Brookings expert discusses Yucca Mountain, border wall funding and more

By Ric Anderson

Saturday, March 16, 2019 | 2 a.m.

The Brookings Institution’s John Hudak has been a frequent visitor to Las Vegas in recent years, teaching classes at UNLV and giving community presentations both on campus and in special events such as the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce’s annual Preview expo.

This month, he and colleague Richard Reeves took part in a unique event — a debate on single-payer health insurance against members of UNLV’s debate team.

“D.C. think-tanks run the risk of appearing to cloistered, too remote and too distant from the daily lives of individuals,” Hudak said. “So being able to come out to a university like UNLV and have that kind of community engagement far from the Beltway is one of the best opportunities we have.”

Hudak, a senior fellow in governance studies and the deputy director of Brookings’ Center for Effective Public Management, sat down with the Sun to discuss a variety of recent political issues. Excerpts of the conversation follow, edited for clarity and brevity:

So here we go again: President Donald Trump included funding to resurrect the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in his recommended budget. Should we be worried here in Nevada, or is this funding dead on arrival in Congress?

It’s really dead on arrival. Nancy Pelosi has made clear that this is not a Democratic priority. Given the success that Democrats had in 2018 in this state, Pelosi is aware enough to know that (approving funding for Yucca) could be devastating for her party.

So you’re seeing movement right now within the Nevada congressional delegation to propose legislation to freeze all of this.

I also don’t think this is a high priority for Republicans to get this moving.

There are going to be big fights in Congress on a lot of things this year, but I don’t think Yucca will be among them.

Speaking of big fights, are you expecting a government shutdown?

It’s very likely. The president has made clear that he’s comfortable with shutdowns. Democrats aren’t losing the battle when shutdowns happen, so there’s no real incentive for them to give in to what they see as outlandish presidential demands, and (Trump) doesn’t see a need to give in to what he sees as outlandish Democratic demands.

So I’d hope that the administration learned its lessons from the last government shutdown. It’s less likely than it was before the last one, but anything’s possible when it comes to this debate over border funding, in particular.

Was there enough backlash to make a difference? 

The president’s poll numbers have rebounded, but he definitely lost about 4 to 6 points while it was happening. Of course, then we moved on to the next crisis — whatever that happened to be the next day. But he had some short-term political damage, and Democrats did not.

Now, the fact that the backlash was short-term makes it more likely the president will ignore it. But ultimately, it’s a risk in the future that that type of damage becomes more permanent for the president, who frankly can’t afford to lose any points in polling as he moves toward election.

What do you foresee happening on the border wall funding?

Congress said no to him last time on a similar number, and they have no incentive to say yes this time, particularly since he’s doing this on his own anyway.

There’s a lot that’s obviously going to be controversial around wall funding, but there’s a lot that’s going to surprise people — for instance, the president asking for an increase in defense spending even while he’s using defense dollars to fund his emergency declaration to build a wall. That suggests the defense department has excess funding — that it doesn’t need all the money it’s getting if that money is so easily moved from what were internally earmarked projects. If that’s the case, perhaps a budget freeze or decrease would be healthy for the department next year.

These are sort of complicated negotiating tactics that I believe are eluding the administration right now. But the president’s move on transferring defense dollars to fund the emergency declaration is going to be a mistake that he regrets.

You and a colleague wrote a blog post recently about funding for the border wall. Can you summarize it for us?

The idea that we can fix the problem with dollars underestimates just how complicated and how broken our immigration system is.

For instance, the president has announced that he wants to hire thousands of new border agents. And his administration threw quite a bit of money — tens of millions of dollars — at the problem, to try to hire individuals.

And they’ve hired fewer than 10 with that money. That’s because it’s really difficult, first of all, to get people to pass all of the required background checks and are fit for service. It’s also very hard to send someone to a remote part of the desert and expect them to move their family with them, and have the quality of life and work-life balance you’d want.

It’s very difficult to recruit people to immigration jobs in this country. And what’s happening now is that more people are retiring than are being hired. So this idea that simply throwing money at it is going to fix it does not match up with the evidence, whereas if you use drones and other technology, you need fewer people to achieve similar results.

Given the challenges that the government has had with hiring, that is one of the best options they have to try to get a better handle on this problem.

Those 10 hires were done over how long a period of time?

At least a year.

And were those some sort of specialized positions within the organization?

No, they were border patrol agents. To fill those positions is difficult, and then to retain them is difficult too. So some people will sign up, then see what their job actually is and won’t care for it, or will ask for transfers into other law enforcement agencies.

