Freedom Line Blog

Former Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck Hagel is poised to be nominated as the next Defense Secretary.  Politico’s Josh Gerstein has an interesting round-up of the five constituencies most likely to oppose Hagel, but I want to see how President Barack Obama’s pick articulates his position on military spending cuts.

After the fiscal cliff mess, Republicans are aiming to reform entitlements, while Democrats would prefer to ax the Pentagon.  If Hagel can give a reasoned defense for eliminating some unnecessary programs – such as projects that serve to stimulate local economic development rather than national security – then a way could be opened for responsible spending reductions over a wider array of budget areas.  Unlike the automatic spending sequester scheduled to reappear at the end of February, a Hagelian contribution like the one I’m imagining could go a long way to getting on the table real cuts that the broader public can accept.

We’ll see if Hagel makes good on the opportunity.

After House Speaker John Boehner was narrowly reelected Speaker today, his spokesman promised that there would be no more end-runs around the constitutional process for making laws; even those that seek so-called “grand bargains” behind closed doors with the President of the United States.

Instead, said the spokesman of Boehner, “he is recommitting himself and the House to what we’ve done, which is working through regular order and letting the House work its will.”

This is welcome news.  Conservatives have long argued that many of the Obama Administration’s signature achievements – such as Obamacare’s abuse of the budget reconciliation process, failure to defend the border or the Defense of Marriage Act, and backdoor amnesty through deferred action, among others – have violated the rule of law.

But those criticisms ring hollow when Republicans in Congress go outside the legislative process to negotiate in secret.  It’s even worse when what’s produced would never be passed if it had been floated during the normal hearing and debate process.

Honoring the rule of law should be a natural and fundamental principle for the Republican Party.  Those wanting a conservative comeback should keep Speaker Boehner to his word.

H/T: Fox News

After Chris Christie’s latest Hurricane Sandy-related misstep, don’t expect GOP bigwigs to be lining up behind any potential presidential bid in 2016.

First, there was Christie’s grinning, bear-hugging performance benefiting President Barack Obama at Mitt Romney’s expense.  Though politics should cease when disaster strikes, it was particularly irksome to many on the Right that the Republican Christie seemed to go out of his way to call the Democrat Obama “outstanding,” “wonderful,” and “deserv[ing] great credit.”  Occurring as it did in the final weeks of the presidential campaign, not a few politicos think Christie was not-so-subtly trying to shore-up his standing in a Blue State by hurting the GOP brand.

Now, Christie is back at it with his temper tantrum over the pork-laden Sandy relief bill that failed to pass the House before the 112^th Congress ended.  Blasting House Speaker John Boehner and others for essentially lying to him, Christie accused House Republicans of “selfishness and duplicity,” “palace intrigue,” and “callous indifference to the people of our state.”

But as the Heritage Foundation, the Weekly Standard, and others have noted, House Republicans didn’t vote against disaster relief; they voted against awarding more than double the amount of requested relief to areas and projects that have nothing to do with Hurricane Sandy.

Thanks to Senate Democrats and liberals at the Obama White House the Sandy relief bill included such spending priorities as $28 billion for future disaster-mitigation projects, $100 million to Head Start, and $17 billion in Community Development Block Grants.  All of this and more is on top of the $20 billion scheduled to go to people and places actually impacted by Hurricane Sandy.

These non-Sandy-related giveaways were designed to get Red State senators to support the pork, but House members couldn’t swallow the bill after being served a bitter fiscal cliff deal.  To compensate the real victims of Hurricane Sandy, Boehner has promised to consider and pass a series of relief measures as early as tomorrow; without the wasteful, unrelated spending, of course.

As Christie gears up for what may be a tough reelection as New Jersey’s governor this year, polls show that his praise for Obama and tough talk on Hurricane Sandy have boosted his approval ratings in his Democrat-heavy state.  If all his high-profile Republican-bashing gets him reelected, it’s likely worth it for conservatives because of the fiscal reforms Christie is stewarding in the Garden State.  But if Christie decides to take his show on the presidential circuit, don’t be surprised if he finds a chilly reception among those for whom a discerning eye on government spending is a virtue, not a vice.

