Debt and Deficits: Only the Tip of the Angry Iceberg

Barely had I published my last entry, when the Washington Post came out with a story about how many Democrats are adding fiscal austerity pledges to their campaign platform. I'm unimpressed.

On one hand, it's good that politicians of both parties have finally come to understand that Americans are fed up with deficits and debt. On the other, Democrats in general and many Republicans are missing the bigger picture: the American people want a reevaluation of the proper role of government and how that role should be distributed among the levels of government.

It's not just about the money; it's about being accountability. And if private enterprise cannot successfully undertake some collective action and government can do better, it should be the most local government that can address it, which also happens to be the level most accountable to the people. Suggesting that a congressman from Ohio can be held accountable for education quality in Florida, or a senator from New York for road congestion in California, is simply preposterous.

It's also about being left alone. The decennial census is supposed to count inhabitants for the purpose of apportioning members of the House of Representatives, nothing more. Yet it has morphed into a vast treasure trove for social science researchers. It sounds benign, but besides the privacy issues, the conclusions of that research provide justification for any number of wasteful and often counterproductive interventions.

Americans want more than cheap talk about the federal budget. They want their national political representatives to fundamentally reconsider the role of the federal government, eliminating, privatizing, or transferring to the states those activities that are not within its proper scope.

Gerry Connolly (D-VA-11) is Fiscally Reckless

Over the past few weeks, I've received a number of snazzy glossy flyers--booklets, really--from the office of Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-Fairfax, VA) touting his fiscally conservative bonafides. His campaign site make similar claims with issues section including headings of "Fighting Wasteful Spending and Budget Deficits" and "Holding the Line on Taxes."

[Begin tangent: The flyers, by the way, apparently meet the guidelines of the House Franking Commission, the congressional body that oversees mailings from representatives to the people they represent to make sure they're constituent service rather than campaign materials. They're obviously campaign materials--I've only received them this summer, despite being "represented" by Mr. Connolly since January 3, 2009. Just another example of the incumbent protection scheme our leaders have established. For our own good, of course. End tangent]

So I wondered, just how fiscally responsible is Mr. Connolly? Let's look at his votes on the big issues. Did he come down on the side of taxpayers? ("No" means he voted "yes," that is, not fiscally responsible.)
- The failed "stimulus" bill: no and no.
- The spendthrift Fiscal Year 2010 Budget Resolution: no, no, and no.
- Cap-and-tax: no.
- A toothless pay-go (touted in his mailers): sure. A decent pay-go: no.
- EFCA, the union payback: no vote, but Connolly is a cosponsor.
- Obamacare: no, no, no.
- The "Homestar Energy Retrofit Act" boondoggle: no.
- "Deeming" the Fiscal Year 2011 budget passed instead of actually passing a budget: no.
- The teacher union bailout: no.
- A resolution to prevent Congress from passing major legislation during a post-election lame duck session, once the voters have rejected the Obama-Reid-Pelosi radical agenda: well, it wasn't a recorded vote, but no.

Want something more rigorous and systematic? Fine. In the first session of the 111th Congress, Gerry Connolly scored a grade of "F" on the National Taxpayers Union congressional report card with a whopping 6%.

Let's face it: glossy flyers notwithstanding, Gerry Connolly is not being responsible with taxpayer dollars. To my fellow residents of Virginia's 11th congressional district, let's encourage him to make a career change after November 2nd.

Checks and Balances Are Back

With the just-declared victory of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts, checks and balances have finally been restored after a year of Democratic dominance in Washington. And that means the pace of their big spending, big government agenda will slow down dramatically.

Not that unified Republican control several years ago was a picnic. Those years brought us massive federal encroachment into K-12 education, a major expansion of an already unsustainable entitlement program, corruption, continued government meddling in all variety of personal matters, a bloody and expensive war of choice, a spending explosion, and the abandonment of the limited government (aka freedom) agenda that was supposed to be the heart and soul of the conservative movement.

But Democratic control has--in only one year--brought an escalation of the war in Afghanistan, the continuation of Bush-era violations of civil liberties and opaque budget processes, even greater recklessness with our fiscal future, the attempted nationalization of our health care system, increasing the burden of taxes and regulations, and pushing a pork-laden energy bill that even greens have rejected.

This country is better served when checks and balances exist, as when Clinton was balanced by a Republican House from 1995 to 2001. Sure, the internal tensions within the Democrat caucus provided some impediments, but at the end of the day, leadership has an awful lot of clout and can force (and has forced) much down the throats of the rank and file.

This should serve as a wake up call. As Gerald Seib pointed out on WSJ today, Americans' political preferences have stayed remarkably constant over the years. A successful governing agenda is not one that tacks hard to the left or right, but one that is essentially a free market, socially tolerant agenda of "live and let live."

