off the ball; to start confusing means and ends. Economic conventions and the day-to-day battles of politics can lead anyone to focus too much on particular economic metrics and political strategies and too little on how economic policy ultimately affects the happiness and sense of meaning and fulfillment in peoples lives. Of course, no one means to lose their focus. And yet we can become too attached to certain policy designs, ideological tribes, or message frames, as if they were ends in themselves. People on all sides dig in to defend specific positions without remembering that their favored metrics or policy mechanisms are means to the ultimate end goals of lifting up peoples lives, and should be evaluated and reevaluated based on their effectiveness in light of changing economic, technological, and political trends.

I personally have never related to any of the labels or policy camps that others have assigned to me over the years. Its easy to be accused of being a technocrat without conviction if you confess to being open to any policy or strategy that would work to enhance what matters most in the lives of the most people possible. Why should this be so? Why shouldnt our economic convictions and philosophies be centered on our end goals for lifting up all people, as opposed to fixed strategies for getting there? When we go to doctors for a serious matter, we want their end goal to be the promotion of our good healthnot their commitment to a particular medicine or a defense of past prescriptions when they have better evidence of what now works best.

Keeping a clear eye on that ultimate end goal is also crucial for knowing what to prioritize when you are making policy. It requires not just knowing what is right, but what you feel will matter most in lifting up the lives of people you are there to serve. Too often, decisions about prioritization end up being compelled by the congressional calendar, polling, or current policy fadswithout a deep and reflective consideration of what will be most meaningful in lifting up lives.

My way of clearing my head and avoiding this trap has always been to step away and ask a simple question: When someone is on their deathbed and looks back on all their years, what would they say mattered most in their economic life? What would make them feel pride and satisfaction instead of despair or frustration?

Those questions might not help determine the precise level of corporate taxation or what specific jobs program to favor. But it forces us to ask ourselves: What economic policies will matter most at a human level? Nobody on their deathbed is going to say that what mattered most to them was the deficit or spending as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). Instead, they will be thinking about how well they were able to care for their families; provide opportunity for their children; enjoy the best moments of family life; feel proud of their work; and enjoy camaraderie, autonomy, and respect in their jobs; and whether or not they had at least a fair shot to pursue their sense of ambition or purpose.

These reflections made me think more and more about the questions of dignity at stake in our debates on health-care policy. I found myself ruminating on the heartbreaking stories of parents with terribly ill children who couldnt provide the care they needed or whose family was left in economic despair and even bankruptcy because of gaps in coverage, discrimination against preexisting conditions, or arbitrary limits on care.