Erick Erickson of Red State on how to visualize the massive cost of regulations emanating from the Obama Administration:

Republicans have an easy story to tell if they would. Every day the Obama Administration issues new regulations on businesses. Some of those regulations are put in place on behalf of one corporate interest against another. Some are put in place because rich players can spread the money around to benefit themselves.

The Georgia Dome covers 8.89 acres, has seven levels, and has 1.6 million square feet of space on all seven levels. It’s roof is 290 feet high. Imagine the Georgia Dome. Now imagine filling up the Georgia Dome with ping pong balls from floor to ceiling. Now imagine one of those ping pong balls — only one — is red.

That one red ping pong ball would represent the parts per million of mercury the Obama Administration wants power companies to remove from coal burning plants. No company can certify the removal because it is so infinitesimal. But because of that regulation, coal power plants are shutting down around the country and energy costs will go up. Those costs will affect American families both in price and in lost jobs.

That is but one of many regulations. There are the healthcare regulations. There are energy regulations. There are all the other regulations. The GOP controls the House of Representatives of the United States. It can tell these stories. It can work to repeal the regulations. It must.

The snippet above is taken from Erikson’s post-mortem of the fiscal cliff deal titled, “A New Agenda.”  The entire piece is well worth a read.

Following up on Quin’s analysis, the Washington Times sheds light on another silver lining in yesterday’s fiscal cliff – formal repeal of Obamacare’s CLASS Act.  The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act is a giant unfunded mandate benefiting the long-term functionally disabled.  I say formally repealed yesterday because the Obama Administration already abandoned the CLASS Act in October of 2011 because it was unaffordable, and therefore unsustainable.

Sounds like logic that should inform the next round of fiscal negotiations…

Want to avoid future “fiscal cliffs”?  Eric Singer, portfolio manager of the Congressional Effect Fund, argues for three reforms.  First, adopt Economist Thomas Sowell’s idea to pay Members of Congress at least $1 million a year, but make the pay subject to all the rules and tax rates experienced by every other taxpayer.  Second, pass Warren Buffett’s proposed constitutional amendment to ban from reelection any current member who presides over a budget deficit.  Third, require members to forfeit any pay increases when there is a budget deficit.  According to Singer, the result would be timely, serious budgets.

Why this approach?

The Hill is reporting that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has the 51 votes needed to change the upper chamber’s filibuster rules.  Historically, rules changes to Senate procedure are done with two-thirds support (currently 67 votes) in order to ensure bipartisanship.  Making the change with only 51 Senators would mean only the majority of Democrats favor the move.

An ad hoc group of Senators from both parties is trying to broker a compromise reform that would speed certain processes along – such as some judicial nominations and the amending of bills – but so far their version of reform doesn’t include the most obvious change: Actually requiring an objecting Senator to verbally filibuster.

Call me simplistic, but I think presidential nominations should get an up-or-down vote, and filibusters should be real.  There’s too much posturing in politics.  I’d much rather see politicians put their reasons on the record than suffer through another year of finger-pointing.

Peter Cove writes in City Journal about the success of America Works, his for-profit company that specializes in getting jobs for long-term welfare recipients:

In the past 27 years, America Works has placed more than 250,000 poor people, with an average of five to six years on the rolls, in private-sector jobs, with an average starting wage of $10 per hour plus benefits. In our New York program, to take one example, more than half of these new workers were still on the job after 180 days. The employers that we have worked with include prestigious companies, such as Time Warner, Cablevision, Aramark, J. C. Penney, and American Building Maintenance Industries. Most of these employers keep coming back, asking for more of our referrals.

In his article, Cove recounts his transformation from welfare-state-liberal to work-first reformer.  The theme throughout is that long job training programs are colossal wastes of time and money compared to the America Works model:

…clients with shaky self-confidence are best served by early success in getting a job, not by long periods of preparation. Our weeklong training sessions are narrowly focused on the attributes and skills needed to land an entry-level job. Our trainers work with clients on the basics, such as maintaining a businesslike personal appearance, speaking properly, preparing a résumé, and showing up on time. Clients quickly learn that success depends on self-discipline and their own motivation and effort.

According to a report by U.S. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), as of February 2011, “Nine federal agencies spent approximately $18 billion annually to administer 47 separate employment and job training programs.”  Unfortunately, the Government Accountability Office says that “little is known about the effectiveness of most programs.”

