OPINION:
As we head toward what seems to be a deal on the debt limit and associated spending reforms, it is worth thinking about what we can learn from this experience.
First and most importantly, legislation matters. House Republicans are still the only ones who have written down and passed legislation that increases the debt limit. That means that their approach is framing the conversation, and it has been since they passed that legislation.
Consequently, the final deal will reflect the framework in the House legislation, including some retrieval of unspent pandemic funds and a possible resetting of budget baselines in an attempt to erase some of the Biden administration increases (important because each year’s budget is built on the previous one, so increases build on one another unless someone tries to reset them). There will also be some cap (1% a year, 2% a year?) in the nominal growth of federal spending (both defense and non-defense). The debt limit will be raised just enough to ensure that we will be right back here in 18 to 24 months.
If you have a clear idea about where you want to go, and the other team doesn’t, you set the terms of the discussion.
Second, congressional Republicans work better together as a team. In the wake of the House legislation, Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee’s letter made it clear that 43 Republican senators were ready to back the House Republicans’ approach. As a practical matter, that left the White House alone in arguing the untenable proposition that spending reforms were unnecessary.
Third, this pending deal is a preface to the real contest. Given the looming expiration of some of the provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, or TCJA, and the recurrence of the need to increase the debt limit in the next two years, it seems likely that the 2024 election will be, at least in part, a contest over federal spending and taxation.
The results of the 2024 election — who wins the presidency, control of the House, and the right to preside over the Senate — will be dispositive both to the debt limit and to the TCJA.
Finally, as Republicans take a well-deserved victory lap in the wake of a pretty impressive deal, they need to be aware that the legislation is only a good first step. Recent congressional history is littered with “historic” deals that were undermined almost as soon as they were signed.
In 1986, President Ronald Reagan and Congress heralded the Immigration Reform and Control Act as a marriage of amnesty and enforcement. We got the amnesty but are still waiting for the enforcement. This was back when there were only about 3 million people in this country illegally.
In 1996, House Speaker Newt Gingrich and President Bill Clinton came to an agreement on welfare reform, the critical component of which was … a requirement for recipients to work. The Democrats (and some fuzzy-headed Republicans) have spent the last 25 years chipping away at work requirements. This week, Democrats were struggling to ensure that the current deal will not result in … work requirements for recipients of food stamps or welfare.
In 2011, Speaker John Boehner announced the “historic” deal on budget sequestration as a means of reforming spending. Sequestration worked as intended for two years: in 2012 and 2013 federal budget outlays actually declined in nominal terms for the first time since 1965. Then the spenders in both parties got to work and, aided by lobbyists, made sequestration a dead letter.
The lesson is this: In governance, as in life, follow-through, persistence and commitment are essential.
This effort to reform federal spending will, like all other efforts to minimize the federal government, come under attack immediately and consistently from those — government workers, contractors, lobbyists, etc. — who benefit from enlarging the federal government.
Congressional Republicans need to be ready for the long march.
• Michael McKenna, a columnist for The Washington Times, co-hosts “The Unregulated Podcast.” He was most recently a deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs at the White House.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.