Ahead
of Elections, a Painful Reminder
Senate Republicans
Raise
Drawing Attention to
Spending and Risking Seats
In a nearly
party-line vote, Senate Republicans. raised the
The $781 billion increase puts the
debt limit at $8.965 trillion-the
equivalent of $30,000 for every American, enough to cover borrowing past the
November election and into the new year. But by
drawing attention to record spending already in place, the action carries big
political risks for Republicans. Republican leaders fear that many party
faithful, demoralized by the Republicans' recent fiscal record, may not show up
to vote in the midter.m elections, putting control of
both the House and the Senate at stake.
Should conservative voters stay
home, a number of Republican senators are particularly vulnerable, including
Sen. Rick Santorum of
Beyond 2006, yesterday's Senate vote
was unwelcome for Republicans who covet the party's 2008 presidential
nomination, particularly Senate MaJumy Leader Bill Frist of
by the end of 2007, administration projec- .
tions
show debt will swell to $9.3 trillion, requiring another vote to lift the
ceiling.
"Republican voters are very
discouraged," says former Republican Rep. Pat Toomey, president of the
conservative anti-tax Club for Growth. "The intensity and party loyalty
that Republicans need isn't there, and it's largely because they've abandoned
their commitment to fiscal discipline," he says, referring to Club for Growth's
polls in 20 congressional districts where Republicans are in danger of losing.
"To the extent the debt limit
reminds voters of that," he adds, "it's not a good thing.'"
In modern times, responsibility for
raising the Treasury Department's limit on borrowing has been the price of
being the party in power, and Republicans have it all-the White House, the
House and the Senate. The alternative would be an unprecedented and
unimaginable
"It is necessary to 'preserve
the full faith and credit of the federal government," Senate Finance
Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said during debate.
"Getting the debt limit done
today was a positive thing," said Treasury Secretary John Snow. "And
the way it was done was a positive thing. I want to commend those who made that
possible, Bill Frist and others.
But congressional Democrats were
free to vote "no" en masse, and they did, just as Republicans did
when they were in the minority. In the Senate's 52-48 vote yesterday, all 44
Democrats and Independent Sen. Jim Jeffords of
Predictably, the minority jabs the
majority for the fiscal jam that made the vote necessary. "Any objective
analysis of our country's fiscal history would have to conclude this
administration and this rubber-stamping Republican Congress are the most
fiscally irresponsible in the history of our country," said Senate
Minority Leader Harry Reid of
The House doesn't vote directly on a
debt-limit increase. When Republican leaders took control 11 years ago, they
disavowed many Democratic-sponsored rules but not the one that makes approval
of a higher debt limit automatic when the chamber passes the year's budget
resolution. In this case, the House did so last year. The Senate put off its
vote until Treasury Secretary Snow said the government could delay no longer.
Since at least the Reagan
administration, debt-limit votes have spawned parallel action on budget-process
reforms, which don't reduce deficits themselves, but promise future
austerity-and, politicians hope, distract voters' attention from the
debt. This year was no different. "That's why you see Republicans jumping
out now on the line-item veto,"
says Scott Reed, a Republican who managed
Robert Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
Yesterday, Mr. Bush had lawmakers to
the White House to discuss a variation on a line-item veto to replace one
struck down by the Supreme Court several years ago for violating Congress's
spending powers. (That earlier line-item measure was passed in a debt-limit
debate in the late 1990s.) Among the attendees were Sen. Santorum and
Mr. Chafee is among Republican
incumbents threatened in party primaries by disgruntled conservatives. His
Republican foe, Stephen Laffey, the mayor of
Cranston, R.I., said in an email: "It's an embarrassment when members of
Congress from both parties team up to fund 6,000 pork projects from one highway
bill, and then turn around and say we have to impose further debt on the
taxpayers. "
Mr. Laffey
offers no specifics for reducing the costs that really are driving annual
deficits-entitlement benefits for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, along
with defense-though he doesn't rule out cuts. Mr. Laffey
does rule out tax increases.
This week, as in years past, Sen.
Chafee joined Democrats in unsuccessfully trying to get the White House and
Republicans to reinstate Clinton-era pay-as-you-go rules requiring any new
spending or tax cuts to be offset by other spending cuts or revenue increases.
While conservative groups attack Mr. Chafee, he has won an Economic Patriot Award
from the middle-of the-road budget watchdog group, the Concord Coalition.
If Mr. Chafee survives, he still
faces the Democrats' nominee this fall. At a minimum, even.,
Republicans expect Democrats to pad their minority. Republicans' big fear is
"the stay-at" home factor," as Pete Sepp,
spokesman for the conservative National Taxpayers Union, puts it.
How big is $9 trillion in federal
debt?
. About $30,O0O
per
. At $1 a second, it would take 284,000 years to payoff
. Dollar bills laid end-to-end would circle the globe 34,129 times
. A string of $20 bills would circle
the globe 1,706 times