Which do you prefer?  A for-profit company with 27 years of experience getting people into jobs they keep, or 47 cross-cutting initiatives that can’t prove whether or not they are effective?

Richard Rahn explains how the Federal Reserve’s low interest rate manipulation taxes savers to help government spend more of taxpayers’ money:

By artificially holding down interest rates to lower-than-expected real market rates, the Fed is, in effect, expropriating interest income (an implicit tax) that savers normally would be expected to enjoy. This interest manipulation enables the government to fund its debt at less than what would be real market rates at the expense of savers, making the deficit appear much smaller than it really is.

And don’t forget that the main reason given for not auditing the Federal Reserve and opening it up to other oversight measures is that it’s supposed to be an independent government agency staffed by experts who operate above the political fray.

Right…

Philip Klein draws attention to reporting by the Wall Street Journal on how President Barack Obama “negotiated” with House Speaker John Boehner:

Mr. Obama repeatedly lost patience with the speaker as negotiations faltered. In an Oval Office meeting last week, he told Mr. Boehner that if the sides didn’t reach agreement, he would use his inaugural address and his State of the Union speech to tell the country the Republicans were at fault.

At one point, according to notes taken by a participant, Mr. Boehner told the president, “I put $800 billion [in tax revenue] on the table. What do I get for that?”

“You get nothing,” the president said. “I get that for free.”

It’s worth remembering how often President Obama has tried to identify himself with Abraham Lincoln.  Recall Lincoln’s most famous line from his Second Inaugural – “…with malice toward none, with charity to all…”  Lincoln was referring to the treatment he intended toward people who had been in armed rebellion against the United States of America.  If Obama goes through with his threat to use his Second Inaugural to make a partisan dig about an important, but, in comparison to Lincoln’s context, a monumentally less significant issue, it will be a stark reminder of how much distance separates Lincoln and his facile successor.

Avik Roy:

…despite all of the dramatic hyperbole about the “fiscal cliff,” it’s important to remember that going over the fiscal cliff will reduce the budget deficit by $503 billion in 2013, and $682 billion in 2014, relative to the “solutions” being bandied about on Capitol Hill.

Moreover, since President Barack Obama and his fellow liberals in Congress refuse to link tax increases with entitlement reform, perhaps it’s better to go over the fiscal cliff than accede to some tax increases and no reforms.  At least then Obama & Co. would own the tax-and-spending system their intransigence created.

If U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-MA) becomes the next Secretary of State, expect several dominos to fall.  Soon-to-be-former Senator Scott Brown seems poised to run in yet another special election.  Bay State Tea Party groups will have to decide whether to support a member-turned-establishment figure like Brown over someone more conservative, but arguably less able to win.

And then there’s Ben Affleck.  What?  According to The Daily Caller, Affleck, the Hollywood star and Massachusetts native, recently met privately with Senator Kerry in Washington, D.C., possibly to discuss running for the latter’s open seat in 2013.  If you’re looking for qualifications, Affleck graduated from Harvard, won an Academy Award for co-writing “Good Will Hunting,” and founded the East Congo Initiative.  Oh, he’s also married to actress Jennifer Garner.

But if Affleck isn’t your ideal Senator, remember, it could be worse.  Minnesota gave us Saturday Night Live’s Al Franken.  If Affleck takes a pass, America could get his friend and Palin-hater, Matt Damon.  Can you imagine Damon and Elizabeth Warren together?

Stuart Rothenberg perfectly articulates the difficult post-election position of fiscal conservatives:

Republicans may well be correct that the nation’s biggest problem is that “the government spends too much, not that it taxes too little,” but at some point political realities rather than ideological beliefs or past party dogma ought to guide both party leaders and members of its rank and file.

The Roll Call columnist also shows just how much Beltway logic drives his analysis.  If Republicans are right that “the government spends too much, not that it taxes too little,” then Republicans are justified in pushing for reduced spending and resisting tax increases.  And, if Republicans are right, then President Barack Obama and his fellow liberals are wrong to demand the opposite.

That’s not ideology, just math and common sense.  Political calculations may end up trumping both eventually, but that doesn’t mean that fiscal conservatives within the Republican Party are wrong as a matter of logic from defending their position.

Jason Richwine of Heritage and Andrew Biggs of AEI provide an interesting thought experiment about the disparities between public and private employee compensation:

If public employees are underpaid, they ought to get raises when they switch to the private sector. But they don’t, and that fact is telling.

