Washington has a spending problem. It also has an “explaining problem.”
In fact, the latter may be a bigger
issue. The explaining problem” certainly helps illustrate last week’s
Senate and House votes to prevent a government shutdown, suspend the
debt ceiling and devote an immediate $15.25 billion for hurricane
relief.
The Senate on Thursday approved the triplicate package 80-17.
All noes came from GOP senators, but not before a
failed effort by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., to offset the hurricane money
with unspent foreign aid dollars. The Senate also neutered a plan by
Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., to decouple the hurricane assistance from
overall government funding and the debt-ceiling freeze.
It’s easy to characterize the bill as “emergency
hurricane aid legislation” -- which it was. But in an impassioned speech
shortly before the vote, Sasse described the bill as “much clunkier and
much less explicable or defensible to your or my constituents.”
Congress long ago designed the debt ceiling as a tool
to harness spending. In other words, if you want to spend more, then
lawmakers should be on record as voting to lift the debt limit.
However, that principle became a problem when
entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security
exploded. Congress long ago authorized all of those entitlements, which
consume two-thirds of all federal spending and drive up the debt.
Congress doesn’t vote at regular intervals to approve
money for entitlements. Yet lawmakers must regularly cast ballots to
increase the debt ceiling -- a threshold challenged by the growth of
entitlement programs.
Those phenomena don’t jibe. So lawmakers sweat nearly
every year about taking what the casual observer would interpret as a
vote to “spend more.”
That makes lifting the debt ceiling one of the most
virulent votes a lawmaker can cast. However, a failure to increase the
debt ceiling could spark a stock market crash or trigger a downgrade in
the government’s credit rating.
That’s why presidential administrations and
congressional leaders of both parties always hunt around for some method
to latch a debt ceiling increase with something else. This time,
convenient alibis boiled in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Basin. So
Congress had to approve emergency spending for hurricanes Harvey and
Irma.
Of course, not everyone would vote yea on such an
amalgamated legislative package. But more than enough would. That
perversely eases the blow of lifting the debt limit by … wait for it …
spending more money.
“We’re going to use the hurricane as an excuse to
hide from the truth,” lectured Sasse on the Senate floor. “We're not
going to have any conversation about the fact that we constantly spend
more money than we have and we have to borrow to do it.”
The Senate then approved the package 80-17. Sasse and Paul were among the noes.
This is where the “explaining problem” comes in.
At the time, Irma was forecast to lash South Carolina with its torrents. Yet. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., voted nay.
“I’ve got zero problem helping people with
hurricanes,” he said. “I’ve got a real problem of legislating in a
fashion that continues to put the military in a box.”
Graham was referring to the interim spending part of
the combo bill that funds the government through December 8. No quarter
of the U.S. government bears a bigger hardship than the Pentagon when
Congress only grants the services a few months of spending direction.
“This just puts us right back into the cauldron here,
and we’re going to have another crisis in 90 days,” Graham said. “It
was more of a protest vote than anything else.”
Or consider the approach taken by Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa.
“Ernst Supports Relief for Hurricane Harvey Victims,
Votes No on Debt Limit Increase,” trumpeted a news release from her
press shop.
Like Graham, Ernst voted no on the legislative
trifecta. The jerry-rigged bill forced lawmakers who voted nay to
concoct oratorical contortions to explain why they favored hurricane
assistance yet opposed the debt ceiling.
Ernst argued she backed the Sasse plan for a
standalone hurricane aid package, But note that she didn’t even say she
voted “for” Sasse’s effort, only “supports.”
That’s because there was never a straight, up-or-down
vote on Sasse’s effort. The Senate voted only to table, or kill,
Sasse’s motion to limit the bill to hurricane funding.
So with no direct vote, Ernst is stuck. She’s left
saying she “supports hurricane relief.” However, the Senate did take a
full-on roll call vote on the underlying legislation that funded the
government, addressed the hurricanes and iced the debt ceiling.
Therefore, Ernst’s statement indicates she “votes no on debt limit
increase.”
Voting no on the debt ceiling may sound great to
fiscal conservatives. But others could flag Ernst’s vote against the
hurricane money. Lawmakers and their wordsmiths convulse when forced to
draft tortured statements to explain vote nuances.
And remember that most of the reason behind lifting
the debt ceiling isn’t because of a vote Ernst or any other senator
cast. It’s mostly because entitlement programs are dialed-in on
automatic pilot. The money flies out the door without a congressional
check.
This sums up the quintessence of Washington’s gnarled “explaining problem.”
On Friday morning, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin
and White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney headed to Capitol Hill to
appeal to House Republicans to support the plan.
