Editorials
Republican Spending Plan
No Road Map Out of Fiscal Crisis
Elections, it is often said, have consequences.
The consequences of Republican successes in 1980 and 1984 can be seen in the so-called Reagan Revolution, the significant changes in budgets, taxes and regulatory policy that President Ronald Reagan signed into law beginning in 1981. Similarly, the strong showing of Democrats in 2006 and 2008, including the election of President Barack Obama, allowed them to pass a health care reform measure after decades of trying.
Now, with Republicans having been swept into the majority in the House of Representatives, consequences can be seen in the bill passed over the weekend that would cut $60 billion from the spending in the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30. The new majority, invigorated by the infusion of 87 freshmen, is full of energy and insistent on having its way. It proposes to hack back all sorts of government activity. Among the more controversial trade-offs are dirtier air and water through weaker regulation, reduced enforcement of immigration law through decreased staffing, and an increase in unwanted pregnancies by stripping funding from Planned Parenthood. The full list is longer and less provocative.
Some pruning is in order, and we’ve long argued that the country won’t have an honest political debate until it has a credible party of small government proposing spending cuts to match its tax cuts. Perhaps that moment is finally arriving and this is a first peek.
The bill would cut the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by a third, nearly $3 billion. That’s a cost of about $21 for each income tax filer; the kind of choice that voters can assess.
But isn’t there something missing from this story of elections and their aftermaths? Such as, for example, the Senate, or the presidency? Sweeping changes in the direction of government don’t usually happen as the result of one party capturing one chamber of once branch of government in a midterm election.
Lacking the legislative strength to get anything close to this measure through the Senate, or past the president’s veto pen, House Republicans have threatened a government shutdown. Some have even said that they would vote to let the government default on its debt before compromising. This is the legislative equivalent of a 6-year-old stamping his feet and threatening to hold his breath until he turns blue. It reflects a lack of respect for representative government.
Let us hope that it is merely an opening gambit, and that adults will take charge, which seems likely because shutting down the government or defaulting on the federal debt could have massive impact--by raising interest rates and delaying benefit checks, for instance--that would backfire on the Republicans as a shutdown did in 1995.
Nor is using the government’s surging debt crisis a convincing rationale for rushing a measure like this into law at breakneck speed.
As an actual road map for getting the government out of crisis, this plan is sorely lacking, as was President Obama’s last week. It massacres a small slice of the budget, domestic discretionary spending (just 17% and shrinking), while it leaves the rest virtually untouched.
By far the biggest spending problems are entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. They make up 57.5% of the budget and are skyrocketing. They are growing so fast that they overwhelm even the most draconian cuts elsewhere.
If those costs are contained, there will be no need to live with dirtier air or other cuts rooted more in ideology or corporate self-interest than in governance that is effective, affordable and responsibility financed.
The sound and fury coming out of the House needs to be redirected into a bipartisan effort to get middle-class entitlements under control. Perhaps what we are hearing is merely the saber-rattling that comes before productive bargaining.
We can only hope.
The above is an editorial of USA Today.
