Tea party Tory: David Cameron’s budget slashing has won him admirers on the US right
In the White House, they are reminding themselves that every time a president’s party loses congress in the middle of his first term he gets re-elected. That was the case with Harry Truman after 1946, for Dwight Eisenhower after 1954 and for Bill Clinton after 1994. After all, it gives a president something to campaign against and something for his party to unite against.
But the Republicans know this too and their strategists have been thinking of little else. In 2006, an anti-Bush tidal wave gave the Democrats six more senators and those vulnerable seats are up for re-election in 2012. But if Obama can win a second term then the Dems may hang on to them. So the Republicans have decided they cannot create a “do nothing” congress and are picking their issues instead. They will frustrate health reform by refusing to vote money for its provisions and are planning legislation to accelerate oil and gas drilling.
Their problem is that a lot of the new intake are Tea partiers who won their primaries in defiance of the party establishment. They don’t think they owe the congressional leadership a damn thing, so discipline will be a problem. The Republican leadership in the house, led by chain-smoking John Boehner from Ohio, still think of themselves as the revolutionaries of 1994 and need no lessons in radicalism from “the fresh green tea leaves.” Boehner will try to keep them occupied by unleashing them on Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Fed, who is going to face so many investigations, hearings and congressional audits that he might as well move to Capitol Hill.
We already know which Republicans will chair house committees and thus control the legislative agenda next year. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, with a constituency full of Cuban exiles and Jewish retirees, will block attempts to ease the Cuban embargo or to pressure Israel from her post chairing the international relations committee. Peter King of Long Island, a supporter of Gerry Adams and no fan of the English, will chair homeland security and fight to keep Guantánamo open.
Doc Hastings of Washington DC will chair natural resources and not rest until the offshore drilling embargo is lifted. Buck McKeon of California will chair armed services and fight any withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin will take the budget committee and struggle in vain against the defences protecting social security and Medicare. Lamar Smith of Texas will chair the judiciary committee and demand the tightening of immigration rules; most controversially, he wants to end the 200-year tradition that being born in the US makes you a citizen.
The only good news for Obama is that battles are underway to chair other key committees, including appropriations (which decides spending), energy and commerce and financial services. Oh, and John Kline of Minnesota is almost certain to chair education and work with the White House to help low-income students.
REINING IN THE DEBT
One of the most interesting moments of the new congress will come in June, with the vote on whether to increase the permitted ceiling of the national debt. When the Dems voted in January to raise the debt ceiling to $14.3 trillion, the Republicans ran the issue hard, even though the bulk of the debt was generated in the Bush years.
But now the Republicans are in the hot seat, and some of them, such as Utah senator Mike Lee, have pledged to vote against any further increase in the debt. Congressman Eric Cantor of Virginia, who will be the majority leader, is promising a simple yes-or-no vote, and praying his party has by then established staunch anti-debt credentials. Newt Gingrich, however, is weighing a plan to refuse the vote and force the president to accept budget cuts that would keep the debt below the current ceiling.
Congress may not have much choice. If they don’t raise the ceiling, the markets will overreact to the prospect that the US won’t necessarily be able to pay back its debts. Next year’s budget deficit is going to be well over $1 trillion—perhaps more given what unemployment will do to tax revenues. Obama’s budget projects that the debt will increase by $4.7 trillion by 2015—and that’s just the increase. Back in those happy days when Clinton was in office, the total US debt was only $5.6 trillion. But then George W took over.
TEA PARTY TORY
In a tough field that includes the claim that Obama is a Muslim socialist, the prize for the most reality-defying argument of the election campaign has to be the canard that Obama is anti-business. According to a Bloomberg poll, that’s what 77 per cent of American investors believe. And yet the commerce department reports that over the last 18 months, US corporate profits have jumped 62 per cent—the fastest rise since the 1920s, beating any of the expansionary times under Presidents Clinton, Reagan, Kennedy or Eisenhower. The only problem is that it’s not something the administration wants to brag about.
Meanwhile, someone approves of the cuts in Britain. Despite the unhappiness at the state department and Pentagon over the defence cuts, the right admires David Cameron’s budget-slashing courage and want to know why it can’t do the same. As Pat Buchanan wrote recently in the American Conservative: “In David Cameron the Brits have a prime minister who can fairly be described as a Tea party Tory. Casting aside the guidance of Lord Keynes—government-induced deficits are the right remedy for recessions—Cameron has bet his own and his party’s future on the new austerity. He is making Maggie Thatcher look like Tip O’Neill [the late, long-serving Democratic speaker of the house].”
