1) HR 7 is a Keynesian stimulus bill one quarter the size of the Obama stimulus. Republican Leadership is very sensitive to this charge, but its true. This bill is a highway spending bill and the centerpiece of the Republican “jobs” agenda—let that discordance set in for a minute. It is called the American Energy & Infrastructure Jobs Act. According to a press release announcing the legislation, “The Speaker and Republicans today are offering a transportation jobs bill that will be a win-win-win for the American people. Americans will win by rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure. Americans will win by putting millions to work” (emphasis added). This is the Keynesian logic. Fill a pothole, create a job. Government spends in order to create jobs, and Republicans are estimating the bill will create 8 million based on presumably Keynesian economic models. Unfortunately, every conservative knows that government must take from the private sector in order to fund anything it does, thereby necessarily destroying jobs elsewhere in the economy. And based on their opposition to Obama’s trillion dollar stimulus, I would have thought that House Republicans knew that too.

2) HR 7 constitutes a massive bailout. The general rule with each highway bill is that they be financed by people who use the roads. Recently transportation has outpaced revenues and the general fund of Treasury (i.e., all taxpayers) has needed to bail out the highway trust fund. HR 7 makes these exceptions the rule. Speaker Boehner’s press secretary, Brendan Buck, admits that, “The gas tax does not generate enough revenue to meet all the infrastructure needs in America.” Of course by “infrastructure needs” he means what is currently being spent, as if the status quo in Washington has ever been the test for conservatives of what is “needed” in America. But thankfully we can all agree that there is a shortfall. HR 7 would spend $262.9 billion over five years (it actually increases spending over current law), and revenues only absorb $193.2 billion of that cost. That is $69.7 billion over the next five years that taxpayers will have to cover in an era when it already cannot cover its many obligations as evidenced by years of trillion dollar deficits. (If you’re generous and allow the bill sponsor’s to assume that there are $15.6 billion in current balances in the highway trust fund, it lowers the bailout figure to $54.1 billion. The problem is those funds exist only in an accounting sense and don’t really offset the shortfall in any real sense.)

3) HR 7 is a bait-and-switch to enable higher spending with Democrats. There are some nice reforms to improve transportation policy at the programmatic level, and of course, there are the offsets to drill in ANWR and the OCS and to require federal workers to pay more for their pensions. These reforms would be great if they were stand-alone legislation that was not being used to mask and perpetuate a highway bailout. But its worse than that. Republican Leadership are attaching these provisions in order to distract conservatives from the fact that a $262.9 billion highway stimulus bill is the centerpiece of their agenda. They want to get to a conference committee with the Senate where they are likely to agree on the same spending numbers (the two chambers’ spending levels are very similar) and jettison the reforms and offsets. This will allow Republicans to initially look conservative during consideration in the House and then throw up their hands and blame Democrat recalcitrance in the Senate and the White House for why they inevitably will have to cave in negotiations and accept only the higher spending. This is everything the tea party hates about the way Washington works. House conservatives cannot vote to allow the bill to go to conference at these spending levels, and those that do will be complicit in the final arrangement with the Senate.

4) HR 7 ensures the demise of real, lasting conservative reform. Conservatives have long sought to devolve or “turn back” the federal highway program to states. The federal gas tax would be gradually phased out, and states would take on the responsibility of both maintaining the interstate system and financing it as they see fit. The case to do so is easy when it’s a simple argument about returning a state’s share of gas tax revenues closer to home. However, as general revenues continue to bailout the highway trust fund, it means that individual states are being subsidized by the taxpayers of other states to maintain high spending levels, entrenching a vested interest in the status quo at the federal level. The long-term success of transformational conservative reforms is won and lost in trenches such as these, and conservatives will look back with regret if they allow HR 7 to move forward.

5) HR 7 is a violation of the GOP Pledge to America. Republicans pledged to “end the practice of packaging unpopular bills with ‘must pass’ legislation to circumvent the will of the American people. Instead, we will advance major legislation one issue at a time.” This promise was made specifically to ensure that overwhelmingly bad bills would not include long-sought bon bons to induce conservatives to support growing government. Remember when ANWR and the minimum wage were packaged together and when health savings account reforms were added to the Medicare prescription drug expansion? This Republican Majority pledged to end that practice and at what point are you no longer good for your word?

