ConservativeHome's The Republican

Are Americans soft? Not in the way Obama says, but if we’re honest with ourselves, we could stand to toughen up a bit

Ryan Streeter
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Obama’s claim that Americans have grown soft has received a lot of justified criticism.

Having blamed his troubles on everything from ATMs to Japanese tsunamis to the Arab Spring to FoxNews, he’s finally resorted to going after you and me. As Byron York has written, he's frustrated that Americans aren't embracing his agenda, which makes them "soft." Apparently Obama wasn't satisfied with the backlash he got by telling black Americans they are complainers, so he decided to dish on everyone.

He's ended up looking a bit silly in all of this. But we shouldn’t let our criticism of Obama prevent us – even in these economically troubling times – from reflecting on the question of whether we have the moral muscle we need to confront our nation’s biggest challenges.

Here are four areas in our public life that suggest we could toughen up:

Welfare for me, but not for thee. Voters who want to see federal spending slashed are generally reluctant to embrace entitlement reform. Social Security and Medicare – not foreign aid, not green tech programs, not anything else – are what threaten to bankrupt us, and yet there’s little citizen activism aimed at reforming them. They are, after all, big social welfare programs that benefit us all. If we’re tough enough, we’ll embrace reform

Tax cuts for me, spending cuts for thee. Related to the first point, wanting lower taxes without wanting equal shares of cuts is a sign of softness. Republican candidates in 2012 are big on tax cuts and tax reform, but much vaguer about how they would trim spending necessary to go along with those cuts. That’s because that takes them into the domain of cutting things ordinary middle class voters like. Rather than lead, they accept our collective timidity at face value and run away from the issue. Read Tyler Cowen’s NYT column yesterday for more on this topic. If we want to get the government under control, lowering taxes is a key part of it, but so is cutting spending at levels that are serious. Are we tough enough for that?

Tax fairness for me, but not for thee. Obama talks about the rich paying their fair share because class warfare sells. But the truth, of course, is different than what he says: the percentage of federal taxes already paid by the richest Americans makes us one of the most progressive tax systems around – and that’s according to the OECD, not some right-wing group. In a republic like ours, the rich should pay more than everyone else, but everyone else should also pay something, and right now nearly half of us don't pay any income taxes. We all have a stake in the republic. But you see very little activism for this kind of fairness because it ultimately means a net increase in the income taxes that lower middle class families pay. Who’s willing to take a tough stand on this kind of fairness and justice? Republicans talk about "comprehensive tax reform" but avoid saying too clearly what it means for the half of America that gets off each April tax-free.

Productivity for thee, not for me. Before the recession, the percentage of working age adults who were actually working was dropping – so much so that we fell below the European average in 2007. Young adults aren’t forming families like they used to, and now the recession has exacerbated these troubling trends in our labor force and households. The ideals of independence, self-sufficiency, and enterprise have been under attack by liberal elites for some time, and now they seem to be eroding in a big enough swath of the populace as a whole that we should be deeply worried about the future workforce's ability to keep America headed in the right direction. But who really talks about these trends? It would seem too harsh. It's much easier to find a part of the population without much of a voice - such as poor people or immigrants - and accuse them of not embodying American virtues, than to look in the mirror.

Obama is wrong that people who don’t support his Leviathan strategy for America are “soft.” But we shouldn’t let our defense of ourselves prohibit us from asking the tough question: are we strong enough to deal head-on with the difficult times we're living in?

Where have the Republican reformers gone? Conservative voters haven't gotten the message about tax and entitlement reform - because candidates and politicians are too timid to talk about them

Ryan Streeter
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Conservative voters do a pretty good job of recognizing reformers when they see them. Last week, we reported that in our latest poll, voters pick Paul Ryan and Chris Christie long before they choose Rick Perry and Mitt Romney when asked who they think the best Republican reformers are.

