Though the odds of Obamacare’s repeal look stark in the aftermath of President Barack Obama’s re-election, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Jim Antle argues that the law’s repeal remains a worthwhile pursuit for the GOP.
“The implementation of Obamacare is going to be rife with problems,” Antle told The Daily Caller in an interview about his new book, “Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped.”
“Those problems will either be solved by blaming the remaining private sector elements, further expanding government, and moving toward a single payer health care system, or they will be solved by unwinding Obamacare’s tangled web of regulations, mandates, and subsidies, moving toward a genuine free market in health care.”
“I argue in ‘Devouring Freedom’ that the Republicans have really badly misplayed the health care issue,” he continued.
“They have traditionally just opposed whatever the Democrats wanted to do or offered watered down versions of the same. But I think Republicans are right to keep Obamacare repeal a live issue, even if the election and Supreme Court decision made it difficult to accomplish that cleanly. A malfunctioning entitlement can’t survive indefinitely with just one party’s support. This is really fundamental to whether we are going to have limited government in this country.”
While in his book Antle documents the government’s ever-expanding role in the lives of its citizens, he says the cause of reversing course is not entirely hopeless. Among the things that need to be done, he said, is change the narrative that big government is good for the poor.
“I think conservatives and libertarians have to break this narrative that big government hurts the rich and helps the poor,” Antle said.
“In many cases, the opposite is true. The new welfare queens are General Electric, General Motors, the big pharmaceutical companies that helped pass Obamacare and profit from its mandates and subsidies, Solyndra, and a whole host of crony capitalists.”
See TheDC’s full interview with Antle below, about his book, America’s debt problem, whether the tea party is still a strong force and much more:
Why did you write the book?
I think for a lot of conservatives Barack Obama’s presidency has been something of an emotional roller coaster ride. There was the feeling of defeat after he was first elected, maybe that the idea of a center-right country was slipping away. Then for a very long time, Obama didn’t have much to show for his three-fifths Democratic majorities in Congress. The stimulus didn’t stimulate, cap and trade stalled, Obamacare was a tough slog. Then came the 2010 elections and the constitutional challenge to Obamacare, raising the very real prospect that many of Obama’s gains would be reversed.
We all know how that turned out. Many conservatives are back to where they started from when Obama became president. So the question posed in the subtitle of “Devouring Freedom” — “can big government ever be stopped?” — was one I thought worth exploring. (It would have been worth exploring even if Mitt Romney had been elected.) What I found is that conservatives shouldn’t give up just yet.
How have you felt the devouring of freedom during the Age of Obama?
I haven’t had the audacity to try to create jobs as a small businessman or feed the poor while holding politically incorrect religious beliefs, so for me the personal impact has been limited to watching friends struggle economically. But I believe Reagan is right: As government expands, liberty contracts. (I actually devote a chapter of Devouring Freedom to making that argument.) Rand Paul echoed that case in his CPAC speech Thursday.
Every dollar government spends is sucked out of the private economy. Every law or regulation limits the scope of permissible human action. That’s true even when government does necessary and important things. We need to recognize the trade-offs inherent in government growth and not just all every good thing “freedom.” Based on how much government has expanded in recent years, we’re devouring a lot of freedom.
Your book talks about Obamacare. Is it rational for the GOP to continue to push for the repeal of Obamacare, as some in the House and the Senate continue to do? Now that Obama’s been re-elected, hasn’t the season to fight Obamacare come and gone, and the best the GOP could hope to do, at least legislatively, is push for reforms that would make the health care law slightly more palatable and efficient?
The implementation of Obamacare is going to be rife with problems. Those problems will either be solved by blaming the remaining private sector elements, further expanding government, and moving toward a single payer health care system. Or they will be solved by unwinding Obamacare’s tangled web of regulations, mandates, and subsidies, moving toward a genuine free market in health care.
I argue in “Devouring Freedom” that the Republicans have really badly misplayed the health care issue. They have traditionally just opposed whatever the Democrats wanted to do or offered watered down versions of the same. But I think Republicans are right to keep Obamacare repeal a live issue, even if the election and Supreme Court decision made it difficult to accomplish that cleanly. A malfunctioning entitlement can’t survive indefinitely with just one party’s support. This is really fundamental to whether we are going to have limited government in this country.
How serious is our debt problem? Isn’t the real problem the liabilities embedded in our entitlement programs, particularly Medicare, and not so much our current debt load?