Finally, it’s not another reason, but one last note to House conservatives. Congressmen, please understand. You should not vote for a bad bill simply because your Leadership makes your amendment in order. I know this is what the GOP whip team is currently doing, but this is one of the oldest tricks in the book. While your amendment is very important, it is likely to fail. If it were likely to pass, it would not be made in order. Please don’t be complicit in growing government just to get a vote on your amendment. Its not worth it.

[Before getting into the proposal, let’s first reflect on something. What does it say about a Republican Majority when their number one priority heading into an election year is to pass a massive federal infrastructure bill? I know Republicans are split on the issue, and that many burn all of their anti-Keynes stimulus talking points to give transportation spending a special dispensation as a government “job creator.” But really? This is what they want to fight on and draw stark differences with the other party? That is depressing.]

Proponents of federal infrastructure spending have long maintained its legitimacy based on the fact that it is user financed by drivers who pay gas taxes. Good driving years generate enough revenue for generous spending on roads and bridges, and bad driving years require such spending to be ratcheted back. The problem is that the last highway bill—the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Act (SAFETEA)—increased spending levels far above what the trust fund could support (and 31% over previous levels). Of course, Congress refused to scale back the spending and instead infused the programs with money from general taxpayers. These bailouts of the highway trust fund occurred in 2008 ($8 billion), 2009 ($7 billion), and 2010 ($19.5 billion). This is confirmed by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service:

Historically, the trust fund-based revenue collection system was a reliably growing source of funding for surface transportation, as the trust funds collected more than was expended to implement the program defined by Congress. This situation has changed under SAFETEA, as spending on highways and transit has exceeded both highway and mass transit account revenues on a regular basis.

And under current law, if Congress does not reduce the spending, another billion dollar bailout will likely be needed right before the election.

According to numerous press reports and the marketing material released already, the GOP bill will set the “long term reauthorization at current funding levels” and “revenues from additional oil and gas production will help fund programs” (emphasis added). Obviously, increased energy exploration is a good thing, but using the revenues generated to pay for existing unaffordable transportation obligations when we are running trillion-dollar deficits each year is insanity. Furthermore, it is unlikely that the energy revenues will come anywhere close to being able to cover a $59 billion shortfall over five years. That means other offsets and gimmicks will be needed or a massive straight-up bailout from taxpayers.

All of us want better roads and bridges, but conservatives have long championed devolving the highway program to the states to collect and spend gas tax revenues as they see fit without heavy federal micromanaging. Both regularizing the recent taxpayer bailouts and relying on offsets elsewhere in the federal government will ensure that conservatives will never be able to devolve these programs and that the federal government will never get out of the federal highway business. It is great that Republicans are proposing to consolidate programs, but rationalizing transportation policy while growing government at an unaffordable pace harms the country. In short, it may be the difference between Chinese communism and Soviet communism, but it’s still communism.

Furthermore, the claims that federal highway spending creates millions of jobs are dubious. These claims are typically based on economic models that ignore that a billion spent on highway projects is a billion that needs to be borrowed or taxed from the private sector, thereby destroying jobs somewhere else. During the last reauthorization of the highway bill, Heritage’s Ron Utt looked at the available research on the subject and concluded that, “such claims…are highly questionable given the mixed findings of decades of independent academic studies on the relationship between federal spending programs and job creation.”

One last point. The GOP highway bill, which will violate the House-passed Ryan budget, is arguably another violation of the Republican Pledge to America, that specifically pledged to “end the practice of packaging unpopular bills with ‘must pass’ legislation to circumvent the will of the American people. Instead, we will advance major legislation one issue at a time.” Now Republicans will argue that “must pass” meant only appropriations bills, but the sentiment behind that component in the Pledge was to guard Congressmen from being pressured to support overwhelmingly bad policy (a highway bailout) that includes some long-sought conservative victories (increased energy drilling). Remember, the old Republican majority had a habit of packaging items like a minimum wage increase and ANWR together or health savings account reforms with a prescription drug expansion, and thus the Pledge included the line of advancing major issues one at a time.

I fear a bums rush in the next few weeks. Republicans love them some highway spending. The last highway bill, with the 31% increase in spending, passed by a vote of 412-8 and 91-4. Speaker Boehner has made this “jobs bill” a priority of his Speakership, and many conservatives are tired of fighting their Leadership. Who wants to oppose a bill that fixes potholes and increases energy drilling? But not fighting bills like this is exactly how our country got in its current fiscal situation. Conservatives in the House need to rise up and fight this legislation, and they need to fight hard.

