I'm sure Democrats will
manage to do a couple of things right in the next two years. I'm just not sure what. Sometimes, the devil we know seems so awful the old adage loses its
power, and we throw in
our lot with the devils we don't. Thing is—they're just as devilish.
Of course, there are those
who direct their prayers for safe passage to the minor libertarian deity of divided government. I hope
the gods of gridlock will spare us some of the indignities below, but I'm not
particularly confident it will halt them all. Say we wind up with just 4 out of
10. Would things really have been so much worse with a lame duck Republican
majority?
Since misery
loves company, I offer, in no particular order, 10 things to expect from the
Democratic Congress to keep you awake nights:
1) Americans
favor raising the minimum wage to $7.15 per hour, 83 percent to 14 percent,
according to a recent report from the Pew Research Center. Democrats are talking about an increase
to $7.25 an hour, and they're promising to push it through in the first
100 hours of the Democratic majority rule. Bush has said he supports an increase, but won't haggle about the
numbers in public. Other evils of Republican governance aside—the
closed-door negotiations about the new minimum wage would have gone better with
a few more Republicans inside (if they'd happened at all).
Bush has said that he also
wants to be sure that the increase is done in ways that won't hurt small
businesses. Which is, of course, impossible. Regardless of where you stand in
the intense debate over whether increases
in the minimum wage reduce the number of jobs available to low wage workers,
an increase in the minimum wage will hurt small businesses. Do the math: Suppose you employ ten
people, full time, at minimum wage. A two dollar increase will cost you about
$40,000 a year. How would we react to a tax of the same size imposed on the
same scrappy entrepreneurial grocer or clothing store owner?
2) Remember the flap
about "fully funding" No Child Left Behind? The poster boy was
Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), who was an original sponsor of the bill. For
political reasons, and perhaps legitimate substantive one as well, when public
support for the legislation disappeared, so did Kennedy's. His concern, he
said, was that the legislation was not fully funded. The act is up for
reauthorization next year, and Kennedy is slated chair the committee overseeing
the bill, so watch for a big rush of Democratic cash on federal education
spending—something few libertarians will be thrilled about.
3)
"Fixing" the prescription drug benefit. When the Republicans passed
Medicare part D, I—like many libertarians—despaired of the GOP. The
only thing worse than a massive new entitlement ushered in by Republicans? A
passel of aggressive Democrats promising to "fix it." By allowing
Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices with pharmaceutical companies and
permitting more importation of pre-price controlled drugs from Canada,
Democrats will add another command-and-control component to our already monstrosity of a
health care system.
There's the old
familiar song and dance about how if you decrease Big Pharma's prospective
profits on new drugs, they will (reasonably) retaliate with less spending on
research and development. According to the author of a new study from the Manhattan Institute: "Prices would be driven down by over 35 percent by 2025. The
cumulative decline in drug R&D for 2007-2025 would be about $196 billion in
year 2005 dollars, or $10.3 billion per year. Because R&D costs for new
medicines are about $1 billion, the loss would be about 196 new drugs."
But to really
understand the havoc a Democratic "fix" could wreak, warily eyeball the Department of Veterans
Affairs, which
already negotiates for its drugs and has been cited by Democrats as a model for
Medicare. At the VA, prices for drugs are very low. But one way that the VA
keeps overall prices down is by making it tough to get new, expensive drugs.
Their formulary includes about 1400 drugs, and they refuse to consider a drug
for inclusion until it has been on the market for three years. Compare that
with the 4,300 drugs currently listed at (the privately negotiated) Part D
formularies. Right now, a third of VA seniors say they would rather be on Part
D. If Dems have their way, at least these vets won't have to bother with the
paperwork for switching.
4) Don't expect any more
progress on free trade. If Congress had remained in Republican hands, they
probably wouldn't have done much to make libertarians happy, but doing a little
bit more to free up trade is one thing that an unpopular, lame duck Congress
and its president might have managed to pull off. Instead, Permanent Normal
Trade relations with Vietnam have stalled and bilateral trade agreements with
Peru and Colombia are in trouble.
