Policy Scoreboard

As I woke up this morning, I got an idea, what if there was an easy way to rank a policy on whether it should be passed and can be passed. As I was thinking about student loans, BBB, and BIF, I made this graph:Think of it this way:

1. Impact on people’s lives, positive would be how directly does it impact the average person. We are looking for both how much does It impact someone, and whether it makes peoples lives better or worse.
2. Good, how positively does this impact society as a whole.
3. Easy to pass. How many barriers are there to turn this idea into a law? at the top there is a special category for executive orders, which are by far the easiest. A low score doesn’t mean a politician shouldn’t pursue a policy, it just means it will take more time and could come with a high opportunity cost.
4. Impact on approval, how much will this impact the public’s perception about whether their government is doing a good job or not? A positive score will impact overall approval rating, a negative score will hurt the overall approval rating. Only count scores as they impact over the short run for this, a policy which will turn massive benefits in the long run but no benefit in the short run will be obviously good, but do little to help the next election.
5. Quick to implement. Once this law is passed, how long will it take to implement the provisions of the law?

I’m going to score a few famous policies, from a scale of 0-100 using this ranking system I have come up with:

1. PATRIOT ACT
   1. Impact on people’s lives: 0, no major improvement in safety, harms privacy
   2. Good: 0, it harmed American civil liberties
   3. Easy to pass: 90, Congress ate it up, so it was very easy to pass
   4. Impact on approval: 90, Bush’s popularity reached record highs which helped propel the Republicans to keep government in 2002
   5. Quick to implement: 90, it only took a few months to implement the new airport security rules
   6. Overall verdict, a short term fix for popularity which caused long term pain
2. Student loan forgiveness, ending the student loan crisis:
   1. Impact on people’s lives: 90, it will significantly help young college graduates financially who didn’t have enough money to have their parents pay for everything, but too much to qualify for enough aid
   2. Good: 99, It is the closest thing to reparations which can be done without congress, it will stimulate the economy, it will reduce inequality.
   3. Easy to pass: 100, it can be done through executive order, it gets a perfect score
   4. Impact on approval: 90, Biden’s approval among will massively increase among millennials.
   5. Quick to implement: 100, it will immediately reduce the amount of student loans owed by all borrowers by $50,000
   6. Overall verdict: this policy needs to pass, it will provide benefits in the short term and the long term, and help improve Democrat’s approval rating. No other policy has such a good positive balance
3. Universal childcare
   1. Impact on people’s lives: 99, it will increase the number of people in the workforce, preschool is demonstrated to give massive long term benefits to the people who participate in it as children.
   2. Good: 100, it will benefit the economy in the short run and the long run. Increasing household income will increase how much people can invest, which will provide long term benefits to families and the economy. It will reduce inequality. This is one of the best possible policies.
   3. Easy to pass: 50, as large budget item, its unclear how Manchin and Sinema will vote for it.
   4. Impact on approval: 90, millions of parents being able to go to work because their kids have access to preschool will be a big benefit to the Democrats.
   5. Quick to implement: 90, it hopefully will start sending out payments to parents quickly,
   6. Overall verdict, this should pass, but it faces significant hurdles in congress

So here are how three famous policies can be judged using these metrics. Use this tool yourself and really think through about how any individual policy should be scored using these metrics. Prioritize the ones which come with the highest score across all 5 metrics to get some quick, easy, impactful wins, and work down the list. It’s easier to get people to volunteer, phone bank, and lobby when they know that a politician is on their side, harness those political capital benefits early, and you will have more to work with when you are fighting for harder policies. If you skimp on the easy stuff, people will see you as insincere, and are less likely to volunteer. If people don’t see the benefit to a policy, they are again less likely to volunteer.

Merry Christmas, and a happy new year as the second half of the 117th United States Congress begins.