First, Ramesh now admits there was, “some slippage on the right but not a huge amount.” That was not stated in his original article.  However, he continues to sell the data short. He keeps focusing on the presidential year of 2004. But let’s compare off-year elections, apples to apples. As Ramesh notes, in the bad year of 2006, conservatives voted 78% for Republicans and made up 32% of the electorate. Compare with the strong year of 2010, in which conservatives voted 84% for Republicans and made up 42% of the electorate. A six point differential, even when less of the electorate is conservative, is significant.

Second, Ramesh now concedes that at least some of this slippage may in fact have been due to “Republican squishiness.” I never argued that the 2006 election hinged “exclusively” on spending and limited government concerns. I pointed out that the independent voters that Republicans lost in 2006, cared a great deal about excess spending, and that it impacted their opinion of Republicans. I also suggested that Ramesh was wrong–by constantly conflating conservatives with Republicans and by drawing such a stark distinction between conservatives and independents–to conclude that big Republican government had nothing to do with the 2006 election losses.

However, even in this discussion, Ramesh is revealing. He declares “that the vast majority of conservative voters favored the prescription-drug subsidies.” I’m not sure where he is getting his proof, but I suspect he is conflating conservatives and Republicans again. According to an ABC/Washington Post poll, 49% of Republicans supported the Medicare prescription drug benefit soon after it was enacted, but 51% either disapproved or did not have an opinion (perhaps because it struck them odd that a Republican president was pushing such a massive new entitlement). Interestingly, 41% of independents disapproved of the new law with 30% approving and 30% having no opinion. The popularity of this new entitlement was hardly “vast” among Republicans, and certainly not with independents.

Third, Ramesh now claims that he was just criticizing “a few candidates associated with the tea party,” when he cited Sharron Angle and Ken Buck, and not the tea party as a whole.  Unfortunately, he wasn’t just criticizing a few candidates–he was criticizing “conservative primary voters [who] rejected two electable, conventionally conservative candidates” and preaching to similar voters across the country. Nor does he address any of the points I made, including that independents voted for both in the general election. He simply reasserts that both were “weak general-election candidates.”

Ramesh also claims that my conclusion that he “has long wanted an agenda that focuses on issues such as wage stagnation, traffic congestion, and student loan costs that appeal to middle class voters, not middle class entitlements that are bankrupting the entire nation” is not true. Not true? In the article I linked to, Ramesh [and Rich Lowry] call for “a reform agenda that helps ordinary Americans….That agenda should center, unapologetically, on the middle class.” In it, after a perfunctory mention that, “spending restraints should be a part of that agenda,” they call for addressing “mundane quality-of-life-issues such as traffic” and “simplifying financial-aid formulas, by replacing subsidized loans with direct grants as much as possible.” And of course, Ramesh is well-known for his foot being firmly on the brake of entitlement reforms.

If Ramesh had merely set out to remind us that Republicans need to apply “conservative thought to voters’ concerns, to be competent, and to be clean,” his article would not have deserved a response for that is obvious. But Ramesh set out to deconstruct an electorally-unsound “mythology” that has led to a “fixation on ideological purity” that he opposes. In doing so, he ironically perpetuated an actual mythology of the Republican establishment–a mythology that has serious adverse consequences for conservatives and Republicans alike, and the country at large. That mythology is not true and must be challenged at every turn.

This is an odd bit of revisionist history coming from someone known to be on the right, especially since the implicit lesson for Republicans is to be less ideologically pure and move to the center. Yet, it is interesting that Ramesh claims that “this consensus still moves the party.” It doesn’t.

Ramesh cites various high-ranking Republican leaders as repeating the cliché that “we lost our way.” With the exception of Mike Pence (who first crafted the words “we did not just lose our majority, we lost our way”) and Paul Ryan of the leaders he cites, Ramesh would be pleased to know that this is not actually the consensus that moves them. It is largely lip service. If you sit in their leadership meetings and if you analyze their strategic decisions and the sorts of candidates backed by the party bosses, you realize fairly quickly that Ramesh and the Republican Establishment are of one mind on this question.

I suspect that Ramesh is fully aware of this fact, and thus his article reads more as a thinly-veiled critique of the Tea Party Movement and its allies than of the Republican Party as a whole. For instance, he says, “In Colorado and Nevada, conservative primary voters rejected two electable, conventionally conservative candidates because they were considered part of the compromising establishment.” I’ll return to CO and NV later, but who were those pesky “conservative primary voters” who overturned the will of the National Republican Senatorial Committee? Of course, they were Tea Party voters and their allies. So let’s be clear about who is in the dock, and who is not.

