Why Government Fails So Often: And How It Can Do Better (79 page)

14
. Melinda Beck, “More Doctors Steer Clear of Medicare,”
Wall Street Journal
, July 29, 2013.

15
. “Medicare and Medicaid Fraud, Waste, and Abuse,” General Accountability Office, GAO-11-409T, March 9, 2011.

16
. Social Security Administration, “A Summary of the 2013 Annual Reports,”
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/
.

17
. See Franklin E. Zimring,
The City That Became Safe: New York’s Lessons for Urban Crime and Its Control
(2012); and Matthew Yglesias, “We’re on Track for the Lowest Murder Rate in 100 Years,”
Slate
, May 17, 2013.

18
. Eliot Cohen, “The Military,” in Schuck & Wilson, eds.,
Understanding America
, chap. 9; Charles Moskos,
All That We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way
(1996). The integration of women and gay people are works in progress, with the former marred by pervasive sexual predation and the latter too recent to be assessed.

19
. Thomas Le Duc, “History and Appraisal of U.S. Land Policy to 1862,” in Howard W. Ottoson, ed.,
Land Use Policy and Problems in the United States
(1963), 4–5.

20
. Ibid., 5–27.

21
. Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” in
The Frontier in American History
(1921).

22
. Aziz Rana,
The Two Faces of American Freedom
(2010), 116.

23
. Paul W. Gates, “The Homestead Act: Free Land Policy in Operation, 1862–1935,” in Ottoson, ed.,
Land Use Policy and Problems in the United States
, 28.

24
. Ibid., 32n9.

25
. Paul W. Gates,
History of Public Land Law Development
(1968), 393–97.

26
. Ibid., 770–71.

27
. Gates, “The Homestead Act,” 33.

28
. See, generally, Stephen Skowronek,
Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920
(1982). On the administration of land offices, see Jerry L. Mashaw,
Creating the Administrative Constitution: The Lost One Hundred Years of American Administrative Law
(2012).

29
. Martha Derthick, “Federalism,” in Schuck & Wilson,
Undertsanding America
, 129–30.

30
.
United States v. Fordice
, 505 U.S. 717 (1992).

31
. Gary V. Engelhardt & Jonathan Gruber,
Social Security and the Evolution of Elderly Poverty
, National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 10466 (May 2004).

32
. U.S. Social Security Administration, “Social Security Administrative Expenses,”
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/admin.html
(administrative cost); Matthew Yglesias, “The Social Security Administration Has a 99.996% Accuracy Rate for Paying Benefits to the Right People,”
http://mobile.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/06/24/social_security_errors_they_re_incredibly_rare.html?wpisrc=newsletther_jcr:content
.

33
. Henry J. Aaron, “Social Security Reconsidered,”
National Tax Journal
64 (2011): 385–414.

34
. “Progressives and the Safety Net,”
Democracy Journal
, Winter 2013, 74.

35
. Michael J. Bennett,
When Dreams Came True: The GI Bill and the Making of Modern America
(1996), x.

36
. Ibid., chap. 4.

37
. Suzanne Mettler,
Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation
(2005), 6–7.

38
. Glenn C. Altschuler & Stuart M. Blumin,
The GI Bill: A New Deal for Veterans
(2009), 210–12.

39
.
Mettler,
Soldiers to Citizens
, 8.

40
. Ira Katznelson,
When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequalities in Twentieth-Century America
(2005), 113–15; Lizabeth Cohen,
A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America
(2003), 167–70.

41
. See, e.g., Altschuler & Blumin,
The GI Bill
, chap. 7.

42
. Mettler,
Soldiers to Citizens
, 55.

43
. Ibid., 9–10.

44
. Earl Swift,
The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways
(2011), 6.

45
. U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, “Annual Vehicle-Miles of Travel, 1980–2011,” January 2012,
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2011/vm202.cfm
.

46
. Thomas L. Karnes,
Asphalt and Politics: A History of the American Highway System
(2009).

47
. U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, “Interstate FAQ,”
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/faq.htm#question8
(updated May 2, 2013).

48
. American Society of Civil Engineers, “U.S. Interstate Highway System: Monument of the Millennium,”
http://www.asce.org/People-and-Projects/Projects/Monuments-of-the-Millennium/U-S-Interstate-Highway-System/
.

49
.
Celebrating 50 Years: The Eisenhower Interstate Highway System
,
Hearing Before the House Subcomittee. on Highways, Transit & Pipelines of the House Commission on Transportation & Infrastructure
, 109th Cong. (2006) (testimony of Jonathan Gifford, Professor, School of Public Policy, George Mason University, et al.).

50
. Mark H. Rose & Raymond A. Mohl,
Interstate: Highway Politics and Policy since 1939
, 3d ed. (2012), 111.

51
. Center for American Progress, “Failing Infrastructure by the Numbers,” August 17, 2007,
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/budget/news/2007/08/17/3372/failing-infrastructure-by-the-numbers/
.

52
. Carol Wolf, “U.S. Highway Trust Fund Faces Insolvency Next Year, CBO Says,” January 31, 2012,
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012–01–31/u-s-highway-trust-fund-faces-insolvency-next-year-cbo-says.html
.

53
. Paul Vigna & Betsy Morris, “Boom Time on the Tracks: Rail Capacity, Spending Soar,”
Wall Street Journal
, March 27, 2013.

54
. “End Food Stamps, with a Caveat,”
Washington Post
, July 1, 2013.

55
. Ron Nixon & Jonathan Weisman, “House Approves Farm Bill, without Food Stamp Program,”
New York Times
, July 11, 2013.

56
. Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, “Policy Basics: Introduction to the SNAP Program,” November 20, 2012,
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2226
.

