Shall We Dance: Harry Reid Blinks

By Martha Zoller

There are big issues out there.  At least the Democrats in a lame duck session think they know what big issues are.  The truth is, they are diffusing their failure with fiscal responsibility with the START Treaty, DADT (Don't Ask, Don't Tell) and the DREAM Act. The debates of this Lame Duck session will be long forgotten unless the fiscal issues are put to the forefront of the discussion.  The truth is, real national security is a booming economy, fiscal responsibility and a strong military.  It's a simple American combination and we have to return to it.

Just before Christmas, we were finally able to see some shred of understanding of what November's election meant.  Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) pulled the omnibus spending bill with thousands of earmarks.  Sen. Mitch McConnell gets some of the credit, but it was really Sen. Jim DeMint who lead the charge.

Reid says he had to back down because a few Republicans, who might have voted with him, changed their minds.  The truth is, there were Democrats who didn't want to support this.  In the first move of the 2012 election, Republican operatives were able to mobilize constituents to contact Democrat Senators who are up for reelection in 2012 and let them know this vote will be held to account in their run for reelection. In 2012, the largest number of Democrat Senators will be up for reelection in a generation and they will have to protect every seat.

Even at the San Francisco Examiner, the editorial page noted:

"It apparently was not enough that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., suffered a humiliating defeat when he failed to gain passage last week of that horrendous $1.2 trillion omnibus spending bill that contained more than 6,600 earmarks. Reid thought he had enough votes from Democrats and a handful of Republicans who would be unable to resist the lure of those earmarks. 

With November's election results still fresh, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., forcefully reminded his wavering GOP colleagues that voters said "no" to more earmarks in the plainest possible terms. Considering the historic gains voters awarded to Republican candidates from top to bottom of the ballots across the country, pundit P.J. O'Rourke was right on target in describing the results as a "restraining order" against the Democratic majority of the 111th Congress."

I put Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell back on the Christmas card list and he and Republican appropriators deserve a pat on the back.  McConnell managed to outfox Reid and save American taxpayers a large "chunk of change" in the process. How did he do it?  He reminded them, with the help of his backbone Senator Jim DeMint, the voters had said, "Not one dime more in wasteful earmarks!"

The beauty was he did it by countering the almost 2000 page monstrosity with a one page continuing resolution to fund the government for two months.  According Human Events editor Emily Miller, the resolution is up to 36 pages now, but that's a far cry from the nearly 2000 page bill of last week. Score one for the taxpayers. Score one for Sen. Jim DeMint. 

The pundit class wants to look at DeMint and ask him if he's running for president.  I can't tell you when a person starts to look in the mirror and see a president looking back, but I will tell you, as an advocate for the Tea Party Movement and a "Kingmaker" of sorts, DeMint is more powerful being the "go-to" guy in the Senate.  You can't win Republican primary presidential politics without the support of Sen. Jim DeMint.  You'll see him in Iowa and New Hampshire stumping for his candidates as he did in 2008. In 2012, he'll be more powerful in the process and in his own state he has eclipsed Sen. Lindsay Graham for influence in South Carolina.  South Carolina is a Tea Party, FairTaxing, Red State and will be in even more important in the next election.

This continuing resolution will take the government through February 18^th, which will allow the new congress, with a much weaker Sen. Harry Reid in the Senate, to show they got the message of the November election.  We the People have to see something radical and a new direction toward fiscal responsibility.

However, between now and then, we've got to decide what an earmark is. Let's state this clearly at the outset.  I support the ban on earmarks in the House and the Senate.  It's a nasty process that has perverted the will of the American people and has added to the cynicism we have about how government spends our money. The adding of hundreds to thousands of special projects to bills that are clearly wasteful and sometimes unconstitutional has taken away the credibility of legitimate regional and local projects that should be championed by our elected officials.

There might be a different way and in fairness it depends on how you define earmarks.  I define earmarks as being special projects inserted into bills that may or may not be germane to the issue without debate by individual members. Speaker-elect John Boehner is on the right track in his promise to eliminate comprehensive bills and to end earmarks.  One hopes he looks at this vote succeeding in the House and failing in the Senate as the beginning of the fight, not the end and if "special projects" are to continue, they have to be dealt with in the open and on a separate vote.  If that's an earmark, fine, but it's an earmark in the open and out of the back room.

The Federal Government should be small and weak when it comes to domestic policy, except where it is expressly given the power by the Constitution.  An example of that is interstate commerce.  If States cannot come to an agreement on their own, the Federal government can step in.

The language is often disappointing. In the trenches, we know what the message of November was. It was to extend and make permanent the Bush Era tax rates, stop excessive spending and make it hurt to get our fiscal house in order and repeal and replace Obamacare.  

That was the message. If the new Congress stays on that message, 2012 will be sweet, if not; the wins of 2010 will be a moment in time and not a movement. 

Also, I chatted with Phil Smith from the Concord Coalition.  Here's what we talked about.

And here

And here

Have a great 2011 and keep it here.