Posted on 09/23/2005 9:52:10 AM PDT by slowhand520
There seems to be two schools of thought right now for conservatives:
The Rush Limbaugh view - Everything is going to be OK Bush is being "misunderestimated" again
The National Review opinion - Bush & Conservatives in trouble
Curious to know What the freepers think and where you stand?
Curing the Current Conservative Doldrums
President Bush is in a perilous political state. His slipping poll numbers are partly a result of softening support from his Republican base. If Bush doesn't take decisive steps to try to offset the billions of new Katrina spending, the forecast will be: Danger, more softening ahead. Never in the Bush years has conservative discontent been so high, nor so justified. With a few false moves in the crucial weeks ahead, Bush could see even more of the life-blood squeezed from his presidency.
We all know the litany that got us to this point: Bush has never vetoed a congressional spending bill, even as Congress has agreed to fund an estimated 14,000 pork projects, up from around 1,000 in 1996; he has presided over a federal spending increase of 33 percent since 2001, with 55 percent of the increase in the last two years unrelated to defense, according to Brian Reidl of the Heritage Foundation; and he created a new entitlement, signing a $500 billion prescription-drug bill.
Conservatives could just manage to swallow all this, when there was the prospect of Social Security reform changing the politics of the nation's most important entitlement. Now, the Katrina aftermath appears to have driven a stake through the already doubtful Social Security reform, while slathering on ever more federal spending in response to the disaster. The turn of events casts all that has come before in an even worse light, and makes Bush fiscal mismanagement looks increasingly intolerable to conservatives.
And so there are rumblings of revolt, which we heartily endorse. Bloggers are making lists of pork-barrel projects that can be cut. Republicans like John McCain — who has been starring in his role as scourge of wasteful spending in recent days — are calling for a repeal of the prescription-drug bill. The Republican Study Committee in the House has compiled a wish list of areas where funding should be outright revoked, or at least frozen. This grand bête noire, titled "Operation Offset," suggests ways to save $139 billion in 2006 alone, and $1.2 trillion over the next ten years. We would be happy to take all the RSC's suggestions, and just running our eyes along the list, with the word "eliminate" repeated over and over, is enough to thrill our hearts.
But, given that there is Republican majority, but not a conservative majority in Congress, that's not realistic, unfortunately. Fights over repealing "earmarks" will be extraordinarily bloody, without yielding major savings. A repeal of the prescription-drug bill — which we opposed at the time of its passage — is unlikely to happen and would be demagogued by Democrats as paying for Katrina on the backs of the ailing elderly. But President Bush must endorse a serious, realistic set of budget offsets, and the most promising area is corporate welfare.
“The trick is to create the basis for savings over time.”
It doesn't have a natural base of support, and cuts in it will be much harder for Democrats to oppose. Republicans should have taken it on long ago. Now is a perfect moment. According to the RSC, eliminating corporate welfare would cut $5 billion in 2006 and $50 billion over ten years. Take one example: The Advanced Technology Program was instituted in the late 1980s, an overwrought response to the Japanese economic tiger. This program, funded to the tune of $150 million per year, gives grants for research and development on products with "significant commercial payoff." That is, the money funds research on only the most marketable products, those that companies have the most incentive to fund anyway. General Motors, Motorola, and IBM have all cashed in. Over 35 percent of ATP funding has gone to 39 "Fortune 500" companies, whose combined 2003 revenue was $1.4 trillion.
It's not sexy, but Bush and anti-spenders in Congress should also be pushing to reform the congressional budget process, which favors free spending. Making the budget resolution binding, for instance, would rein in appropriators who ignore it to lavish money on their own priorities. Cuts in pork-barrel spending are important, but history tells us when the current anti-pork moment passes, pet projects will be back with a vengeance. The trick is to create the basis for savings over time.
The most important ingredient at the moment, however, is presidential leadership. It has been absent for five years on spending. Bush is said to rise to the occasion when confronted with crises. He is about to confront one within his own party on spending. Let the rising begin.
* * *
Bush is pretty unpopular right now (and its well-deserved) but neither he nor the Republicans are in any trouble because the Democrats are...well...the Democrats
The party of Ted "the Swimmer" Kennedy, Joe "The Dumbest Man in the Senate" Biden, Harry Reid, Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi...I mean...its hard to believe these would be the leaders of even a fringe leftist party...much less one of the two major parties
The Washington GOP establishment may have problems, but are the Dems offering?
NRO is often "stuck on stupid"
Reasons:
1.) Failure to secure the borders in war time.
2.) PC approach to war with the moose limbs.
3.) Great Society approach to domestic spending.
All stemming from:
Need for press approval rather than true leadership.
Bush numbers won't affect the 2006 elections per Michael Barrone. So who cares if his numbers are low?
Weren't Reagan's at 39 once?
Yes. In fact 35 was his lowest.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
I think it's time for a war within the Republican party. The spending is beyond outrageous.
The Republicans will be unable to make real cuts and in the end will allow the DUmmycrats to have their way on future tax reduction efforts. If they can't even trim the pork or postpone the prescription thing (which most geezers didn't want in the first place), they will only fiddle around the edges as the deficits grow. That's my view. See more on Republican thoughts below:
GOP group calls for cuts in federal retirees' benefits to fund Katrina relief: http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0905/092205r1.htm
A group of Republican House members called Wednesday for cuts to some federal retirees' benefits to help offset the cost of Hurricane Katrina recovery.
The House Republican Study Committee released a package of recommendations known as "Operation Offset" Wednesday that called for calculating retirement annuities for federal employees based on an average of their five highest-earning years of service. Currently, employees' annuities are based on a high three-year average. Adding two years of lower pay would tend to decrease the average, and thus reduce retirees' defined benefits.