What about the issues? We also asked them which of the following four reform proposals, which Republicans are pushing and Democrats resisting, are the most urgent. The results are as follows:

61% - Repealing ObamaCare and using market-based reforms to lower health care costs

20.5% - Imposing a moratorium on new federal regulations and repealing the worst regulations currently on the books

11.5% - Making entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security solvent

  7.5% - Lowering tax rates and removing most exemptions and deductions

 
We have consistently seen that even the most fiscally conservative voters become less conservative when asked about their appetite for reforming Medicare and Social Security. So the 11.5% figure on entitlements isn’t terribly surprising. Despite all of Paul Ryan’s charts, graphs, and videos, voters don’t feel as urgent about reforming entitlement programs as they do other programs that have a less negative effect on the deficit.

Tax reform, likewise, would have a profound effect on the economy. All evidence suggests that it would spur growth significantly. But it registers at the bottom among voters.

So why the high marks for repealing ObamaCare and, to a lesser extent, regulatory reform?

We didn’t probe respondents about motivation or intention. But I have a simple theory: ObamaCare and regulations are frequently cited on the cable shows and in the news as having a deleterious effect on jobs and businesses. And jobs are on people’s minds these day. Of course, part of ObamaCare’s negative ratings stems from the fact that people witnessed its creation amidst rancorous politics. But overall, the effects on the economy seem most likely to explain why repealing the health care law and regulations get higher marks than entitlement and tax reform.

This suggests that Republicans could do the entitlement and tax reform cause some good by making a clear economic case for doing so.

What these results also show, though, is that our candidates and political leaders have failed to make a persuasive case about deficit reduction. Entitlement and tax reform are the two pillars of deficit reduction - an unavoidable conclusion from the facts and from the recommendations of everything from Obama's deficit commission to the Paul Ryan budget.

The fact that urgency on this front is low is because our political class is too timid to be urgent about these issues. Case in point: the Social Security debate in the 2012 GOP race quickly became, and stayed, an exercise in political demagoguery. When's the last time our candidates actually debated the issue - as an issue?

Party of Change, and the Party of Stasis: Three things that should be separating Republicans from Democrats going into 2012

Ryan Streeter
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In yesterday’s Washington Examiner, Michael Barone wrote:

[Obama] blithely ignored the recommendations of his own commission headed by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. He has said since he would take a look at raising the Medicare eligibility age -- it's now lower than the Social Security age.

But anyone can take a look at a proposal. We pay presidents a good salary to lead, not just to look.

So far the Republican presidential candidates have not done much leading on entitlements either. They have tended to take a gingerly approach to Paul Ryan's Medicare proposal and Newt Gingrich even trashed it.

The conventional wisdom is that this is simple political prudence. Don't give the other side a juicy target.

But we are faced not only with a huge short-term budget problem but with the prospect of a Western European future of an enlarged government, ever higher taxes and lower growth. Is that really what American voters want?

President Obama has shown zero interest in reforming what everyone knows is the greatest threat to America’s fiscal future: entitlements’ growing burden on our economy. He has had numerous opportunities to confront this growing crisis and has hid under the covers each time.

Congressional Democrats, who grow more left-wing with each passing month it seems, show no signs of doing anything differently than Obama on this issue.

The Democrats have today become the Part of Stasis – that is, the party that keeps things as they are. Terms like “progressive” mean nothing anymore for a party bent on defending the status quo at all costs.

On entitlements (keep them as they are), tax policy (raise taxes on the rich), and job-creation (spend federal dollars to “stimulate” the economy), they have no interest in doing anything that resembles a solution to today's problems. 

As Barone points out, the current GOP presidential candidates are not doing much better on this front when it comes to entitlements. Faced with town hall questions on Medicare and protestors holding signs such as “Hands off Medicare and Social Security,” they walk delicately around these issues. The web sites of the two frontrunners, Romney and Perry, offer only vague generalities on entitlement reform. Everyone knows why: as Barone points out, it’s a matter of “political prudence.”

But Republicans have become the Party of Change, whether some of them like it or not, especially on entitlement reform. After the Paul Ryan budget passed the House in April, the Republicans became the party of policy activism on entitlement and tax reform. Republican presidential candidates should take advantage of this new reality.

