Global economist David Malpass writes in the latest Forbes magazine that fiscal conservatives need to switch gears if they want to end up with better results than those that emerged from the recent “October budget fiasco.”
As Republicans regroup, there’s no indication that the fiasco was a learning experience. As October proved, the continuing resolution and the debt limit don’t provide much restraint, because the President controls the shutdowns and the publicity.
Looking to the 2014 budget mess, fiscal conservatives will have even less leverage than in 2013–unless they change tactics. The solution is to do a better job explaining the importance of smaller government as a critical step toward more jobs and higher median incomes. They can’t win just through backbone and political intensity. The rules are stacked against them and have to be changed through a public consensus in favor of a smaller federal government.
Washington is a city on fire with ambition, power and unbridled expansion. Republicans didn’t make a clear case for smaller government or more jobs, so the shutdown was unpopular and will be hard to use as a tool when the temporary extensions run out in 2014. The debt limit didn’t provide any check or balance on the President, nor will it limit the government’s growing use of risky short-term and floating-rate debt. The debt limit needs to be repealed and replaced. It must be completely rewritten to restrain spending when debt exceeds the limit. …
… Starting well ahead of the next fiscal impasse, fiscal conservatives should publicize ineffective government spending, link big government to economic stagnation, invite public outcry and insist that President Obama be engaged–force him to list programs that could be downsized.