Some Clarity on Funding Theory

Per your interpretation, what’s to stop someone from funding their program with cigarette taxes, and claiming advantages from reduced cigarette consumption?

Normal Means is really clean for a lot of reasons, but the primary one is that it prevents people from overspecifying away from disad links, and into free impact ground. The aff has enough of an advantage with infinite prep – they don’t need any more.

Sorry, read the rest of your post. Oops.

I think the problem is that there is no clear brightline to your interpretation, which makes it problematic to use for any sort of procedural argument. I prefer an interpretation of “aff is ONLY allowed to spec normal means” in order to preserve links to disad ground.

My take on funding is about as far divergent from Mike’s as you can get =) And I’m glad we have this space as well as tournaments to hash out our theories – which everyone should be quick to see are simply that – theories. Neither Mike nor I are the holy grail when it comes to debate theory. We just have our thoughts and various justifications as to why they are a good idea. My thanks to Mike for laying out his thoughts!

I’ll have a more detailed response later (need to get grading done!) but my question to Mike, as he lays out in case is this:

Why doesn’t the entire case become an “extra topical advantage” when you specify funding?

If the funding mechanism is not in the resolution and we both seem to agree that if my funding plank says “cut all money from Iraq war” and my advantage one is “End death in Iraq” that would be bad for debate. Most of us would agree to an extra-topicality violation to sever advantage 1.

As such, it seems to me that if I have a really expensive plan (say, repave all roads) and I fund that by saying I “cut all money from Iraq war” to do my plan, my plan’s solvency is similar if not exactly like Adv 1 above.

If you can convince me the two are different I may move closer to your viewpoint. Right now I see them as the same. The entire plan is an extra-topical advantage since you gain solvency by an extra-topical plan plank. If the resolution said “reform domestic transportation infrastructure by cutting defense spending” then I’d be 100% in agreement.

At the risk of stating the painfully obvious: (a) “normal means” is the antithesis of “reform”; (b) new and/or different funding for transportation is “reform” of the “financial infrastructure” of the transportation system.

Danny,
You must look to the grammatical usage of “reform”. Transportation infrastructure must be reformed, not the normal funding process for new governmental policies. Your second point seems to be changing words of the resolution. The affirmative must reform the infrastructure for transportation itself, not the “financial infrastructure of the transportation system”.

Mike, your first paragraph is regarding negative ground of solvency because if the money isn’t there, they can’t solve. Remember, policy debate is not whether or not a government “can” do the “plan”, but rather if they “should” do the plan. That is why fiat is to assume that a world exist where the government already “can” do the plan. The ground you are asking for is ground that is already denied by fiat.

Additionally, you aregue that the affirmative would just be able to shift ground by not specifying funding, and de-link disads. But I think this is worse when the affirmative actually is required to specify funding. In a world absent funding, then you get the links to generic disads (as previously mentioned). Additionally, if the affirmative does try to de-link by fiating different funding mechanism, then run an abuse voter in response. Not specifying lets the neg get their disads, and still gives both teams the opportunity to debate what a “likely funding source” would be, but not let the affirmative spike out of disads via fiat abuse.

In a world where the affirmative is required to specify funding, I would simply write my affirmative case, and change my funding mechanism EVERY SINGLE ROUND, that was so obscure that no generic disad, and no disad to the funding mechanism I used the round before would link. As the negative, where I am already disadvantaged with the extra 2 minutes of speaking time aff gets, would rather have a round where I could have a chance to link a spending disad to the plan and could debate the link with my oppent over a round where the affirmative pre-emptively denies me ALL ground on spending disads with fiat.

I also feel that you are confusing topicality a little bit. The only thing that has to be topical is the plan text in a vacuum. Advantages can be extra-topical (ie: soft power, politics scenarious, etc). Under your advocacy, I could have a funding mechanism, and still be topical, and then claim my extra-topical advantage (which is not against the rules), and deny you ground at the same time. And then I could specify which congress people would pass the plan (still topical), and then deny you health care politics. This could go on forever until the neg could never win. This is why I agree with Will that specify to normal means is best for the negative team.

