Category Archives: U.S. Congress

Make Cuba thirsty

Politics, U.S. Congress

By Steve Brawner
© 2014 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. That’s how Manny Scott used to see it.

Scott, a professional speaker, was one of those kids who grew up in a gang-infested inner-city neighborhood and didn’t have much of a future until a caring teacher, Erin Gruwell, came into his life. The movie “Freedom Writers” told the story of Gruwell and her students.

Scott now travels the country telling his story and encouraging audiences to care. Addressing Arkansas school board members Dec. 11, he told of being asked in Texas about what to do with students who refuse help. “You can lead a horse to water,” he had replied, but before he had finished the statement, a lifelong rancher had excitedly corrected him by saying that while it’s true that you can’t make a horse drink, “You sure as blank can slap some salt in its mouth and make it thirsty.”

For 53 years, the United States has tried to make Cuba drink. Actually, it’s tugged that horse by the reins, pushed it from behind, and grabbed it by its mane and pulled. It’s tried yelling at the horse, pleading with it, and reasoning with it. Despite Uncle Sam’s best efforts, the horse has stubbornly refused to comply, growing ever scrawnier in the process.

Earlier this month, President Obama reintroduced the very American concept that if something isn’t working, try something else. It’s why we have light bulbs. He said the United States would open diplomatic relations with Cuba and try to accomplish through engagement what it failed to accomplish by heavy-handedness. In Arkansas, Sen. John Boozman and Rep. Rick Crawford, both Republicans, reacted favorably. The Arkansas Farm Bureau and other state agricultural groups said it was a good idea.

Opponents had a different response: Keep pulling on that rein until that horse does what we tell it to do.

While Obama can re-establish relations, it will be up to Congress to lift the trade embargo that has given the Castro brothers, Fidel and Raul, a convenient villain to blame. Given the partisan makeup of Congress and the reactions of many Republicans, it seems likely that the embargo will remain in place for a while. In Arkansas, Sen.-elect Tom Cotton and Rep. Steve Womack were critical of the announcement, saying or implying that it amounted to appeasement.

The concern is understandable, but if at first you don’t succeed, for goodness’ sake, try something else. The United States tried to outlast Fidel Castro and ended up with his brother, who’s 83. Maybe both will die soon, and a democracy will arise from the grass roots. Or maybe Raul will stick around for another decade and then be replaced by one of the Castros’ sons. North Korea, after all, is now led by the dictatorial grandson of its dictatorial Great Leader.

Instead of the United States trying unsuccessfully to make Cuba become a democracy with a free market economy, wouldn’t it be better to make it thirstier for those things so it would choose them on its own? An end to the embargo would expose Cubans to the freedoms and prosperity that some of their countrymen braved 90-mile raft trips across the ocean to obtain. American businessmen would introduce Cubans to ideas the Castros could not hope to contain. Surely the country has many budding entrepreneurs whose wits enabled them to supplement their incomes amidst the deprivations of communism. The growing free market would require online access, which would further expose Cubans to non-Castro ideas. Missionaries from the States would share their faith and give Cubans something besides the revolution to worship.

Many Cubans no doubt already thirst for freedom and opportunity. The United States should try to make them thirstier. Do that, and eventually the horse will drink. After 53 years, it’s time to let go of the reins and try using some salt.

Congress: Better, sort of

Debt and deficits, Politics, U.S. Congress

By Steve Brawner
© 2014 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

You could say that what Congress accomplished this month was a vast improvement. You also could say it wasn’t nearly good enough.

On Tuesday, President Obama signed a 1,600-page, $1.1 trillion “cromnibus” bill passed by Congress. The “cr” is an abbreviation for “continuing resolution,” which is a short-term funding mechanism that will be used for the Department of Homeland Security. “Omnibus” is the mechanism funding the rest of the discretionary budget – in other words, not entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, which are on autopilot. Homeland Security is funded only until February so Republicans can try to undo Obama’s immigration order.

This is a step forward because Congress finished this task without a government shutdown, though the deadline for one came pretty close again. Next year will be a circus like always, but at least Congress won’t be playing Russian roulette with the economy for a while.

Unfortunately, important provisions were slipped into this spending bill that weren’t related to the budget. One, written by the big bank Citigroup, amends the Dodd-Frank law passed after the bank bailout and will let banks engage in riskier behavior backed by your tax dollars. If they make money, they’ll keep it. If they lose money, you’ll bail them out. Another provision increases the amounts that big donors can give to the Democratic and Republican National Committees tenfold, from $32,400 to $324,000.