The Democrats still hold the White House, 256 of 435 House seats, and 59 seats in the Senate. But at least the filibuster is back.

If this is a harbinger of things to come, November will be very, very interesting. Stay tuned.

On Health Bill, Lone GOP Supporter Got Played

One of the most surprising aspects of last night's House vote on the Democrats' plan to deepen the distortions in the health care sector was the lone Republican vote for it.



That vote came from none other than first-term Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao (R-LA-02). He got played. The Democrats--including personal entreaties by the President--secured his vote by promising him lots of goodies to take home to his constituents.



He doubtless hopes it'll get him reelected. Remember, the first priority for the vast majority of elected officials is...to get reelected. And keeping the people who vote for you happy is the best way to do that.



But Louisiana's 2nd district has a Cook Partisan Voter Index Rating of D+25. That's a "safe seat" for Democrats. The only reason Cao won last year is that he was running against a deeply corrupt incumbent. He's a one-termer, plain and simple.



So why do I say he got played? Because his vote makes it marginally more likely for Democrats to be successful in the Senate without really affecting his likely defeat next year. One of the moderate Senate Democrats is Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, whose reelection victory margin last year was underwhelming in the Year of Obama.



Now, Landrieu is only one of several moderate Democrat holdouts in the Senate who may ultimately prevent comprehensive healthcare legislation this year--despite their supposed filibuster-proof majority--but the bipartisan patina Democrats will now be able to claim can only make their efforts easier.



Despite having been played, Cao is no fool. Rather, his vote last night is symptomatic of the corrosive power-at-any-cost mentality that plagues political life. Instead of gracefully accepting his brief stint in Congress, he has abandoned principle in the vain hope of prolonging his tenure.

Ramming a Climate Bill Through Senate Committee is Politically Risky

This morning the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee reported the Kerry-Boxer climate bill (S. 1733: "Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act) in a rather unusual fashion. Committee Republicans were insisting on further economic analysis of the legislation--a courtesy they extended to Democrats several years ago during the ultimately unsuccessful Clean Skies debate--before moving to mark up the bill. Chairman Boxer refused to wait and forced the bill through the committee despite a GOP boycott of the markup.

The 12 committee Democrats voted 10-1-1 to report the bill: Baucus (D-MT) voted against it, and Carper (D-DE) didn't make it to the vote.
The following committee Democrats voted for it: Barbara Boxer (CA), Frank Lautenberg (NJ), Benjamin Cardin (MD), Bernie Sanders (VT), Amy Klobuchar (MN), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Tom Udall (NM), Jeff Merkley (OR), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), and Arlen Specter (PA).

Without getting into the minimal benefits and large costs of the legislation, this vote appears to carry significant political risk for several committee members.

Baucus, Lautenberg, Merkley, and Udall aren't up for reelection until 2014, so this vote is unlikely to have much significance by then. The same is probably true for the 2012 class--Cardin, Klobuchar, Sanders, and Whitehouse--except in the (hopefully) unlikely event that the economy fails to recover by then.

For those up in 2010, however, facing the very real possibility that recovery will be slow and unemployment remain high for the next year, this vote is a bit of a gamble: whether the base energizing effects on turnout will outweigh the loss of swing voters, most of whom quite reasonably are more concerned about employment at the moment.

And then there's the inconvenient truth that global surface temperatures have been stable for the last decade and this year has been rather cold in the United States. Note that I'm making no claim regarding the future of global temperatures, simply laying out the factors that will affect voter perceptions at the polls next fall.

CQ Politics Race Ratings for 2010 Senate Races considers Boxer's California seat to be "safe", Gillbrand's New York seat as "Likely Democrat", and Specter's in Pennsylvania as "Leans Democrat." Yet polling on Real Clear Politics has Specter slightly behind fmr. Rep. Pat Toomey, and that's before his primary with Rep. Joe Sestak (and a former admiral), which is likely to force Specter further to the left.

In New York, Gillibrand could plausibly be defeated by either former Governor George Pataki or former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani. Neither has officially entered the race.

Boxer seems to be in the best shape of the three, although her advantage over presumed GOP challenger and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina has narrowed significantly in recent months.

Of couse, a year in politics is a very long time, and a lot could happen between now and then. Nonetheless, when reelection or early retirement can depend on a few points, a vote on a bill that many voters rightly perceive to damage American competitiveness and productivity is highly unlikely to improve these senators' prospects.

And to have the vote within 48 hours of major Republican victories in New Jersey and Virginia seems bizarre. Then again, maybe the writing on the wall says if they don't get it done now, they never will.