1NC---Grapevine---R5

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Fiscal redistribution requires BOTH taxing and spending---violation they only spend.
Hicks 86, Researcher, Northwestern University (Alexander Hicks, 1986, “CLASS INFLUENCE ON
REDISTRIBUTIVE POLICY: THE CASE OF U.S. STATE GOVERNMENTS, 1951-1961,” Journal of Political and
Military Sociology, Vol. 14)//BB

The present redistributive policy focus is on a particular type of government redistribution that may be
called direct fiscal redistribution to the poor (hereafter DFRP). Fiscal redistribution refers here to
redistribution of money and in-kind income among strata of households by means of both
government spending and taxing (i.e., fiscal ) activities. For example, increased generosity in public
assistance payment levels and reliance upon progressive income as opposed to regressive sales taxes
can provide positive fiscal redistribution . Direct fiscal redistribution refers to that part of such
redistribution that can be accounted for in terms of government's relatively direct and immediate give-
and-take of expenditures and taxes to and from income strata of households. Current evidence
suggests that such redistribution is considerable in advanced capitalist political democracies, especially
vis-à-vis the poor (e.g., Reynolds and Smolensky, 1977; Hicks and Swank, 1984b). During the 1970s DFRP
apparently augmented the "pre-fisc" income share of poor households in the U.S. by over 100 percent
(see Reynolds and Smolensky, 1977: 74 on the U.S.; and Hicks and Swank, 1984b on advanced
capitalism).

Voting issue: limits and ground---they expand the topic to any policy that spends
money. Only fiscal redistribution calibrates neg ground and enables effective clash.
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Text: The Federal Reserve ought to substantially increase its monetary policy by
adopting a labor standard including, but not limited to, the areas of rural agriculture.

That solves and competes – pegs the dollar to an amount of labor, functionally
providing a jobs guarantee.
Hendrickson 18 (Joshua R. Hendrickson, holds a BA, MA, and PhD in economics, from the University
of Toledo (BA, MA) and Wayne State University, associate professor and chair of the department of
economics at the University of Mississippi; "Monetary Policy as a Jobs Guarantee", July 2018, Mercatus
Center, https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/hendrickson_-_policy_brief_-
_monetary_policy_as_a_jobs_guarantee_-_v1.pdf, DOA: 4-3-2023)//ATJ

One recent fiscal policy proposal to address unemployment is a “job guarantee.” This proposal would essentially
require that the government be willing to hire workers at a fixed real wage at all times.1 Thus, the government would
provide a safety net for workers in the form of a job should the worker be willing to work for the wage offered by the
federal government. This proposal would therefore provide workers with employment opportunities when workers have difficulty finding a job,
which might especially be true during recessions.

While the “job guarantee” has drawn some recent interest, little has been said about a related monetary
policy proposal. In the 1980s, economists Earl Thompson and David Glasner proposed the “labor standard.” 2 The idea was to
capture important characteristics of the gold standard. However, rather define the dollar as a fixed quantity
of gold, the labor standard would define the dollar as a fixed quantity of labor . This proposal has a variety of
desirable characteristics. First, fluctuations in the price level would be driven by changes in the “real” side of the
labor market. This means that in the long run, prices would decline with rising productivity . Second, by using
indirect convertibility , the labor standard would outsource monetary policy to the market . Third, the
labor standard implies that the central bank would behave as though it were willing to buy and sell
labor at a fixed price , thereby effectively providing a “job guarantee.”
HOW THE GOLD STANDARD WORKED

To understand how a labor standard would work, one needs to first understand how the gold standard worked. Under the gold
standard , the unit of account (e.g., the dollar) was defined in terms of a particular commodity. For example, the dollar might be
defined as 1/20 oz. of gold. This definition implies that the official price of gold was $20 per ounce. What this meant is that the central
bank (or the banking system more generally) stood ready to buy and sell gold at a fixed nominal price. Since gold is an
internationally traded commodity, the market price of gold could potentially deviate from the official price.
However, if this occurred, it would create an arbitrage opportunity for either holders of bank notes or those
holding gold. For example, suppose that the market price of gold was $21. An individual holding a bank note could take $20 in bank notes
to the bank, redeem those notes for 1 oz. of gold, and sell the gold for $21. Since anyone holding bank notes could do so, the market
price could not deviate much from the official price since it created an arbitrage opportunity. The very
process of arbitrage would drive the price back toward the official price . In equilibrium , the market
price of gold would equal the official price.
Under ordinary circumstances, the price of gold is determined by supply and demand . This is true even when the nominal
price of gold is fixed under the gold standard. To understand this point, it is important to recall that supply and demand is a partial equilibrium
framework. A
change in supply or demand leads to a change in the equilibrium price and quantity, holding
everything else constant. So in any supply-and-demand model, the price being determined is the real price of the good (or the price of
the good holding all other prices constant). Under the gold standard, since the central bank (or the banking system) is willing to buy and sell
gold on demand at a fixed nominal price, this means that when
there are fluctuations in the supply of and demand for
gold, all other prices must adjust until the real price of gold clears the market. Consider an example. Suppose that
there is a gold discovery somewhere in the world. In an ordinary supply-and-demand analysis, an increase in the supply of gold would lead to an
increase in the equilibrium quantity of gold and a decline in the equilibrium price. If the nominal price of gold is fixed, then the
nominal price cannot decline . Nonetheless, the real price of gold can decline in order to clear the
market. For this to happen, the price level must rise. A gold discovery is therefore inflationary, since all other prices,
on average, would have to rise so that the real price of gold declined.
This characteristic of the gold standard is one of the most frequently cited characteristics as to why a gold standard is undesirable. Many critics
have argued that because fluctuations in the price level tend to be driven by changes in the supply and demand for gold and are difficult to
predict, these seemingly random fluctuations in the price level cause corresponding changes in real economic activity. Since such fluctuations
could be avoided (in theory) with an inconvertible paper money standard, many economists have argued that the gold standard creates
unnecessary fluctuations in the economy as a result of unexpected fluctuations in a market that makes up only a small fraction of any economy.

THE LABOR STANDARD

Under a labor standard , the unit of account would be defined as a fixed quantity of labor. Consider a
world in which all labor is homogeneous. In such a world, one could define the dollar as being equal to
four minutes of labor. This implies that it would take $15 to employ labor for one hour. In other words—to draw an analogy to
the gold standard—the central bank would stand ready to buy and sell labor at a fixed nominal price of $15
per hour. This is therefore equivalent to a monetary-policy-based job guarantee in which the central
bank is willing to buy and sell labor at a fixed nominal price (rather than real price). Of course, in reality, there are two
practical problems with this proposal. The first problem is that labor, unlike gold or some other commodity, is not sold in spot markets. The
second problem is that labor is heterogeneous. Nonetheless, the Thompson-Glasner proposal for a
labor standard resolves these
issues by targeting a nominal wage index through indirect convertibility.
The Thompson-Glasner proposal would work as follows: Because labor is not sold in spot markets, the central bank cannot offer to buy and sell
labor on demand in some organized market. Instead, what the central bank could do is agree to buy and sell a particular
asset of its own choosing on demand at the current market price, but the central bank would
guarantee that the value of this asset would always be equivalent to a fixed quantity of labor . Since labor
is heterogeneous, the central bank cannot pin down “the” wage because there is an entire distribution of
wages. However, the central bank could commit to making sure that this asset would buy a fixed
quantity of labor , on average , by promising to keep an index of nominal wages constant.
To understand how this would work, consider an example. Suppose that the central bank promised to buy and sell gold on demand at its
current market price, but guaranteed that an ounce of gold would buy a fixed quantity of labor, on average. This is a promise to keep an index
of nominal wages constant. Let’s assume that the wage index implies that the average wage is $15 per hour, the current market price of gold is
$1,500 per ounce, and that it is January. An
individual who purchases an ounce of gold from the central bank for
$1,500 expects that this ounce of gold will purchase 100 hours of labor ($1,500 / $15 = 100). In February, the
average wage for January is calculated to be $16.50. This implies that the price of labor is 10 percent higher than expected.
In order to buy 100 hours of labor, this individual would have needed $1,650 (= $16.50 x 100). To
compensate these individuals, the central bank would send a payment of $150 to anyone who had
purchased gold in January. However, note that since the central bank buys and sells gold, anyone who sold gold to the central bank
would now owe the central bank $150.
This type of monetary policy would ensure that the average nominal wage remained constant over
time. To see why, consider that anyone who expected the average nominal wage to rise would buy gold from the central bank in anticipation
of receiving a rebate from the central bank if they were correct and earn an arbitrage profit.3 If the value of purchases at the central bank
exceeds sales, then this is an indication that the market expects the nominal wage to rise. Note that if this is true, then the central bank is
effectively conducting net open market sales of gold, thereby pulling dollars out of circulation. Thus, the very expectation of higher nominal
wages leads to contractionary monetary policy that would, in turn, reduce nominal wages.

The situation also works in reverse. If the market expected nominal wages to decline, then the value of gold sales to the central bank would
exceed the value of gold purchases from the central bank. If this is true, then the central bank would be conducting open market purchases of
gold on net, thereby expanding the money supply and increasing nominal wages.4

The labor standard would therefore maintain a fixed nominal wage index equivalent to the fixed price of
gold under the gold standard. This system has several advantages . First, recall that one criticism of the gold
standard is based on the fact that fluctuations in the gold market caused by real factors, such as gold
discoveries, led to fluctuations in the price level and real economic activity. The criticism was that fluctuations in a
market that made up a small portion of total production had the ability to cause booms or recessions. This also resulted in fluctuations in the
labor market by altering the relative price of labor in terms of gold. Under
a labor standard, fluctuations in the price level
would be driven by real factors associated with the labor market. An increase in productivity , for
example, would increase the demand for labor . A standard supply-and-demand model would imply
that real wages should rise. Since the nominal wage is fixed, this would require that the price level
decline to clear the market for labor. Changes in the price level would therefore represent changes in
real factors in the labor market , such as productivity, which some have argued is a desirable objective
in and of itself for monetary policy .5 In addition, unlike the gold standard, the labor standard would require that
the price level respond to real changes in a market that policymakers treat with primary importance .

Second, the labor standard would eliminate all nominal sources of fluctuations in the labor market. If
monetary policy was seen by the market as being too tight , individuals would (on net ) sell gold to the
central bank in anticipation that nominal wages would decline. By doing so, the central bank would be
conducting open market purchases of gold, thereby expanding the money supply. If monetary policy was
seen by the market as too expansionary , individuals would (on net ) purchase gold from the central bank. This
open market sale would reduce the money supply and reduce nominal wages to the target level.

Third, the labor standard would outsource monetary policy to the market . Insofar as the market aggregates
knowledge better than, for example, the 12 individual voters of the F ederal O pen M arket C ommittee,
this would more accurately align the stance of monetary policy with information about the state of the
economy.
CONCLUSION

To draw an analogy to the gold standard, by fixing the nominal wage the central bank would be acting as though it
stood ready to buy and sell labor on demand at a fixed nominal wage . In that respect, this policy is something
similar to a monetary-policy-based job guarantee. In reality, a central bank cannot actually buy and sell labor on demand.
However, since the Federal Reserve can buy and sell other assets on demand in a spot market, it can conduct
monetary policy such that an asset’s value would purchase a constant quantity of labor. This form of
indirect convertibility would ensure that the dollar purchased a constant quantity of labor. The price level
would have to adjust to real factors influencing the supply and demand for labor, but nominal factors would no longer have any
 The labor standard would therefore allow the Federal
effect on the labor market.
Reserve to simultaneously achieve its goals of price stability and maximum
employment.

Credible commitment to the labor standard solves international trade and third-world
development.
Glasner 05 (David Glasner, PhD, MA, and BA, Economics, UCLA, American economist who currently
works at the Federal Trade Commission; "II. A proposal for monetary reform", Free Banking and
Monetary Reform, this paperback first printed 2005, hardback book originally published 1989,
Cambridge University Press, DOA: 8-17-2023)//ATJ [[language modified]]
Under the gold standard, the pattern of international prices was constrained by the fixed currency parities in relation to gold. International
arbitrage ensured that there was a close correspondence in the prices of similar goods in all countries. World trade adjusted itself to a stable
pattern of prices that indicated which commodities the various countries had a comparative advantage in producing.

But now , with currency values unconstrained , there may be no such thing as an equilibrium exchange
rate - certainly no such thing as a stable equilibrium rate (Karaken and Wallace 1981). Exchange rates can change for
speculative reasons , and there is no underlying market pressure for them to return to their original
levels. Instead, domestic prices adjust to the movement in exchange rates. The change in domestic prices is
usually slower than the speculative change in exchange rates, however. Thus formerly profitable
exporting or import-competing industries can be rendered unprofitable by a change in exchange rates
when wages and other input prices adjust sluggishly to such a change. If nothing else, the <<<FIGURE 5
OMITTED>>> added risk of producing in the tradable-goods sector is causing resources to be
withdrawn from that sector and moved into domestic nontradable-goods production, which is less
subject to the risk of adverse exchange-rate shifts.8

The added risk of investing in the tradable-goods sector is a deterrent to investment in exporting and
import-competing industries. It is also an incentive for those who have already invested in import-
competing industries to lobby for protectionist legislation and for those who have invested in export
industries to lobby for export subsidies. Ad hoc quotas , so-called voluntary quota agreements, and
international market-sharing agreements that clearly violate the letter if not the spirit of GATT (General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and often of domestic antitrust legislation have proliferated at a
frightening pace in this decade. Even if a full-scale trade war is avoided, international economic
integration and the international division of labor are being eroded . That erosion, of course, also
undermines the foundation for continued growth of the world economy.

Dissatisfaction with floating exchange rates in general and a view that extreme instability of exchange
rates is inconsistent with an open international trading system has led some to propose restoring fixed exchange
rates or, at least, limiting the range within which exchange rates may fluctuate. However, aside from nearly meaningless incantations about the
need for the coordination of national monetary policies, these proposals do not address the central question of who is going to determine the
single monetary policy that can be followed by a group of countries with fixed exchange rates. Until they do, all such proposals are superficial,
unrealistic, and misleading.
They are superficial because they presume that it is possible to control exchange rates without fundamentally changing the manner in which
national monetary policies are carried out. No monetary authority can peg an exchange rate without also surrendering control over its domestic
price level or any other domestic target it is trying to meet.

Proposals for fixed exchange rates are therefore unrealistic because they take it for granted that some
countries will surrender the choice of their monetary policy to the unconstrained monetary authority
of another country. But it was precisely the desire of other countries to reclaim that independence after U.S. monetary authorities
shrugged off the mild constraints of the Bretton Woods System that led to the collapse of fixed exchange rates. A world with truly fixed
exchange rates is a world with one currency. Advocates of fixed exchange rates simply ignore the inability of countries to agree on who should
be allowed to conduct monetary policy on everyone else's behalf. Platitudes about limiting exchange-rate fluctuations and coordinating
monetary policies only evade the central issue.

Proposals for fixed exchange rates are misleading because the threat to an open international trading
system that has emerged in recent years under flexible exchange rates does not stem from flexible
exchange rates. It stems from the absence of any constraint on the monetary policies of all major
countries. Without a commitment by the monetary authorities to price stability that might anchor
expectations , speculators pay little attention to anticipated changes in the future terms of trade
between countries. Instead they guess about the monetary policies different countries will adopt and
about the political developments that shape those policies. They may even guess about the guesses of
other speculators about those monetary policies and political developments. The absence of any
credible commitment to a price-level target leaves exchange rates free to wander about more or less at
the whim of speculators.

The United States, therefore, would remove a major source of uncertainty in

international currency markets by committing itself credibly to a policy of price-
level stabilization. If other countries continued to pursue unconstrained monetary policies, speculation could still drive exchange
rates, but people would have at least one stable currency as an alternative.

