The Heritage Foundation Asks: What if the House GOP Ran DC? Well, as Michael G. Franc relates, America would be in much better shape. See, the FisCons are in the House and they know how to fix this mess we are in. I was almost cheering while reading this and then reality hit. Not only do these guys have to fight the Democrats, they have to fight the leadership in their own party as well. Hopefully, both will be overcome.
Let’s conduct a little thought experiment. Imagine that the Republican majority in the House of Representatives ran things in Washington. Unilaterally. No need to negotiate with the Senate or assemble two-thirds majorities to overturn those pesky presidential vetoes.
Imagine that legislation commanding majority support in the current House would become law immediately upon passage. What might our nation and our world look like?
This is not an altogether quixotic exercise. A thorough review of roll-call votes cast since the 2010 electoral upheaval allows us to approximate the world view that guides the 243-member House Republican caucus.
Such a review reveals a conception of America — and America’s role in the world — as ambitious, and conservative, as that of any previous congressional majority.
Indeed, from a political perspective many of these votes qualify as truly heroic (or, for those hewing to a leftist viewpoint, truly demonic). Viewed in its entirety, the agenda overwhelms. It would: repeal Obamacare; place a firm limit on how much in taxes Washington can take from our paychecks; require federal bureaucracies to think before they regulate; restore considerable authority and decision-making power to state governments; and alter the structural DNA of two of the Big Three entitlement programs — Medicare and Medicaid. (Fundamental overhaul of Social Security, it seems, will have to wait.).
In a nutshell, the GOP House agenda would place the federal government on a fiscally sustainable path without eviscerating national security. America would reclaim its status as one of the freest and most opportunity-laden economies in the world. There would be real and enforceable limits on the power of the federal government. And our ability to defend America’s interests around the world would be robust and enduring.
If you think this sounds like the equivalent of a second American Revolution, you’re right.
So, what exactly happened in our thought experiment?
First, the 112th Congress repealed every jot and tittle of Obamacare on its first day of business. All the House Republicans, joined by three Democrats, voted to undo the single largest expansion of federal regulatory, fiscal, and taxing authority in American history. Not a bad start.
Next, the House Republicans approved, en masse, the budget blueprint sponsored by Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.). “No budget in decades,” my colleague Alison Fraser wrote, “has had the potential for so fundamentally improving the nation’s prosperity and restoring its vast promise.”
Within it, one finds many transformative ideas. Among them:
Medicare and Medicaid are reformed to blunt much of the fiscal carnage they are projected to inflict on future generations. If House Republicans ruled the world, Medicare would be restructured so that each senior received a fixed government contribution to help pay for a portion of the health plan of his or her choice. Meanwhile, Medicaid’s open-ended financing arrangement, which violates every reasonable conception of federalism, would give way to block grants with a fixed federal contribution to the states. In exchange, states would enjoy greater flexibility to design their programs to better serve those in need. The tax code is completely overhauled. Special-interest tax deductions, credits, and exclusions are eliminated in favor of a growth-inspiring across-the-board reduction in tax rates. The top tax rate drops to 25 percent on both individual and corporate income, placing the United States squarely within the international norm and making us much more competitive in the global economy. Except for defense, the remaining areas of federal spending are frozen — hard — at pre-Obama (2008) spending levels. This reduces projected spending by a cool $1.6 trillion over the next decade.
Collectively, these reforms shook official Washington to its core, registering at 9.0 on the political and policy Richter scales. Significantly, they garnered the support of all but four House Republicans.
Next in the majority’s sights: the suffocating blanket of federal regulatory activity, which has dismayed and befuddled entrepreneurs, throttled job creation, and sapped the economic recovery of virtually all vitality. Here the House Republicans cast some of the most politically courageous votes imaginable, votes that their opponents will undoubtedly try to exploit relentlessly.
In 2011 the House majority voted literally dozens of times to roll back federal regulatory excesses in areas affecting energy production, the workplace, the power of labor unions, higher education, and federal lands. Except for some elements of the union agenda, House Republicans remained remarkably united around the premise that the mounting regulatory burden placed on American businesses and consumers must be reduced.
Efforts to rein in the Environmental Protection Agency dominated the rollback agenda. Over 90 percent of House Republicans remained united on restoring common sense to a wide variety of environmental standards, ranging from fossil-fuel combustion waste, to dredged fill material, to air-quality standards for particulate matter, to mercury emissions from cement plants, to dust kicked up by routine farm operations. Ditto for bills addressing the need to construct terminals to process liquefied natural gas, plans to drill for oil and natural gas off our coasts, and the regulation of carbon-dioxide emissions. Each time, the overwhelming majority of House Republicans voted to exert congressional authority and confront the runaway administrative state head-on…
WOW! Exciting, isn’t it? Well, Read the rest here!
