There is no sensual pleasure in the world comparable to the delight and satisfaction that a good man takes in doing good.
Tillotson
Sunday Talk Soup
Meet the Press had a classic interview with my favorite governor, Chris Christie (R-NJ) today. If you watch or read the interview, it's uncanny how we see some issues the same way and our direct, blunt styles complement each other. For example, he responded exactly the same as I did on the New York gay "marriage" law: civil unions yes, gay "marriage" no. I wish to comment on specific extracts:
MR. GREGORY: How so? And where do you think the president has gone wrong, particularly in this fight over the debt and the deficit?I would have somewhat tweaked his response, and I think the point is more general than Governor Christie emphasized. This "lay back and let the Congress duke it out" is a pattern we've generally seen in other contexts, most notoriously the health care "reform" law. I am one of those "some people"--I think it's entirely political. I think Obama backs away from the process because of the risk of a perceived political loss, e.g., the President wants something in the bill, and it doesn't get in. There are some things where the White House has pushed for a few items, e.g., opposition to the notorious healthcare "public option", but that passed the House (initially). Then there are the notorious earmarks attached to the 2009 stimulus bill despite the President's opposition. The devil is in the details. I think the earmark pledge breakage is actually very significant, because Obama had promised to fight the "special interests". But, as I've repeatedly pointed out in this blog, Democratic special interests are "more equal".
GOV. CHRISTIE: Well, listen, here's what I did in New Jersey. I put out this pension and benefit plan first in September, and I did 30 town hall meetings across my state selling the plan, increasing the public pressure on the legislature that something needed to be done, and convincing the public that my approach was a reasonable one. Now, I compromised off my approach. But I think if you're the executive, you've got to be the guy who's out there pushing and leading. You can't lay back and wait for somebody else to do it. And I think if the president's made a mistake here, it's this laid-back kind of approach where he's waiting for someone else to solve the problem. Some people say it's a political strategy. No matter what it is, it's not effective in solving problems. I think what we did in New Jersey proves that's the effective way to do it. The executive needs to lead and then bring people to the table to forge compromise.
Could we say that Christie's compromises are no different than, say, the President signing a 2009 stimulus bill with earmarks? No. First of all, the President signed a stimulus bill with an overwhelmingly partisan Democratic vote while Governor Christie had to deal with a legislative opposition. Second, President Obama's earmark pledge was patently a co-opting promise designed to marginalize John McCain's pledge. In fact, Obama has secured numerous earmarks before he became a Presidential candidate and suddenly had an epiphany on intrinsically corrupting earmarks. Third, earmarks were entirely consistent with Obama's advocacy of Keynesian economics, underlining the whole stimulus bill.
The fact of the matter is, by any objective standard, the President refuses to compromise; the only compromise Obama has really made was on a 2-year extension of the Bush tax cuts--less than a month before they expired. And it wasn't a compromise but a concession to simply extend existing tax policy. Obama insisted, with a $1.3T deficit, we couldn't afford extending up to $70B in higher-income tax cuts to those people paying most of the taxes--but we could afford spending almost 3 times as much in lower/middle-class tax cut extensions.
Other examples? Defying Congressional authority on the Libyan intervention; using the EPA to circumvent a failure in enacting climate change legislation; ignoring a federal judge's ruling involving permits already issued in the Gulf for offshore drilling.
But let's go into more detail on Obama's "leadership" in the budget wars. How serious is Obama on the budget? The national debt has increased by nearly $4T (roughly 40%) in less than 3 years of the Obama Presidency. How serious has Obama been on the budget? The Democrats never even drew up a final year budget last year. Obama has only made two extremely modest attempts to cut speeding--one $17B reduction, half of which came from defense (accounting from only 20% of the budget) and one $100M agency cut. And who can ever forget the fact that he wouldn't even back his own bipartisan deficit reduction committee which won majority support and the votes of all but one senator?
When has the President even suggested meaningful deficit cuts? He hasn't offered a dime of cuts in the 60% or so of entitlements; he's proposing increases for the 20% in defense. The only real thing he's suggesting is increasing tax receipts from the upper 2%.
MR. GREGORY: Do tax increases of some stripe have to be on the table in these national budget talks, whether they're revenue increases that don't come from changing tax rates, but some other way to increase revenue at the same time that you're cutting spending back?The reason I cite this is not for Governor Christie's response, which is consistent with the standard conservative reply of "the issue isn't with not enough taxes but too much spending". David Gregory is trying to trick Christie into admitting that tax cuts aren't self-sustaining. Hence, the GOP also lacks credibility on fiscal discipline. That's disingenuous. Right now the Democrats are insisting on "investing" in infrastructure projects again. Everything Democrats do involves spending more and more money. Has even a single Democrat suggested, at minimum, an across-the-board spending freeze? I'm willing to consider tax increases and/or eliminating various implicit or direct exemptions, tax credits, etc.,--if Democrats agree to a real budget cut across-the-board and a moratorium on new spending.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Group
Chicago, "Chasin' the Wind"
