Conservatives may rule the White House and Congress, but spirits at the liberal
Center for Policy Alternatives (CPA) are high nevertheless. That’s because the nonprofit group that promotes liberal issues in the 50 states says progressives are doing well in that arena.
"Especially since 2000, when it's been virtually impossible to enact progressive legislation in Washington, there's been a burst of activity in the states,” Bernie Horn, CPA's policy director, told Stateline.org.
Among the successes the organization celebrates are increases in the minimum wage in 17 states, including three so far this year and a fourth in Hawaii awaiting Republican Gov. Linda Lingle’s signature, and a flurry of legislative action to allow people without health insurance to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices and undocumented immigrants to get in-state tuition at state colleges and universities.
A nonprofit tax-exempt organization, CPA sends information on progressive policies -- everything from raising the minimum wage to promoting same-sex civil unions -- to 2,000 legislators it regards as progressive, the majority of them Democrats, Horn said.
CPA pushes its agenda by connecting legislators from different states who are working on the same issues, acting as a source of information, and disseminating more model legislation than any state group besides ALEC, Horn said.
In past years, about 1,000 bills have been introduced and 100 enacted that are similar to CPA model bills, Horn said. Among initiatives on CPA's 2005 agenda are a bill that would allow prisoners on death row to request DNA testing of evidence, and a bill that sets a deadline for electric utilities to generate a certain percentage of their energy from renewable sources.
For the most part, CPA doesn’t draft its own model legislation, preferring to borrow from bills that already have passed, but the group delights in finding an issue only a few states have tackled and then spreading the word to the rest of the network.
For example, CPA began pushing in-state tuition for undocumented immigrant students in 2001. This year, legislators in 11 states introduced bills on the issue, and New Mexico became the ninth state to enact such a plan. New Mexico also became the third state to require electronic recording of police interrogations, which CPA began pushing for in 2003.
In 2002 Hawaii Rep. Roy Takumi (D) sponsored the second bill in the nation that pooled state residents without health insurance so they could negotiate with drug manufacturers for bulk discounts. The plan was based heavily on the Maine Rx program that Takumi learned of at CPA's annual conference in 2002.
Since then, five more states have passed bills based on the CPA model, and nine others have enacted similar prescription drug discount laws, according to CPA.
As he worked on his bill, Takumi said CPA's help was invaluable. "There are a lot of issues, like minimum wage, that are pretty straightforward, but take something like family leave, or prescription drugs, or things like that," he said. "Those are not easy issues to develop on your own, and to get a sense of what other states are doing, that's where CPA plays a key role."
Some groups believe CPA exaggerates its influence in the states. Brian Newell, state and local coordinator for conservative Christian group
Family Research Council, disputes the contention that progressives have scored many nationwide victories when it comes to hot-button social issues like gay marriage and abortion rights.
Noting that several examples of success that CPA touts occurred in Maryland, Connecticut and New Jersey, Newell said, "They're referring to the Northeast corridor, where the more progressive liberal policies are stronger...I wouldn't say they haven't had their victories, but you've got to look a little deeper and a little further out than just the Northeast.”
Horn said CPA considers itself "the progressive ALEC," but CPA may have a ways to go before it matches the influence of its conservative counterpart. A recent Google search for ALEC turned up 105,000 hits, while CPA turned up only 30,900.
But CPA is not a lightning rod for controversy the way ALEC is. Several of ALEC's hits came from the Web sites of liberal organizations or watchdog groups lambasting ALEC's operation and policies; CPA appears to inspire no such passion from the right.
Horn attributed CPA's lesser influence to its smaller budget. In 2003 ALEC's budget was $5.6 million, with the bulk of that coming from its corporate members; in 2003 CPA's budget was $1.8 million, with more than half of that coming from the Ford Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
CPA has always promoted progressive issues, but when it was founded in 1975 it dealt equally with issues at the state and local level. In recent years however, CPA has focused primarily on state policy.
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