Andy, Stiles is in the trenches at the Capitol covering spending issues, and does a damned fine job of it if you ask me. I know he can defend himself as or more ably, but I thought I’d note a few things in response to what you’ve written.
1) I’d love to live in a country where “responsible leadership is not always on the look-out for a ‘fail-safe’ strategy, nor is it paralyzed by polls,” where, “Because they are in the right (i.e., because this is a real crisis, not one they have manufactured for political purposes), they are also confident that they will be able to move the polls in their direction by boldly explaining why their actions are not extreme but, in fact, are the only rational response to the straits we are in.” Tell me where to find it. Tell me where to find it in a democracy. Tell me where to find it with a time machine. Truly great conservative leaders — Reagan, Thatcher — in their best moments adhered to this standard, but they were heads of state with the attendant bully pulpits, and the rhetorical chops to use them. I have great admiration for John Boehner — I think I’ve even underestimated him — but he has neither the gifts nor the institutional power of the above-mentioned. (More on this shortly).
2) You could have zeroed out non-defense discretionary spending in the C.R. and eliminated only roughly half of our current-year deficit. What would you have cut to get us the rest of the way?
3) Relatedly, you frequently refer to the “budget” deal, but in fact this was a continuing resolution in the absence of a budget. Budgeting is done, ostensibly, in the light of committee rooms and is meant to employ the full deliberative and policy-making apparatus of the Congress. It’s a long process, with a number of competing interests and veto players, and it functionally establishes the “baseline” for future spending. That’s the “continuing” part of “continuing resolution.” C.R.s take procedural shortcuts because they have the last passed budget as their starting point. Now whether that’s valid or not it’s reality, and trying to message away that reality is why it takes 20 minutes to explain to someone why the wonks, the House Republicans, and the Senate Democrats all have different numbers attached to the very same spending cuts. Though I think — I think — it’s structurally possible, a six-month C.R. is not the ideal vehicle for addressing entitlements (which is what you’d have to do to get us the other half of the way toward zeroing out the current-year deficit), not just for the above reasons, but because any changes they instituted would have a six-month expiration date. That’s why so many of us thought that the policy riders the GOP were fighting for — while nice — were not indispensable. In the deal, we won a battle on funding the hiring of new IRS agents to enforce Obamacare. But we’ll have to have that battle again in six months. And so on. I just don’t think it’s wise or even plausible to try to fundamentally reform the size and scope of the social safety net in that context.
4) There are other ways in which institutions matter to this argument. The Constitution says revenue bills originate in the House, yes. But I’ve never really understood why this is supposed to give that body any great leverage. Like the English tradition whence it comes, the origination clause is mostly symbolic — meant to ensure that the “power of the purse” resides in the chamber closest to the people. But the 17th Amendment surely took a lot out of both the substance and the symbolism of that principle. And of course, spending bills don’t bypass the Senate or the president’s desk. They’re vetoable. They’re amendable. They enjoy no further procedural privilege whatsoever. In practice, the Senate routinely skirts the clause by the wholesale substitution of revenue/spending language in unrelated bills that have already passed the House. The upper chamber is in murky enough constitutional waters here that I’d rather they didn’t do this, and the House can and does “blue slip” such bills on constitutional grounds, but it’s hard for me to think of a case in which the origination clause materially affected a macro-level spending outcome. It’s even less consequential when one considers the full scope of the extra-constitutional practices that have come to define the Congress. For good and for ill, the legislative branch is run by leadership, appropriators, and conference committees. Origination is mostly or wholly irrelevant to that dynamic.
