Tag Archives: GOP

Remember when deficits mattered to GOP?

Donald J. Trump’s tax “reform” plan appears to be a prescription for doing something that used to be anathema to Republicans.

It will blow apart the national budget deficit.

I recall a day when deficits actually mattered to Republicans. The GOP spent a lot of political energy and capital during the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency to lambaste the president for expanding the national debt, even though the annual budget deficit was cut by two-thirds during Obama’s two terms.

Flashing back to 1980, I want to recall how Ronald Reagan managed to be elected president. He and his fellow Republicans tore congressional Democrats — and President Carter — to pieces because they were running deficits that exceeded $40 billion annually.

Forty billion dollars!

Don’t you wish that were the case today?

Well, deficits no longer seem toĀ matter. Republicans have joined their Democratic colleagues as political spendthrifts. Trump is going to cut taxes for his fellow wealthy Americans; his administration calls it the greatest tax cut in history. The spending will go on. The deficits are likely to soar. Won’t that pile more money onto our national debt?

Where is the outrage over that?

O’Rourke trying to make a fight of it for U.S. Senate

I am going to give credit to a young member of Congress who wants to upgrade his status as a public official.

Beto O’Rourke is a Democratic congressman from El Paso. He’s running for the U.S. Senate seatĀ occupied by Republican Ted Cruz.

What deserves a word of praise is that O’Rourke is coming here, to Amarillo, the unofficial “capital city” of the most Republican region of one of the nation’s most Republican states.

He’s scheduling a meet-and-greet this coming Saturday at Abuelo’s Restaurant. He’s going to shake a few hands, get his picture taken with individuals, perhaps answer some questions from those coming to meet the young man.

OK, I get that the election is more than a year away. O’Rourke might not even win his party’s primary next spring; another young up-and-comer, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro of San Antonio is thinking about challenging Cruz.

That’s a decision to be made by others.

But I’m struck by the idea that a Democrat would come here. I understand this isn’t the first time O’Rourke has ventured this far north since announcing his candidacy. I’ve long lamented the idea that Democratic candidates have given up on the Panhandle while Republican candidates take this region for granted.

This ain’t necessarily a battleground region within Texas, if you get my drift.

Am I going to assert that some back-slapping at a popular eatery in Amarillo is going to turn this region into a critical front in the fight for political supremacy? Oh, no.

I do have to give Rep. O’Rourke some props, though,Ā for spending some time among Panhandle partisans. Just maybe we canĀ restore some competitiveness to these statewide races.

There once was a time, as the late U.S. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen used to say, that “politics in Texas is a contact sport.” It hasn’t been that way for more than two decades, since the last time a Democrat was elected to a statewide office here.

I am left to wonder — indeed, hope — that Beto O’Rourke is ready to return some of the rough-and-tumble toĀ Texas politics.

Sen. Cruz: a little self-awareness … please!

Ted Cruz suffers from a serious bipartisan affliction that affects politicians of all stripes.

It’s an acute case of lack of self-awareness. The Texas Republican said that he fears that U.S. Senate Democrats are all in favor of shutting down the federal government over some spending proposals.

Gosh, who knew?

Sen. Cruz said that would be horrible, I tell ya — just horrible! We can’t shut down the government, he said, forgetting — or ignoring — his own role in the previous government shutdown.

You might recall that Cruz sought to filibuster an end to the Affordable Care Act; the filibuster failed but the government had to shut much of its operations down for 16 days thanks in good part to the Cruz Missile’s efforts to repeal the ACA.

As the Texas Tribune reports: “You know, one of the dynamics weā€™ve got is the Democratic radical left is demanding of Senate Democrats that they oppose everything, that they engage in across-the-board obstruction,” Cruz said Monday. “And so I do have some concern that to appease the radical left, Chuck Schumer and the Democrats may do everything they can to try to provoke a shutdown.”

That’s politics, Sen. Cruz

Young man, you need to look back on your own role as part of the “radical right” of your own party. It was quite all right for Cruz and others within the Republican Party to try to talk the ACA to death and produce a partial government shutdown in the process.

“You know, I very much hope we don’t have a shutdown,” Cruz said. “I will say Iā€™m concerned. I think [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer and the Democrats want a shutdown.”

Excuse the disagreement, Sen. Cruz. No one wants to shut down the federal government.

