Is it Really 'Picking a Fight' if the Other Guy Doesn't Notice

Michael Gerson, in an effort to redeem his former employer's record, has to go all the way back to an early campaign speech.

In the summer of 1999, George W. Bush chose the first major policy speech of his presidential campaign to pick a fight with Grover Norquist. Bush flatly rejected the “destructive” view “that if government would only get out of our way, all our problems would be solved” — a vision the Texas governor dismissed as having “no higher goal, no nobler purpose, than leave us alone.”

As they say, you campaign in poetry and govern in prose. The fact that the only significant evidence Gerson can find to support his notion that Bush was standing up to the anti-tax crowd comes from a campaign speech is telling.

For some reason Gerson didn't link to the actual speech, but it's available online. The speech was part of Bush's attempt to reinvent himself as a "compassionate conservative", a concept to which he offered little more than lip service.¹ Once Bush took office it wasn't that "deficits don't matter" because we need to "carry a message of hope and renewal to every community in this country". It was "deficits dont' matter" because Bush wanted to expand spending on Medicare (something Mitt Romney might cynically characterize as "buying votes") and massive tax cuts for the wealthy, even if it meant that the deficit would go through the roof.

Gerson relies upon the conceit that a single campaign speech in which Bush supposedly picked a fight with Norquist should be read in a vacuum. As if the only person whose opinion matters in the entire Republican hierarchy is a single anti-tax zealot. Given a choice between a Democratic President who was disinclined to cut taxes and would have tried to maintain budget balance, and a Republican candidate who was promising massive tax cuts for the rich even if it meant going back to deficit spending, who do you think Norquist would choose? And... one suspects Norquist was receiving assurances behind-the-scenes.

Twice in the past week, Bush has sharply criticized his party. A week ago, he charged that congressional Republicans were trying to "balance the budget on the backs of the poor." On Tuesday in New York, he said that his party has been too negative, too pessimistic and too enamored of believing that free markets can solve social problems while ignoring the role of government....

Grover Norquist, who heads Americans for Tax Reform, said the Bush speech was not even discussed at the weekly meeting of conservative activists that he hosts each Wednesday.

"What, me worry?"
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1. I don't want to be unfair here - perhaps Bush sincerely believed in the "compassionate conservative" concept that he made a cornerstone of his campaign. But if he did, he either quickly changed his mind once in office or decided that it wasn't a concept worth pursuing.

Safety in Numbers

Although a growing number of Republicans are willing to refuse to sign Grover Norquist's anti-tax pledge, or repudiate their signatures, the party may be reaching a tipping point where they "toss[] aside Americans for Tax Reform’s pledge in order to secure a grand bargain". Norquist has played word games in the past to avoid accusing the Republicans of breaking their pledges, but if you push that type of game far enough you undermine the meaning of the pledge. On the other hand, if you accuse large numbers of Republicans of violating the pledge you are likely to find that they have the collective power to push back, "We have to do what's right for the country," and the legislators would likely have little concern about any effort to punish them - any effort at retaliation would become diluted.

You have to wonder, even if they agree with him in principle, whether a good number of the Republicans who have signed the pledge want to get out from under Norquist's thumb. Once the pledge is broken, it's not clear that Norquist or any similar pledge effort can regain the same level of power or control.

Hard Reality: The Republicans Don't Want to Balance the Budget

You would think that our national experience would teach us something: The Republicans are very good at cutting taxes and spending money, but have demonstrated next to no actual interest in balancing the budget. Still, the snake oil sells and a huge percentage of Americans believe that we can easily and painlessly balance the budget by cutting "welfare", funding for the arts and "foreign aid".

Diane Rehm interviewed Grover Norquist and a Republican Congressman-elect, and the incoming Congressman, Ted Yoho, insisted upon taking a principled stand: He was not going to sign Norquist's anti-tax pledge.

I made a pledge and a promise to the people that I'd go up to Washington and do the very best I could for our district and our country. And signing a pledge wasn't going to solve the problems our nation faces fiscally. You know, and I made a pledge to, you know, two things: one is to our country, I pledged allegiance. And I made a pledge to my wife to be the best husband I could be.

But as Yoho explained his philosophy toward taxes and the budget, Norquist had to be smiling. Why would he need Yoho to sign the pledge when Yoho has already internalized Norquist's "drown it in the bathtub" philosophy of government?

You know, we don't have a revenue problem in this country. You know, our debt is going to kill us, and the biggest part of our debt is our spending. We have got to get our spending under control. And if you look back where Canada was back in the 1960s when they had a real liberal congress or parliament and they put in all the entitlement programs and, you know, tax and spend more, you know, it killed their economy. And they're at the brink of disaster.