5) But let’s say you’re right, that the origination clause imbues the House with a kind of spending supremacy, a duty to fully dictate the budget to the other branches — even if that means holding the functioning of the government hostage. That’s terrifying. It’s abstractly terrifying because it runs counter to what I always thought set the American legislative system apart — its deliberateness. It turns the House into a kind of British parliament, able to jerk the ship of state willy-nilly. It’s materially terrifying because Democrats have controlled the House for 70 of the last 100 years. And this is instructive. It took liberals every one of those 70 years — often over opposition from fellow Democrats — to build the bloated, inefficient, over-extended welfare state. We can’t undo it in a week. I have higher hopes for the debt ceiling and 2012 budget fights than you do. But I’m sure those won’t be pure, clean victories for “constitutionally valid objective[s] in line with the political realities and appetites of the moment” either. (Not least because the big entitlements are wildly popular — dependency’s a bitch — and we have an almost incomprehensibly large public-education task ahead of us to change that.)
All of this is to say, Andy, that I share your frustration that more was not possible. But I also believe that more was not possible. Not now. Not yet.
PS — Though I doubt it will slow down the indefatigable boo-hiss-RINO section of the commentariot, I’d also like to vigorously associate myself with Derb’s excellent take. And you can’t get to the right of Derb on government spending.
Dear Republicans & Republican Party Cheerleaders & The Rest of You Who Are So Much Smarter Than the Rest of Us Rubes:
Since you're obviously so clever, no doubt you've factored in losing us and the rest of the Country Class who wanted to see some real spending cuts and who have been hearing that this is not the hill to die on for as long as we can remember. See ya!
Sincerely,
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe Tea Party
Dear jcp and the rest of you who are so much more conservative and brave than the rest of us. Try starting a third party and just see how much worse the country gets. Without idiots trying for door number three we would never have had Bill Clinton. And while you're pondering that, let me thank you and your pals for reinstalling Harry Reid as majority leader and for throwing away the Delaware senate seat with the sneaky, money stealing kook, Christine O'Donnell. Take your ball and go home if you want, you aren't going to find a better game. Get over it.
Sincerely,
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe people of Earth
Well said, Daniel.
I'm still, on balance, not all that upset about the deal for all the reasons you outline. I became less bullish on it when I learned the $38 bil apparently is counting the $10 (or $12?) bil already agreed to in CRs. But then I did remember the $61 bil figure was stale, in that the two previous CRs ate into that figure a bit. Indeed, it would have been bad faith on our part to not recognize that, and in effect insist on $71 bil, instead of just $61.
What really irks me though, is that what Boehner essentially did - if this note from an anonymous Dem that Greg Sargent received is to be believed - is to settle for $38 bil, but let the DEMS determine the composition of the spending:
External Link
Remember, for the 2 CRs, the GOP went out of their way to pick spending Obama had ALREADY PROPOSED HIMSELF. So that $10 bil was Democrat-chosen. According to Sargent's emailer, another $3 billion was defense, and another $17 billion was diffused out to the MANDATORY sections of the budget, not discretionary.
Now, a spending cut is a spending cut, and I'm certainly not opposed to mandatory and even defense taking a hit as well. But still ... doing the rough math, that means only - what? - $6 or $7 bil MIGHT have been cuts Harry Reid actually objected to??
If there's a such thing as winning and still looking weak, I'd say that qualifies.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRegardless of how many editiorials about how Boehner "won", the Tea Party "won", etc. I don't feel particularly thrilled with this deal.
In case you forget; the GOP ran on the platform to cut $100B in this year's budget. Many Tea Partiers took the GOP at their word, and are rather dismayed at how quickly Boehner & Co were willing to compromise.
Now we hear promises of "cuts in the trillions". Given the track record, I am sure Boehner will "compromise" again and we will end up with far less cuts that we expected. And sorry, some trillion dollar cut over 10 years doesn't really count as "cuts in the trillions" in my book.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRemember that McCarthy signed on to Mr. Romneycare's campaign, so he was happy to work for someone who was pro-TARP and a RINO in many ways.
Andy's apparently had a sudden attack of fiscal discernment.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMr. Foster,
In response to Mr. McCarthy, you asked for some direction about a "responsible country": "Tell me where to find it with a *time machine*". Sure thing!
The United States of America, circa 1900 - prior to Teddy Roosevelt changing the government's interface with both its constituted limits to its power, and with its constituents.
