Freedom Line Blog

Republican control of the House of Representatives may have stifled the Obama Administration’s grand statist designs in Congress, but the White House continues to push costly, job-killing regulation through the rulemaking power of the administrative state. Because new regulations enjoy nowhere near the media scrutiny of new legislation, however, the public often remains unaware of their role as silent predators on America’s economy. That’s why credit is due to House Speaker John Boehner for calling Obama to account for this economic poison. From Politico:

In a letter that will be sent to President Barack Obama on Friday, House Speaker John Boehner charges that planned regulations have jumped nearly 15 percent over the past year and he calls on the administration to calculate and publicize their economic impact.

“This year, the administration’s current regulatory agenda identifies 219 planned new regulations that have estimated annual costs in excess of $100 million each. That’s almost a 15 percent increase over last year and appears to contradict public suggestions by the administration this week that the regulatory burden on American job creators is being scaled back,” Boehner wrote.

“I was startled to learn that the EPA estimates that at least one of its proposed rules will cost our economy as much as $90 billion per year. The administration has not disclosed how many of the other 218 planned rules will cost more than $1 billion, nor identified these rules,” he noted.

If Obama is serious about “pivoting to jobs” (a promise we seem to hear on a quarterly basis), there’s no way he can ignore the costs of federal regulations, which are de facto tax increases. According to the Small Business Administration, the annual cost of federal regulation alone amounts to $1.75 trillion dollars. That’s nearly 12 percent of America’s GDP gone every year because of the Washington bureaucracy.

A failure to repeal many of these draconian monstrosities is economic malpractice. But a failure to simply reveal their costs is a dereliction of duty.

At the American Spectator, I’ve been keeping tabs.

For the past two and a half years, it’s been the exclusive provenance of the right to point out that President Obama often seems overmatched by his job. But after this weekend’s latest round of debt ceiling negotiations — where a newly irascible President Obama was nowhere to be seen amidst the congressional horse-trading — it’s becoming clear that Democrats on the hill are starting to think the same thing. The ugly details are fleshed out by Craig Crawford, writing in the Huffington Post:

While the GOP obviously would savor a solution to the debt-ceiling crisis that gives Obama no credit, why are Democratic leaders so willing to cut him out?

The answer might be found in growing concerns among veteran Capitol Hill Democrats that their president is a lousy negotiator.

Although they see him as a talented public communicator, his short time as a senator and painfully slow learning curve as president leads congressional Democrats to think it best to take over and provide cover for him once the deal is done.

“A talented public communicator” who can’t negotiate? The Democrats are essentially saying that the president is really good at talking about his job, just weak when it comes to actually doing it. This, my friends, is what the wag who coined the phrase “damning with faint praise” had in mind.

If you like inside baseball tidbits, here’s Roll Call‘s list of the top ten most powerful members of Congress in the legislative redistricting fight unfolding across the nation.  (Note: names are not listed in any specific order)

Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA)

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL)

Rep. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA)

Rep. Jerry Costello (D-IL)

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD)

Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY)

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC)

Rep. John Boehner (R-OH)

Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA)

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX)

For summaries of each member’s role in the redistricting process, click here.

If you’ve lost National Review — the most consistently conservative child of William F. Buckley — you’ve lost the conservative moment. Thus, House Speaker John Boehner should be insecure about NR’s new staff editorial reacting to the recently revealed gimmicks in last week’s budget deal, ominously entitled “Strike One.” Reading the content won’t assuage those fears:

There’s realism and then there’s cynicism. This deal — oversold and dependent on classic Washington budget trickery — comes too close to the latter. John Boehner has repeatedly said he’s going to reject “business as usual,” but that’s what he’s offered his caucus. It’s one thing for Tea Party Republicans to vote for a cut that falls short of what they’d get if the controlled all of Washington; it’s another thing for them, after making so much of bringing transparency and honesty to the Beltway, to vote for a deal sold partly on false pretenses.

Last week, some of us held out hope that the budget deal represented real — albeit incremental — change. The disappointment that would have resulted from a less satisfying outcome would have been bad. But the betrayal that results from feeling duped by your own leadership is far worse.

Bloomberg reports that the rumored $33 billion in cuts being negotiated by House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is looking like the key number both sides are working towards.  For perspective, that’s $28 billion less than the House of Representatives passed a few weeks ago, and $67 billion less than Republicans promised during last year’s mid-term elections.

When the $61 billion cut was passed, Tea Party-backed legislators accepted the reduction under the assumption that half a loaf is better than nothing at all.  Now, the loaf is down to a third, and activists are having none of it.

