Transparency, As Promised

As I've stated before, I wanted very much for President Obama to bring true change to Washington - much-needed change, to a place deeply mired in lobby-driven graft, the good-old-boy network, shameless self-interest, and partisan divisiveness. I truly did. But given the events of his first few weeks in office, I'm afraid that he's made good on one of his campaign promises, one that we previously had reason to doubt he'd keep:

Increased transparency.

The early returns on this promise were ... well, less than promising. He signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act without posting it on the White House website for five days, so that we the people could review it, even though he'd promised during the transition to do so with all non-emergency legislation that was presented for his signature. And we still don't know what the heck Tim Geithner's planning to do with the second half of the TARP money. I'm not sure Tim does, either.

But especially seeing what's in the President's proposed budget, and after a few other little items that have come up in the early days of the new administration, his agenda appears increasingly transparent.

Consider these things. After his first Commerce appointee had to withdraw in the midst of a scandal - and only after the porkulus bill passed the Senate by the narrowest of margins, requiring three GOP senators to cross the line in order to secure passage - President Obama saw the handwriting on the wall: he couldn't count on blind bipartisan support for everything he wanted to do, as fiscally conservative Republican senators would actually demand to read spending bills before voting on them. So if the Democrats are to make sure their agenda is pushed through without opposition, they must increase their majority in the Senate.

So the President appointed a GOP senator, fiscal conservative Judd Gregg, to Commerce. Sen. Gregg agreed, but only if his state's Democrat governor would agree to appoint a Republican to replace him.

So she did - a RINO who would certainly side with the Democrats on every vote.

Now, that in and of itself doesn't necessarily tell us much. But at the same time, the President announced that the census - which has always fallen under the purview of the Commerce Department - would be taken from Commerce, with responsibility for it coming directly under the White House staff.

Why is that important? The census determines Congressional district boundaries, and its manipulation can provide opportunities to gerrymander, so that a party that controls, say, the White House and both houses of Congress can stack the odds in favor of maintaining or increasing its majority in the House.

Any such attempts on the part of the administration would undoubtedly have met with resistance from Commerce Secretary Gregg. So after the Senator saw the underlying intent of the move, and after he saw how close the porkulus vote was, he withdrew his candidacy for the Commerce vote and stayed put in the Senate to fight the good fight.

Fast forward to this week, when it was announced that the Senate had passed legislation to allow voters in the District of Columbia - who vote heavily Democratic - to elect a Representative to the House. Now, the bill also gives an extra seat to Utah, and it expands the electoral college to add one more elector - also from Utah - which will end the scenario where there could be an electoral tie, as the total number of electoral votes is now odd. Utah is a red state, so its inclusion was a move to win Republican votes for the bill. But still, only six GOP senators voted in its favor. (To throw the GOP an extra bone, the bill rescinded DC's tough gun laws, but that provision will be dropped in the House version that will be voted on next week, since the Democratic majority in the House is so large that its version won't need that sweetener.)

This really isn't a huge deal, as the additional seats should cancel each other out in the House. What's significant about it is that the Constitution only provides representation for states, and DC isn't a state. So the Constitution would have to be amended for the bill to be legal. And I'm not arguing that DC's residents - who pay taxes, after all - shouldn't have representation; we fought a revolution on that very basis. Again, taken of itself, this isn't really all that signficant. But stay with me; these things all need to be taken together.

Now let's look at the budget (which I promised yesterday to do, but as I reviewed it, decided it's actually part of a bigger story).

In the face of the worst recession since possibly the 1930s (President Obama certainly has gone on record stating he believes so), and with a massive, pork-laden spending-bill-wolf-in-"stimulus"-sheep's-clothing already passed, on top of a huge inherited deficit, and with more bailouts in the offing (just this week, another $25 billion to Citigroup, another $15 billion possibly to AIG, and another $22 billion possibly to Chrysler and GM), the President proposed a break-the-bank budget that is full of left-agenda spending.

Spending on education. Spending on nationalizing health care. Spending on "clean energy." Bad ideas? Not necessarily, in and of themselves. It will depend on the execution.

But in the face of the current economic malaise, and the huge debt the US is taking on, these things should wait.

Heck, even Mexico's president gets that. After President Obama told Presidente Calderon that the US' top priority in terms of its relationship with it southern neighbor would be immigration reform, Mr. Calderon acknowledged that immigration reform would be beneficial to both nations. "But," he went on to say, "the best thing that President Obama and his government could do in favor of Mexico and the region is to solve the economic problem in the US."

