Gut Check Republicans : They know the time is now : The Republican Congress must address its big spending habits or face an ugly reckoning as early as 2006
Macomber, Shawn
Gut Check knov S n The Republican Congress L S its big spending habits or face an ugly reckoning as early as 2006 "Can we, who man the ship of state, deny it is somewhat out of...
...Shortly thereafter, the White House issued a statement "commending" Congress for this action...
...If we fail, we run the risk of demoralizing mil-lions of our most ardent supporters...
...They have better margins and a strong showing in the recent election...
...But Veronique de Rugy noted for a Cato Institute report, "Whereas Reagan was able to reduce non-defense discretionary outlays by 14 percent, Bush will have overseen a rise of 18 percent—a whopping 32 percent difference between the two men...
...The mantra of these true believers, newly invig36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR February 2005 orated by what they see as a red state mandate for a conservative agenda is, "It will be different this time...
...The party has a problem," Indiana Congressman Mike Pence said...
...There wasn't time but to leaf through it...
...The bad news was that Congress had decided they couldn't live by such rules, a fact that does not bode particularly well for the current crop of reformers...
...They were so serious they made Bill Clinton serious about it...
...And what little bit I actually had a chance to read, I sure didn't like " He voted against it...
...Now we have a president re-elected by a strong majority, and Republican control of both the House and Senate...
...Policy is about real people in the real world, and it's much easier to explain to constituents...
...It's stunning...
...This is not, however, the first time congressional budget restraint measures have been employed...
...Those are base elections, and the majority of our base is people who voted for us to see fiscal discipline in D.C...
...With little prompting, Ryan recounts with a sort of jilted awe how many of his own colleagues pressured him to vote for the $300 billion-plus omnibus spending bill last November...
...Even the '94 guys who are still around have lost their edge," she said...
...Now that ensuring the president's re-election is no longer a factor, I foresee a return to a more healthy equilibrium between branches of government along the lines of what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers...
...Criticism of Republicans' fiscal laxity over the last four years has been muted within the party...
...There is a historical precedent for cutting non-defense spending when the nation is at war that the Republicans could honor...
...There are no more excuses...
...A trillion dollars would be a stack of thousand-dollar bills 67 miles high...
...We should already know where that road goes...
...Conservative Republicans are promising a series of bold reforms both in policy and procedure—whether the president is on board or not...
...We abandon those folks at our own peril...
...economy—at the urging of a Republican president regarded as the ideological descendant of Reagan...
...Make no mistake...
...During World War II and the Korean War, for example, discretionary spending was cut by 22 and 25 percent, respectively...
...The Congress Reagan confronted with these words was a much different monster from the one before us today...
...Gut Check knov S n The Republican Congress L S its big spending habits or face an ugly reckoning as early as 2006 "Can we, who man the ship of state, deny it is somewhat out of control...
...The money is spent at all costs...
...This 3,000 page monster lands on my desk about six hours before the vote," Ryan said...
...Ryan's bill would give the federal budget the force of law, and any "budget busting" requests would require approval by a two-thirds majority...
...for conservatives the disappointments of the last four years were driven largely by the desire of many members, even strong conservatives, to support the president in his re-election effort," Pence explained...
...Nothing is accrued to savings...
...So far today's Republicans have not been willing to press Bush in the same way...
...The US...
...Even bills dealing directly with Iraq or terrorism have been larded with pork...
...It took sheer will and political guile for Reagan to pursue fiscal conservatism against those odds...
...February 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 39...
...We have a budget process that works as well as a pub that opens its doors to a pack of fraternity brothers and tells them the drinks are on the house," Moore writes...
...Smith going to Washington...
...Ryan looks like a conservative Mr...
...If Bush had lost they would have blamed conservatives for dragging him down...
...Pence pleaded mitigating circumstances, and urged fiscal conservatives to join the battle rather than lose heart...
...DICK ARMEY, WHO FOUGHT similar battles in those same trenches, is skeptical about Republicans betting so much on procedural reform...
...40-4L) THE RESPECTABLE DETERMINATION and moral bearing of some House Republicans notwithstanding, rank-and-file fiscal conservatives have reasonable cause for doubt...