The anti-trade TomPaine.com
is taking victory laps already: "Even before being hit by
electoral losses, Bush administration allies had intended to sneak several
trade agreements through Congress during the lame duck session. This hasn't
gone as smoothly as they had planned. When President Bush visited Vietnam the
week before Thanksgiving, he hoped to bring with him news of Congressional
approval of Permanent Normal Trade Relations with that country—a measure
that would have served as a stepping stone to a free trade deal and an
endorsement of Vietnam's entry into the WTO. It didn’t happen. The bill failed
to secure the two-thirds majority it needed to pass, with many emboldened
Democrats rallying to defeat it. The New York Times declared that the vote,
which was supposed to be an easy victory, instead signaled 'a deep
disappointment and embarrassment for the White House.'"
5) Reinstituting the draft.
Obviously, this is not actually going to happen, but it was one of the first
concrete policy proposals tossed out after Democrats declared victory. American
libertarians made their bones fighting the draft, and the mere mention sends
some into a card-burning frenzy. Still, Rangel is crazy
like a fox: He proposed the draft reinstatement once before—two years
ago. But when it finally came to the floor right before the last election, he
voted against it, along with 401 other congressmen.
6) My beloved Sen. Tom Coburn
(R-Okla), will no longer chair the subcommittee on
Federal Financial Management, Government Information, and International
Security. I don't know what the committee does (and yes, Coburn's record on
social issues is decidedly unlibertarian), but on federal financial management
he kicks ass. Whoever replaces him is going to be worse, and you know it. Plenty
of other decent committee chairs will be booted, too. Check out the list here.
7) It's always
hard to know who is worse on judges, Democrats or Republicans. The next
chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) railed against both the president's Supreme Court picks, John Roberts and Samuel Alito (though he grudgingly voted for Roberts in the end),
judges about whom reasonable libertarians can disagree. But it's safe to say
that Leahy's staff probably won't be working overtime to dig up dirt on
potential nominees' failure to support economic liberty, nor will they rush to
confirm judges with a history scaling back expansionist interpretations of the
commerce clause. And "Federalist Society"
probably just became dirty words.
8) Libertarians
can fight amongst themselves about the merits of hybrid cars, reducing
dependence on foreign oil, and other energy conservation/national security
measures. But Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) recently declared that the new
Democratic Congress will mandate that a quarter of new vehicles sold in the use
flexible fuel technology by 2010. Said Schumer: "These are things that will help
the middle class and those who aspire to be in the middle class," Schumer
said. Because nothing helps the "aspiring middle class" more than
tacking on a few hundred (or thousand) bucks to the price of their Ford
minivan.
9) Then there are also
the things Democrats won't do. They won't do much of anything in Iraq:
"Now he's the commander in chief, and we're not going to do anything to
limit funding or cut off funds, even though there are some on the outside who
suggest that,'' House leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said. "I think we want to make sure that
the troops have everything that they need.''
And they won't
make any headway on federal funding for stem cell research. Bush finally broke
his no-veto rule to kill the damn bill the first time around—after many
consultations with "researchers and religious leaders." He won't
agonize nearly as much the next time. And, as
Harry Reid has pointed out, 51 seats isn't exactly a veto proof majority.
10) Finally, hate Republicans if you want, but there's no one worse
for libertarians than Hillary Clinton. She is anti-flag burning, (historically)
pro-war, anti-tax cut, and pro-PATRIOT Act. And, of course, there's always HillaryCare.
Whatever Hillary thinks she needs to do to position herself for a successful
'08 run, she can do it much more easily in a Senate where her gang is in
charge.
Katherine
Mangu-Ward is an associate editor at Reason.
UPDATE: Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) voted for John Roberts for Supreme Court, not against him, as indicated in the original text. The error has been corrected.
