A preview of the coming battles

There are several big policy fights coming, with the new Administration and the increased Democratic majority in Congress. Many voters picked Obama in large part based on his assurances that he would be moderate, that he would reach across the aisle, that he would try to heal the divisions in our society. I Hope&trad; so, but of course I'm skeptical (to put it politely).

The biggest foreign policy issue will be Iraq, and the biggest domestic issue will be taxes. Let's leave those aside for now. I want to focus on two other domestic issues where I think President-Elect Obama and the Democratic Congress will try to make major changes. Taken together, I think they illustrate the tactics which the Democrats will use on a whole variety of fronts.

The fundamental tactic will be to get the government involved in some area, then use that government involvement to impose increasingly stringent "conditions," which seem reasonable only in light of the government funding in that area.

First is the Fairness Doctrine. Tully has done excellent work the past couple of years, showing how the Democrats have been laying the groundwork for reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine. When it is proposed (which Peter Kirsanow at National Review thinks will be in the first 100 days, President Obama will, in his nice, folksy voice, explain to us all the many tax benefits and subsidies which the media get. From free airwaves to tax deductions of all stripes, he'll show us a nice laundry list of every government break and subsidy there is going to support the "media." And the he'll ask a nice, simple, innocent question: "With all that taxpayer money going to them, shouldn't they be asked to give back just a little? Isn't it, frankly, practically conservative to ask that they do just this one little thing in return for all of those taxpayer-funded benefits they get? Is it too much to ask for Rush Limbaugh to give a little bit of time in return for the $X in taxpayer subsidies he gets?" They'll begin with traditional broadcast media, TV and radio, but they will quickly expand. All those telecommunication wires that our internet communications travel on are heavily regulated by the federal government. The government invented the internet, a pretty hefty subsidy by itself. These tendrils of government involvement will be used to justify expanding the Fairness Doctrine to the "new media" like blogs. On that front, they'll try to use the same arguments previously rejected (they won't be rejected this time around) to impose campaign finance restrictions on bloggers. They aren't really proposing "regulations," you see, they're only imposing "conditions on federal spending." If you want the benefits of the government-subsidized service, then you must accept the conditions.

This will be even more apparent with the proposal for Universal Voluntary National Service. It will indeed be "voluntary." The catch will be that you won't be able to get any federal college assistance without agreeing to the service. His official plan on his website is to provide a new $4,000 tax credit to those who agree to the two years of service. My bet, however, is that because there won't be near enough money to fund all of his promised programs, that new tax credit will never appear, but the service conditions will be attached to all the existing federal subsidies for higher education.

That's one tack the argument will take, tying individual benefits to service. What's not to like about that, conservatives? It's workfare instead of welfare! Why should we give these future Wall Street millionaires guaranteed student loans for free? Let's make 'em work for that benefit.

The other tack will be to have other institutions impose the actual service requirements in return for the institutional benefits they receive from the government. If your school district wants to continue receiving the federal funding it enjoys, then it may have to impose "service learning" requirements. Again, this will be presented as nothing new. After all, we condition colleges' receipt of federal funding on the colleges allowing military recruiters on campus over the college's objections. And many high schools and colleges already require "service learning" as part of their curriculum.

The fundamental response to this, of course, is to say that those subsidies should end, should never have been given out to begin with. This argument is strong, and should be made vociferously, but it will not prevail in the short term, because most people are too comfortable with those subsidies. I know way too many middle class Republicans who hate all wasteful government spending to people who don't deserve it, but man, don't talk about cutting back the few benefits they get, like help with college tuition. But we still need to fight hard for that argument in order to help frame the battleground.

The other argument we must make is that, even accepting the premise that the government SHOULD provide some of these subsidies (to college students or broadcast media, or in whatever context), government, as a matter of good policy, should still not impose terribly onerous conditions on those subsidies, and certainly should not seek to exercise such pervasive control over those who receive the subsidies as these proposals would require. The national service proposal, for example, would require the government to designate which local community organizations should and should not be funded, which ones should and should not count toward the required number of "volunteer" hours. For example, many folks would consider working for a local church's soup kitchen to be service of the highest caliber. But will church service count? How about being an alter boy or alter girl? Is that service which will count toward the required hours? No, the argument will inevitably be made that government legally cannot subsidize or approve or otherwise "entangle" itself in religious matters (just as the Catholic diocese in Massachusetts can no longer provide city adoption services, since it won't place children with gay couples). But because organizations like Planned Parenthood are ostensibly secular, service with them will be just fine. Will service to the Boy Scouts count? What about Mormons? Will their young men have to do 2 years of missionary work, and then another 2 years of government-approved community service, if they want to qualify for a Pell Grant?

We can win these battles, but we must think them out carefully and stay true to our principles while doing so. And, as I noted in my earlier thread, we must fight them over policy, not personality. In the mind of the public at large, we lost all the battles with Bill Clinton, once we started fighting him and his sleaziness, rather than his policies. Let's not make the same mistake again.