The New Revolution: America Turns Right

The National Journal’s Major Garrett writes that the debt crisis has left behind “five permanent truths.” I like his idea, but not his list. Garrett’s “permanent truths” are: 1. a new precedent that ties debt-ceiling increases to deficit reduction; 2. continued bipartisan entitlement protection; 3. Congress's continued back-loading of spending cuts; 4. Speaker John Boehner’s wobbly but continued upright stance, and; 5. Given all the financial back-loading, a likely explosive 2013.

Garrett’s cynical list suggests not much happened but “kicking the can down the road.” In contrast, and after reading the thoughts of others besides Garrett, I see a more meaningful “three permanent truths:”

1. The revolution is underway.

Obama promised to fundamentally transform America, and he and his party have managed to increase the federal government's share of gross domestic product from 21% to 25%-- a huge policy change. They are striving now to keep it at that level permanently.

Republicans want to reverse that enormous policy change, [but t]o achieve the changes they want and that voters endorsed in 2010, they need to win again in 2012. The deal that gets them closer to that is what they ought to be seeking now.

--Michael Barone, Washington Examiner

Comment: Barone is making two points. First, that we are engaged in a “politics as war” struggle to turn back government’s massive growth, one pitting those who want resources shifted to the private sector against our national elite. Under Ronald Reagan, we reduced taxes as a way to put a lid on government, and it has been difficult to raise taxes since. Revenue has held at around 19% of GDP. Now we are focused on step two, cutting the annual deficit and reducing debt. Tuesday’s agreement for the first time links, dollar-for-dollar, any increase in the debt ceiling to equal spending reductions (Garrett’s—see above—first and only “permanent truth”). It’s a big new collar around government growth.

Second, the battle is unfinished; in fact, it’s only just begun. Republicans will have to gain control of the Senate and the White House in 2012 if government’s size is to return to even 21% of GDP, where it was in 2008. Here, Barone has an implied criticism of extremists who want to win the revolution today, not take the fight step by step. Former Bush 43 speechwriter Michael Gerson, writing in the Washington Post, more pointedly criticizes Tea Party-like extremists:

a significant minority of House conservatives has no interest in actually governing. The dissenters made no serious strategic case for their actions. They apparently view public office as a chance to periodically display their purity. It is the political philosophy of the peacock. [emphasis added]

Having lived through the 1960’s and having been distressed by my more radical anti-war friends, I think I understand the truth of Gerson’s words. During a revolution, the political spectrum gets chopped off at the middle, and extremists gain influence over the remaining rump. They are dangerous. They are also an inevitable part of the spectrum, and their extremism does move the debate in their direction. Hey guys, it’s a revolution!

2. Democrats lack an effective defense.

After signing the debt-ceiling increase bill Tuesday, President Obama said,

since you can’t close the deficit with just spending cuts, we’ll need a balanced approach where everything is on the table. Yes, that means . . . reforming our tax code so that the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations pay their fair share. And it means getting rid of taxpayer subsidies to oil and gas companies, and tax loopholes that help billionaires pay a lower tax rate than teachers and nurses.

Comment: The president isn’t going to be able to raise taxes before November’s election, another “permanent truth” to emerge from the debt ceiling fight. Obama does, however, understand that to maintain his big government status quo, taxes must go up, and so he has to make tax increases an election issue he can ride to tax increases in 2013. The battle lines are drawn. It’s all about the size of government. And the debt ceiling fight has brought the battle into sharp perspective.

Is Obama right that people want a “balanced” approach to deficit reduction, spending cuts balanced by “revenue enhancement”? Karl Rove doesn’t think so:

Mr. Obama . . . claimed that a "clear majority" of Republicans and "80%" of voters want "balanced" deficit reduction that includes higher taxes and spending cuts. But a July 10 Gallup Poll, for example, found that fewer than one in three people surveyed support reducing the deficit "equally with spending cuts and tax increases."

The biggest choke collar of all on government growth is popular resistance to tax increases.

3. Democrats lost while nobody was looking, when national security dropped off the Republican agenda.

My respect goes to progressive blogger Peter Beinart at the “Daily Beast” for educating us all on why Democrats turned out to be defenseless in the debt ceiling debate. Beinart realized, before anyone else I have seen, that because Republicans no longer believe in massive defense spending, they don’t have to compromise with Democrats by increasing the budget. Democrats say, “If you don’t play ball and allow us to increase revenue, you’ll be hit with automatic defense cuts.” And Republicans reply, “So?”

It’s a new Washington.

Here’s Beinart:

the Tea Party is now running Washington. How did this happen? Simple: This is what American politics looks like when there’s no . . . war. . . newly elected Republicans are indifferent. . . to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They’re happy to cut the defense budget [when it leads to] larger cuts in domestic spending.

It’s the reverse of the Cold War dynamic. During the Cold War. . . conservatives accepted that overall spending would go up in order to ensure that some of that increase went to defense. Today, conservatives accept defense cuts in order to ensure that overall spending goes down. [This has] ended whatever hopes liberals once entertained that roughly 100 years after Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, roughly 75 years after the New Deal and roughly 50 years after the Great Society, we were living in another great age of progressive reform.