Not even those dreaded Senate Democrats. Honest.

Wishing for days of ‘pork barrel’ bickering

My late mother had a retort when I would say, “Mom, I’ve been thinking.”

“Oh, beginner’s luck?” she would ask … rhetorically.

I’ve had a rash of beginner’s luck lately. I’ve been thinking about the good ol’ days of politics in Washington, D.C., when we used to single out politicians who had this habit of being champions for “pork barrel spending projects,” or those projects that benefit a specific area.

These days, worries about pork barrel spending has given way to rank ideology, where one side calls the other side “evil.” Liberals think conservatives have evil intent; the feeling is quite mutual coming from the other side.

Frankly, I prefer the old days when politicians used to bitch at each other because of all the money they funneled to their states and/or their congressional districts.

The former Republican U.S. senator from Texas, the loquacious Phil Gramm, used to boast about all the “pork” he brought home. “I’ve carried so much pork back to Texas,” he would say, “I think I’m coming down with trichinosis.”

Gramm, though, was a piker compared to some of his Senate colleagues. The late Democrat from West Virginia, Robert Byrd, was known as the king of pork barrel spending. He would attach riders onto amendments to bills that had dough for this or that federal project. As a result, Byrd’s name is on more buildings and bridges in West Virginia than one can possibly imagine.

However, is pork barrel spending a bad thing?

Look at it this way: Politicians do what their constituents want them to do. That’s the nature of politics in a representative democracy, as near as I can tell. We elect pols to represent our interests. If it means carving out a few bucks for this project or that back home, well, then that’s what we send them off to do for us.

These days we hear from rigid ideologues in the U.S. Senate and House. Texas’ two senators — Republicans Ted Cruz and John Cornyn — offer prime examples. One won’t likely accuse Cruz especially of being loaded down with pork; he’s too busy promoting rigid conservative ideology to worry about rebuilding highways and bridges back home in Texas; Cornyn, too, has this leadership role among Republicans in which he seeks to elect more of them to the Senate.

The House features much the same sort of ideology. My congressman, Mac Thornberry, R-Clarendon, once criticized President Obama for considering air strikes against Syria; then he praised Donald J. Trump for doing that very thing. Thornberry isn’t the least bit interested in pork barrel spending, which seems to fit the desires of his constituents; if they insisted on him bringing home more money to the 13th Congressional District, my hunch is that he’d do their bidding.

Where am I going with this?

I guess I’m trying to suggest two things.

One, I long for a return to the late House Speaker Tip O’Neill’s maxim that “all politics is local.” Why not argue the merits of this or that spending program and whether our member of Congress — in the House or Senate — is doing what we want him or her to do on our behalf?

Two, let’s quit the purely ideological battlesĀ and demonization of each other just because they happen to be of a different stripe. From where I sit, I still consider good governmentĀ to be a team sport where each team respects the other side.

Residency becomes an election issue

Jon Ossoff ought to know better than to be caught in the residency whipsaw affecting his candidacy for a seat in the U.S. Congress.

The young man, though, is facing an issue that under normal circumstances wouldn’t matter to anyone outside the district he wants to represent. These aren’t normal.

Ossoff is a Democrat running to succeed former Rep. Tom Price, who quit to become secretary of health and human services. Democrats think they have a shot at capturing a seat held for decades by Republicans. Democrats also believe they have momentum on their side as both parties prepare for the 2018 mid-term congressional elections.

So who’s the leading candidate in the special election set for today? A young man who doesn’t live in the Sixth Congressional District.

Good grief, dude!

Yep, it’s an issue

The 30-year-old Ossoff says it isn’t an issue. Why? Because he said he “grew up in the district” and plans to move back after his girlfriend — with whom he is living outside of the Sixth District — completes her medical school education.

C’mon! Either you live there or you don’t.

The law requires candidates for Congress to live within the corporate boundaries of the congressional district. It’s true at the state level as well.

Residency issues have entangled candidates of all stripes for as long as we can remember. Many of us in Amarillo recall when a local businessman sought the Republican nomination for a seat some years ago in the Texas Legislature. He established a residence in Potter County, even though he had lived for many years in neighboring Randall County; Potter County is part of the legislative district, Randall County is not. Questions arose about whether the gentleman actually was living in his Potter County house or whether he was going “home” at night to his digs in Randall County.

