During the lame duck session of Congress in December, Democrats sought to take advantage of their large majorities on Capitol Hill one final time before the Republican takeover of the House. Earlier, they had packed a 2011 budget with enough pork and earmarks to increase discretionary spending to $1.128 trillion. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republicans blocked that measure. So in December, Democrats proposed to spend $1.114 trillion. McConnell and company killed that, too, and Democrats settled for $1.09 trillion.
Last week, chastened Democrats proposed to freeze spending for the remainder of 2011, figuring that a reasonable compromise. Deeper cuts relished by Republicans were outrageous and unacceptable, they insisted. This wouldn’t fly either, and a majority of Democrats in the Senate and House voted for $4 billion in cuts, leaving spending roughly at the 2010 level.
That’s when the White House stepped in. Aides of President Obama said they’d go along with another $6 billion in cuts. But Republicans, who want $61 billion, rejected the offer as, McConnell put it, “unserious” and “unacceptable.” So expect the White House to acquiesce to still more cuts.
It may not be obvious, but there’s something important going on here. No, it’s not that Congress has begun to rein in spending significantly. It’s that actual cuts, small as they are, are being made. “Four billion in the context of an over $3 trillion budget is not a lot of money, [but] it is at least the first time since I’ve been here I can recall cutting anything of any consequence,” McConnell said. And Democrats are bragging about how hard they’ve worked to meet Republicans “halfway” in trimming spending.
The boasting is ludicrous. Democrats have indeed worked hard—to stave off even the most modest reductions. Though Republicans control only the House, they’ve forced the White House and Senate to swallow cuts unimaginable to Democrats before the November 2 election. So far, that means one sixth ($10 billion), not one half, of the cuts sought by Republicans.
So a culture of cutting rather than spending has taken hold in Washington. Its grip may be weak. The public may conclude Republicans are overreaching, which is what Democrats are counting on. But I don’t think so. The public, I suspect, is way ahead of Washington in recognizing the need to control spending, avert a debt crisis, and reverse the decline of the country they perceive all around them.
We’ll find out if Democrats are right in April when the Republican budget for 2012, drafted by Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, is released. Republicans are committed to “addressing” entitlements, but it’s unclear if that means meaningful cuts and reforms. In any case, Democrats expect the budget to open Republicans to relentless attacks.
For now, the involuntary retreat by Obama and Democrats goes well beyond spending. The White House appears to understand the unpopularity of its health care law isn’t a passing phase. In Rasmussen polls, a majority has favored repeal of Obamacare for 49 of the past 50 weeks.
Rarely has a major domestic program been as beleaguered. Not only have two federal judges ruled Obama-care unconstitutional, but there’s one drive to enact a constitutional amendment barring the program and another to create a compact among a number of states to take over the health care duties of the federal government.
And in Congress, there’s strong Republican opposition to funding preparations for Obamacare to begin in 2014. Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama believes Republicans will have the votes in the Senate to block the funding the president is seeking for this purpose in his 2012 budget.
To assuage governors who fear the fiscal impact of Obamacare, the president said he’d allow states to “opt out” of the program in 2014, three years earlier than planned. As accommodating as this sounds, states would still have to do practically everything that’s required under Obamacare. Governors reacted unenthusiastically.
Another Obama albatross is the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to put a national ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions, just as the cap and trade legislation that failed to pass Congress would have done. There’s speculation in Washington the president will postpone EPA action at least until after next year’s election.
Outside Washington, the new political culture has had the effect of reviving conservative issues either overlooked or forgotten in recent years, three of them in particular: states’ rights, right-to-work laws, and curbs on collective bargaining by public sector unions.
The phrase “states’ rights” is rarely invoked because of its past association with racism. But the idea is back in circulation, thanks to the growth of Washington’s authority and reach under Obama. Serious talk of shifting programs to the states, or eliminating them, has escalated.
Republican governor Rick Perry of Texas has published a book on the subject, Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington. “Empowering states prevents the accumulation of power in one central government and limits the extent to which the people must be governed by faraway representatives, bureaucrats, and judges who do not share their beliefs,” Perry writes.
The last state to enact a right-to-work law was Oklahoma in 2001. As you might expect, organized labor hates right-to-work because it bars a closed shop and gives workers the right to reject a union and refuse to pay dues. Yet a committee of the Indiana House passed a right-to-work measure in February. It has since died. And legislatures in at least six states—Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Missouri, Maine, Wisconsin, and Michigan—are considering right-to-work laws.
Unions love collective bargaining as fervently as they detest right-to-work. And why not? It gives them the power to collect dues from workers who’d rather not join a union. Public sector unions have a still greater asset. Their negotiations are often not with adversaries but with officials whose election they’ve supported financially. They negotiate with those who owe them.
What’s elevated collective bargaining is its creation of a privileged class of government workers who in 41 of 50 states get higher pay than private sector employees. Then they retire early with pensions and health care to which they have contributed little. It’s a corrupt and costly system, and governors in Wisconsin, Ohio, and other states are bent on curbing or ending it. Before the 2010 election, few dared.
That election, as commonly understood, was a rejection of Obama, Democrats, and their agenda of spending, debt, and a surge of power in Washington. But it was more than that. It reflected a national shift to the right. It put Obama, Democrats, and liberalism on the defensive. And it created a climate that Republicans and conservatives are just beginning to exploit.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.
