Lost GOP Souls: Gang of 13, House Appropriations Subcommittee, Wall Street Journal, 6-30-04

The Wall Street Journal

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

Lost GOP Souls
June 30, 2004; Page A8

Once upon a time, in a Congress far, far away, Republicans believed in smaller government. But you sure wouldn't know it from last Friday's budget-reform fiasco on the House floor.

By an astonishing vote of 326 to 88, the GOP-controlled body rejected the Family Budget Protection Act that would have removed the bias toward greater spending inherent in the current Congressional budget process. Even among Republicans, the bill lost 131 to 88. The Members also nixed the Spending Control Act, a less ambitious bill that Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle championed to impose spending caps, by a vote of 248 to 146.

Most of the credit for this repudiation of GOP principle belongs to the so-called "College of Cardinals," the chairmen of the 13 Appropriations subcommittees and protectors of sacred pork, who threatened their fellow Republicans with legislative excommunication if they voted for the reforms sponsored by some very brave GOP backbenchers. Specifically, they vowed to zero out all pork projects for their districts.

The cardinals -- whose names are listed nearby -- were on the floor twisting arms for virtually every vote. They have already retaliated by removing projects favored by the conservative Republican Study Committee from 2005 spending bills. That intimidation explains why even 20 GOP Members who had co-sponsored the budget reforms turned around and voted against them in the end.

It gets worse. The Members opposed giving the President rescission authority, which is the right to send individual spending items back to the Congress for an expedited vote. This relative of the line-item veto has been a staple of the Republican agenda going back to the Reagan years and a version of it was part of the original Contract with America that helped the GOP carry the House in 1994. How quickly entrenched incumbents forget.

It may seem strange that the Republican Pooh-bahs pulled out all the stops to thwart measures that would never have passed the Senate anyway. The explanation is simple. This is the beginning of a fight for the soul of the Republican Party. The cardinals know that when the anti-spending battle is rejoined next year, anything that gained majority support this year would become the starting point for negotiations.

GANG OF 13
House Appropriations
Subcommittee Chairmen

Henry Bonilla, Texas
Frank Wolf, Va.
Jerry Lewis, Calif.
Rodney Frelinghuysen, N.J.
David Hobson, Ohio
Jim Kolbe, Ariz.
Harold Rogers, Ky.
Charles Taylor, N.C.
Ralph Regula, Ohio
Jack Kingston, Ga.
Joe Knollenberg, Mich.
Ernest Istook, Okla.
James Walsh, N.Y.

The sense of spending entitlement is so deep that some GOP leaders resorted to the Democratic rhetoric that giving the President rescission power represents an unacceptable surrendering of legislative power to the executive. Considering the derision that conservatives once heaped on the old bulls of the Democrats for this line, Republicans are fortunate that nobody else in the press corps was paying attention to this debate.

To be fair, top GOP leaders did honor their promise to the reformers to let this debate take place and allow votes on the floor. This at least got the spenders on the record. But it's also true that Speaker Dennis Hastert, Majority Leader Tom DeLay and the rest did nothing to help pass even the most moderate spending-control measures.

Republicans should understand that, principle aside, sooner or later they are setting themselves up for a political fall. If Republicans won't campaign against spending to reduce the federal deficit, they will soon find themselves on the defensive on taxes. And if they ever vote for a tax increase, they can soon expect to find themselves back in the minority.