A GOP Game Plan for the Next Budget Fight

Friday night, the GOP reached a budget deal with Senate Majority Leader Reid and the White House.  I’m pleasantly surprised Republicans actually took my advice “to pocket the offer, negotiate a couple billion more in cuts, call it a budget and move on to the FY2012 budget and long-term issues like entitlement reform.”

Even though the threat of government shutdown has now been averted at least until October, I can’t help wondering why we have the shutdown rules that we have. Why do national parks automatically close in a shutdown even though they actually generate revenue for the government?

And why are military paychecks stopped in a shutdown but not Social Security checks? Considering that entitlement spending is the biggest part of government expenditures, would not it be logical to suspend it when the government shuts down for lack of money?!

Furthermore, if there were no Social Security payments during a shutdown, we would have a lot less brinkmanship in the budget process, since the political consequences of being blamed for the shutdown by the public would be much more severe (and in the past week we would have seen a lot fewer elderly Tea Partiers rallying for a shutdown).

If Republicans in Congress are in the mood to take more advice from me, I’ll be happy to oblige:

1. The debt ceiling must be increased. No ifs, ands or buts.
2. You know you are going to increase the debt ceiling no matter what. The more unrealistic demands you make, the more your final vote will look like a wholesale surrender. There’s absolutely no need for that.
3. Finding a real solution to the deficit problem in the next five weeks is completely unrealistic. For that matter, passing any serious long-term reform in that time frame is unrealistic.
4. Go easy on the theatrics. Someday one of you may become president. And then you will ask the Congress to increase the debt ceiling to yet another unprecedented level (if you doubt that for a moment, please resign right now and find some occupation for which you have more aptitude). At that time the video clips of you commenting on the current increase will be everywhere. You can save yourself a lot of embarrassment in the future by exercising a little self-control today.
5. Don’t get fixated on numbers in the new budget – the substance is more important.
6. Don’t get fixated on the new budget – government policies are more important, and a lot of them are not reflected in the budget at all.
7. Remember that the three most important priorities are economic growth, entitlement reform and curbing health care costs.
8. The current status quo in health care is indefensible. If you try to block Obamacare without offering any alternative, you are essentially defending the indefensible.
9. Remember that in our constitutional system the House does not run the country.
10. If you want to live in a country run by the lower chamber of the national legislature, there are daily flights to London from Dulles airport.

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