Moreover, Congress relied on a few gimmicks to make the numbers work. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, in fact, has found $30 billion it says violate the spirit of the sequester and the 2013 Murray-Ryan agreement. Without going into too much history, the sequester is a series of automatic spending cuts affecting non-entitlement programs. Murray-Ryan set spending caps for two years and raised spending levels above the sequester.

Google it if you need more. It’s hard to write about this stuff.

Thirty billion dollars is less than 3 percent of $1.1 trillion, so again, it’s not too bad. Still, it’s not great. One provision shifted $7 billion from regular defense spending, which is capped under the sequester and Murray-Ryan, to war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is not.

This is one of many reasons why we should be reluctant to fight all these wars.

In addition to the cromnibus, Congress also passed a one-year bill extending 55 tax breaks retroactive to the beginning of 2014. These were deductions for wind energy production, big business foreign profits, schoolteacher supplies, college tuition, etc.

Some of those may be worthy policies, but there are several problems with doing it this way. First, the tax extenders bill reduces revenues to the federal government by $41.6 billion over 10 years – money future taxpayers will have to cover because Congress didn’t also cut $41.6 billon in spending. Next year, the tax breaks probably will be extended again, further adding to the debt. Also, by extending the tax breaks year after year instead of just cutting taxes permanently, Congress can hide how much these actions actually increase the national debt over time.

“It really is no more complicated than me going home and saying to my kids, ‘I’m going to ask you to pay for this $42 billion because we didn’t want to,’” Maya MacGuineas, CRFB president, said in an interview.

Finally, the whole point of a deduction is to encourage behavior. All of these tax breaks expired at the end of 2013. Waiting until the end of the year and then re-enacting them retroactively created uncertainty and made it harder for businesses to make the investments Congress is trying to encourage. If the credits are a win for the economy, then Congress should have extended them through 2015 so beneficiaries could include them in their plans moving forward. Congress did not do that.

Being a member of Congress often means choosing between two options that are less than ideal. For the record, here’s how Arkansas’ members voted on the two bills. On cromnibus, the yeses were Sen. John Boozman, Sen. Mark Pryor, Rep. Tim Griffin, and Rep. Steve Womack. The no votes were Rep. Rick Crawford and Rep. Tom Cotton. On tax extenders, everybody voted yes except Cotton.

GOP’s timing was good … this year

Elections, Politics, State government, U.S. Congress

By Steve Brawner
© 2014 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Here’s what did not happen on Election Day: The American people did not simply rise up and repudiate President Obama and give Republicans a mandate.

Oh, they did repudiate Obama, but the Republican Party’s big win was more the result of timing and demographic factors that worked entirely in its favor this year and mostly will favor Democrats in 2016.

We’re talking nationally, not about Arkansas. What happened in Arkansas was permanent.

Let’s focus on three big advantages Republicans across the country had working for them.

Our two electorates. The United States is now made up of two distinct voting populations. The one that votes in presidential election years is bigger, younger, and more diverse, favoring Democrats. Many of those voters stay home during midterms, when the leader of the free world is not on the ballot. What’s left is an electorate that is older, whiter, and more affluent – in other words, more Republican.

Second-term midterms. So far, seven U.S. Senate seats have shifted from Democratic to Republican hands, and Sen. Mary Landrieu is probably going to be the eighth in Louisiana’s December runoff. Seven or eight seats sounds like a lot, but that kind of result is not unusual for a midterm election when a president is in his second term and voters are becoming cranky and annoyed. President George W. Bush’s Republicans lost six Senate seats in his second-term midterm, and President Reagan lost eight seats. President Eisenhower, World War II hero and budget balancer, saw his Republican Party lose 13 seats in his second-term midterm elections.

Democrats on the defensive. This year, Democrats were defending 21 of the 36 contested Senate seats, including seven states won by Mitt Romney in 2012. Senators serve six-year terms, so these Democrats were elected during the 2008 presidential election, when they had the advantage, and had to run for re-election this year in a midterm, when the electorate favors Republicans.

The reverse will be true in 2016. Republicans, elected in 2010 when they had an advantage in the midterms (and also after Obamacare was passed) will be defending 24 of the 33 seats up for re-election, and they’ll be doing it in a presidential election year that will be more favorable to Democrats. In seven of those 24 states, Obama won twice.

