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Senate Republicans Must Not Use National Security as a Bargaining Chit

By: Russ Vought (Diary)  |  December 1st, 2010 at 12:42 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

It would be unbelievable, if it were not so common place. After an election in which millions of Americans went to the polls to demand that laws be considered and passed on the basis of principle, Senate Republicans are already reverting to their log-roll ways to help President Obama pass in a lame duck session an arms treaty–New START–that makes the U.S. weaker and Russia stronger.

According to press reports, Senate Republicans are willing to sacrifice their votes on New Start (and another costly extension of unemployment benefits) to secure a deal on a SHORT TERM extension of the current tax rates that they were already going to get if they played out there hand.

Here is the bottom line: Republicans are trading national security for tax cuts. And we wonder why the Republican brand still stinks.

Look at Senate Republicans’ widely-reported-upon letter, which states that if a tax deal is agreed upon, other issues can be worked on:

For that reason, we write to inform you that we will not agree to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to any legislative item until the Senate has acted to fund the government and we have prevented the tax increase that is currently awaiting all American taxpayers. With little time left in this Congressional session, legislative scheduling should be focused on these critical priorities. While there are other items that might ultimately be worthy of the Senate’s attention, we cannot agree to prioritize any matters above the critical issues of funding the government and preventing a job-killing tax hike.

Here is the thing. Republicans could have the tax rate extension regardless. Democrats are in an untenable political situation if they don’t extend the current rates. If they allow taxes to skyrocket on January 1, it’s their fault, and Republicans will have an opportunity to permanently extend them in a new Congress, with the help of many Democrat Senators newly in cycle who don’t want to be seen as tax hikers. There is a reason Barak Obama felt the need to negotiate with Republicans down at the White House yesterday.

Unfortunately, Senator Jon Kyl has been signaling for months that many Senate Republicans would trade their votes on New START to secure additional nuclear modernization funding. According to Senator McConnell in August, “All [the Obama Administration has] to do is find enough money to satisfy Senator Kyl that they are prepared to do what they said they would do…In my view they need to do that, because without that I think the chances of ratification are pretty slim.” Kyl’s strategy has always been to force Democrats to spend more money in exchange for something they badly want. Given that Democrats always want to spend money, this was never a particularly heavy lift.

Now after Republicans won big in the mid-term election and increased their negotiating leverage with six new Republicans, the strategy has changed–but in the wrong direction. Instead of forcing the Obama Administration back to the negotiating table with the Russians, Senate Republicans are content to barter it away in exchange for a short-term increase of current tax rates.

COMMENTS

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  • cwilson

    …and stated that he [Rush] was told that the story was bogus. IOW, the weasels are denying it. However, Rush went on to say that he fully expected that the weasels would, eventually, arrive at this compromise capitulation or one very similar to it.

    Weasels are weasels, and 80% of the weasels got re-elected.

  • ohiohistorian

    think of themselves as statesmen. Remember, Voinovich was part of the problem that gave us 10 year tax relief instead of an across-the-board tax cuts, which is what should have occurred.

    There should be NO START deals at all. Tell Obama that he can have his unemployment extension until he runs out of recovery funds. And tell him that $800 B is the ceiling for the budget extension.

    There are 62 Republicans in the Senate. They can block all of this nonsense if they will stand together.

  • romeg

    To borrow a quote from Oliver Stone’s JFK:’We are through the looking glass’ as far as polling is concerned. Reagan, indeed, used polling to gauge opinion in order to shape the message, not the policy. Now polling is used to shape opinion, not gauge it. No one is more aware of this than Dick Morris, an early architect of the science.

    Whether or not something makes the 11 o’clock news is determined by whether or not it makes for “Good TV” and that is almost always some shallow aspect of spectacle over substance.

    Broadcast TV has become the vast wasteland that its critics bemoaned since the early ’60s only now that wasteland encompasses what passes, or USED TO pass for their respective news bureaus.

