Revolt!

by Dick Morris

  We can’t have a recovery with this widespread fear and uncertainty.

  Obama doubtless hopes that these issues will be ancient history by November 2012. His political people want us to forget our fears about his health care changes—that’s why it is slated to take full effect only after the presidential election. They hope that the failure of the stimulus package will fade from memory by the time Obama seeks a second term.

  After all, when the presidential race came around in 1996, who remembered Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax increases or Hillary’s 1994 health care proposals?

  Obama is right: unless the Republican House keeps those issues front and center, they will fade from memory. And we must not let that happen!

  Having battled to defeat Obama’s socialist agenda throughout ’09 and ’10, conservatives must now fight to defund and repeal it in ’11 and ’12. And we know that even if our bills pass the Democratic Senate, Obama will undoubtedly veto them.

  Our only choice is to wrap our proposals to defund ObamaCare into the two pieces of legislation that have to pass for the government to keep operating: the increase in the debt limit, which we will need this spring, and the 2012 budget, which will have to pass by October 1, 2011. We have to stop his program before it starts. Before they will approve a debt limit increase or a new federal budget, Republicans must demand that Obama’s expensive and intrusive programs be cut. They must hold firm despite the chaos that will ensue. Obama will refuse to sign a debt limit increase or a new federal budget without his programs. The great budget battle lines will be drawn.

  As we fight these battles we will be keeping the issues Obama wants to go away alive. We are assuring that they will remain front and center in the 2012 elections.

  Not so if the GOP folds and accepts compromises with Obama. If we settle for some improvements in his health care proposal—a weakening here, a dilution there—conservatives will be unable to make these issues central to the 2012 election. If we compromise in ’11 and ’12, we will have to live with Obama as president for four more long years.

  It’s that simple.

  We must use the battles over the debt limit and the federal budget for fiscal year 2012 to replay and relitigate all the issues that made Obama so unpopular that he lost control of the House.

  Start with blocking tax increases.

  Higher taxes are Obama’s central goal. He sees them not as vehicles to raise money, much less as necessary steps toward lowering the deficit. To him, they are instruments to redistribute income and promote what he calls “social justice.” His goal is economic leveling, which entails soaking the rich with ever higher taxes and using the money to fund a permanently enhanced public sector that placates and pacifies voters with subsidies. Capital flows from private hands to the government, and socialism sets in.

  That’s what he wants.

  But when he took office, Obama realized that he could not raise taxes, especially not right in the middle of a massive recession. His party wouldn’t have passed it, no matter how overwhelming his majorities, and he would not have gotten any Republican support.

  So Obama decided instead to raise spending to incredible heights and borrow the money, making the deficit totally unmanageable. By incurring a massive debt and building up a huge deficit, Obama assured that the cry for an American tax increase would swell and sweep around the world. He knew that the pressure to close the deficit he had created would be irresistible. Central to his political strategy was the assumption that the forces of fiscal responsibility would make Republicans join in voting for higher taxes.

  But he thought wrong.

  Republicans must, instead, pass a debt limit bill and a budget that brings down the deficit dramatically and ratchets back his big spending policies—but does it with no tax increase.

  In the next chapter, you’ll find out just how to accomplish this. Surprisingly, it’s not that hard, even with an extension of the Bush tax cuts and an end to the alternative minimum tax (AMT) hikes.

  All you have to do is to roll back the massive, unbelievable spending increases that Obama pushed through in the opening months of his presidency: the so-called stimulus package. Under his leadership, the government spent money on all kinds of junk. Every useless program that had been kicking around for years, every congressman’s dream pork barrel appropriation got money.

  To bring down the deficit to about 3% of our economy (the level economists aim at) you have to get rid of all of that new spending. The way budget mavens put it is, you have to freeze domestic discretionary spending at 2008 levels for three years. That’s not so hard to do. After all, the federal government wasn’t exactly starved for funds in 2008. We just had not yet gone on the wild spending spree of the Obama years.

  We also need to stop the crazy growth of Medicaid spending, which has doubled in the past ten years, and cancel Obama’s plans to add 16 million people to the rolls as part of ObamaCare.

  Then we just have to commit to bringing our troops home by 2015, leaving only 60,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  And you’re there! The deficit will be down to a reasonable size by 2014.

  No need to cut Medicare or Social Security…and no need to raise taxes. The numbers work just fine without higher taxes.

  This is important: Republicans must not be dragged by our idealism into battles we cannot win and that, if we wage, will cost us the White House in 2012. It is vital for the long term that we reform Medicare and Social Security. But we’ll do that after we win in 2012. Not before! Don’t sacrifice our chances by wading into those thickets. We will have our hands full with the essential fights we must win.

  Then, Republicans must use the debt limit and budget battles to defund ObamaCare. The program he jammed through Congress is massively unpopular. More than any other factor, it was what led to his defeat in the 2010 elections.

  Republicans cannot actually repeal ObamaCare until we retake the White House and win a Senate majority. But there’s a lot we can do to stop it cold in the meantime. We can take away the money to implement it. We can refuse to appropriate money to the IRS to hire the 16,500 new agents the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says it will need to enforce the requirement that everybody buy health insurance and that employers provide it.13 And we can stop funds from going to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that would be used to implement Medicare cuts or to gather data on which to base health care rationing. Zero funding!