The “Sims” people should get on this…
Crimeny, this is SO inside baseball
Unless they can catch Dingy Harry in the ladies room dressed in a corset and crinolines they can’t
@ eaglesoars:
I’m glad I already had my breakfast today…. 8)
@ Macker:
Mack -- I swear if I could photo shop, I’d put Harry in a crinoline and email him to you. The question is -- do I add a festive Easter Bonnet or not….decisions, decisions.
Carolina Girl wrote:
Yep. It should tie under his chin with a pretty satin ribbon, too.
Carolina Girl wrote:
No need. My Pixelmator-fu is sufficient. But would I want to do that? The imagination, as bad as it is, is enough.
Megadeth guitarist endorses Santorum
Santorum/Mustaine 2012!!!
h/t Zip
Carolina Girl wrote:
I would much rather see Harry Reid in an orange jumpsuit facing a firing squad.
doriangrey wrote:
Oh, and can we please please please put San Fran Nan, the Wicked Witch of the West right next to him????? (Where the he11 is Dorothy and that damned house???)
Why isn’t DC part of Maryland?
@ Rodan:
Even we don’t want that swamp.
@ Rodan:
Goes back to the founding. The idea was that the Federal Capitol wouldn’t be part of any State. That was to prevent any State from wielding too much power over it. It was a good decision at the time, and still works for today. Though if we could expel DC from the Union, I’d be for it.
@ Iron Fist:
Me too. let it be a city state and we go back to a Constitutional Union of states!
One can dream?
Hubby just got back from the Blue Dog Research Forum. The speakers were Chris Cillizza, Wapo “The Fix” blog; Shira Toeplitz, Roll Call;
and Ann Walter, ABC News Political Director.
- They are ALL frustrated w/Twitter. They feel compelled to always be following it so they don’t get left behind on something but they don’t much like it and think of it as one big echo chamber
- There are no more moderates on either side of the aisle. EVERYBODY wants a fighter
- All their polls show that jobs and the economy are still concern #1 (climate chaange has dropped to one-tenth of one percent). They got nailed on that as people started up with “Then WHY HAVE WE BEEN TALKING CONTRACEPTION FOR A WEEK?” (wish I had been there -- I would have straightened that out right quick)
- They think there are a lot of people still not engaged in the election. Cillizza cited his mom -- she said she’d pay attention/make up her mind around October
@ eaglesoars:
Very interesting.
Just said “no” to a contract. Not the kind of thing I like to do, especially when I really need a contract. But countries where the US has conducted air strikes within the last 3 weeks are generally not good choices as work locations.
Culture of Corruption:
Not even the Washington Post can cover this mess up, though they spin it for all they are worth. The wheels are coming off the Obama Administration, but I am afraid the Republican Elites are going to sabotage this year’s run at the White House. Either Mittens will win and not campaign effectively (face it; he is a lousy campaigner), or one of the others will get the nod, and the GOP Establishment will informally campaign against them. We are fucked.
Rodan wrote:
In order for DC to work “properly” (if ever there were such a concept), the District shouldn’t even have permanent residents! Then there wouldn’t be this “Taxation without Representation” BULL-SHIT they had on their license plates a few years ago.
Iron Fist wrote:
It was a good ideal. The big mistake was letting people live there and then claiming resident status.
@ Mike C.:
Sometimes the money aint worth. I’m sure you will get a gig. Hang on tight!
@ Macker:
It should be Federal officials only.
@ Macker:
@ Rodan:
And they should live in barracks. No posh living for the real 0.000001%
@ Iron Fist:
Agreed.
@ Rodan:
95% of them would quit without the posh living and swank parties. That is, unfortunately, all most of them care about.
@ Rodan:
No doubt, but I sure don’t want to piss off the nice consulting company that got me a record-breaking 46 month gig, either. OTOH, the wife would rather kill me here and save the trouble required to get my body back if I was killed over there, and she’s not a bad shot.
@ Iron Fist:
Make them live in man-camps.
Half of them would starve to death.
The real question is how to clean up Mordor on the Potomac?? I don’t think a GOP controlled parliament is the correct answer. Can anyone name just one Speaker of the House (past or present) that could be trusted as the Prime Minister to run America??
@ Da_Beerfreak:
Parlimentary Democracies are NOT superior to Constitutional Republics. Division of power is endemic to our system and is that way by design. This is a feature, not a bug.
Iron Fist wrote:
It’s too bad more Folks don’t know that. Gridlock is a good thing.
FOMC speaks
@ Macker:
It’s still on there, including on the plates on Obama’s limo.