Yoho seems sincere, but "the biggest part of our debt is our spending" is an odd statement. Canada has a pretty good track record for balancing its budget, strong per capita income and growth, and its people have a good standard of living. He thinks Canada is at the brink of disaster because of its Medicare program? What's actually going on in Canada...

The report's outlook for the world is decidedly bleaker than for Canada, pointing out that after five years of crisis the global economy is again weakening and risks proliferate.

"The risk of a new major contraction cannot be ruled out," said Pier Carlo Padoan, the OECD's chief economist, citing the ongoing recession in the euro area, a below-par economy in the U.S. and a slowdown in many emerging markets.

That is, the biggest threats to Canada's economy are external.

In fact, the OECD anticipates the U.S. economy will speed up faster than Canada's next year at two per cent and in 2014, at 2.8 per cent growth.

Because the U.S. is starting from further behind, Canada will still maintain an advantage in the recovery over its southern neighbour, however. For instance, the organization projects Canada's unemployment rate will fall below seven per cent by 2014, while in the U.S., it is expected to remain close to eight per cent.

Yoho's positions on Canada are, to be blunt, divorced from reality. Yoho continues to present the Republican / Tea Party line:

This has been, you know, over the course of the last 15, 20 years, bad policies and people not dealing with it. It's time for us to stop talking about it and putting another Band-Aid on it. These are going to be some tough decisions that are going to be -- have to be made. And this is the year we need to do it because if we don't make these decisions, we're going to be in the same place where Greece or Spain was.

Except here's the thing: The Republican Party is not interested in making those tough decisions. They claim to have a budgetary genius in Paul Ryan who, after years of careful thought and collaboration with presidential nominee Mitt Romney, was able to specify a desire to cut funding for PBS. They have a leader in budget negotiations in the form of John Boehner who, building on last year's negotiations and Ryan's budgetary proposals, tosses out numbers that are neither supported by specific budgetary proposals nor sufficient to balance the budget. That's not leadership - it's a continuing display of cowardice.

And why are these Republican leaders such cowards? Because they know what Yoho will find out if the budget is balanced through cuts - the people who have been buying that snake oil will howl when they find out that the Republican approach to balancing the budget necessarily involves inflicting serious pain upon them. It's not that Boehner couldn't propose specific cuts to government programs, including Social Security and Medicare, it's that he doesn't want to face the political consequences. He hopes to trick the Democrats into proposing the cuts so he can argue, "I only voted for them because I'm fiscally responsible, but the cuts that hurt you came from the Democratic Party. I had no choice."

Paul Krugman has reproduced a graph I have at times shared, illustrating that it's Republican policies that have created the present "deficit crisis". Here's the thing: If you and your party are unable to actually identify budget cuts, if you and your party are the ones primarily responsible both for revenue shortfalls and for the unfunded expenditures that drive up the deficit, you owe the voters a moment of honesty. You need to either admit that you don't care about balancing the budget, and that the entire debate is a pretext for your long-standing goals of cutting Medicare and Social Security to the bone, or you need to admit that although you would like to see the deficit reduced you would prefer to have out-of-control deficits and spending growth if the alternative is to raise taxes or risk losing the next election.

Perhaps I underestimate Yoho, but if I do, what are the implications of this:

Rehm: But let me just ask, Congressman Yoho, would you be more willing to raise taxes on upper-income Americans, more willing to do that than to allow us to go over the cliff?

Yoho: No, ma'am.

If you care about balancing the budget, you balance the budget. Once you figure out how to balance revenues and expenditures, you can take a deeper look at the numbers, figure out where you can or should cut, where various taxes and tax rates might be adjusted or tweaked, etc., all without throwing the budget out of balance.

If you protect low tax rates for the wealthiest Americans despite budgetary consequences that you insist threaten the health and future of the nation, can't we be honest about it? You might not mind it if somebody else did the hard work and took the political risks necessary to balance the budget, but you have other priorities.

The Finely Tuned Messaging of the Political Right

A week or two ago I saw a Republican commentator complaining about how mean President Obama was to Mitt Romney during the election campaign. She accused the President of running an ad that said that Mitt Romney gave somebody cancer. My reaction to that statement was that she knew the actual facts - an independent entity, backing Obama, ran an ad about a man whose wife died of cancer, and suggested that she might have had a better outcome had Bain not taken over his company, laid him off, and cost them his health insurance.

To the best of my knowledge, nobody is claiming that the ad was fair, and the story it told was misleading. But the problem for Republicans is that if you respond to the ad, you will have great difficulty not responding to its story - and that story is of the problems families face when their health insurance is tied to their employment.

