FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2015
4 — THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS
Opinion
— Guest Opinion —
How to fix
Congress
(Part Three)
By Sen. Mike Lee
Public domain screen shot.
Re-elected speaker of the House John Boehner kisses Nancy Pelosi as she
hands him the gavel.
— Editorial —
Could’ve
been worse
than Boehner
Bear with us as we explain our headline
and desperately grasp at a silver lining.
We couldn’t muster up disappoint-
ment when John Boehner was reelected
to Speaker of the House this week. The
growing disconnect been most Republi-
cans voters in the conservative base and
the Republican establishment has, sadly,
come to be something we expect.
We couldn’t find anyone—not an -
one who wasn’t registered Democrat
anyway—this week who approves of or
wanted Boehner to have this third term.
The problem didn’t start this week,
though. The fate of the speakership was
sealed, we think, back during conference
in November when a majority of the GOP
in the House should have nominated and
lined up behind a new candidate for the
position.
Should have, but didn’t.
No one else stepped up back then.
This means our representatives ended
up with limited choices Tuesday, and little
to no possibility of organizing behind an
alternative to Boehner before the vote.
If too many of our representatives
voted for random candidates without a
majority assured, they risked giving the
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speaker position over to the minority
party’s nominee—Nancy Pelosi. See? It
really could have been worse than reelect-
ing Boehner.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California
would have been the next Republican in
line for the speakership, based on senior-
ity alone. It’s possible that McCarthy is an
even bigger RINO than Boehner.
Again, it could have been worse.
All in all, 25 dissenters formed the
biggest rebellion against an incumbent
Speaker of the House since 1923.
Boehner should view this as a warn-
ing shot, quit kissing ass across the aisle
(meant literally and solely in the Demo-
cratic party logo sense of the word) and
turn back toward his base, which is clearly
supportive of the 25 dissenters.
In case you haven’t heard, here’s the list:
Reps. Justin Amash (R-MI), Rod Blum
(R-IA), Dave Brat (R-VA), Jim Briden-
stine (R-OK), Curt Clawson (R-FL), Scott
DesJarlais (R-TN), Jeff Duncan (R-SC),
Scott Garrett (R-NJ), Chris Gibson
(R-NY), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Paul
Gosar (R-AZ), Tim Huelskamp (R-KS),
Walter Jones (R-NC), Steve King (R-IA),
Thomas Massie (R-KY), Mark Meadows
(R-NC), Richard Nugent (R-FL), Gary
Palmer (R-AL), Bill Posey (R-FL), Scott
Rigell (R-VA), Marlin Stutzman (R-IN),
Randy Weber (R-TX), Daniel Webster
(R-FL) and Ted Yoho (R-FL) all voted for
someone other than Boehner. Rep. Brian
Babin (R-TX) voted that he was present.
What we hope doesn’t happen, but
already seems to be starting, is that plum
committee positions and perks will be
removed from them in retaliation.
Of course, there’s not much worse than
a sore winner.
—The Baker County Press Editorial Board
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YOUR ELECTED
OFFICIALS
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202.456.1414
202.456.2461 fax
Whitehouse.gov/contact
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503.326.3386
503.326.2900 fax
Merkley.Senate.gov
US Sen. Ron Wyden
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Wyden.Senate.gov
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541.624.2400
541.624.2402 fax
Walden.House.gov
Oregon Gov. John
Kitzhaber
503.378.3111
Governor.Oregon.gov
State Rep. Cliff Bentz
503.986.1460
State Sen. Ted Ferrioli
541.490.6528
Baker County
Commissioners Bill Harvey;
Mark Bennett; Tim Kerns
541.523.8200
541.523.8201
3. Keep it Simple on the Budget. The
biggest strategic and legislative question
the new Republican Congress will face in
2015 is what we should do on the budget.
The procedural and political realities of
the budget process demand that, in an era
of divided government, it highlight the
contrasts between the two parties. (Unless,
like the Democrats, you ignore federal
law and just don’t do a budget at all, the
better to conceal your true beliefs from the
public.)
We should try to agree on a handful of
principles that all Republicans can agree
on and not try to have the budget alone
substitute for everything Congress needs
to do.
Come the spring, House and Senate
Republicans have to pass a common Bud-
get Resolution for the fiscal year starting
next fall. The budget’s privileged process
allows for its passage in the Senate with
only 51 votes—which in all likelihood will
mean 51 (hopefully 54!) Republicans and
no Democrats. This step must be fulfilled
to begin the so-called reconciliation pro-
cess, under which Congress can fast-track
a single fiscal reform bill later on—again
with only 51 Senate votes.
It’s such a complicated process, and
such a delicate political balancing act that
to succeed, the Republican establishment
and conservative grassroots should come
to an agreement very early on the broad
parameters of what the budget must entail.
Arguing over specific spending levels,
cuts, programs, and reforms at this point
is probably unwise. Rather, we should try
to agree on a handful of principles that all
Republicans can agree on and not try to
have the budget alone substitute for every-
thing Congress needs to do.
The three most obvious Republican con-
sensus principles—to me, anyway—are
that our budget should: 1. Balance within
ten years (without accounting gimmicks),
2. Not raise taxes, and 3. Repeal Obam-
acare.
