I AM GROWING CYNICAL in my old age.
Ten years after being swept into Congress as a thirty-one-year-old reformer, I have seen leaders of my political party conspire with Washingtons biggest spenders to sell out the future of America. Not too long ago you knew who was on which side. Democrats would get elected by promising to launch new federal programs that would cost taxpayers billions of dollars of their hard-earned money. For instance, Hillary Clintons recent promise to a group of San Francisco business owners that if they elected Democrats to power, people like them would pay higher taxes for the common good shows the Democratic Party is holding up its end of the bargain.
Unfortunately, the Republican Party of my youth is nowhere to be found. The once-proud party of Ronald Reagan is doing nothing to hold true to the ideals President Reagan held so dearsmaller government and less spending.
Under Republican leadership in Congress and the White House, the United States is suffering its largest federal deficit ever. Our national debt is rocketing toward $7,500,000,000,000thats seven and a half trillion dollars! Interest rates are once again shooting upward because of reckless Washington spending. Meanwhile, Democrats and their new ideological allies on Capitol Hill are responding to Americas growing crisis by voting through trillion-dollar entitlement programs, massive pork-barrel spending projects, and annual congressional pay raises.
A few Republicans are becoming understandably embarrassed. Before Congress rushed out of town for the 2004 summer recess, a small group of mavericks tried to pass modest budget reforms that would have placed spending caps on legislation and allowed the president to single out pork-barrel bills for elimination. Commonsense proposals like these have been staples of the Republican agenda since Ronald Reagan was president, but when young GOP members placed these provisions in a bill appropriately titled The Family Budget Protection Act of 2004, Republican leaders worked with Democratic Party bosses to crush the reforms by a vote of 326 to 88.
These days when it comes to wasting your tax dollars theres not a dimes worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats. Sadly, less than a month after the world watched Ronald Reagan ride off into the California sunset, the Wall Street Journal declared Reagans party spiritually dead.
Once upon a time, in a Congress far, far away, the Journal began in a June 30, 2004, editorial, Republicans believed in smaller government. But you wouldnt know it now.
The conservative newspaper concluded its GOP Lost Souls editorial by suggesting that the Republican Party would soon be cast out of power if it continued betraying American taxpayers.
Republicans should understand, principal aside, sooner or later they are setting themselves up for a political fall. If Republicans wont campaign against spending to reduce the federal deficit, they can soon expect to find themselves back in the minority.
In a political season where partisans accuse their political opponents of killing little children to gain access to oil pipelines, the Wall Street Journal s criticism of Republican leaders must be disconcerting to demagogues like Michael Moore and Jesse Jackson. These cartoon characters can vilify Republicans by portraying them as baby killers or slaveholders, but they cant teach you a thing about how Washington, D.C., really works.
I can.
What you are about to read isnt the stuff you see in civics books or newspapers. Instead, Im going to give you the Real Deal on how the White House, Congress, and Washington bureaucrats conspire to ensure their political survival while sticking American taxpayers with the bill. If you are an avid reader of political books, you probably expect me to explain this nasty little scheme by launching a blistering attack on one political party while lavishing rapturous praise on the other. After all, isnt that the rage in the publishing world these days?
Republicans make millions writing books that paint Democrats as treacherous, evil little beasts who possess dwarfish hearts, while Democrats get rich slandering Republicans as conniving liars who bend the truth as they send young Americans to their early deaths for a few extra gallons of oillying all the while. Oh, yeah, and did I mention, these Republicans seem to lie a lot.
This profitable form of political hate speech reached its ugly climax with the release of Michael Moores Fahrenheit 9/11. What once would have passed for bizarre Internet conspiracy theories suddenly became mainstream cinematic fare and the object of praise by Democratic congressmen, senators, and party bosses.
Was it a dream? Did my eyes really see Democratic leaders praising a film that was so virulently anti-American that the terrorist group Hezbollah offered to help distribute Moores movie in the Middle East?
It had to be a dream. That could not have really been Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe and half the Democrats in Congress at the Fahrenheit 9/11 premiere sucking up to Michael Moore. After all, it was the same Michael Moore who opposed the United Nations involvement in Iraq because most Americans supported the war, and that the majority must now sacrifice their children until enough blood has been let that maybejust maybeGod and the Iraqi people will forgive us in the end.
Had hatred for George W. Bush really infected the souls of liberals so deeply that they eagerly embraced Moore as their political saviordespite the fact that he defended Iraqi terrorists killing American troops?
The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not insurgents or terrorists or The Enemy, Moore wrote in an April 24, 2004, screed posted on his website. They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will growand they will win.
I can understand why Hezbollah wants Moores message spread across terror camps in the Middle East. I just cant figure out why the Democratic Party would embrace a man calling for the death of young American troops and the success of Iraqi terrorists.
I wonder how Michael Moores hate speech plays in the homes of Americans who saw their childs head cut off and shoved in front of a video camera by these Minutemen. Not well, I would imagine.
As a congressman, newspaper publisher of the Florida Sun, and host of MSNBCs Scarborough Country, I understand that we live in mean political times. Impeachment, the 2000 election, September 11th, the war in Iraq, and a score of political battles going back to Watergate have hardened even the most pragmatic minds inside the Beltway. But as one who has peaked behind the Wizards curtain, I can assure you that neither party comes to the table with clean hands. That is why simply picking a political party to cheer for while slamming the other side as the singular cause for Western civilizations decline is not only misguided, it is dangerous. Americans who buy into this political circus act are distracted from the real sickness that infects Washington.
Unlike George Washington or the Roman general Cincinnatus, who left his farm to save Rome and then promptly returned home after victory was secured, most political leaders in Congress seem fixated on holding power in perpetuity by funneling taxpayer funds to their favorite pork-barreled projects. Their worldview is limited to a two-year term and a single congressional district. Making matters worse, each member secures his own election (and re-election) by trading whatever votes are required to pass pork-barrel bills that keep his voters happy. And because Republicans and Democrats conspire to gerrymander one anothers districts so incumbents are rarely challenged at the polls, the turnover rate on Capitol Hill is lower than in the old Soviet Politburo. This means reckless politicians rarely have to pay the price for their misdeeds. Who does, you ask? You do.
