Table of Contents
PRAISE FOR THE TWO PERCENT SOLUTION
The Two Percent Solution is a welcome return to political thinking on a big-canvas agenda. Millers plans do not reduce to cynical exercises ... designed mainly to win and hold on to executive power. Instead, they are intended to include all citizens under the simple idea that the public sector can intelligently do some good in the world.
CHRIS LEHMANN, Washington Post Book World
Most people think that making America a far more decent placea place with a lot less poverty and miseryis an unattainable dream. It aint soand this book explains why. Matt Millers book is the best explanation Ive seen so far of how a bit more money and a lot more sense can improve our society.
PAUL KRUGMAN
A small marvel of a book, an extended discussion of public policy that will wake you up rather than put you to sleep ... the Republican in the White House should take heed as well.
GARY ROSEN, Wall Street Journal
Matt Miller shows that the biggest crisis we face is the crisis of imagination. Political leaders refuse to think outside the conventional ruts. But Miller has done just that, superbly. I havent felt this hopeful about domestic policy and our national prospects in a long time.
DAVID BROOKS
In this stimulating and constructive book, syndicated columnist Matthew Miller not only calls our attention to some of the most serious and urgent problems confronting our country, but also accomplishes the even more laudable feat of offering some workableand affordablesolutions.... Miller has a gift for setting forth his ideas in vigorous, direct and irresistibly lively language.
MERLE RUBIN, Los Angeles Times
Matt Miller for president ... If you care about where the nation is headed, if you worry about 40 million Americans having no health coverage, about struggling urban schools ... about the 15 million Americans who work full time but still live below the poverty line, read Millers book ... Miller is passionate and bold.
CHRIS SATULLO, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Read the first 50 pages of The Two Percent Solution and you wont be able to stop. Matt Miller is a major new talent in American public life, and his first book flows like a fresh, cold stream through the Rockies, slicing through mountains of rhetoric toward irresistible conclusions. But be warned: you wont be able to finish the book without feeling incensed about the way were failing to fix our health care, our schools, and our future.
DAVID GERGEN
Whether you mostly agree or disagree with Matt Miller, you can never fault him for thinking small. Indeed, he is fast becoming one of the most original and interesting essayists on politics and policy in the country. The Two Percent Solution offers another intelligent challenge to the tired conventions of contemporary political debate from a man whose chief interest is always the progress of his country.
JOHN MCCAIN
[Miller is] an engaging writer and out-of-the-box thinker ... His solutions uniquely combine a powerful moral dimension with economic sophistication and a lot of original thinking.
DAN SELIGMAN, Commentary
If liberals and conservatives could ever agree on anything, it would have to be something as blazingly simpleand originalas Matt Millers two percent solution. And Miller is one hundred percent right: Weve got to get serious about fixing our nations substandard schools, insultingly low wages, and unaffordable health insurance. The Two Percent Solution is an ideal place to begin the debate on rebuilding America.
BARBARA EHRENREICH
While other political authors rant and point fingers, Miller offers readers a centrist vision of how we might redeem Americas commitments to equal opportunity and a minimally decent life ... The strength of Millers book isnt just in these ideas ... It comes in boldly arguing that these ideas belong at the center of the political debate even after a decade in which one president miniaturized the national agenda and another miniaturized the nations resources.
MARK PAUL, The Sacramento Bee
[An] elegant read
DAVID GRATZER, National Review
A grand new policy vision that seeks to enrich public life and solve seemingly intractable policy dilemmas while re-animating the dormant center of American politics.
BENJAMIN HEALY, The Atlantic Monthly Online
For pure American-style optimism, nothing beats Millers reformist thesiscarefully researched and argued in convincing economic and political detailthat at the cost of two percent of the GDP, health insurance could become universal, public education for the poor could be dramatically improved and poverty could be nearly eliminated.... This book is a blueprint to the United States society I wish I lived in.
GREGG EASTERBROOK, New Republic Online
Original, arresting, and carefully argued, The Two Percent Solution establishes Matt Miller as the liberal to reckoned with. Conservatives need to pay attentionbecause what Miller is proposing today, were all going to be debating tomorrow.
DAVID FRUM
In addressing the obligation of the more to the less fortunate ... Miller, a disciple of philosopher John Rawls, is at his most prophetic.
R. STEPHEN WARNER, Christian Century
Matt Millers Two Percent Solution challenges us to get serious about social justice by confronting the reality of America, not the unreality of most political campaigns. This critical book asks us to open our minds far enough to see that real remedies exist for some of this countrys toughest problems.
BILL BRADLEY
The Two Percent Solution proves what those who have read his newspaper column know: Matt Miller is not only brilliant but he has what is even rarer, an original mind that comes up with fresh answers to old problems. And whats more, he presents it all in prose that is as lively as it is incisive.
CHARLES PETERS
For Jody and Amelia
PROLOGUE
Heres the Deal
Suppose I told you that for just two cents on the national dollar we could have a country where everyone had health insurance, every full-time worker earned a living wage, every poor child had a great teacher in a fixed-up school, and politicians spent their time with average Americans because they no longer had to grovel to wealthy donors? Suppose I also said wed largely be using conservative means (like tax subsidies and vouchers) to reach these seemingly liberal goalsand that when we were done, government would be smaller than it was when Ronald Reagan was president?
If youre like most people, Id wager that for two cents on the dollar youd say this sounds like an intriguing deal. But then suppose I explained that two cents on the dollar means two percent of our $11 trillion national income (gross domestic product, or GDP), which is $220 billion a yearorders of magnitude beyond the boundaries of Washington debate? If you listen to the experts who set the terms of that debatethe politicians, the mainstream press, and the vast associated network of analysts, advocates, and other talking headsyoud conclude such a plan was impossible. If you listen to common sense, however, finding two cents on the dollar to reach the goals Ive mentioned seems almost a snap.
