GOP Poised To Blow Another Big One
By Chuck Muth (02/08/05)
Do you remember the start of 1995? Republicans had just taken control of the House for the first time in 40 years thanks to the conservative promises made in the Contract With America. The House, shot up on political steroids, voted on every plank in the Contract in the first 100 days. Then.
WHAM!!
Right into a brick wall named the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate. Well, get ready for a little déjà vu all over again.
In the most recent copy of Human Events, assistant editor Robert Bluey notes that back in 1996 the GOP platform called for the elimination of four Cabinet-level departments: Commerce, Education, Energy and HUD. It also called for defunding the National Endowment of the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Legal Services Corporation. But Bill Clinton was re-elected and none of it ever happened.
Fast-forward to 2005. Republicans now control the White House AND both houses of Congress. Expectations are running high that, FINALLY, Republicans begin rolling back government and do something about the nation's $300 BILLION-plus budget deficit. So Bluey checked in with eight leading GOP senators and asked them if it was time to revisit the 1996 platform and cut or eliminate some departments or agencies.
The eight were: Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, Sen. John Sununu of New Hampshire and Sen. John Thune of South Dakota. It is significant to note that those eight are generally recognized fiscal conservatives. The leading liberal Republicans in the Senate - such as Sens. Lincoln Chaffee, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins - weren't included.
In response to the question, the conservative eight danced. They shuffled. They ducked. They spun. But not one answered with a straightforward "Yes." Not one.
Instead, you got typical political answers such as this from "conservative" Sen. Jeff Sessions: "It is time for us to vigorously review every department and agency in the government to determine whether they're producing sufficient value for the American people." (Yawn.) Sen. Sessions added, "I think it may be difficult, as a practical matter today, to just eliminate an entire Cabinet agency."
Well, golly, if it's gonna be "difficult," let's not even try. Heck, there are a ton of issues Congress can ignore if we just stick to the easy ones. Good grief.
At least "conservative" Sen. Kyl gave a straightforward answer: "The reality is, those departments are not going to be eliminated." According to Sen. Kyl, "there are two ways to solve the (deficit) problem: one is to cut expenses, the other is to make more money."
So "conservative" Sen. Kyl apparently believes big government departments and agencies shouldn't be cut or eliminated as long as the government takes enough money from the people to pay for them. Cutting back government because it's the right thing to do, because many agencies and departments exceed the constitutional constraints the Founders tried to put on the feds, because the programs and agencies are duplicative, wasteful or no longer necessary - none of these are sufficient reasons for getting rid of them. All that matters is what the government can "afford." Lovely.
Next? The department most frequently mentioned as the #1 candidate for any government chopping block is Commerce. We bring you now "conservative" Sen. Richard Shelby: "I would not support abolishing the Department of Commerce."
So there.
Then there was "conservative" Sen. John Thune, who just joined the senate after knocking off former Minority Leader Tom Daschle last November. According to Sen. Thune, if Congress would just focus on eliminating "duplication, and overlap and redundancy, you wouldn't have to necessarily totally, in a wholesale way, eliminate departments."
Great. Just great. Totally great.
The response from "conservative" Sen. Richard Burr was particularly troubling. Burr thinks fulfilling the promises made in the 1994 Contract With America and the 1996 GOP platform with regard to eliminating agencies and departments would be "misguided on our part" today. "We've grown a lot since then," he added.
"Grown"? Transformed is more like. Transformed into exactly what we opposed when the Democrat liberals were in charge. Apparently Sen. Burr doesn't mind big government, as long as it's "our" big government.
The only ray of hope came from "conservative" Sen. Cornyn. He wants to take a "hard look at all federal agencies...and if they don't produce solid results, I'm for abolishing them." I'm happy to hear him say he's in favor of abolishment, but that *if* is an awfully big escape clause. We already know these departments and agencies "don't produce solid results." In fact, just the opposite. Sen. Cornyn's *if* is a way to talk tough but continue to do nothing. I think in his home state of Texas they call that "all hat and no cattle."
For his part, "conservative" Sen. Sununu didn't give a straightforward answer to the actual question. Instead, he shifted the conversation to entitlements. Not that addressing entitlements isn't important, but that wasn't the question.
And then there was "conservative" Sen. McCain, who did a similar spin by answering an unasked question about earmarks and pork-barrel spending.
Again, those are important considerations, and I give Sen. McCain a lot of credit for leading efforts to rein in that kind of spending, but that wasn't the question. In fact, Bluey asked McCain about cutting departments and agencies TWICE...and still got a non-answer. That's really disappointing, especially considering McCain's reputation for "straight talk."
If you thought winning the White House and expanding majorities in both the House and the Senate meant limited-government conservatism would FINALLY make some serious progress, you're in for a MAJOR disappointment. Last November, Republicans were handed an historic opportunity to roll back the big government liberalism of the New Deal and the Great Society. But you know what they say about Republicans.
They never blow an opportunity to blow an opportunity.
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