October 19, 2008
WSJ: The coming "Liberal Supermajority"
The Wall Street Journal sums up why this election presents the voters with a chance to change the nation in ways they may not fully realize, given the way the Senate and House work together -- or at cross purposes -- to craft legislation.
The editorial, A Liberal Supermajority, ought to replace the thrill running up Obamabots' legs with a chill running down their spines.
If the current polls hold, Barack Obama will win the White House on November 4 and Democrats will consolidate their Congressional majorities, probably with a filibuster-proof Senate or very close to it. Without the ability to filibuster, the Senate would become like the House, able to pass whatever the majority wants.
Though we doubt most Americans realize it, this would be one of the most profound political and ideological shifts in U.S. history. Liberals would dominate the entire government in a way they haven't since 1965, or 1933. In other words, the election would mark the restoration of the activist government that fell out of public favor in the 1970s. If the U.S. really is entering a period of unchecked left-wing ascendancy, Americans at least ought to understand what they will be getting, especially with the media cheering it all on.
The table [above] shows the major bills that passed the House this year or last before being stopped by the Senate minority. Keep in mind that the most important power of the filibuster is to shape legislation, not merely to block it. The threat of 41 committed Senators can cause the House to modify its desires even before legislation comes to a vote. Without that restraining power, all of the following have very good chances of becoming law in 2009 or 2010.
- Medicare for all. When HillaryCare cratered in 1994, the Democrats concluded they had overreached, so they carved up the old agenda into smaller incremental steps, such as Schip for children. A strongly Democratic Congress is now likely to lay the final flagstones on the path to government-run health insurance from cradle to grave.
Mr. Obama wants to build a public insurance program, modeled after Medicare and open to everyone of any income. According to the Lewin Group, the gold standard of health policy analysis, the Obama plan would shift between 32 million and 52 million from private coverage to the huge new entitlement. Like Medicare or the Canadian system, this would never be repealed.
The commitments would start slow, so as not to cause immediate alarm. But as U.S. health-care spending flowed into the default government options, taxes would have to rise or services would be rationed, or both. Single payer is the inevitable next step, as Mr. Obama has already said is his ultimate ideal.
- The business climate. "We have some harsh decisions to make," Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned recently, speaking about retribution for the financial panic. Look for a replay of the Pecora hearings of the 1930s, with Henry Waxman, John Conyers and Ed Markey sponsoring ritual hangings to further their agenda to control more of the private economy. The financial industry will get an overhaul in any case, but telecom, biotech and drug makers, among many others, can expect to be investigated and face new, more onerous rules. See the "Issues and Legislation" tab on Mr. Waxman's Web site for a not-so-brief target list.
The danger is that Democrats could cause the economic downturn to last longer than it otherwise will by enacting regulatory overkill like Sarbanes-Oxley. Something more punitive is likely as well, for instance a windfall profits tax on oil, and maybe other industries.
- Union supremacy. One program certain to be given right of way is "card check." Unions have been in decline for decades, now claiming only 7.4% of the private-sector work force, so Big Labor wants to trash the secret-ballot elections that have been in place since the 1930s. The "Employee Free Choice Act" would convert workplaces into union shops merely by gathering signatures from a majority of employees, which means organizers could strongarm those who opposed such a petition.
The bill also imposes a compulsory arbitration regime that results in an automatic two-year union "contract" after 130 days of failed negotiation. The point is to force businesses to recognize a union whether the workers support it or not. This would be the biggest pro-union shift in the balance of labor-management power since the Wagner Act of 1935.
- Taxes. Taxes will rise substantially, the only question being how high. Mr. Obama would raise the top income, dividend and capital-gains rates for "the rich," substantially increasing the cost of new investment in the U.S. More radically, he wants to lift or eliminate the cap on income subject to payroll taxes that fund Medicare and Social Security. This would convert what was meant to be a pension insurance program into an overt income redistribution program. It would also impose a probably unrepealable increase in marginal tax rates, and a permanent shift upward in the federal tax share of GDP.
- The green revolution. A tax-and-regulation scheme in the name of climate change is a top left-wing priority. Cap and trade would hand Congress trillions of dollars in new spending from the auction of carbon credits, which it would use to pick winners and losers in the energy business and across the economy. Huge chunks of GDP and millions of jobs would be at the mercy of Congress and a vast new global-warming bureaucracy. Without the GOP votes to help stage a filibuster, Senators from carbon-intensive states would have less ability to temper coastal liberals who answer to the green elites.