Someone from Equifax could have made a better case
for their cybersecurity protocols. Many Republicans found Mulvaney’s
appearance particularly ironic. He formerly led the conservative House
Freedom Caucus and repeatedly rejected debt limit hikes when he
represented South Carolina in the House.
“We should have sold admission passes for the
discussion. I heard it was a sight to behold to have Mick Mulvaney
coming in arguing for a debt ceiling increase,” scoffed Rep. Charlie
Dent, R-Pa.
Despite Mnuchin and Mulvaney’s entreaty, the House
voted on the Senate-approved plan 316-90. All 90 noes came from
Republicans. Only 133 Republicans voted yea -- compared to 183
Democrats. Lawmakers from both parties again stated their abhorrence to
lump issues together. But the defense from those who voted yes was that
they had to do this.
There is a remedy, however.
Congress could really curb the fiscal trajectory and
neutralize debt ceiling crises if members adopted a “budget” that indeed
tamed Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security spending.
A congressional “budget” is different from
appropriations bills, which were contained in the “no government
shutdown” part of this package. Same for emergency disaster relief
money. Budgets address all federal spending – including entitlements.
And they’re not binding.
But here’s the problem: The Budget Act of 1974
compels the president to draft a budget model and submit it to Congress.
The House and Senate are supposed to approve their budgets in the
spring. But as you can begin to imagine, neither has done so this year.
Thus, the “explaining problem” raises its ugly head.
In the late winter and spring, Mulvaney crafted a
budget “blueprint” for the Trump administration and specifically
referred to it as such. Presidential budgets are aspirational. The
numbers don’t have to add up and rarely do. Same for those written on
Capitol Hill. For years, Republicans designed “budgets” that purportedly
steer federal spending on a path to “balance” over a period of years.
They look great on paper.
Lawmakers who fancy themselves as fiscal hawks get the chance to “explain” why this is such a good idea.
Yet federal spending climbs. Rendezvous with the debt
ceiling continue. That’s because Congress rarely approves a concrete
budget which actually implements true spending reforms. Congress passed
the Budget Control Act after an epic tussle over the debt ceiling in
August, 2011.
The BCA imposed serious fiscal restraints known as
sequestration -- though none of the spending strictures touched
entitlements. Lawmakers could adopt a budget that if fact curbs the
fiscal trajectory. To be sure, it’s hard. But instead, lawmakers spend
time “explaining” the virtues of this budget or that one. But bona fide
reforms rarely happen.
For the most part, budgets without teeth are nothing
but distractions. They entail a lot of explaining. Of course actually
cutting entitlement programs would involve a lot of explaining to voters
as well.
Think they have an “explaining problem” now?
With the current fiscal fight off the table,
lawmakers will focus on tax reform. That sounds great. But lower taxes
could mean higher deficits. One of the reasons the sides aren’t closer
on tax reform is because it’s unclear if the math will work.
On its face, diminished federal revenue means higher
deficits. Tax reform advocates assert federal coffers will be fine
thanks to economic growth spurred by lower taxes.
Talk about a lot of explaining…
How about stumbling into a nuclear war on the Korean
peninsula? You can forget about tax reform after that. That probably
requires a hefty tax increase. And nuclear war doesn’t do a lot for
deficit reduction either.
The catastrophes of Harvey and Irma will likely cost
hundreds of billions of dollars of unexpected emergency spending. Last
week’s $15.25 billion was just a down payment. We haven’t even discussed
the price tag of flood insurance. The current federal program is $26
billion in the red.
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb
Hensarling, R-Texas, fretted at the flood insurance costs after
hurricanes Katrina and Sandy.
“I warned at the time, if we do not fix the problem,
we are one major storm away from having to bail it out again,” he said.
“And here we are.”
Hensarling now worries about the flood insurance deficit after Harvey and Irma.
“We are incenting, encouraging and subsidizing people
to live in harm’s way,” he said. “Shame on us if all we do is help
rebuild the same homes, in the same fashion, in the same place.”
Yeah. But explain to home and business owners why they can’t rebuild where they were before.
“One day this is going to blow up on us. One day we will be judged by history,” Hensarling said.
He voted against Friday’s debt ceiling/government
spending/hurricane bill. And some may ask if Hensarling and the other 89
GOP nays have some explaining to do.
“This should have been two separate votes,” Hensarling argued.
It’s all complicated. It’s tough to distill into 140
characters. The congressional appropriations and budget processes are
monsters. The Treasury spends the money without major fiscal reforms.
And that means Congress will tangle again with the debt ceiling again in
a few months. Explain that.
