Post-election, it’s not all sweetness and light with the Republicans
Fiscal austerity was promised. Fiscal austerity is needed. But fiscal austerity is hard, or it would have been done earlier.
Problem is, it may be good on the macro level, but it’s seen as bad on the micro level, because local communities and special interest groups benefit from government largesse. The benefit may be short-term, or at the expense of others or even the nation as a whole. But it’s perceived as a benefit by one particular community or group, and people can be loathe to give that up for what’s imagined or projected or explained to be the greater good. After all, a bird in the hand is worth—a lot.
This year is different, however. Or at least, it has appeared to be, so far. Rarely before has there been a public so alarmed and energized about the dangers of overspending, so seemingly willing to give up some perks in order to get the fiscal house in order.
Trouble is, which perks? And whose perks? How deep and wide will the cuts go? It is all very well to talk about generalities, but when specifics come and it’s you or I or the other guy who feels the pinch, it can hurt.
Although many of us here voted for Republicans and rejoiced in their victory, that doesn’t mean we place huge trust in their integrity or their judgment. Politicians are politicians, and betrayal and/or disappointment and/or ignorance and/or error is the name of the game.
Being an opposition party is often easier than having power, as the Democrats found out once again this election cycle. And all is not unified in the Republican camp. Party ranks include everything from a few lingering RINOS to social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, libertarians, establishment types, Tea Partiers, old guard and new.
One early conflict shaping up appears to be whether Michael Steele has got to go as chairman of the RNC. Usually, of course, when a party achieves an astounding victory like the one the Republicans just chalked up, the party chairman would be lauded. Not now, because it is widely perceived as having been accomplished in spite of Steele’s pallid leadership, not because of it.
The brewing earmark fight is emblematic of the sort of battle we may see more of in the coming session. A red-on-red conflict is shaping up between TeaParty-friendly Jim DeMint and establishment-type McConnell:
DeMint won backing from 25 Senate Republicans, including McConnell, earlier this year to impose an earmark ban on Republicans and Democrats alike. Despite winning the support of a majority of Republicans, the proposal was easily defeated by Democrats and 14 pro-earmark Republicans. Thirty-three of 41 Senate Republicans then sought earmarks in this year’s unfinished roster of spending bills.
McConnell, however, isn’t enthusiastic about the idea of a ban now. And he finds himself caught in the middle of an unwelcome battle dividing his party and opening it to criticism from anti-pork tea party activists who helped Republicans take back the House and elect several anti-earmark senators.
And it’s not as though McConnell doesn’t have a point about what happens if earmarks are banned:
McConnell says giving up earmarks would provide a “blank check” to President Barack Obama because his administration would determine exclusively where money for popular programs would go. The proposed ban wouldn’t save any money, McConnell says.
“Every president, Republican or Democrat, would like to have a blank check from Congress to do whatever he chooses to do,” McConnell said in a speech to the Heritage Foundation last week. “You could eliminate every congressional earmark and you would save no money. It’s really an argument about discretion.”
“Earmarks” are one of those words, like “lobbyist,” that are flashed around as code for “evil, selfish.” But that’s way too simplistic, although it’s good for campaigning. Earmarks have become a symbol, and as a symbol they may need to go. But is the remedy worse than the disease?
[ADDENDUM: Ace muses on a similar topic.]
I do not find McConnell’s explanatoin persuasive. If the legislation is broad enough that the executive can do with it what it wills, then perhaps the language should be more specific or allocated according to some formula? It is not an all or nothing proposition. Or perhaps more of these monies need not be appropriated at the federal level and instead should remain in state and local hands to begin with so as to avoid the redistribution problem?
Earmarks are more than a symbol. They are basically bribes and the cost is not only of the bribe itself and the culture that it creates, but of the effect of legislation that the legislator would otherwise not vote for. Let’s say you have a $5 billion bill that neither of two opposing legislators like (say because their constituents do not like it in the abstract). The two then bribe each other (or are bribed by other proponents) with earmarks valued at $2 million total. So the localities are better off by $2 million in order to spend $5 billion collectively that they otherwise would not have spent. This sort of leveraged logrolling is what created the monstrosity of the health care bill.