Ramesh’s central argument–and that of most Republican establishment politicos –is that Republican base voters did not stay home (as they presumably would, if Republicans really had lost their way) in 2006 and 2008. Instead, they maintain independents abandoned Republican candidates in droves. It had nothing to do with not being conservative. In 2006, it was “bleeding in Iraq, corruption in Washington, wage stagnation, and the lack of any agenda by the party,” and in 2008, it was voter fatigue of Republican rule and an economic crisis that John McCain seemed ill-equipped to understand or address.

Ramesh notes that 36% of the electorate in 2006 were self-identified Republicans, only 1% below 2004. But that’s not the most relevant data point to judge conservative turnout. He should have looked at the percentage of the electorate that is conservative. In 2006, only 32% of the electorate was conservative. In the majority making elections of 1994 and 2010, 37% and 42% of the electorate was conservative, respectively. This is a major difference in conservative turnout, and the percentage it represents of the whole. For comparison’s sake: after President George H.W. Bush violated his tax pledge, in 1992, self-identified Republicans held steady at 35% but the conservative electorate was only 30%, only two points below its level in 2006. Self-identified Republican voters are certainly part of “the base,” but they are as close to professional voters as the GOP can claim—voters who are Republicans first, conservative second. Its their clan on the ballot—they show up. But that may be all they do. While their votes may not be depressed, their activity can be. Elections are decided by more than just election day: are the activists working the phones, giving their money, and going door-to-door, all steps that data shows us decides elections far more than just positioning? Ramesh does not say.

There is a worse mistake here, however. Ramesh is correct to point out that Republicans lost independents. But he seems to assume that independents are moderates. Some are, but many are not and make up the rest of the conservative base. This was true of Reagan Democrats and Perot voters. They are often confused as “moderates” like Olympia Snowe and Mike Castle. They are not moderate. They do hate partisanship, but only because they don’t trust that either political party actually cares about getting the country back on track versus ruling them from Washington. They are willing to either stay home, begrudgingly vote Republican, or go outside the GOP. Take 1992 for example: of the conservative voters that showed up, only 64% voted for Bush I. 18% voted for Perot.

These independent voters, who often vote for Republicans, are deeply committed to limiting government. Even in 2006, when Iraq and the War on Terror was on the minds of most voters, a post-election survey from Kellyanne Conway found that 65% of independents favored, “Smaller government that provided fewer services and charged lower taxes.” When a war appears to be mismanaged and going south and much of Washington appears to be corrupt, why stick with a party that doesn’t seem to share your views on limiting government and controlling spending?

The Republican establishment fully understands this dynamic and perpetuates the myth of the moderate independent voter to excuse their own unwillingness to change the country fundamentally. If conservatives were right—to paraphrase Dick Armey—that good policy is good politics, that would necessitate real change! But such change will ultimately mean a lessening of the establishment’s own power and influence. Such change will cut into their position within the ruling class, and so it continues to play games with words.

Ramesh also argues essentially that conservatism’s political appeal is limited. “Republicans were more popular in Bush’s first term, when they were expanding entitlements, than in his second term, when they were trying to reform one (Social Security). For most of the second term, they exercised more spending restraint than they had done in the first term–and again, there was no evidence it helped them politically.” Ramesh doesn’t get to have it both ways. He can’t argue that the ’06 election had nothing to do with fiscal responsibility, and then turnaround and conclude that the results were a death knell for limited government. Republican popularity in the first term had far more to do with national security than expanding entitlements, and any so-called “spending restraint” in the second term is quite frankly hard to locate amidst the flows of spending earmarks, Congressional over-rides of the few Bush vetoes, and the massive federal bailout to the financial sector. And Social Security reform’s unpopularity had more to do with the specifics of the particular reforms being proposed and the hypocrisy involved with a party that had just expanded Medicare’s unfunded liabilities by trillions coming along two years later and saying that Social Security was in the midst of some major funding crisis. The messengers for tough reforms do have to be somewhat credible.