These residency issues would seem to be simple to resolve.

You live where you intend to run — or you don’t.

As for the special election that’s occurring today, it well might be decided if Ossoff wins an outright majority against the crowded field of Democrats and Republicans. If he doesn’t and faces a runoff against the No. 2 candidate, look for the GOP to make a serious issue of his residency.

Yes, congressman, the public pays your salary

Markwayne Mullin has a curious way of honoring this tax-filing season.

All the Republican congressman from eastern Oklahoma did was tell a fired-up town hall audience the other day that they don’t pay his congressional salary. No sir. He has essentially “prepaid” his own $174,000 annual salary by forking over all that tax revenue from his multiple businesses, or so he said.

So help me, if there was a prize for creative (non)thinking, I am quite certain Rep. Mullin would be a finalist for the Mother of All Booby Prizes.

It ain’t ‘bullcrap’

Here is part of how the Washington Times reported Mullin’s, um, strange rationale: ā€œYou said you pay for me to do this. Bullcrap. I pay for myself. I paid enough taxes before I got there and continue to through my company to pay my own salary. This is a service. No one here pays me to go,ā€ Mr. Mullin said in a video of the exchange. ā€œI do it as an honor and a service.ā€

An honor and a service? Is that what you call it, young man?

Even though I am not one of your constituents, I applaud this fellow for calling his congressional service an “honor.” However, he isn’t doing it on his own dime. He’s doing it with money paid by taxpayers all across the nation. That includes those of us who live way over yonder in the Texas Panhandle, which is a good distance from the district Mullin serves.

To be candid, such reasoning about his own tax burden paying for his congressional service insults the intelligence of those who heard him say it at the town hall gathering. It also insults the rest of us who know better than to believe the nonsense this guy sputtered.

The only “bullcrap” mentioned by this young member of Congress was the notion that taxpayers aren’t footing the bill for his service on Capitol Hill.

This is just me thinking out loud at the moment, but I venture to guess that Rep. Mullin has just “bullcrapped” his way out of office after the next congressional election.

Time for a town hall meeting, Rep. Thornberry? Hmmm?

Welcome home, Mac Thornberry.

I know you’re a big shot in the U.S. House of Representatives, chairing the House Armed Services Committee and all of that.

You and I have some shared history here in the Texas Panhandle. You took office the same week I reported for duty at the Amarillo Globe-News in January 1995. In a way, we kind of “grew up together.”

But you’ve disappointed me at times. We differ on public policy matters. That’s OK with me. We have maintained a friendly relationship, which I sincerely appreciate.

What I cannot yet fathom is why you are forgoing town hall meetings with your constituents during this Easter/Passover break Congress is taking. Surely you know about the unease among many Americans about what Congress might do with the Affordable Care Act, the law you GOP lawmakers and other critics blithely call “Obamacare.”

Y’all tried to scrap it and replace it with something else. It didn’t work. The effort failed.

But you aren’t planning any town hall meetings. You met with business leaders in Amarillo and, I presume, in Wichita Falls. I understand you talked about the government’s rules and regulations that affect business operations; I also am quite certain you heard a lot of agreement from those constituents over your own belief that the feds are too hard on private enterprise.

Others out there aren’t entirely in sync with what you want to do. They dislike efforts to repeal and replace the ACA. Indeed, many of your colleagues — including your fellow Republicans — have gotten a gutful of gripes from constituents. I applaud them for taking the heat.

I do not applaud members of Congress who decline to face their constituents and to answer their questions and deal with their anxiety.

You need not to be reminded, Mac, that you work for us. We are your bosses. Not the speaker. Not the House majority leader. Not the president. It’s us, sir.

Talk to us. Listen to us.

Trump and Perry: national security BFFs?

How in the world do these things happen?

Political foes say some amazingly harsh things to and about each other. Then when the fight is over, they declare a winner, all is forgiven and forgotten. It’s just politics, man. Which means that we didn’t really mean all those angry things we said to the other guy.

I just caught up with a story published in the Texas Tribune that seems to illustrate all of that quite nicely. Former longtime Texas Gov. Rick Perry — who now serves as secretary of energy in the Donald J. Trump Cabinet — is now joining the National Security Council. Perry has become one of the president’s more trusted national security advisers.

Did they cure the ‘cancer on conservatism’?

