The crisis of fiscal leadership
Republicans, as I have recently argued, have a great deal more to offer the country than tax cuts. They might ask: Do we wish to see our country’s energy sector continue to grow, and to see America displace Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil producer? The country will answer “Yes,” and Republicans should be ready with a list of specific policies to ensure that this happens. Republicans might ask: Do we wish to create a great many more solid career opportunities for the very large share of our young people who are not headed for MBAs, law degrees, or information-technology jobs? The country will answer “Yes,” and Republicans must be ready with a solid policy agenda. Ask the country if it wants to end subsidies to politically connected businesses, and it will answer “Yes.” Be ready. Instead, Republicans have been asking if the country is ready to put everything on hold to forestall a relatively small tax hike for households with incomes approaching $400,000 and up, and the country has answered “No.” The country is wrong to want to raise taxes for reasons having to do more with envy than economics, but certain human realities have to be accounted for in politics.
As for the more difficult questions, such as whether the country will protest if the Republicans attempt to reform entitlements by changing the indexation benchmark from wages to prices — a reform that would save billions of dollars without actually cutting the current benefits of one person — the answer is not obvious, but then that is the nature of hard questions. But it will be easier for conservatives to do the hard thing if they have an agenda that emphasizes the great many relatively easy and popular proposals that conservatives can and should support. But that is going to take deft and imaginative leadership of a sort that we have not lately seen from Republican leaders. John Boehner has not been the catastrophe that many fiscal hawks accuse him of being, but it is not clear that making the best of a bad hand is the most we can or should hope for.
Blowback
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The crisis of
fiscalleadershipdavidk on December 8, 2012 at 9:41 AM
Kicking the can. GOPe’s favorite pastime.
davidk on December 8, 2012 at 9:44 AM
Except it really is the democrats who’re the f***ups.
Speakup on December 8, 2012 at 9:47 AM
If you read the article, there is a reference to Boehner removing some pro Tea Party people from committees. Someone is calling this a purge of conservatives. I don’t know who phrased it that way first, I do know that the media wants Boehner to look bad to republicans. The media, doing its work to “crack the republicans” for the white house will help spread any rumor to undermine the speaker’s negotiations.
Someone needs to check on whether the tea party leaders, who came on in 2010 had the seniority for these committees and actually produced some kind of result. I remember that they did not know House rules well enough, and were proposing spending cuts that they did not have jurisdiction over. They wasted time and did not succeed. They ruined a perfectly good budget bill that might have been shoved thru with a $300 million cut to Planned Parenthood that did not have to be timed that way, giving the liberal megaphone something to whine about. It is my belief that seniority is what gets people committee assignments. I don’t believe in it mind you, I want seniority done away with, I don’t believe any member should be the Ranking member for any particular gain, except to express wisdom if they have some.
Paul Ryan had to get exceptions to the rules to operate as budget head because, even HE does not have the seniority to preside there. Qualifications be damned, that is how seniority works. We need more info on this budget committee assignment fuss, not rumors started by people who lost their seats. I want to know if the people that lost seats actually accomplished anything conservative. And did they have an exception to come in from nowhere to get the assignment because of tea party enthusiasm in 2010?
Fleuries on December 8, 2012 at 10:51 AM