House Republicans released their Pledge to America last week – a platform statement they hope will help them regain Congressional majorities in November. John Boehner says it contains bold new ideas. And indeed it does. It suggests that all bills coming out of Congress explicitly reference the part of the US Consitution that gives Congress the power to take the referenced action. It suggests requiring any Federal regulation that effects $100 Million or more of the economy to be approved by Congress, not just enacted by the Executive.
The problem is that, when it comes to the real meaty substance of this document, it’s the same old stuff. Cut taxes and cut spending, but don’t touch entitlements (Social Security, Medicare) and don’t touch defense spending. Their suggestions are that the budget can be balanced by trimming away at Non-defense, Non-Disgressionary spending: they’re expempting what would be $2.848 trillion or 80% of the 2010 Federal budget.
Conservative New York Times editorial writer (and author of a very amusing memoir about being a Harvard student in the late 90s, early 00′s) Ross Douthat calls bullshit.
The Tea Party is asking for real spending cuts and real deficit reduction. The Pledge to America is giving us more of the same that we’ve seen from the GOP ever since the 1990′s – lip service to spending cuts but no substantive follow through. Tax cuts, unfunded government programs, wars of choice overseas and a real reluctance to make the hard choices that could really lead to a deficit reduction, to say nothing of paying down the national debt.
To their credit, the House Republicans don’t invoke starve-the-beast in their 2010 pledge, or pretend that renewing the Bush tax cuts would single-handedly push the nation into the black. But their fiscal vision practices the same kind of free-lunchism that the Tea Party supposedly abhors: it promotes low taxes without coming close to identifying the spending cuts required to pay for them.
There’s a sound political rationale for this, of course. Reducing spending is always difficult, and a Republican Party coasting toward a midterm victory has little incentive to stake out controversial positions. And as everybody knows, the only way to really bring the budget into balance is to reform (i.e., cut) Medicare and Social Security, a topic that nobody in Congress — save the indefatigable Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan — is particularly eager to touch.
But that means that the pledge is ultimately less about the triumph of the Tea Partiers, and more about their potential co-option by Republican politics as usual.
Damn straight, but what Douthat seems to miss is that the Tea Party isn’t really ready to make the sorts of big cuts that would be required. It’s full of “keep government away from my Medicare” complainers who want to cut services but only if they don’t effect them. They’re a vision of the naive political understanding that permeates America – people want to have their cake and eat it too.
Most Americans can’t even be bothered to keep on top of their own financial life and follow a personal budget – it’s no wonder that they have no idea of the real hard choices and cuts that would need to be made to truly realize a vision of a balanced budget, no less surpluses to pay down the national debt. And the GOP is perfectly willing to feed this delusion so long as it gets them elected. The problem is going to be that in another two or four or six years the Tea Partiers are going to realize that their Republican saviors were just as cowardly about the tough economic decisions as the Democrats are and the “throw the bums out” mantra will return. This political season, during which the public disapproves of both Congress and the President just indicates the truth about the electorate in 2010 – they live in a fantasy world where they can get everything they want, low taxes, good services, a robust war on terror, without having to pay for it.
If Tea Partiers want real spending cuts and deficit reduction the bottom line is they are looking for magicians, not politicians.