It’s easy to put together a majority against too much spending in general, but once any one puts detailed proposals on the table the consensus will evaporate.
It’s a problem a lot harder to solve than it looks. We’re going to need some very capable very wise leaders and a lot of luck.
Mitch McConnell is a bright and savvy fellow who could figure a way to tie the hands of the executive branch on spending. I’m guessing he doesn’t want to give up the political benefits of “bringing home the bacon.”
The current level of spending and borrowing is a major threat to our economic survival. We need to tackle the easy stuff right away. As Sen. Dirksen(sp) famously said many years ago, a billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you are talking about real money.
The riots in France over the retirement age and the student riots yesterday in Britain over tuition increases show how hard it is to cut back on perceived entitlements.
…in spite of Steele’s pallid leadership, not because of it.
pal’ – id (adjective):
1. pale; faint or deficient in color; wan
Such racism! You racist racist, you.
Consider that the primary rational, that they don’t wish to go hat in hand to Obama asking for specific spending, fails to accept that it is inherently wrong to direct federal dollars at local problems. Barring true emergencies, things like dredging a harbor is an issue for the state or possibly even a city to under take, using local funds.
Reduce federal spending and taxes and let states with worthy projects increase their taxes to pay for public works for which their citizens are willing to support.
uncleFred: What if it is federal spending for a military project? Which state gets it? Or say the government wants to consolidate certain NASA programs, which state loses the workers? I agree that to the extent that things are local, they should be funded locally. I also agree that legislation should be specific without tack-ons, but I think there will always be some room for pork even in legislation that most accept as a legitimate federal matter.
You have to be careful that you don’t hand over to the president all power to direct funding toward his friends and away from foes via the veto. I think avoiding massive comprehensive legislation is one check on abuse. By keeping legislation simpler, lawmakers can be forced to justify why money went where it did.
Just a thought:
I wonder if it would be possible to push through congress a U.S. budgetary version of Proposition 13 , by which I mean, a bill mandating an accross the board rollback in government spending to a specific point, without specifying any specific category of spending. Of course, this would mean accepting cuts accross every area of spending, accross the board, to a certain degree.
This may sound blunt, but so did Prop 13 back in 1978. And it couldnt be any more drastic than the enormous “stimulus” bill that was enacted by Obama and the Congress. If possible, would this not be a counter measure?
Mitch McConnell could make the argument that earmarks, like guns, aren’t bad. It’s the people who determine whether their use is good or bad. And he could further point out, apropos guns, we see that when they are outlawed, criminals prevail. It’s kind of what he is saying.
Unfortunately, guns don’t corrupt. Earmarks do. There’s a general correlation between the integrity of a politician and the amount of earmarks he secures.
Earmarks are just bribes. One of my Senators, Patty Murray, is the third highest earmarker in the Senate. She uses the earmarks to point out how she is fighting for her constituents. What she doesn’t point out is that the money is our tax money or, even worse, borrowed money that she is bringing back to the State. But it’s even worse because every dollar that is sent to the Feds is reduced by a 15-20% adminstrative and handling fee before it is returned to the state. It would have been better to leave the money in the state and use it (or not) as the voters want. Patty’s earmarks are always for libraries, schools, parks, public transit, etc. Just the kind of projects that libs salivate over, but are not really high priority in most people’s minds.
A mind set has taken hold of many politicians (DD & R alike) that the folks back home demand that they bring home the bacon. Well, IMO, it would be better if they left the bacon here in the first place. At least it would not have had a big chunk removed by the Feds before returning to us.
The Executive “should” decide how to execute the law as passed by Congress. Allowing earmarks creates a line-drawing game.
Congresscritters taking some discretion away from the Administration implies a lack of trust in the Executive to “do the right thing”. If there’s no trust, why not move the line further away from the Executive and have Congress legislate the structure and personnel of every bit of the government?
Earmark every nickel. Or earmark none. Sharing executive power allows shirking of accountability.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/253028/earmark-myths-and-realities-sen-tom-coburn#
Tom Coburn retorts.
Tom Coburn delivers a Hulk Hogan smack down!