Rick Perry once challenged Trump for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. He was one of a thundering herd of GOP hopefuls seeking to succeed President Obama.

Perry didn’t make the grade — again! But before he stepped off the stage, he did manage to launch a scathing, blistering attack on Trump, whom he called a “cancer on conservatism.” He said the cancer needed to be “excised” from the party, meaning, I suppose, that Republicans needed to do all they could to avoid nominating Trump.

Lo and behold! Trump wins the election and then selects Perry to run the DOE, which in itself is soaked in irony. You’ll recall that Perry ran for president in 2012 and during a primary debate sought to name the three federal agencies he would eliminate. He mentioned the departments of Education and Commerce, but then forgot the Energy Department, producing that infamous “oops” moment that likely will live forever.

I get that energy policy is a national security matter and that the energy secretary deserves to be included in national security discussions on the NSC.

It still does boggleĀ my mind to seeĀ Rick Perry — of all people — elevated to this exalted place during this troubling time.

It makes me ask: Did he really mean that stuff about curing the conservative movement of its “cancer,” or was heĀ making it all up?

How will we know when he’s speaking from the heart or whether he is merely pandering?

Trump at war … with conservatives in GOP!

Conservative Republicans should have known what they were getting when they stood firmly behind their party’s presidential nominee in 2016.

They were backing a guy who didn’t understand them, didn’t understand how to legislate, didn’t grasp the degree to which they would run through brick walls to get their way.

So, when Donald Trump hooked up with congressional GOP leaders — comprising a few moderates here and there along with some notable conservatives — on a cobbled-together health care overhaul, the Freedom Caucus bolted.

The caucus opposed the American Health Care Act. It spoke as one. The president couldn’t deliver.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think the Affordable Care Act should be repealed. It does kind of make me chuckle, too, to see the president get his head handed to him by a group of zealots who want the ACA tossed into the crapper.

But now the president has all but declared war against the Freedom Caucus. I believe this open warfare might doom whatever passes for Trump’s legislative agenda for, oh, the foreseeable future.

Trump is a RINO to many conservatives anyway. RINO, of course, means Republican In Name Only and it’s not altogether clear what precisely informs any public policy that pops into the president’s noggin.

The biggest surprise to me was that conservatives would stand with this candidate to begin with, given his bizarre personal marital history, his acknowledged groping of women, the manner in which he spoke to — and about — his more conservative GOP primary opponents. Whenever I hear Trump talk openly about matters important to social conservatives, one word keeps popping into my head: panderer.

Thus, I shouldn’t be surprised that the president would stake his agenda on cooperation with anyone other than the Freedom Caucus.

He’s not one of them. They certainly do not follow his lead.

The battle, therefore, is joined.

Trump is no Obama as a negotiator

Donald J. Trump’s reputation as a first-class “dealmaker” is now in shambles. It’s been trampled by his own ego and his own petulance.

The deal to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act became a victim of the president’s inability and unwillingness to even talk to Democrats. Let’s forget for a moment that the replacement bill couldn’t get enough Republican votes in the House to approve it. It was cobbled together virtually overnight, in secret, by Republican congressional leaders who handed it to a president who didn’t know — or care — about the details it contained.

How did the ACA come into being?

Its author, President Barack Obama, sought out congressional Republican leaders. One of them happened to be now-Speaker Paul Ryan, who at the time was chairman of the House Budget Committee. He sought out Sen. Mitch McConnell, who would become majority leader in the upper chamber. He talked to Republicans and implored them to come up with a better plan than the one he and his administration had assembled.

The GOP didn’t budge. The president then was left to rely on his Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate to approve the ACA. They did. Republicans howled about having the bill “shoved down our throats.”

What happened this past week bears little resemblance to what happened in 2010. What the current president and the current speaker sought to do was foist a bill on the public that didn’t have the support of most members within their own political party.

There. That’s my take on it.

Do not believe the baloney that Donald Trump is a master “dealmaker.” He’s nothing of the kind. The president has been schooled by politicians who don’t like being bullied.

Trump told us that “I, alone” can repair the things he said need to be fixed. No sir. YouĀ alone cannot.

***

I want to share with you a hilariously astute column by one of the best columnists in America. The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd has peeled the bark off the president, someone she says she knows quite well.

Dowd speaks a blunt, brutal truth in her “letter” to the president of the United States.