A commitment to stabilize the price level would therefore greatly increase the international demand for dollars. That would exert upward
pressure on the dollar's exchange rate against other currencies. However, a free banking system under a labor standard (or any other form of
price-level stabilization) would automatically supply the additional dollars demanded internationally. The additional quantity of dollars would
prevent the additional demand for them from causing deflation and would moderate the appreciation of the dollar in foreign exchange
markets.

Constant unpredictable changes in tastes and technology will always cause changes in the patterns of
international trade and investment that must be reflected in changes in the pattern of international prices. Countries can
choose whether to let these changes work themselves out in exchange rates or in their domestic price
levels. The point of committing the monetary authority to a predictable course of behavior is to
guarantee that changes in the pattern of international prices reflect only the unavoidable changes in
the underlying terms of trade between countries and not arbitrary disturbances introduced by the
actions of unconstrained national monetary authorities. We can't eliminate all uncertainty. But we can minimize
uncertainty if monetary policy can be constrained in a predictable way.

Once the U nited S tates adopted a labor standard , other countries would be able to choose for
themselves whether the benefits would be greater from a fixed exchange rate with the dollar or from a
stable internal price level.9 And the United States would have no reason to encourage countries to choose one or the other. But
once U.S. monetary policy was constrained in a predictable way , other countries would have far more
incentive than they do now either to peg their currencies to the dollar or to adopt monetary regimes aimed at
domestic price stability. Many countries might well choose to peg their currencies to the dollar , just as many
countries pegged their currencies to sterling and gold in the nineteenth century. The gold standard in
the late nineteenth century was not created by a deliberate international agreement; it was the product
of a slow evolution . Another international monetary system based on fixed exchange rates will come
about not because of any international agreement, but only because countries independently find it in
their individual interest to peg their own currencies to some other currency . Few countries, of course,
will be likely to peg their currencies to another currency whose value is not itself pinned down by
some reliable commitment . <<<FOOTNOTE 9 BEGINS>>> The discussion here is particulary [[ particularly ]]
relevant for the monetary problems faced by many less-developed countries ( LDCs ). LDCs chronically suffer from
weak and supposedly overvalued currencies. When they seek financial assistance from international
agencies such as the I nternational M onetary F und and the World Bank , the international agencies
impose conditions calculated to improve the recipients' capacity for meeting their obligations.

Unfortunately, among those conditions is usually a requirement that a recipient LDC devalue its currency
or allow it to float downward against other currencies. Floating or devaluation is supposed to improve the recipient's
balance-of-payments position, increase its debt-paying capacity, and allow it to eliminate or relax foreign-exchange controls.

Yet floating and devaluation can be fatal policy mistakes for an LDC. Any government that issues an
inconvertible currency has to find some substitute for convertibility to maintain a positive value. As a
sovereign power, a government can, so to speak, force people to hold its currency by making it legal tender and by
accepting it in payment of taxes. But the government's power to do so is not unlimited. So unless people have
confidence in a government's stability and its future good behavior, they will correspondingly reduce the
amount they hold of its currency.

Governments of developed countries with stable political institutions usually command enough public
confidence to be able to keep their currencies from depreciating rapidly even without a legal
commitment to make their currencies convertible into a valuable real asset or another stable currency.
But LDCs are not only economically underdeveloped, they are also politically underdeveloped. They lack
the political , legal , and governmental institutions that, under normal conditions, allow advanced countries to
keep their currencies tolerably stable . Citizens of LDCs would not willingly hold the currencies issued by
their governments if they were not forced to. They would prefer holding either dollars or some other
major currency. But LDCs can't create dollars themselves; they can only acquire dollars by exchanging their own goods and
services for them. That is, they would have to pay seignorage in the form of a foreign-trade surplus to acquire
them.
Actually, LDCs could largely avoid the burden of seignorage if they would allow private banks - either foreign or domestic - to create the dollars,
much as banks create them outside the United States in the Eurodollar market. But if
LDCs insist on providing their own
currencies, they must create the confidence necessary for their currencies to be generally held and
used, in the same way that a private bank creates confidence in the money it creates. They must make
their currencies convertible into the dollar or another major currency.

To recommend devaluation or floating to an LDC is to recommend that the country give up what may be
the only means of building the confidence people must have in the country's currency if they are to be
willing to accept and hold it. Devaluation or floating therefore deprives people in LDCs of a money in which they
can have confidence. They seek to avoid holding the currency, driving its value down even further. A
vicious cycle gets under way. Depreciation undermines confidence in the currency, loss of confidence
intensifies the depreciation, and so on. There may well be no way of stopping such a depreciation as
long as the currency remains unpegged to a stable currency .

Depriving a country of a useful money is no way to promote economic development. Too little money
can be a major barrier to development . Too little money makes trading more costly because people have to rely on inefficient
means of trading like barter. When the cost of trading is increased, fewer mutually beneficial transactions are made and
resources are wastefully used up in those transactions that are undertaken. Since, as Adam Smith taught us, the
division of labor is limited by the extent of the market, anything that discourages trade is an obstacle to bringing about
the transition from self-sufficiency and subsistence farming to specialization and production for the
market that is a principal feature of economic development. <<<FOOTNOTE 9 ENDS>>>

Decline in trade and protectionist policies cause great power war.

Johan Norberg 22, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a writer who focuses on globalization,
human progress and intellectual history, “Free Trade Still Promotes Peace, despite Putin’s Reckless
War,” 4/29/2022, https://www.cato.org/commentary/free-trade-still-promotes-peace-despite-putins-
reckless-war

By analyzing thousands of country pairs over several decades, many researchers have found that
increasing trade between two countries lowers the risk of war between them. They have also found that
countries that are more dependent on international trade have fewer conflicts than self‐reliant ones,
which provides us all with a security interest in other countries’ global integration as well.

It’s not just trade though; it’s free trade . A series of statistical analyses by the political scientist Patrick McDonald show
that the level of free trade between two countries has a larger effect on peace. Countries that engage
in free trade are less likely to attack or be attacked than protectionist countries. Free trade removes the
barriers and privileges that enhance the domestic power of groups that generally support authoritarian
leaders and an aggressive foreign policy .

It has long been known that democracies are more peaceful . According to McDonald’s study, the risk of a war between two
countries is reduced by almost 30 percent if they move from little democracy to the highest level of democracy. But in fact, liberal,
capitalist peace is even more powerful than democratic peace. If two countries move to the highest level of free trade,
the risk of war is reduced by as much as 70 percent . Forget about the golden arches, this is the real McDonald’s theory of
peace.

In an era of decoupling and trade wars , there are other authoritarian powers, like China , worth worrying
about. It’s not just current trade relations that inform decisions over war and peace but also expectations of future
relations. The historical pattern is that countries that expect the international order will stay open mostly prefer
to be at peace with it, to reap the rewards, but when they feel that it is closing time, they start fearing
the loss of access to resources and markets. Some even go to war to secure them.
If authoritarians lose all commercial, cultural, and personal relationships with the outside world, they
have nothing left to lose . They are suddenly free to act according to their own character. And that is scary.

If goods cross borders, it might not always stop soldiers from doing so. But if goods suddenly stop moving across borders,
history suggests that soldiers won’t be far behind .
 1NC---OFF
Appropriations battles now chart the course for IRS’s future, but growing new audits
causes Republican defunding.
Guggenheim 8/14 (Benjamin Guggenheim, reporter at POLITICO; "The future of tax administration",
8-14-2023, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/weekly-tax/2023/08/14/the-future-of-tax-
administration-00111002, DOA: 9-3-2023)//ATJ

A CRITICAL MOMENT: The future of what tax admin istration and enforcement will look like in the U.S. may
very well hinge on IRS appropriations battles to be fought over the next couple years in Congress.

Will the agency manage an overhaul to permanently transform its operations with I nflation R eduction A ct
funding — and, perhaps, greatly expand its role in tax administration by offering a new free filing tool available to every American taxpayer?
Or will Republicans successfully make the case that the IRS is unworthy of both new funding and the
trust of the public?

That battle is happening now , with Democrats and several civil society groups asserting that yes, in fact, the IRS
has already made remarkable strides since Dem ocrat s enacted their climate , health and tax bill last
August.

This morning the newly launched Coalition for Free and Fair Filing is holding a press conference with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), House
Ways and Means member Don Beyer (D-Va.) and Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) to discuss an analysis of how the
agency has rapidly
improved its customer service and successfully laid the groundwork for an agency-run direct filing
option.

The analysis, which was produced by the coalition and previewed by Weekly Tax, will highlight that the
agency has been able to
answer millions more calls this filing season with 5,000 new support staff; cut its unprocessed paper
returns, which were the bane of the IRS during the pandemic, by 80 percent; and collected $38 million in
delinquent taxes from more than 175 wealthy taxpayers as the result of ramped-up enforcement
efforts.

But Republicans and conservative groups are underscoring other developments to argue that the
agency is as untrustworthy as ever.

Take what the conservative Americans for Tax Reform said in response to a watchdog report published last
week that revealed that the IRS lost track of millions of sensitive tax records: “This is the same agency that
wants to spend large amounts of taxpayer dollars to get into the tax software business. Yes, the same
agency that wants you to trust them with safeguarding your most sensitive personal data cannot even
do a basic inventory.”

<<<ADVERTISEMENT FOR ANOTHER ARTICLE OMITTED>>>

PAST CONTROVERSIES: The Treasury Inspector General for Tax

Administration report on the lost tax records isn’t the
first instance of the IRS getting caught flat-footed in its handling of potentially very sensitive taxpayer
information.
It was also revealed that the IRS, crushed by paper backlogs during the pandemic, destroyed 30 million
documents in March of 2021 in a move that prompted outrage from tax preparers around the nation.

And Republicans have likewise hounded the agency about its accidental publication of 120,000 private
tax files on its website in 2022 and how non-profit publication ProPublica somehow got its hands on a
trove of returns belonging to the wealthiest Americans.

“House Republicans secured an agreement to repurpose up to $21 billion s of future IRS enforcement
funds during the June debt-ceiling fight,” the Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote last Friday in a response to the watchdog
report. “The threat of cuts should warn the agency to get its leaky house in order before focusing on
growing its audit program.”

FUNDING BATTLES: Indeed, it turns out that Republicans

have already maneuvered to cut a whole lot more than the
$21.4 billion rescission agreed to under the debt limit deal between President Joe Biden and Speaker Kevin
McCarthy.

House Appropriations Committee Republicans have in fact proposed to slash $67 billion from the IRS, obscuring
the additional cuts in a potpourri of unusual spending bills , including those for transportation, housing
and urban development, and labor, health and human services, as Doug Sword reported in Tax Notes.

According to a preview of this morning’s call by the

Coalition for Free and Fair Filing, Igor Volsky of Groundwork Action plans to
underscore how deleterious those GOP efforts would be and point to new research indicating that the
IRS can return as much $12 from audits of wealthy taxpayers for every $1 invested in the agency.

“In the past year, the

IRS has revamped customer service and brought the agency closer to the modern world
because of this funding, and now Republicans want to stonewall this modernization process ,” Adam
Ruben of the Economic Security Project says. “ It
is critical that we keep this momentum going if we hope to see free
and simple tax filing become a reality.”

Progressive policies empirically cause funding cuts.

in two ways:

1---They chase their tail for years tracking down funds well-protected havens, they lose those efforts but
waste valuable time and energy trying

2---They dramatically increase lobbying backlash that undercuts IRS funding

Kiel and Eisenger 18, *covers business and consumer finance for ProPublica, **senior editor at
ProPublica (Paul and Jesse, “The IRS Tried to Take on the Ultrawealthy. It Didn’t Go Well. Ten years ago,
the tax agency formed a special team to unravel the complex tax-lowering strategies of the nation’s
wealthiest people. But with big money — and Congress — arrayed against the team, it never had a
chance.” ProPublica, https://www.propublica.org/article/ultrawealthy-taxes-irs-internal-revenue-
service-global-high-wealth-audits)//BB

