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How to Shut Down the Government
By Dick Morris & Eileen McGann
Published on DickMorris.com on March 7, 2011
At some point, the Administration will run out of cuts that it can live
with and the Republican House will have to decide whether to shut down
the government by refusing to vote for ongoing Continuing
Resolutions. The decision will be easy: either shutdown or shut
up! There is no way the GOP can have any ongoing leverage if it
refuses to close things down once Obama says no to further budget cuts.
The question is: How can the Republicans shut down the government
without suffering the same defeat that Clinton inflicted on them in
1995 and 1996? The full answers are in our new book Revolt!: How
To Defeat Obama and Repeal His Socialist Programs - A Patriot’s
Guide. But here’s a partial summary:
A total government shutdown is like a strike in a labor dispute.
The idea is to punish the public until it forces management (in this
case the Democrats) to give in. In any strike, the key to winning
public sympathy and support is to articulate clearly one’s demands and
to formulate them so that they elicit a positive response.
The central problem confronting the Republicans is that they seek a
panoply of cuts ranging all across the federal budget. Their
desired $61 billion of reductions ($100 billion annualized) go into
practically every area of discretionary spending. There is no way
to describe them in a sound bite.
And, when they cannot tell voters what the cuts are about, the
electorate always imagines the worst. People assume the GOP is
cutting Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, unemployment benefits,
Headstart, and every other popular program. Republicans, helpless
to describe what they are really cutting (because the cuts are so
pluralistic) can only be defensive. Inevitably, the debate
centers around numbers ($61 billion in cuts) rather than any
substantive description of the cuts themselves.
To avoid this pitfall, Republicans should not simply shut down the
government to achieve the multiple cuts in their proffered package of
$61 billion in reductions. They need to scrap that agenda after
the negotiations fail. Such a broad based package of cuts is fine
for negotiations, but it makes a poor message when the actual shutdown
comes.
Instead, Republicans must do the opposite: concentrate their cuts on
two or three vulnerable programs or agencies while leaving all the
others totally untouched. Such a strategy will let the Party
explain its cuts and phrase them in a broadly popular way.
For example, the federal government spends $40 billion a year on
highway construction. About one-quarter of that amount is for
highway repair and maintenance, necessary for safety. But the
other three-quarters ($30 billion a year) are for new highways.
The Republicans should zero fund new construction and say that America
needs a three year moratorium on new highway construction. Repair
and maintain what we have, but we will have to do without new federal
roads for the next year to save $30 billion. It’s a tradeoff,
they should say, but we need deficit reduction more than we need the
new roads.
Other prominent candidates for zero funding are Obama’s National
Infrastructure Innovation and Finance Fund a pork barrel construction
project ($4 billion a year) and his Build America Bonds which provide
for a federal subsidy to states and localities to pay the interest and
principal on their bonds for infrastructure ($11.5 billion a year).
Together, these three programs cost us $45.5 billion a year, close to
the GOP spending reduction goals. Nobody is going to bleed if
they are cut and most voters will accept the necessity of zero funding
them for at least a year and possibly for three years.
For additional political advantage, Republicans should zero fund the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting ($500 million a year) and the
National Endowments for the Arts and for the Humanities ($500 million a
year).
And, for political cover, the House should propose rolling back the
Congressional budget to 2008 levels saving $500 million a year).
Add in $4 billion cuts already agreed to and $6.5 just proposed by the
White House and you come to $57.5 billion, very close to the $61
billion the GOP proposed.
Then the Republicans should leave all other federal agencies in tact
with no cuts. They should present the Democrats with bills for
continuing funding for the other agencies that are identical to those
which would have passed the Senate. Then, if the Democrats choose
to vote against the funding for these other agencies, it is they who
will have held the country hostage and closed down the
government. Republicans would be perfectly willing to keep all
the other agencies open.
And, by unilaterally zero funding the targeted agencies, Republicans
will, de facto, have accomplished their budget reduction goals and be
able easily to explain them to America. And who will care that
these agencies are zero funded?
The result will inevitably be a total victory for the Republican Party
and for those who want to cut the budget.
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