Tom Coburn: The Year
Washington Fled Reality
'Message discipline' can win elections but is
not a healthy way to run a country.
By Tom Coburn in the
Wall Street Journal
The past year may go
down not only as the least productive ever in Washington but as one of the
worst for the republic.
In both the executive
branch and Congress, Americans witnessed an unwinding of the country's founding
principles and of their government's most basic responsibilities. The rule of
law gave way to the rule of rulers. And the rule of reality—in which
politicians are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts, as Sen.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan liked to say—gave way to some politicians' belief that
they were entitled to both their own opinions and their own facts. It's no
wonder the institutions of government barely function.
On health care,
President Obama oversaw a disastrous and, sadly, dishonest launch of his
signature achievement. The president gave an exception to employers, but not to
individuals, without any legal basis, and made other adjustments according to
his whim. Even more troubling was his message over the past three years that if
you like your plan, you can keep it, and that if you like your doctor, you can
keep your doctor. We now know that the administration was aware that these
claims were false, yet Mr. Obama continued to make them, repeatedly.
In 2014, millions of
Americans will likely discover that the president's claim that the average
family will save $2,500 on health insurance was equally disconnected from
reality.
The president
apologized in part for his statements, but his actions reveal the extent to
which he has conformed to, rather than challenged, the political culture that
as a presidential candidate he vowed to reform.
The culture that Mr.
Obama campaigned against, the old kind of politics, teaches politicians that
repetition and "message discipline"—never straying from using the
same slogans and talking points—can create reality, regardless of the facts.
Message discipline works if the goal is to win an election or achieve a
short-term political goal. But saying that something is true doesn't make it
so. When a misleading message ultimately clashes with reality, the result is
dissonance and conflict. In a republic, deception is destructive. Without truth
there can be no trust. Without trust there can be no consent. And without
consent we invite paralysis, if not chaos.
Taking unilateral,
extralegal action—like delaying the employer mandate for a year when Mr. Obama
realized the trouble it would cause for businesses—is part of a pattern for
this administration. Immigration and border-security laws that might displease
certain constituencies if enforced? Ignore the laws. Unhappy that a deep-water
drilling moratorium was struck down in court? Reimpose it anyway. Internal
Revenue Service agents using the power of the state to harass political
enemies? Deny and then stonewall. Unhappy with the pace of Senate confirmations
for nominees? Ignore the Constitution and appoint people anyway and claim that
the Senate is not in session.
The Obama
administration hardly has a monopoly on contributing to Washington's
dysfunction. Congress more than earned its 6% national approval rating, a
historic low.
Congress's most
significant action this year was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's decision to undo 200 years of precedent
that requires a supermajority to change Senate rules. To speed the approval of
executive appointments and judicial nominations, Sen. Reid resorted to raw
political power, forcing a vote (52-48) that allows the Senate majority to
change the rules whenever it wants. In a republic, if majorities can change
laws or rules however they please, you're on the road to life with no rules and
no laws.
The supermajority
safeguard that prevented senators from destroying the institution in which they
serve is now largely gone. Gone also are members of the majority who understood
the need to protect minority rights. There are no more Robert Byrds to quote
Cicero, who said, "In a republic this rule ought to be observed: that the
majority should not have the predominant power."
Instead, we have a
majority leader who has appointed himself a Rules Committee of one. Referring
to the right of the minority to offer changes to bills under consideration, Mr.
Reid said: "The amendment days are over." Like President Obama, Mr.
Reid is great at message discipline but weak on the rule of law and reality.
His narrative about Republican obstruction of appointees is a diversion from
his own war against minority rights. Even before his wrecking of the
supermajority tradition, Mr. Reid had already used Senate rules to cut off
debate and prevent the minority from offering amendments 78 times—more than all
other Senate majority leaders combined.
On the budget,
Democrats and Republicans alike are celebrating the avoidance of another
nihilistic government shutdown as a great victory. The choice to not commit
mass political suicide may be a step toward sanity, but it isn't reform.
Solving the problem—fixing entitlements, reforming the tax code and
consolidating the government's $200 billion in duplicative spending—would be
reform. Yet as my annual Wastebook report showed, even in this year of
budget-sequestration anguish, the federal government still managed to fund the
study of romance novels, provide military benefits to the Fort Hood shooter and
even help the State Department buy itself Facebook fans.
If Congress wants to
get serious, and be taken seriously, it can start by doing its job. It can
debate and pass individual appropriations bills—a task that Congress has not
completed in eight years. And perhaps Congress can cut some of the
stupidity in government spending. The House deserves some credit for trying—it
passed four appropriations bills—but the Senate deserves none. Mr. Reid did not
pass a single appropriations bill in 2013, thus shielding vulnerable members of
his party from having to make tough votes.
How the nation's
leaders perform in Washington is a reflection of the country, and culture, they
represent. Moral relativism and postmodern disregard of truth has been promoted
by academia for decades; sometimes it seems that the best students of that
thinking can be found in Washington. We live in a time when laws and rules are
defined however the holders of power decree, and "messaging" is
paramount, regardless how far the message is from reality.
The coming year
presents an opportunity to Americans who hope for better. Despite Washington's
dysfunction, "We the People" still call the shots and can demand a
course correction. In 2014, here's a message worth considering: If you don't like
the rulers you have, you don't have to keep them.
Mr. Coburn, a
Republican, is a senator from Oklahoma.
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