These goals comprise the closest thing
our party has to a mandate in the wake of
this election, and my guess is that every
House and Senate Republican is already
on record supporting them. If we want to
avoid an ugly establishment-grassroots
battle next spring, Republican leaders and
Budget Committee leaders would do well
to reach out to all wings of the party to get
buy-in on a framework like this, and only
then begin the sausage-making.
There are rumors around Capitol Hill
that some Republicans don’t want to
repeal Obamacare in the budget process.
They would prefer to pursue something
else—corporate tax reform, for instance—
where bipartisan cooperation may be
more attainable. They want to use budget
reconciliation to “get a win.”
But this has things backwards, it seems
to me. President Obama and many Demo-
crats have already voiced some support for
corporate tax reform. Any plan that could
get the president’s signature wouldn’t need
to be done via reconciliation, because such
a bipartisan compromise could easily get
60 votes in the Senate. The whole point of
reconciliation is that it allows the major-
ity one chance to pass something with
only simple majorities. For Republicans in
2015—not as a matter of ideological purity
but of practical coalitional unity—that one
thing has to include repealing Obamacare.
Corporate tax reform, and much else, can
be pursued in other ways.
4. Fund It? Fix it. One of the biggest
traps Republicans and conservatives fall
into is any debate about budget “cuts.”
When you stop for a moment and think,
blindly “cutting” the federal government’s
budget is not a very conservative approach
to governing. After all, the conservative
critique of Washington is not that the
federal government is a bit profligate, but
otherwise efficient and e fective with our
money. No, the problem with Washing-
ton is that it’s comprehensively wasteful,
unfair, and dysfunctional. It is, in a great
many areas of policy, trying to do the
wrong things and doing them in the wrong
ways.
Just spending less on a misguided pro-
gram doesn’t get you any closer to a real
solution than just spending more on it.
Just spending less on a misguided pro-
gram doesn’t get you any closer to a real
solution than just spending more on it. If
the program is dysfunctional—if it doesn’t
do what it’s supposed to do, and what it’s
Submitted Photo
Elected in 2010 as Utah’s 16th
Senator, Mike Lee has spent his ca-
reer defending the basic liberties of
Americans and as an advocate for
founding constitutional principles.
supposed to do is worth doing—fix it. Fi -
ing a leaky faucet is not an arbitrary “cut”
in one’s water bill, it’s repairing a broken
system so that it only costs what it must.
Republicans can approach federal reform
the same way. We can make a commit-
ment in coming years not merely to cut big
government, but to fix broken government,
which is the more difficult but far more
important work.
For instance, we know for a fact that
the federal highway trust fund wastes
money: on bureaucracy, on special interest
giveaways, on projects that are purely
local and can be managed by state and
municipal governments. Therefore, when
the time comes next spring to reauthorize
the federal highway program, the Republi-
can Congress should insist on making the
system at least a little bit better—rather
than just “finding the money” to fully fund
a legacy system we already know doesn’t
work.
I along with several other conserva-
tives have proposed a plan to perma-
nently reform the highway program; I also
know that President Obama is unlikely
to sign it. Republicans shouldn’t accept
the president’s veto threat as the end of
the negotiation, however, but the begin-
ning. If he wants infrastructure money, he
should accept some structural reforms to
give states more flexibility and let gas tax
revenue go further.
We should put an end to ‘omnibus,’ all-
or-nothing spending packages, and instead
insist on consideration of each appropria-
tions bill in regular order—with hearings,
amendments, and specific votes
Similarly, Head Start is a program that
the Obama administration itself has found
does not work. Decades of rigorous analy-
sis have shown that it does not yield last-
ing benefits for children in need. So, rather
than spend less money on exactly the
same broken system—and merely disserve
fewer poor children—Republicans should
start to fix it to better serve more children,
at lower cost to the taxpayers.
Sen. Tom Coburn has fought for years
to clean up wasteful aspects of the Defense
Department budget that have no bearing
on national security. Sen. Dick Durbin and
I have introduced a bill to reform federal
criminal sentencing guidelines, which
would save taxpayers $2.5 billion over ten
years. Crumbling public support of Com-
mon Core should force action on federal
K-12 grants. The Ebola outbreak demands
serious reprioritization at the Centers for
Disease Control.
The annual appropriations process
should take up this approach, too. We
should put an end to “omnibus,” all-or-
nothing spending packages, and instead
insist on consideration of each appropria-
tions bill in regular order—with hearings,
amendments, and specific votes. This is
how the Constitution protects Americans
from waste and exploitation, after all. It’s
also the only way Congress can hope to
rein in the Obama administration’s unprec-
edented abuses of power—by withholding
funding from corrupt bureaucracies.
Indeed, the entire congressional budget-
and-spending process is due for a com-
prehensive overhaul. But at a minimum,
Congress should only fund reformed
programs. (Only in DC would this sugges-
tion be even remotely controversial.) If the
president rigidly resists intelligent, surgical
reform based on thorough oversight, then
we could turn to across-the-board cuts, as
we did in 2011.
These are not heavy lifts or ideologi-
cal crusades I’m describing. They only
seem novel because it’s been so long since
we’ve had a functioning legislature. My
modest proposal is that if there is a good
reason for Congress to fund a program,
that in and of itself is a good reason to
continually improve it.
(Final installment next week.)