They Legislate, We Decide
BARNES, FRED
They Legislate, We Decide The view from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. by Fred Barnes YDu can't govern from Capitol Hill. Newt Gingrich, as Republican House speaker, tried after the landslide of 1994...
...Instead, they're amused by Democratic pretensions of being in charge of Washington...
...The White House wants to hold down spending but not raise taxes...
...He was more or less obligated—or at least felt he was—to sign spending bills passed by a Republican Congress...
...What stands in their way...
...One, the Democratic majority in the Senate is fragile (51-49), and it's hardly overwhelming in the House (233-202...
...They can leak what they find to the press...
...It's likely to pass Congress, prompting a Bush veto that the House is all but certain to sustain...
...And Bush is prepared to use them...
...If Rove is right—and I believe he is—Social Security reform is off the table in Bush's final two years...
...Democrats have already discovered this would cost far more than initially anticipated...
...One of the six items on the "100 hours" program in the House is expanded funding of embryonic stem cell research...
...They can bombard the administration with subpoenas...
...Rove had only one taker...
...The president has quite an arsenal: veto, filibuster by Senate Republicans, bully pulpit, a potential alliance of Republicans and conservative Democrats on selected issues, recess appointments, discretion to act on foreign policy without congressional approval...
...Yet Democrats, with their "100 hours" agenda in the House and 10 legislative "priorities" in the Senate, act as if they can run Washington...
...Newt Gingrich, as Republican House speaker, tried after the landslide of 1994 and failed...
...One might suppose the White House would be chastened, given Bush's dismal public approval rating...
...But with a Democratic Congress, "he can be bolder than he otherwise might have been," an aide says...
...To the delight of the White House, Democrats have endorsed the same fiscal goal as the president: a balanced budget by 2012...
...And they're convinced the politics of the two plans favors Republicans...
...This amounts to limited bipartisanship—very limited...
...And while they can reject confirmation of Bush's nominees for United Nations ambassador, director of national intelligence, and deputy secretary of state, Bush can respond with recess appointments...
...Democrats look kindly on a fiscal fix for Social Security that involves raising the ceiling on income subject to payroll taxation...
...The president is also expected to disclose new breakthroughs from non-embryonic stem cell research...
...They can make life in Washington unpleasant for the Bush administration...
...This approach is a bit of a gamble...
...Some Democrats and organized labor oppose the so-called offsets...
...Bush, of course, has opposed tax increases throughout his presidency...
...But they won't offer Bush what he might want—personal investment accounts—in exchange for swallowing a tax increase...
...The Democrats' ultimate weapon is a cutoff of funds for Iraq, but they have said they won't use this weapon, for now anyway...
...In his first six years as president, Bush often threatened vetoes but vetoed only a single measure...
...But they cannot stop the president from deploying more troops in Iraq to secure Baghdad, as he is expected to do soon...
...We govern...
...And third, there's Bush and his weapons...
...His no-new-taxes policy is unwavering and all-encompassing...
...But when Bush adviser Karl Rove spoke to Grover Norquist's weekly gathering of conservatives last week in Washington, he offered to bet anyone in the room $5 that the president would finish his two terms without having signed a single tax hike...
...But Bush and Democrats are sure to disagree on how to achieve it...
...Democrats are not powerless...
...Then there's the item to cut the interest rate on student loans in half...
...on issues on which they agree—extension of No Child Left Behind, comprehensive immigration reform, and stepped-up funding for alternative energy—and strongly oppose everything else that Democrats are proposing...
...We run things...
...If it does, Bush is ready to veto it—in the expectation his veto will be easily upheld...
...Its future is unclear after Democrats concluded it might have to be phased in over five years...
...Bush is braced to accept a boost in the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour, but not unless it is coupled with tax relief for small businesses...
...Siding with Bush, Senate Republicans may mount a filibuster to block a simple increase...
...Last week, in a piece published in the Wall Street Journal, he wrote that "now is not the time to raise taxes on the American people...
...Three rather large impediments...
...Bush, according to aides, feels "liberated" to insist on fiscal restraint...
...I want the Democrats saying higher taxes," an aide says...
...Not so, his aides say...
...They can recommend Bush appointees for criminal prosecution...
...Democrats believe raising taxes on the well-to-do to pay for, say, expanded health care benefits for children is a political winner...
...Still there have been fears he was weakening on taxes after the election disaster last November...
...They can turn oversight hearings into partisan show trials...
...It's just hilarious," an aide says...
...The bill may not pass...
...They've got to legislate...
...In a political fight, Congress can't match a president's tools...
...It might be...
...His strategy is to join with Democrats Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard...
...That means a willingness—perhaps an eager-ness—to use the veto...
...Good luck...
...Bush advisers assume Democrats will prefer higher spending plus tax increases...
...Presidents, even unpopular ones, usually do...
...House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Harry Reid are promising to take the country in a "new direction...
...One way or another, Bush and his aides figure they'll defeat the Democratic bid to have the federal government negotiate drug prices for the popular Medicare prescription drug program...
...Second, Democrats are fractured on many issues— not just Iraq but even on whether to pursue a moderate strategy of moving slowly and carefully or one of going for broke to roll back the conservative advances of the Bush years...
...He's not going to raise taxes for nothing," an adviser says...
...Bush and his aides aren't...
...Even before Democrats took over Congress last week, the White House was developing tactics to block their agenda...
Vol. 12 • January 2007 • No. 17
