Publication: Conservative Review
A Republican Retreat | |
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THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW
December 21, 2007
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A Republican Retreat
By Robert D. Novak
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Nearly the entire federal government
would be funded by an omnibus appropriations bill to be
unveiled today after covert negotiations. In subsequent
parliamentary maneuvering likely to extend all through
this week, Democrats will pare the spending level to the
maximum demanded by President George W. Bush in order to
avoid a veto. Republicans will declare victory. In fact,
they are in retreat.
As the minority party in Congress, the GOP will have less
than 24 hours to read the massive bill before it comes up
for a House vote on Tuesday. While at least coming close
to the Bush limit, the bill will be passed over Republican
opposition because it contains no Iraq war funding. It
then will go the Senate on Wednesday, where Republicans
will use their filibuster threat to insert money for Iraq.
Overall spending will be reduced to the Bush standard in
the Senate by means of an across-the-board cut.
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The bill then will be passed into law by the House, though
Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she personally will vote against
this solution that, in effect, finances the war at the
expense of domestic programs.
This solution is designed to win bipartisan support because
it will contain the earmarks for pork barrel spending back
home dearly desired on both sides of the aisle. It became
clear a week ago that Senate Republican Leader Mitch
McConnell was in negotiation with Majority Leader Harry
Reid for a bill to finance multiple new earmarks by means
of across-the-board reduction in government programs.
What's more, a little rules chicanery will hide an
estimated 12,000 new earmarks, including pork that
previously had not been passed by any chamber and is
"airdropped" into the bill. The wily legislators have
found a way to get around new ethics rules that require
disclosure of all such spending.
Nobody can predict even at this late date exactly the
outcome of this intricate legislative process. It is not
totally out of the question that an omnibus money bill
still will fail and that Bush will achieve his real desire.
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On Friday, the president advocated a continuing resolution
(CR), keeping spending at last year's level without new
earmarks. That is also the goal of the GOP's House leader-
ship. But because that is a very unlikely outcome,
Republican reformers believe they have a lost a golden
opportunity to regain their old "brand" of fiscal
responsibility by fighting to the end in the budget battle.
As early as Tuesday last week, the astute House Democratic
Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel observed what McConnell was
up to and issued a statement accusing him of trading
established domestic spending programs for individual
earmarks: "(H)e's fighting for earmarks over funding for
cancer cures, the veterans' health care crisis and 5,000
new American teachers." Those words chilled conservative
Republican senators who were saying exactly the same thing
privately. They did not go public because rank-and-file
members of Congress are not inclined to challenge their
leaders in today's climate of partisan polarization.
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Indeed, while anti-pork Republican Sens. Tom Coburn and
Jim DeMint have fought earmarks valiantly for three years,
they are reluctant to combat McConnell and thus play into
Democratic hands. Remembering how Republicans suffered
from the 1995 government shutdown, other GOP senators are
chary about a CR repeating unpleasant history (though it
is hard to see why this time the minority party and the
president would be blamed, in contrast to what happened
12 years ago).
But the overriding reason for backing away from a showdown
on government spending was the feeling in both parties
that elected representatives cannot return home without
booty, financed by the bank accounts of American taxpayers.
However, House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, not known previous-
ly as a foe of earmarks, has come to the conclusion that
his colleagues vastly overrate the political necessity of
pork.
Rep. Blunt and Sen. DeMint met privately Friday to probe
ways of enacting a clean, pork-less bill. They have not
given up, but the odds against them are heavy, as their
colleagues yearn to return home for Christmas. Each is a
Santa Claus distributing earmarks to special interests
with no thought of reform.
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