Thread: One-two-three punch the GOP can deliver

Posted on Sun, Nov. 21, 2010

Jeff Bergner
has served as staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as assistant secretary of state, and has been a professor of government

Now that Republicans have won control of the House and gained several seats in the Senate, they need an agenda that is both radical and popular (as opposed to President Obama's agenda, which was radical and unpopular). An agenda that is capable of reversing our slide into bankruptcy and makes good on the commitment of economic growth. An agenda that is more than high-sounding-yet-empty reforms to the legislative process. Squaring this circle with concrete actions is as simple as one, two, three.


One Tough Vote
Pass an appropriations bill that returns nondefense discretionary spending to 2008 levels. Discretionary spending has increased 24 percent in the last two years; outlays have grown from $1.134 trillion in 2008 to $1.408 trillion in 2010, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget. Even Obama's 2011 budget proposes a spending "freeze" at $1.414 trillion - a bit like stealing your neighbor's horses, then insisting that everyone should just keep what they have. A freeze is not a serious response to our budgetary problems.
If we are unable to cut deeply into spending, we cannot balance the federal budget. So the first step is to pass a clear Republican budget and see which Democrats sign on.

The GOP can learn from the budget impasse in 1995. Here are a few tips:

Roll all spending for fiscal 2011 into one bill. Do not let Democrats have separate votes on defense and homeland-security spending.

Do it with fanfare. Call it the "We're all in this together, anti-bailout, anti-incumbent, anti-lobbyist, anti-special pleading, anti-Washington, save the country from bankruptcy" bill of 2011.

Treat it like a national referendum. Many Americans are living on less than they earned last year. Why can't Washington? Bring in the talk-show hosts. Offset the president's bully pulpit.

Include a rescission of unspent funds from the unpopular economic-stimulus bill.

Be prepared for blowback. You will be called "heartless" and "dangerous" and worse. This is the standard Democratic game. But you will be called the same if you try to cut current spending by a dime. Why not take a principled stand?


Two Policy Fixes
1. Repeal health-care reform. Much ink has been spilled about whether to repeal Obamacare whole or to target for repeal only such (small) provisions as could make it through the legislative process. The answer is: Do both.
Pass a wholesale repeal of Obamacare, which polls show enjoys majority support in the country. Put down a marker. Make clear that liberal legislation is not irrevocable. Then go to work on ways to pick it apart. Defund it, defer it, repeal the new tax increases, end the legal mandate to buy health insurance, permit interstate competition, offer new options for health-savings accounts, and enable the states to take more steps on their own. Do it all, in the knowledge that there is popular support for every bit of this.

2. Pass legislation in 2011 to mandate the closure of our borders to illegal immigration. This step has about 70 percent support from the American people. Explain that this is the only practical way to begin to address the issue of the roughly 11 million illegal immigrants who are already in the country. Tell some basic truths:

Illegal immigrants who live here are not now, or ever, going to be deported en masse.
What is holding back the creation of a pathway to permanent legal residence, or even citizenship, for these illegal immigrants is the very demand for "comprehensive legislation." We need to bound the problem before we can fix it. To quote the president, we need to "plug the damn hole."

America can find a reasonable way to deal with illegal immigrants who are already here. What Americans can't accept is an open-ended commitment to allow illegal immigrants to continue to come here without limit.

Make a commitment that within two years of effectively ending illegal immigration, Republicans will bring forward a sensible and humane plan to deal with illegal immigrants already living in this country. If Republicans make this happen, they can be the electoral beneficiaries of immigration reform in both the short and long terms.

Three Structural Reforms

1. Pass a pro-growth tax-reform bill in 2012. This will be extremely popular. Simplify and reduce tax rates for individuals; cut the corporate tax rate to a level competitive with other advanced democracies; and reduce capital gains tax rates to encourage and reward investment. These steps not only will be politically popular, but they also are the only realistic way to increase federal revenue to help reduce the deficit. We cannot tax our way out of large and persistent deficits. We can only grow our way out. Tax reform is a sure winner. Dare congressional Democrats and the president to oppose tax cuts in 2012. Dare them.

2. Reform the federal government. Address the engine that has brought America to the edge of bankruptcy - the federal government itself.

Begin with the congressional budget. From 2008 to 2010, Congress' spending on itself grew from $3.7 billion to $4.3 billion, an increase of more than 16 percent. This at a time when American families were suffering through a ruinous recession. Republicans should pointedly include Congress in the return to 2008 levels of spending.

Second, Congress should recalibrate pensions downward for all past and present members. For members elected in 2012 and after, it should abolish the congressional retirement system altogether. This would be a sign that the default position is no longer for members of Congress to make a lifetime career in Washington.

The executive branch is also in need of reform. Here are some places to start:

Equalize government salaries with those in the private sector by freezing executive and congressional pay for three years.

Loosen the mind-boggling civil-service protections that make it nearly impossible to fire government employees for incompetence.

Reduce executive and congressional benefits to levels comparable with the private sector, including eligibility ages for retirement.

These initiatives will be unpopular inside the Beltway, but they will receive strong support across the country.

