When Dems controlled Washington (House, Senate, White House) in ’93 and ’94, the GOP was very effective in exploiting divisions within the caucus to stymie parts of the Clinton agenda. With Social Security privatization on the horizon, and some skeptical Republicans out there, it’s time for Dems to do the same thing.
As John Harwood noted today:
If Mr. Bush has a mandate to do something on Social Security, he doesn’t have a mandate to do anything in particular. And nobody knows that better than his fellow Republicans in Congress, who remain a significant obstacle to the president’s ambition.
“He’s got a problem getting this through,” says Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, former chairman of the House Republican campaign committee and a rare lawmaker whose command of political information rivals Karl Rove’s. Mr. Bush has yet to spell out how he’d achieve a shift toward private Social Security accounts. Mr. Davis estimates that roughly 30 House Republicans, including him, are already inclined to oppose Mr. Bush. That would be little more than 10% of the party’s House caucus — but too many defections to allow Mr. Bush to succeed.
That’s extremely encouraging; I’m even surprised Davis would admit this on the record. If Davis, a high-profile GOP lawmaker, has about 30 Republican colleagues who oppose privatization, Bush’s scheme could quickly become a political debacle (in addition to a policy disaster).
To be sure, most congressional Republicans will jump simply because Bush will tell them to. Since most of them are in relatively safe districts, their futures will remain secure, even with support for this ridiculous scheme. But not every GOP district is secure.
For Republicans in swing districts of the Northeast and Midwest, swallowing tax increases or future benefit cuts may sound like swallowing strychnine.
For some fiscal moderates such as Mr. Davis, borrowing to finance the transition to a new system doesn’t seem like such a smooth idea. “Floating a bond issue of a trillion dollars is not the message you want to send to the markets right now,” Mr. Davis says. With the federal budget more than $400 billion in the red and the dollar weakening, he cautions, “Deficits are beginning to matter.”
If Dems don’t take advantage of this fissure, they’ll lose. They obviously won’t be able to defeat Bush’s Social Security plan on their own, but with 30 Republicans rejecting the White House approach, Dems can stave off the worst of Bush’s second term agenda and generate some momentum going into the ’06 cycle. Get to work, guys.