George W. Bush's biggest problem over the next four years will be a Congress that's even more Republican than it was in 2000. Let me explain.
In their heart of hearts, presidents don't like it when their own party controls both houses of Congress. It's the same whether the new President is a Republican or a Democrat. Why? Because when your own party runs Congress, you've got to help them pay off all the IOUs they've accumulated along the campaign trail from all their constituents and patrons and sponsors. You don't have the excuse that you can't help with the payoffs because the other party runs one or both houses of Congress. No, it's entirely your party. You're stuck with the bill for it.
Look at what happened to Bush over the last four years, with a Republican Congress. Non-defense spending grew by an average of 8 percent a year. Under Bill Clinton, it grew by an average of only 4.3 percent a year. Meanwhile, special-interest tax loopholes exploded over the past four years. The corporate tax bill the president signed last month was the biggest piece of special-interest pork in history. Yet tax loopholes increased only moderately under Clinton.
Why could Clinton hold down spending and special-interest tax loopholes when Bush couldn't? Because for most of the Clinton years, Republicans and Democrats in Congress couldn't agree on much of anything. That meant Clinton could veto or threaten to veto even bills containing pet projects of leading Democrats by blaming Republicans for larding up the bills with too many favors.
Over the last four years, Bush has signed every spending bill that came his way -- every morsel of pork for the folks back home in every Republican congressional district, every bit of corporate welfare for the big businesses that contributed to every Republican senator and every Republican representative. Total federal tax revenue is $100 billion lower this year than when Bush took office in 2001 but spending is $400 billion higher!
Poor President Bush. Now he has an even larger Republican majority. And the budget deficit is already way over $400 billion this year. He doesn't stand a chance of reducing it. Every one of those newly-elected Republicans in the House and most in the Senate are carrying around huge IOUs from the election. And all those IOUs require more special tax breaks, more subsidies, more spending. It's enough to make a president downright depressed.
Robert B. Reich is co-founder of The American Prospect.