As Coburn proves with a Krauthammer-level of incisiveness, it aint complicated and it aint mushy. McConnell, Imhofe and others are just chafing at having one of their “entitlements” involuntarily withdrawn. All they are proving is their own fecklessness on fiscal issues.
Anything that gives Obama a say in anything is horrid for the U.S. But letting him have even more dough to fund things like NASA – the Muslim Outreach Agency will probably guarantee that he’s gone in 2013 so might make up for that.
The Coburn piece is good. I think he is right about bad legislation with little oversight being the source of the executive power grabs. I also think he is right about earmarks distorting spending priorities. Unfortunately, DC won’t change practices completely, even if some reforms are made, until the voters back home understand that pork isn’t free. This is one reason the state legislature changes are important. This is why Chris Christie is important. Abstract principles about separation of powers can be made concrete for the voters.
Giuliani backed the broken windows policy, and changed the way America (or at least the rational part) thought about crime and law enforcement. Still the change wasn’t immediate, nor is it complete. We need lots of local examples on a variety of issues so that voters across the country can start demanding similar policies for themselves. This is what will make them appreciate the values of smaller government.
Here is a good place to start, industrial policy:
The United States used to be an industrial giant, in fact, a good case could be made that, rather than the U.S. overwhelming the Axis powers in WWII solely by our military might, it would be more accurate to say that we actually overwhelmed them with our productive capacity; aircraft and ships and weapons the Axis lost could not be easily replaced or–thanks to our bombing campaigns–replaced at all towards the end of the war but, once we got rolling, for every airplane or tank or ship or gun we lost, we built two or four or six more, and, eventually, the sheer weight of our material superiority just buried the Axis.; we might have well just dropped everything that poured out of our factories–guns, aircraft, ships and supplies–from the air on Japan and Germany, it would have just as easily done the job.
We used to have an enormous “industrial base,” and we took raw materials (many ones we found and extracted from our own lands) and made steel and aluminum, nuts and bolts, lubricants, copper wire and tires, and then we took those things and built ships and aircraft, sewing machines and cars, tractors, transformers and air conditioners, factories and a transportation system; we made our own TVs, we made our own textiles and clothes, we made our own telephones, and we made our own lathes and our own furniture.
Unwisely and suicidally our policy for quite a few decades now has been to change as rapidly as possible from a manufacturing to a service economy, from making concrete products to just doing research and marketing our ideas, from making products to importing products, and all of those millions of jobs that used to be the engine that ran a large part of our economy have been transferred overseas; we not longer sell to others, it is we who buy from them, we no longer make high quality, robust, long lasting products, we buy cheap, flimsy, quickly broken and replaced junk from China and elsewhere; and because of this we are dependent on our foreign suppliers.
To get some idea of how bad things are, look at this estimate from “The American Prospect,” that since 2001, 42,400 U.S. factories–large and small–have closed (http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_plight_of_american_manufacturing). I think that reversing this trend and making us again the world’s leader in not only research and ideas but in the production of goods might be a worthy goal for Conservative/Republicans.
Wolla Dolba, I think you have tapped into largely half-truths weaved into a narrative. There’s something of the “Luddite” argument in your facts and conclusions. That 42,400 factories have closed has no context. How many factories closed in the previous 10 years? How many opened? And might there be other explanations for the closings? How many are replaced through the use of flexible and cellular manufacturing.
The U.S. is still a leader in production requiring highly skilled labor, management and complex machinery. Further, outsourcing production of “junk” allows more disposable income to American consumers. For instance, you may buy a high quality, robust, long lasting razor, but most people will spend only one-tenth of what you spent for your razor.
The areas we should be looking at are de-regulation, cutting taxes, stopping the funding of welfare to immigrants, repealing minimum wage and prevailing wage requirements, decreasing union influence and bringing back home energy production.
It appears that this is going to be another instance of letting the opposition define your terms.
Someone rightly commented that the public defines, and hates, earmarks as stealth projects that are added to spending bills at the last moment, without debate or actual votes on their merits.
But, now it suits the purposes of some to greatly broaden that definition to encompass any spending delineated in specific terms by Congress–even if it survives the full appropriation process.