So what's the solution? That's easy: you lie. You pretend not to be familiar with the details of the ad, pretend to believe that it was an official Obama campaign ad, and pretend that it says something absurd. That way you get to advance a story line of how negative the Obama campaign was, how it was detached from facts, and get to avoid responding to the difficult issues the actual ad raised.

It is simply not credible that right-wing power players are unfamiliar with the ad. It went viral, it was discussed at length (often with breathless overstatement) in political blogs, on "fact checking" sites, in editorials, on television.... The distortion is deliberate.

The Republicans have become very good at shaping a message, pushing it out through multiple channels, and sticking to the script. So it was no surprise when I heard essentially the same story being pushed again, by none other than Grover Norquist:

Norquist: [Obama] has a very expansive vision and a very different sales pitch. Eighty-six percent of his ads this year were trashing Mitt Romney as a person. He'll give you cancer. He'll do all this other stuff. Eighty-six percent...

Rehm: I don't think he said that.

Norquist: Oh, one of the ads that was paid for on his behalf said that some guy who worked at one point for one of his firms got cancer and that was somehow Romney's fault. I don't know why they put it in the ad if it wasn't Romney's fault. That said, they went after him personally, 86 percent of the ads. He won a smashing mandate, overwhelming mandate not to be Mitt Romney. He did not run ads saying I want to spend $1.6 trillion and higher taxes.

Norquist not only repeats the same essential lie about the ad and its content, he mixes in his home-brewed statistics, as if he wants to personify the phrase, "lies, damn lies, and statistics".

When you see Norquist speak, he sometimes displays an odd affect that can distract you from what he's saying. But when you listen to him it's clear that he's focused like a laser on his agenda (nominally the prevention of tax increases, but more accurately the advancement of policies that shift the tax burden from the wealthy onto the rest of us).

When Norquist gets a fact wrong, rest assured, it's not an accident.

The Republican Balanced Budget Amendment - Another Exercise in Vapidity

Apparently the nation cannot get enough budgetary Kabuki theater, so the Republicans want to enshrine their present nonsense into the Constitution. Having reviewed the present Republican proposal for a balanced budget amendment, it would seem that the Republican Party leader gets dumber or less honest... maybe both... with each passing year.

A small dose of honesty would be nice: Congress controls the budget. If Congress wants to balance the budget, all it needs to do is pass a balanced budget. It managed to do that a few times under President Clinton, so it's not like we're dreaming the impossible dream here. The Republican Party shouldn't need to amend the Constitution to give itself sufficient inspiration to do its job.

But truly, this "balanced budget amendment" is made to be broken. It contains intentional loopholes that every Congress can and will drive a truck through. To the extent that it works, it guarantees the type of budgetary gridlock that has paralyzed California's legislature for years. But it won't work, and it will become a matter of routine for Congress to pass resolutions putting it off to the following year or impose disaster on the nation.

Section 1. Total outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed total receipts for that fiscal year, unless two-thirds of the duly chosen and sworn Members of each House of Congress shall provide by law for a specific excess of outlays over receipts by a roll call vote.

So Congress must balance the budget unless it votes not to balance the budget. We're adding a supermajority requirement to the status quo.

``Section 2. Total outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed 18 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States for the calendar year ending before the beginning of such fiscal year, unless two- thirds of the duly chosen and sworn Members of each House of Congress shall provide by law for a specific amount in excess of such 18 percent by a roll call vote.

There is no basis for imposing an arbitrary cap on spending, and it should go without saying that such a cap could paralyze the nation in a time of crisis, such as a recession (like the present one) in which the GDP drops and huge, immediate spending cuts are required, resulting in a downward economic spiral. Or Congress votes to exempt itself from the cap and finds itself locked into the pattern of having to continue to exempt itself, year after year, because the insanity of the cuts required by the cap spirals upward with each passing year. It also encourages Congress to play budgeting games. Rather than including an expenditure in the current year's budget, commit to pay for it next year - make it the problem of the next Congress. And once again, if Republicans want to commit to only voting for budgets for which total outlays do not exceed 18 percent for the fiscal year, they may do exactly that.

``Section 3. Prior to each fiscal year, the President shall transmit to the Congress a proposed budget for the United States Government for that fiscal year in which--
``(1) total outlays do not exceed total receipts; and
``(2) total outlays do not exceed 18 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States for the calendar year ending before the beginning of such fiscal year.

Why? Congress, the body charged with passing the budget, is so incompetent that it cannot propose a budget within these parameters? No, really, this is about Kabuki theater and the avoidance of responsibility. The Republicans want to be able to blame the President for unpopular cuts. "We only did what was in his budget.

