The most important presidential election ever
Most every campaign cycle, it seems, presidential candidates and political pundits claim this election is the most important one ever. It’s become something of a cliché in American politics. This time, however, they just might be correct. Rarely before in modern times has the divide between the two parties been as stark.
That division largely revolves around the debate that has roiled American politics for much of the past century: What is the role of government in the lives of the American people. Republicans have generally sought to minimize the federal government’s role and responsibilities, particularly on economic issues, while Democrats tried to expand it. But the two parties have generally coalesced around broad areas of consensus on the basic elements of the modern welfare state.Continue Reading
No longer can that be said to be true. The Republican Party’s invocation of President Barack Obama’s supposed “radical agenda,” notwithstanding, little of this divide is the result of Democrats moving further to the left. Indeed, most of the proposals offered in Obama’s State of the Union speech, like greater investments in education, clean energy and manufacturing, reflect what the federal government is already doing today.
A good chunk of Obama’s proposals involve using the Tax Code to provide credits or public-private partnerships rather than grandiose new spending initiatives. This is the sort of middle-of-the-road, even tepid liberalism practiced by Democrats for decades.
But if Republicans were to win the White House, hold the House and take back the Senate (a reasonable possibility if Obama is defeated for reelection), the country would experience a very different sort of change.
Conservatives have long sought to shrink the welfare state. But never before have they outlined proposals to shrink it so significantly. More important, rarely before has there been such broad consensus within the GOP to do so.
To understand how a Republican-dominated Washington might transform the country, consider the budget passed by the House last spring — the so-called Ryan budget. Every congressional Republican supported it and Mitt Romney has endorsed it. But what would it mean in policy terms?
First are the tax implications. The Ryan plan would reduce the top marginal tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. It would also end income tax on capital gains, dividends and interest and get rid of corporate and estate taxes. These moves would go beyond the two separate tax cuts passed under President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003, and are in line with Romney’s current tax proposals. These cuts would not only increase the deficit, they would make it nearly impossible to maintain the federal government’s current spending responsibilities.
Indeed, it is on the spending side where the American people would feel the greatest impact. Passage of a budget like this would lead to the end of Medicare, in its current form, for those under age 55; the block granting of Medicaid to the states; an end to the Children’s Health Insurance Program; and privatization of key elements of Social Security.
What about Obama’s signature achievement, the Affordable Care Act? It is hard to find a prominent Republican who hasn’t called for its repeal. While it would be difficult for the GOP to erase the program, key elements could be gutted so as to make it largely unworkable.
Much of this could be done through the reconciliation process — meaning Senate Republicans might need only a bare majority along with a presidential signature to upend almost 50 years of social policy geared toward providing guaranteed health care access for potentially tens, if not hundreds of millions of Americans.
What about other areas of domestic spending? Romney has a plan to cap discretionary spending at 20 percent. When one subtracts the 4 percent he has pledged for the military (higher than current levels of defense spending), that would leave only 16 percent of the budget for everything that doesn’t include entitlements and the military.
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Michael A. Cohen