• Stephen Slivinski, Buck Wild: How Republicans Broke the Bank and Became the Party of Big Government, Nashville, Tenn.: Nelson Current, 2006, 227 pages, $25.99.
What can a book written about Beltway Republicans in 2005 tell us about the Congress that will convene in 2011? Quite a bit, it turns out.
In Buck Wild, Stephen Slivinski, at the time the director of budget studies at the Cato Institute, explores the previous 25 years of Republican governance, from Ronald Reagan’s halting moves to rein in federal spending through the first decade of postwar congressional rule by the GOP, and how the Republican Revolutionaries elected in 1994 morphed into “tax collectors for the welfare state” (to cite Newt Gingrich’s description of Bob Dole).
It’s a fast-paced review of its times, and would serve as a useful handbook for any freshman Republican (particularly one with Tea Party support) who’s headed to Washington and might wonder how the GOP so rapidly abandoned limited government principles.
The book moves quickly through the Reagan years and the conservative retrenchment during the administration of George H.W. Bush, really hitting its stride when recounting the 1994 election and its immediate aftermath.
While House firebrands in the 104th Congress suggested closing three Cabinet agencies and 300 federal programs (including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting), the Dole-led Senate would have none of it. The Senate budget for fiscal year 1996 kept every Cabinet department and called for 100 federal programs to be ended — 30 fewer than Bill Clinton proposed.
Moreover, veteran Republican appropriators in the House and Senate offered earmarks and pork-barrel spending to buy off wavering lawmakers, gutting significant cuts and reforms.
Gingrich hardly is the star of the show, however, coming across as someone more interested in the perks of office than in cutting government. By the time the 105th Congress convened in 1997, the Republican leadership reversed several of the promises in the Contract with America, and when a handful of junior fiscal conservatives pushed back, Gingrich shut the renegades out.
Rather than cut the size and scope of government, Republicans focused on Clinton’s campaign fund-raising and later his sexual indiscretions, placing scandal ahead of fiscal responsibility and government reform.
Slivinski says the Republican’s isolated focus on deficit reduction was mistaken. By merely cutting red ink (as tax revenues were surging) rather than eliminating programs, the GOP squandered an opportunity to downsize Washington — particularly restructuring the entitlements that will cripple taxpayers as the Baby Boomers retire.
Along the way, Slivinski reminds us who the good guys were way back when: House rebels Tom Coburn, Steve Largent, John Shadegg, John Kasich, Lindsey Graham (!), and Sen. Phil Gramm. George W. Bush’s initial budget director Mitch Daniels earns plaudits for pushing through the 2001 across-the-board tax cuts.
Odd as it may sound today, congressional Republicans welcomed Bush to Washington, convinced that he would have the fortitude to slash programs Congress wouldn’t touch. It was as if lawmakers, who are given control of the purse strings by the Constitution, were crying, “Stop us before we spend again!”
Then came 9/11. And along with the ramped-up security spending in response to the attacks came a renewed desire to spend like crazy on programs that had no connection to security at all.
By the end of his first term, in inflation-adjusted dollars, Bush had increased per-capita domestic spending faster than any president since LBJ. The GOP House offered little resistance to the administration.
Buck Wild ends with the revolt over Hurricane Katrina relief by backbench conservatives, who were able to wrestle a 1 percent, across-the-board spending cut from Bush. This offered a rare but temporary glimmer of hope for the GOP, which had deteriorated from “the party of Goldwater and Reagan” to “the party of [TV huckster] Matthew Lesko.”
Slivinski’s book offers plenty of lessons for the dozens of newcomers who will take office in the 112th Congress: Don’t go native. Remember who elected you. Best of all, rent in D.C., don’t buy.