If they cannot reasonably meet this requirement, Presidents, not being stupid, will take one of the many obvious paths around this requirement. One way would be to submit two budgets to Congress, one that complies with this requirement and the other that it the actual spending proposal.Another might be to simply include a line, "If Congress finds that this proposal exceeds the limits set forth in 'Section 3' of the balanced budget amendment, Congress shall determine the percentage by which this budget proposal exceeds the limits and reduce all items by that percentage." Another would simply be to propose a budget based upon unrealistic revenue projections.

Section 4. Any bill that imposes a new tax or increases the statutory rate of any tax or the aggregate amount of revenue may pass only by a two-thirds majority of the duly chosen and sworn Members of each House of Congress by a roll call vote. For the purpose of determining any increase in revenue under this section, there shall be excluded any increase resulting from the lowering of the statutory rate of any tax.

Because this approach works so well in California?

Seriously, Republicans have proved themselves capable of blocking tax increases, the closing of even absurd tax loopholes, or even the scheduled expiration of tax cuts, while in the minority. I will grant that this type of provision gives the likes of Grover Norquist wet dreams, but why is it actually necessary, let alone desirable, if you're concerned less with your trust fund and more with the welfare of the nation?

Section 5. The limit on the debt of the United States shall not be increased, unless three-fifths of the duly chosen and sworn Members of each House of Congress shall provide for such an increase by a roll call vote.

So we'll have additional rounds of the childish Kabuki theater we're presently "enjoying", but with a supermajority requirement such that a minority of Congress can hold the nation hostage, potentially destroy the nation's credit rating, and potentially trigger a national or global recession or depression. By refusing to authorize the government to borrow money to cover the financial obligations Congress has already authorized? Brilliant. Here's an idea: If Congress doesn't want the money spent, it should refrain from including the expenditure in the budget.

This type of provision makes you wonder if the Republicans want to be taken seriously. There is no constitutional requirement that there even be a debt ceiling. It's entirely a legislative creation. Congress could render this language a nullity simply by repealing the law setting a debt ceiling.

``Section 6. The Congress may waive the provisions of sections 1, 2, 3, and 5 of this article for any fiscal year in which a declaration of war against a nation-state is in effect and in which a majority of the duly chosen and sworn Members of each House of Congress shall provide for a specific excess by a roll call vote.

This gives the President cause to seek a declaration of war against a nation state, or to continue to declare that hostilities remain open in relation to a previous declaration of war. This could pretty much guarantee that the U.S. is always in a declared war against a nation state. We might have declared wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Heck - had this requirement been in the Constitution back when Reagan was running up the deficit, we might still be in a declared state of war against Grenada. What brilliant foreign policy the Republicans would create by giving Presidents even more incentive to take military action against foreign nations, and drag out those wars and occupations rather than bringing them to the fastest possible resolution.

Note that the one thing a war would not do is allow for a tax increase based upon a majority vote of Congress. It's better, after all, to risk sending ill-equipped, ill-supported troops into battle than to risk that a majority of Congress might raise taxes in order to properly fund the war effort.

Section 7. The Congress may waive the provisions of sections 1, 2, 3, and 5 of this article in any fiscal year in which the United States is engaged in a military conflict that causes an imminent and serious military threat to national security and is so declared by three-fifths of the duly chosen and sworn Members of each House of Congress by a roll call vote. Such suspension must identify and be limited to the specific excess of outlays for that fiscal year made necessary by the identified military conflict.

So if a President declares something along the lines of a Global War on Terror, we can expect Congress to authorize hundreds of billions of dollars in new debt without concern for if or when it might be repaid. And we raise the serious risk that a minority of the members of a new Congress might decline to continue war spending authorized by a prior Congress, or might demand ridiculous concessions if we want to avoid walking away from a military commitment or leaving troops in the field without adequate support. Small chance, you say? Some wars should be defunded? Even accepting that, this language creates an unnecessary potential national security risk.

Note also the lack of consideration for other contingencies. Massive natural disasters? Huge regional power grid failures? Another financial industry collapse? A recession that could turn into a depression? Domestic emergencies, it seems, are of little import - which I guess is consistent with the Republican Party's actions and the Bush Administration's record - but aren't they supposed to occasionally pretend that they care about responsibly governing this country?

Section 8. No court of the United States or of any State shall order any increase in revenue to enforce this article.

To enforce which provision? This seems gratuitous, but appears to have been thrown in to satisfy certain right-wing think tanks who criticized prior balanced budget amendments for leaving open the possibility of enforcement through the courts.