Three years after Barack Obama ran on the theme of change, he’s standing guard over failed policies of the previous century. Republicans are advocating 21^st century ideas. Candidates should make that point over and again, especially in three main ways:

Ask Americans to help save the future. First, use the attention of the national media to explain to the American people that our current path today means higher taxes, even fewer jobs, and desperation tomorrow. It’s a given, not open to interpretation. And then ask everyone under 55 to be the generation of reform, the next "greatest generation," the generation that saves America. Ask citizens to embrace the kind of change that will save our economy for ourselves when we’re older, and our children when they reach our age. Call on Americans to live with a new tax code that gives out fewer favors in exchange for rates everyone can live with. Barack Obama never asked anything of people other than to vote for him when he talked about "change" in 2008. Republicans should call on Americans to help be part of the change, to embrace reform that affects their lives, to participate in rescuing the future.

Demand fairness in our entitlement programs. Right now, the Democrats discriminate against the young. They also favor welfare for the wealthy. Let’s change that. Republicans are offering ideas that require the wealthy to bear more of their retirement security and all of us to play a more active role in choosing future healthcare options as a way to reduce the costs that young workers have to bear. Explain these points over and over. Republicans favor fairness as a way to save the future, while Democrats discriminate in ways that will wreck the future.

Demand fairness in the tax code. End loopholes and lower rates. Those should be the only two battle cries. If, through ending a series of loopholes and exemptions, some portion of the affluent population sees a slight net increase in what they pay overall, so be it. It’s time to worry less about the pledge most congressional Republicans have signed not to raise taxes and more about a tax system that is clear, predictable, and favorable to growth.

Right now, Republican candidates do not want to rock the boat - especially on entitlement reform, but also on tax reform to some degree (i.e., what it will really mean to close loopholes, etc.). Everyone is sure that rocking it will lead to electoral disaster. But Obama and the Democrats will use Mediscare tactics anyway. That ship has sailed and will keep sailing. Republicans should beat them to the punch, get out in front of the issue, and talk straight about America's future with voters - who will be more likely to reward candidates than one might think.

Does the Tea Party have Michele Bachmann's titanium spine? Let's hope not

Ryan Streeter
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Pete Wehner’s and Yuval Levin’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today was refreshing - and important.

Why? Because they called on the Tea Party to live up to its own terms – something America needs in a big way going into 2012 and beyond. Here’s what I mean: the Tea Party has been the greatest force for limited government in America since the Republicans’ victory in 1994, maybe since Ronald Reagan. And yet the movement has been less enthusiastic about limiting the REAL drivers off long-term government dominance (entitlements) than about limiting discretionary spending, which everyone knows will do virtually nothing to reduce our deficit on its own.

Levin and Wehner make this point by highlighting how Michele Bachmann, darling of the Tea Party, refuses to commit on exactly the issue that has the most to do with restraining the cost and expanse of government. They put it this way:

[Paul Ryan's plan] is the best, most far-reaching reform of health-care entitlements on the table. Yet when asked about Mr. Ryan's Medicare plan, Mrs. Bachmann's titanium spine seems to fold.

She has said she supports the Ryan budget's discretionary cuts but puts "an asterisk" over its Medicare reform. "We have to make sure going forward with senior citizens, that we're focusing on a higher quality of life, dealing with cures for instance for senior citizens," she told one interviewer.

If Mrs. Bachmann is worried that Mr. Ryan's reforms would not address her concerns, then there are other approaches to choose from. But she has declined to offer or endorse any, expressing only vague support for a small increase in the retirement age and greater means testing—neither of which would make a real dent in Medicare's growth, since neither would reform the grossly inefficient payment system that causes costs to explode throughout the health sector. An asterisk is not enough.

They continue:

The tea party movement has been indispensable in forcing Republicans (and through them forcing Washington) to start reversing the rampant spending of the last few decades. It can now do the same with respect to the far greater spending explosion looming over the next few decades—holding politicians, including presidential candidates, to a high and principled standard when it comes to addressing our fiscal problems. It can educate voters about our entitlement crisis and demand that office holders and candidates explain what they will do to fix the problem, and especially to reform Medicare.

