Back when Republicans were winning elections in the 1980s, Tip O'Neill used to say that it was because Democratic policies made a lot of people rich enough to vote Republican. Republicans who are saying that the party needs to go back to the principles of 1994 or Ronald Reagan should keep O'Neill's lesson in mind: Successful public policies render moot the issues that bring parties to power. They won't keep winning unless they address new issues.
With that in mind, let's examine the successful Republican policies since their takeover of Congress in 1994.
Some of these were on economic issues, addressable only at the federal level. The big budget deficits of the early 1990s were eliminated by the Clinton tax increases and by the one-year standstill in spending the Republicans forced on Bill Clinton in 1995. With George W. Bush in office, Republicans produced tax cuts that kicked the economy out of recession and gave us robust, low-inflation economic growth.
Another public-policy success was welfare reform, forced on Clinton by the Republicans in 1996. But note that that success came after, and was inspired by, welfare reform in the states, started by Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin in 1987 and followed by many Republicans and also some Democrats.
Still another public-policy success of the 1990s -- crime control -- was almost entirely the work of big-city mayors, starting with Rudy Giuliani in New York. On crime, Clinton and the Republican Congress were no more than interested and occasionally helpful bystanders.
Some public-policy successes of the Bush years have been criticized by many conservatives. One was the education accountability measures in the No Child Left Behind Act. Here, Bush and a bipartisan coalition were federalizing reforms initiated in the states, by governors like Bush himself, his brother Jeb Bush in Florida and Democrat Jim Hunt in North Carolina.
Then there was the controversial Medicare prescription drug law pushed through in a three-hour roll call in 2003. Many conservatives criticize the creation of a new federal entitlement. Bush's argument was that there was going to be a prescription drug benefit sooner or later and that it was better to have a Republican version that provided for competition and choice, rather than government ukase.
Continued... |