  The courts may help us out in stopping ObamaCare. As we said in our previous book, 2010: Take Back America—A Battle Plan, ObamaCare is unconstitutional. Now a Virginia District Court has found that the individual insurance mandate to buy insurance violates the Constitution. If the Supreme Court agrees, we may kill ObamaCare even before the 2012 elections. But we can’t take that for granted. We must paralyze ObamaCare by defunding it now.

  The Republican House can also stop Obama from using his control over the executive branch to attempt an end run around Congress to enact his most controversial proposals without even asking for legislative approval. In two areas where Congress has rejected his bills (even with his overwhelming Democratic majority), the president has moved to implement them by executive action.

  Congress turned down his cap and trade proposal to combat global climate change. So Obama is getting the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to require businesses and industries to buy permits to emit carbon dioxide, using what it claims is its power under the Clean Air Act, passed in 1970. Carbon dioxide, of course, is not a health risk like the particulates, sulfur dioxide, or nitrous oxides, which are the targets of the statute. We all breathe carbon dioxide with each breath. But because he says it contributes to global climate change, Obama wants the EPA to limit CO2 emissions.

  Meanwhile, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is moving to impose Obama’s card check legislation (the so-called Employee Free Choice Act) on the nation’s business. Currently, when workers want to form a union, a majority of them have to check off cards
asking for one and then the issue is put to a referendum—by secret ballot. Obama tried to get Congress to eliminate the secret ballot and let the card checkoffs alone determine the workers’ wishes. But much of the time, the referenda result in a rejection of the union, even though a majority have signed cards asking for one. The workers say one thing when their union rep is peering over their shoulder and another when the ballot is confidential. Congress rejected the proposal. But now the NLRB, by a 3–2 party line vote, is planning to ban the secret ballot and just use card checks.

  The pollution tax and the card check law are both job killers and Americans overwhelmingly oppose them.

  According to the Rasmussen Reports, 61% of voters think “it’s fair to require a secret ballot vote if workers want a union. Only 18% disagree.”14

  Voters break even on whether or not carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions should be regulated. Rasmussen Reports found them splitting 41–41 on the question. But when asked if the EPA should be able to impose these regulations without consulting with Congress, voters said no by 53–24.15

  So the Republican House must amend the EPA and NLRB budgets to prohibit these agencies from using any of the money it appropriates to implement a carbon tax or card check regulations.

  No sooner did the election results come in last year than Obama’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) came up with new ways to squelch talk radio and control the Internet. We must block this devious attack on free speech launched in the names of “localism,” “fairness,” and “net neutrality.” Republicans should insert language into the FCC appropriation prohibiting the proposed changes.

  Finally, Republicans need to put an end to budget earmarks once and for all. GOP congressmen and senators have just voted to do so. In the House, that will, of course, be binding on the Democrats whether they like it or not. But we don’t have the majority in the Senate, and know that the Democrats—particularly those running for reelection—will jam up the budget with earmarks.

  They will say the earmarks are to create jobs in their home states, but don’t believe it. They are really devices to generate campaign cash for themselves. Democratic senators such as Robert Casey (PA), Robert Menendez (NJ), Bill Nelson (FL), Jim Webb (VA), Debbie Stabenow (MI), Sherrod Brown (OH), Jeff Bingaman (NM), and Jon Tester (MT)—who are all up for reelection—receive between a quarter and a third of their total campaign war chest from lobbyists for whose clients they have secured earmarks. (Go to Part IV, The Democrats We Must Defeat, to see who is funding their campaigns with donations, and in return for earmarks.)

  Without the earmarks, would the campaign funds still flow? We doubt it. These Democrats are hanging on to their earmarks so that they can use them as a legal form of bribery to get campaign donations in return.

  We have to put an end to this little shell game! We must stop any earmarks from making their way into the budget for 2012!

  Finally, we need to force changes in the new regulations that Obama imposed on small community banks. The big boys on Wall Street need more regulating. But we need to free local banks from the shackles that Obama’s federal bureaucracy imposed on them. These restraints, more than anything else, are impeding our economic growth. Banks must be freed to make loans to create jobs or jobs won’t be created!

  We need to bring all these issues into the debt limit and the budget battles. We must wage the fight on nine fronts:

  Stop any increase in taxes

  Roll back Obama’s outrageous spending

  Cut the deficit to 3% of GDP

  Defund ObamaCare

  Block the EPA from imposing a carbon tax

  Halt NLRB efforts to ban secret ballots in union elections

  Kill all earmarks in the budget

  Block the FCC from curtailing free speech

  Free community banks to lend, thus creating jobs

  In effect, we must use the debt limit and the budget debates throughout 2011 to revive, relive, refight—and win—the Greatest Hits of 2010!

  Obama will veto the debt limit extension and the budget as long as our amendments are attached. He will demand clean bills that preserve his programs and his spending. But the Republican House must not give in. We need to battle through the stalemate that follows. Don’t blink. Don’t cave. Even if a government shutdown results. Don’t compromise. Just fight and win.

