Can anything good come out of the super committee? It’s a
question frequently being asked in Washington and conservatives are
unsure of the answer.
The 12-member joint congressional committee, evenly divided
between Democrats and Republicans, was formed at the end of a
tumultuous debate over raising the federal debt ceiling. Its
members are tasked with identifying and recommending $1.5 trillion
in new spending cuts over 10 years by Thanksgiving. If they fail —
or if Congress declines to enact their handiwork — it will set off
a “trigger” automatically imposing $1.2 trillion in cuts over the
next decade, to be taken equally from defense and nondefense
spending. (Most entitlements are excluded.)
No matter how super, committee members will have their work cut
out for them. There would be no committee in the first place if
congressional Democrats had been willing to contemplate spending
cuts of this magnitude at the time the debt limit was increased.
Most Republicans will also balk at the reduction of defense
spending necessary to win bipartisan approval.
“Nobody really knows what’s going to happen,” admits one
Republican congressional staffer. “We’re cautiously optimistic, but
this could go in a lot of directions.” Until the super committee’s
recommendations are made, Capitol Hill conservatives are unsure of
what their strategy should be.
The six Republicans on the committee are mostly conservatives.
Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas is a co-chair. He cut his teeth
working on fiscal issues with former Sen. Phil Gramm and was once
chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee. Sen. Pat
Toomey of Pennsylvania is also a leading economic conservative who
previously headed the Club for Growth. Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl
and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp both having
conservative voting records and are close to GOP congressional
leaders.
Possible question marks include Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohioan who
wasn’t exactly part of last year’s Tea Party tidal wave, and Rep.
Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican who attracted substantial
conservative opposition when he ascended to the House Energy and
Commerce chairmanship. But most of Upton’s transgressions are not
on economic issues and Portman, as a former Bush administration
budget director, is knowledgeable about federal spending.
Moreover, sources report that the Republican leaders in both
houses have been hands-on with regard to the super committee
process. “I don’t think any of these guys will get too far away
from what the leadership wants when coming up with proposals,” says
a GOP staffer. And the leadership won’t want to get too far away
from what their rank-and-file members can support.
The Democratic membership is predictably liberal. Sen. Patty
Murray of Washington, the committee’s Democratic co-chair, actually
runs the Democrats’ Senate campaign committee. Rep. Chris Van
Hollen of Maryland is a recent past chairman of the Democratic
House campaign committee, and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts was
the party’s presidential nominee in 2004. (Kerry reportedly lobbied
for his super committee slot.) South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn is
the assistant House Democratic leader.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana and Rep.
Xavier Becerra of California round out the Democratic selections.
Baucus is a member to watch in terms of deal-cutting, as he has
evinced some interest in deficit reduction in the past. Liberal
bloggers were not happy with his appointment. One Daily
Kos poster asked pointedly, “What the f— k is Harry Reid
thinking?”
“Max Baucus?” the Kossite asked in a typical netroots reaction.
“The guy who fought every jot and tittle of health care reform?”
Conservatives are likely to remember Baucus’ role in the health
care debate somewhat differently — though he certainly played a
role in sinking the public option — which should temper their
enthusiasm. Liberal blogger Matthew Yglesias noted that “Baucus
served on the Simpson-Bowles Committee and ultimately voted against
its recommendations on the grounds that they weren’t left-wing
enough.”
The committee has already agreed to hire a Republican, Mark
Prater, as staff director. Prater was deputy staff director and
chief minority tax counsel for the Senate Finance Committee. This
move was also panned in progressive circles, but some Democrats
praised Prater as a solid consensus pick.
That’s about the end of what we do know about the super
committee. Its handiwork remains up in the air. So, in some
quarters, does its legitimacy. In a speech before the Heritage
Foundation, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich blasted the panel as
unconstitutional and warned that it might raise taxes rather than
reduce spending.
“This is a city that says, ‘well, we’d really like to do better,
but we can’t do any better so we’re going to have to do less of
what we’re doing or we have to raise taxes,’” Gingrich fumed.
“Since you don’t want us to do less of what we’re currently doing,
we have to raise taxes, because after all you can’t expect us to
change, so we’re going to expect you to change so you can pay the
taxes we’re going to demand of you. But you can’t expect your
government to change.”
Some might dismiss this as hyperbole from a floundering
presidential candidate. But Hill conservatives do worry what might
result from the pursuit of a “grand bargain” between the two
parties. Past bipartisan agreements have included the debt deal and
the continuing resolution that funded the federal government for
the rest of this year, which most conservatives found inadequate.
Another such grand bargain was the tax-raising 1990 budget
agreement, which ultimately helped catapult Gingrich into the top
spot among House Republicans. That poisoned the well for future
deals, as the spending cuts proved illusory while the tax increases
were very real.
BOTH THE STRUCTURE of the committee and the nature of the
spending on the table seems almost designed to pit national
security hawks against anti-tax fiscal conservatives. Tax increases
could potentially save the defense budget from major cuts. Every
Republican on the committee and most in Congress have taken Grover
Norquist’s pledge not to raise taxes.
“No doubt, we’ll start to see more and more opposition from
conservative defense hawks to slashing the military budget, while
the Norquist crowd will continue to push Republicans to accept more
defense cuts to avoid any increase in taxes,” concludes Philip
Klein in the Washington Examiner. “Some of our
members could accept defense cuts,” says a Republican staffer.
“Others would fight them.”
The last attempt at a grand bargain — the Simpson-Bowles
committee on budget reform — failed both sides. Conservatives
balked at the additional revenues commission members wanted to
raise while liberals rejected the spending cuts. Super committee
boosters hope the new panel will be as successful as the commission
that began recommending military base closures in 1988.
Others point to the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act of 1986, which had
mixed results. Gramm-Rudman did lead to some spending caps and had
a salutary effect on the budget deficit. But the law was under
attack almost immediately and its sequesters never ended up
happening once major spending programs were threatened. Some think
the triggers could face the same fate. “It’s possible nothing could
happen,” says a Republican congressional aide.
“I’m not optimistic,” says Sen. Mike Lee, who notes that he
voted against the agreement setting up the super committee in the
first place. The Utah Republican quickly rattles off all the
reasons to doubt the bipartisan panel. But even Lee is unwilling to
discount it entirely. “I’m always going to be in favor of anything
that could facilitate spending cuts,” he says. We’ll see if that’s
what we get.
