Capitol Ideas
Bethell, Tom
CAPITOL IDEAS by Tom Bethell Falling on the Ball F ailing on the ball in the hope of running out the clock often has disastrous consequences in football, and we are seeing the same thing in...
...What this Congress has shown, beyond doubt, is that interests trump ideas in a democracy...
...There are no constitutional barriers to the redistribution of wealth...
...That really is how liberals think...
...It's striking that Gingrich and Armey were both college professors...
...His willingness to give away other people's money was the true measure of his generosity...
...In fact, it would end overnight...
...Three months ago Clinton looked like a goner...
...Unlike those greedy Republicans, they said, Gore supported programs that help children, the poor, the discriminated-against...
...Once re-election becomes the goal of the leadership, it will take precedence over substance...
...Because the authority to direct funds to construction projects (or to withhold them) brings with it the power to attract campaign funds from builders...
...Then is no ratio, or proportion, between the fed eral taxes levied and the amount that i spent in each congressional district...
...Consider the candidate for office who promises voters that he will dare to oppose new government spending...
...But Gingrich was determinedly playing defense, and now he is unable to do anything else...
...Lewis said of those who apologize for remote events) —Newt Gingrich was crouching somewhere beneath Capitol Hill...
...So much money is available this year—$3o billion more than was envisaged in last year's budget plan—that Bud Schuster seems to have been able to cut almost everyone in on the deal...
...If he votes no (e.g., on the highway bill), he will probably deprive his constituents of an opportunity to get back from Washington what they put into the $1.6 trillion common pool of the federal budget (in the form of taxes...
...Ultimately, the problem is that successful, ambitious people believe in themselves, and it is but a short step from that to believing in one's indispensability...
...Here we come to another institutional reality...
...He didn't mean it, and it isn't...
...It's hard to think of a Western country where the size of government, and with it the taxburden, has not gone up, and then up again, since the 1960's...
...The franchise has been extended to everyone, and all literacy tests are illegal...
...The beneficiaries of specific programs have vastly more influence than the many who know nothing...
...Shortly after he became majority leader, he told me that we would soon see a 50-percent income-exclusion and indexing of capital gains, and "massive tax restructuring" by 1997...
...He and Armey really are men of ideas to a degree that is unusual in politics...
...Their eagerness to take your money and give it to someone else (keeping some for themselves) demonstrates their moral greatness...
...We take for granted and do no notice the key part of this arrangement tax rates are everywhere the same...
...Tens of millions of people are eligible for entitlement programs, and the Democratic Party stands ready to fight to increase their benefits and win their votes and gratitude...
...Their posture of moral superiority is their most valuable asset, they realize, and if they ever show self-doubt they will be finished...
...A mood of grievance and discontent— victim status— is nurtured...
...Embarrassed by Vice President Gore's $353 charitable deduction on his financial disclosure statement, one or two of his defenders riposted like true Democrats...
...This is the exact parallel of Milton Friedman's point that a simplified tax code, such as a flat tax, is not likely to be enacted any time soon because the power to put tax breaks into the existing complicated system (or take them out) attracts a flood of campaign funds from those who might be affected by such loophole openings or closings...
...has admirably insisted that federal gasoline taxes be confined to highway spending...
...20 Jun e 1998 • The American Spectato payers in his district were "billed" accordingly, with big spenders saddling their constituents with high taxes, and low-spenders rewarding theirs with low taxes, the era of big government really would be over...
...In exchange for their votes, they see to it that some of the money goes to projects in their home states or districts...
...At present, civic duty is overshadowed by career-building and pension-seeking...
...I was over-optimistic, and so was Armey...
...Incidentally, highway spending is not such a bad idea given the vast revenues flooding into Washington...
...With the wrong priorities, they threw away the opportunity to harmonize their own ideas and interests...
...I know of no evidence to the contrary...
...Orli simple change would end this...
...Here we do see ideology and interest working hand in hand...
...A flat tax would be nice for you and me, but it would be bad for congressmen seeking to build up re-election war chests...
...Transportation Committee chairman Bud Schuster (R-Penn...
...Since the 1970's, highway spending, federal and state, has declinedsharply as a percentage of all spending, and this has greatly strengthened the no-growth lobby...
...In the Western world, they have probably already topped out...
...But his amendment was easily defeated, one Democratic congressman calling it a "thinly veiled attempt to turn back almost all highway responsibilities to our states...
...Bill Clinton felt obliged at one point to say that the era of big government was over...
...In the course of negotiating the highway bill, Budget Committee chairman John Kasich tried to return most of the 18.4 cents-a-gallon federal tax to the states...
...It's a sign that our era of big government is still with us that "turning it back to the states" was used as an accusation...
...Tick...tick...tick...
...They didn't understand that in politics the most important things must be done first, or perhaps not at all...
...Ideas have consequences" became the great conservative cliche after Richard Weaver formulated it in the 1950's...
...But it's worth considering...
...So, instead of voting "no," he ends ur joining in the general logrolling, teaming up with others to appropriate the money Some of it is now earmarked for his district Voters at home may think that he sold out But it was the institutional arrangement o Congress that encouraged his change o heart...