  In American politics, it is the president who sets the agenda, not Congress. And the president will want to move on. He won’t want a Republican House to pick through the budget increases he got passed in 2009 or the new laws he enacted in 2010 or the executive orders now coming down the pike. He will want to move on to new turf.

  But the Republican House and the American people cannot let him change the subject. We need to review all that he has pushed through and defund it, cut it, and block it. In that sense, the president will still be setting the agenda, but it will be the agenda he set in his first two years, not the new agenda he would like to focus on.

  The nation will be watching this Armageddon-like battle very, very closely. Just as we hung in suspense on every vote as Obama passed his health care program, over our objections, in 2010, we will be riveted to the television (FoxNews, we hope!) as the 2011 confrontation over the debt limit and the budget unfolds. Obama will fight with every ounce of his strength as the 2012 elections approach. The issues of 2010 will be the issues of 2012. And then, we’ve got him!

  Some ask if Obama will move to the center. Will he emulate Bill Clinton and his strategy of 1995 and 1996?

  He won’t, because there is no center. Either you raise taxes or you don’t. No matter how Obama may try to dress up or conceal a tax hike by claiming that he is also cutting spending, it will still be a tax increase. Obama won’t get credit for the spending cuts, and the debate will quickly move to his tax proposals.

  The other issues Republicans will insert in the budget debate also do not admit of compromise. Either you let the IRS go after people who don’t have health coverage or you don’t. The budget either permits Medicare cuts and rationing or it doesn’t. Either it bans a carbon tax or allows it; either allows a secret ballot in union elections or doesn’t.

  There is no compromise. There is no center ground. If Obama proposes to phase in his programs more gradually or to adjust them to make them more palatable, that won’t help much. The heart of his proposals will remain unpopular.

  Obama may well try to disguise his defeats as compromises. His cave-in during the lame duck session of Congress in December 2010, when he agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts, for example, was portrayed as a bipartisan compromise, a concession to lower the intensity of the partisan debate. But America was not deceived. We saw it for what it was—a Republican victory and a defeat for Obama. We could tell the difference between compromise and surrender.

  And even if Obama is able to moderate the liberal, dogmatic, obstinate image he acquired during his first two years, by gracefully conceding fights he is losing and making a virtue out of surrender, it will still hurt him. He cannot escape being increasingly seen as weak, or Carteresque. His inability to stand firm on foreign policy and his continuing defeats at the hands of the Republican House will lead voters to conclude that he is not up to the demands of the presidency. The bad economy—even if there is a slight lowering of unemployment—will reinforce the impression of a president who is in over his head.

  Obama will have to choose between a rock and a hard place. Either stand up to the Republican House, battle tenaciously, and try to win, at the price of looking doctrinaire, liberal, and dogmatic. Or give in and make concessions and look weak and inept. Either way, we have him. Once we fight—and if we hold firm—we’ve got him!

  But won’t Obama have all the money he needs to win? Won’t he be flush with campaign funds? Won’t his union buddies hand over the keys to their treasure chests to keep their man in office?

  Of course an incumbent president will have a big financial advantage. But money doesn’t always determine electi
ons. At the start of the 2010 election, Congressional Democrats in both chambers enjoyed a huge financial advantage. Since they were in power and solidly controlled both houses, they outraised the House and Senate Republicans dramatically.

  But, as the likelihood of a Republican victory loomed larger, the GOP began to catch up and raised more than their rivals did in the crucial months before the election. Obama will, indeed, have an early financial edge, but, by Election Day, it is likely to have eroded.

  Nor can Obama ignore the rising discontent on his left flank. Democrats were outraged when he conceded the fundamental issue of the 2008 campaign and did not raise taxes on the wealthy. He has not closed the Guantánamo Bay detention center. He failed to get a public option on health care (i.e., a government-owned insurance company). And his job creation record is dismal.

  Will all this discontent lead to a Democratic primary challenge? It very well might. Perhaps someone like former senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) or radical congressman Dennis (the Menace) Kucinich (D-OH) might mount a challenge. If they do well in the polls, that might open the door for Hillary Clinton to run. It’s too early to tell. But the more Obama concedes to the Republicans in the House, the more he catalyzes a primary on the left. And let’s all remember history: the three presidents who faced serious primary challenges—Johnson, Ford, and Carter—saw their party defeated in the ensuing general election.

  Of course, you can’t beat somebody with nobody. Whom will the GOP run? Whom should we nominate?

  AND THE REPUBLICAN CONTENDER IS…?

  The Republican victories of 2010 were based on national issues, but there were no national leaders.

  In 1994, when the GOP took Congress, it was clear that Newt Gingrich was the leader. He had been planning for the 1994 takeover for much of his adult life. It was he who worked for years through GOPAC (Grand Old Party Political Action Committee) to fund state legislative races around the country to groom and advance local Republicans for the day when they would be able to topple their Democratic congressmen. It was he who uncovered the dozens of Democrats who bounced checks to the House Bank.