Perhaps it’s a mistake to measure the Tea Party’s success only
in terms of primaries won or
forced. A better indicator might be the movement’s impact on
the GOP: have Tea Partiers finally gotten Republicans to debate
how, rather than whether, to cut federal spending?
The Republican-controlled House has twice passed budgets
introduced by Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, who chairs the Budget
Committee. Unless its tax reforms have a significantly greater
supply-side effect than conventional static accounting assumes, the
House plan doesn’t reach balance until roughly 2040 but it does
produce reforms that tackle the long-term drivers of the country’s
national debt.
Last week, Sen. Pat Toomey unveiled a proposal to balance the
budget in eight years. Unlike Ryan, the Pennsylvania Republican
didn’t come up with a plan for overhauling Medicare. But Toomey
does knock most discretionary spending back to 2006 levels,
freezing it there for seven years and indexing it to inflation
thereafter.
The Republican Study Committee and the Senate Tea Party Caucus
have also offered spending blueprints that try to balance the
budget in just five years. The RSC budget, rejected by the full
House, endorses Ryan’s Medicare plans but doesn’t count the savings
— which don’t come until after workers under the age of 55 begin
to retire — toward near-term deficit reduction. The Senate Tea
Partiers, led by Kentucky Republican Rand Paul, have their own
proposal for revamping Medicare.
While Toomey emphasizes that his approach complements the House
budget — he has
included the Ryan Medicare reforms, pointing out that their
basic framework enjoys bipartisan support — Paul is more critical.
“The problem with the Ryan budget is that he takes the hit on
Medicare but doesn’t get the political upside of balancing the
budget,” Paul says, citing estimates that the House would eliminate
deficits 28 years from now. “You look at the life expectancy of
most of Congress… I might not be here in 20 years, and I’m on the
younger side.”
This is a replay of a debate that occurred last year. At a
briefing of Senate Republicans, Paul
reportedly told Ryan that the “Path to Prosperity” takes too
long to balance the budget. Ryan countered that Paul’s own proposal
made quick, dramatic cuts to discretionary spending but without
entitlement reform the deficits would return with a vengance in the
out years. Paul included a
competing version of Medicare reform in his budget this year,
which he argues will yield savings faster and be easier to explain
to the American public.
Similarly, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the senator’s father, has twice
voted against the Ryan budget on the grounds that it doesn’t go far
enough. In the budget plan he proposed as part of his 2012
presidential campaign, the elder Paul identified $1 trillion in
specific spending cuts in just one year. Yet Ron Paul has also been
zinged for “timidity” on entitlements.
“According to his campaign manager, Paul simply wants to have an
‘adult conversation’ about how to keep Medicare and Social Security
working,” John McCormack wrote in the Weekly Standard. “An
‘adult conversation’ is exactly what Barack Obama has proposed
instead of an actual plan.”
One conservative reading of the country’s fiscal problems is
that the only way to build support for a plan that will prevent
Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid from devouring the entire
budget or driving the country deeper into debt is to implement
reforms gradually. Otherwise, senior citizens — a key Republican
constituency — will balk and nothing will ever pass Congress.
The contrary view is that gradual reforms have proven just as
easy for Democrats to attack without producing tangible near-term
results to show the voters. It is hard for Congress to abide by its
own spending caps and budget plans, much less bind future
Congresses. What makes a thirty-year plan any different?
At the heart of this debate lies a dilemma: when spending
programs are cut, they tend to grow back. It is more enduring to
eliminate them entirely. Abolishing the Commerce Department will
produce less of a backlash than transforming Medicare, and might
build credibility for future Republican cuts. But eliminating
agencies and programs is exceptionally hard to do. It is rare for
one party to have the votes. And as Obamacare has demonstrated,
sweeping reforms are easier to undo if they are rammed through in a
partisan manner.
In one sense, this is progress. As recently as George W. Bush’s
presidency, Republicans were debating whether to cut
spending rather than how to do so. The pro-spending Republicans
won, with the result being the unfunded Medicare prescription drug
benefit, No Child Left Behind, the $700 billion Wall Street
bailout, and pork-laden farm, transportation, and energy bills.
After Social Security reform fizzled out early in Bush’s second
term, the GOP legacy of that period was making the entitlements
problem worse rather than better.
The pro-spending Republicans are still there, carping off the
record to reporters about Ryan and Paul’s budget cuts. Some of them
hope to come out of hiding after the election. But for now, the
debate among Tea Party-influenced fiscal conservatives is drowning
them out.
