Posted on 03/31/2011 3:42:08 PM PDT by Brices Crossroads
As the budget process unfolds on Capitol Hill, with the prospect of a government shutdown, It has become increasingly apparent that the GOP leadership in Congress lacks the will to fight. Congress is an inherently cowardly institution, but many in the TEA Party (and no doubt Sarah Palin) had hoped that the immense landslide of November 2010 would stiffen the spines of the John Boehner, Eric Cantor and the GOP leaders in Congress. After all, it was the GOP, not the Democrats who received a MANDATE and that mandate was to enact deep spending cuts, along the lines of the $500 billion proposed by TEA Party Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.
True to form, however, the GOP careerists on Capitol Hill epitomized by Boehner and Cantor surrendered faster than the French in 1940 and without any justification. Like the French, Boehner and Cantor are busy fighting the LAST war and are terrified that a government shutdown will damage their political position and careers, as they believe the week long Government shutdown damaged Newt Gingrich in 1995. They forget, however, that it was Gingrich who blinked first, folding like a cheap suit at the release of the first negative poll information. Had Gingrich stuck to his guns, he would have scored not only a political victory, but achieved even deeper cuts in government spending than the GOP Congress ultimately achieved. There is no political downside to a government shutdown for the GOP, as most federal employees are Democrats who will be screaming bloody murder to their Congressmen to get paid. With every advantage and the wind at their back, Boehner and Cantor rushed to surrender.
2011 is not 1995. The situation is much more serious. We are now awash in a sea of debt that threatens to make the United States an economic "banana republic" if it is not addressed with major cuts. We can no longer afford the luxury of surrender, and the people know it and would support the deep cuts (and the shutdown, if it comes to that). Alas, in spite of the 2010 results, the GOP leadership appears to lack all conviction, while it is the Democrats, unbowed by their historic shellacking, who are filled with the passionate intensity.
Boehner's lack of resolve is causing support for the GOP, which had reached a five year high after the 2010 midterms, to nosedive. If, as expected, the GOP leadership caves in the coming days, look for support for the party to drop even more. This is, I believe, part of a concerted Democrat strategy to divide the TEA party from the GOP in 2012, or at least demoralize the TEA party voters, who installed the GOP in power in 2010. Obama knows that 2012 will be a base election and that, if he can spawn a third party or at least depress conservative turnout for the GOP nominee, he stands a chance of reelection. Boehner and Cantor are playing right into his hands.
How should Governor Palin react to the impending sellout of the TEA Party by the weak-kneed Boehner and the threat it poses to GOP presidential prospects in 2012? I believe she should identify the problem and distance herself from the Congressional GOP. Congress is an institution that generally defaults toward cowardice and eschews hard choices, even with the best of leaders. With Boehner and Cantor, the GOP is worse than leaderless. It is complicit. Palin will have to position herself as the last best hope to slash the looming deficits, and she can point to her record of reducing state spending in absolute terms in Alaska, liberally using the veto. However, this may not be enough to separate her from the Democrat big spenders and their GOP fellow travellers, since she will not be able to use (as she did in Alaska) the line item veto. And all the GOP candidates will promise to do the same. While necessary, simply vetoing wasteful spending is not enough under the dire circumstances the next President will face.
I suggest a solution to use in addition to her veto pen. It is called the Constitution. And the constitutional answer to Congress' bipartisan addiction to spending is IMPOUNDMENT. Impoundment is simply the decision by the Executive not to spend funds appropriated by Congress. It had been exercised by every President from John Adams to Richard Nixon and had proved very useful in lowering the deficit. In 1973-4, President Nixon impounded $12 billion in wasteful spending, about 4% of the federal budget. ( To get an idea of the significance today, a similar 4% reduction today would pare Obama's budget by $146 billion!). So what became of impoundment? The Watergate Congress, drunk on its power and thirsty for more spending, passed the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which purported to make the old practice of presidential impoundment illegal and ordered the Executive Branch to spend every dollar that would ever be appropriated for it by Congress in the future. The administration contended that Congress was arrogating to itself a constitutional authority that belonged to the President as head of the Executive Branch under Article II, that is: management and control over all executive branch agencies. However, a lower Federal Court upheld the Congress' position on this matter, and the weak-willed Gerald Ford chose to acquiesce in this lower court ruling rather than appeal to the Supreme Court. Make no mistake about it. The Budget Control and Impoundment Act of 1974 is unconstitutional. It violates the Separation of Powers doctrine. And such acquiescence is a luxury our country can no longer afford.