He gets it. Why don't we? Priority one in this country should be the economy, and everthing else that costs money should take a back seat until that's fixed.

The budget also calls for the end of the Bush tax cuts. Again, not necessarily bad in isolation. But FDR showed us in 1937 what happens when you hike taxes in the middle of a deep economic downturn: you prolong it and worsen it.

What is becoming increasingly apparent - transparent, if you will - is that, after eight years of frustration under the Bush administration, after eight years of seething rage at Karl Rove's permanent majority agenda, the Dems are swinging the pendulum the opposite way, and hard.

They want to create their own permanent majority, through gerrymandering, both existing and additive. They want to pursue their long-desired agenda items of health care nationalization, entitlement expansion, wealth transference, etc.

Now, it's hard to blame them. The past eight years were certainly divisive in this country, although the responsibility for that is equally shared on both sides of the aisle; let's not forget that the outgoing Clinton administration thumbed its nose at Bush even as he was being sworn in, by trashing the White House, holding a press conference at the Andrews AFB send-off to try to upstage the inauguration, etc. And this came on the heels of the bitterness over Al Gore losing his lawsuit to win the 2000 election.

The great divide was born then; it only briefly healed after 9/11. President Bush most certainly squandered the unity dividend that followed that tragedy, especially with the invasion of Iraq. But the healing post-9/11 was tenuous in Washington, even if it wasn't in homes throughout the nation. Sen. Clinton used the terror attacks on her newly-adopted state to increase her visibility, and there was immediate - though muted - criticism of President Bush for some aspects of the response.

Still, the Democrats frustration, and their desire to finally get to spend as much money as they wanted on their pet projects, is understandable. And not everything they want to do is a bad idea, as I've said. But the massive bailout mania that began last year under the Bush administration, which was anything but fiscally conservative, paved the way for additional massive spending on anything and everything. In an environment where trillion is the new billion, the American people seemed almost numb to the idea of doubling a deficit that was already going to be double last year's record shortfall.

So it appears that this administration and Congress are returning to the old "tax and spend" model. And I'm not applying that moniker either exclusively nor universally to Democrats. Both Bush administrations lived up to it, and I wouldn't call President Clinton a tax and spend Democrat.

Maybe he was, at the core; maybe he wanted to be. But he at least understood, being sworn into office on the heels of a recession and during a still-anemic recovery, that "it's the economy, stupid." So if he was a tax-and-spender, he buried his tendencies and sought to strengthen the economy and use the peace dividend and low interest rates to balance the budget.

This lot doesn't have that resolve, or else they don't get the importance of economic matters. So they're going to spend as much as they want on what they want, taking steps along the way to try to ensure their ability to continue to do so after future elections - economy be damned.

I, for one, could live with a little less transparency. There are some truths that I'd just rather not know.

As for the budget itself, the proposed $634 billion in spending on health care nationalization is but a "down payment" - the full cost is projected to be a trillion dollars, and we all know what will happen to that estimate when all the spending's done.

The additional $750 billion in aid to the banks - which is being gobbled up even as I type - may not be necessary, according to administration officials; it's being referred to as a "placeholder" in the budget, in the event it's deemed necessary. In Washington, we all know what that means: it will most assuredly get spent, one way or the other, even if its purpose has to be shifted to an ancillary one. And it will become part of the base line for next year's budget, which will increase it.

Reaction to the budget is predictably mixed - divided would be a better term to use. Naturally, many (myself included), armed with a full understanding of exactly what brought us to the brink of economic ruin, are aghast at such huge deficit spending on pet projects at such a time as this.

Others think it's fine. Here's a quote from one American interviewed by Reuters:

"I like Obama, so I am willing to be cautiously optimistic. If anyone has a shot at creating a budget that will be good (with) good priorities, he's got the best chance."

Really? How do we know this? Is it true merely because we like the guy? Does he honestly have the most experience, the greatest wisdom, in crafting a budget? Has he ever had to do anything more than vote on a budget in his life?

Translation: "Had John McCain been elected President, and proposed a budget full of tax cuts and defense spending that would result in a two trillion dollar deficit, I'd be screaming to the rafters about fiscal irresponsibility."

We remain divided. And a house divided against itself cannot stand.