PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE:  This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

When I worked in state government many years ago here in Oregon, one of my bosses said:  “One of the easiest things to do is to be cynical about state government.”

He was right then.  And, if he made the statement again today, he also would be right.

But, what follows is not cynicism – at least I contend it is not.  It is recognizing two recent failures of the federal government, not Oregon state government – one very obvious and another not-so obvious.  So, my views are not cynical; they represent an attempt to tell it like it is from my perspective.

Creating a Congressional Committee to Investigate the January 6 Insurrection:  After Congress couldn’t get its act together enough to create a consensus committee, representing both the House and the Senate, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi decided to create a House version of such a committee.

Except she and her staff failed to get their act together.

First, she made her own appointments, then allowed Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to name Republicans to the committee.  Wouldn’t you know it, McCarthy appointed several flamethrowers who could not be counted on to conduct themselves with aplomb and a straightforward approach to reviewing the insurrection.

So, Pelosi rejected two Republicans appointees.  Then, McCarthy pulled his other appointees out and said there would no Republican participation.

Pelosi then charged ahead, risking what would appear to be a Democrat-only review of what anyone with a pair of eyes could see was an insurrection on January 6 to throw the election to Donald Trump even though he lost outright to Joe Biden.

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne contends that, with one dramatic act to turn down weird Republicans, Pelosi called out the extremists in what was once the “Grand Old Party” and exposed their political dysfunction. 

“It is no longer possible to proceed normally when Republicans answer to a leader and his loyal base for whom reality is an inconvenience, fairly counted elections are a hindrance and outright lies are an accepted currency of politics.”

True.  But, n the other hand, Pelosi could have done better.  She could have allowed the Republican appointees to serve and then allowed them to do in public what they would have done anyway, which was come across as nothing other than sycophants for Trump.

So, don’t hope for anything resembling consensus to emerge from this process.

Developing a Federal Government Budget:  Now, for the other government failure, one not-so obvious.  It deals with the federal government budget and a tendency to aim low – perhaps intentionally – on the cost of expansion of government programs and, thereby, increase chances to adopt an ever-larger set of federal outlays.

Here’s the way the Washington Post wrote about the subject:

“Lawmakers trying to seal a bi-partisan infrastructure deal and maneuver Democrat priorities through Congress will claim those plans are fully paid for, but they look likely to use a series of creative budgetary techniques to achieve that target.

“President Biden and other Democrats have said they want to pay for their policies, attempting to pair new tax cuts and spending on one hand with tax increases and spending cuts on the other.  That is an intentional choice to avoid additional borrowing or scaling back their agenda. Republicans have also insisted that any bi-partisan infrastructure deal be paid for.   

“Instead of borrowing at historically low interest rates, as was the case in the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief law in March, lawmakers appear set to open a well-worn bag of maneuvers, which analysts in both parties call gimmicks, to help claim their policies aren’t adding to the national debt, though Democrats will certainly have tax increases to point to.

“Some techniques exploit gaps and quirks in how non-partisan analysts at the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation measure the effects of policies.  Others are designed to supplement official analyses with claims about savings or revenue that don’t meet those offices’ criteria.”

Enough detail.

But what I wish for is that the federal government would develop more rational budget development policies.  State the true cost of new programs.  Avoid gimmicks.  Then, contend for their passage on the merits.

Clearly, it would be too much to ask that the federal government do what happens in Oregon, which is that expenditures must be balanced with revenue in every two-year cycle. 

With federal outlays, however, so much is at stake, especially, for example, if the country goes to war or faces a deep recession that balanced budgets are not possible.  Frankly, budget discipline might have to take a back seat to funding the troops and equipment or to boosting the economy.

But neither reality – war or the economy — should be presumed to be sufficient to avoid the discipline of producing solid, accurate estimates of the cost of new, proposed federal outlays.  So far, that is not occurring.