    All of this is very demoralizing to an electorate so recently inspired by its ability to re-shape the makeup of Congress. My fear is that cynicism will take root and, instead of finishing the job in 2012 or 2014, we will be back where we were in 2006. After all, isn’t that what happened to the Donks in 2010 and the Repubs in 2008?

  • avgjo

    We have all been saying that after we get the Republicans elected, we’d have to hold their feet to the fire on everything we want.

    And now, I notice that all over, people are getting discouraged because the GOP is doing what the GOP always does. Well of course they will. In many (most?) cases, they are little better than the Dems. I have said it before and I’ll say it again: there IS a dime’s worth the difference between the GOP and the dems and that is that, at the end of the day, the GOP will listen to its constituents and the Dems won’t. So that means it is up to us to stay on their backs.

    Case in point: ‘the weasels are denying it’ in cwilson’s words. To me, this means they know that this is not a popular idea. The only reason they know this is because people are letting them know. If people quit letting them know, they will go right back to their old ways, and yeah, they will capitulate to this jerk we call president. If we keep the pressure up, they won’t. BTW, two more examples I read about in the last 12 hours: Cantor et al. vehemently denying that they would compromise on the repeal of Obamacare and the Senate GOP coming out saying that they are going to block all non-tax related legislation. This last is a shrewd move; it gives them the ability to demagogue on tax cuts for everybody (about danged time we start doing some demagoguing) and they can use this as cover to avoid other nasty lame-duck legislation.

    The fact that ‘the weasels are denying it’ should be encouraging. This means that they know there is opposition to the idea of compromise. Of course, if we let up on the watching and yelling, they will screw things up. What concerns me is that this seeming shift from ‘we’re going to have to stay on their butts’ to ‘sigh, the GOP is just doing what it always does’ signals that people are falling into the same old trap of voting republicans in and then letting themselves be disasppointed, instead of maintaining the realistic but optimistic ‘we can get what we want out of these jerks, we’re just going to have keep big pressure on them.’

    Rush, Levin and others are doing yeoman’s work in staying on the GOP’s back and getting their listeners worked up over RINOism. We have to do our part: don’t get discouraged, watch these bums like hawks and swoop down on them at the first sign of pachyderm stupidity.

  • chamberD

    Republicans will either oppose statists, utterly and completely, and including statists with an R next to their names, or they will be replaced by a third party.

    It doesn’t matter, either, that a third party wouldn’t have the infrastructure at the beginning to make much of a dent in winning races. What would matter is that our representatives will know that a course correction is demanded by the electorate and that we mean business. What would matter is that Republicans — who have squandered their political capital and abused their calling by easing us into socialism — will be denied the power to do any more damage than they already have done.

    We expect Democrats to pursue the destruction of America; that’s what the left does. But we expect Republicans to DEFEAT those attempts and to UNWIND the cord strangling our freedoms. If they’re not up to the job, if they’re made of straw because their ambition is self-promotion and not adherence to principle, if they’re unsure of who they really are or unsure of the rightness of the American cause, then they will be replaced.

    No extension of unemployment benefits: the USA is not a charity organization: Permit people to suffer the NEGATIVE EFFECTS of socialist policies so they can begin to APPRECIATE capitalism, self-reliance, and self-respect.
    No new Republican health care bill that is based on polling data. Free-market solutions ONLY; unwind the disastrous governent regulations that alone are the chief drivers of sky-rocketing costs; major TORT REFORM. Portability of purchase of HI across state lines.
    No to Putin’s newStart treaty deal.

    No compromise whatsoever with the Left — EVER.

  • runner12

    When I heard this story on Rush I almost tossed my cookies. When will these people GET IT? We don’t want compromise or go-along-to-get-along, we need real change and we need it now. While I sympathize with those out of work, the government has helped you out for a while now and it is time for those benefits to end. We simply can’t afford it as a nation. There are many private charity organizations and churches who have highly effective ministries to those in need.
    And the START treaty? Really? You would sacrifice our national security for tax cuts? These reps should go into the POTUS office with guns blazing and demand that he back down and come to our way of thinking. That is why the people put you back in power in the House.
    If the Repubs do not change, they will go the way of the Whigs and a Third Party will take their place.