As a consequence of the Budget Control and Impoundment Act, since the 1970s, deficits have exploded. (The $29 billion dollar deficit of 1974 has been replaced with three consecutive trillion dollar deficits, the latest $1.65 trillion, and the national debt of $14.2 trillion is 30 times larger than it was in 1974!) Under Article II of the Constitution, the President as head of the executive branch of the government and has the sole constitutional authority to manage nearly every federal agency (since all agencies except the relatively small legislative and the judicial branches are within the Executive Branch). Similarly, Article I gives the Congress the power to appropriate funds to manage government agencies, but Congress is nowhere empowered to order that those funds be spent, if the CEO (that is, the President) deems them unnecessary to run the government.
The Budget Control and Impoundment Act is akin to a scenario where, under a corporate charter, the Shareholders hire a CEO to run a company and a Board of Directors tries to micromanage his stewardship requiring him to spend money on every department in exactly the proportions they say (and contrary to the Corporate charter). If a CEO can run a department of the corporation efficiently for $10 million, does it make sense to have the Board telling him that he must spend $100 million? Such a corporation will shortly find itself exactly where the United States finds itself--on the precipice of bankruptcy. Such a scenario is not only fiscally irresponsible and nonsensical, but in a Republic such as ours where each branch of government has enumerated powers, it is unconstitutional as well.
To win in 2012, Governor Palin will have to run against Obama and his enablers within the GOP Congress. Impoundment is a tool which she alone, as the Chief Executive of the United States, could employ UNILATERALLY to save the taxpayers' money and to stiff the big spenders in Congress. She should pledge to challenge the Budget Control and Impoundment Act in the Courts and to seek its repeal in Congress. To make her case effectively, and to BE effective as President, she needs to use all the arrows in her quiver, not merely the veto, but any constitutional method available. Impoundment is such a method. Impoundment is a nightstick with which to beat the irresponsible Congress over the head and to educate the American people on proper, and fiscally responsible, Constitutional governance as well.
I doubt it.
I have a better chance of being the Republican standard-bearer next year than your candidate, Rep. Ron Paul. Although he does have a nifty blimp.
LOL
LOL
I have a better chance of being the Republican standard-bearer next year than your candidate, Rep. Ron Paul. Although he does have a nifty blimp.
With Palin not adressing the Obama Birther issue...she is just as bad as Boehner when it comes to GOP spinelessness
If a GOPer will not challenge Obama on his eligility...do you really trust a GOPer to challenge Obama and the DNC on anything else?
Problem is that Palin is closer to Boehner and Cantor than she is to being a conservative
Leaders lead, they don't compromise. When Boehner cried upon assuming the speakership, at that point it was apparent that it was all about him, and not about the country. He is a political chameleon and will cut a deal with Democrats in a New York minute.
I see one of the leading Paultards here with his terminal case of PDS has shown up to put his two cents in.
That kook quack doctor from Texas will NEVER be president.
get used to that fact.
ROFLOL, why set around and waste your time with all of those what ifs and maybes, when none of it is real.
Can you even IMAGINE the 24/7 uproar and attacks from the jourbalists, academia, Hollywood, the nutroots bloggers, cable TV, Broadway, the RINOs, the elites and all the rest if Governor Sarah Palin even whispered the word “birth certificate” to Piper as she tucked her into bed at night? She’s already getting 97% of all the flak from those people, but you want her to go on a Kamikaze raid? How many conservative/tea party representatives, governors and state officials did you get elected last fall? Where were you when she was speaking up and raising funds for the unborn? She single-handedly came **this** close to defeating ObamaCare. Where were you?
You must be one of the Whiglicans.
Here’s the problem. The GOP career politicians, which includes most of them, care more about getting re-elected and what their dem friends think about them than they do about the country. They should be willing to be slammed by the media and do what’s right.
Nope, But I’d vote for Palin, Bachmann, Cain, or even Trump.
I will not vote for Willard, Elmer Gantry, Tiny Tim, Newtie, or that tin-foil hat wearing kook Ron Paul.
If one of the first four win the nomination they have my vote in November. If any of the bottom five get it I’m staying home and getting very drunk.
So far I like Rand 10 times more than his Dad.
By "Cain" I assume you mean McCain. If we end up having McLame again I know we've been had. Shirley you can't be serious!!!! That man's a joke.
Hot damn, I found someone I agree with.
I assume he means Herman Cain, former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza.
No, HERMAN CAIN.
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