Goodbye Friends, Hello Foes

The narrow victory by Maria Cantwell in Washington state pulls the Senate into a 50-50 tie, with the vice president, presumably Dick Cheney, giving the GOP the majority.

Meanwhile, the new senators are a dreadful lot. Hillary Clinton, who will represent New York, will undoubtedly be a persistent voice for unreason and governmental expansionism. Gazillionaire Jon Corzine campaigned on federalizing education, health care, and pretty much all of parenthood. Debbie Stabenow has for years been an appendage of the militantly left-wing Michigan Education Association. Among governors, Tom Carper of Delaware was one of the biggest tax hikers in a decade (the Cato Institute gave him a D in its fiscal report card). And the widow of Missouri’s Mel Carnahan promises to vote however Tom Daschle tells her to. Mark Dayton of Minnesota, heir to a family fortune, is beset with liberal guilt. 2006 can’t get here soon enough!

There will be fewer moderates inside the Democratic caucus of the Senate to retard the party’s looney left. Three voices of reason on Social Security reform — Bob Kerrey of Nebraska (he should be the head of a Bush Health and Human Services Department or Social Security Administration), Pat Moynihan of New York, and Chuck Robb of Virginia — are gone to retirement or defeat.

So we are left with a razor-thin Republican majority in the Senate with both parties having lurched to the left. The Republican majority leader, Trent Lott of Mississippi, says that the bipartisan gridlock is “put behind us now.” His interpretation of the election is that the voters want a flurry of legislation. “No matter who becomes president, we’re going to have to get things done. We may get more done than anybody would have believed possible.” We can only pray that he is wrong about that. After all, four years of political gridlock has given America one of the greatest eras of wealth creation in world history.

What exactly is this Senate likely to get done? The Senate didn’t approve much of value with Abraham, Ashcroft, Coverdell, Grams, Mack, and Roth still around. Who knows what kind of policy mush might be delivered without them? Not even a defensive posture against legislation such as universal health care, a patients’ bill of rights, and minimum wage increases, will be likely now that there are less than 40 half-reliable conservative votes.

Now for a quick word of praise for each of the Senate casualties in this election year. First, Ashcroft, Coverdell, and Mack were quite simply the conscience of Senate conservatives. They are irreplaceable. Ashcroft’s loss is particularly heart-breaking. He would have almost certainly defeated the ultra-tax-and-spend liberal Mel Carnahan had it not been for the tragic plane crash that took Carnahan’s life. And Ashcroft almost certainly would have won if the election had been even a week later. (Please, John, run again in 2002.) Grams was the most persuasive voice in the Senate for Social Security choice and had the most ambitious plan for private accounts.

Spence Abraham was a supply-side superstar. He was a champion of tax cuts, free trade, and a more liberal and humane immigration policy. Spence made political misjudgments as a freshman senator. He played too much inside baseball, cozying up to the GOP leadership, rather than tending to his constituents. For better or worse, as a first-term senator, one has to be Senator Pothole. And Spence wasn’t. But that’s because he had an abiding interest in advancing policy goals. Few one-term senators have left such a glowing legacy.

The business community should be ashamed of itself for allowing Spence Abraham to go down. Ditto for Silicon Valley. The high-tech community seldom had a better friend in Washington. He was voted, by one magazine, the best friend of high tech in the entire Senate. Time and again, he stuck his neck out for big business on issues like free trade, immigration, and tort reform, risking unpopularity in Michigan, home of the United Auto Workers. The unions, the anti-immigrant groups, the trial lawyers, the environmental wackos, and the feminists spent millions to defeat Abraham. The high-tech community should have raised whatever it took — $ 10, $ 20, $ 50 million — to defend him. Where was John Doerr? Where was Tech-Net? At one point earlier this year Tech-Net had planned to hold a fund-raiser for Debbie Stabenow — Abraham’s left-wing opponent! Well, you know what? Silicon Valley deserves Debbie Stabenow. They’ll soon learn how responsive she is to business interests.

Finally, there is William Roth. Roth was the godfather of the Reagan-Kemp-Roth tax cuts. Quite simply, Bill Roth’s tax bill helped launch this unprecedented 18-year economic expansion. You just want to drive up to Delaware and start smacking the voters on the side of the head and say, “How could you de-elect this guy? What were you thinking?”

Roth also gave us one of the great financial and tax innovations of the past decade: the Roth IRA. For nearly two decades, he was dogged in his pursuit and defense of IRAs — and tens of million of Americans have him to thank for the consequent huge increases in their financial wealth. It is to be hoped that, later this month, the lame duck Congress will have the sense to approve Roth’s pending tax cut bill to vastly expand IRAs and 401(k) plans. That would be a parting gift worthy of this distinguished gentleman. And it would make a lot of working class Americans richer to boot.

The voters have moved the Senate sharply to the left. We’ve traded down. As for Abraham, Ashcroft, Grams, Mack, and Roth, I miss them already.

Stephen Moore is president of the Club for Growth and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.