Having coached more than a dozen Little League teams through the years, I’ve learned that solidarity is a great thing. Keep the kids focused on teamwork. But I’ve also learned that, if your team has no talent, solidarity doesn’t mean squat. Ultimately, your team’s weaknesses will be exposed.
This reality also applies in politics. Instead of baseball dugouts, political parties have caucus rooms where they hide and huddle to get their acts together. Ultimately, though, even the most rigid alliance can’t hide the truth.
We’ve seen this vulnerability exposed on the state level among Democrats. Here’s the standard donkey line you’ll hear in defense of what has happened in Olympia the past couple of years: Budget cuts totaling $4.3 billion have been enacted. (Translation: We’re real tight with your money, so vote for us) Oh, and those tax increases this year? Why, they were just 8 percent of the overall solution to the budget crisis. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Then they tug at the public’s heartstrings by specifying the most painful cuts. According to the Washington State Budget & Policy Center, the state’s public education spending was cut by 11.2 percent, public safety and “balanced economic development” spending was cut by 7.3 percent, and health and environmental programs by 9.3 percent;, 44,000 people will lose Basic Health coverage, and premiums will increase for remaining enrollees by 50 to 100 percent.
Cut, cut, cut. That’s their story, and they’re sticking to it. Solidarity at its best — until we look deeper. The 2010 Senate supplemental budget actually grew by $1.6 billion over last year’s budget.
Whoa! How could that be, what with all those cuts? Well, the rock-solid Democrats are reluctant to talk about the “untouchable” part of the budget: pay and benefits for state workers, which is about 70 percent of spending. According to state Sen. Joe Zarelli, R-Ridgefield, since February 2008, the state’s public work force lost 0.7 percent of its (non-higher education) workers while the private sector lost 7.5 percent. In other words, the “untouchables” made one-tenth the sacrifice that was seen in the real world. And not once did Democratic legislators exercise their ability to declare a fiscal emergency and renegotiate union contracts. That’s the bad side of solidarity.
Unity eroded by hypocrisy
At the federal level, we see Republicans flexing their solidarity with locked-arm resistance to anything President Obama proposes. Give them high marks for teamwork.
Here’s the standard elephant line that was crafted in their caucus room: Because the president is intentionally trying to destroy America as we know it, none of his ideas should be supported. Others ask, really? None?
That GOP solidarity starts to wither with the arrival of an old enemy of both political parties: hypocrisy. Turns out the Republicans are united in opposition to some of their own ideas, if those ideas are presented by the president. Rachel Maddow last week gave two examples, bolstered by her masterful use of video archives. Four Republican U.S. representatives (Peter King of New York, John Mica of Florida, Dan Manzullo of Illinois and Dan Lungren of California) were shown praising infrastructure spending back during the first debate about a stimulus, which many Republicans supported.
Now, though, the GOP staunchly opposes Obama’s proposals for infrastructure spending, with House Minority Leader John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell leading the protest.
The second hypocrisy involves corporate tax cuts, which usually induce ecstasy among conservatives. Republicans in 2002 passed a 30 percent tax write-off on investments in equipment. In 2003, it was increased to 50 percent. This year, they want to renew that same write-off. Obama is proposing 100 percent, which Maddow says is “more than Republicans ever dreamed of.” But, of course, now they hate the idea. Perfectly awful. “Why?” Maddow wonders. “These are your ideas!”
Perhaps, but in the world of partisan politics, as both parties keep proving, solidarity trumps common sense. And both parties keep wondering why so many Americans remain independents.
John Laird is The Columbian’s editorial page editor. His column of personal opinion appears each Sunday. Reach him at john.laird@columbian.com.
