Politics, Government & Public Policy: December 2017 Archives
"Eat, drink, and be merry" -- tomorrow is the other party's problem.
It's hard to remember that just a couple of decades ago, our government did do something about the deficit, other than make it worse. First under George H.W. Bush, and then under Bill Clinton, Congress and the president worked together to pass major deficit-reduction bills that actually tried to put the finances of the country on a reasonably stable long-term footing. These bills were not very popular; the first may have cost Bush re-election. But they were what responsible government looks like.Nowadays, with our entitlements crisis much closer, both parties seem to have chosen the slogan "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die!" Entitlements costing more than we take in in tax revenue? Obviously, we need to make them even bigger! Taxes too low to cover all our spending commitments? Cut taxes! The idea seems to be that if you can push through your pet programs now, by the time the reckoning comes, they'll be too popular to touch, and the other guys will have to find some way to pay for all your goodies.
How's the new meritocracy working out? We have the worst governing class in American history. Maybe we're stuck in a local maxima that we can't escape without a significant jolt to the system.
Rich Lowry writes that Trump has a string of successes in his first year as president.
Republicans have tried, on and off, to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling since the 1980s. The effort has always engendered intense opposition and always been abandoned. A provision for drilling in ANWR is included in the Republican tax bill almost as an afterthought.Republicans took a constitutional fight against ObamaCare's individual mandate to the Supreme Court in 2012, and lost. They targeted it in their ObamaCare repeal-and-replace bill earlier this year, and lost. They tried again with a last-ditch "skinny repeal" bill, and lost yet again. Repeal of the individual mandate is also included in the Republican tax bill.
As the year ends, President Trump is compiling a solid record of accomplishment. Much of it is unilateral, dependent on extensive executive actions rolling back President Barack Obama's regulations, impressive judicial appointments and the successful fight against ISIS overseas. The tax bill is the significant legislative achievement that heretofore has been missing.
Say what you will about his personal flaws, but Trump has delivered the most success for conservatives of any president in a long, long time.