I absolutely hate the distortion of language and terminology in order to obscure issues. At the risk of revealing homophobia, I have always considered the corruption of the word “gay” to be a prime example. Another is the term, “reproductive rights”. I wish those folks privileged to have a public voice would immediately object whenever this tactic is attempted.
We, the tea party, knew this fight was coming, and from the very beginning it has been apparent that the enemy are not people, but ideas which are antithetical to a constitutional republic. That the ideas crystallize in many people to the point where those people become an enemy is an enormous dilemma: If we do not treat them as an enemy, it is to our peril. If we do treat them as an enemy, we become endangered and risk losing our humanity.
McConnell and the pro-earmark faction speak for an idea whose time to expire has come. But McConnell and the pro-earmark faction have not crossed the line; they have not become unreachable on most ideas and therefore our enemies. We know that their deep down devotion to this idea is self-interest. So be it. But tone and respect are awfully important here.
There is a larger problem with earmarks, and that is that earmarks are not a feature of normal legislative practice, but are a practice that has grown up among the most influential/powerful members of Congress, who can dictate which locations, organizations or entities will get specific amounts of money within a general appropriation–earmarks often written in the most obscure of legislative language so as to disguise the fact that they are “earmarks,” and the examples I have seen so for of this practice make me think that it is much more of an ego stroking practice i.e. the myriad of projects Senator Robert Byrd steered to in West Virginia, trolling for votes, or a payoff for an ally, rather than a justifiable action–beneficial to the nation–that also benefits the congressman’s particular state in some way.
In these categories I place Senator Byrd’s transfer of the FBI fingerprint facility from the Capitol Hill to WV, the duplicative threat analysis center that Pennsylvania’s Congressman Murtha secured for his state, and the various large and costly, seriously underutilized airports that various congressmen have secured for locations in their respective states.
Bottom line; it may benefit a particular state, but if it does not clearly benefit the U.S. as a whole, it is a payoff or an ego trip, or both.
My conclusion is that over 42,000 U.S. factories closing in just the space of 10 years is not a good thing. As for how many manufacturing establishments there currently are and how to define the “manufacturing sector,” I invite you to try to find out by wading through–as I have just attempted to do–the Census Bureau’s statistics they gather every few years in their Census of Manufactures; good luck.
Luddites, as I understand it, were against “machines” (and by extension, traditionally thought to be against “progress,” too) as opposed to the old, traditional way of crafting things by hand. I am not against mechanization/automation, if such mechanization improves our situation here in the U.S.
My argument is that by reducing our industrial base we are less secure that we were when we manufactured a large percentage of what we needed, and that, in addition, we are pretty much forced to take whatever kind of crap our suppliers send us, and we are, in reality, at their mercy, since we cannot make these items–including critical military items–for ourselves anymore. Moreover, it seems to me that it is our overseas suppliers who have really gotten the fullest benefit from automation in industry, not us.
Then, of course, there is the wholly different philosophical issue of whether it is preferable to have one very well-crafted and sturdy item, built to have a long service life, or several shoddily made, flimsy items that have to be periodically replaced; we seem to have fallen for the latter philosophy.
It’s very simple: don’t appropriate as much money. The President can’t spend money he doesn’t have.
Apparently there are also presidential earmarks of some sort. There was a discussion on the radio the other evening (probably on the Mike Gallagher show) about this, and his guest (sorry – no quote, no names, no nothing! of actual facts) stated that on a particular recent bill, there was something like 100+ billion dollars added, and none had been added by Congress – all were executive add-ons. I don’t understand how this works, but will try to learn more about it. If this is true, then somehow it too must be addressed.
Found this: (relevant info starts about the 8th paragraph)
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/01/presidential_earmarks.html
And this site:
http://earmarks.omb.gov/earmarks-public/
No time to really explore the links, but the last line is interesting: “earmarks with no sponsor include explanations” How can you have an earmark without a sponsor??
At some point in the last few months I saw mention that some members of Congress were claiming that–without their knowledge or consent–a staff member somehow inserted language, I believe it was an earmark, into legislation that was subsequently passed. I guess this is riffing off the idea that they don’t actually read the bills these days.
P.S.–From working on Capitol Hill for several decades, my sense is that very few members actually read the bills and, instead, they often rely on staff to do so.