In summary, why would the negative not want just get a card saying how much the plan costs, and where the money would come from. Chances are, the affirmative won’t have that information, and neg will always be winning the debate on links/solvency?

My few cents on the matter are…
That as far as I understand that for the federal government to fund a program by LAW it has to be from congressional appropriations, also called “normal means.” It is quite literally illegal for the Fed to cut funding from one program or venture in order to fund another. The reason for this is fairly simple, if this was legal, earmarks would be cutting funding to anything and everything a lawmaker wants to. For example, if a representative from NC decides that he needs a new federal welfare program in his state, and doesn’t like the Afghanistan war, then he cuts the funding for that. Or he doesn’t like nuclear weapons so he cuts the defense budget.

This may be a shocker to many in the debate community, I know it is regular practice to draw from farm subsidies or other random stuff to supposedly have solvency on any funding arguments. In my high school days this argument worked on almost every plan because it was so popular to insert these little funding cuts because nobody in my league liked farm subsidies. It has some fun impacts having to do with precedents set, laws violated, and in the end programs unneccessarily cut

Thoughts? Comments? Snide remarks?

Alex,

This only apply to plans where the sole actor is Congress. Their are other ways to fund the plan, ie: you have an agency do the plan, in which case, pulling money from another program is an option. The Department of Homeland Security, for example, could decrease funding for investigations on terror suspects in Afghanistan (Afghanistan war) to institute a welfare policy for refugees living in the United States (to stick with your example). Or an executive order to an agency would essentially have the same effect: the agency would have to find a way to fund the option.

Additionally, under PAYGO legislation, I believe Congress is required to either use any revenue to pay for new programs, or make across the board cuts to non-mandatory programs in order to fund the plan. Correct me if I am wrong, but I do think it is legal for Congress to cut funding programs, or they can use “emergency exemptions” that allow for new appropriations to be made.

Mike, I am glad you are finding everything helpful.

I would like to respond to your first paragraph by saying that it is important to differentiate plan text and advantages. The only thing that has to be on face topical (not untopical, effects topical, or extra topical) is the plan text itself. It is completely fine to have extra-topical advantages, it is not a rules violation or abusive. Plan text in a vacuum is the only thing that must be topical. Looking to advantage solvency is mixing burdens of topicality and solvency. There are a several arguments people make about why mixing burdens is bad. But the bottom line is, the only thing bound by the constraint of topicality is the plan text.

In response to your “middle path”, my recommedation is to say in your plan text, “Funding and Enforcement through normal means. I reserve the right to clarify intent. Any questions, just ask.” This serves a few purposes. First it prevents you from overspecifying and abusing the neg, giving the neg more link ground of funding DA’s. Second, it gives the negative the option to ask you to clarify funding. If the negative asks you to specify, then you can. And if you do clarify, then you can use that offense in the next speech if you need to. This also lets you make the “cross-examination checks abuse” on funding spec arguments made against you, but prevent’s over-spec from being run against you as well. Plus you aren’t using fiat to guarantee funding (you have funding determined if asked), and letting the negative choose between assuming you have funding and they can have their link ground or letting the negative assume you don’t have funding, in which case they can ask, but then they may sacrifice links. This is the best middle path I think one can have.

Here is the only real abuse situation of not specifying. The aff writes a plan text that does not specify funding. Negative runs a spending tradeoff disad (or another spending disad). The affirmative responds to the “link” (this is important, since spending links are generated off the plan text usually), by saying something like “I don’t tradeoff with “x” because my plan uses money from “y”.” The abuse comes because the affirmative is now re-writing his/her plan text in the middle of the round, which completely moots the Negative constructive.

Their is a differentiation that needs to be made though. Take the above example, but instead of the aff saying the plan uses money from “y”, s/he runs a card, that says empirically that money for this type of program comes from “y” or that it is likely to be pulled from “y”, then this is not abusive, because the affirmative is not writing it into her/his plan text, but rather challenging you the negative link, and still giving the negative a chance to beat back these cards and win the disad.

