Republican Ex-Members of Congress Still Only Willing to Complain About “Congress”

I found myself debating Tom Davis–a very smart and well-trained professional–on Bloomberg TV last Friday, on the occasion of the monthly employment report. I did better than I had expected, probably because we are both on the same side of the technocratic “we badly need to do more for infrastructure” issue:

The conversation:

Matt Miller: Tom, let me start with you. Weren’t you impressed with this month’s job report? We added 280,000 jobs. That is much higher than the average of the past twelve months. We boosted hourly pay.

Tom Davis: Yes. It was a good report.

Matt Miller: And, Brad, do you find it to be a good report as well?

Brad DeLong: Yes. It was a good report. But combine it with the past two reports. We are about where we were three months ago. Whatever you thought about the state of the economy three months ago, you should think it now. The last quarter has not been one in which there has been a great deal of news to lead anyone to change their mind.

Matt Miller: Tom, are you more positive about this report than Brad? He’s got a lot more “buts” and “ifs” in there.

Tom Davis: Well, there are a lot of “buts” and “ifs”. I think lower gas prices have given a tax cut to everybody. I think they have created a lot of optimism. But there is still a lot of uncertainty. And there are still a number of international factors that come into this that nobody can control. I think some times we give the government too much credit for what goes well and too much blame for what goes badly.

Matt Miller: So what should we do, Tom, to make things better here? What is your prescription? Or what is the Republican prescription, I should say?

Tom Davis: Look: Our prescription has always been that higher taxes and needless regulations–and there are a lot hanging around. You need to be looking at them so that businesses can operate more efficiently. One of the biggest problems right now is that we have a political system that is not operating very efficiently on issues from the Export-Import Bank; to getting a long-term transportation bill which has been on life-support for six months–for six years; to just getting the Appropriations bills out on time. We just have a political system that is not functioning very efficiently. And that has, I think, a drag on the economy. We’re not getting out of the government what we ought to be.

Matt Miller: Brad, Democrats and even President Obama would agree with that. They would like to see lower taxes and fewer regulations, but also more spending. Right?

Brad DeLong: Well, I don’t think it is just Democrats who would like to see more spending. Back in the 1970s Milton Friedman looked back at the Great Depression. He talked about what his teachers had recommended as policies and what he would have advocated in the Great Depression. He called for, in situations like that, and, I think, in situations like this, for coordinated monetary and fiscal expansion. With interest rates at their extraordinarily low levels, now, as in the 1930s, is a once-in-a-century opportunity to pull all the infrastructure spending we will be doing over the next generation forward in time and do it over the next five years, when the government can finance it at such extraordinarily good terms.

Matt Miller: We have a national infrastructure crisis, right? Roads and bridges, ports and airports are at levels that are critical and certainly not worthy of a first-world country. Tom, don’t you agree we need to fix that up quickly?

Tom Davis: I agree with that. Look, I think that with the stimulus package that was passed in 2009 they blew an opportunity to do more for infrastructure. We should have had something to show at the end of that. With the money, maybe we got a short-term stimulus, but we should have gotten something long-term.

Brad DeLong: They had to get it through with only Democratic votes. Why weren’t there any Republicans willing to deal? We could have gotten a larger and much better-crafted program.

Matt Miller: There was a lot of money there. There was a lot of money there, Brad.

Brad: Yep.

Tom Davis: Let me interject. I know something about politics. I think the President’s inclination was to deal with Republicans, but Democrat leaders said: “No: We are in charge. You have to go through us.” And I think that hampered his ability. It wasn’t just Republicans. You offer us a bad deal, don’t expect us to take it.

Matt Miller: That doesn’t change the fact that we still have crumbling infrastructure in this country.

Tom Davis: No, I agree.

Matt Miller: It needs to be, somehow, brought up to snuff. How would you do that?

Tom Davis: You need a massive transportation bill at this point. And you need continuity. Right now this thing is on life support. So long-term projects are not moving through. States are taking some initiative in some cases. But this is the time to do it.

Matt Miller: Brad, it sounds like…

Brad DeLong: When Larry Summers was in the White House, he spent two years trying to assemble a centrist bipartisan coalition for a large-scale long-lasting infrastructure bank, and got no Republican bites at all.

Tom Davis: Well, the Democrats controlled both houses. They could have done it. That is all I am saying. We have to look ahead at this point. But I think they blew the opportunity with that bill when they controlled everything. I think bipartisan government right now has just crumbled. We have turned almost into a parliamentary system in our behavior, and unfortunately with our system of government that just does not work very well.

Matt Miller: It sounds like we are all in agreement that something needs to be done. Hopefully that can happen. Maybe the two of you can get together after this program.

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I got out-talked: word count:

• Miller: 220
• Davis: 430
• DeLong: 250

I suffered from professor disease: my “Milton Friedman” paragraph was easily twice as long as it should have been.

Tom Davis, however, seemed to me to be less effective because he allowed himself to be pulled in two directions. He could not decide to present himself as a Republican partisan–which he is–mindlessly hitting the talking points that poll well. And he could have. He was a seven-term member of the House of Representatives (1995-2008) from northern Virginia’s 11th District. He was swept into office on the Gingrich 1994 partisan election wave. He was NRCC chair over 1998-2002. He chaired the House Government Reform Committee over 2003-2008, and under his tenure the committee issued only three subpoenas to the executive branch. And–for some reason–he was anxious to subpoena the comatose and brain-dead Terri Schiavo as a witness to appear before his government reform committee. And, indeed, he hit a bunch of the talking points:

• lowering gas prices as a tax cut.
• tax cuts
• Obama as a creator of “uncertainty”
• “Giv[ing] the government [Obama] too much credit for what goes well”
• “Giv[ing] the government [George W. Bush]… too much blame for what goes badly.
• Cut “higher taxes and needless regulations
• Obama in the 2009 “stimulus package… blew an opportunity to do more for infrastructure”
• Obama’s “inclination was to deal with Republicans, but Democrat leaders said: ‘No’.”

But he also wanted to make some good-government points:

• The failure of the Republican leadership in congress “to just getting the Appropriations bills out on time”
• “A political system that is not functioning very efficiently.
• “Bipartisan government right now has just crumbled… almost… a parliamentary… with our system of government that just does not work very well”
• The failure of the Republican leadership in congress to get the Export-Import Bank onto Obama’s desk
• The failure of the Republican leadership in congress to get “a long-term transportation bill which has been on life-support for six months–for six years”
• “The Democrats controlled both houses…. They blew the opportunity with that bill when they controlled everything”

In which he was greatly handicapped by his unwillingness to ascribe any responsibility to people with names like “Boehner” and “McConnell” and “Republican Tea Party Caucus”.

The most interesting thing to me was his refusal to blame the (now relatively popular) Obama–it’s always the “Democratic leadership” and “congress” that are the problem…