Whatever sum gets approved, it’s a sure bet the Tea Party and the members of Congress friendly to it won’t forget the importance of starting the cut threshold even higher next time.  At this rate, don’t be surprised if the 2012 battle cry is, “$500 Billion in Cuts or Fight!”

There’s a confrontation brewing between fiscal conservatives in the House GOP caucus and their leadership over how best to handle the budget crisis.  House leadership wants to keep negotiating while passing short-term spending bills to avoid a shutdown.  Fiscal conservatives like Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) are voting No and getting killed for it.

Pence is fighting back.

“I have no doubt that Speaker John Boehner and Republican Leader Eric Cantor and the rest of our leadership will privately, and if needs be, publicly denounce any effort to essentially bad mouth the intentions of Republicans that are simply fighting for fiscal responsibility,” the former GOP conference chair said Thursday morning on “The Hugh Hewitt Show.”

It’s funny to hear that the House leadership is fuming at fiscal conservatives for voting their principles when those same leaders say that the latest budget extension is the last one.  With House leadership moving towards the fiscal conservatives’ position, maybe leadership is just ticked that they’re losing negotiations with both Democrats and Republicans.

As if we needed another issue to highlight the differences between conservatives and liberals, the skyrocketing price of gasoline is showing each side’s true colors.

Fox News reports that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) wants to put forward several ‘bite-sized’ bills to expand domestic energy production through increased oil drilling, easier permitting, and promoting nuclear power plant construction.  (The piecemeal legislation is also intended to be a jab at Democrats’ penchant for ‘comprehensive’ legislative fixes.)

Liberals like Ed Markey (D-MA) want to tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to drop prices by increasing supply.

How brazenly foolish.  As usual, liberals want to blow a savings account instead of increasing their revenue streams.  Shattering the nation’s energy piggy bank isn’t a solution to the problem – it’s a delaying tactic that puts off the hard decisions until later.

The time for stop-gap measures is over.  If liberals continue to show a genetic inability to create sustainable budget and energy policies, conservatives should bypass them and get America back on a sound footing.

After originally pledging to cut $100 billion in spending this year the House GOP leadership settled for a cut of $30 billion.  Then, the Tea Party-backed freshman caucus weighed in and forced a rethink.  Early this morning, the House voted to cut $60 billion in this year’s budget.

That’s real, measureable progress.  Getting 60% of a loaf may not satisfy everyone’s hunger for budget cuts, but it is still a victory for fiscal conservatives.  Well done.

The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel describes perfectly the triumph of democracy that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) made possible this week by opening up the budget bill to floor amendments from anyone.

Neglected questions were once again asked. Should we get rid of federal funding for the arts? Should the government be designating federal monuments? What’s the role of NASA? And Congress finally got to air some dirty secrets.

One of this week’s more symbolically rich cuts came from Arizona’s Republican Jeff Flake, who won an amendment erasing $34 million for the National Drug Intelligence Center in Johnstown, Pa. The center, despite serving no real purpose, had been protected for decades, via earmarks, by the late Defense appropriations chair John Murtha.

A little later, Strassel identifies the best aspect of Boehner’s new regime:

This week’s exercise forced members to read the underlying spending bill; to understand the implications of hundreds of amendments; to remain on the floor for debate; and to go on record with votes for which voters will hold them accountable.

Indeed, John Murtha and corrupt legislative processes are dead.  Long live this new era under Speaker Boehner’s new House rules where members of Congress can finally earn their money.

As President Obama uses Tuesday night’s State of the Union address to attempt a pivot to the center (a topic you can hear me discuss at length with my fellow former White House speechwriters Peter Robinson and Bill McGurn in last week’s Ricochet podcast), newly minted Speaker of the House John Boehner is preparing to call the president’s bluff by teeing up an offer that the president — who has long claimed to be a proponent of education reform — shouldn’t be able to refuse: the renewal of school vouchers in Washington, D.C.

D.C. schools have long had a reputation as the nation’s worst. In response, a five year pilot program of Opportunity Scholarships (a fancy term for school vouchers) was begun in 2004. Then, in 2009 — despite years of positive results — an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress bent to the will of the teachers’ unions and shut the program down. Ninety percent of the children who had to leave the program then found themselves back in failing D.C. schools.

If Speaker Boehner has his way, that trend will be coming to an end soon. According to a story in Politico:

The day after President Barack Obama makes education a centerpiece of his State of the Union address, House Speaker John Boehner will try to force his hand on the issue of school vouchers in Washington, D.C. as a test of the White House’s commitment to bipartisanship.

The Ohio Republican, along with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), will introduce legislation on Wednesday to reauthorize the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program, the speaker’s office said Monday, making a school voucher initiative that Democrats, including Obama, have strongly opposed as a bargaining chip for beginning discussions on the administration’s desired education proposals.