"Gee! Thanks. That gets us where, now?" Well, it helps I think to remind ourselves that we once actually had, right here in our own little neck of these Earth woods, pretty much a close approximation to the classical liberal ideal of how a government is expected to operate.
We ALL - conservatives almost MORE than the main body politic - have completely given up on restoring our constitutional order. More so us because we're the ones who proclaim to CARE the MOST about just that!
We essentially have committed ourselves to the ideology of the "art of the impossible", wherein every and all meaningful efforts to restore some semblance of connection between what the government does and what the Constitution SAYS it CAN DO are deemed to be an abject waste of everyone's time.
The day is steadily approaching where it will make little difference if a leader stood up in front of a crowd at a campaign rally and torched the document. If no one in public office will commit to adhere to its limitations, then to continue to pretend it governs us is but a charade.
And, really, that is the WHOLE POINT of the "dead document" crowd's efforts to inject into it and elevate in importance what the Constitution DOES NOT say over and above what it DOES SAY. They discovered how to untie the Gordian knot the Constitution posed to them - kill the meaning of everything in it. In the absence of amendments to either "fundamentally" change the system (to use Obama's terminology) or curtail its limitations on exercising power, the "impossible art" was THEIRS.
And, well, to committed leftists, nothing is ever really deemed "impossible", beyond the existence of the Almighty, of course.
That burning would rile the senses and the anger of the American public to witness that crass act.
And that's really the nub of the rub here. The American people have more reverence for our fundamental charter than our "leaders" do. Yet, that reverence did not stop leftists from transforming our country's charter without amending it. The people never revolted. And that reverence, in my view, is not at all diminished by the fact that those very same people with their constitutional reveries have been the very ones demanding every single smidgen of unconstitutional government action.
So, the people were whole-heartedly committed to the Constitution, and yet the political left LED them to constitutional evisceration.
Conservatives, by contrast, won't dare be so proactive. It's "unseemly", somehow, to the sensibility of "preservation" that runs through the veins of conservatism. If only conservative leaders would commit to acting as classical liberals, as our forefathers did, we'd see that taking the bold lead on a $1 Trillion, six hundred fifty Billion governmental cost over-run is really not so utterly revolutionary.
And to pretend that it is promulgates a full-blown constitutional crisis in the offing, not merely a budgetary one.
Will conservatives EVER lead the American people to our country's own greatness? With every passing day, the answer comes bellowing back with a resounding, "NO!"
So sad, that we expect our "leaders" to "follow" the conventional wisdom off the total cliff of our constitutional existence.
Sorry, sir. Leaps from bridges with a throng are not my forte. Are conservatives unable, or unwilling, to mount a national, educational, constitutional awakening?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAndy McCarthy, it sounds like the 25 year old recent college grad moderates which now make up National Review Online don't need your years of experience anymore, so I would take your wisdom and contribute to other serious conservative publications, at least so I can have the pleasure of watching NRO crash and burn, while they explain to us how stupid we are for not supporting their feckless points of view.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm not crazy about the Boehner deal, but am inclined to believe it was the best deal for that day.
That's doesn't mean we need to praise Boehner & Co. from the highest hills. We need the message to be "nice start, where's the rest?".
Why do the inside-the-Beltway pundits think us rubes (and we're happy to have McCarthy's company) are so unrealistic in our expectations? Why are you people so quick to settle for a little savings here and there? We were promised much more - we got a little now, we expect to see more later.
Step up, Mr. Boehner. That was only the appetizer and I'm still hungry.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat is the point in arguing back and forth about the merits of the latest CR deal? We all agree about everything important -- the proposed cuts are inadequate and the Republicans aren't likely to do much better unless and until they take the White House and the Senate. They may not even do better then. In any case, by the time they get a firm grip on DC again the whole spending debate will probably have been overtaken by events.
Every sentient person agrees that the deal does nothing of substance to address our budgetary emergency. There was never any chance that Congress would address that emergency this year and there is precious little chance that it ever will. The bond market will shut the party down before our elected representatives do. They will keep spending us into oblivion until they can no longer beg, borrow, steal or print the money to do so.
