A lot of conservatives were predictably disappointed in the budget deal that Speaker Paul Ryan agreed to last week with the White House. We did get a few things, like delays in the implementation of several key ObamaCare taxes, and the repeal at long last of the 42-year-old oil export ban.
But the Democrats got lots more spending, and even the tax delays are not the same as tax repeals. They added another $500 billion to the deficit and Josh Earnest and Harry Reid are crowing that this is a great budget that keeps Republicans from “achieving their ideological agenda through the budget process.”
You know it’s not good if those guys like it!
So much of the early sentiment is that Paul Ryan is just another weak RINO sellout, no different from John Boehner, and conservatives have been sold down the river again.
I understand feeling that way, but let me tell you what I think Ryan’s strategy is. You don’t have to agree with it, but at least it’s useful to understand it.
Ryan realizes that you can only get so much in a budget deal that Obama has to sign, because Obama will gladly let the government shut down if he isn’t getting what he wants, and he fears no political repercussions from doing so.
We’ve complained many times here about Republicans fearing media criticism during these shutdown showdowns, and have urged them to get in there and fight. I still think that’s the right thing to do.
But Ryan is looking at the political dynamics and recognizing that we’re less than a year from an election that has a chance of giving us a new Republican president while keeping both the House and Senate in Republican hands. He knows that if that actually happens, much of what’s impossible now in budget talks will become very plausible. He also figures it makes sense to clear away potential political liabilities like contentious budget showdowns as we head into that election cycle.
So his strategy is: Get a little bit now if you can, but not at the expense of the big prize next year, then go really big if and when the GOP wins control.
Is that a defensible strategy? I think it could be, but there are several problems with it. One is the assumption that fighting for conservative policy ideas is a political loser. It certainly will attract media criticism, but that doesn’t mean the public will disapprove of it. Washington Republicans have a bad habit of not knowing the difference between the two. They’re so terrified of losing a news cycle that they don’t even realize the majority of the public actually agrees with what they’re doing.
Another problem is that there’s no guarantee they win everything. Keeping the House is probably a pretty safe bet, but the Senate will be close, and while I’d like to think the public knows better than to elect Hillary Clinton over any of our candidates, I think we’ve all learned not to take that for granted. If you don’t fight your hardest now because you hope that will help you to win an election, do you fight harder if you lose?
And that brings us to the third problem: Just because Republicans control everything is no guarantee they’ll do everything we want them to do. It wasn’t that long ago (specifically from 2003-2006) that Republicans controlled the presidency, the House and the Senate. A lot of us thought they would crank up domestic oil production, enact market-based health care reforms, reform the tax code and get federal spending under control. Some even held out hope they would restructure entitlements.
We didn’t get much, did we? Spending went up, not down. They did a few things in health care but they largely left the status quo intact, setting up the Democrats to pass ObamaCare. The administration talked about an energy plan but we never saw any real action. George W. Bush wanted to partially privatize Social Security but Congress was terrified.
And the tax code? Forget it. It was tweaked around the edges as it usually is, and we did get two rate cuts that helped the economy. But given the numbers to really do something game-changing, the Republican-controlled federal government of a decade ago punted.
So if the proposition is that we should just wait until they’ve got control, and then boy oh boy just see what they do, conservatives should remember that Republican control doesn’t guarantee real action by any means.
If Ryan’s strategy works and Republicans really do win it all next year, conservatives should not think they can just sit back and watch the show as the new Republican president and Congress dismantle liberalism piece by piece. Our work will be just beginning, because history tells us Republicans with power don’t necessarily do the work their conservative supporters expect – unless we make sure they do.
A lot of conservatives were predictably disappointed in the budget deal that Speaker Paul Ryan agreed to last week with the White House. We did get a few things, like delays in the implementation of several key ObamaCare taxes, and the repeal at long last of the 42-year-old oil export ban.
But the Democrats got lots more spending, and even the tax delays are not the same as tax repeals. They added another $500 billion to the deficit and Josh Earnest and Harry Reid are crowing that this is a great budget that keeps Republicans from “achieving their ideological agenda through the budget process.”
