RALEIGH – Elections matter.
Keen grasp of the obvious, huh? But in my defense, many people view the electoral process with suspicion, skepticism, and scorn. They say there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the two major parties, or that political pull matters more than political ideas, or that politicians who run for office on principle often run from principle once in office.
There’s truth to all these observations, of course. If you bring high expectations to politics, you are bound to be perpetually disappointed. Special interests do often exercise more power than average voters, regardless of which team is in power at any particular time.
And in American politics particularly – where constitutional checks and separation of powers tend to slow down governmental activity – those who seek immediate gratification through political revolution are bound to be frustrated by the system’s inherent gradualism.
But elections still matter. Partisan differences matter. Look at recent events in Washington and Raleigh.
During 2009-10, when liberals were solidly in power in both places, the size and power of government grew. In Washington, President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats enacted some of the most sweeping new regulations in American history and ran budget deficits that would make even the most spendthrift Republicans blush (yes, I’m looking at you, W).
In Raleigh, Gov. Beverly Perdue and legislative Democrats couldn’t run deficits, thanks to the state’s balanced-budget requirement, but they did raise taxes and grabbed billions in borrowed federal dollars to sustain past increases in government spending. They also began preparing a new round of mandates and regulations that would have further hampered North Carolina’s economic recovery.
In November 2010, disenchanted voters yanked hard at the reins of government. They put the U.S. House and both houses of the North Carolina General Assembly in Republican hands.
This momentous decision had major consequences.
In the nation’s capital, Obama immediately made a deal with surging Republicans in Congress to extend President Bush’s tax cuts for another two years. Then Washington’s attention turned to the spending side of the ledger.
Last spring, the president offered a sketch of a federal budget that would have guaranteed massive deficits as far as the eye could see. It was roundly rejected by Congress. On the Senate side, the Democratic majority continued to hem and haw throughout the spring and early summer.
On the House side, Rep. Paul Ryan and other conservatives fashioned a very different long-term vision for the federal budget, a vision predicated on the need to reform entitlements, downsize federal programs, and reform the tax code – not to increase its burden but to increase its fairness and efficiency. The Ryan fiscal roadmap passed the House.
Then, with the debt limit approaching, House Republicans passed another bill last month, the “Cut, Cap, and Balance” plan. It was consistent with the Ryan roadmap but included more intermediate-term details and a call for a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. Again, there was no substantive response from Obama or the Senate.
Last week, the House acted a third time, offering the outlines of a plan to raise the debt limit in stages, predicated on projected spending cuts of equal or greater amounts. Over the weekend, it became the basis for a bipartisan agreement. While I wish the immediate spending cuts were far larger, and think conservatives should be wary about the details of implementation, the final deal is clearly closer to the original House position than to the vague “Tax, Pretend to Cap, and Pretend to Balance” plan the president and Senate leaders had sought.
In Raleigh, where conservatives captured both legislative chambers rather than just one, the effects of the 2010 election were even more striking. The new North Carolina budget cuts spending, reforms government, and allows the 2009 tax hikes to expire. Also becoming law in 2011 were major conservative bills on regulatory reform, charter schools, annexation reform, and medical malpractice, just to name a few.
Whether you welcome or detest these outcomes, you should see them as evidence of the fact that political action matters. You can make a difference, so don’t let healthy skepticism turn into feckless cynicism.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.