...Supply-siders cite the trade and budget deficits under Reagan, pointing out that the sky not fall in the 1980s and massive growth occurred...
...In politics you get to be one of two things: A pleas-ant surprise or a bitter disappointment," former House Majority Leader Dick Armey said...
...They knew they were going to lose, but they wanted to get politicians on the record against fiscal common sense before the election...
...TRTRADMONALLY, SUPPLY-SIDERS have been reluctant to cede too much ground to "green-eyeshade" Republicanism, which they believe focuses too much on cutting deficits and not enough on clearing the boards to let the inherent dynamism of the American economy play itself out...
...We have self-styled conservatives endorsing Big Government Republicanism with a straight face...
...Congress is an unreality, a world carefully constructed to protect the interests of its members...
...Losing a battle, he said, is sometimes necessary to advance an issue...
...The federal budget today is passed as a resolution, a mere set of guidelines for spending that can be easily ignored...
...Armey hopes battles for fundamental Social Security and tax reform, which suddenly appear politically winnable, are taken up first...
...A subsequent poll in August showed those numbers tighten into a dead heat, but clearly Republicans' long-held reputation as the party of fiscal discipline is fast eroding, especially now that they control so much of the government...
...Whatever House conservatives plan for the budget, it is unlikely to get off the ground Shawn Macomber is a reporter for The American without White House backing...
...Even then it wasn't a perfect revolution...
...Consider: In November, the Republican majority in Congress passed legislation on a near-party line vote raising the government's debt limit to $8.18 trillion, a figure close to 70 percent the size of the entire U.S...
...Treasury instead of back to the Appropriations Committee, where it currently goes to be re-spent...
...Bush's funding for national defense mirrors Reagan's, with outlays increasing around 20 percent...
...The national media turned this election into a referendum on conservative prinS H A W N M A C O M B E R ciples...
...The realities of being in Congress, of trying to move up and get re-elected, have all sunk in, and many of those who have stuck around have obviously decided to not rock the boat...
...That doesn't give conservatives a very strong hand at the bargaining table...
...Fiscal conservatives disappointed with the results of the last four years should know that time hasn't been entirely wasted, Ryan said...
...Any serious initiatives to reform the tax code, entitlements, Social Security, or budget practices in any meaningful way must begin before the sniping of the 2006 midterms begins...
...There was no mention in it of a now 500-mile-high stack of thousand-dollar bills...
...Nevertheless, conservative mandate or not, it is undeniably the case that a large segment of the Republican caucus has not been voting in favor of fiscal discipline...
...It would also close the grossly misused "emergency spending" loophole and send any savings from spending cuts back to the U.S...
...They've got idealism on one side, and the appropriators have got dollar bills on the other...
...T N SEVERAL POST-ELECTION INTERVIEWS, conservative congressmen, senators, and political operatives—forming what Howard Dean might call the Republican wing of the Republican Party—were surprisingly candid about the failures of the last four years...
...Reagan changed the paradigm of politics in America with a seismic boom that was still reverberating when Bill Clinton, desperately seeking the "third way," declared the era of Big Government over...
...It goes back into the pork pot to be spent somewhere else...
...Jeb Hensarling, the Budget Fraud Elimination Act, which seeks to overturn much of the Budget Act of 1974, a bill passed by a Democratic majority and signed by a hamstrung Richard Nixon, grasping at liberal straws in the final month before his resignation...
...It's a perfect storm...
...I don't see the same sort of revolutionary fervor in the Republican Party about ending deficits as I did S H A W N M A C O M B E R George W. Bush to locate the veto pen he didn't pick up a single time during his first term "There is a broad coalition for fiscal discipline in Congress made up of moderate and conservative Republicans alike, alongside blue dog Democrats," Ryan said...
...There is growing evidence, however, suggesting that the party had better rock the boat before Republicans fall out of it...
...We're at a unique moment in the history of big government," Pence said...
...Last March the Tarrance Group found Democrats holding a five-point lead over Republicans when it asked which party would keep down federal spending...
...Back then it was as if conservatives were possessed...
...After September 11 there was a sense of immediacy and tragedy that took over and created a lack of focus...
