Day: January 3, 2010

News conservatives can use

Since, thankfully, Congress is away for a couple more weeks we have an opportunity to catch our breath and assess the situation we find ourselves under.

One such effort was undertaken last week by Americans for Limited Government as they did the research and compiled a quick primer of the voting records of 90 so-called “Blue Dog” and moderate Democrats. It tends to show the revolving door aspect of Democrats voting against their leadership in just such a number to make some votes nailbiters, but not enough to defeat the proposal.

ALG’s Bill Wilson puts it this way:

Americans for Limited Government today released the voting records of some 90 Blue Dog and what it dubbed “so-called moderate” House Democrats on what ALG President Bill Wilson called “some of the most controversial votes of 2009.”

“So-called Blue Dog ‘conservative’ Democrats in the House have long touted their caucus as being fiscally-responsible, but what emerges from an analysis of their voting records is a pack of lapdogs who have voted largely in lock-step with their more radical counterparts in House leadership,” said Wilson.

“In vote after vote, the Blue Dogs have been all bark and no bite.  Although they had the votes to do so, they have not stopped a single piece of budget-busting legislation in a year that saw the largest budget deficit in American history: $1.4 trillion,” Wilson explained. 

“By over a 4 to 1 margin, so-called ‘moderates’ in the House have voted with the bankrupt Pelosi agenda of Big Government,” Wilson added.

The analysis shows 856 Yea votes and 207 Nay votes, which Wilson said “was not enough to stop anything.”

The ALG analysis includes votes on the $789 billion “stimulus”, bankruptcy mortgage “cramdowns,” ACORN funding, a $108 billion International Monetary Fund expansion, the Waxman-Markey carbon emission caps, the $2.1 trillion “public option” health system, the $154 billion assistance program for bankrupt states, and the $290 billion debt limit expansion.

According to the Blue Dogs’ website, “In the 111th Congress, the Coalition intends to continue to make a difference in Congress by  forging middle-ground, bipartisan answers to the current challenges facing the Country. A top priority will be to refocus Congress on balancing the budget and ridding taxpayers of the burden the debt places on them.”

“By its own measure, the Blue Dog coalition has not succeeded,” Wilson noted.  “The House of Representatives this year alone has voted to spend more than $3.6 trillion, to nationalize the health care system, to strangle the nation’s access to energy, and to bankrupt the Treasury—and yet the Blue Dog and so-called ‘moderate’ Democrats have done nothing to stop the profligate financial catastrophe unfolding at the nation’s Capitol,” Wilson said.

Wilson pointed to the record national debt which currently stands at over $12 trillion, as placing an “insurmountable burden on the next generation of Americans.” The total debt is projected to top the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2011 at over $14 trillion. By 2020, it will top $20 trillion.

Wilson said that if entitlement spending is not reined in, it will soon half of the entire budget.  According to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), entitlement spending as a percentage of budget outlays will continue to increase over the next decade.  In 2019, OMB projects that entitlements spending will stand at $2.482 trillion (45.93 percent of outlays totaling $5.403 trillion).

According to the National Center for Policy Analysis, by 2050 entitlement spending “will consume nearly the entire federal budget.”

“While the nation is going bankrupt, House Blue Dogs and ‘moderate’ Democrats pretend that their support for these terrible pieces of legislation is ‘deficit-neutral.’  They have done nothing to stop the madness, which will only bankrupt the Treasury, destroy the dollar, and saddle American taxpayers without a debt that cannot be paid.”

Obviously I’m most interested in the record of one Frank Kratovil, and while he’s somewhat better than the about 4:1 yea/nay ratio exhibited by these “centrist” Democrats, a Republican would’ve voted for few if any of these budget-busting, big-government items. Aside from voting with his party for the repressive House rules Democrats put in place, Kratovil changed his mind on the stimulus once his price was met, voted for national service (which included a call to make 9-11 a “day of service”) and voted for cap-and-tax before feeling the heat of his constituents and turning into a fiscal hawk late in the game, after the horse had escaped the barn. If you believe today’s Daily Times article on Kratovil by Greg Latshaw, it appears Kratovil will pursue that “independent” fiscal hawk strategy leading up to the 2010 election.

It may be a prudent idea for Kratovil to portray himself as a fiscal conservative, but I’d rather have the real thing in there.