57
. Damian Paletta & Caroline Porter, “Use of Food Stamps Swells Even as Economy Improves,”
Wall Street Journal
, March 28, 2013. See Yonatan Ben-Shalom et al., “An Assessment of the Effectiveness of Anti-Poverty Programs in the United States,”
Oxford Handbook on the Economics of Poverty
(2012), Sec. 4.1 (on labor market effects).

58
. Richard H. Pildes, “The Future of Voting Rights Policy: From Anti-Discrimination to the Right to Vote,”
Howard Law Journal
49 (2006): 744; Richard H. Pildes, “The Politics of Race: Quiet Revolution in the South,”
Harvard Law Review
108 (1995): 1359–92.

59
. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights,
The Voting Rights Act Ten Years After
(1975), table 3.

60
. Adam Liptak, “Voting Rights Law Draws Skepticism from Justices,”
New York Times
, February 28, 2013 (statement of Chief Justice John Roberts at oral argument).

61
. Frank R. Parker,
Black Votes Count: Political Empowerment in Mississippi after 1965
(2011), 1; Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies,
National Roster of Black Elected Officials: Fact Sheet
,
http://www.jointcenter.org/sites/default/files/upload/research/files/National%20Roster%20of%20Black%20Elected%20Officials%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf
.

62
.
Carol Hardy-Fanta, Christine Marie Sierra, Pei-te Lien, Dianne M. Pinderhughes, & Wartyna L. Davis, “Race, Gender, and Descriptive Representation: An Exploratory View of Multicultural Elected Leadership in the United States” (2005),
http://www.gmcl.org/pdf/APSA9–05–05.pdf
, 3–4.

63
.
Allen v. State Board of Elections
, 393 U.S. 544 (1969).

64
. Compare, e.g.,
Parents Involved in Community School v. Seattle School District No. 1
, 551 U.S. 701 (2007); and
Allen v. State Board of Elections
(Stevens, J., dissenting; Breyer, Stevens, Souter, & Ginsburg, J.J., dissenting).

65
. See, generally, Schuck,
Diversity in America
, chap. 5.

66
. Charlie Savage, “Report Finds Political Splits and Unprofessionalism in Voting Agency,”
New York Times
, March 13, 2013.

67
. J. Morgan Kousser,
Colorblind Injustice: Minority Voting Rights and the Undoing of the Second Reconstruction
(1999), 347–48.

68
. “Voting Rights Watershed,”
Wall Street Journal
, February 28, 2013.

69
.
Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder
, 133 S. Ct. 2612 (2013).

70
. Pildes, “The Future of Voting Rights Policy,” 743.

71
. Taylor Branch,
At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965–68
(2006), 275–78.

72
. It certainly helped that the Supreme Court quickly affirmed the law’s constitutionality.
Katzenbach v. Morgan
, 384 U.S. 681 (1966).

73
. Adam Liptak, “Voting Rights Act Is Challenged as Cure the South Has Outgrown,”
New York Times
, February 17, 2013.

74
. See, e.g.,
Veith v. Jubilerer
, 541 U.S. 267 (2004); and
Georgia v. Ashcroft
, 539 U.S. 461 (2003).

75
. See Peter H. Schuck,
Diversity in America
, 87–88.

76
. See, e.g., Schuck,
Diversity in America
, chap. 4; and Peter H. Schuck, “Alien Rumination: What Immigrants Have Wrought in America,”105
Yale Law Journal
1963 (1996).

77
. See, e.g., Peter H. Schuck,
Citizens, Strangers, and In-Betweens: Essays on Immigration and Citizenship
(1998), 4–11.

78
. Jacob L. Vigdor, “Measuring Immigrant Assimilation in Post-Recession America,”
Civic Report
76 (2013),
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_76.htm#.UVXMCxyR98E
.

79
. Kristina Peterson, “Immigration’s Tricky Politics,”
Wall Street Journal
, September 7, 2013.

80
. Peter H. Schuck, “Bordering on Folly,”
American Lawyer
, October 2007, 83–86.

81
. On the ideology of settler freedom, see Rana,
The Two Faces of American Freedom
.

82
. See, e.g., Peter H. Schuck & John E. Tyler, “Making the Case for Changing U.S. Policy Regarding Highly Skilled Immigrants,”
Fordham Urban Law Journal
38 (2010): 327–62.

83
. Robert A. Moffitt, “Economics and the Earned Income Tax Credit,” in John J. Siegfried, ed.,
Better Living through Economics
(2010), 88.

84
. Anne L. Alstott, “Why the EITC Doesn’t Make Work Pay,”
Law & Contemporary Problems
73 (2010): 285–314. Richard J. Zeckhauser and I proposed a wage supplement approach in Richard J. Zeckhauser & Peter Schuck, “An Alternative to the Nixon Income Maintenance Plan,”
Public Interest
19 (1970): 120–30.

85
. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “Policy Basics: The Earned Income Tax Credit,”
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2505
; Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “Earned Income Tax Credit,”
http://www.cbpp.org/research/index.cfm?fa=topic&id=27
.

86
. Internal Revenue Service, “Earned Income Tax Credit: Fraud,”
http://www.eitc.irs.gov/rptoolkit/faqs/fraud/
.

87
. U.S. Government Accountability Office,
Improper Payments: Recent Efforts to Address Improper Payments and Remaining Challenges
,
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11575t.pdf
.

88
. Moffitt, “Economics and the Earned Income Tax Credit,” 102. See also Sara Sternberg
Greene, “The Broken Safety Net: A Study of Earned Income Tax Credit Recipients and a Proposal for Repair,”
New York University Law Review
88 (2013): 515–588; Sabrina Tavernise, “Antipoverty Tax Program Offers Relief, Though Often Temporary,”
New York Times
, April 17, 2012.