Ramesh bemoans the choosing of candidates on the right who are known to be uncompromising “and avoid accommodation at all costs.” He cites the races in Colorado and Nevada, where the Tea Party tossed out the establishment candidates in the primary, backing Ken Buck and Sharon Angle as their nominees. Of course, he fails to mention that Buck was significantly weighed down by a fiasco at the top of the Colorado ticket called the Dan Maes gubernatorial run. Perhaps most devastating in both races was the Michael Steele-led RNC, which failed to run basic GOV efforts as they normally do. Despite these disadvantages, a total 884,032 Coloradans voted for House Republican candidates across the state. Buck received 822,731 votes to Bennett’s 851,590. Given that Buck actually won independents 53% to 37%, it seems likely that many of these 61,301 people who cost Buck the election were establishment GOP-types sour after the divisive primary. The lack of a GOV effort was a particular problem in Nevada where the union presence is strong and the polling in the week before the election showed Angle to be in a strong position (the Real Clear Politics average had her leading by 2.7 percentage points, with her lead trending up until election day). As Buck did, Angle won independents 48% to 44%.

Were mistakes made by each respective campaign? Certainly, but to blame Tea Party voters with such a broad stroke when so much culpability rests on the shoulders of the party establishment, is unfair. And what about Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul? It was the same unsophisticated Tea Party movement looking for “ideological purity” that rejected the wishes of party bosses to get these supposedly un-electable men elected to the Senate. Look, if the charge is that the Tea Party need to find excellent candidates to run, I agree, but let’s not pretend their political viability has anything to do with a willingness to accommodate with the Republican establishment.

It is true that the Tea Party, and those of us who ally ourselves with them, are looking for more spine in our elected leaders. If we are going to devote months of time and treasure to candidates seeking office, they better be a sure thing. They better be willing to stand up to their party if its about to pass an unfunded expansion of Medicare or a massive tax increase or a punitive measure aimed at pro-lifers (all real fights with Republican Leadership that have occurred in recent years). We better not have to worry about them fretting over Paul Ryan’s entitlement reforms or condoning earmarks. And they better be willing to fight for conservative policies against fierce political head winds. That is the only way to ensure that the next time we have a Republican in the White House, and Republican control of the House and the Senate, that we produce conservative policy victories, long discussed but never secured, of the magnitude that will actually save our country. That is the only way that we avoid another dispute ten years from now, on missed opportunity and who is to blame.

My guess is that much of Ramesh’s frustration stems from his suspicion that a Tea Party agenda based squarely upon the bedrock of limited government and the actual parameters of the Constitution is a political loser in the long run. Ramesh has long wanted an agenda that focuses on issues such as wage stagnation, traffic congestion, and student loan costs that appeal to middle class voters, not middle class entitlements that are bankrupting the entire nation. Its not that he opposes reforming entitlements eventually; its just that the political stars have to be perfectly aligned. There certainly is no joy in it.

But the problem with that sort of “when I say go” political advice is that it leads many Republicans to incrementalism and inaction. They begin to fear game-changing policy reforms that may prompt a debate that they actually have to work hard to win. It encourages political men and women, who are already risk adverse, to think far too much about the next election instead of the needs of the next generation. Unfortunately, we are past the point of incrementalism. We don’t have the time to fiddle at the edges. We need elected officials free of calcified political assumptions of what is possible that reveal only their own level of accommodation with the liberal welfare state. And we need officials with the courage to actually shape public opinion with urgency in favor of the policies that are necessary to bring the nation back from the brink.

Instead of preaching the virtues of accommodation to a Tea Party that will only tune it out, the Republican Party would do well to realize that it actually did lose its way when it previously held all the levers of government, and that the game has permanently changed for the better.

In an excellent critique of Steve Hayward at Transom, Ben Domenech puts it nicely:

[Hayward] wants a milder, gentler approach, a more sophisticated approach, not just in tone but in policy. The fight is lost. He wants to barter.

A reject of the politics as usual bartering, of course, is the reason people like Scott, Walker, Kasich and Jindal got elected in the first place. It is a rejection of an approach to government that Republicans from Eisenhower to Nixon to Ford to H.W. to Dole to W. to McCain have all espoused – with Goldwater and Reagan as the slight interruptions. This dominant authority on the right dislikes bad government, and it seeks to replace it with good government, not realizing that either way ends up slowly but surely with big government – and if there’s one thing history has taught us, as the Eurozone is reminding us now, big government is always, always, bad government…..What has happened since 2008 on the right is an incredible reawakened revolution of governance which rejects the dominant establishment good government Republicans who have ruled from on high for a Coolidge-style return to the basics of what government ought to be and what it ought to cost.

It might make the salons and the operatives nauseous, but this rejection of the Republican establishment is the new reality, and it is a profoundly good thing.