Even the most ambitious Republican proposals were entirely beside the point. There was precisely nothing at stake in the dispute about whether to make trivial spending cuts or none at all. The GOP didn't get a good deal and it didn't get a bad deal. It got a nothing deal, which is what it was destined to get all along.
Maybe the GOP will get more ambitious and determined in connection with the 2012 budget and the debt ceiling increase, but don't hold your breath. The last budget fight dealt with mere gestures because professional politicians didn't dare go further. They probably know their business. If they don't think the electorate will stomach a serious reduction in the scope of government, they're probably right. Which means we're stuck on stupid.
There's no point in castigating Republicans for failing to achieve the impossible. But neither is there any point in pretending that the Republicans have shown their mettle and might start to achieve the impossible in the next round of the never-ending budget battle. Even Paul Ryan isn't proposing the kind of paradigm shift we plainly need, and we won't go nearly as far as he proposes until dire necessity requires it.
The situation is hopeless, but there is a kind of peace in hopelessness. There may even be hope in hopelessness. Once everything falls apart we may get a chance to rebuild. Until the moment of collapse, the goings on in Washington are mere posturing. They don't deserve nearly as much attention as they get. We should all hang out over in Right Field and talk sports instead.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBThompson:
Have you ever stopped to consider the prospect that, in a country with 40% of the electorate identifying as "conservative", that a 3rd party, in the near-term, might fare better than you imagine?
Seems to me that it is becoming more and more likely to happen, as more and more among that 40% become more and more convinced that the GOP represents the sensibilities of a smaller and smaller portion of the 30% "middle group".
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBThompson, I think it's pretty safe to say that George W. Bush and six years of a Republican controlled congress gave us Barack Obama and a house & senate led for two years by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
Some of you folks simply do not realize others of us have had it with the Statist-Lite approach of the Republican Party. All we heard out of this bunch during the past election cycle is "we've learned our lesson". After this latest skirmish, call me cynical.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLike McCarthy, I'm tired of the low expectations. If you really think there is a financial crisis then that deal was a waste of time. If politics is your only concern, then sure the deal was a political winner. Fat lot of good it's going to do to relieve any problems.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe deal puts in my mind the old Jerry Jeff Walker song '#issing in the Wind'.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe deal puts in my mind the old Jerry Jeff Walker song '&issing in the Wind'.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat the critics will not answer is how they expected us to "win" TWO government shutdowns to achieve the type of cuts they demand. The swing voters and independents have had no epiphanies; they are still mushy in the middle and have little taste for confrontation. Sure they are on our side NOW, but they voted for Obama in 2008. Things change rapidly with "swing" voters.
This is why Obama and Reid were steering to a shutdown and preparting to blame the GOP and the Tea Party. They didn't care that polls showed both sides would be equally blamed for it - because they knew if we then shut down the government AGAIN over the FY 2012 budget, when we are dealing with trillions instead of billions, the public would turn on us. Thus they would take it off the table for the real budget negotiations.
They were cowed only by Boehner's skill, Prosser's shocking election, and the building backlash to their attempt to leverage military paychecks in a shutdown.
Until you explain how you can "win" two shutdowns, the cries and gnashing of teeth are merely the tantrums of children who wanted instant gratification.
~~~~~~~
As to Greg Sargent: Every single word that leftist hack writes is a lie, including "and" and "the." If you read anything by him, you need to wash your brain out with soap.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI always think it is good to know a little bit about the authors of column or blog posts I read. Andrew Stiles is a recent graduate of UNC. By recent, I mean like 2 years ago. Andrew McCarthy has spent years writing conservative opinion articles, while during the day prosecuting terrorists. Yet, most of the commenters here at NRO call McCarthy an unrealistic idiot, while Stiles is the wise old owl. I've been reading this site for almost 10 years, and man has it been in free fall decline. I don't know where these rock ribbed conservative commenters have come from. Maybe they just graduated from college last week too.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm taking a middle line position, though leaning more towards McCarthy than Foster, in that I think the assertions in this post are bordering on hyperbole.
