OPINION:
As House and Senate Democrats work in their various committees to cobble together the various sections of what will surely be a multiple-thousand-page reconciliation bill, much attention has been paid to recent declarations by Democrat senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema that they will not support a bill that prices out at $3.5 trillion.
On its face, to those concerned about the explosive growth in the size and scope of the federal government, that’s welcome news, yet not sufficient, because it’s not just the amount of spending that is cause for concern, it’s the programmatic content. This bill-under-construction will contain new or extended programs we wouldn’t support even if they were free. Given that context, the Manchin/Sinema declarations aren’t necessarily cause for celebration; in fact, they may warrant additional cause for concern because they may actually grease the path forward for truly reckless and unsustainable spending down the road.
Let me be clear: What worries me most about the under-construction reconciliation bill is the variety of new programs that Democrats propose to enact. Why? Because once created, they will be challenging to terminate. As Ronald Reagan famously reminded us in his October 27, 1964, nationally televised “A Time for Choosing” address, “No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.”
Consider: Which is more dangerous, a bill that creates 100 new programs and funds each of them for one year at the cost of $1 trillion (that is, $10 billion per program, for one year), or a bill that creates 10 new programs and funds them for ten years at the cost of $1 trillion (again, $10 billion per program, for each of the next ten years)?
If all you look at is the overall cost, you’d say the bills are the same – both cost $1 trillion. But the one that creates and funds 100 new programs for just one year is far more dangerous because now, instead of just 10 new programs that could metastasize, we’ve got 100. And metastasize they will. When was the last time a Congress actually spent less money on a program in a current year than it did in a previous year? That’s not the way Washington spends Other People’s Money (OPM), and anyone who’s been around for more than a few spending cycles knows that.
So it’s not just the dollar amount but the programmatic content that is cause for concern. The radicals who are writing this bill – under the watchful eye of, literally, a self-professed socialist, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, whose committee will take all the various sections written by the committees of jurisdiction and join them together in one massive piece of legislation – are ignoring our Founding Documents, and our history, to create an entirely new mission statement for the federal government: Cradle-to-grave care, paid for by OPM.
It’s a good thing that Sen. Manchin has made clear he opposes much of the Green New Deal agenda that liberals want to include in the draft of the reconciliation bill. Perhaps his opposition to those new green energy programs will be the straw that broke the camel’s back on that front, and those programs will not make it into the final version of the reconciliation bill.
But I haven’t heard Mr. Manchin (or Ms. Sinema, for that matter) say he opposes making permanent the now temporary extension of the Child Tax Credit, which the Tax Foundation projected would cost $1.6 trillion over ten years. If Mr. Manchin’s only reason to oppose it is that he thinks we cannot afford as a nation to commit now to spend that much money on that program over the next decade, Sanders & Co. could simply cut the cost in half by funding the program for only the next five years – and then count on the 120th Congress to find a way to fund the program in Fiscal Years 2027 and 2028, and, possibly, even beyond that.
The same goes for all the other new and expanded programs Democrats are devising – universal pre-kindergarten, massive child care subsidies, two years of community college, 12 weeks of guaranteed paid family and medical leave, Medicare expansion to include vision, hearing, and dental coverage, Medicaid expansion, Obamacare expansion, and even a mass amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants.
Once these programs are created and funded, they will be virtually impossible to terminate. Democrats know this. Even if they have to “compromise” with Manchin to fund these programs for only five years, or even less, to get this bill passed, they know that once the current law termination date of the program arrives, the future Congress will be under enormous pressure to find ways to continue their funding. It will be a reverse fiscal cliff, with Democrats (!) warning (!!) of the potential tax “increase” (!!!) that will hit families with children if the bad Republicans don’t immediately join them in finding ways to continue the funding for this program and others.
Something tells me all the wailing we hear now from the radical Democrats on Capitol Hill is a setup for their eventual “cave” to Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema. They know that what really matters is not the dollar cost but getting the programs established. Have congressional Republicans figured this out?
• Jenny Beth Martin is the co-founder and national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots.
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