Ted Cruz: Dreaming of 'Wacko Birds' and Flying Ponies
By P.J. O'Rourke
Ted Cruz is a dream candidate for anyone who wants to see America take great economic strides without being chased by the hounds of government and bitten in the seat of the pants.
Ted Cruz's plans are good. The Texas senator would:
- Institute an across-the-board flat-rate 10% income tax. And he wouldn't just chain up the IRS, he'd take it out behind the barn and send it the way of Old Yeller.
- Get rid of the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) agency that might as well be called the Department of Homelessness and Abandoned Downtowns.
- Cut the nation's power bill by turning off the lights at the Department of Energy.
- Take a commercial approach to the Department of Commerce, which is not a going commercial concern and ought to go out of business.
- Teach the Department of Education to say "Goodbye."
Cruz has a list of government commissions to be decommissioned, government programs no one wants to see in reruns, and government bureaus to be locked in a bureau drawer.
His federal budget will have its books balanced by law. His Federal Reserve will have its currency supply governed by reason.
The trouble is, Ted Cruz's plans are too good.
We'd all be in love with a 10% flat tax. But could it wind up as a Romeo and Juliet love story?
The U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) is $16.8 trillion. The U.S. federal budget is $3.8 trillion. Let's imagine Cruz somehow lops $1 trillion off the budget. Let's imagine the 10% tax rate is somehow applied to the entire GDP. That gives us $1.68 trillion in revenue to cover $2.8 trillion in expenditures. We're still buried under a $1 trillion-plus deficit in a Shakespearean tragedy of a national debt tomb.
It's nice that our flat-tax forms will be the size of a postcard. But how does a piece of pasteboard (with a photo of the Treasury building on one side and "Weather is here, wish you were beautiful!" on the other) fund the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines?
Eliminating the IRS is an applause line for sure. But something else that's for sure – the government has to have some mechanism to collect taxes. Citizens aren't going to stroll by the White House and leave their tax payments under the windshield wiper of the presidential limousine.
Eliminating Energy, Commerce, HUD, and Education may be almost as hard to do. Ronald Reagan found this out. The Department of Education was only one year old, a toddler on the playing field of Washington influence when Reagan tried to tackle it and got stiff-armed.
Disposing of a cabinet-level department with all its prestige, patronage power, and budget earmarks means getting past entrenched interests. It's a deep trench those interests dig. And it's not just your opponents doing the digging. Members of your political family are also down there in the ditch wielding shovels.
When you try to take out the trash, you'll find a huge political pitfall in your own driveway keeping you from putting the Hefty bag full of useless federal agencies out on the curb.
The Department of Education had a budget of $14 billion when Reagan was elected. Thirty-five years, three Republican presidents, and several Republican congresses later... the Department of Education has a budget of $154 billion.
And good luck to Cruz with creating a rational system of monetary supply. Politicians like to feel that they "control" the economy. (Never mind that, in fact, the economy controls them.) Money is one of the main things that make politicians feel as if they're "in control." Politicians won't be enthusiastic about money they aren't in charge of any more than my teenager would be enthusiastic about getting the keys to a driverless car programed to take her to and from school and nowhere else.
For Cruz to make any of his plans happen, he's going to have to be a hell of a political salesman. He'll need to convince Congress to buy his ideas. And Cruz has – to put it politely – an "adversarial" personality.
This is not the best trait for a salesman. When a customer comes into your menswear store, you don't call him a wimp for buying briefs instead of boxers, tell him he's too fat to wear plaid, and announce that he'll never be able to pay his credit-card bill.
But Cruz called Republicans who voted with Obama on bipartisan measures "the surrender caucus." And despite strong GOP House and Senate opposition to gun control, Cruz referred to his fellow party members as "squishes" on the issue. Then, Cruz wondered aloud if outgoing House Majority Leader John Boehner had "cut a deal with Nancy Pelosi to fund the Obama administration for the rest of time."
A majority of people in Congress don't like Cruz. What's worse, that majority is the majority. The people in Congress who like Cruz least are the Republicans.
Cruz accused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of telling a "flat-out lie" about McConnell's intention to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank of the United States. A hundred years ago, that would have resulted in pistols at 20 paces on the Capitol lawn. As it was, it resulted in Senator John McCain getting right up in Senator Cruz's face, calling him a "wacko bird."
Former Senate Majority Leader and 1996 GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole told the New York Times that if Cruz is the Republican nominee, "we're going to have wholesale losses in Congress and state offices" and Hillary Clinton would "win in a waltz." Dole went on to say Donald Trump would make a better president than Cruz because Trump could "probably work with Congress, because he's, you know, he's got the right personality and he's kind of a dealmaker."
Ted, it's not a good sign when a guy like Dole compares you and a guy like Trump, and you come off as the loudmouth bully and existential threat to the Republican Party.
Cruz is a dream candidate. But while we're dreaming of economic flying ponies, unicorns, and candy-flavored rainbows... we don't want to wake up to find a liberal Democrat in the Oval Office.
Regards,
P.J. O'Rourke