Abuse from not specifying does not come from no-linking the disad, but rather “how” the affirmative choooses to no-link the disad. Using fiat in the second speech and writing the no-link into the plan text is abusive, but debating the link with cards, and not straight-out denying the negative the position (because the negative can beat these cards and still get the link) is not abusive.

Lastly, as the negative, if you are ever worried about the affirmative abusing you by not linking, you can run f-spec combined with the disad. In this scenario, the affirmative either has to guarantee the link (sometimes argued the most important part of winning a disad) or they will lose on the abuse story of f-spec. It is a bit of a time waste for the neg, but if your spending disad is enough to win the round, then it can be worth it, because whatever choice the affirmative makes, the negative has a winning position.

Hope this helps.

Speaking as a lawyer and political science instructor, the son of a deceased legislator, and as well as a debate coach and ex-debater, the term “normal means” means nothing. The experience of the two stimulus packages and the health care reform debate plainly demonstrates that to anyone who has the slightest experience in government.

The federal government can – if so chooses – simply print an coin money as it sees fit; of course to do so – without some backing – would be purely inflationary, and make our currency worthless… witness the experience of the Weimar Republic.

“Backing” the currency can be done by the government’s collecting money or borrowing money – and there are a myriad of ways of doing both.

On another issue: “Authorization” is substantially different from “appropriation,” and both are substantially different from “expenditures.” And “expenditures” can either be “investitures” (paid before work is started) or “obligations”(paid after the work is done).

The point is, you can’t truly understand the federal government without understanding governmental finance. And governmental finance can’t be meaningfully debated by employing, burps, bleches, blandishments, blurbs and/or bumper sticker slogans – either in Congress or in academia. Unfortunately – both institutions seem dead set on trying to do just that.

Hence the events of the fall of 2008, in which our economy almost – according to numerous “experts” in and out of government – ceased to exist.

Economics may be a dismal science – but it is the stuff that capitalism is made of. Get used to it.

Professor Miller is right, and I don’t think anyone is disagreeing with anything in your comment regarding how the government acts re: $$$.

I think the bigger point, and why fiat exists in debate, is that if Professor Miller is right, I doubt very many aff cases would ever get to anything related to transportation infrastructure in 6 minutes. Instead, most of the speech would be spent explaining everything Professor Miller talks about in his comment.

Furthermore, if the negative wins Professor Miller’s interpretation of what the affirmative must discuss, why can not the negative continue to pile on burdens.

OK, so you outline what the affirmative should discuss with regards to finances. How about timing too? Questions to respond to:
How long will the plan take to move from house committee to the floor?
Which committee’s bills will be the ‘base bill’ (as I’m learning about re: health care reform)?
Will reconciliation be used in the senate or will a cloture vote be reached?
Who will go to the conference on the house side? the senate side?
How long from when the Congress passes it until the President passes it?
Will there be a signing statement?
Will it be bipartisan? Does 1 vote from a Republican on a committee count as your bipart?
etc…

What distinguishes the need to discuss financial info from timing info? Certainly timing is very important to how the FG makes policy as well. If funding is a key part of nfa-ld timing should be as well.

Instead, I think normal means allows us to debate within the realm of ‘should’ we do something and allow us to explore the heart of the topic. If the resolution was “reform financial system” rather than transportation then I’d agree all those topics would be game for debate.

Right now, I think a more broad view of fiat allows for a discussion of this year’s topic within the 6 min 1ac rather than the intricacies of USFG policy making. I’d rather not debate the sausage making – just the quality of the sausage.

@Mike: If an extra-topical advantage is never claimed, is it really extra-topical? This isn’t a philosophy 101 joke (you are permitted to smile however), but if I never claim that cutting war funding leads to more death, what is there to sever?

My only thought is that while there is no extra-topical advantage the ability to fund your plan would the abuse part. Since no where in the resolution does it specify you can use that funding area (cutting the war) doing so to avoid a trade-off DA seems still a problem. I almost think the same ‘sever’ should then happen to your solvency maybe?

But interesting, this may take more time to muse and perhaps an in person discussion since it’s so hard to fully understand through the internet.