Joseph Lane: Romney’s Big Government
[Joseph Lane is the Hawthorne Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Emory & Henry.]
It is now conventional wisdom that the leading three candidates for the GOP nomination each represent one of the big three factions of the party - McCain represents the strong foreign policy hawks, Huckabee the evangelical social conservatives, and Romney the pro-business/corporate power. What is missing in all of this is the old idea of “small government” - unless you count Ron Paul’s fourth place showing in most of the states so far as creating a “big four.”
However, the three leaders all represent some type of “bigger government” and no one government vision is bigger than Mitt Romney’s. Consider the following exchange from CBS News’ Face the Nation on January 13:
“BOB SCHIEFFER: You’re talking about investing in science, and yet when we’ve just passed a law that has told the automakers to make these cars more fuel efficient, the idea being to make the country more energy independent, you were against that.
MITT ROMNEY: What I’m–what I’m against is saying to the automobile industry, `Here, you have this big problem. It’s an unfunded mandate. We’–I’d like to make sure that if we’re going to put a mandate to improve fuel economy on cars–and I want to see our average fuel efficiency go up, up, up–that’s important to all of us for energy independence–but I want the federal government to be part of the solution rather than mandating a change that the domestic auto industry is going to suffer from without providing any help. And the preferred way of providing help is in helping develop the new technologies and helping share the cost of that. But there are other ways, too, that we have to keep our mind open to.
But we simply can’t sit back and say, `Well, too bad for Michigan. They’ve got these new, big mandates that they’re going to get laid on them. It’ll really kill the domestic industry.’”
I had to go check the transcript to be sure, but there it was. Governor Romney is using the old Republican attack on an “unfunded mandate” in a novel context with startling ramifications.
Republicans have been against “unfunded mandates” for thirty years, and the construction has entirely negative connotations in Republican circles. As a policy diagnosis, the term appears to have roots in Reagan’s promise of a “New Federalism,” and it became central to the platform when a federal prohibition on “unfunded mandates” was one of the planks of the Contract with America. The trope has a deep Republican pedigree.
In its classic sense “unfunded mandate” refers to a federal law that imposes duties on state or local governments without providing the resources necessary to carry out these duties. In the 1990s, the Republicans ruthlessly attacked many “unfunded mandates” – like the Brady Bill giving local law enforcement a requirement to enforce federal gun laws without receiving resources to cover that enforcement.
This is not to say that Republicans always live up to their rhetoric. Recently, the Republicans have been more willing to impose certain types of duties on local authorities without paying for them. No Child Left Behind does not fully fund the educational programs and tests that states are now required to administer. New calls for tougher local law enforcement of federal immigration laws have not always been joined with promises to provide local authorities with the money for performing these new duties.
Romney’s suggestion, however, is that imposing a “mandate” on an industry (i.e. higher CAFÉ standards on automakers) without providing funds for meeting that requirement is an “unfunded mandate.” I thought we used to call these “mandates” “regulation,” and there has never been a guarantee that you will get reimbursed all the costs of being in compliance with the law.
It is true that the cost of being in compliance with the law is often passed on to the rest of us as higher prices, but generally speaking, industries facing new regulations try (and in time succeed) to meet the new regulations in the most cost effective way possible so as to keep competing with rivals (both inside and outside the U.S.) at an appropriate price point. If a federal subsidy covered the costs of meeting each new regulation, would industries have any reason to do the research that generates these efficiencies?
Romney appears to say that the government should not be able to regulate an industry unless government is willing to offer direct payments to cover the costs of the regulation. Romney’s invocation of “unfunded mandates” suggests that this is a general principle that should be applied to all regulations.
If government wants to set a minimum wage, it should have to pay employers the difference between the old prevailing wage and any newly mandated floor. If government wants to hold industries responsible for safe working conditions, government should be willing to pay out to employers the costs of any new safety equipment. If government wants to make industries cover employees’ family and medical leave necessities, government should have to pay back the industry for the costs of the employees’ absences.
Strangely enough the last example is what is done in some of the “nanny” states of the E.U. whom Republicans claim to disdain.
This little statement may be a slip of the tongue, but thinking through its ramifications says a great deal about the mindset of some of today’s Republicans. They like to suggest that Republican v. Democrat = Small Government v. Big Government. However, that is not at all true. Both parties now advocate some form of “big government,” the only question is who will this big government look out for - the classic, “cui bono?” I think we have Romney’s answer.