...Gramm-Rudman required automatic spending cuts if Congress exceeded spending caps...
...t-# Bush...
...The act ushered in the era of massive, pork-filled omnibus spending bills, even larger deficit spending, and general unaccountability...
...House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, for example, threatened to derail the entire omnibus spending bill last November by refusing to call it up for a vote if NASA did not receive the full $16 billion the agency wanted to send a man to Mars, among other projects...
...Even a trimming of $300 million during these times of fiscal crisis was deemed unacceptable by DeLay...
...We brought forward the most comprehensive version of budget reform I've ever seen, broke it into 11 distinct policies, and made members vote on each section," Ryan said...
...It's the road to serfdom...
...The money is spent at all costs...
...The budget was still bloated and missteps were made, but the ultimate goal remained clear and the rhetoric was pure if somewhat tainted in practice...
...For a Senate perspective, see TASs accompanying interview with incoming Budget chairman Senator Judd Gregg on pp...
...It passed anyway, 344 to 51...
...It is an open question whether well-intentioned reformers and conservative stalwarts will change their votes in the aftermath of an election that saw them rewarded for their recent behavior by voters, not chastened...
...out-of-control federal spending is first to change how the government works on the budget...
...That the Democrats spewed vitriol at Bush for not spending more on their favorite programs, combined with John Kerry's promises to add at least a trillion dollars to the federal debt if elected, shows the Republican Party, like the Soviet Union in its arms race with the U.S., cannot win a spending war with Democrats...
...If this Captain believes the ship of state was out of control, he wasn't letting on...
...taxes rather than lower spending...
...Whether talking about tax reform, budget reform, or Social Security reform, the central theme amongst them is "fundamental change?' "When it comes to spending, it's not bad people," Pence said...
...The Gramm-Rudman bill, for example, was enacted in 1985 to reduce the $200 billion budget deficit...
...The time to act is now...
...The general approach for Republicans for sever-al years now has been to talk about cutting spending at every opportunity while consistently voting in favor of spending increases," said Stephen Slivinski, director of budget studies at the Cato Institute...
...An increasingly large portion of the conservative base is saying there's not a dime's worth of difference between the parties, and that only hurts Republicans, never Democrats, come Election Day," Dick Armey said...
...Outspending liberals has been the order of the day for the Bush administration, and, yet, if the recent c. mpaign has shown anything, liberals remain unimpressed and unsated...
...This Congress is on the brink of becoming a bitter disappointment...
...They'd go to war with Republican leadership just as soon as anyone else if the leadership wasn't acting conservative enough...
...This was an administration, after all, that began with a promising tax cut, but quickly backslided, with the full complicity of many congressional Republicans, into a smorgasbord of government giveaways including increases in perpetually useless farm subsidies...
...Discretionary spending under Bush has also been significantly higher than under Clinton...
...If we do not work towards the solutions we have been promising, it will kill the midterm election for us...
...the largest increase in federal education spending—52 percent—in more than a quarter century, written by Ted Kennedy, no less...
...During his first term, Republicans held tenuous control over the Senate, but Democrats controlled the House by nearly 100 seats...
...It takes a bold partisan to make such a claim...
...The White House's willingness to compromise at the first sign of controversy could likewise endanger conservative goals...
...If the White House starts in the middle of the aisle and tries to work to the right, the entire reform agenda will be put in peril," Pence said...
...Ronald Reagan asked this question less than two minutes into his first address to Congress in 1981, excoriating a government willing to mortgage the future of its citizenry via a national debt of $1 trillion...
...This means getting Spectator...
...This is a fight for the soul of the Republican Party" Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan said...
...Outraged by what he sees happening in D.C., Ryan makes little attempt in conversation to mask his distaste for the whole scene...
...Such dereliction of duty by wide swaths of the Republican Party has convinced Pence, Ryan, and others that the conservative mandate of election 2004 should apply to reforming the system broadly, not just to quibbling over one bill or another...
...Our suggestions might sound like common sense to people outside of D.C., but there are representatives who consistently vote against this stuff...
...Policy reform is a lot easier than process reform," he said...
...The good news was that by 1990, when the law was repealed, the deficit had been cut by 40 percent...
...and the prescription drug benefit, the first new entitlement in 40 years...