3. Reduce federal payments to individuals. The principal engine of growth in federal spending is entitlement spending. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment compensation, and roughly 190 other such programs consume well over half the federal budget this year. Here is the real spending problem. Americans discovered in the 1930s that they could vote themselves benefits, and politicians ever since have been only too eager to oblige.

Solving the entitlement problem is very difficult politically. We may not yet have developed the inbred entitlement mentality of France or Greece, but the political dynamics in the United States are much the same. No one wants to cut Social Security benefits, and if either party chooses to demagogue the issue, there is little hope of joint action. What then is to be done?

Republicans should invite Democrats to participate in an entitlement-review commission. This would not be a commission to provide cover for tax increases, while adjusting payments at the margins; it would be a commission to examine the role, trend lines, and sustainability of entitlement payments in a nation that must compete in the world economy. Democrats might or might not agree to participate.

More broadly, Republicans should begin a serious effort to explain the need for intergenerational justice. Reforms of this scope, as the Bush administration learned in 2005, cannot be rushed. The ground must be prepared. Republicans should explain the advantages of medical insurance and retirement accounts, which are owned by individuals rather than paid out of current government revenue or borrowing. Show Americans, particularly the young, how individual retirement accounts work - invested in the same kinds of instruments as pension funds, university endowments, and private fortunes, with statements sent regularly to the owner, who can plan for retirement.

In all of this, Republicans should stress one major point: No one at or near retirement age will be forced into a new program.

Republicans also should borrow a page from the opposition. When the left cannot pass a program wholesale, it starts a pilot program. Republicans should push to establish voluntary pilot programs for medical insurance and retirement accounts. Voluntary retirement accounts could be modeled on the federal Thrift Savings Plan, which allows individuals to choose from a prescribed range of options, from financially aggressive to safe. These pilot programs would demonstrate the superior long-term returns of private accounts.


It may be that not all these initiatives will pass in the next Congress. The Senate might bottle up some of them or amend them in unhelpful ways. The president might veto some or all of them. But at least Congress and the president will be working from a pro-growth, job-creating Republican agenda. People in America are ready for this. They will reward a political party that advances these ideas, whether it can fully achieve them right away or not. What the American people will not reward is business as usual from a Republican Congress.


The full version of this article, which first appeared in the
Nov. 15 Weekly Standard,

can be found at www.weeklystandard.com.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/currents ... ?viewAll=y

Originally Posted by topsecret10

America can find a reasonable way to deal with illegal immigrants who are already here. What Americans can't accept is an open-ended commitment to allow illegal immigrants to continue to come here without limit.

Looks like the fight is never going to end.

Jeff Bergner
has served as staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as assistant secretary of state, and has been a professor of government

Well, he sure chose to leave a lot out of his little resume there, now didn't he? Meet the enemy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Bergner

Jeffrey Bergner is President and Managing Financial Partner of Bergner Bockorny, Inc. He is an adjunct professor at the National Security Studies Program at Georgetown University.

Bergner Bockorny, Inc. was a registered foreign agent in March 1998 with the Taipei Economic & Cultural Representative Office (TECRO) (formerly: China External Trade Development Council (CCNAA)). "The registrant monitored legislation relating to Taiwan in the House and Senate. The registrant also monitored trade and political issues of interest to Taiwan. $32,500.00 for the six month period ending March 20, 1998." The firm was again registered with the Taiwan government for its activities with the Taipei Economic & Cultural Representative Office (TECRO) (formerly: China External Trade Development Council (CCNAA)). The firm (i.e. registrant) "monitored legislation relating to Taiwan in the House and Senate. Other activities included general monitoring of trade and political issues of interest to Taiwan and received $45,500.00 for the six month period ending September 20, 1997." [1] Also in 1997, the firm was acting as a registered foreign agent for the Friendship in Freedom: A German Initiative for European-American Relations. However, no financial activity was reported.[See article on International Trade below.][2]

Bergner was Policy Director, Lugar for President Campaign; Staff Director, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations; Chief of Staff/Legislative Director, Senator Richard Lugar; Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania; Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Michigan; and Visiting Professor of Leadership at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, VA.

Bergner served as Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs from 2005 until July 2008.

Bergner has affiliations with The Asia Foundation, The Calvert Institute, The Hudson Institute, and the Project for the New American Century.

Bergner received his B.A. from Carleton College (1969), M.A. at Princeton University (1971), and Ph.D. from Princeton (1973).

Bergner ... there was a time when Americans weren't paying attention that some might have fallen for your bull crap. But guess what, Jeffrey? We're paying attention now, so take your globalist treasonous craparticles and tell your "boys" over there at PNAC who told you to write them you no longer have an audience because their century is over. We're done with the likes of you. How you ever ended up on a Republican Senator's staff or as an Assistant Secretary of State during a Republican Presidency is beyond me. Oh wait, it was Globalist Bush's Presidency, stick a fork in him, and Lugar ... the Senator who wants to rule the world from Indiana.

Sorry, Charlie, I mean ... Jeff. Thanks for your one, two, three, but no thanks. See, we've our own one, two, three, four, five ...

1. stop illegal immigration
2. pass the FairTax
3. protect our trade
4. legalize/regulate/tax under 2 the illegal drug trade
5. drill baby drill

The rest will take care of itself in due and natural course.