If the tea party movement does this, it will take its place among the great, constructive political movements in U.S. history. If it doesn't, it will be judged to have been fundamentally unserious when it came to reining in the spending Leviathan.

Back in May I made a similar point:

In one big way: Tea Party 1.0, which led to historic gains in the House last November, was based on cutting (discretionary) spending. It's time for Tea Party 2.0, which needs to be based on reforming entitlements and the tax code. The movement's various leaders have not been as active or vocal on entitlements as they have been on spending…Tea partiers in Congress and activists around the country understand that the REAL mission is bigger than they thought, but the movement has not yet updated its rallying cry…If any movement can turn entitlement reform into a winning issue for candidates, the tea party can. If it tries.

The Tea Party cannot risk supporing Bachmann if, on the single greatest cost-driving issue of our day, her titanium spine turns to cardboard. They need to hold her, and all other candidates, accountable for what they will do on entitlements, and especially Medicare.

Low taxes and job growth go hand in hand with entitlement reform

Ryan Streeter
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Conn Carroll is exactly right this morning at the Examiner when he writes:

Would any Republican ever say that we must raise taxes to create jobs? Of course not. Yet by pretending that candidates can avoid talking about entitlement reform, some Republicans are essentially arguing just that.

Any conservative candidate will tell you that among the top policy priorities for job creation is low taxes. Texas Gov. Rick Perry sure is talking up the role his state’s low taxes played in his state’s strong job creation record. But those low taxes are only sustainable as long as entitlement spending is kept low. That is why Perry fought so hard for flexibility in the state’s Medicaid program.

The exact same is true, only more so, at the federal level. The only way our current tax rates, let alone lower ones, can be sustainable is if government spending is reduced. And the only way to reduce government spending is to reform entitlement programs, Medicare being the big spending league leader.

The mere possibility that this fact isn’t already thoroughly ingrained into every Republican’s brain is exactly why so many conservatives are pushing for Ryan to run.

Without entitlement reform, our taxes are going up - big time. And, the role of the federal government will only grow more intrusive as bureaucrats play a greater and greater role in making health care decisions for us. There is hardly any scenario where this isn't really bad for the economy.

That's why Ryan's budget is called A Path to Prosperity. His team has tried hard to sell it as much an economic growth agenda as an entitlement reform agenda. I think it's safe to say the public has gotten a better grasp of the latter than the former, but the two definitely go together.

There is some hope that the dual message can get out. The readers who have been writing in to encourage Ryan to run seem to understand the connection between entitlement reform and a robust economy.

So what comes next?

Natalie Gonnella
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As America moves forward after a dramatic conclusion to Washington's latest budget battle many are trying to wrap their head around what comes next

With deficit reduction measures taking root alongside a three step debt limit increase, the Washington Post (using the latest analysis from the CBO) offers a great visual of what's to come over the next few months (full graphic available to view here.)

How much of America's debt problem is OUR fault (that’s right, as in you and me, not just those narcissists in Washington, DC)?

Ryan Streeter
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We're a conservative country. And yet we're massively in debt. How does being conservative square with letting our finances get so out of control?

It’s ironic that Gallup released it’s political ideology survey this week showing that America continues to be a conservative country just as Congress was passing a bill allowing America’s debt load to surpass its GDP.

When it comes to party affiliation, America is pretty evenly divided, but we are definitely more conservative than liberal – and it’s been that way quite a long time (see the graph above). While 41% of Americans say they are conservative, only 21% say they are liberal. Even 23% of Democrats – nearly one in four – say they are conservative, compared to just 4% of Republicans who say they are liberal. Independents are also pretty conservative – 44%, or nearly half – and they’ve grown more so since Obama has been elected.

So we’re a conservative country. And we’re massively in debt. And the debt is growing like crazy even with the debt ceiling deal that has made cuts substantial enough to slow the debt growth.