I suspect that at the heart of this provision is a recognition by the Republicans that, should this pass, at times they'll want to fake it and run up a deficit based on revenue projections they know to be false, or they fear that a recession will turn their projected balanced budget into a deficit-generating budget, and that somebody might try to go to the courts to compel that the budget actually be balanced. Nobody, but nobody, is going to tell a Republican Congress how to do its job, particularly when it is failing in that job.

``Section 9. Total receipts shall include all receipts of the United States Government except those derived from borrowing. Total outlays shall include all outlays of the United States Government except those for repayment of debt principal.

This language, of course, targets the Social Security trust fund. The Republicans are proposing to steal it, fair and square.

``Section 10. The Congress shall have power to enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation, which may rely on estimates of outlays, receipts, and gross domestic product.

Well, duh?

Section 11. This article shall take effect beginning with the fifth fiscal year beginning after its ratification.

Typical legislative cowardice. "We don't want this to hurt us in the coming election... or the one after that. We don't want this to harm our next presidential candidate. But after five years many of us will be retired and rewarded with cushy sinecures."

I don't believe that the Republicans actually want this nonsense to become part of the Constitution, with the caveat that a significant faction of the Republican caucus is willing to take any number of reckless and stupid risks they know could harm the country if they believe their actions could also harm the Democrats. If they muck up the country and the Constitution in the process, so be it - this is about money and power. The balanced budget proposal is a ploy for the next election, so they can claim to have been seriously trying to force themselves to act responsibly, but that those darn Democrats keep making them run up the deficit.

I'll repeat myself: If the Republicans truly want to balance the budget, all they need to do is pass a balanced budget.

Tax Pledges

For years, Republicans have led the charge to mindlessly sign on to the Americans for Tax Reform pledge, with about 70% of their candidates promising not to raise taxes (but also not to cut corporate welfare). So it's no small wonder that Fred Hiatt and his crew offer up an unsigned editorial aimed at... a pretty much irrelevant tax pledge requested by a teacher's union back in 2006.

In 2006 the union, known as the Montgomery County Education Association, included this question on its questionnaire for candidates seeking its endorsement for the Montgomery County Council: "Would you support a tax increase, if necessary, to fund the school budget and the negotiated agreements [setting salaries and benefits for teachers]? If so, in what way would you increase taxes?"

Asking a politician if they would raise taxes if necessary to fund schools? The horror!

It should be noted in this regard that the Washington Post has been squarely behind Michelle Rhee and her unsustainable plan to reform teacher pay. In another of the Hiatt crew's unsigned pieces,

Minimally effective or ineffective teachers would lose job security. In addition to the generous pay raises -- which would give the District a competitive edge in hiring -- teachers would also benefit from a rich offering of new opportunities for professional development as well as enhanced policies on school security and discipline.

To finance the contract, Ms. Rhee was able to attract $64.5 million from foundations that hope the District will serve as a national model.

I don't know if they haven't put down the crack pipe long enough to realize that not every school district in the nation is going to get private concerns to donate tens of millions of dollars per year to help them pay salaries that cannot be sustained by taxes. I'm not sure that they put it down long enough to ask what will happen in D.C., five years from now, when that money runs out. But it is clear that Hiatt and his crew would whine incessantly if D.C.'s teachers dared to ask if elected officials would "support a tax increase, if necessary, to fund the school budget and the negotiated teacher salaries and benefits", even though there's no reason to believe that the private money will fill the huge financial void that will exist when current commitments expire.

It's no surprise, given that the Washington Post Company's principal profit center is Kaplan, that they are much more concerned with getting public money into private hands than in ensuring that public schools are sustainable. In that light, it's similarly no surprise that Hiatt and his crew can't muster even a word of criticism toward the tax pledges that the vast majority of Republicans and some Democrats sign onto every year, even if it makes it effectively impossible to balance the federal budget. But to the extent that the Post pretends to care about education, why isn't it fair to ask politicians how they plan to pay for schools and teachers when the economy turns bad, or when private charities can be found to fill multi-million dollar holes in school board budgets - because the overwhelming experience of school districts in the current recession is that they are experiencing significant budget cuts.

Just When You Think It's Safe....

Being interviewed in a friendly forum, they have to go and ask you if the war in Iraq was a mistake....

ROHRABACHER: Well, now that we know that it cost a trillion dollars and all of these years and all of these lives and all of this blood, uh, I don’t know many…

NORQUIST: Looking for a number. Two-thirds? One-third?

ROHRABACHER: I, I can’t. All I can say is the people, everybody I know thinks it was a mistake to go in now.

NORQUIST: That’s 100 percent.

Part of that is hindsight, but....