In 2009, the IRS had formed a crack team of specialists to unravel the tax dodges of the ultrawealthy . In
an age of widening inequality, with a concentration of wealth not seen since the Gilded Age, the rich were evading taxes through ever more
sophisticated maneuvers. The
IRS commissioner aimed to stanch the country’s losses with what he proclaimed
would be “a game-changing strategy.” In short order, Charles Rettig, then a high-powered tax lawyer and today President Donald
Trump’s IRS commissioner, warned that the squad was conducting “the audits from hell.” If Trump were being audited, Rettig
wrote during the presidential campaign, this is the elite team that would do it. The wealth team
embarked on a contentious audit of Schaeffler in 2012, eventually determining that he owed about $1.2 billion in unpaid
taxes and penalties. But after seven years of grinding bureaucratic combat, the IRS abandoned its campaign.
The agency informed Schaeffler’s lawyers it was willing to accept just tens of millions, according to a person familiar with the audit. How did
a case that consumed so many years of effort, with a team of its finest experts working on a signature
mission, produce such a piddling result for the IRS? The Schaeffler case offers a rare window into just
how challenging it is to take on the ultrawealthy. For starters, they can devote seemingly limitless resources to hiring the best
legal and accounting talent. Such taxpayers tend not to steamroll tax laws; they employ complex, highly refined strategies
that seek to stretch the tax code to their advantage. It can take years for IRS investigators just to understand a transaction
and deem it to be a violation. Once that happens, the IRS team has to contend with battalions of high-priced lawyers
and accountants that often outnumber and outgun even the agency’s elite SWAT team. “We are nowhere near
a circumstance where the IRS could launch the types of audits we need to tackle sophisticated taxpayers in a complicated world,” said Steven
Rosenthal, who used to represent wealthy taxpayers and is now a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Urban Institute
and Brookings Institution. Because the audits are private — IRS officials can go to prison if they divulge taxpayer information — details of the
often epic paper battles between the rich and the tax collectors are sparse, with little in the public record. Attorneys are also loath to talk about
their clients’ taxes, and most wealthy people strive to keep their financial affairs under wraps. Such
disputes almost always settle
out of court. But ProPublica was able to reconstruct the key points in the Schaeffler case. The billionaire’s lawyers and
accountants first crafted a transaction of unusual complexity, one so novel that they acknowledged,
even as they planned it, that it was likely to be challenged by the IRS. Then Schaeffler deployed teams of
professionals to battle the IRS on multiple fronts. They denied that he owed any money, arguing the agency fundamentally
misunderstood the tax issues. Schaeffler’s representatives complained to top officials at the agency; they challenged document requests in
court. At various times, IRS
auditors felt Schaeffler’s side was purposely stalling. But in the end, Schaeffler’s
team emerged almost completely victorious. His experience was telling . The IRS’ new approach to
taking on the superwealthy has been stymied. The wealthy’s lobbyists immediately pushed to defang
the new team. And soon after the group was formed, Republicans in Congress began slashing the
agency’s budget . As a result, the team didn’t receive the resources it was promised. Thousands of IRS employees left from
every corner of the agency, especially ones with expertise in complex audits, the kinds of specialists the
agency hoped would staff the new elite unit. The agency had planned to assign 242 examiners to the
group by 2012, according to a report by the IRS’ inspector general. But by 2014, it had only 96 auditors.
By last year, the number had fallen to 58. The wealth squad never came close to having the impact its proponents
envisaged. As Robert Gardner, a 39-year veteran of the IRS who often interacted with the team as a top official at the agency’s tax
whistleblower office, put it, “From the minute it went live, it was dead on arrival .” Most people picture IRS officials as all-
knowing and fearsome. But when it comes to understanding how the superwealthy move their money around, IRS auditors historically have
been more like high school physics teachers trying to operate the Large Hadron Collider. That began to change in the early 2000s, after
Congress and the agency uncovered widespread use of abusive tax shelters by the rich. The discovery led to criminal charges, and settlements
by major accounting firms. By the end of the decade, the IRS had determined that millions of Americans had secret bank accounts abroad. The
agency managed to crack open Switzerland’s banking secrecy, and it recouped billions in lost tax revenue. The IRS came to realize it was not
properly auditing the ultrawealthy. Multimillionaires frequently don’t have easily visible income. They often have trusts, foundations, limited
liability companies, complex partnerships and overseas operations, all woven together to lower their tax bills. When IRS auditors examined
their finances, they typically looked narrowly. They might scrutinize just one return for one entity and examine, say, a year’s gifts or income.
Belatedly attempting to confront improper tax avoidance, the IRS formed what was officially called the Global High Wealth Industry Group in
2009. “The genesis was: If you think of an incredibly wealthy family, their web of entities somehow gives them a remarkably low effective tax
rate,” said former IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, who was one of those responsible for creating the wealth squad. “We hadn’t really been
looking at it all together, and shame on us.” The IRS located the group within the division that audits the biggest companies in recognition of
the fact that the finances of the 1 percent resemble those of multinational corporations more than those of the average rich person. The vision
was clear, as Doug Shulman, a George W. Bush appointee who remained to helm the agency under the Obama administration, explained in a
2009 speech: “We want to better understand the entire economic picture of the enterprise controlled by the wealthy individual.” It’s
particularly important to audit the wealthy well, and not simply because that’s where the money is.
That’s where the cheating is, too. Studies show that the wealthiest are more likely to avoid paying taxes.
The top 0.5 percent in income account for fully a fifth of all the underreported income , according to a 2010
study by the IRS’ Andrew Johns and the University of Michigan’s Joel Slemrod. Adjusted for inflation, that’s more than $50 billion
each year in unpaid taxes. The plans for the wealth squad seemed like a step forward. In a few years, the group would be staffed with
several hundred auditors. A team of examiners would tackle each audit, not just one or two agents, as was more typical in the past. The new
group would draw from the IRS’ best of the best. That was crucial because IRS
auditors have a long-standing reputation, at
least among the practitioners who represent deep-pocketed taxpayers, as hapless and overmatched. The agents can fritter away
years, tax lawyers say, auditing transactions they don’t grasp. “In private practice, we played whack-a-mole,” said Rosenthal, of the Tax Policy
Center. “The IRS felt a transaction was suspect but couldn’t figure out why, so it would raise an issue and we’d whack it and they would raise
another and we’d whack it. The IRS was ill-equipped.” The Global High Wealth Group was supposed to change that. Indeed, with all
the fanfare at the outset, tax practitioners began to worry on behalf of their clientele. “The impression was it was all going to be specialists in
fields, highly trained. The IRS would assemble teams with the exact right expertise to target these issues,” Chicago-based tax attorney Jenny
Johnson said. The new group’s first moves spurred resistance. The team sent wide-ranging requests for information seeking details about their
targets’ entire empires. Taxpayers with more than $10 million in income or assets received a dozen pages of initial requests, with the promise
of many more to follow. The agency sought years of details on every entity it could tie to the subject of the audits. In past audits, that initial
overture had been limited to one or two pages, with narrowly tailored requests. Here, a typical request sought information on a vast array of
issues. One example: a list of any U.S. or foreign entity in which the taxpayer held an “at least a 20 percent” interest, including any “hybrid
instruments” that could be turned into a 20 percent or more ownership share. The taxpayer would then have to identify “each and every
current and former officer, trustee, and manager” from the entity’s inception. Taxpayers who received such requests recoiled. Attacking the
core idea that Shulman had said would animate the audits, their attorneys and accountants argued the examinations sought too much
information, creating an onerous burden. The audits “proceeded into a proctology exam, unearthing every aspect of their lives,” said Mark
Allison, a prominent tax attorney for Caplin & Drysdale who has represented taxpayers undergoing Global High Wealth audits. “It was
extraordinarily intrusive. Not surprisingly, these people tend to be private and are not used to sharing.” Tax practitioners took their concerns
directly to the agency, at American Bar Association conferences and during the ABA’s regular private meetings with top IRS officials. “Part of our
approach was to have private sit-downs to raise issues and concerns,” said Allison, who has served in top roles in the ABA’s tax division for
years. We were “telling them this was too much, unwieldy and therefore unfair.” Allison said he told high-ranking IRS officials, “You need to rein
in these audit teams.” For years, politicians have hammered the IRS for its supposed abuse of taxpayers. Congress created a
“Taxpayer Bill of Rights” in the mid-1990s. Today, the IRS often refers to its work as “customer service.” One result of constant congressional
scrutiny is that senior IRS officials are willing to meet with top tax lawyers and address their concerns. “There was help there. They stuck their
necks out for me,” Allison said. The IRS publicly retreated. Speaking at a Washington, D.C., Bar Association event in February 2013, a
top IRS official, James Fee, conceded the demands were too detailed and long, telling the gathering that the agency has “taken strides to make
sure it doesn’t happen again.” The Global High Wealth group began to limit its initial document requests. The
lobbying campaign,
combined with the lack of funding for the group, took its toll. One report estimated that the wealth team had
audited only around a dozen wealthy taxpayers in its first two and a half years. In a September 2015 report, the
IRS’ inspector general said the agency had failed to establish the team as a “standalone” group “capable of conducting all of its own
examinations.” The group didn’t have steady leadership, with three directors in its first five years. When it did audit the ultrawealthy, more
than 40 percent of the reviews resulted in no additional taxes. In 2010, the IRS as a whole audited over 32,000 millionaires. By 2018, that
number had fallen to just over 16,000, according to data compiled by Syracuse University. Audits of the wealthiest Americans have collapsed
The inspector general also criticized the IRS broadly — not just its high-wealth team — for not focusing enough on the richest taxpayers. 52
percent since 2011, falling more substantially than audits of the middle class and the poor. Almost half of audits of the wealthy were of
taxpayers making $200,000 to $399,000. Those audits brought in $605 per audit hour worked. Exams of those making over $5 million, by
contrast, brought in more than $4,500 an hour. The
IRS didn’t even have the resources to pursue millionaires who
had been hit with a hefty tax bill and simply stiffed Uncle Sam. It “appeared to no longer emphasize the
collection of delinquent accounts of global high wealth taxpayers,” a 2017 inspector general report said.

That undermines the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The impact is warming.
Bravender 22, general assignment reporter for Greenwire (Robin, “The surprising new climate
agency,” Greenwire at E and E News, https://www.eenews.net/articles/the-surprising-new-climate-
agency/)//BB
The IRS is a climate agency now. The massive climate and energy law enacted by Democrats in August
puts the IRS at the forefront of the effort to incentivize renewable energy across the economy. Of the
nearly $370 billion of climate spending in the new law, about $270 billion will be delivered through tax
incentives for electric vehicles, energy-efficient buildings, solar power and other “clean” energy technologies. That means the success
of the law — and the Biden administration’s ability to achieve its climate goals — will hinge in part on the
work of a beleaguered agency that’s sprinting to staff up as it implements the new law. But Republicans are
already campaigning against an emboldened IRS, and they’ve pledged that slashing its funding will be a top priority if they take control on
Capitol Hill next year. “The IRS is at the center of it because the way that you get this cash that the f ederal
g overnment has basically earmarked for all these things is through tax credits and benefits that you get when you
file your tax return,” said Lauren Collins, a partner at Vinson & Elkins LLP who specializes in renewable energy. This isn’t totally
uncharted territory for the IRS, which has long been central to the government’s efforts to subsidize favored industries and energy
types through the tax code, Collins said. What’s different this time is the massive scale of federal investments under
the law Democrats have dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act. “It has taken what we’ve always done and just hyped it up,
turned the dial up to 11,” Collins said. “Now we have tax benefits for a gazillion different renewable
technologies, climate-benefiting programs, green manufacturing, domestic manufacturing, electric
vehicles, the list goes on.” The IRS and its parent agency — the Treasury Department — are hustling to put policies
in place so businesses and consumers can understand and take advantage of them. “I am proud that the Treasury Department will be
at the forefront of implementing our economic and climate plan,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a September speech
at a North Carolina solar company. “We’re committed to ensuring that as many eligible taxpayers as possible get credits provided by law, while
carefully protecting against fraud and abuse,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo told reporters earlier this month. It’s a big new
workload at an agency reeling from budget and staffing cuts in recent years. The IRS’s budget in 2021 was 19 percent below what it was in
2010, when adjusted for inflation, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The agency’s staff was reduced by
about 22 percent during that time. The IRS has struggled to answer phone calls and efficiently process tax returns, according to a June report
released by an independent watchdog within the agency. During the 2022 filing season, the IRS received about 73 million telephone calls, the
Dem ocrat s are attempting to revitalize the IRS with an
report said. Only one in 10 of those calls reached an IRS employee.
infusion of new cash under the Inflation Reduction Act. The new legislation gives the IRS about $80 billion over the next decade for
expenses like enforcement and taxpayer assistance. The cash influx was welcome news for the agency. IRS Commissioner
Chuck Rettig said in August that the new law marks a “transformational moment” for the agency, which “has
struggled for many years with insufficient resources to fulfill our important mission.” Rettig, a Trump appointee, is nearing
the end of his five-year term heading the IRS, and Biden could soon name a replacement, causing a leadership change at the agency that
employs about 80,000 staffers. Meanwhile, Republicans have seized on the specter of a beefed-up IRS to campaign against Democrats in this
fall’s midterm elections. If they’re successful in winning control of the House or the Senate, they would gain more power to investigate the IRS
and its role in implementing the climate law. They would also have more leverage to try to slash the agency’s funding during budget
negotiations. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) warned that the new law “hires an army of 87,000 IRS agents to harass working
Americans.” McCarthy also said that if Republicans win the House, their first piece of legislation would be a bill to repeal the $80 billion in new
IRS funding. The administration and its allies accuse the GOP of spreading misinformation about its plans to staff up the IRS. Some of the GOP
claims are “outlandish and even irresponsible and dangerous,” said Seth Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who
served in the Obama White House National Economic Council. Yellen has promised to use new funding to improve customer service at the IRS.
Adeyemo said earlier this month that much of the new money will help to restock personnel lost over recent decades and to replace retiring
staffers. A major chunk of the cash, he said, will go toward modernizing outdated technologies. “That will allow us to provide benefits to
individuals but also to companies better going forward,” Adeyemo said. “And the first area of focus is going to be on these
climate provisions .”

Successful IRA prevents extinction

Subramanian 22, senior fellow at Brown University, is a distinguished non-resident fellow at the
Center for Global Development (Arvind, “Global Cooperation Is Not Necessary to Fight Climate Change,”
Project Syndicate, https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/multilateral-cooperation-climate-
change-unnecessary-inflation-reduction-act-by-arvind-subramanian-2022-11)//BB
This week’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Egypt highlights
the growing consensus that
multilateral cooperation is necessary to avert environmental catastrophe. But with geopolitical tensions spiking and
the US-China rivalry heating up, such efforts seem doomed to fail, much like previous efforts to promote global coordination on vaccines, trade,
technological innovation, and macroeconomic policy. The good news is that the
consensus may be wrong: A lack of
multilateral cooperation need not be fatal to the climate cause. The existing frameworks for international coordination
are outdated anyway, and tech nological competition, fueled by the United States’ climate-focused Inflation Reduction Act
(IRA), may prove to be a more potent driver of innovation, ensuring that the fight against climate change
continues apace. So far, the main framework for promoting multilateral cooperation on climate change has relied on the
principle of “cash for cuts,” whereby developed countries offer financial aid to persuade developing countries to launch ambitious
decarbonization efforts. But this approach is no longer credible, given that the international community has failed to meet its financial
commitments and has shown no sign of improving. Worse, the “cash for cuts” paradigm is premised on a double standard. While lower-income
countries are asked to reduce emissions, rich countries are increasing their reliance on fossil fuels, particularly in the aftermath of Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine. Moreover, the European Union’s planned border tax on carbon-intensive imports would effectively punish lower-income
countries in Africa and elsewhere, limiting their own clean-energy transition. The EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism essentially foists
developed-world policies on poorer countries, making it tantamount to climate imperialism. Fortunately,
rapid technological
advances have sharply reduced the price of renewables bringing decarbonization within financial reach .
That is why some developing countries, notably India and China, have embarked on massive renewable-energy programs over the past decade.
Nonetheless, given the need for massive investments in renewable-energy infrastructure and already-
elevated storage costs, the transition to a net-zero economy is still not financially viable . Moreover, the
transition would dislocate millions of people in developing countries who earn their living from fossil fuels, leading to enormous adjustment
costs. Underestimating these costs or believing that these problems will resolve themselves is another, subtler form of climate imperialism.
While multilateral cooperation in the fight against climate change seems unlikely, America’s new IRA could
be a global game changer . By subsidizing renewable-energy r esearch and d evelopment, it would
obviate the need for onerous and inequitable carbon-taxation mechanisms. More to the point, such measures
would help create a new, hopeful narrative that focuses on mitigat ing climate change through
technological innovation and boosting supply, rather than sacrifice and reduced demand . Like the US, few
developing countries are likely to “carbon tax” their way to emissions reductions. The IRA could also help lower-income
countries to reduce the costs of decarbonization by encouraging the deployment of technologies such as
low-cost batteries and c arbon c apture and s torage. In our book Greenprint, Aaditya Mattoo and I argue that by making
greater use of these technologies, developing countries could meet their energy needs without
increasing global climate emissions. The IRA is essentially a protectionist trade and industrial policy. As such, it could spark
an international arms race of green-energy subsidies. But that might be a good thing. A global subsidy
war could spur tech nological innovation, potentially driving down the price of renewables . Moreover, it may
do for new technologies what China’s subsidies for photovoltaics did for the global solar-energy industry. As many have warned, the IRA is not
without risks. President Joe Biden’s signature legislation links many of its subsidies and incentives to production and research in the US and
North America. It thus constitutes what the World Trade Organization calls “local content requirements.” The EU, one of America’s biggest
trading partners, has complained about this barrier to trade. But, given the urgency of the existential threat posed by
climate change, a global rush to subsidize key tech nologies seems like a feature, not a bug. To the extent that
a global subsidies race could make clean energy financially viable, it would save rich countries the charade of committing to provide trillions of
dollars to poorer countries that they cannot raise. Finally, such
a race could help resolve developing countries’
grievances about the rich world’s climate hypocrisy. Driving down renewable-energy costs would be a
global public good provided by the developed world – assuming, of course, that whatever new technologies emerge would be freely
available. The unequal global rollout of COVID-19 vaccines should serve as a reminder that the mere invention of new technologies does not
guarantee an equitable distribution. The
Green Revolution of the 1960s, when industrialized countries significantly
reduced global hunger and poverty by introducing high-yield crops across the developing world, is a
useful model for distributing cheap, non-proprietary renewable technologies . But to achieve a green revolution for
the twenty-first century, the world must move beyond stale and divisive discussions about which countries are responsible for the climate
threat. Given today’s geopolitical rivalries, efforts to strengthen multilateral cooperation on climate change are likely to be futile. But
competitive tech nological progress, even if promoted by protectionist policies, could save the planet .
 1NC---OFF
Biden pushing Ukraine aid now --- will likely pass as part of continuing resolution but
it’s not a sure bet
Keith, 9/6/2023 --- White House correspondent for NPR (September 6, 20235:00 AM ET, Tamara, “The
White House wants $44 billion in emergency funding. Here's what that covers,”
https://www.npr.org/2023/09/06/1197262534/white-house-emergency-funding-request, JMP))

Congress faces a Sept. 30 deadline to agree on a short-term funding bill that would avert a government
shutdown.