It’s likely that the media won’t say much — or at least won’t say it for long — if this proposal doesn’t go anywhere. That’s to their shame. How the Democratic Party can ever expect to be taken seriously in its self-appointed role as defender of the downtrodden is inexplicable if they don’t take action to heal the wounds of poor minority children whose first, best chance at a better life is crushed beneath the weight of government bureaucracy.

The United States House of Representatives just elected Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) as its next Speaker.  The vote was 241-173.

File E.J. Dionne’s new column paying nominal tribute to the incoming Republican class of congressmen under articles we didn’t finish. The reason? This passage:

There is already a standard line of advice to Speaker-to-be John Boehner and his colleagues that goes like this: Democrats overreached in the last Congress by doing too much and ignoring “the center.” Republicans should be careful not to make the same mistake, lest they lose their majority, too.

This counsel is wrong, partly because the premise is faulty. Democrats did not overreach in the 111th Congress. On the contrary, they compromised regularly. Compromise made the health-care bill far more complicated than it had to be and the original stimulus bill too small. Democrats would have been better off getting more done more quickly and more coherently.

Seriously, folks … he gets paid for this.

Well, that didn’t take long.  Speaker-elect John Boehner (R-OH) and incoming Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) announced today that the new Republican leadership will make good on its campaign promise to repeal ObamaCare.  Next Monday the bill hits the Rules Committee, followed by a Friday floor session deciding the rule for debate.  With 242 members, the House GOP is virtually assured of a favorable pro-repeal vote.

But since Democrats still hold the Senate hostage, no actual repeal is happening anytime soon.  Right now, though, that isn’t the point.  As Politico reports:

The repeal effort is not expected to succeed, given that Democrats maintain control of the Senate and the president can veto the legislation. But Republicans could embarrass the White House if they persuade a number of Democrats to vote with them, and over the long term, plan to try to chip away at pieces of the law.

That yeoman work will begin quickly under new House Government Reform and Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA).  His sights are set on investigating just about every consequential action by the Obama Administration.  Ladies and gentlemen, set your DVRs!

“The American people did not vote for gridlock”

That was President Obama following his White House meeting with senior congressional leaders (including heretofore marginalized Republicans) earlier today. A few things are wrong with this:

1. Of the many tasks for which Barack Obama is demonstrably unqualified, interpreting election results is clearly towards the top of the list.

2. To the extent that the 2010 midterm elections can be boiled down to a single trend, it wasn’t the American people voting for anything — it was them voting against Obama’s agenda.

3. The American people don’t vote for process. They saw the country headed too far to the left and wanted to stop it. While the electorate may not think gridlock is ideal, they would probably prefer it over another two years like the ones we just had.

4. It’s amazing how many Democrats are spinning the 2010 elections as a mandate for the two parties to work together (not that this is a particularly innovative narrative for parties that crawl back into the minority). The 2010 election saw disgust for the two major parties at an all-time high and faith in our political institutions at an all-time low. This is just a hunch, but I don’t think the resulting message was “we’d like to see more effective cooperation between the party we hate and the party we really hate”.

Ashton makes a good point about the geographic diversity of the GOP House leadership in comparison to its Democratic predecessor. Another interesting addition may be Kristi Noem, the incoming freshman who will serve as the At-Large Representative for South Dakota and who looks to be in line to fill a new position being created to give some leadership representation to the burgeoning ranks of Tea Party-affiliated conservatives. Noem is attractive, articulate, and has a compelling biography. She looks to be a definite rising star in the party.

I think the mix of the two parties may be reflective of what caused the Democrats to go astray in the past few years. Looking at the new Republican leadership, only Texan Jeb Hensarling comes from a state where Republicans are reliably strong in both federal and state elections. Democrats, on the other hand, populated their leadership ranks with figures from the deepest of the deep blue states. They governed that way too. And in so doing, they forgot all the lessons that gave them control of the Congress.

In the 2006 and 2008 election cycles, Rahm Emanuel in the House and Chuck Schumer in the Senate gave considerable flexibility to their recruited candidates, allowing them to run with conservative positions on a host of issues that allowed them to escape being tarred as liberals in the Midwest, the South, and the Mountain West. While they succeeded in getting a large percentage of those candidates elected, the Obama-Pelosi-Reid agenda then lurched so heavily to the left that the new members had to run for reelection in the shadow of a record that undermined all their pretensions of moderation.

