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12.20.2010 0

Where to go after Omnibus

By Bill Wilson

A generation ago, William Rusher wrote in The Making of the New Majority Party, that liberals inside the GOP, “have always been large enough to compel a certain amount of compromise or adjustment in their direction.” The record of conservative failure is really nothing more than “a record of the compromises made by conservative majorities to appease a liberal minority whose sole effective function has been to insure the defeat of conservatism.”

There can be no more stern caution for the incoming Republican members of the 112th Congress than Rusher’s words. Compromise with the tiny minority of liberals inside the Republican Party now, at this juncture, would be suicide. Last week Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell took a step back from such a deadly deal. By getting all GOP Senators to stand with him in opposition to Harry Reid’s “omnibus” spending bill, McConnell set the stage for the real battles that will come after the first of the year.

While the legacy media, the social elites that prowl Washington like stray cats, and the professional appeasers are already whispering surrender into the ears of the newly elected members of Congress, the public is more resolved than ever. Either the GOP will make immediate moves to cut, in an absolute sense, the size and scope of the federal government or the voters will find someone who will. This shaping up as the ultimate “zero tolerance” situation. To his credit, Senator McConnell sensed this simmering rage and acted as a true representative of the People.

When the new Congress is sworn into office they will immediately confront a mountain of undone business. None will be more important than taking concrete steps to bring America’s fiscal house into order. This year, America will be faced with a budget deficit of at least $1.3 trillion. It could end up higher. The national debt is fast approaching $14 trillion. And, over the course of the next three years, we will have to sell as much as $8.8 trillion in government debt just to cover the deficits and roll over maturing debt from earlier spending sprees.

So, on average we will have to “sell” about $2.93 trillion of government paper a year, every year for three years just to stay “even.” What turns the blood stone cold is that the most we have ever sold in one year is $2.3 trillion. These simple facts explain starkly why the Federal Reserve is printing more money to cover our debts – nobody else will buy it.

Couple this fact with the realization that even the debt we are “selling” may be nothing more than a Ponzi Scheme. Great Britain, as much of a basket case as we are, has more than quadrupled its holdings of U.S. debt in past year from $108.1 billion in October 2009 to $477.6 billion in October 2010, according to the U.S. Treasury. Why is England buying so much of our debt? So, we can buy Japan’s debt, who in turn buys Britain’s debt. If three people do this it is called price fixing and asset manipulation. When central banks do it, there is another name for it: quantitative easing.

All of these scams are being done for the primary purpose of allowing the U.S. government to continue spending as they have. It’s time for that to end. The less we spend, the less debt we have and smaller the amount of government bonds we will need to sell. The simple solution to start walking back from the edge of the cliff is to cut spending – by a lot.

And that is where the liberal “Republicans” and their allies will draw the line. The last thing they want is for us to reduce spending and begin the process of digging out of the failed experiment in European-style soft socialism. Why? Your guess is as good as the next guy. But regardless of what they say, their track record speaks volumes.

For nearly 70 years, the liberal, establishment cabal inside the GOP has enabled the welfare state to proceed with only minor bumps in the road. Today the herd of RINOs is thinned like never before. The new majority in the House of Representatives and the enhanced GOP caucus in the Senate must finish the job and push the liberals aside. No campfire ghost stories of “government shutdowns” or veiled threats of establishment retribution can be allowed to deter the GOP from their mission.

That mission is simple and straightforward, one that finds overwhelming and widespread support among the American people. Cut the federal government down to size, eliminate thousands of needless, destructive regulations, block all leftist judges, help empower the states to take their rightful place in our scheme of federalism, and boldly insist on policies that place the interests of the People of the United States ahead of any utopian nightmare of world government and submission to the gray, faceless bureaucrats of the UN or EU.

Once the work to achieve these goals has started and taken root, we will have the breathing room to reclaim the culture from the advocates of depravity, enshrine property rights and a host of other important problems. But nothing starts until and unless government spending is cut by large percentages – not once, not twice, but continually until a small, humble federal government is not able to spend us into slavery and is returned to its proper place in a free American society.

The opportunity to work and strive for these goals is what Senator McConnell gave us last week when he killed the Omnibus. He created the opportunity. Now it is up to the millions of citizens who have spoken so loudly these past two years to come together to take advantage of it.

Bill Wilson is the President of Americans for Limited Government.

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