An idea to consider

In place of my usual LFS op-ed this Sunday (because my last one hasn’t cleared yet,) I’m going to posit another more localized idea. At least this time I don’t have a 600-word limit!

Regarding elections, Maryland’s Constitution notes in Article XVII, Section 2:

Except for a special election that may be authorized to fill a vacancy in a County Council under Article XI-A, Section 3 of the Constitution, elections by qualified voters for State and county officers shall be held on the Tuesday next after the first Monday of November, in the year nineteen hundred and twenty-six, and on the same day in every fourth year thereafter.

This was ratified in 1922 and since then 21 state elections have been held on a four-year cycle. Barring death or resignation, this limits turnover in the legislature and seems to limit accountability, lending itself to the growth of government. (There’s always the argument that at least some experienced hands are necessary, which causes inertia.) Furthermore, since a governor goes into office with the content of the General Assembly known for the next four years, he (or eventually she) has to tailor his agenda to what he knows can pass and can’t easily make bold, sweeping changes unless they are in the direction of larger government – the Democrats have held the General Assembly since the mid-1800’s.

I think there’s a better way to instill accountability, but it would cause pain for some legislators while the process begins. Oh well.

Many states have adopted a staggered system where a portion of their legislature turns over every two years. In Maryland this idea can take form in one of two ways:

  • have either the House or Senate as a body serve an interim two-year term to stagger the election cycle for each body, or
  • For one election only, Delegates and Senators in odd-numbered districts (1, 3, 5…all the way to 47) run for a two-year term while those in even-numbered districts (2, 4…and so on to 46) continue on the normal 4-year cycle. As an example, if this began with the 2010 term 24 Senators and 72 Delegates would be up for re-election in 2012 and 23 Senators and 69 Delegates would run in 2014. This is my preferred method.

The advantage of this extra check and balance on a governor’s power is the opportunity to reward or punish him or her by adding or subtracting supporters midterm. For example, if a Republican won in 2010 but couldn’t pass his agenda because of recalcitrant Democrats in the General Assembly, the opportunity would exist for popular sentiment behind him to be expressed by the removal of those obstacles in 2012. If Martin O’Malley were re-elected, it would be harder to pass a budget-bloating, tax-raising agenda through the General Assembly if some members knew their re-election was nigh. It’s the accountability, stupid.

Obviously this requires a Constitutional change, and 2010 presents a unique opportunity (although it also promises to be a Pandora’s Box of sorts too.)

Normally to be amended the proposed Constitutional change goes through the General Assembly and requires a 3/5 majority vote in both the Maryland House of Delegates and Senate. But in Maryland’s Constitution, Section 2 of Article XIV notes:

It shall be the duty of the General Assembly to provide by Law for taking, at the general election to be held in the year nineteen hundred and seventy, and every twenty years thereafter, the sense of the People in regard to calling a Convention for altering this Constitution; and if a majority of voters at such election or elections shall vote for a Convention, the General Assembly, at its next session, shall provide by Law for the assembling of such convention, and for the election of Delegates thereto. Each County, and Legislative District of the City of Baltimore, shall have in such Convention a number of Delegates equal to its representation in both Houses at the time at which the Convention is called. But any Constitution, or change, or amendment of the existing Constitution, which may be adopted by such Convention, shall be submitted to the voters of this State, and shall have no effect unless the same shall have been adopted by a majority of the voters voting thereon.

2010 just so happens to be one of those years, and there is a website advocating a “yes” vote. But any change would still need to be approved by voters so the final call is up to us.

This also would present an opportunity to force the legislature to adopt other items which would serve as a check and balance, such as term limits and the possibility of a recall election for wayward members of the House of Delegates or Senate. We could even enshrine the idea of a “taxpayer bill of rights,” which would keep spending increases from exceeding the sum of inflation plus population growth without voter approval. (For example, 3% inflation and 1% population growth would mean the budget could only increase 4 percent.)

The hard part would be getting good items like those without adding bad items like overt restrictions on growth in critical areas or specifying excessive amounts of spending on education into the Constitution. Voters last year managed to muck it up with slot machines and early voting, and those will be hard to get rid of (although they could be in a new convention.) Just keep the special interests out of the room and it could go well.