But the number of people who fail polygraph tests, drug tests and psychological evaluations for jobs that require clearance would astound you.

Does the difficulty in hiring strengthen the argument for a physical barrier?

There is an argument that a physical barrier would be an effective device in a place where you don’t have an adequate workforce. The challenge is that constructing that barrier is legally and physically complicated. So because we know we’re not going to have a full physical border, it’s better to use other approaches to deal with this.

You’re not going to use eminent domain to clear all of the private property. You’re not going to run walls roughshod through Native American reservations without extraordinary legal challenges.

Every section where you have gaps are sections that people are going to come through. So you get to a point where you have to think more rationally about not necessarily what is the best device, but what is the most feasible device to deal with immigration policy.

Let’s go to subjects. Now that the dust has settled from the Michael Cohen testimony, do you think it will have any lasting importance?

I don’t. The testimony was sort of a blockbuster for people who like politics. His testimony was informative about some of the things that allegedly go on in the Trump Organization and in the administration. But he likely didn’t change anyone’s mind. If you wanted to believe what he was saying, you believed it. And if you didn’t want to believe what he was saying, you could say to yourself, “Here’s a guy who’s going to jail for lying to Congress, so why should we believe him now?”

I’m sure his testimony was fairly informative for Robert Mueller, and it might help inform a bigger picture. But in the day-to-day politics and in terms of public opinion, it was an interesting day that most people have forgotten.

Regarding the House’s anti-hate resolution, were you surprised that it didn’t name Rep. Ilhan Omar? 

Yeah. If you’re going to have an honest conversation about racial, ethnic, religious sensitivities in our society and in Congress, calling people by name is an important step in that direction.

It might anger some freshmen and the person getting called out. In this case with Rep. Omar, she’s new to Congress and she’s already a repeat offender in terms of saying things that are being interpreted as insensitive or worse. So that behavior doesn’t change unless you really force it.

The freshmen feel so empowered by the media attention they’re receiving, some of them are behaving very differently than freshmen usually do. In some cases that’s good, but in other cases it’s not. They’re new to the job; they have to think of it in those terms. People who are new to the job don’t run the office on Day One. And there’s a lot of cultural learning that happens in any new occupation, so a lot of the freshmen would do well to take a breath and look around them and learn what successful life in Congress looks like.

Right now, a lot of them are doing that, but a few very vocal ones are creating headaches for the party.

In the UNLV debate, you were assigned to argue against establishing single-payer health insurance. But afterward, everyone involved agreed that the U.S. should move incrementally in that direction. Why is that the best approach?

Anyone who thinks health care in this country is doing everything it should do is delusional. There are a lot of needs going unmet in terms of individuals’ health care and the broader system.

Given that it’s not only such a significant part of our economy but also such an important part of our day-to-day lives — whether you have access to high-quality health care, and whether it’s affordable — all of that makes it shocking that Congress is doing almost nothing about it or in some cases rolling back some protections.

But incrementalism is necessary for a policy that is so enveloping of the American economy. To do anything drastic to it could be pretty disastrous.

You and Richard Reeves hammered home that point during the debate — that a huge number of jobs are at stake here. Does that aspect of the issue get lost in the national conversation?

It does. When you listen to members of Congress and other policymakers talk about changes that need to happen to health care, you hear a lot about paperwork and redundancies and bureaucracy. And while those things are challenging and can create real inefficiencies in the system, behind all of them are employees who are doing a job and providing for their families. Simply erasing that may create more efficiency and cost savings in the economy, but you have to think about what’s next for the people who are working in those jobs. They’re not trying to make health care more complicated but just trying to live a decent life and have a good income.

Let’s discuss the 2020 election. With everybody watching to see what Joe Biden does, what’s your take on him as a candidate?

Biden comes in with universal name recognition, he’s polling better than anyone and he’s obviously someone who credential-wise needs no introduction. The American people need very little convincing that he has the experience necessary to be a president.

That’s obviously not true of a lot of Democrats who have entered this field, and some who haven’t gotten in yet.

He’s also paid his dues to the party and has a network of supporters and fundraising opportunities that a lot of people who run for office can only dream of.

But the other side of it is that because he’s been around as long as he has, he’s had to cast a lot of votes. He’s been part of a Democratic Party that has evolved dramatically since he came to Congress in the 1970s. Where the party is now on issues like criminal justice reform and policing policy, those are issues where Biden is going to face a real challenge proving he’s changed.

There are a lot of primary voters who’ll hear him say he’s sorry and he’s changed, and they’re not going to give a damn. They’re still going to hold that against him, because you have other candidates who’ve spent their entire career fighting against the types of criminal justice legislation that Joe Biden didn’t just support, but authored.