It’s an all of the above problem. Right now, Washington is patting itself on the back for its short-term deficit reduction. That progress was really only possible because we were running such huge deficits in the first place. But we’ve made no progress on the long-term debt problem and have actually added $6 trillion in new debt.
The cost of servicing this debt, plus entitlements, is crowding out the rest of the federal budget. And if interest rates go up, the problem will only get worse. But you’re right that it is the unfunded liabilities of the federal government, particularly the Social Security and Medicare benefits we’ve promised but are too broke to pay for, is the biggest problem. Those unfunded liabilities aren’t just bigger than the U.S. economy. By some estimates, they exceed world GDP.
What do you believe government’s role should be limited to? How far do you think it needs to be scaled back?
Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution would be nice.
How unique is President Obama in “devouring freedom” compared to others who occupied the Oval Office? Is there anything President Obama has supported that you couldn’t imagine Jimmy Carter pushing if he were president today? Or do you believe President Obama is far and away the most liberal president in American history?
I think what Obama had was a unique opportunity for success. Jimmy Carter would have had a much worse impact on the country if he hadn’t been such a political failure. Richard Nixon was a government grower. Bill Clinton tried to grow government in his first two years in office, but after being rebuked by the electorate and saddled with a Republican Congress, federal spending actually declined as a percentage of the economy. George W. Bush was a disaster for limited government.
The natural tendency of government is to grow, but the most explosive growth happens in a time of crisis. The financial meltdown and Great Recession was such a crisis. Since Bush was in office when the crisis hit, it had the added effect of electing a Democratic Congress and discrediting alternatives to big government solutions (even though Bush himself wasn’t much of an alternative).
Obama inherited ideal political conditions for what he wanted to do. Rahm Emmanuel famously said never let a crisis go to waste, and they didn’t.
How would you go about reversing course?
Whatever your opinion of drones, I think the Rand Paul filibuster is a good example of two important things that must be done: 1.) Elect some principled leaders; and 2.) Change the political incentives for everyone else. Milton Friedman once said that it was less important to elect the right people than to create the conditions for the wrong people to do the right things.
More specifically, I think conservatives and libertarians have to break this narrative that big government hurts the rich and helps the poor. In many cases, the opposite is true. The new welfare queens are General Electric, General Motors, the big pharmaceutical companies that helped pass Obamacare and profit from its mandates and subsidies, Solyndra, and a whole host of crony capitalists.
How did we ever let Obama get away with saying his health care program was tough on insurance companies? It mandated that every American buy those companies’ products!
Finally, I argue in Devouring Freedom that Republicans should pick their targets and act decisively. Don’t trim wasteful programs or unconstitutional agencies, because they’ll grow back. Abolish them outright. Don’t tinker with entitlements. Pursue lasting structural reforms. It’s the only way to real savings.
Is the tea party dead? They were supposed to help take back America for conservative principles, but they didn’t seem all that powerful last November on Election Day.
After the 2004 presidential election, we heard about the “permanent Republican majority” that was brought about in part by the country’s rejection of gay marriage. How do those predictions look now? That was followed by Democratic landslides in 2006 and 2008, and then a Republican course correction in 2010, followed by Obama’s reelection and a good Democratic year in 2012.
Politics is very volatile right now, as you might expect when government is too big to not fail. I think the tea party has already created the first meaningful pressure Republicans have ever felt from the right on spending. This has been an important contribution. The next step is to reach rather than repel the persuadable middle.
What is the most stunning statistic or anecdote you discovered researching the book?
The fact that almost every statistic kept getting a lot bigger as I wrote. Some might now say $84 trillion in unfunded liabilities is on the small side. But most striking to me is how much of a government-cutter Obama posed as during his campaigns. Did you know he promised to cut taxes until they were a lower percentage of the economy than when Reagan was president?
What politicians do you think are best positioned to lead the movement to reverse the big government trend in government?
Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Justin Amash, Thomas Massie, Raul Labrador, and Tom McClintock are some of the standouts. I have high hopes for Ted Cruz, but we’ll have to see. The wild cards are Paul Ryan and the GOP governors, who are a big part of the party’s future. In my book, I talk about the contrast between Ryan’s entitlement reform proposals and his frequently less than austere voting record being an illustration of the Republican Party’s aspirations vs. the reality of how it has actually governed.