Bartlett: GOP Win Will Create "Toxic Gridlock"
Bruce Bartlett writes:
Among the things Newt was able to do once he took control was effectively neuter the committees. The committee chairmen's roles were diminished, their staffs were slashed, and virtually all power in terms of policy and legislative initiatives was centralized in the speaker’s office. The only committee Newt had any use for was the Rules Committee, which would often rewrite legislation in the dead of night and bring it up for a vote the next day. Consequently, members from both sides of the aisle had no idea exactly what they were voting on, which made it easier to hide earmarks and other special interest provisions from scrutiny.
There’s no way Boehner can hope to get away with that sort of thing. It’s clear that the Republicans in line to be committee chairmen are not prepared to be potted plants. They are going to reinvigorate the traditional committee system and make it once again the pipeline through which legislation flows. And if nothing else, the many Tea Party members expected to be elected will want to see more legislative transparency and strongly resist the sort of heavy-handed methods that were used to ram legislation through during the Gingrich era.
Another important difference between 1994 and today is that presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton and Democrats in Congress had already done the heavy lifting of getting the federal budget onto a sustainable path. In the 1990 and 1993 budget deals — both enacted against the strenuous opposition of congressional Republicans — taxes were raised and strong deficit controls put in place that led naturally to surpluses so long as the budget remained on auto-pilot, with no big new spending programs or tax cuts. Under these circumstances, gridlock was just what the doctor ordered.
It should be remembered also that Republicans had the very good fortune to take power right on the brink of the 1990s technology boom, which raised the real gross domestic product 4.7 percent in 1995, 5.7 percent in 1996 and 6.3 percent in 1997 — which sent tax revenues cascading into the Treasury.
But today the situation is quite different. The economy is in the tank and the budget is clearly on an unsustainable path, in large part due to actions taken by Republicans when they were in power. They completely dismantled the deficit controls put in place by the elder Bush and Clinton so that they could cut taxes willy-nilly without paying for them, and in the process thoroughly decimated the government’s capacity to raise adequate revenue to fund its essential functions. Adding insult to injury, Republicans enacted a massive new entitlement program, Medicare Part D, without paying for a penny of it on top of every pork barrel project any Republican ever imagined.
The point is that gridlock under today’s circumstances will not be benign, as it was in the late 1990s, but toxic, preventing our political system from grappling with problems that demand action and will only get worse the longer it is delayed.