The Republican Study Committee, headed up by Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., is made up of about 100 House Republicans who push conservative social and economic policies. The RSC said it estimates the change in retirement calculations would save $5.2 billion over ten years.
The RSC also recommended lowering the government subsidy for some federal retirees who participate in the Federal Employees Health Benefits plan. RSC members said they want to "reduce health benefits for new retirees who had relatively short federal careers, although it would preserve their right to stay in the program." Currently, the government pays for 72 percent of all participants' premiums, regardless of the length of their federal careers.
According to a Congressional Budget Office analysis, under the proposal backed by the RSC, "the government's share of premium costs would be cut by two percentage points for every year of service less than 30. In the case of a retiree with 20 years of service, for example, the government's contribution would decline from 72 percent of the weighted average premium to 52 percent."
Charles Fallis, president of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, said the proposals are insulting to federal employees.
"Not only would these proposals dishonor the government's obligation to its workers, but it also makes public service a much harder sell," Fallis said.
National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley echoed Fallis' sentiments.
"This is a deeply flawed proposal that falls disproportionately on the backs of those who can least likely afford it," Kelley said.
The RSC placed the retirement benefits proposals, which were only two among dozens of cost-saving suggestions, under the title "Tough Choices in Tough Times" in its report.
The entire package of RSC spending-cut proposals, which total $500 billion, has generated friction within the House Republican Conference, lawmakers and aides said Wednesday.
"The leadership has said repeatedly that we are willing to look at offsets that make sense," a GOP leadership aide said. "But what they are offering is just not realistic."
Most of what conservatives are advocating in "Operation Offset" is a rehash of policies fiscal conservatives have long trumpeted -- funding cuts for NASA and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, eliminating so-called pork in the highway bill, cutting subsidies for Amtrak, and reining in foreign aid, among others.
Still other politically untenable proposals -- such as postponing the Medicare prescription drug program for one year -- have some members concerned that conservatives are "giving ammunition" to Democrats to attack them on the already politically sensitive issue heading into the 2006 election cycle.
"We need to be focusing on our fiscal record right now," the aide said.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
That might even mean Republicans losing the next few general elections. Do not discount the ability of democrats to gather their base with with hardly anything more than a catchy slogan and a few widespread lies.
" don't think any one has the political will to cut spending."
They can't even cut NPR's subsidy or that of the NEA. My bet is that we'll see a back-door tax increase, for example by not making certain cuts permanent. All pols of both stripes are addicted to taxing, not cutting spending.
Republican Study Committee Budget Options (rev 9/22/05):
http://johnshadegg.house.gov/rsc/RSC_Budget_Options_2005.pdf
worth a look
I'm afraid that Social Security reform has been dead since spring. The uncomfortable fact is that younger Americans don't care that much about retirement, while the elderly's resistance to any change at all was ferocious (and in my view grossly irresponsible and greedy.) I am speaking in generalities here - but change will probably not come until the financial pinch makes everyone uncomfortable. Then America will make the choice of remaining a superpower, or becoming a socialist welfare state.
The Reagan analogy is very apt. NRO is stuffed with inside-the-beltway pundits and "thinkers" without any real, discernable contacts within the administration. I refer here to the many pessimists who've been clogging "The Corner" with grim predictions of doom and hysterical hand-wringing over things like gas prices and Katrina. I mean, some of their stuff during the Katrina aftermath was just pathetic. Weak-sister stuff. Embarrasing.
Well, many of the wise old heads of the GOP got hysterical and gas-baggish over some of the stuff that happened during the Reagan administration. The point is this: the NRO-nics are establishment DC pundits. Take that into account when reading them. They expect to be around long after Bush retires to Crawford. They have other agendas and interests other than the success of any one Administration.
What's frustrating to me about this early second term criticism and quasi-abandonment of Bush is that it comes at a time when real accomplishments are very attainable.
I mean, read the mil-blogs and others and its apparent that real progress is being made in Iraq in terms of training the Iraqi security forces to hold their own and allow the US to draw down forces. Folks, that's HUGE.
In addition, the destruction in NOLA gives the President a chance to try conservative solutions to deeply entrenched issues like poverty, illiteracy and housing. Solutions that, if tried, will succeed and offer convincing proofs of the superiority of the GOP domestic agenda.
Finally, Bush is coming through on his pledge to nominate conservative jurists to the Supreme Court and conservatives stand at the cusp of finally achieving a long dreamed of goal: returning sanity to constitutional jurisprudence.
Bush has made many mistakes and one things sure: he's no Reagan. But this Administration needs defending against the leftist hordes, not sniping from the right flank. And certainly not the shrill hysteria that the likes of Rod Dreher, J-Pod and even Malkin served up over Katrina. I'm with Rush and the Blogs.
"The Rush Limbaugh view - Everything is going to be OK Bush is being "misunderestimated" again
The National Review opinion - Bush & Conservatives in trouble
Curious to know What the freepers think and where you stand?"
Put me down in column two.
Some of Bush's problems are well documented in your column.
Add the breach of his oath of office (to uphold the constitution) when he signed the Campaign Finance Bill to the list.
Add the increase to great society programs like a latter day LBJ.
Add his campaigning for Specter instead of Toomey in the PA Senate race.
On a personal note as a Republican candidate for the state legislature - unwillinginess to share a stage with local and congressional (non-incumbent) candidates during political events.
Add his failure (again) to uphold his oath with regard to securing our borders against illegals (aliens and terrorists).
Yes, you can put me down as disappointed with President Bush. This was one of those "hold my nose" and vote for the lesser of two evils elections.
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