…

According to the SIPP data, the average federal worker shifting to a private job actually accepts a small salary reduction of around 3 percent. Similarly, private sector workers who move to federal jobs don’t take a pay cut. They get a first-year raise averaging 9 percent, well above the raise other workers get when they switch jobs within the private sector.

SIPP stands for Survey of Income and Program Participation, a Census Bureau dataset that tracks tens of thousands of households over several years as they switch jobs.  Using it above, Richwine and Biggs turn their thought experiment into a cold hard fact: Compensation is better in the public sector.

Think that’s sustainable?

Now that the Michigan House has passed both paycheck protection measures, Republican Governor Rick Snyder will sign them into law, perhaps as early as Wednesday.

Of course, Big Labor didn’t go down without an ugly fight.  Thousands of public school teachers protested by calling in sick, deliberately shutting down classrooms across the state with a taxpayer-funded temper tantrum.  A state Democratic representative threatened violence by declaring “There will be blood” once the laws go into effect.  And an assortment of union members tried to heckle and intimidate lawmakers into voting down laws that do little more than make union dues voluntary.

After Snyder makes the right-to-work victory final, unions public and private will have to engage in a form of advocacy that is long overdue: Justifying their cost to people who can say no.

Welcome to the free market.

Huffington Post has the summary:

The Michigan House approved the first of two right-to-work bills Tuesday that would weaken union power in the historical labor stronghold as hundreds of protesters rallied at the Capitol.

The Republican-dominated chamber passed a measure dealing with public-sector workers 58-51 as protesters shouted “shame on you” from the gallery and huge crowds of union backers massed in the state Capitol halls and on the grounds.

Democrats immediately sought to have the vote reconsidered but failed in that effort.

Still to come was a vote on a second bill focusing on private sector workers. The Senate approved both last week. If enacted, Gov. Rick Snyder says he will sign them into law as early as Wednesday.

Even with the outcome considered a foregone conclusion, the heated battle showed no sign of cooling as lawmakers prepared to cast final votes.

Byron York on why the cradle of organized labor is poised to defund union leadership today:

While Washington obsesses about the “fiscal cliff,” there are potentially more consequential events taking place far from the halls of Congress. In a move that rivals and perhaps surpasses the decision to limit organized labor’s collective bargaining powers in Wisconsin, Republican lawmakers in Michigan are expected to pass final legislation Tuesday to end the requirement that workers pay union dues or fees as a condition of their employment.

If the GOP succeeds, Michigan, home of the nation’s heavily unionized auto industry, will become the 24th right-to-work state in the country — a development that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

Republicans say the move would not only give current workers the freedom to choose whether to join a union and pay dues but would, more importantly, bring many, many new jobs to Michigan. Rep. Gov. Rick Snyder, who supports the bill, points out that Indiana enacted (after a long and bitter fight) the same kind of law earlier this year. “We’ve carefully watched what’s gone on in Indiana since they passed similar legislation back in February,” Snyder told Fox News’ Greta van Susteren last week, “and they’ve seen a significant increase in the number of companies talking about [bringing] thousands of jobs to their state.”

To be fair, reporting in the Christian Science Monitor surveys research from conservative and liberal think tanks to show, in the words of one expert, “Very little is actually known about the impact of right-to-work laws.  There [are] a lot of assumptions that [the laws] create or destroy jobs, but the correlation is not definite.”

In other words, like most public policy debates, the essential issue here isn’t financial, it’s moral.  It’s just wrong to force, as almost all unions do, members to sacrifice a portion of their paycheck to the union so that leadership can use the money to support political causes that may, or may not, improve the lives of members.  Paying dues should be voluntary.

Michigan voters agree.  With right-to-work and other issues, it’s important to remember that while social science studies and projected financial impacts can be persuasive, they are not conclusive reasons to support or oppose a position.  At bottom, people make a gut-level decision on an issue based on whether they think the proposal is right or wrong.  At this point in history, unions are squarely on the wrong side of this debate.