The White House has asked that $44 billion in extra emergency spending be tacked on to that bill .

It's far from a sure bet that the White House will get everything it is asking for . Last year, repeated
requests from the Biden administration for extra funding for the COVID pandemic went unfulfilled.

Here's how this year's request breaks down.

Ukraine: $24 billion

This request faces resistance from some Republicans in the House, though the White House has said it's
confident that there are enough votes to help support Ukraine in its efforts to push back Russia's
invasion. The total includes:

 $13.1 billion for military equipment and replenishing U.S. Department of Defense stockpiles as
well as continued military, intelligence and other defense support

 $8.5 billion for economic, humanitarian and security aid to Ukraine and other countries affected
by the war

 $2.3 billion for the World Bank

Biden has a strategy to avoid a shutdown and increase Ukraine funding BUT it rests on
pairing them with popular policies
Lemire, et. al, 8/19/2023 (08/19/2023 07:00 AM EDT, JONATHAN LEMIRE, JENNIFER HABERKORN
and ALEXANDER WARD, “House Republicans are standing between Biden and his war to save Ukraine;
Biden’s $24 billion bid to arm Ukraine forces comes as Americans grow weary of supporting a battlefield
stalemate,” https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/19/house-republicans-biden-ukraine-00111949,
JMP))

The White House’s $24 billion request to arm Ukraine will test the administration’s ability to support
Kyiv just as it meets its fiercest resistance from Russia and — for the first time — a Republican-led House holding
the purse strings.

The request is part of a larger, $40 billion package full of unrelated big-budget items. The West Wing believes the deal will get
done , even if the aid package shrinks, and is executing a strategy to make sure that happens , according to
interviews with nearly a dozen White House and congressional aides granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak about the
process.
The White House has padded the proposal with numerous big-budget unrelated items — like disaster
relief, border security and anti-fentanyl trafficking — that are broadly popular . White House officials
believe that will make it hard for Republicans to explain a no vote to constituents , although the packages could
eventually decouple. There is an expectation that the Ukraine funding and the continuing resolution to fund
the government will be tackled at once , so as to not have to repeat the grueling process twice .
West Wing aides have noted that public support goes up for Ukraine funding any time there is a major moment in the conflict. They plan to take
advantage of a pair of upcoming international appearances by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to keep the pressure on Republicans.
Zelenskyy is expected to attend next month’s G-20 summit meeting in India before returning to the United States to deliver a speech to the
U.N. General Assembly.

The White House will also ramp up public pressure by hammering home the need to defend democracies
around the globe as well as the fiscal necessity to thwart Russia — or any future nation with war ambitions — by pointing out
the negative economic impact of the war.

“The defense assistance that both parties have come together around has been critical to Ukraine’s ability to beat
back Russia’s illegal invasion and to strengthening our alliances in the world ,” said White House
spokesperson Andrew Bates.
“The president has been very clear that this strategy deters wars of choice and the economic disruption they cause and that we will continue to
support Ukraine and our own basic principles as a country,” he said.

But the
funding battle is poised to lead to another standoff between the president and Speaker Kevin
McCarthy, one that could shape Biden’s legacy and Ukraine’s success in the war .

Biden has placed the defense of Ukraine against Russia’s invasion at the center of his foreign policy , rallying the
democracies of the world to help one of their own. The U.S. has spearheaded the effort, corralling NATO and other allies to send billions in
military and economic aid. But the jubilation is giving way to fear as Ukraine’s wartime success stalls.

It will be a political fight and the plan’s spending would ignite fresh opposition --- even
a small gap in support will collapse Ukrainian resistance
Cancian, 8/15/2023 --- (Colonel, USMCR, ret.) is a senior adviser with the International Security
Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., During his time in the
Office of Management and Budget his staff helped develop military aid packages for Eastern Europe and
Ukraine (August 15, 2023, Mark F., “Aid to Ukraine: The Administration Requests More Money and Faces
Political Battles Ahead,” https://www.csis.org/analysis/aid-ukraine-administration-requests-more-
money-and-faces-political-battles-ahead, JMP – thanks to SP))

President Biden has asked Congress for an additional $24 billion for the war in Ukraine, bringing the total aid to $135
billion. Such aid is critical , not just for military operations but for easing the war’s humanitarian impact.
Although most of this request tracks with previous requests, some items are only tangentially related to the war in Ukraine. Furthermore, t his
request will likely engender more debate than previous requests as concerns about a “forever war”
build. Although the administration will likely prevail this time, the next request― which is inevitable―may face a more
difficult reception.

Q1: What is in the request?

A1: The $24 billion request for Ukraine aid is part of a larger $40 billion supplemental that also includes domestic disaster relief and border
security.
The Ukraine request includes money for both the Department of Defense (DOD) ($13.2 billion) and the Department of State ($10.7 billion), with
small amounts going to the Department of Health and Human Services ($100 million) and the Department of Energy ($65 million).

Figure 1 below shows the purpose of the funding. Although attention has focused on military aid (“Military [Ukraine]”), funds for the Ukrainian
government to continue regular governmental operations (“Ukrainian Government”) and humanitarian aid (“Humanitarian”) are also
significant. Further, the DOD has received money for its increased military activity in Eastern Europe and for acceleration of munitions
production (“Military [United States]”). Most of this goes to the U.S. Army, with lesser amounts to the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force. Finally,
other parts of the U.S. government have received money for activities related to the war such as nonproliferation efforts (“U.S. Government
and Domestic”). Thus, “aid to Ukraine” is a misnomer since 40 percent does not go to Ukraine itself. However, all is related to the war.

One striking element of the request is that $3.5 billion is, at best, indirectly related to Ukraine and arguably entirely unrelated. The Department
of State would receive $1 billion for “transformative, quality, and sustainable infrastructure projects that align with U.S. strategic interests and
support U.S. partners and allies. Funding would allow the United States to provide credible, reliable alternatives to out-compete China.” The
World Bank through the International Development Association would receive $1 billion “to support the IDA’s crisis response window, which
provides rapid financing and grants to the poorest countries to respond to severe crises” and another $1.25 billion through the International
Bank for Reconstruction and Development for loan guarantees “to provide financing to help countries such as Colombia, Peru, Jordan, India,
Indonesia, Morocco, Nigeria, Kenya, and Vietnam build new infrastructure and supply chains.” Finally, $200 million would go to a new fund in
the Department of State to counter “Russian malign actors” in Africa.

While all of these uses might be justified, their inclusion in an emergency supplemental was likely opportunistic. The Office of Management and
Budget often refers to this as the “Christmas tree” effect, whereby agencies that could not get money through the regular budget try to append
the funds to an emergency supplemental.

Q2: Why did this request appear now?

A2: Congress has appropriated a total of $111 billion as a result of the conflict, which was intended to last through the end of the fiscal year
(September 30). Because
the money will run out soon , the administration needs to ask for more now to give
the appropriations process time to play out.

Outside aid is vital for Ukrainian resistance . Militaries in active combat require a constant flow of
weapons, munitions, and supplies. Without outside military aid, Ukrainian resistance would collapse in
two or three weeks. Thus, the U nited S tates, with its allies and partners, needs to provide an uninterrupted flow of
military aid. Even a short gap in support would badly undermine Ukrainian resistance . The same is true of
humanitarian and economic assistance, though the effects are not as dramatic—human suffering as opposed to battlefield movement.

The administration sent its FY 2024 budget proposal to Congress in March but did not include aid to Ukraine. Rather, the administration has
waited until now because it has not been sure how long the war would last or what its nature would be. Waiting has indeed provided more
clarity: the war goes on and at the same level of intensity.

Q3: How does this latest request fit into the aid that the United States has provided so far?

A3: CSIS has tracked aid to Ukraine from the beginning of the conflict, publishing analyses in May 2022 (“What Does $40 Billion in Aid to
Ukraine Buy?”), November 2022 (“Aid to Ukraine Explained in Six Charts”), and February 2023 (“What’s the Future of Aid to Ukraine?”). Those
analyses contain a full description of U.S. aid. Figures 2 and 3 below draw on these previous analyses to put the August request in context.

Figure 2 shows the total amount of aid enacted by Congress: $113 billion, which came in four packages appropriated by Congress: March ($14
billion), May ($40 billion), September ($12 billion), and December ($45 billion). The August package brings the total to $135 billion.
Figure 3 compares the purpose of the funding in the August package with the previous packages as percentages of the whole. The figure shows
that the proportion of military aid has stayed about the same. The August proposal has relatively more humanitarian aid and less economic aid
to the Ukrainian government.

Q4: How long will this aid last?

A4: This
is an interim request. The expectation is that Congress will not have appropriations bills passed
by the beginning of the fiscal year on October 1, so there will be a continuing resolution. This aid
package will support Ukraine during the time of the continuing resolution. The administration will make another
request when the appropriation bills shape up, likely in November or so. That was the pattern last year. The administration asked for enough
money to get through the period of a continuing resolution. It later asked for money for the rest of the fiscal year.

The $113 billion of aid approved by Congress averaged over the 583 days of war between February 24, 2022, and September 30, 2023, comes
out to $223 million per day or $6.8 billion per month. Military aid to Ukraine has averaged $86 million per day or $2.7 billion per month. Thus, a
$23 billion aid package will last about 100 days, the expected period of the continuing resolution. Indeed, the administration’s documentation
sent to Congress cites three months in one program description (“Economic Support Fund” section of the administration’s August request).

Why not ask for a full year of funding now? There are three reasons. First, the administration does not want to
ask for a large amount of money ―for example, enough to last for the entire fiscal year―because that
would generate a lot of attention at a time when the other appropriations bills are not being considered .
It is less controversial to put Ukrainian aid funding into the context of the full federal budget when the final budget deal is being made. Second,
a full-year funding at this point would imply that the war will continue for another whole year. That is not yet clear. Finally, the administration is
unsure about the nature of the war—whether it will continue at the current high level or settle down to a long-term stalemate that entails a
lower level of operations.

On the other hand, the administration does not want to ask for too little money and then go back to Congress repeatedly with all the political
controversies that go with it. The two-step process, continuing resolution request and then a full-year request as part of the final budget
negotiations, is a compromise.

Q5: Will political opposition reduce or even block this proposed aid funding?

A5:Blockage or reduction is unlikely, but a political battle is inevitable , given rising

concerns on both the left and the right. Progressives want to use the money for domestic
purposes and agonize about the suffering that war entails. The populist right wants to reduce federal
spending and avoid foreign entanglements. In the House vote on the National Defense Authorization Act, populists got 70
votes in a failed attempt to strip out $300 million of Ukraine funding. So far , however, the opposition has not
stopped or even reduced aid in the face of strong bipartisan support.
What is new is the disappointing results of the Ukrainian counteroffensive so far. Although the counteroffensive began two months ago,
Ukrainian forces are still chewing their way through the Russian defensive lines. Even President Zelensky has acknowledged the
disappointment. Frustration is building. The great fear is a “forever war,” a conflict that goes on indefinitely at a great human and fiscal cost but
without a clear outcome. Ukraine has tried to ease these concerns and has urged patience. However, recent CNN polling in the United States
shows a majority saying “the United States has already done enough” (51 percent) and “should not authorize additional funding” (55 percent).

Opposition to aid packages often manifests itself in support for immediate negotiations because they seem to offer a way to end the war
without betraying Ukraine. However, given Russia’s recalcitrance, any deal will reflect the situation on the ground. Currently, that would be an
armistice with Russia retaining the territories it still occupies.

Economic aid may be most vulnerable as conservatives tend to support military aid and progressives support humanitarian aid. By contrast,
economic aid goes to the Ukrainian government. Some on the left and right will argue that U.S. local governments need the money more.

There may also be a push for additional oversight. Although the administration argues that oversight is extensive and no significant problems
have yet arisen, this is always a sensitive area. Evidence of widespread abuses would be extremely damaging to outside political support. It is
also an area where the administration and congressional skeptics may find common ground.

Q6: What happens next?

A6: The administration will push Congress to act on this aid package. Given the political difficulty surrounding any
appropriations action, the package may be attached to the expected continue resolution. Since the continuing resolution is a “must pass” bill,
that increases the chances of the aid package getting a vote. If there is a government shutdown, as some deficit hawks are pushing for, there
could be a gap in funding. That will not lead to an immediate end of support since Ukraine will continue to receive equipment and supplies that
are already in the pipeline. Because previous shutdowns lasted a few weeks at the most, a funding gap would probably stop any offensive
actions but not be fatal to Ukrainian resistance.

In the longer term, Ukraine’s success on the battlefield will drive both the need for future aid packages and the political fate of those packages.
With both near-term and long-term aid packages in play, the fall could be a time of crisis.

*Delay risks it not passing at all

Raju & Zanona, 9/3/2023 (Manu Raju and Melanie Zanona, CNN, “Congress poised for messy
September as McCarthy races to avoid government shutdown,”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/03/politics/congress-september-government-shutdown-kevin-
mccarthy/index.html, JMP)) ***GOP Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho leads one of the appropriations
subcommittees
Ukraine funding a key flashpoint in House

How McCarthy deals with the immediate spending demands remains to be seen, including whether he’ll agree to pair the short-term spending
bill with any aid to Ukraine.

While Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell is a staunch advocate for Ukraine aid, McCarthy has been more
circumspect amid loud calls from his right-flank against pouring more money into the war-torn country.
And as he toured Maui on Saturday, McCarthy acknowledged the need for more disaster relief aid, though it’s unclear if he will separate that
package from Ukraine funding — even as the White House and senators in both parties want them to move together.

Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, leader of the conservative Republican Study Committee, told CNN that disaster relief and Ukraine “need to be
separated.”

“The president needs to come forward, or the speaker, leadership of the Republican Party, the Democrat Party need to come together to share
with the American people what we’re doing, what’s the outcome of this?” Hern said.

Simpson said of tying Ukraine aid to the short-term spending bill: “That’s a tougher sell. Particularly in our conference.”
But advocates of more Ukraine aid say that the longer that Congress waits , the more difficult it will be to
approve money needed to deter Russian aggression and the brutality of Vladimir Putin’s war.

“I think we need to get that done because we’re

not going to get it done next year, right?” said Sen. Tammy Duckworth,
an Illinois Democrat. “Once you get truly into the presidential cycle, everything gets that much more difficult.”

Success in Ukraine will deter wars of aggression, prevent a global nuclear arms race
and make World War 3 less likely
Thiessen, 23 --- fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the former chief speechwriter for
President George W. Bush (May 30, 2023 at 8:00 a.m. EDT, Marc A., “This is the ‘America First’ case for
supporting Ukraine,” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/30/ukraine-
counteroffensive-support-america/, JMP))

Of course, the most powerful argument is the one I have not made yet: Helping Ukraine is the right thing
to do. It is the American thing to do. As Reagan explained 40 years ago during his “Evil Empire” speech,
the United States cannot remove itself “from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil”
because “America has kept alight the torch of freedom, not just for ourselves, but for millions of others
around the world.” Those words ring as true today as they did in Reagan’s time. The war in Ukraine is a
struggle between right and wrong and good and evil, and in that struggle, America must not remain
neutral.

Even this is a matter of self-interest. Since the end of the Cold War, democratic self-government has
spread throughout the world. The dramatic expansion of human freedom has unleashed an
unprecedented expansion of peace, stability and prosperity at home and abroad.

But even those unpersuaded by Reagan’s call to oppose evil can still agree with him that the United
States must pursue “peace through strength.”

The “America First” isolationists of the 1930s hoped to avoid a repeat of the carnage of the First World
War, which took some 20 million lives. Instead, their failure to resist Adolf Hitler’s rise invited the
Second World War, which took 60 million lives. Allowing Hitler to seize the Sudetenland in
Czechoslovakia did not appease the dictator nor deliver “peace for our time.” It only whetted Hitler’s
appetite, and the appetites of other expansionist powers, for conquest. The same will be true if we allow
Putin to seize Ukraine.

