This week you’re likely to hear a lot more about the death of
one of the Beastie Boys and the French election than what
Republicans are trying to do to save the Pentagon budget from the
wrecking ball of sequestration. The reasons you won’t hear about it
are lessons for Mitt Romney, who remains oddly disconnected from
what House Republicans are doing.
That’s the first problem. Romney, the presumptive nominee, is
rapidly earning the reputation attributed to the Palestinians
almost forty years ago by Israeli Prime Minister Abba Eban: he
never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Romney could be
working closely with House leaders to pass legislation — putting
Senate Dems under the gun for killing the bills - to illustrate
vividly how a Romney presidency would help save the nation from
Obama’s spending spree, reductions in military strength and
over-regulation. But he isn’t.
One of the biggest problems that will come to a head soon after
the election is the result of last year’s disastrous debt ceiling
deal, which imposed about $600 billion in defense cuts (on top of
the $400 billion Obama already made) over the next ten years. As I
wrote
here three weeks ago, sequestration imposes limits on future
spending across the board, a decision made in perfect ignorance of
whether we’d be cutting fat or muscle.
Moreover, sequestration spending cuts will result in the
Pentagon breaching its contracts for major weapon systems. These
breaches will end up costing as much (or more) to terminate the
contracts as it would to actually buy the weapon systems for which
the contracts were signed. And sequestration will cost a massive
number of high-tech private sector jobs. (According to one
study by Dr. Stephen Fuller of George Mason University, the
sequestration cuts would cost almost 600,000 jobs and $35 billion
in lost earnings in 2013 alone.)
Congressional sources tell me that Democrats are getting nervous
about defense sequestration. But with Obama’s continued threat to
veto any bill that fixes the mess, they’re not nervous enough yet
to do anything to stop the coming train wreck. Fortunately, House
Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Ca) and Majority
Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Ca) are stepping up to prevent it.
At four syllables, sequestration is too long a word to use in
politics. The fix for sequestration McKeon and McCarthy have chosen
is budget reconciliation (two words, eight syllables, beyond the
attention span of 98% of the media). Nevertheless, it’s a good idea
that deserves our support.
Reconciliation is a tool that establishes a budget figure. It
bases the figure on instructions to congressional committees to
produce enabling legislation that will result in spending at that
level. Working over the past few weeks, House committees have come
up with legislation that will enable the Pentagon to be protected
from the first year of sequestration spending cuts by cutting
non-defense programs, from which this week’s try at reconciliation
proceeds.
The differences between House conservatives, trying to impose
some fiscal discipline without sacrificing national defense on one
hand, and Obama and Senate Dems who refuse to even consider a
federal budget, are irreconcilable. The budget reconciliation
measure that McKeon, McCarthy, and others are bringing to the House
floor this week will illustrate just how irresponsible Obama and
the Dems are. If only people pay attention to it.
This week, the House will pass a budget reconciliation bill that
would prevent the sequestration of about $300 billion in defense
budget authority that will come into effect in January and instruct
the House committees (which have already passed the necessary
bills) to make the reconciliation effective. The reconciliation
bill will never see the light of day in the Senate.
Which brings us to the lessons for Mitt Romney.
First and foremost, the national security issue isn’t critical
to the presidential campaign, at least not yet. Obama has managed
to push it off the stage in the moments he isn’t spiking the ball
about the death of bin Laden. In fact, the Republicans have lost
their ownership of the defense issue.
In years past, Republicans were the “daddy party,” trusted with
the defense of the nation and some grasp of the economy. Dems were
the “mommy party,” concerned only with the welfare state and
increased government control of the economy.
Now, after eight years of George W. Bush’s self-imposed quagmire
of nation-building and his oxymoronic “big government
conservatism,” Republicans are trusted with neither national
defense nor the economy. Obama is engaged in the most massive
reduction of our military’s capabilities in generations, and
Republicans haven’t yet been effective in even slowing him
down.
If Romney were to get involved personally in the McKeon-McCarthy
initiative, he could begin to recapture both issues. Defense
spending can’t be cut without the so far unaccomplished analysis of
what the Pentagon needs to deter or defeat the threats we face.
Sequestration cuts defense spending without regard to the threat
matrix, and borders on the criminally negligent. It also reduces
jobs and GDP without regard to the negative effects on the economy.
And — after the termination costs of breached contracts are paid
— sequestration won’t reduce Pentagon spending nearly as much as
claimed. Romney should make it his campaign theme all this week. It
would gain a level of traction his campaign now lacks.
Romney is now trying to consolidate his influence over the
national debate and take on Obama. That’s a claim to leadership
that he has to assert credibly. The other big lesson for him in the
reconciliation debate this week is that Republican control of the
House gives him a leadership tool that he has to use.
No one really knows how many Republican voters are still queasy
about Romney, but the number has to be too high for him to ignore.
He is now the leader of the Republican Party and he has to
demonstrate to them, and to the “moderates” and undecideds, that he
is the right choice in November in a way that will convince people
to go to the polls and not sit this one out. Leadership has to be
proven, and if Romney were to engage fully with House Republicans,
he could go a long way to proving that he is worth the effort to
vote in November.
Romney has endorsed the Ryan Budget Plan, which would reduce the
federal debt and protect Pentagon spending from sequestration.
(Ryan’s plan takes too long to bring spending under control but
it’s at least a credible attempt). But Romney hasn’t done more than
say he favors Ryan’s plan, and his own economic plan lacks the
force and simplicity that the election demands. Obama has made it
clear that the Ryan plan will be a big issue in the fall,
regardless of whether Romney goes all-in on it or not. Better to go
at it forcefully than to appear uncertain. And far better to link
it to energy policy, defense, and jobs than to remain vaguely
committed to both.
And there’s much more like that to be done. Why not ask Cong.
Tom Price (R-Ga.) to revive and pass his patient-oriented
substitute for Obamacare? We now have the highest corporate tax
rate in the civilized world. Why not pass a House bill to reduce it
and really stimulate economic growth? Why not pass a House
resolution damning Obama’s deal with Hamid Karzai that prohibits us
from launching raids from Afghanistan into Pakistan like the one
that killed bin Laden? Or a bill to rein in EPA’s and other
agencies’ regulation blitzkrieg on the economy?
All it would take is a few hours of meetings between Romney and
House leaders and a few speeches by Romney in conjunction with
their actions, which could be spread out between now and the
election. That would demonstrate leadership and energize voters
more than anything Romney is doing — or apparently planning —
now.