  • IJB

    People who think that a third party is magically going to spring into being and solve our problems after 2012 are whistling past the graveyard.

    The truth of the situation is grave: if the Republicans fail this time, a lot of us won’t be looking for a third party – a lot of us on the Right (and I suspect an equal number on the Left) will be looking for something of a solution that’s a whole lot more… permanent. IOW, a whole lot of people are going to be lined up against the wall if these guys fail. And I’m not really thinking of that in a figurative sense…

    This country’s decline is too far along for a third party to be an answer.
    It’s now or never time, frankly – if the “Ruling Class” fails the get it this time, they have no idea how serious the response from the people will be. Especially if the economy gets worse from here on in.

  • Common_Cents

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOshw4kIGR4&feature=player_embedded

  • http://pocketchangeproductions.net/ anotherindyfilmguy

    Ok… let them be hounded out of office by the new people coming in this year and/or the voters next time around.

    H-O-pefully we won’t get nuked by anyone who dislikes us in the meantime…

  • avgjo

    I and my two brothers were at early morning Black Friday sales, and even the 15-year old is politically engaged.

    My comments were directed primarily at activists who complain about the GOP not doing what they’re told. My point is, in short:

    1. We already know that the GOP will sell us out UNLESS we stay on their backs at all times;

    2. Bearing this in mind, we must be ever vigilant in watching them and vigorous in excoriating them.

    3. The energy that could be put into doing 1 and 2 is all too often spent wringing our hands and lamenting the fact that the GOP must be shown that it has a spine.

    That’s all I was trying to say. I’ve had my caffeine since the above post so i can now word it more clearly.

  • Common_Cents

    Keepin boots on their necks is the way to keep em honest.

  • Scope

    I get so down with what the Liberals have been able to pass, and, wonder over and over if the Republicans could have stopped the worst of it. Today, I read that McConnell will hold up any further bills coming before the Senate, if they don’t work on the tax extensions first. Why the freak did this creep not do that before? I have been in a state of depression, not because of what the Liberals have done, but, I am profoundly depressed about what the Republicans have done, particularly in the last few days. I am so in the realm of giving up it’s pathetic. Why do we fight to get these people re-elected, as we did for McConnell in 08, just for them to screw us over and over again? The Republicans are upsetting me more than the Progressives at this point.

  • froster

    it was the fact that very few Democrats supported the proposal, that they had to move the tax cut package through reconciliation (back in 2001). Reconciliation, for those who did not know, can only be done if you want to have the stuff expire in x amount of years. (I guess 9?) Am I wrong?

  • chihank

    John Cornyn is warning incumbents up for re-election in 2012 to pay attention to primaries. Also the newly elected, Tea Party Governor of ME is backing Snowe in the primary in 2012.

    Its going to be tougher to beat the Establishment in 2012. The Establishment is preparing itself against Tea PArty insurgents.

  • Bill S

    The Senate has voted on and passed some legislation, but nothing has emerged for a signature from Obama. And very little WILL emerge. Remember – both sides of Congress must pass legislation, and it either must be identical or it must go through the conference committee process. And that takes a lot of time.

    This is why I have predicted repeatedly that little of substance will emerge from the session. Congress moves far too slowly for a substantial amount of stuff to happen.

    The START vote is one of those things that is an exception – it is something that merely requires a Senate ratification vote. But I believe that it will take quite a bit more time to get the tax cut extensions passed and will leave little or no time for action on START. Russ is quite right – there should be no negotiation on the taxes that uses START as a lever.

    Don’t panic about this lame duck session. The country will survive it and not much is going to happen that is damaging. The START thing may be an exception to that, but… elections have consequences, as unfortunately we’ve witnessed for the past 2 years.