The lesson of the 20th century is that putting “America First” requires us to project strength and deter
our enemies from launching wars of aggression — so that U.S. troops to don’t have to fight and die in
another global conflagration. The invasion in Ukraine was a failure of deterrence. Only by helping
Ukraine win can we prevent further deterrence failures .

If we help Ukraine prevail, we can rewrite the narrative of U.S. weakness ; restore deterrence with
China; strike a blow against the Sino-Russian alliance; decimate the Russian threat to Europe; increase
burden-sharing with our allies; improve our military preparedness for other adversaries; stop a global
nuclear arms race ; dissuade other nuclear states from launching wars of aggression; and make World
War III less likely.
The “America First” conclusion: Helping Ukraine is a supreme national interest.
 1NC---OFF
Fed rate-hikes are winding down and inflation is cooling – but more time is required
for the economy to reach equilibrium
Cora Lewis, 6/14/23, Associated Press, “What you should know as the Fed gets closer to the peak of
its rate-hiking cycle,” https://apnews.com/article/federal-reserve-interest-rate-hike-pause-consumers-
d44a6f58eb03ec5edeff78294a167053, mm

The Federal Reserve’s decision Wednesday to leave interest rates alone for the first time in 11 meetings raises hopes
that it may be at least nearing the end of its rate-hiking campaign to cool inflation. That said, the Fed’s
policymakers indicated that they envision potentially two more hikes this year — a more hawkish forecast than had been
expected. And even after the Fed has stopped hiking, it’s likely to keep borrowing rates at a peak for months to come. Consumers would still
have to bear the weight of higher-cost auto loans, mortgages, credit cards and other forms of borrowing. Still, some people may feel
encouraged by the possibility that loan rates might not rise much more. And in the meantime, people with savings accounts are enjoying higher
yields than they have in years. Fortunately, that isn’t likely to change anytime soon. Though the Fed hasn’t likely reached the
top of its rate-raising cycle, it’s getting closer. That doesn’t necessarily mean that relief is on the way, especially with the
forecast of possibly two additional hikes this year. “Even once the Fed stops raising interest rates, borrowing rates are still very, very high,” said
Greg McBride, Bankrate.com’s chief financial analyst. “Some of these rates are higher than many consumers have ever seen.” McBride noted
that credit card rates, in particular, are at or near their all-time peaks, mortgage rates have more than doubled in two years and auto loan rates
have reached their highest level in about a dozen years. Even if rates were to hold steady, borrowing costs across the economy will remain
much higher than they were in recent years. Some consumers may struggle to continue making loan payments on time as they simultaneously
face inflated prices for many goods and services. “That means debt repayment has taken on a renewed urgency,” McBride said. “If you have
credit card debt, that is a top priority to get paid down.” Matt Schulz of LendingTree suggested that consumers who have debt should “assume
that rates will continue to rise and focus on paying down their balances as quickly as possible,” to err on the safe side. Card users, he said, might
consider asking their issuers to offer a lower Annual Percentage Rate (APR), if possible. In a recent report, LendingTree concluded that a
majority of cardholders who had asked their card issuers for a lower rate received one. The average reduction was significant — 6 percentage
points. “It is well worth your time to make that call,” Schulz said. Right now, the average APR on a new credit card offer is a towering 23.98%,
according to LendingTree. “And they’re probably going to still creep higher in the immediate future,” Schulz said, even if the Fed doesn’t raise
rates Wednesday. For a typical credit card already in use, the average APR was only slightly lower — 20.92% — according to the latest data
from the Fed. Loan rates for new vehicles have stayed constant for the past few months, at an average of about 7%. That isn’t likely to change
even with the Fed leaving rates alone for now, said Ivan Drury, senior manager at Edmunds.com. Auto loan rates, Drury said, tend to reflect
buyer demand for vehicles more than they do the Fed’s interest rate decisions. Auto sales, while still way below pre-pandemic levels, remain
fairly strong, automakers are selling at still-high prices and profits are solid. Unless sales were to slow, companies and dealers won’t likely
reduce prices or offer subsidized loan rates. “Everyone seems too content,” Drury said. With loan rates probably unlikely either to rise or fall
significantly anytime soon, buyers who need a vehicle may increasingly come off the sidelines. Autos are generally staying on dealer lots for
only 35-40 days before being sold. Until they start sitting for 60 days or more, Drury said, automakers probably won’t cut prices. New vehicle
prices averaged $47,892 in May, 1.3% below the peak in December. Yet any decline has been offset by costlier loan rates, which have surged
nearly a half point over the same period. Prices for used vehicles also dropped somewhat last year but remain comparatively high. The national
average in May was $29,387, down about 5% from the May 2022 peak but nearly $9,000 more than the average before the pandemic. (As of
May, the average used-vehicle loan rate was about 11%.) “Make sure your credit is in tip-top shape, shop around for financing and have an
offer in your back pocket before you go to the dealership,” said Bankrate’s McBride. Ken Tumin, a banking expert and founder of
DepositAccounts.com, noted that while yields for savings accounts and certificates of deposit are the highest they’ve been in a decade, the
pace of increases is slowing. With the Fed likely nearing the end of rate hiking, any further increases in yields may be comparatively small.
“Banks will have reason to slow their deposit rate increases,” Tumin said. Still, it’s worth noting that these accounts are much more rewarding
than they were as recently as a year ago. The average online savings account yield is now 3.98% — up from 3.31% at the start of this year and
from 0.73% from a year ago, according to DepositAccounts.com. The average yield on an online one-year CD is 4.86%, up from 4.37% at the
start of the year and from 1.49% a year ago. McBride suggested that consumers comparison-shop to find the best rates on high-yield savings
accounts. He noted that online banks, in particular, are paying yields of 5% or better. “Savings rates are the highest we’ve seen since the
financial crisis,” he said. “Banks that need deposits — like online banks — are competing aggressively by paying higher rates.” By contrast,
McBride said, “brick-and-mortar banks, who have a surplus of deposits — their rates reflect that. They will intentionally have lower rates, and
some of them have no intention of catching up.” Overall, he noted, consumers can enjoy savings rates that haven’t been this high in 15 years.
“That’s not a bad place to have money parked,” said McBride. The
Fed has clearly achieved progress. Inflation, which
peaked above 9% last year, is less than half that level now. Yet the latest inflation readings remain well
above the Fed’s 2% target. Many households are still feeling heavy financial pressure as a result. Reducing inflation back to the
Fed’s target level will require more time. “That might mean the Fed is going to have to hold rates higher for longer, and it may even
mean boosting rates further in the months ahead,” McBride said. The central bank has now raised rates at its fastest pace in 40 years. “ That
doesn’t mean the Fed is going to start cutting rates or that other rate hikes this year are completely out of the question,” said Jacob Channel,
senior economist for LendingTree. “It just means
they may be willing to hold rates where they are and let the
economy continue to settle without more rate-related prodding in the immediate future .” If the economy
does cool, Channel predicts that mortgage rates may end the year closer to 6% than to 7%. (The current national average for a 30-year fixed-
rate mortgage is 6.71%, according to Freddie Mac.) “There’s a very significant cumulative impact (of rate hikes), but it doesn’t hit all right
away,” McBride said. For the Fed to leave rates alone, at least for now, “gives them a little bit of time to evaluate the broader economic and
inflationary landscape to see if further rate hikes are warranted.”

Expansionary fiscal policy will trigger further interest rate hikes – that decimates the
financial sector and spreads globally
Tobias Adrian and Vitor Gaspar, 11/21/ 2022, International Monetary Fund, “How Fiscal Restraint
Can Help Fight Inflation,” https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2022/11/21/how-fiscal-restraint-can-
help-fight-inflation, mm

Government support was vital to help people and firms survive pandemic lockdowns and support the economic recovery. But where
inflation is high and persistent, across-the-board fiscal support is not warranted . Most governments have already
dialed back pandemic support, as noted in our October Fiscal Monitor. With many people still struggling, governments should continue to
prioritize helping the most vulnerable to cope with soaring food and energy bills and cover other costs—but governments should also
avoid adding to aggregate demand that risks dialing up inflation. In many advanced and emerging economies, fiscal
restraint can lower inflation while reducing debt. Central banks are raising interest rates to dampen demand
and contain inflation, which in many countries is at its highest levels since the 1980s. Because rapid price gains are costly to society and
detrimental to stable economic growth, monetary policy must act decisively. While monetary policy has the tools to subdue
inflation, fiscal policy can put the economy on a sounder long-term footing through investment in infrastructure, health care, and education;
fair distribution of incomes and opportunities through an equitable tax and transfer system; and provision of basic public services. The overall
fiscal balance, however, affects the demand for goods and services, and inflationary pressures. A
smaller deficit cools aggregate
demand and inflation, so the central bank doesn’t need to raise rates as much. Moreover, with global financial
conditions constraining budgets, and public debt ratios above pre-pandemic levels, reducing deficits also addresses debt vulnerabilities.
Conversely, fiscal stimulus in the current high inflation environment would force central banks to slam
on the brakes harder to curb inflation. Amid elevated public and private sector debt, this may raise
risks for the financial system , as our Global Financial Stability Report described in October. Against that backdrop, policymakers
have a responsibility to provide strong protections to those in need, while paring back elsewhere or raising additional revenues to reduce the
overall deficit. Fiscal responsibility—or even consolidation where needed—demonstrates that policymakers are aligned against inflation. When
fiscal adjustment is sustained, ideally through a medium-term fiscal framework that sketches the direction of policy over the next few years, it
also addresses looming pressures on debt sustainability. These include aging populations in most advanced and several emerging economies,
and the need to rebuild buffers that can be deployed in future crises or economic downturns. In our research, we use a stylized two country
model (where the “home economy” may be the US or a group of advanced economies). We study two different approaches to curb inflation.
The first relies exclusively on monetary tightening to cool the overheating economy, whereas the second involves fiscal consolidation. Both are
constructed to have similar effects on economic growth, and each is effective in reducing inflation. Under the first, higher interest rates and the
weaker growth contribute to rising public debt. Meanwhile, the currency appreciates as higher yields attract investors. Under the second
approach, fiscal tightening cools demand without the need for interest rates to rise, so the real exchange rate depreciates. And with lower
debt-service costs and smaller primary deficits, public debt declines. The real exchange-rate appreciation under tighter monetary policy implies
that inflation falls a bit more, but this difference would diminish if more countries pursued these policies. Faced with high food and energy
prices, governments can improve their fiscal position by moving from broad-based support to assisting the most vulnerable—ideally, through
targeted cash transfers. Because supply shocks are long-lasting, attempts to limit price increases through price controls, subsidies, or tax cuts
will be costly to the budget and ultimately not be effective. Price signals are critical to promote energy conservation and encourage private
investment in renewables. The desirable fiscal stance and measures underpinning it will depend on country-specific circumstances, including
current inflation rates and longer-term considerations such as debt levels and developmental needs. In most countries, higher inflation
strengthens the case for fiscal restraint, calling for raising revenue or prioritizing spending that preserves social protection and growth-
enhancing investments in human or physical capital. In
the United States, the early-1980s disinflation under Federal Reserve
Chairman Paul Volcker exemplified the challenges of controlling inflation . Inflation had become entrenched at
high levels, and fiscal policy was expansionary. The Fed had to raise rates sharply to rein in inflation,
causing a collapse in housing investment and historically large appreciation of the dollar . Manufacturing
was hard hit, leading to calls for trade protectionism. That historical episode is relevant for many countries
facing similar challenges today. A more balanced removal of policy stimulus, including fiscal restraint, can reduce the risk that
some parts of the economy—especially those most sensitive to interest rates—experience
disproportionate effects, or that large swings in the currency heighten trade tensions . This would also
reduce risk globally. Less abrupt interest rate hikes would imply a more gradual tightening of financial conditions and mitigate financial
stability risks. This would tend to limit adverse spillovers to emerging market economies and reduce the risk
of sovereign debt distress. Avoiding a sharp appreciation of the US dollar or other major currencies
would also lessen pressures on emerging markets that borrow in those currencies . While many central
banks are tightening policy in response to the large and persistent rise in global inflation, the policy mix
matters. Fiscal restraint will reduce the cost of bringing inflation back to target in a timely way,
compared with the alternative of leaving monetary policy alone to act.
===CASE===
Adv 1
 1NC---Slow Growth
Slow growth is structural and harmless.
Dietrich Vollrath 20, Professor of economics at the University of Houston, "Slow economic growth is a
sign of success," USAPP, 02/22/2020, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2020/02/22/slow-economic-
growth-is-a-sign-of-success/.

We’re accustomed to looking at the growth rate of GDP to evaluate the health of our economy . Which is why the recent
slowdown in growth appears so troubling. In the US, GDP growth for 2019 was 2.3% , meaning it has been nineteen years
since growth hit 4%, and nearly as long since it touched 3% . For the UK the story is similar, as it has been fifteen years since growth hit
3%. In the Eurozone as a whole, growth last came close to 4% in 2000. These slowdowns across developed economies
predates the financial crisis, and leads to natural questions : what went wrong with the economy, and how do we fix it?

But the slowdown we’re observing isn’t something we can fix – or that we would want to fix – because the slowdown
was never a consequence of things that went wrong . Instead, as I show my new book, the slowdown is a
consequence of things that went right.

From a simple accounting perspective, there are two main factors behind slower growth: the fall in fertility during
the 20th century, and the shift of our expenditures away from goods and towards services . And both of
those explanations can be traced back to economic success.

The fall in fertility had a significant impact on economic growth for decades, particularly in the US . The baby
boom generated a one-time wave of human capital that hit the economy during the middle of the 20th century. As those new workers
hit the workforce, the proportion of workers to population rose substantially , as evidenced by the fall in the
youth dependency ratio between 1960 and 1980 (see Figure 1). Combined with the relatively high educational attainment of the baby
boomers compared to prior generations, this provided a substantial boost to the growth rate, increasing it around 1.25 percentage points in
1990 compared to immediately after World War II.

As that wave of human capital receded, so did the growth rate. Starting in the early 2000s, the old age
dependency ratio started to rise (see Figure 1) the inevitable consequence of the drop in youth dependency back in
the 1960s and 1970s. As
workers aged out of the workforce – and continue to do so – this dragged down the growth
rate of the aggregate economy. That 1.25 percentage point boost during the 20th century disappeared in the 21st, explaining most
of the slowdown in the US.

But why should we see these demographic shifts as a success? The drop in fertility after the baby boom which explains the shifts was
driven by several successes . Expanded access to college education pushed back the age at which
people were willing to marry. The opening up of many professions to women, along with growth in overall
wages , meant that it made sense for many women to delay marriage. Finally, advances in contraceptive
technology meant it was possible for women to take advantage of the new educational and
professional opportunities that arose. The growth slowdown today is a consequence of family decisions
made decades ago in response to rising living standards and the expansion of women’s rights.

The second source of the slowdown, the shift from goods towards services , was also driven by success. In the past
one hundred years we became incredibly efficient at producing goods like clothes, food, furniture, and computers. The
consequence was a steady reduction in the price of those goods relative to services. We could have used that
reduction to buy even more goods than we did, but instead we took advantage of the savings to purchase more services like education,
healthcare, and travel. Therefore the composition of our expenditures shifted away from goods and towards services (see Figure 2). We still
consume more goods than before; it is just that they got so cheap that their share of our total expenditure fell relative
to services.
This had a consequence for overall economic growth, however. Productivity growth in services is lower than for goods. That wasn’t a failure of
services in the last few years. It appears to be an inherent quality noted by economist William Baumol in the 1960s. If a restaurant — a service
— tried to operate with half their normal staff, you’d complain about the slow service and lack of attention. In comparison, if a manufacturer
produced a laptop – a good – with half as much labour, you’d never know. This makes productivity growth harder for services than for goods.
As we shifted expenditures towards services, aggregate productivity growth was thus bound to fall. Between the middle of the 20th century
and today, that probably shaved another 0.2 to 0.25 percentage points off of the growth rate. But note that this only happened because of the
productivity growth we experienced in the first place, a success.