...in 1994," she said...
...That's a tough fight...
...Getting a majority of members to go along with rule changes that will make their life harder will be tough, especially since it will mean defying the appropriators to some degree...
...But if the congressional leadership and the White House fail to step up and back us, the Appropriations Committee can defeat any reform legislation they choose to, because they hold the key to the money for people's districts...
...If the White House starts in the middle and moves right, it will taint both the policy and politics of what we are able to accomplish" The general consensus in both the liberal and conservative press is that politics will overtake Congress in approximately 13 months...
...Moore also quotes the libertarian Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman declaring the budget deficit "the single greatest deterrent to faster economic growth in the United States today...
...If you had a stack of thousand-dollar bills in your hand only 4 inches high, you'd be a millionaire," he said...
...Killian said that even the 1994 "revolution" didn't translate into long-term fiscal conservative votes...
...Ryan has authored, along with fellow conservative Texas Rep...
...If they really want to rein in spending now, they can do it...
...Congress cannot sustain a Republican majority without an enthusiastic base," Pence said...
...In his latest otherwise laudatory book, Bullish on Bush, the Club for Growth's Stephen Moore calls the current budget deficits "inexcusable," and jabs sharply that Republicans "no longer have a credible anti-big government agenda...
...Early signs are not promising...
...You have to lay groundwork for any transformational legislation...
...We've been on the move for a while...
...Still, the most public faces of the supply-side movement accept some sort of deficit reduction plan...
...This isn't a one-year or a two-year fight," he noted...
...BY SHAWN MACOMBER republicans GUT CHECK REPUBLICANS Criticism of Republicans' fiscal laxity over the last four years has been muted within the party...
...budget deficit for last November alone was almost $58 billon...
...If anyone believes we February 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 37 GUT CHECK REPUBLICANS can restrain federal spending without fundamentally altering procedure, well, frankly, that is just not going to happen...
...Right now you can find the most egregious boondoggle in a bill and eliminate it, but you can't save that money," Ryan said...
...If we live up to our ideals, we'll prosper," Pence said...
...Linda Killian, author of The Freshman: What Happened to the Republican Revolution?, a fascinating chronicle of the 1994 Republican House takeover, considers the idea of a new Republican revolution overblown...
...Ryan and his supporters brought the Budget Fraud Elimination Act forward last summer and lost...
...It's like Yosemite THE FT.FIH,AT1T IN THE LIVING ROOM is President Sam always used to say, `Times a wasting...
...While national security concerns have certainly played a role in the growth of the deficit, it is inaccurate to attribute all of that growth to the war...
...Who knows when another one will come along again...
...Deficit worries are also often accompanied by calls for higher "This is a fight for the soul of the Republican Party...
...They were on a mission to balance the budget and reduce the size of government...
...But has the Republican Party lived up to this legacy...
...Both the September 11 attacks and the resulting War on Terror have been frequently invoked in place of an honest debate about the state of the budget...
...Reagan invited the American people to visualize this "incomprehensible" sum not as a string of numbers but as the cold, hard cash it actually was...
...The '94 Republicans, statistically, voted in favor of the prescription drug bill, the biggest entitlement since the 1960s, at the same rate as any other group...
...Most conservatives see the current spending out-rages as a problem of collusion between moderate Republicans and liberal Democrats...
...Ironically, President Bush is now promising to cut the record 2004 deficit of $417 billion in half by the time he leaves office in 2008—in other words, cut it down to roughly 1985 crisis levels...
...The moral authority of fiscal conservatism is only valid if we practice what we preach...
...As further proof of its effectiveness, unions, tax-and-spend liberals, and all the other usual suspects were furious...
...It's bad process...
...Accordingly, the deficit fell from 6 to 3 percent of GDP, government spending dropped from an annual growth rate of 8.7 percent to 3.2 percent, and entitlement spending 38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR February 2005 slowed to a rate of 5 percent...
...It is an article of faith among House conservatives that entitlements must be reformed in order to save them and that the best method of combating "Nothing is accrued to savings...
...We've seen this happen many times these last four years, where the White House signals they'll take any bill they can get...
Vol. 38 • February 2005 • No. 1