Michael Barone thinks illegal Mexican immigration into the United States might be a thing of the past for three reasons.  First, birthrates among Mexican-born, America-residing women are down 24 percent.  Second, up to one-third of the housing foreclosures in California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida since 2007 are estimated to belong to low-income Latino households.  Since there is always a time-lag in getting these kinds of data points, they go a long way to explaining reason number three: Mexican migration north was reported to be zero earlier this year for the first since the boom began in 1982.

All of this adds up:

Beneath the cold statistics on foreclosures and births is a human story, a story of people whose personal lives have been deeply affected by economic developments over which they had no control and of which they had no warning.

Those events have prompted many to resort to, in Mitt Romney’s chilly words, “self-deportation.” And their experiences are likely to have reverberations for many others who have learned of their plight.

Still, I’m hesitant to adopt Barone’s conclusion of a complete end to illegal Mexican immigration.

If it’s true that the bursting of the housing bubble and the concurrent recession are causing illegal Mexican immigrants to voluntarily repatriate themselves, then it’s a mixed bag for conservative immigration reformers.  While it’s good that the number of illegal immigrants is dropping, it’s not because of any fealty to enforcement policy by government officials.  Instead, it’s because of terrible economic stewardship by President Barack Obama and his tax-and-spend allies in Congress.

In short, if the economy rebounds, so will illegal immigration.

But don’t think that liberal amnesty seekers won’t use Barone’s data points to deny that cause-and-effect relationship.

Moreover, if the rumors are true that comprehensive immigration reform is the next bipartisan agenda item after the fiscal cliff showdown, then conservative reformers shouldn’t give an inch on the need to secure the border.  Furthermore, in order to blunt calls for amnesty because the illegal immigration problem allegedly is under control, conservatives need a Paul Ryan-esque big think on how federal immigration serves the national interest.

Personally, I’m open to a lot of different conclusions.  However, I deplore the incoherence of the current federal regime of passing laws politicians don’t intend to fund, and political appointees don’t intend to enforce.  Like every big issue, the American people deserve a clear, coherent vision on immigration policy and how it serves the national interest.

The Washington Times captures a revealing back-and-forth between an Obama Justice Department lawyer and a conservative D.C. Circuit appeals judge over whether the text of the Constitution or court precedent should decide when the President can make recess appointments:

“Once you remove yourself from the principles set forth in the Constitution — inter-session versus intra-session — you are adrift,” said Judge Thomas B. Griffith.

He was joined in his pointed questioning by Chief Judge David B. Sentelle, who said the clause in the Constitution giving presidents recess appointment powers refers to “the recess,” which he said suggests the one at the end of each year, not the breaks Congress regularly takes for holidays, weekends or other reasons.

If the court were to rule that way, it would upset the balance that has been maintained over decades, and would conflict with another appeals court’s precedent — though that didn’t bother Judge Sentelle.

“Forget about a century of precedent — go back to the Constitution,” he told Beth Brinkmann, the Justice Department lawyer who argued the case for the Obama administration.

She warned that going that route would change the system of checks and balances fundamentally.

Sentelle sounds like my kind of judge.  Let’s hope this is the beginning of a trend.

Human Events kindly provides the full text of Senator Marco Rubio’s speech at last night Jack Kemp Foundation ceremony bestowing on him its annual Leadership Award.

While the entire speech is a must-read, a passage on a specific health care reform struck this conservative as especially attractive:

In addition to promoting Flexible Savings Accounts, we should create a health insurance system that focuses on empowering people, not bureaucracy. People should be able to buy a health care plan that fits their needs and budget, from any company in America that is willing to sell it to them. And they should be able to buy it with tax free money, just like their employers buy it for many of them now.

That is, until Obamacare fully kicks in.  Since Obamacare’s regulations on employers only apply to full-time workers, there is a regulatory incentive to minimize the amount of full-time workers one employs.  In order to avoid either the stiff compliance costs or the steep penalties for failing to comply, employers are likely to increase the trend of laying-off workers, scaling back hours, or using contract workers in order to avoid the profit-killing expense of paying for all of Obamacare’s new required benefits.

Because of the entirely predictable response to Obamacare’s mandates, millions of American workers are likely to be caught in an employment trap where they work just enough at two or more jobs not to qualify as full-time employees with benefits.  If Republicans are unable to repeal Obamacare, then fixing the tax code to allow independent workers to buy affordable health plans with pre-tax dollars is one of the next best moves.  Marco Rubio seems poised to lead that charge.