(1) I think the gnashing of teeth is overdone. The politics of this matter, and the GOP was cautious, maybe overly so, in approaching this issue. But there caution was not unreasonable given the media situation and the new paradigm where the President and the Senate Dems, who called the "cuts" "Draconian" are now touting them.
(2) That said, I think Foster is completely off base in his mild histeria regarding the House's veto power over Any and All funding.
The baseline is and always must be ZERO. As in no funding. The next baseline above that is "essential functions." The R's could very well take the position, and SHOULD take the position, if this government spending situation is ever to be under control, that: ONLY spending that has broad support will be funded by the House. Where there is a disagreement over spending, absent some sort of trade-off between the bodies of government, the House will not agree to fund.
To rephrase- you need an agreement to Supply money. You need no agreement to "cut"; a "cut" is just an abstract idea - there is no rquirement to fund at any baseline, only political consequences for not doing so. Where there is no agreement to fund, funding does not exist - that in many cases will be a "cut" from a prior budget. So what.
Now, you may argue, as Mr. Foster does, that this is scary. What if the D's get enough people to defund the military!?! Well, let them live with the political consequences of a bunch of soldiers getting killed in Iraq, or being forced to retreat. Frankly, as we saw with Iraq, the D's may be brave enough to demagog the issue, but they aren't brave enough to do that.
The new soundbite should be:
"In an era where the government spends $1.40 for every $1.00 of revenues that it takes in, where we are in debt nearly 15x our annual revenues, and where the U.S. already has the most progressive taxes in the industrialized world, and some of the highest overall taxation when you take state and local taxes + regulations into account, we are in a position to only fund what we, R's and D's, broadly agree on. Where the parties disagree, whether it be vouchers or classical music radio stations, we are not in a position to spend such money."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLooks like they got the Internet back on at the nut house where they have madisonian locked up.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMadisonian, my heart is with you, but alas my head is not. The battle is the 2012 budget - it isn't even the debt ceiling - it is the 2012 budget.
Ryan - yes I know the former or currently disguised RINO - is doing the unthinkable. He is going after entitlement spending, at least as a means to start having the conversation that was once seen similar to suicide. All hinges on how that goes - and not even what the result is but in how the GOP holds themselves as perceived by the electorate - all with the MSM cheerleading how they want to drown babies in boiling water. That is the hill we will live or die on, because it will frame the election of 2012 which is all important.
The key for the tea party and other like minded fiscal conservative types is more success in 2012, and doing a better job of candidate vetting in state wide offices. Some were OK, some were not (O'Donnell was the worst, Miller not much better, and Angle probably a reach too far). We need to reform the GOP from within. A third party would lose in 2012 at which point ObamaCare is locked in and we are doomed.
Sorry you disagree, and I understand your frustration, but hold fast and realize it has to be played delicately unless you just want to watch it all blow up - because as you well know, then we are on the Derb path - the money will run out, the question is only how long will it take.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@Madisonian: "[medium-length rant]"
/me stands and applauds. (And, that don't happen often between us, methinks.)
@Living: "That's doesn't mean we need to praise Boehner & Co. from the highest hills. We need the message to be 'nice start, where's the rest?'"
Exactly right. We can be happy that we sort of won, but unhappy that it's a rather pitiful start.
You want to know how to start winning the war? Start by taking 'omnibus' bills off the table. Pass a bill to fund the Congress (with cuts). Then pass a bill to fund the judiciary (probably with cuts). Then pass a bill to fund DoD; then one to fund DHS; then another to fund State; then one for DoJ (all with appropriate cuts). Now that you have used up most of the Constitutionally mandated bits, start passing bills for the other departments - with deep cuts, especially anything that smacks of a subsidy. All the while, you keep telling the American people why you are funding or not funding each and every bit. And, taking every opportunity to point out the lies and demagoguery of the left.
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