One common explanation for this tension – namely, how such a conservative country could be saddled with so much out-of-control spending – is that it’s Washington’s fault. The political class has lost touch with ordinary Americans. This is true, but it’s not a complete explanation.

The harder truth to accept is that we conservative Americans, over time, have supported the expansion of entitlements that are driving our deficit spending. There has been plenty of evidence that conservatives resist cutting those entitlements, despite recognizing they are a problem. It’s much easier to support cutting foreign aid, welfare, and space exploration, for instance, than entitlements such as Medicare. And yet it's the latter, not the former, that are fueling our spending binge on into the future.

As the public reaction to the House Republicans’ budget – which proposes to reform Medicare – has shown, Americans are not yet ready to apply their conservatism to the government’s biggest spenders.

We need political leadership (someone with conservative views in the White House would sure help) to change this. But we also need an uprising of Main Street conservatives from around the country who stand ready to apply their conservatism to the country’s problems. Without grassroots support and enthusiasm, real reform will be too slow in coming.

An uprising of this sort would need to be based on some key principles and realities:

Conservatism needs to reclaim the reliable old values and rhetoric of thrift. Conservatives in America should be the anti-debt caucus, not just when it comes to Washington but when it comes to personal debt, too, which is still at threat-level heights. Savings should be central to a conservative vision of the future. This requires living within our means, not just as a nation, but as citizens.

Conservatives need to be as anti-entitlement with themselves as they were anti-entitlement with welfare moms in the 1990s. In the 1990s conservatives frequently spoke about the “entitlement mentality” of people on welfare and the bureaucracies that encouraged them, but you never hear that expression used today to describe – us. And yet what other than a sense of entitlement to future benefits (paid by others) makes changing Medicare and Social Security so hard?

Conservatives are the pro-youth caucus. Millennials, generally those born after 1982, went big for Obama in 2008 and remain quite liberal in their views, and yet they stand the most to lose by America’s fiscal mess. Conservative politicians and policymakers have advanced the most pro-youth reforms out there, and yet they haven’t articulated them as such. That needs to change. A conservative renewal should actually be driven by young people.

Conservatives need to get wiser on tax reform. Conservatives generally all support lowering tax rates so we can have more growth. They need to be as staunchly against special interest tax breaks as they are for lower rates, even if it means supporting eliminating some of those breaks without the offsetting tax cuts that many insist on now. This will help conservatives sell the tax rates they want to a larger part of the population. More importantly, it would help conservatives renew their commitment as advocates of ordinary, middle class Americans, not protectors of whoever was well-connected enough to get their wishes written into the tax code.

Conservatives need to redefine “shared sacrifice” away from class warfare and into something more noble. Instead of resisting Obama’s use of the term to apply to higher taxes for the wealthy (something a good number of Main Street conservatives actually support), conservatives need to coopt the term for what everyone under 55 years old should be prepared to do: give up the entitlements as they are currently defined, and prepare for a whole new system. The truth is, if we make reforms soon, this won't require too much sacrifice. But it will require embracing programs that do less than previously promised, and should also ask people to save a bit more than they have been.

Without a renewal of conservatism in the country that is focused not just on spending cuts but on real reform, America the conservative nation will continue to go the way of the wayward, undisciplined child we have unwittingly become.

Ahead of today's Twitter @townhall, a look at some of the 140 character queries from congressional Republicans

Natalie Gonnella
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As the White House prepares for its first Twitter based Town Hall meeting today, thousands of #AskObama tweets have poured across the social media site.  And while most of the questions won't make it to this afternoon's 'prime time' event, GOP Congress members have tactfully used the opportunity to push for answers on a number of pressing policy concerns.

From the ATF to unemployment, here's a look at some of the 140 character queries for President Obama from congressional Republicans:

Congressman Tom Price:

@RepTomPrice Are you going to release an updated, score-able budget, rather than just a political speech? #AskObama

Congressman Tom Graves:

@RepTomGraves #AskObama with unemployment at 9.1%, do you have a plan #4jobs?

Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart:

@MarioDB #AskObama: Mr. President, Your Chosen Head Of The DNC Says Democrats Own The Economy. Do You Agree? Is This The Obama Economy?

Republican Study Committee:

@RepublicanStudy #AskObama what he has against a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution. #CutCapBalance

House Ways and Means Committee:

@WaysandMeansGOP #AskObama Why are you holding up the 3 bipartisan trade agreements that would create 250K US Jobs? 1.usa.gov/lCfVwZ

House Natural Resources Committee:

@NatResources Why is your Admin. placing the majority of American #offshore #energy resources off limits? #askobama j.mp/r67QES

House Oversight Chair Darrell Issa:

@DarrellIssa #AskObama: who is right on #fastandfurious: Eric Holder or #ATFDir.Melson, whom we just interviewed? INFO:http://1.usa.gov/pvqXJQ #2nd

Congressman Tim Huelskamp:

@CongHuelskamp #AskObama: Will you back #GOP leg that hinders job-killing regulation + red tape? jobs.GOP.Gov #4jobs

Congressman Tom Rooney:

@TomRooney 798 days, $3.2 trillion in new debt since Senate Democrats passed a budget. What's your plan #4Jobs? #AskObama

Congressman Bob Gibbs:

@RepBobGibbs #AskObama: Will you tell the Senate 2 vote on #HR872, leg that will reduce uncertainty #smallbiz owners say prevent them from hiring? #4jobs

Congressman David Rivera:

@RepRivera Will Free Trade Agreements w/ Colombia, Panama & S Korea come before Cong, w/out additional conditions, before Aug recess? #AskObama #4jobs

Congressman Dennis Ross:

@RepDennisRoss Which is a better revenue generator? Economic growth or tax increases? Unlike the classroom lecture, u can't have both.#AskObama

Senator Orrin Hatch:

@OrrinHatch Gas prices are high. We’re losing 90m barrels of oil due to your moratorium, plus jobs. Why not open more land in Utah? #AskObama

Congresswoman Renee Ellmers:

@RepReneeEllmers What are you doing to remove regulation, taxation and uncertainty which small biz owners say prevent them from hiring? #askobama #4jobs

As debt negotiations stall (yet again), another freshman threatens to filibuster

Natalie Gonnella
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With less than a month to go before a possible US default and little progress on a debt deal, Senator Rand Paul plans to flex his filibuster muscles in an attempt to push negotiations out in the open.

Speaking about the stagnated debt debate in an interview on C-SPAN's Newsmakers this morning, the Kentucky freshman threatened to all unanimous consent calls next week in an effort to force lawmakers to get serious about deficit-reduction proposals.

Picking up where freshman Senator Ron Johnson left off with his own filibuster attempt last week, here's a look at what Senator Paul had to say about his plans:

I’m part of the freshman group in the Senate that’s saying no more...we will filibuster until we talk about the debt ceiling, until we talk about proposals...And many of us in the conservative wing are going to present our own proposal [this] week, and that is to raise the debt ceiling. We will actually vote in favor of raising the debt ceiling [this] week if we can, but it’ll be contingent upon passing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

Americans see out-of-control spending, rising federal deficits as the biggest threat to freedom

Natalie Gonnella
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As Americans pay tribute to the country's 235th birthday this weekend, a new poll from US News and World Report reveals that most voters believe that Washington's wasteful ways are the biggest threat to American freedom.

With just under a month to go before a potential default, nearly 40% of Americans feel that uncontrolled spending and rising deficits are the biggest concern facing the country today.  This compares with:

• Terrorism 28%
• Politicians who don't listen 20%
• Government regulations 10%
• Gun control 3%

USNWR's Washington Whisper's blog also points out that:

The poll jives with the rising concern in the nation that Washington isn't attacking federal spending with enough gusto and comes at a time when Democrats and Republicans remain divided on how to cut the deficit.

With budget negotiations currently at a standstill, and just week's to go before the debt ceiling is reached, it will be interesting to see how voters views may change as the August deadline approaches.