Unfortunately, Leadership’s commitment to their Pledge deteriorated quickly upon taking control. The Pledge called for a $100 billion cut in nondefense spending, but since this was going to be too hard in an abbreviated fiscal year, they decided to “prorate” that amount. Conservatives at the Republican Study Committee fought their Leadership and got them closer to $100 billion, but not all the way.

However, the Pledge also promised to transform the way the House of Representatives as an institution would be run. They promised to end the practice of packaging spending bills and other related legislation into so-called “omnibus” bills. Specifically, House Republicans pledged to “end the practice of packaging unpopular bills with ‘must pass’ legislation to circumvent the will of the American people. Instead, we will advance major legislation one issue at a time.”

Since it doesn’t actually say the word omnibus, did they mean something else? No, the passage was widely known to mean an end to omnibus bills. In fact, according to an October 2010 post on Speaker Boehner’s own blog, “House Republicans have also called for an end to the practice of passing massive ‘omnibus’ spending bills, arguing such bills make it too difficult to cut spending and too easy to shield spending projects from public scrutiny and debate.”

Now, House Republicans are about to violate this pledge too. They are packaging three spending bills together in a so-called “minibus,” combining the Agriculture, Transportation-HUD, and Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bills, but this simply amounts to playing games with names to save face. The bill would violate the House-passed, Ryan budget by at least $13 billion. Here is one example of why the bill costs so much that illustrates the logic of Congressional appropriators. According to CQ, “[the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program] would receive $6.6 billion. That is $570 million more than the House-passed Agriculture bill and $36 million more than Senate appropriators had recommended.” What sort of degenerate negotiating is this?

It would also include a very troubling provision to expand Federal Housing Administration (FHA) subsidies up to $729,750 mortgages. Never mind that FHA is going broke, and this provision could prove to be an accelerator on a future taxpayer bailout . According to a Reuters article this morning, an FHA audit recently revealed that its cash reserves are so low, “that there is close to a 50% chance it could run out of funds and may require a taxpayer bailout next year.” FHA is leveraged 300-to-1, with roughly only $3 billion in reserves to cover its $1 trillion portfolio. Given that the minimum downpayment for FHA loans is only 3.5%, most of these FHA borrowers have little equity in their homes. Did we not learn the colossal stupidity of this sort of economic policy as a nation during the financial crisis in 2008? For instance, the GOP Pledge itself says that Fannie and Freddie, “triggered the financial meltdown by giving too many high risk loans to people who couldn’t afford them.” Why does the same logic not apply to FHA loans?

Conservatives in the House would do well to vote no and force their Leadership to ”unpackage” these bills, at levels consistent with their own budget resolution and without provisions that will likely lead to future taxpayer bailouts. After all, they made a pledge to the American people to do just that.

In a stunning parliamentary move, Reid invoked the infamous “nuclear option” this evening on the Senate floor to bar Republicans from getting votes on amendments without Reid’s permission. In short, he used a simple majority to do an end run around the rules of the Senate that make it the greatest deliberative body in the world.

Here is what is going on. Harry Reid brought a bill to the floor to impose protectionist sanctions on China. He didn’t want anyone to offer any amendments all week that were uncomfortable for his Democrat Senators, even though it is a key feature of the Senate to be able to force votes on any matter that a Senator deems important. In order to prevent Republicans from forcing votes on the President’s new stimulus plan, Reid used his ability as the Majority Leader to “fill the tree” by offering meaningless amendments that served only to block Republican amendments. Republicans figured out a way to get around him by offering procedural motions (instead of formal amendments) that would require 67 votes to pass but would secure the roll-call vote to get Democrats on the record.

The GOP manuever fit perfectly within the rules of the Senate. The Senate parliamentarian said so. Reid responded by having the Senate overturn the parliamentarian’s ruling. He won his appeal by a vote of 51 to 48 and thereby changed the rules of the Senate by simple majority. Senate rules are supposed to require 67 votes to be changed. This was the nuclear option long contemplated by Republicans in response to Democrats’ blockade of conservative judges, but was never used, in part because of what it would mean to the Senate’s future as a deliberative body. It was feared that it would ruin the filibuster.

Harry Reid pulled the trigger on a bill that had every chance of passing the Senate. Senate Republicans did not have the votes to stop it, so all that was in jeopardy was Harry Reid’s patience and his party’s comfort over having to take a tough vote.

The filibuster is still intact, but by invoking the nuclear option with regard to these Republican motions, Reid has established a precedent that will work to it’s long-term ruin. That is not a good thing for conservatives. I understand that many want the filibuster to go away when conservatives are in control and trying to pass important policy. But the filibuster is about securing a minority’s right to be heard. A government that allows the majority to trample the rights of a minority loses its legitimacy to govern. The majority isn’t always right, and the Senate has always been one of our nation’s most enduring checks against its tyranny.