Republicans will have one historical reality in their favor, and it’s a big one: the fickle American voter. We have a habit of letting one party control the White House for eight years and then giving the other party a shot. In recent years, we’ve gone from eight years of Clinton to eight years of Bush to eight years of Obama. The last time voters let a president’s party stay in power after two terms was 1988, when they elected Reagan’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, for one term.

Of course, what happens between now and 2016 matters. How will Republicans govern now that they will control Congress, and what will President Obama do in his last two years in office? Does Hillary Clinton want the nomination, and if so, will Democrats just give it to her? Are Americans ready to elect her, or any “her”? Will the Republicans beat up each other so badly during the primary process that the nominee emerges too bloodied to win in November? Will one of the two candidates insert their foot so firmly in their mouth that Americans can’t hear anything else they say? Will a well-funded independent candidate like Ross Perot emerge to upset the apple cart?

Those questions remain to be answered. This we know: In 2016, Democrats will have the advantage because it will be a presidential election year, and Republicans will have the advantage because it will be their turn.

Womack: Yes to earmarks, no to pork

Politics, U.S. Congress

By Steve Brawner
© 2014 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

I’ll try to write this carefully because a member of Congress has presented a nuanced position that can’t be explained in three words or less, is out of step with the prevailing mood of his party, and easily could be misconstrued. That kind of activity usually gets congressmen in trouble these days, which is why they so rarely engage in it.

Here goes: Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., is proposing bringing back pork barrel spending.

Oh, wait. I did a terrible job of presenting that carefully. I’m apparently still decompressing from the 60,000 TV ads that ran in the U.S. Senate race in Arkansas this cycle, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

Let’s start over. What the state’s 3rd District congressman proposes is rethinking Congress’ self-imposed ban on earmarks, and maybe bringing them back with significant changes.

Earmarks are congressionally directed spending for specific projects. At their worst, they’re pork. They’re the “bridge to nowhere,” the $223 million Alaska bridge that would have served a tiny population until it was cancelled amidst controversy. In 2011, earmarks were banned by Congress in the name of good government, and they’ve been banned ever since.

Womack, who voted for the ban, says it was a mistake. Speaking to engineers in Springdale last month, he said the money is still being spent – but now by the executive branch. The Constitution says spending is Congress’ job, he said. He said that while some earmarks are wasteful, some can be quite useful. For example, no one knows his district’s highway needs better than he does.

There’s another argument for bringing back earmarks – they might help Congress actually get something done. In the past, earmarks were an important vote-trading tool that helped lawmakers coalesce into a majority. Yes, billions were wasted, but Congress actually functioned as a legislative body instead of the train wreck it’s become. Train wrecks such as the government shutdown cost far more than bridges.

When I mentioned that argument to Womack, he didn’t affirm it – either because he didn’t agree with it, or because he didn’t want to be associated with it. Just talking about earmarks is a big enough leap.

There are, of course, good reasons to continue the earmark ban. According to a recent Gallup Poll, only 14 percent of Americans approve of Congress, while 82 percent disapprove. That’s not exactly a popular mandate for more congressional power. Earmarks might make Congress no less a train wreck – just a more wasteful one. In the past, too many congressmen were judged not by how well they served the country but by how much bacon they brought home. Incumbents already have so much power that, this year, 96 percent of House members and 95 percent of senators who ran for re-election won, according to Politifact. Giving them more pork barrel power only increases the odds they’ll keep their jobs.

Womack is aware of the criticisms. He said earmarks should be reinstated only as part of a much more transparent process, including a cost-benefit analysis for each project. He said earmarks should not be inserted into major, must-pass legislation.

This isn’t the only battle that Womack, a 30-year National Guard veteran, has picked. For years he’s been arguing that Congress should let states and localities enforce their own sales tax regulations for online purchases. Legally, online consumers are supposed to calculate the sales tax for each purchase and then pay what’s required on their own initiative, but few do so.

Womack, a former mayor of Rogers, says the national ban places Main Street businesses at a disadvantage competing with tax-free online retailers. He also says his “Marketplace Fairness Act” isn’t a new tax – it just lets states and localities enforce their current ones.

But that’s another nuanced position, right? It’s so much easier to oppose anything that looks like a tax (while supporting spending increases). This week, House Speaker John Boehner announced Womack’s proposal was off the table for the rest of the year.

Credit to Womack for broaching a couple of difficult subjects. Whether or not they’re good policies, they’re risky politics. It takes a full column to explain Womack’s positions, right or wrong. Right or wrong, it only takes two words to summarize the arguments opponents can use against them: “tax” and “pork.” Which side do you think fits better into a 30-second ad?