Relative to the successes in the demographic shifts and spending shifts, the usual suspects are not capable of explaining the growth slowdown.
Tax rates fell right as the slowdown started, and evidence from across states and industries shows that, if anything, more regulation was
associated with faster growth, not slower. Trade with China exploded in the last twenty years, but evidence suggests that this had little effect
on growth for the economy as a whole, even though individual regions and industries saw booms or busts. Economy-wide measures of the
mark-up of price over cost rose, but it turns out that this didn’t lower growth. The shift of activity to high mark-up industries kept economic
growth rates from falling even further than they did, as it meant we produced more valuable products.

If you’re still uncertain that the growth slowdown is a consequence of success , ask yourself what you’d give
up to bring growth back to 4%. We could destroy half of all our goods : cars, couches, TVs, laptops, houses, trampolines,
and so on. That would lead to a massive shift of spending towards goods as we scrambled to replace everything, and we’d
see a jump in productivity growth. Alternatively, we could roll back contraceptive rights and women’s participation in the workforce in the
hopes of starting a new baby boom. Wait twenty years and we’d have another surge of human capital into the economy. Would either of those
be worth it just to see growth hit 4% again, perhaps not until 2040? Assuming the answer is “no”, that tells us the growth slowdown
happened because of things that went right , things we would not sacrifice.
 1NC---Stagnation
No impact to stagnation.
Posen ’16 [Adam; March 2016; Government and Economics PhD from Harvard, economic advisor to
the Congressional Budget Office, faculty of the World Economic Forum, consultant for the International
Monetary Fund and the United States government; Peterson Institute for International Economics
Briefing 16-3, Reality Check for the Global Economy, “Why We Need a Reality Check,” Ch. 1]

Greater confidence in the world economy’s resilience and near-term prospects is justified . Market fears about the ability of
policy to stabilize growth and promote inflation, if understandable, are exaggerated or in some cases unfounded . All the more
reason then not to allow ourselves to be distracted by a financial market tail wagging the macroeconomic dog. At a fundamental level, most of
the major economies, starting with China and the United States, are growing more sustainably now than a decade ago, at their
slower rates . That growth is not built on rising private or public leverage, with the notable exception of China—and even in China some
restructuring is under way with ample savings to cushion the process. Even where the situation is not so rosy, many in the markets seem to be
confusing strains and suboptimal situations with acute instability, not just for Italian banks and for Brazilian budgets but also for Latin America
more generally or for trends in global trade. A more normal muddling through with poor but stable conditions is a
far better bet . And where some in the markets moving prices fear that normal economic laws have been reversed—that monetary policy
is ineffective or that low oil prices are on net harmful—they are likely to be proven clearly wrong, as they were previously on inflation and
commodity prices. Having some clarity to distinguish between the more solid underlying economic outlook and
the shadows thrown by financial puppetry is critical to making the right policy decisions to avoid an unnecessary recession.

A combination of public
policies and decentralized private-sector responses to the crisis have increased our economic
resilience , diminished the systemic spillovers between economies, and even created some room for
additional stimulus if needed. Large parts of the global financial system are better capitalized, monitored, and frankly more risk
averse than they were a decade ago, with less leverage. The riskier parts of today’s global economy are less directly linked to the center’s
growth and financing than when the troubles were within the United States and most of Europe in 2008. Trade imbalances of many key
economies are smaller, though growing, and thus accumulations of foreign debt vulnerabilities are also smaller than a decade ago. Most central
banks are now so committed to stabilization that they are attacked for being too loose or supportive of markets, making them at least unlikely
to repeat some policy errors from 2007–10 of delaying loosening or even excessive tightening. Finally, corporate and household balance sheets
are far more solid in the US and some other major economies than they were a decade ago (though not universally), and even in China the
perceptions of balance sheet weakness exceed the reality in scope and scale.
 1NC---No Recession
No risk of a recession
Egan 9-5; Matt Egan, 9-5-2023, Matt Egan is an award-winning reporter covering business and
economic and financial markets. "Goldman Sachs cuts US recession odds to 15% as economic optimism
grows," CNN, https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/05/business/goldman-sachs-recession-odds/index.html //
smarx ezb

Goldman Sachs is increasingly confident that the US economy will stick the soft landing that many thought was
nearly impossible to pull off.

In a research report published Monday night, Goldman Sachs lowered its estimated chance of a US recession over
the next 12 months to just 15%.

That’s basically in-line with the historical average chance of a recession on any given year. It’s also down from the
Wall Street bank’s prior forecast of 20% and well below its 35% projection in March as the banking crisis erupted.

The report, titled “Soft Landing Summer,” pointed to a series of encouraging economic indicators on inflation and the jobs market that suggest
the US economy will avoid the Federal Reserve-fueled recession that many feared.

Tamping down inflation without throwing the economy into recession is what’s called a “soft landing,”
something the Fed has only achieved once in the past 60 years.

“We strongly disagree with the notion that a growing drag from the ‘long and variable lags’ of monetary policy will push the economy toward
recession,” Jan Hatzius, Goldman’s chief US economist, wrote in the report. “In fact, we think the drag from monetary policy tightening will
continue to diminish before vanishing entirely by early 2024.”

Hatzius added that Goldman

Sachs is increasingly confident that the Fed is “done” raising interest rates as
unemployment rises, wages slow and inflation eases.
Wall Street economists have been forced to repeatedly postpone or even cancel their recession forecasts as the economy proves resilient.

Bucking consensus

Goldman Sachs says it is “substantially more optimistic” than most forecasters. The Bloomberg consensus of economists is still calling for a 60%
chance of a recession.

Hatzius wrote that GDP tracking tools like the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model, which is calling for booming growth of 5.6% in
the third quarter, likely “overstates the economy’s true momentum.” He added that growth will likely cool off in the
fourth quarter as student loan payments resume and the mortgage rate spike hurts housing.

“But we expect the slowdown to be shallow and short-lived,” Hatzius said.

Goldman Sachs pointed to “solid” job

growth and rising real (inflation-adjusted) wages that should allow real disposable
income to “reaccelerate” next year.

In other words, paycheckswill grow faster than prices, giving consumers the ability to keep spending. That’s
crucial in an economy where consumer spending is the main driver of growth.
The August jobs report, released late last week, showed that hiring remains solid, though it has slowed from the blockbuster pace of earlier in
the post-pandemic recovery.

And while the unemployment rate jumped from 3.5% to 3.8% in August, Hatzius said Goldman Sachs is
“unconcerned” by the increase because it was “entirely driven” by an increase in the supply of people
looking for work.
“The August jobs report couldn’t be much better,” Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi wrote Friday on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“The report has soft landing written all over it.
1NC---Asset Bubbles
 1NC---JG Fail
JGs fail.
Pethokoukis ’20 [James; September 13; a columnist and blogger at the American Enterprise Institute;
“A Federal Jobs Guarantee Will Not Solve America's Economic Woes,” The National Interest,
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/federal-jobs-guarantee-will-not-solve-americas-economic-
woes-168754]

A federal jobs guarantee is an underwhelming idea . And perhaps if Dave were remade as an HBO mini-series or something, the
many, many downsides would become evident. To think it is a good idea means thinking that (a) Washington could

anytime soon successfully direct a workforce that would be multiples (maybe many multiples) larger
than the number of K-12 teachers (but less educated) to do meaningful, socially productive work that
they are not currently trained to do; (b) even if that managerial Manhattan Project took decades to
accomplish, it could be sustained amid “stories about how these are disorganized make-work programs” and the “stigma” that follows; (c)
running such a program might not be made even more maddeningly complicated by the possible
inability to actually fire anyone ; (d) these permanent government gigs would not “crowd out” existing
jobs that actually matched the skills of the workers; (e) we could ever figure out if these new government-supplied jobs
were replacing existing jobs or jobs that would have been created anyway ; (f) private employers in
high poverty areas would not see an employee drain to these probably better-paying jobs ; (g) these
voluntary jobs would not become mandatory ; and (h) the cost would not be crazy tremendous .
 1NC---Econ Decline
Economic decline doesn’t cause war.
Walt ’20 [Stephen; 5/13/20; Professor of International Relations at Harvard University; " Will a Global
Depression Trigger Another World War?" https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/13/coronavirus-pandemic-
depression-economy-world-war/]

On balance, however, I
do not think that even the extraordinary economic conditions we are witnessing today are going to
have much impact on the likelihood of war . Why? First of all, if depressions were a powerful cause of war, there

would be a lot more of the latter . To take one example, the United States has suffered 40 or more recessions since
the country was founded, yet it has fought perhaps 20 interstate wars , most of them unrelated to the state of the
economy. To paraphrase the economist Paul Samuelson’s famous quip about the stock market, if recessions were a powerful cause of war,
they would have predicted “nine out of the last five (or fewer).”

Second, states do not start wars unless they believe they will win a quick and relatively cheap victory . As
John Mearsheimer showed in his classic book Conventional Deterrence, national leaders avoid war when they are convinced it

will be long , bloody , costly , and uncertain . To choose war, political leaders have to convince themselves they can either win a
quick, cheap, and decisive victory or achieve some limited objective at low cost. Europe went to war in 1914 with each side believing it would
win a rapid and easy victory, and Nazi Germany developed the strategy of blitzkrieg in order to subdue its foes as quickly and cheaply as
possible. Iraq attacked Iran in 1980 because Saddam believed the Islamic Republic was in disarray and would be easy to defeat, and George W.
Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 convinced the war would be short, successful, and pay for itself.

The fact that each of these leaders miscalculated badly does not alter the main point: No matter what a country’s
economic condition might be, its leaders will not go to war unless they think they can do so quickly , cheaply ,
and with a reasonable probability of success .

Third, and most important, the primary motivation for most wars is the desire for security, not economic gain . For this
reason, the odds of war increase when states believe the long-term balance of power may be shifting against them, when they are convinced
that adversaries are unalterably hostile and cannot be accommodated, and when they are confident they can reverse the unfavorable trends
and establish a secure position if they act now. The historian A.J.P. Taylor once observed that “every
war between Great Powers
[between 1848 and 1918] … started as a preventive war , not as a war of conquest ,” and that remains true of
most wars fought since then.

The bottom line: Economic conditions (i.e., a depression) may affect the broader political environment in which decisions for war or
peace are made, but they are only one factor among many and rarely the most significant . Even if the COVID-19

pandemic has large, lasting, and negative effects on the world economy—as seems quite likely—it is not likely to affect the
probability of war very much , especially in the short term.
Adv 2
 1NC---Inequality
Unions bad---can’t solve overall inequality.
Epstein ’20 [Richard; January 27; Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, New York University Law School,
and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago; Hoover Institute, “The Decline Of Unions Is Good
News,” https://www.hoover.org/research/decline-unions-good-news]

Unions are monopoly institutions that raise wages through collective bargaining, not productivity
improvements. The ensuing higher labor costs, higher costs of negotiating collective bargaining agreements, and higher
labor market uncertainty all undercut the gains to union workers just as they magnify losses to
nonunion employers , as well as to the shareholders, suppliers, and customers of these unionized firms.
They also increase the risk of market disruption from strikes , lockouts, or firm bankruptcies whenever
unions or employers overplay their hands in negotiation. These net losses in capital values reduce the
pension fund values of unionized and nonunionized workers alike.

Employers are right to oppose unionization by any means within the law, because any gains
for union workers come at the
expense of everyone else . Of course, the best way for employers to proceed would be to seek
efficiency gains by encouraging employee input into workplace operations—firms are quite willing to
pay for good suggestions that lower cost or raise output . But such direct communications between workers and
management are blocked by Section 8(a)(2) the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which mandates strict separation between workers and
firms. This lowers overall productivity and often prevents entry-level employees from rising through the ranks.

So what then could justify this inefficient provision? One common argument is that unions help reduce the level of
income inequality by offering union members a high living wage , as seen in the golden age of the 1950s. But that
argument misfires on several fronts. Those high union wages could not survive in the face of foreign
competition or new nonunionized firms. The only way a union can provide gains for its members is to
extract some fraction of the profits that firms enjoy when they hold monopoly positions .

When tariff barriers are lowered and domestic markets are deregulated , as with the airlines and
telecommunications industries, the size of union gains go down. Thus the sharp decline in union membership from
35 percent in both 1945 and 1954 to about 15 percent in 1985 led to no substantial increase in the fraction of wealth earned by the top 10
percent of the economy during that period. However, the income share of the top ten percent rose to about 40 percent over the next 15 years
as union membership fell to below 10 percent by 2000.

But don’t be fooled—that 5 percent change in union membership cannot drive widespread inequality
for the entire population , which is also affected by a rise in the knowledge econ omy as well as a
general aging of the population. The far more powerful distributive effects are likely to be those from
nonunion workers whose job prospects within a given firm have been compromised by higher wages
to union workers.

It is even less clear that the proposals of progressives like Sanders, Warren, and Buttigieg to revamp the labor
rules would reverse the decline of unions. Not only is the American labor market more competitive , but
the work place is no longer dominated by large industrial assembly lines where workers remain in their
same position for years. Today, workforces are far more heterogeneous and labor turnover is far higher. It is therefore much more
difficult for a union to organize a common front among workers with divergent interests.
Employers, too, have become much more adept at resisting unionization in ways that no set of labor
laws can capture . It is no accident that plants are built in states like Tennessee and Mississippi, and that facilities
are designed in ways to make it more difficult to picket or shut down . None of these defensive maneuvers would be
necessary if, as I have long advocated, firms could post notices announcing that they will not hire union members, as they could do before the
passage of the NLRA.

Such changes to further weaken unions won’t happen all at once. But turning the clock back to increase
union power is not the answer. It will only cripple the very workers whom those actions are intended to
help.

Union decline is restoring domestic manufacturing.

Epstein ’20 [Richard; January 27; Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, New York University Law School,
and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago; Hoover Institute, “ The Decline Of Unions Is Good
News,” https://www.hoover.org/research/decline-unions-good-news]

The United States D epartment o f L abor released a report last week that chronicled the continued decline of
the American labor movement in 2019. In our boom economy, more than 2.1 million new jobs were added to the
market last year, but the number of unionized workers fell by 170,000. The percentage of union workers,
both public and private, fell from 10.5 percent to 10.3 percent, or roughly 14.6 million workers out of
141.7 million. The percentage of unionized workers dipped even lower in the private sector , from about 20
percent in 1983 to 6.2 percent of workers in 2019, a far cry from the 35 percent union membership high
mark last seen in 1954. Decline was lower in the public sector, where just over one-third of workers are union members, as a modest
increase in state government employees partially offset somewhat larger declines in federal and local unionized workers.

This continued trend has elicited howls of protest from union

supporters who, of course, want to see an increase in union
membership . It has also led several Democratic presidential candidates to make calls to reconfigure labor law. Bernie Sanders wants
to double union membership and give federal workers the right to strike , as well as ban at-will contracts of employment,
so that any dismissal could be subject to litigation under a “for cause” standard. Not to be outdone, Elizabeth Warren wants to
make it illegal for firms to hire permanent replacements for striking workers . They are joined by Pete Buttigieg in
demanding a change in federal labor law so that states may no longer pass right-to-work laws that insulate workers from the requirement to
pay union dues in unionized firms. All of these new devices are proven job killers .