In the White House, they are reminding themselves that every time a president’s party loses congress in the middle of his first term he gets re-elected. That was the case with Harry Truman after 1946, for Dwight Eisenhower after 1954 and for Bill Clinton after 1994. After all, it gives a president something to campaign against and something for his party to unite against.
But the Republicans know this too and their strategists have been thinking of little else. In 2006, an anti-Bush tidal wave gave the Democrats six more senators and those vulnerable seats are up for re-election in 2012. But if Obama can win a second term then the Dems may hang on to them. So the Republicans have decided they cannot create a “do nothing” congress and are picking their issues instead. They will frustrate health reform by refusing to vote money for its provisions and are planning legislation to accelerate oil and gas drilling.
Their problem is that a lot of the new intake are Tea partiers who won their primaries in defiance of the party establishment. They don’t think they owe the congressional leadership a damn thing, so discipline will be a problem. The Republican leadership in the house, led by chain-smoking John Boehner from Ohio, still think of themselves as the revolutionaries of 1994 and need no lessons in radicalism from “the fresh green tea leaves.” Boehner will try to keep them occupied by unleashing them on Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Fed, who is going to face so many investigations, hearings and congressional audits that he might as well move to Capitol Hill.
We already know which Republicans will chair house committees and thus control the legislative agenda next year. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, with a constituency full of Cuban exiles and Jewish retirees, will block attempts to ease the Cuban embargo or to pressure Israel from her post chairing the international relations committee. Peter King of Long Island, a supporter of Gerry Adams and no fan of the English, will chair homeland security and fight to keep Guantánamo open.
Doc Hastings of Washington DC will chair natural resources and not rest until the offshore drilling embargo is lifted. Buck McKeon of California will chair armed services and fight any withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin will take the budget committee and struggle in vain against the defences protecting social security and Medicare. Lamar Smith of Texas will chair the judiciary committee and demand the tightening of immigration rules; most controversially, he wants to end the 200-year tradition that being born in the US makes you a citizen.
The only good news for Obama is that battles are underway to chair other key committees, including appropriations (which decides spending), energy and commerce and financial services. Oh, and John Kline of Minnesota is almost certain to chair education and work with the White House to help low-income students.
REINING IN THE DEBT
One of the most interesting moments of the new congress will come in June, with the vote on whether to increase the permitted ceiling of the national debt. When the Dems voted in January to raise the debt ceiling to $14.3 trillion, the Republicans ran the issue hard, even though the bulk of the debt was generated in the Bush years.
But now the Republicans are in the hot seat, and some of them, such as Utah senator Mike Lee, have pledged to vote against any further increase in the debt. Congressman Eric Cantor of Virginia, who will be the majority leader, is promising a simple yes-or-no vote, and praying his party has by then established staunch anti-debt credentials. Newt Gingrich, however, is weighing a plan to refuse the vote and force the president to accept budget cuts that would keep the debt below the current ceiling.
Congress may not have much choice. If they don’t raise the ceiling, the markets will overreact to the prospect that the US won’t necessarily be able to pay back its debts. Next year’s budget deficit is going to be well over $1 trillion—perhaps more given what unemployment will do to tax revenues. Obama’s budget projects that the debt will increase by $4.7 trillion by 2015—and that’s just the increase. Back in those happy days when Clinton was in office, the total US debt was only $5.6 trillion. But then George W took over.
TEA PARTY TORY
In a tough field that includes the claim that Obama is a Muslim socialist, the prize for the most reality-defying argument of the election campaign has to be the canard that Obama is anti-business. According to a Bloomberg poll, that’s what 77 per cent of American investors believe. And yet the commerce department reports that over the last 18 months, US corporate profits have jumped 62 per cent—the fastest rise since the 1920s, beating any of the expansionary times under Presidents Clinton, Reagan, Kennedy or Eisenhower. The only problem is that it’s not something the administration wants to brag about.
Meanwhile, someone approves of the cuts in Britain. Despite the unhappiness at the state department and Pentagon over the defence cuts, the right admires David Cameron’s budget-slashing courage and want to know why it can’t do the same. As Pat Buchanan wrote recently in the American Conservative: “In David Cameron the Brits have a prime minister who can fairly be described as a Tea party Tory. Casting aside the guidance of Lord Keynes—government-induced deficits are the right remedy for recessions—Cameron has bet his own and his party’s future on the new austerity. He is making Maggie Thatcher look like Tip O’Neill [the late, long-serving Democratic speaker of the house].”