That’s what makes it even more damning. His role as chair of the judiciary committee and other top leadership roles in the Senate are going to come back to bite him, because we’ve changed so much as a country and the Democratic Party has changed, too.

If anyone can convince Democratic voters that he’s changed and that his past experiences will inform what he does in the future, he’s probably the only one who can do it effectively, but I’m not convinced anyone can do it.

Could Barack Obama help him in that respect?

He could, but a lot of Democrats, particularly on the far left, have a bad taste in their mouth for Obama as well.

Do you think that having such a large and expanding field of candidates will hurt the Democrats?

I don’t. The reality is that the number of people will winnow down eventually, and the ability of Democrats to find candidates who reflect their values will happen fairly quickly once these campaigns get up and running.

The flip side is that the Republican field last time was crowded, and they nominated a candidate who was an extraordinary underdog and ended up beating a candidate who most people thought was unbeatable. The response to that sometimes is you don’t want Democrats nominating a Donald Trump, but the reality is that the Republicans nominated a giant-killer and he came from a large field.

That suggestion is out there a lot, that this big field is bad for Democrats. I don’t see that at all. In fact, one of the criticisms from 2016 was that Clinton wasn’t vetted enough in the primary because the field was so small.

Are you a proponent of strengthening the requirements to run for office?

I’m not, for a couple of reasons. People showing their tax returns are good, but the desire to go in and meddle with the Constitution just to add layers of what an elite class is going to believe is a necessary requirement, I’m just not a fan. It’s the same thing as term limits. It’s restricting an individual’s choice over candidates.

What other things are you watching most closely?

The ability of Democrats to operate internally in a more harmonious way, particularly in Congress, has been surprising in the first couple of months. Pelosi is a master vote counter, and there have been a couple of defeats in votes on legislation so far. Part of that is that she’s still getting a feel for who her Democratic colleagues are, particularly the new ones.

There’s a whole lot of new Democratic colleagues and it takes a little while to adjust to their quirks. And some of these new Democrats are quite quirky. The amount of time it takes for that machine to become well oiled again is going to determine how effectively the speaker can negotiate with the president and how much leadership Pelosi can show in terms of keeping a party under control in advance of a presidential campaign.

She is uniquely positioned to be able to dictate the types of conversations that the Democratic Party is forced to have. Chuck Schumer can’t do that.

That really rests on Pelosi’s shoulders, and she can have an outsized effect on the presidential primary without even endorsing a candidate. She knows that. She’s been through this before.

She can do that most effectively if her caucus cooperates with her. If people within the caucus believe she’s wrong about the conversations she wants to have, Democrats will miss an opportunity to craft what types of issues are discussed both in the primary and general election.

Is there any precedent that might suggest whether the Democrats will pull away from her?

It’s hard to say. The one thing that helps with all of this is that there is a unifying force for Nancy Pelosi, and that is opposition to Donald Trump. It’s what Mitch McConnell did during the Obama presidency with a very fractious Republican Party. When everyone was screaming at each other, there was one lightning rod that would wash at least most of the dissent away, and that was Obama.

Pelosi has that too with Trump. That’s a lot easier than if the president were of the same party, and it’s a lot easier than if the president were 15 or 20 points more popular.

So you see her relying on this a little right now. Her comment about not thinking Donald Trump is worth impeachment is brilliant. It is a way for her to get her party talking about the president again, and not Rep. Omar or border funding or missed opportunities on gun votes. It’s her way to align the party in a way that everyone is feeling that shared sense of commitment to a cause. That cause is making sure Donald Trump doesn’t get re-elected.

So impeachment isn’t something she could use to unify and energize the caucus?

She understands that impeachments are divisive — she said that. She’s lived through it already, so she knows what it does. And she knows Republicans in the Senate will never convict Donald Trump and remove him from office.

She’s recognizing that the election is less than two years away, and that impeachment takes a while and hurts the country. She said that if there was something that was so beyond the pale and bipartisan, then we move forward. But until that happens, maybe impeaching still happens, but the loudest voices screaming for it are not going to be from the speaker’s office. That’s a way to help protect the party.

In a lot of ways, Pelosi is a party elder. She’s seen everything before. There are a lot of people in Congress who play that role in leadership positions, and there’s this newness and this desire to be big and splashy in Congress. But the reality is that Pelosi has two jobs right now: to protect Democratic policies and defeat a president. If anything, including impeachment, is going to hurt that even slightly, she’s not going to support it.