What the GOP Pledge Left Out
I have mixed feelings about the Pledge to America. I am relieved that the House GOP did not surrender to nuttiness and there’s nothing in the pledge about Obama’s birth certificate or returning to the gold standard. Furthermore, there’s no balanced budget amendment or any other substantive silliness. The pledge pays only lip service to the Tea Party’s demands by promising that almost every bill will now end with the words “This bill is constitutional under the interstate commerce clause” (what else could the promise to cite constitutional authority for every bill possibly mean?!) and offering some other cosmetic measures. So I am pleased to report that unlike the platform of some GOP candidates, the pledge passes basic sanity checks.
All in all, the GOP program is not bad (I would be genuinely glad if they actually managed to accomplish many things that they promise to try). My biggest problem with it is that it’s actually too timid and circumspect. The part on the debt is actually misleading – since it suggests that increases in discretionary non-security spending caused huge deficits and that capping that spending will put us “on a path to balance the budget and pay down the debt”. But in reality, even if we completely eliminated all such spending (and that would mean abolishing the majority of government departments and agencies) instead of merely cutting it back to 2008 levels, we would still have huge budget deficits and the debt would still be increasing. I am not saying that cutting budget deficits by $100 billion a year is not a worthy goal in and of itself, but it is intellectually dishonest to imply that cutting the deficit by a certain small percent will somehow get us anywhere close to paying down the debt. The 800 pound gorilla in U.S. public finances is the unaffordable growth of entitlements, and the pledge is very vague about that topic. I realize that tactically now may not be the best time to start talking about cutting Social Security, but if Republicans do not talk about it now, it will be harder for them to govern later.
The pledge only focuses on the formal debt, for which the government in on the hook contractually. It does not say much about the obligations for which the government is on the hook politically. And thus it minimizes the real debt problem that we face and that affects the investment and business climate that the GOP wants to improve. The pledge does not say much about entitlements and there is absolutely nothing in it about the coming federal bailouts of state and local governments. But investors clearly worry about such things, especially after the EU bailout of Greece, and it would be nice of the Republicans to at least say something.
A major driver of the growth in entitlements is the increase in healthcare costs. The pledge provides some good ideas for controlling those costs. But contrary to what many conservatives seem to believe, malpractice litigation reform (assuming that it is even politically possible) will not reduce the costs sufficiently. And unfortunately the pledge says nothing about such important healthcare topics as the obesity crisis and comparative effectiveness.
Finally, there’s an issue of tone and partisanship. In order to become a majority party the GOP needs to persuade millions of voters who are not yet sold on the Republican program. Are they going to be persuaded by such nonsense as a claim that the three branches of government “have combined to thwart the will of the people and overturn their votes and their values”? What does that mean? A solid majority of voters actually voted for President Obama and large Democratic majorities in Congress – and did so fully cognizant of the Democrats’ intentions to enact universal health coverage. So how exactly were their votes overturned and their will thwarted by the passage of Obamacare?! If the pledge alludes to something else, then what is it and why is it not spelled out? Then, the very next sentence reads “An arrogant and out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites makes decisions, issues mandates, and enacts laws without accepting or requesting the input of the many.” Does not the pledge talk a lot about respect for the Constitution? Well, the Constitution does not mention any “input of the many” for enacting laws – only a vote in both chambers of Congress and a presidential signature. And what about that reference to “self-appointed elites”? The government is not self-appointed, it is elected. And how exactly do elites appoint themselves? By graduating from top universities?! Is it all continuation of the old culture wars? The Republicans may soon go the way of the Whigs (both in the US and UK) unless they reverse the flight of college-educated whites from the party. Is such language going to help?!