Read entire article at Britannica Blog
It is now conventional wisdom that the leading three candidates for the GOP nomination each represent one of the big three factions of the party - McCain represents the strong foreign policy hawks, Huckabee the evangelical social conservatives, and Romney the pro-business/corporate power. What is missing in all of this is the old idea of “small government” - unless you count Ron Paul’s fourth place showing in most of the states so far as creating a “big four.”
However, the three leaders all represent some type of “bigger government” and no one government vision is bigger than Mitt Romney’s. Consider the following exchange from CBS News’ Face the Nation on January 13:
“BOB SCHIEFFER: You’re talking about investing in science, and yet when we’ve just passed a law that has told the automakers to make these cars more fuel efficient, the idea being to make the country more energy independent, you were against that.
MITT ROMNEY: What I’m–what I’m against is saying to the automobile industry, `Here, you have this big problem. It’s an unfunded mandate. We’–I’d like to make sure that if we’re going to put a mandate to improve fuel economy on cars–and I want to see our average fuel efficiency go up, up, up–that’s important to all of us for energy independence–but I want the federal government to be part of the solution rather than mandating a change that the domestic auto industry is going to suffer from without providing any help. And the preferred way of providing help is in helping develop the new technologies and helping share the cost of that. But there are other ways, too, that we have to keep our mind open to.
But we simply can’t sit back and say, `Well, too bad for Michigan. They’ve got these new, big mandates that they’re going to get laid on them. It’ll really kill the domestic industry.’”
I had to go check the transcript to be sure, but there it was. Governor Romney is using the old Republican attack on an “unfunded mandate” in a novel context with startling ramifications.
Republicans have been against “unfunded mandates” for thirty years, and the construction has entirely negative connotations in Republican circles. As a policy diagnosis, the term appears to have roots in Reagan’s promise of a “New Federalism,” and it became central to the platform when a federal prohibition on “unfunded mandates” was one of the planks of the Contract with America. The trope has a deep Republican pedigree.
In its classic sense “unfunded mandate” refers to a federal law that imposes duties on state or local governments without providing the resources necessary to carry out these duties. In the 1990s, the Republicans ruthlessly attacked many “unfunded mandates” – like the Brady Bill giving local law enforcement a requirement to enforce federal gun laws without receiving resources to cover that enforcement.
This is not to say that Republicans always live up to their rhetoric. Recently, the Republicans have been more willing to impose certain types of duties on local authorities without paying for them. No Child Left Behind does not fully fund the educational programs and tests that states are now required to administer. New calls for tougher local law enforcement of federal immigration laws have not always been joined with promises to provide local authorities with the money for performing these new duties.
Romney’s suggestion, however, is that imposing a “mandate” on an industry (i.e. higher CAFÉ standards on automakers) without providing funds for meeting that requirement is an “unfunded mandate.” I thought we used to call these “mandates” “regulation,” and there has never been a guarantee that you will get reimbursed all the costs of being in compliance with the law.
It is true that the cost of being in compliance with the law is often passed on to the rest of us as higher prices, but generally speaking, industries facing new regulations try (and in time succeed) to meet the new regulations in the most cost effective way possible so as to keep competing with rivals (both inside and outside the U.S.) at an appropriate price point. If a federal subsidy covered the costs of meeting each new regulation, would industries have any reason to do the research that generates these efficiencies?
Romney appears to say that the government should not be able to regulate an industry unless government is willing to offer direct payments to cover the costs of the regulation. Romney’s invocation of “unfunded mandates” suggests that this is a general principle that should be applied to all regulations.
If government wants to set a minimum wage, it should have to pay employers the difference between the old prevailing wage and any newly mandated floor. If government wants to hold industries responsible for safe working conditions, government should be willing to pay out to employers the costs of any new safety equipment. If government wants to make industries cover employees’ family and medical leave necessities, government should have to pay back the industry for the costs of the employees’ absences.
Strangely enough the last example is what is done in some of the “nanny” states of the E.U. whom Republicans claim to disdain.
This little statement may be a slip of the tongue, but thinking through its ramifications says a great deal about the mindset of some of today’s Republicans. They like to suggest that Republican v. Democrat = Small Government v. Big Government. However, that is not at all true. Both parties now advocate some form of “big government,” the only question is who will this big government look out for - the classic, “cui bono?” I think we have Romney’s answer.