The facile interpretation of this trend is that a party always has to govern from the center to keep its majority. That’s also the rationale for liberals like  E.J. Dionne, who hope that the new conservative majority’s stand on principle will alienate them from the electorate. In his most recent column, Dionne writes:

Give Republicans credit for this: They don’t chase the center, they try to move it. Democrats can play a loser’s game of scrambling after a center being pushed ever rightward. Or they can stand their ground and show how far their opponents are from moderate, problem-solving governance. Why should Democrats take Republican advice that Republicans themselves would never be foolish enough to follow?

This is what happens when a static mind attempts to comprehend a dynamic landscape. The problem with Dionne’s analysis is that he assumes the left and the right are equidistant from the center. This is false. When Gallup polled the question in June, 42 percent of Americans identified as conservative, 35 percent said they were moderate, and 20 percent said they were liberal. That means the self-identified center-right represents an astonishing 77 percent of the country. By contrast, the center-left at its theoretical apex is only a slight majority of Americans. When you then factor in that 56 percent of independents broke for Republicans this year — and that that represented a 36 point swing from 2006 — you see how steep the hill is for Democrats.

Dionne and his counterparts in Congress need to learn the lesson: in a center-right country, it’s more important for Democrats to moderate than Republicans. If you doubt that, ask Bill Clinton — he might remind you that he’s the only Democratic president to be elected twice since FDR.

With Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) announcing the end of her campaign to be Republican Conference Chairman, the likely top four House GOP leadership spots look like this:

(1)   Speaker – Rep. John Boehner (R-OH)

(2)   Majority Leader – Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA)

(3)   Majority Whip – Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)

(4)   Conference Chairman – Rep. Jeb Hersarling (R-TX)

It’s always interesting to see where leadership team members are from because it indicates where the strength of the party lies.  Since leadership positions are sought and won by members with multiple terms in office, it’s intriguing to see four Republicans representing each corner of the country.

Contrast this with the locations represented by the outgoing top four House Democrat leaders:

(1)   Speaker – Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

(2)   Majority Leader – Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD)

(3)   Majority Whip – Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC)

(4)   Caucus Chairman – Rep. John Larson (D-CT)

Aside from Clyburn, all the Democrat leaders come from deep blue coastal states (e.g. California, Maryland, and Connecticut).  Counting Clyburn, the Democrats’ claim to a “southern” voice is tied to a gerrymandered district designed to elect a liberal African-American.  If Hoyer beats Clyburn for the Minority Whip post, even that fig leaf of regional diversity will blow away.

The House Democratic caucus lost 29 of 57 “blue dog” members last Tuesday, making the remaining chamber membership much more liberal.  It also wiped out the Democrats’ claims to represent regions other than the high-tax, morally bankrupt coasts.  That, combined with Nancy Pelosi’s likely retention as caucus leader, will make it substantially more difficult for the party to recruit viable candidates in 2012.

Conservatives shouldn’t count on gifts like this forever, but for now, we’ll gladly take them.

Following a meeting with business groups earlier today on  the issue of job creation, House Minority Leader John Boehner floated one of the best ideas suggested this year:  A one-year moratorium on all new federal regulations.

“I think having a moratorium on new federal regulations is a great idea,” Boehner told reporters.  “[I]f the American people knew there was going to be a moratorium in effect for a year that the federal government wasn’t going to issue thousands more regulations, it would give them some breathing room.”

Now that’s a Stimulus Plan we can all support!

Let me start by saying I don’t have anything against the Leader of the House Republicans, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH).  It’s just that I don’t have much of anything for him, either.  That’s not the case with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), who’s constant stream of ideas and commentary should make House Republicans seriously consider elevating him to the Speakership if the GOP, as expected, wins a majority of seats in the midterm elections this November.

Check out this excerpt from Ryan’s column today:

We are challenged to answer again the momentous questions our Founders raised when they launched mankind’s noblest experiment in human freedom. They made a fundamental choice and changed history for the better. Now it’s our high calling to make that choice: between managed scarcity, or solid growth … between living in dependency on government handouts, or taking responsibility for our lives … between confiscating the earnings of some and spreading them around, or securing everyone’s right to the rewards of their work … between bureaucratic central government, or self-government … between the European social welfare state or the American idea of free market democracy.

What kind of nation do we wish to be? What kind of society will we hand down to our children and future generations? In the coming watershed election, the nature of this unique and exceptional land is at stake. We will choose one of two different paths. And once we make that choice, there’s no going back.

Add his impassioned floor speech before the final House vote on Obamacare, and his leadership with the Young Guns candidate recruitment effort, and Ryan is starting to look like the congressional Republican best suited to be the Washington counterweight to President Obama.  For conservatives who don’t think we can wait until January 2013 to inaugurate the next standard bearer, I hope we’re not overlooking the right guy in favor of the one who’s next in line.