- Free speech and voting rights. A liberal supermajority would move quickly to impose procedural advantages that could cement Democratic rule for years to come. One early effort would be national, election-day voter registration. This is a long-time goal of Acorn and others on the "community organizer" left and would make it far easier to stack the voter rolls. The District of Columbia would also get votes in Congress -- Democratic, naturally.
Felons may also get the right to vote nationwide, while the Fairness Doctrine is likely to be reimposed either by Congress or the Obama FCC. A major goal of the supermajority left would be to shut down talk radio and other voices of political opposition.
- Special-interest potpourri. Look for the watering down of No Child Left Behind testing standards, as a favor to the National Education Association. The tort bar's ship would also come in, including limits on arbitration to settle disputes and watering down the 1995 law limiting strike suits. New causes of legal action would be sprinkled throughout most legislation. The anti-antiterror lobby would be rewarded with the end of Guantanamo and military commissions, which probably means trying terrorists in civilian courts. Google and MoveOn.org would get "net neutrality" rules, subjecting the Internet to intrusive regulation for the first time.
It's always possible that events -- such as a recession -- would temper some of these ambitions. Republicans also feared the worst in 1993 when Democrats ran the entire government, but it didn't turn out that way. On the other hand, Bob Dole then had 43 GOP Senators to support a filibuster, and the entire Democratic Party has since moved sharply to the left. Mr. Obama's agenda is far more liberal than Bill Clinton's was in 1992, and the Southern Democrats who killed Al Gore's BTU tax and modified liberal ambitions are long gone.
In both 1933 and 1965, liberal majorities imposed vast expansions of government that have never been repealed, and the current financial panic may give today's left another pretext to return to those heydays of welfare-state liberalism. Americans voting for "change" should know they may get far more than they ever imagined.
Posted by Mike Lief at October 19, 2008 08:40 PM
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Comments
C'mom Mike...the election is still a couple weeks away and you've already thrown in the towel (head towel). What gives? You sound just like the liberal media you despise--jumping to conclusions before the race is over. A lot might happen between election day and now and you know what...not one vote is cast yet. Let's stop the e-media Ouija board crap, point out why Osama-Obama is a poor choice and then vote. Time will tell, as we know from the last Presidential election--right?
Posted by: Heinrich at October 19, 2008 09:38 PM
I thought this post did a decent job pointing out why Obama is a lousy choice. I haven't given up; it's just that McCain is such an uninspiring choice and the Obamabots are so damned vituperative.
It's also wrong to say that no votes have been cast; the absentee ballots are flying fast and furious, many of them cast during the height of the bailout kerfuffle.
All that being said, the electorate seems as volatile as a batch of sweating sticks of dynamite being ferried across a swaying bridge over the Amazon in a battered old truck driven my desperate men.
How's that for an overwrought metaphor?
Posted by: Mike Lief at October 19, 2008 10:15 PM
Republicans need to sit back and think about why this is happening. How could a country that is more right of center back a party that is contolled by liberals in the House, in the Senate and now in the Presidency?
Republicans need to open their thick heads for a second and just think. The reason is George Bush and the backing of George Bush through his failed presidency. Stop blaming the liberal media elites. The media is liberal and is clearly helping Obama. That's not the reason for this amazing reversal of fortune however.
Despite his liberal politics, Barack Obama comes across as even tempered, a smart individual and more astute on the use of limited American military power. He didn't buy the weapons of mass destruction hype that got the country into Iraq and this gives him credibility among swing voters who still can't understand how we got into Iraq in the first place. The decision to go into Iraq was a huge strategic error so the candidate who opposed the war in the first place sounds better to the swing voter than the guy who talks about how "the surge" helped the U.S. regain the momentum. It's simple to understand so don't fight it and let it sink in. If you respond by trying to tell people that Iraq was a good idea you are just sinking in intellectual quick sand.
On the economy, once again Obama sounds more confident and capable. After four years of the bumbling George Bush and eye popping spending, people long for something stable and sane. Despite the fact that he plans to foolishly tax businesses during a recession, his folly seems insignificant compared to the nationalization of American banks under the Bush administration. Under Republican leadership we now have a socialist economy so the liberal and consertive labels just don't seem to matter.
McCain, the new champion of the right, wants to buy up bad mortage debt from people who got in over their heads. He's vowed to use $300 billion dollars for this purpose. Obama says this is a bad idea and looks like the smart one once again. It's not a good deal for taxpayers to buy up bad home loans with prices that far overstate their worth.
It will be a sad day when Obama wins the White House and no one will have more to do with his victory than George Bush and the Republican party that followed him over the cliff.
Posted by: Gecko at October 20, 2008 06:47 AM