The Senate as a deliberative body took a major hit tonight. And all because Harry Reid lost his cool and didn’t want to vote on his own President’s stimulus plan.

Never mind that in the opinion of nearly every main stream political analyst the President is on the ropes. My inbox is flooded with news articles about his declining popularity in blue states and the aftermath of this week’s GOP special election victories. But House Republicans modus operandi is still to avoid the fight.

This week, it was their insistence on a continuing resolution (CR) at levels far above the Paul Ryan-House passed budget in order to align with the bad debt deal they passed earlier in the year (because they were unwilling to fight). Then it was their shadiness in passing a six-month highway extension at levels far above the same Paul Ryan-House passed budget without a roll-call vote. They’re only now beginning to criticize the President’s new stimulus plan such that the President’s only glimmer of hope is that the public still doesn’t know how bad or unworkable it is. Why? Because Republicans are afraid of being the party of no. I thought we put that meme to bed last year.

And now we find that tucked into the recently unveiled CR is the provision to bail out the Postal Service, which I wrote about yesterday. Who knows what else is in there.

The bailout is terrible policy, and it completely cuts the legs out from under Darrell Issa, Chairman of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee. (Whatever happened to deferring to committee chairmen?) But what is most troubling is what it illustrates about the state of Congressional Republicans.

They are fundamentally in their DNA unwilling to fight. Every day they have opportunities big and small to educate the public of needed reforms and ways to limit government, but if it distracts them from their pre-cooked, poll-tested “jobs” agenda in the least, then the default position must be to avoid it like the plague.

Conservative activists are not idiots. We can figure out that Republicans control only the House, and that some compromise is necessary. However, this is what we also know. House Republicans are not fighting because they know they don’t have it in them—they know they will cave eventually, so they might as well do it on the front end and lower the political stakes. Better that than risk a public backlash when the night terror of their dreams—the bully pulpit of the White House (such as it is, even with this President)—gets louder and louder with each hour of the increasing brinksmanship needed to win. Conservative activists don’t demand success. We do demand Congressmen who aren’t afraid of the night.

Issa deserves tons of credit. It is a thankless task to try and reform the Postal Service when its threatening to shut its doors and every local postmaster is whining to their local congressman to forestall the doom. Furthermore, nobody comes to Congress with a burning passion to take on postal reform, and very few committee chairmen are willing to spend their political capital to reform programs within their jurisdiction in a manner that ultimately lessens their power. In fact, former chairmen like Tom Davis repeatedly put forward “reform” bills that were bailouts by another name, designed to placate the labor unions and corporations that benefit from artificially cheap mail.

Thankfully, Issa has said enough. He told his colleagues there would be no more bailouts and proposed reforms to allow USPS to shed costs and compete without federal assistance. But this promises to be a major fight, and it will be interesting to see how a Republican Congress handles this difficult political football.

As stated, the source of much of the controversy are these debt payments and whether they are fair to USPS. First some history. In 1970, USPS was converted from a federal agency into a quazi-private, self-financed entity (think Fannie and Freddie without the upside) where it would have the benefit of the system’s assets but also the responsibility of its liabilities. However, this principle has not kept the Postal Service from being relieved of its liabilities through the years—or being bailed out in the language of most Americans. In 2003, Congress and USPS came up with a nifty way of disguising these bailouts. They decided that USPS had “overpaid” into the Civil Service Retirement System, meaning that it would overpay its pension obligations many years from now if everything held steady at current rates and market conditions. But since lowering USPS’ pension payment by itself would have resulted in a huge loss to the Treasury and a resulting increase in the deficit, beyond what even the bill’s sponsors could justify, they put the money in an escrow account within the Treasury until they could figure out what to do with it. Of course, that didn’t stop them from letting $7 billion in walking-around money seep to the Postal Service to do whatever it wanted with.

In 2006, Congress required USPS to direct most of the “overpayment” to prefunding its large unfunded liability stemming from the cost of retiree health care costs (while again giving USPS a couple of billions in bailout money to subsidize their operations) that taxpayers would otherwise have to cover. It is this prefunding requirement that has become the bane of every USPS defender and, in their talking points, the source of all of its current woes. Each year, they call for this requirement to be waived or loosened, and in 2009, Congress obliged. The main House bill (with its cosponsors) to bail out USPS is here. 

