“The power to tax involves the power to destroy!”
John Marshall
Despite a blizzard of disinformation to the contrary, America’s projected deficit for this fiscal year may exceed $200,000,000,000, pushing the national debt closer to the $5.0 trillion mark!
But, how can that be? President Clinton, his army of minions, the Congressional leadership and various apologists who believe government is their salvation have all assured us the deficit is under control. In truth any reductions from Bush-era deficits are due to low interest rates, private sector expansion and massive tax increases … only the latter of which comes courtesy of the government.
Serious attempts to reign in the budget have met with obfuscation and obstruction. Most highly-touted spending cuts were little more than clever bookkeeping adjustments. Since even the beltway accountants couldn’t cook the federal books into balance, the public was told it must “invest in America’s future“; Washington double-speak for a tax increase.
Then, once our government spends all it can extract from the taxpayers and it simply borrows the rest. In the process, our futures and those of our children are being undermined.
Disenchanted with last year’s budget resolution, New Hampshire Republican Bill Zeliff latched on to an idea floated and then abandoned by Senator Bob Kerry. Subsequently frustrated with Congressional defeats of the Balanced Budget Amendment, the Line Item Veto and the Penny-Kasick amendment, Zeliff and New Jersey Democrat Robert Andrews fashioned a new and creative, bipartisan approach to reigning in runaway federal spending.
House Resolution 3266, popularly known as “A-to-Z”, calls for the House to set aside fifty-six hours to debate and vote on line-item spending cuts. If adopted, every House member would be permitted to offer a single, “meaningful” spending cut. Each proposal would be debated and then voted on, up or down.
Moreover, everything would be on the table, including usually sacrosanct entitlements. The process would also operate under an “open rule”, permitting members to offer floor amendments, a parliamentary freedom denied members more than 80% of the time by recent House Speakers. Proposed cuts for which the allotted time did not permit debate would still be voted on individually. Those approved would be sent on to the Senate where an uncertain future would await them.
“A-to-Z” would also deny House members the conventional cover of being able to vote for wasteful or pork barrel projects typically buried in larger, often popular bills.
If the Senate then acted in a similarly responsible manner, those House spending cuts they also approved would be sent to the president who’d then be faced with signing or vetoing each cut on an item-by-item basis.
Even with the iffy future any House passed cuts might face, the Speaker and his leadership cohorts are vehemently opposed to “A-to-Z”. Labeled as “irresponsible” by Speaker Foley, he has launched an all-out crusade to scuttle the plan and keep it locked up in committee.
However, last Wednesday, Congressmen Zeliff and Andrews initiated a discharge petition process to circumvent the Speaker and to bring the measure to the House floor. As the bill currently has 230 cosponsors, logic would dictate obtaining the required 218 discharge signatures would be in the bag.
But, with Comrade Foley out twisting arms, nothing is guaranteed. However, his actions expose yet another problem with a Congress sorely in need of reform.
While the Speaker may be personally opposed to a bill’s goals, efforts to prevent the people’s elected representatives from debating and voting on issues they believe in the best interests of their constituents is anathema to the democratic process. Moreover, the mere fact a few powerful, and generally senior, members can wield such control over the House and its members smacks of a Congressional oligarchy … which Americans should demand be dismantled immediately!
Clearly, the “A-to-Z” formula is imperfect. However, it represents an honest and creditable attempt to publicly examine a wide ranging array of spending priorities … and deserves a chance to work.
As Bill Zeliff properly observed, “The members are going to have to decide whether their committee slots or their Washington benefits are more important than the people back home.”