...In that sense the Democratic leadership is fighting a rearguard action...
...Soon the clock would run out and it would be time for another election...
...Conservatives in Washington marvel that in his dealings with Bill Clinton, with all his moral shortcomings, Gingrich has been unable to capture the moral high ground...
...On the contrary, they will have more tc divvy up among themselves...
...Democracy is one of those dull words you hardly see on the page and I only recently noticed "stable democracy...
...All are said to be insufficiently devoted to principle...
...If control of that federal money were turned over to the states, the campaign money would go to state legislators...
...I hailed this development (TAS, January 1995), contrasting them favorably with Bob Dole and Bob Michel, and recalling Irving Kristol's comment that academics do well in Washington because they understand ideas...
...Government service would more closely resemble jury duty...
...Mindful that in the sixth presidential year, the party not in the White House does well in mid-term elections, Newt Gingrich opted to play defense...
...Highway money at least won't go for social programs, government social workers, grief counselors, poetry meetings, and so on...
...Real term limits—perhaps just one term and no more—would radically alter the incentives of all legislators...
...Leaders will become convinced that both goals can be achieved in the end...
...CAPITOL IDEAS by Tom Bethell Falling on the Ball F ailing on the ball in the hope of running out the clock often has disastrous consequences in football, and we are seeing the same thing in politics...
...the virtue of contrition, as C.S...
...Some conservatives have expressed dismay that Republicans would actually participate in this pork-barrel exercise...
...It was a bad sign when in 1995 Gingrich and Dick Armey declared their opposition to term limits...
...Only sixty-six Republicans voted for Kasich, showing that the GOP, too, opposes the decentralization of government power...
...It is not at the moment working...
...They rely on people like Peter Jennings of ABC News to tell them...
...Since then, his office has transformed him from a policy intellectual into an anxious shepherd, counting straggling sheep...
...As it is, the institutional arrangement encourages a rapid consumption of all available funds, just as a common pot of food surrounded by 500 hungry men, with no rights or shares allocated, will be rapidly consumed...
...The GOP refused to ditch the static revenue analysis used by the Democrats' Congressional Budget Office, and they foolishly agreed, in last year's budget negotiations, that any tax cut between now and 2006 must be offset by tax increases elsewhere, or by cuts in entitlement spending...
...when we have a more solid majority, we can implement the agenda more easily...
...For conservative office-holders in a "stable democracy," however, ideas and interests are often at odds...
...Tax cuts could establish a similar unity of purpose and interest for Republicans, but for some reason the GOP has been unable to unite behind this issue since Reagan's first year in office...
...Consider the new $2oo-billion, six-year highway bill, which passed both House and Senate in April...
...They may be sufficient to explain why things stay the same, without resorting to character analysis...
...04 The American Spectator • June 19 9 8 21...
...Here Gingrich undoubtedly made a serious error, allowing his enemies (with a strong assist from House and Senate Budget Committee chairmen Kasich and Pete Domenici) to define the problem in terms of the balance of the budget rather than the absolute burden borne by taxpayers...
...But his "no" vote will not encourage o like restraint among other congressmen...
...Incidentally I am told that Ron Paul of Texas, one of the few libertarians in Congress, voted "no" on the highway bill but managed to get a highway project funded in his district anyway...
...Elected, he arrives in Washington, and there he figures out something he hadn't foreseen on the campaign trail...
...Fully enfranchised, redistributionist democracy, with one vote for the "entitled" tax recipient, and one vote for the taxed donor, may be so "stable" that there is no reforming it...
...The vote in the House was 337-80, and the Senate passed the measure by unanimous consent...
...L et's look at another institutional factor...
...Economic reality dictates that the tax-supported classes can only grow so large, of course...
...He believed it, but didn't know what he was getting into...
...Its most important goal is to preserve its gains and prevent its interest groups from becoming self-supporting, or from relying on the market...
...Frustrated drivers stalled in traffic blame "all those people out there," or economic activity generally, rather than the liberals' adamant ideological opposition to new highways...
...The same is true of Gingrich...
...The Democrats not only play offense, it is the only game they know...
...If the tota dollars that a congressman votes to spent in the course of a year were tallied, and tax In Congress, wrong ideas have bad consequences...
...That may be, but not enough attention has been paid to the government institutions that remain unaffected, no matter whether Democrats or Republicans are in the majority...
...Frustrated conservatives are tempted to blame bad people: Newt Gingrich, Trent Lott, Dick Armey...
...Just let me be re-elected, along with my colleagues...
...Most people have only the haziest idea of what is going on in Washington...
...When he leaves office, he will be the same old Armey...
...Which means that any presidential veto will be overridden...
...Even as all these things were happening—Kathleen Willey on "6o Minutes," Bill Clinton in Africa apologizing for slavery (the sin of detraction masquerading as TOM BETHELL is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...Not a great deal has changed since Republicans took control of Congress in 1995, although some federal welfare was turned back to the states...
Vol. 31 • June 1998 • No. 6