Issa is proposing instead to reform the Postal Service and control its costs, namely excess infrastructure and excessive labor costs. The Postal Reform Act (H.R. 2309) creates a Postal Reorganization Commission similar to a military base realignment commission to shutter $1 billion per year in post offices, $1 billion per year in mail processing facilities, and 30% in management facilities. H.R. 2309 allows the Postal Service to shift to 5-day delivery and brings its retirement and health benefits down to the level of federal workers, which is generous considering federal workers have much better benefits than the private sector. Importantly, it also creates a Solvency Authority with broad authority to return USPS to financial solvency in the event of a default. The Authority could renegotiate expensive collective bargaining agreements or unilaterally make changes in the absence of an agreement. It’s not perfect—the Authority would have to abide by the principle of “universal service” and have access to an additional $10 billion line of credit to the Treasury with USPS property acting as collateral. But overall the Postal Reform Act is the first postal reform bill in recent memory that lives up to its own title. Its starts from the worthy premise that costs need to be controlled and the Postal Service doesn’t need a bailout.

At the end of the day, however, Congress needs to catch up with the rest of the country and realize that in a world of electronic mail, the Postal Service’s moment in the sun is over. It’s time that it be allowed to join and compete on equal footing with the private sector and be spun off completely from the federal government. It should be relieved of its universal service mandate and government-sanctioned monopoly. It should also be allowed to compete without an act of Congress. In short, it should be completely privatized. H.R. 2309 is a commendable step in that direction, but we must not lose sight of our ultimate destination because the country may be ready to get there sooner than we think.

Then we find out that a separate bill (H.R. 2887) to extend the federal highway and aviation programs for six months was rushed through the House this afternoon without even a recorded vote. The problem with this legislation was that it extends a broad set of transportation programs that the nation can no longer afford and which are in dire need of reform. It was a missed opportunity, and at the very least, the bill should have extended the programs at the level provided for in the Paul Ryan budget. Ryan’s budget—which almost every Republican Member voted for—included $27 billion for highways programs, about $15 billion less than was provided in FY 2011. In addition, H.R. 2887 lacked a formal cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, so its impossible to nail down the numbers for sure. Bills without cost estimates shouldn’t see the light of day in committee, let alone the floor of the House of Representatives.

After Heritage Action for America (in full disclosure, my employer) announced that it was key voting the legislation for precisely these reasons, Leadership quickly moved that the bill be passed without a roll call vote, meaning that Members had no chance to register their objection to the bill and activists would have no way to hold them accountable. Now every Congressman has the right to demand a roll call vote, and when a bad bill passes the full House by voice vote (or unanimous consent) they are ultimately responsible.  But these sort of games by the Leadership are an affront to all of the promises made during the campaign that the House would be run differently with more accountability and more transparency. Rank-and-file congressmen should expect more of their Leadership, and conservatives need to figure out a better way to monitor this from happening again.

These members—such as Rep. Renee Ellmers (NC)—don’t like the fact that they are perceived on the wrong side of where the conservative movement ended up. Some are threatening to quit their membership in the House of Representative’s predominant conservative caucus.

If that’s what they think, they should submit their resignation—today.

I’d like to give everyone a brief understanding of what the RSC’s role is in Congress. I know because I worked there for over four years, served under three different RSC chairmen, with a two-year stint as its staff director.

The RSC is the conservative movement in the House of Representatives. It is not an arm of the elected House Leadership. It is not a cheerleader of everything that Leadership is doing. In fact, its job is to push Leadership as far to the right as is possible and flat out oppose it when necessary. As a result, Leadership often has a rocky relationship with whoever is the Chairman of the RSC because he or she is a political counterweight on whatever they are trying to do.

Now let me add a dynamic to the picture. A lot of—let’s be generous here—casually conservative Members of Congress like to join the RSC in order to be perceived back home as a 100% winger, but in reality, these Members are in the “Just Happy to Be Here” Caucus. They don’t fight, they often take bad votes if their Leadership wants them to, and when the RSC Chairman decides to fight, they often make his or her life absolutely miserable. Some threaten to quit the RSC. It is part of the territory.

In spite of all that abuse, and in spite of being from Ohio as Speaker Boehner is, Jim Jordan is proving to be one of the most effective Chairman in the history of the RSC. I know because I’ve worked for some of the others. Instead of being raked over the coals, he should be honored as a patriot.

Message to RSC Members who don’t like how the RSC is being managed: Get out.