The arguments in favor of unions are also coming from some unexpected sources in academia, where a
conservative case has been put forward on the ground that an increase in union membership is needed to combat job
insecurity and economic inequality .

All of these pro-union critiques miss the basic point that the decline of union power is good news , not
bad. That conclusion is driven not by some insidious effort to stifle the welfare of workers, but by the
simple and profound point that the greatest protection for workers lies in a competitive economy that
opens up more doors than it closes. The only way to achieve that result is by slashing the various
restrictions that prevent job formation, as Justin Haskins of the Heartland Institute notes in a recent article at The Hill. The
central economic insight is that jobs get created only when there is the prospect of gains from trade .
Those gains in turn are maximized by cutting the multitude of regulations and taxes that do nothing
more than shrink overall wealth by directing social resources to less productive ends .
President Trump is no master of transaction-cost economics, and he has erred in using tariffs as an impediment to foreign trade. But give the
devil his due, for on the domestic front he has repealed more regulations than he has imposed and lowered overall tax rates, especially at the
corporate level.

During the 2016 election, President Obama chided Trump by saying: “He just says, ‘Well, I’m going to negotiate a better deal.’ Well, what, how
exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually the answer is, he doesn’t have an answer.” This snarky
remark reveals Obama’s own economic blindness. The gains in question don’t come from any “negotiations.” And they don’t require any “magic
wand.” They come from unilateral government decisions that allow for private parties on both sides of a transaction to negotiate better deals
for themselves.

True to standard classical liberal principles, the market has responded to lower transaction costs with improvements
that Obama, as President, could only have dreamed of creating. Overall job growth was 5.53 million jobs between 2007 and 2017. But new job
creation has exceeded 7 million in the first three years of the Trump administration. In addition, the sharp decline in
manufacturing jobs that started in the late Clinton years and which continued throughout the Obama
years has also been reversed . Over 480,000 manufacturing jobs have been added to the economy since
Trump took office, compared to the 300,000 manufacturing jobs lost in the eight years under Obama.
Happily, the distribution of these jobs has been widespread, causing drops in Hispanic and African unemployment levels to 3.9 percent and 5.5.
percent respectively, both new lows. Basic neoclassical theory predicts that regulatory burdens hit lowest paid workers the hardest. Hence,
the removal of those burdens gives added pop to their opportunities and to the economy at large .

That solves global nuclear war.

Eaglen et al ‘12 [Mackenzie Eaglen; Rebecca Grant; Robert P. Haffa; Michael O’Hanlon; Peter W.
Singer; Martin Sullivan; J Barry Watts; January 2012; resident fellow in the Marilyn Ware Center for
Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute; IRIS Research; Haffa Defense Consulting; The
Brookings Institution; The Brookings Institution; Commonwealth Consulting; Center for Strategic and
Budgetary Assessments; “The Arsenal of Democracy and How to Preserve It: Key Issues in Defense
Industrial Policy January 2012,”
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/0126_defense_industrial_base_ohanlon.pdf]
In short, the fiscal and political reality is that the United States will again undergo a post-war defense budget reduction of the type that has
followed every major war in its modern history. The numbers remain to be resolved, but the most likely scenarios are that the annual resources
available to the military and the wider defense industrial base will decline significantly over the coming years. The magnitude of this reduction
will feel dire to a Defense Department and industrial base that have known only growth in spending for the last decade. But it is not unusual by
historical standards. Indeed, the budgetary starting point of more than $700 billion is in fact substantially higher than 2 peak spending in past
periods including the Korean War, Vietnam War, and Reagan defense buildup. The Obama budget proposal of early 2012 would take the base
budget back to near 2007 levels—a steep drop to be sure, especially when combined with much larger percentage cuts in war spending, but not
an historical anomaly. Yet
there are severe challenges that could result to the nation’s security interests even
with 10 percent cutbacks. Despite
the likely potential of lesser resources, the demand side of the equation does
not seem likely to grow easier. The international security environment is challenging and complex .
China’s economic, political and now military rise continues. Its direction is uncertain, but it has already raised
tension, especially in the S outh C hina S ea. Iran’s ambitions and machinations remain foreboding, with its

nuclear plans entering a new phase of both capability but also crisis. North Korea is all the more
uncertain with a leadership transition, but has a history of brinkmanship and indeed even the
occasional use of force against the South, not to mention nuclear weapons related activities that raise
deep concern. And the hopeful series of revolutions in the broader Arab world in 2011, while inspiring at many levels, also seem likely to
raise uncertainty in the broader Middle East. Revolutions are inherently unpredictable and often messy geostrategic events. On
top of these remain commitments in Afghanistan and beyond and the frequent U.S. military role in humanitarian disaster relief. Thus, there are
broad challenges for American defense planners as they try to address this challenging world with fewer available resources. The current wave
of defense cuts is also different than past defense budget reductions in their likely industrial impact, as the U.S. defense industrial base is in a
much different place than it was in the past. Defense industrial issues are too often viewed through the lens of jobs and pet projects to protect
in congressional districts. But the
overall health of the firms that supply the technologies our armed forces utilize
does have national security resonance . Qualitative superiority in weaponry and other key military
technology has become an essential element of American military power in the modern era—not only
for winning wars but for deterring them. That requires world-class scientific and manufacturing
capabilities —which in turn can also generate civilian and military export opportunities for the United States in a globalized marketplace.

No civil war
Hanania 20 - research fellow at Defense Priorities, and a postdoctoral research fellow at the Saltzman
Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. (Richard, Oct. 29, 2020, “Americans hate
each other. But we aren’t headed for civil war,” washingtonpost.com/outlook/civil-war-united-states-
unlikely-violence/2020/10/29/3a143936-0f0f-11eb-8074-0e943a91bf08_story.html)
The men arrested in early October and charged with plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) apparently hoped that doing so
might help set off a civil war — pitting lovers of liberty like themselves against treasonous statists. The goal may sound outlandish, but fringe
militia members aren’t the only ones who think a second civil war could occur in the United States. Recently, New
York Times columnist Thomas Friedman said that the situation in this country reminded him of his time in Lebanon, where in the mid-1970s
street clashes between sectarian militias erupted into multifaceted strife that lasted a decade and a half. David Kilcullen, an Australian scholar
and adviser to the U.S. Army, described America in June as being at the point of “incipient insurgency,” while the academic Peter
Turchin
recently wrote — pointing to riots and rising economic inequality — that “we are getting awfully close to the point
where a civil war or revolution becomes probable.” The logic underlying most of these predictions is
consistent and straightforward. Americans are more divided on social and political issues than in previous
decades, and they hate each other more. Violence is boiling over: Armed right-wing militants traveled to sites of left-
wing protests this summer, supposedly to enforce order, and deadly clashes occurred. If tensions continue to grow, these
isolated incidents could become more common — and the United States might follow the path of other
nations that have experienced full-blown armed conflict in recent decades. Despite its appeal, this view
betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of political violence. Historically, the academic literature on
the causes of civil war was divided into two categories: Some scholars viewed such conflicts as a
predictable outcome whenever there were deep grievances within national populations, while others
stressed the importance of citizens having an opportunity to act on those resentments. Much of the
discussion about violence in the United States today centers, implicitly, on the grievance model, holding
that if we know how much different tribes of Americans hate each other, we can predict the likelihood
of fighting in the streets. But scholars now prefer the opportunity model, thanks to large-scale studies
that examine political violence worldwide with cutting-edge statistical methods. Grievances and
societal cleavages exist everywhere, waiting to be exploited. What distinguishes the countries that
descend into civil war from those that do not is the lack of state capacity to put down rebellion — for reasons
rooted in politics, economics or geography. Gun laws were meant to ban private militants. Now, our hands are tied. You
might expect, for instance, states that lack democracy, that have diverse populations or that discriminate
against minorities would be at the highest risk of internal conflict, because such conditions foment bitter
grievances. But in fact, those qualities are at most loosely correlated with civil war , as scholars like the Stanford
University political scientists James Fearon and David Laitin and the University of California at San Diego’s Barbara F. Walter have shown.
Rather, civil wars happen where the state is weak. Lower levels of wealth predict civil war, because poor
countries lack the law enforcement and military capability to put down armed rebellions. That helps to explain
recent conflicts in such varied countries as Yemen and Congo. Power vacuums, as occurred during and after decolonization, after
American regime-change wars and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, create uncertainty about who is in charge and can
inspire those who seek power to take up arms. There are other factors, too: States that are rich in oil see more civil war
because the potential payoffs of a successful rebellion are higher — but this applies only up to a certain level of income, after which point the
government is often able to buy off or destroy any potential challengers. The Balkans offer a ready example of how grievance based on ethnic
tension must be intertwined with the collapse of order for groups to take up arms against one another. While various ethnolinguistic
communities there long eyed each other with suspicion, going back to the days of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, those tensions
did not lead to violence for most of the region’s history, including during the nearly half-century of communist rule. But when the Soviet empire
fell and communist governments were discredited, parts of Yugoslavia began to declare independence. Serbs, Bosnians, Croats and Albanians,
incited by political opportunists and demagogues, fought wars against one another for a decade, drawing in the international community, until
sovereign states emerged with new, widely accepted borders. In one influential 2006 study representative of the new
school of thought — one that examined 172 countries from 1945 to 2000 — the political scientists Havard Hegre, of
the Center for the Study of Civil War, and Nicholas Sambanis, of Yale University, used advanced statistical tools to determine
which of 88 factors most consistently predicted civil war. Grievance-based measures like authoritarian
government and ethnolinguistic diversity ranked low or had no discernible effect (although the latter did predict internal conflict
when the analysis included the lowest level of conflict measured, defined as 25 or more deaths in a year). In contrast, Hegre and Sambanis
found that measures of opportunity like a small military establishment and rough terrain — which offers a base from which
rebels can strike — had a much stronger and more consistent effect. Geography is a surprisingly potent variable in predicting
civil war — and can confound even moderately strong states. During such conflicts, governments usually control the cities, and rebels form
bases in relatively inaccessible regions like mountains, forests and swamps. Countries that have had problems with mountain-based minorities
include Russia, which has confronted rebels in Chechnya, and Turkey, which is still fighting Kurds in the southeast of the country. (Until the
1990s, the Turkish government even referred to Kurds as “Mountain Turks,” denying their identity while acknowledging the geographical
nature of the problem.) Even with the most difficult geographic conditions, however, wealth and government power tend to erase
opportunities for rebellion. Consider that in 1948 and 1949, South Korea faced a communist-led uprising on Jeju Island — which lies in the
Korea Strait, about 60 miles from the mainland — in a conflict that cost as many as 30,000 lives, mostly civilian. A poor, newly independent
South Korea had difficulty bringing that island under control and relied on brutal tactics to do so, including summary executions. But now that
South Korea has joined the club of modern, industrialized states with advanced militaries, the idea of a region like Jeju rebelling has become
unthinkable. Wealth and military power explain why, in the United States, civil war is likely to remain a
metaphor. Its per capita gross domestic product is about $62,000 a year, among the highest in the world, and its
military is clearly capable of wiping out any challenges to state power. (The U.S. Civil War occurred when the nation
had a per capita GDP comparable to that of a developing nation today, and when military technology was limited to rifles and cannon.) The
Pentagon has 1.3 million active-duty personnel, can find terrorists on the other side of the world and
wipe them out with the push of a button, and boasts a command-and-control structure with no recent
history of factionalization. There is no swamp or mountain peak that is beyond the easy reach of the U.S. military. A recent survey by
Nationscape revealed that 36 percent of Republicans and 33 percent of Democrats thought that violence was at least somewhat justified to
accomplish political goals. The opportunity model suggests that while a survey result like this reveals disturbing things about our political
culture, it does not presage civil war. To be sure, riots
and general discord can happen as long as leaders lack the
political will to respond (or if, as today, leaders disagree about the line dividing peaceful protest from lawlessness). But as soon as
the authorities perceive a serious enough problem, they can move quickly and decisively, a lesson
learned by the anarchists who recently took over part of Seattle, declaring it the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. They
were tolerated for just over three weeks until they were cleared out by local police in partnership with the FBI. Law enforcement at the local
and national levels, from police to the military, remains united and under civilian control, willing and able to put down potential threats to our
governing system or territorial integrity. Five myths about militias The wide availability of guns does make the American situation unique
among developed countries — and leads to more horrific low-level violence, such as the 2019 El Paso shooting, in which a White racist angry
about immigration is accused of targeting innocent Hispanics, killing 23 people. (He had apparently sought, but failed, to provoke a larger
conflict.) But that is not civil war — and using such hyperbolic language may actually lead to more violence, as radicals come to believe that true
civil war is possible and undertake copycat attacks. In fact, the situation in Michigan suggests how intoxicating the idea of civil war can be. Had
the recently arrested anti-government extremists not been under close federal surveillance — itself a reassuring sign of state capacity — they
might have committed hideous political violence. Yet their goal of inciting civil war would have remained out of reach. Those predicting civil war
have correctly identified serious problems in American society: Ever-widening divisions based on factors including race, geography and
partisanship make it difficult to respond to such varied threats as pandemics, economic crises and climate change. But our problem
remains bitter polarization and distrust, not the literal disintegration of the country. The United States faces
monumental challenges in the coming months and years, from a rancorous election (and its aftershocks) to difficult racial issues to continuing
environmental calamity. Extreme partisanship and political discord will absolutely make everything harder. But the sooner we realize
that civil war is highly unlikely, the sooner we can focus on real problems.
 1NC---Democracy
Unions are vulnerable to right-wing populism – the plan doesn’t solve democracy
Gruenberg 21 [Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People's World. He is also
the editor of Press Associates Inc. (PAI), a union news service in Washington, D.C. that he has headed
since 1999. Previously, he worked as Washington correspondent for the Ottaway News Service, as Port
Jervis bureau chief for the Middletown, NY Times Herald Record, and as a researcher and writer for
Congressional Quarterly. Mark obtained his BA in public policy from the University of Chicago and
worked as the University of Chicago correspondent for the Chicago Daily News. "Worldwide, union
leaders grapple with members backing right-wing ‘populists’."
https://peoplesworld.org/article/worldwide-union-leaders-grapple-with-members-backing-right-wing-
populists/]

WASHINGTON—For years, union

leaders on both sides of “The Pond”—also known as the Atlantic Ocean—have faced a problem:
Right-wing ideologues’ “populist” rhetoric sways millions of their members to vote against their own
interests .

And then once those putative plutocrats achieve public office, they show their true colors , by enacting
and enforcing repressive pro-corporate anti-worker laws .

The problem is visible in the U.S ., where 40% of union members and their families backed former GOP Oval
Office occupant Donald Trump in 2020. But it’s not just Trump.

Over the years, millions supported other right-wing Republicans such as Sens. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Ted Cruz (Texas), various
U.S. representatives, Gov. Greg Abbott (Texas), and former Govs. Bruce Rauner (Ill.) and Scott Walker (Wis.).
All of them, especially Trump and Cruz, spout populist bombast and claim to represent workers—and then enact edicts benefiting the corporate
class.

“Trump’s policies favored the rich and the well-connected. But four in ten union voters wanted to give
him a second term” last November , said Knut Pankin, moderator of a late-March panel discussion on Right-Wing Populism As An
Anti-Worker Agenda. “Why?”

The dilemma exists in other democracies, too. Some unionists heeded anti-immigrant screeds from
Germany’s extreme right Alternative for Deutschland, Marine LePen’s French National Rally (formerly the National
Front), Norbert Hofer’s Austrian Freedom Party, Hungarian Prime Minister/strongman Viktor Orban of Fidesz, and Poland’s Law and
Justice Party , panelists said.

Once those blocs won power in Austria, Poland, and Hungary, or influenced elections in France, mainstream
politicians followed their lead, cracking down on workers as well as targeting migrants . The pols feared
they would otherwise lose more votes to the right .
The panel, sponsored by Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, a
foundation set up to foster U.S.- German relations, tried to figure out why workers vote that way—and how to reorient them.

That’s not to say panelists Vonda McDaniel, president of the Nashville, Tenn., Central Labor Council, Prof. Federico Finchelstein, an expert on
East European politics at New York’s New School for Social Research, and Prof. Thomas Greven of the Free University of Berlin reached a
conclusion. They offered some reasons for the rightward shift and some solutions.
All those parties, including the GOP, “started as bourgeois, middle-class, shopkeeper-oriented” organizations, but have since pivoted to right-
wing populism, Greven explained.

“Cruz at the Conservative Political Action Conference was trying to be the inheritor of the white working class who supported Trump,” he
contended. The Texan proclaimed the GOP “the party of steelworkers, construction workers, police officers, firefighters, and waitresses.”

Nationalism, protectionism, and racism

“But onecommon denominator” is the GOP and the other right-wing parties, plus the workers they appeal to,
“have a radicalized response ” that “is nationalist, protectionist and nativist …to all facets of
globalization,” he said. Those facets include corporate export of workers’ jobs to low-wage nations and
resentment of refugees and migrants , often people of color whom white nativists in Europe and the
U.S. view as a threat .

“ ’Us versus them’ is much easier to sell to working-class constituents . Union status doesn’t inoculate
people versus right-wing populism ,” Greven said. While populists’ pro-worker rhetoric is “a charade,” and
progressives’ answer, “tax the rich,” is not enough, he added.

The public is an idiocracy – democracy can’t be productive

Dr. Stuart Parker 20, Philosopher and Former Teacher who Lectured on Philosophy and Education at
London's Institute of Education, South Bank University, Author of Reflective Teaching in the Postmodern
World, “The Problem With Democracy — It's You”, The Article, 10/5/2020,
https://www.thearticle.com/the-problem-with-democracy-its-you

So why is our democracy so unfit for purpose? Why is it that we can elect leaders who are little more
than self-serving schemers , whose contempt for the electorate renders them incapable of giving
straight, honest answers to even the most straightforward , reasonable questions? It’s not as if any of
these qualities have been smuggled in under our noses. They are paraded before our eyes every single day.
Nobody voting for Johnson or Trump could be blind to the fact [ignore] that they are serial liars . And yet they
voted all the same . Why?
***

Mencken was on to something when suggesting that the leaders we get, the leaders we deserve, closely represent
something dark in the inner soul of the people. There’s no easy way to put this — the problem with
democracy is the voters . The voters simply aren’t good enough to support a healthy democracy.
They’re not up to the job. Now I know some will think: a snowflake-remainer-lefty-loser will always blame the voters just as a bad workman
always blames his tools. But these tools are shot.

Consider this: a poll in 2005 found that 21 per cent of Americans believe in witches and 9 per cent that
spirits can take control of a person. In 1999, 18 per cent believed the sun revolves around the earth — so
much for “the science” — and in 2000, 31 per cent believed in ghosts, and increase of 20 percentage points since 1978.

By 2019, the year before Trump’s re-election attempt, significant numbers believe d in the illuminati , Big-foot and a
flat earth . Ghost-belief had risen to 45 per cent , as had the belief in demons. Belief in vampires stood
at a fangtastic 13 per cent.
Britain has nothing to be proud of. While 33 per cent of us believe in ghosts and 18 per cent in demonic possession, a whopping 52 per cent of
us believe that you can magically make a false claim true simply by writing it on the side of a bus.

In elective dictatorships where small margins have huge consequences we’d better get used to the fact that (possibly small)
groups with stupid ideas and a lack of relevant knowledge and skills can have a disproportionate
effect on the lives of the rest of us.
 1NC---Warming
Warming will be gradual, cushioned by inevitable intermediate mitigation.
Wade ’21 [Robert H.; 2021; Professor of Global Political Economy at the London School of Economics,
DPhil and MPhil in Social Anthropology from Sussex University, Master’s in Economics from Victoria
University, BA in Economics from Otago University; Global Policy Journal, “What is the Harm in
Forecasting Catastrophe Due to Man-Made Global Warming?”
https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/22/07/2021/what-harm-forecasting-catastrophe-due-man-
made-global-warming]
Conclusion

I have argued that the “plausible” risks of climate change are commonly exaggerated within the climate community. Recall
for example, Christiana Figueres, 2020, “The scary thing is that after 2030 it basically doesn’t really matter what humans do”; Kevin Drum, 2019,
“[The Green New Deal] would only change the dates for planetary suicide by a decade or so”; Frank Fenner, 2010, “We’re going to
become extinct . Whatever we do now is too late.” Many more in the same doomsday vein.

We have seen that the standard global warming models have a powerful built-in bias to exaggerate the rate
of future temp erature rise, as seen in (most of) them “hindcasting” temperature rises several times faster
than actually observed. We have seen that forecasters commonly take “ worst-case scenarios” as “ likely scenarios
in the absence of radical action” (eg reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050), to the point where Nature recently published a paper sub-
titled, “Stop using the worst-case scenario for climate warming as the most likely outcome”.

The dismaying thing is that scientists and advocates have

been making catastrophising global warming forecasts of this
kind for decades past, normally dated some 10 to 30 years into the future. The due date comes without catastrophe ,

but never a retrospective holding to account. Rather, on to the next catastrophising forecast another 10 to 30 years
ahead. Scientists-writers-activists know the catastrophe forecasts get the attention, the clicks , the research funding.
We saw the exaggeration mechanism spelled out by Richard Betts of the BBC, Holman Jenkins of the Wall St Journal, and climate scientist Judith
Curry.

The built-in exaggeration of the costs of climate change blunts the parallel with nuclear power plants. We know with high certainty the costs of
nuclear explosions. We know the costs of global temperature going above 1.5 C above “pre-industrial” much less certainly, and we can see the
mechanisms by which the likely costs are being systematically exaggerated.

On the other hand, there is abundant evidence that even without the doomsday exaggerations the plausible risks of climate change could be very serious, in particular because of the inherent
political economy difficulty of getting needed global or regional cooperation when political action is mostly at the level of sovereign nation states (see the G20).

Coal power generation is the single biggest source of GHG emissions, and emissions from coal consumption will probably not fall fast, whatever the promises. First, coal is cheap, accessible and
generates reliable power for many developing countries; in Asia, coal alone generates 40 percent of energy consumption, much higher than the world average of 29 percent. (12) Second,
developing countries, including China, assert a strong claim on carbon space to power their economic development. They see it partly as a matter of fundamental justice, since developed
countries emitted most of the CO2 that is already in the atmosphere and seas as the necessary condition for them becoming developed. Developed countries promise finance and technical
assistance on a massive scale to accelerate the energy transition in developing countries – and have a long track record of leaving promises as promises. (See the global distribution of Covid
vaccines. See the results of vaunted “voting reform” in the World Bank, leaving the US with 17% and China with 6%.) What is more, the Japanese government plans up to 22 new coal power
plants, as it closes nuclear plants in the wake of Fukushima.

Then comes a question: does drawing attention to the doomsday exaggerations of the CCC – “disaster”, “catastrophe”, “extinction”, “fiddling while the planet burns” - serve to reduce the
political and public pressures for necessary ameliorative action, in a world where powerful fossil lobbies seek to block or delay such action for reasons independent of “evidence”? Should
“Third Way” essays like this one not be published, because “give them (deniers, sceptics) an inch and they will take a mile”? To what extent must mass publics be “panicked” in order to induce
enough collective political and business action – national, international – to substantially slow the growth of GHG emissions? If we can sustain emission- and temperature-curbing action only
by holding up the certainty of disaster, catastrophe, extinction, then better to let the doomsday exaggerations continue as the necessary condition for that ameliorative action. What is the
harm, when the alternative is ruin for humanity and the biosphere?

The danger is that the repeated wild exaggerations produce a public backlash, a discrediting, and a strengthening of the many “deniers” who see “leftists, governments, and the United
Nations” as the source of malevolence in the world. A more accurate accounting of the evidence would (hopefully) produce a more calibrated and sustained public and business response.

What to do? (13)

The IPCC should allocate some 10% of its budget to a Red Team, dedicated to independent scrutiny of its evidence and conclusions (especially the Summary for Policymakers). (14) The IPCC
should revise its mandate to require it explicitly to focus on interactions between natural forces and human actions, as it is now almost required not to, biassing its assessment of the state of
scientific knowledge towards “man-made global warming” as an almost separate system.
Learned societies should more actively seek to understand and publicize the reasons for repeated large-scale discrepancies between “hindcasts” and “forecasts” on the one hand and actual
observations on the other, discrepancies strongly biased towards “disaster”.

It is particularly important that the knee-jerk attribution of extreme weather events to global warming be challenged with reference to evidence. Judith Curry explained – quoted earlier -- why

CCC advocates have a powerful incentive to attribute cases of extreme weather to global warming, tout
court. She has recently written, “Apart from the reduced frequency of the coldest temperatures, the signal of global
warming in the statistics of extreme weather events remains much smaller than that from natural
climate variability, and is expected to remain so at least until the second half of the 21rst century .” She goes
on to amplify a point made earlier about the limits of the climate models used for the IPCC assessment reports : they are driven

mainly by predictions of future GHG emissions. They do not include predictions of natural climate
variability arising from solar output, volcanic eruptions or evolution of large-scale multi-decadal ocean
circulations. They do a particularly poor job of simulating regional and decadal-scale climate variability.
(15)

Participants on both sides have to learn the art of respecting the principle of free speech while maintaining the standards of civil discourse.

While I have stressed the CCC’s support for urgent and radical changes to the way we live, work and govern, some CCC champions argue that the world economy could continue on a largely
unchanged growth trajectory provided that we switch fast from fossil fuels to renewables. Indeed, this switch is beginning to happen fast, with coal and nuclear energy production unable to
compete without subsidies in areas where natural gas, wind and solar resources are readily available.

But to say that life can continue as before provided we substitute renewables for fossil fuels obscures the huge difficulties for many developing countries of getting out of fossil fuels while
growing fast enough to reduce the income gap with developed countries.

We must give high priority to investments in “clean coal” technologies, such as carbon capture, storage and use, to make the dirtier coal cleaner in existing and new coal-power plants; and link
coal-power retirement to the coming on-stream of attractive alternatives. The multilateral development banks have recently or will soon announce bans on coal power. The G7 leaders
meeting in mid 2021 promised to stop using government funds to finance new international coal power plants by the end of 2021. China’s Belt and Road Initiative should increase its pressure
on host countries to cut back on dirty coal and boost clean coal and renewables.

A high and immediate priority is to build a robust financing and technical assistance mechanism for help from developed to developing countries. The Paris Agreement instituted a Mitigation
pillar and an Adaptation pillar. Intense debate took place around the third, Loss and Damage, the name of a mechanism to compensate for the destruction that Mitigation and Adaptation
cannot prevent. Developed countries by and large have sought to marginalize the Loss and Damage pillar, as they have long sought to marginalize Special and Differential Treatment for
developing countries in trade and investment agreements. “Finance is something that really rich countries, particularly the US, have made sure that there is no progress and not even
discussion on”, remarked Harjeet Singh, senior advisor at Climate Action Network International. (16)

My “forecast” is that in
the next two to three decades to midcentury we will make rapid progress in scientific knowledge
about weather and climate, helped by longer and more accurate satellite and ocean records and by a new generation of
climate models that operate at one to ten kilometers scale (as distinct from the current models’ 50 kilometer scale). We will probably
continue to make rapid progress in decoupling GHG from GDP growth, with a combination of state direction-
setting and private innovation focused on transformations in energy, transport, buildings, industry and agriculture, using incentives
like research and development subsidies and tax credits for technology investment, and penalties for carbon-intensive activities. (17) In
transport, this entails coordination across urban planning decisions, public transport investment, future of remote working, infrastructures for
electric charging and hydrogen loading. (18) Transformations in these systems are already underway, and the prospect
of vast new green investments, supported and under-written by the state, will intensify them. These green investments will
open productive investment opportunities previously limited by stagnant wages and rising debt, which have driven investment into increasingly
speculative ventures. If by two or three decades ahead it looks as though the second half of this century could well experience globally extreme
climate and ocean events, we will be much more knowledgeable about what to do than we are today. (19)
 1NC---Food Insecurity
No food wars.
Jonas Vestby et al. 18, Doctoral Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo; Ida Rudolfsen,
doctoral researcher at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University and PRIO;
and Halvard Buhaug, Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Professor of
Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), and Associate Editor of
the Journal of Peace Research and Political Geography, 5/18/2018, “Does hunger cause conflict?”
https://blogs.prio.org/ClimateAndConflict/2018/05/does-hunger-cause-conflict/

It is perhaps surprising, then, that there is little scholarly merit in the notion that a short-term reduction in access to food increases
the probability that conflict will break out. This is because to start or participate in violent conflict requires people to
have both the means and the will . Most people on the brink of starvation are not in the position to
resort to violence, whether against the government or other social groups. In fact, the urban middle classes tend to be the most likely to protest against
rises in food prices, since they often have the best opportunities, the most energy, and the best skills to coordinate and participate in protests.

Accordingly, there is a widespread misapprehension that social unrest in periods of high food prices relates primarily to food shortages. In reality , the
sources of discontent are considerably more complex ---linked to political structures , land ownership ,
corruption , the desire for democratic reforms and general economic problems ---where the price of food is seen in
the context of general increases in the cost of living. Research has shown that while the international media have a tendency to
seek simple resource-related explanations ---such as drought or famine---for conflicts in the Global South, debates in the local media
are permeated by more complex political relationships.
 1NC---Emerging Tech
No emerging tech impacts – gradualism and hype.
Sechser 19 – Todd S. Sechser, Public Policy Professor at the University of Virginia. Neil Narang, Political
Science Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Caitlin Talmadge, Security Studies
Professor at Georgetown University. [Emerging technologies and strategic stability in peacetime, crisis,
and war, Journal of Strategic Studies, 42(6), Taylor and Francis]

Yet the history of technological revolutions counsels against alarmism. Extrapolating from current technological
trends is problematic, both because technologies often do not live up to their promise , and because technologies often
have countervailing or conditional effects that can temper their negative consequences . Thus, the fear that
emerging technologies will necessarily cause sudden and spectacular changes to international politics
should be treated with caution . There are at least two reasons to be circumspect.

First, very few technologies fundamentally reshape the dynamics of international conflict. Historically, most
technological innovations have amounted to incremental advancements, and some have disappeared into
irrelevance despite widespread hype about their promise . For example, the introduction of chemical weapons
was widely expected to immediately change the nature of warfare and deterrence after the British army first used poison
gas on the battlefield during World War I. Yet chemical weapons quickly turned out to be less practical , easier to counter ,
and less effective than conventional high-explosives in inflicting damage and disrupting enemy operations.6 Other technologies have
become important only after advancements in other areas allowed them to reach their full potential: until armies developed tactics for
effectively employing firearms, for instance, these weapons had little effect on the balance of power. And even when technologies
do have significant strategic consequences , they often take decades to emerge , as the invention of airplanes
and tanks illustrates. In short, it is easy to exaggerate the strategic effects of nascent technologies .7

Second, even if today’s emerging technologies are poised to drive important changes in the international
system, they are likely to have variegated and even contradictory effects . Technologies may be
destabilising under some conditions , but stabilising in others . Furthermore, other factors are likely to
mediate the effects of new technologies on the international system, including geography , the distribution
of material power , military strategy , domestic and organisational politics , and social and cultural
variables , to name only a few.8 Consequently, the strategic effects of new technologies often defy simple classification. Indeed, more than
70 years after nuclear weapons emerged as a new technology, their consequences for stability continue to be debated.9