2/23/2015 - Jay Cost Townhall.com
Why
is the Republican Party so unreliable on the immigration issue?
There is little doubt that they are
unreliable. Conservatives want iron-clad border-security measures firmly in
place before any legalization process begins. Yet GOP members of Congress are
eager to switch it around, and then accept milquetoast security.
It is strange. After all,
congressional Republicans are not bad on taxes; they’re not secretly looking to
hike the rate you’ll pay the IRS in April. They’re not bad on regulation; they
are serious when they say they want less, not more red tape.
Why immigration? This is, after all,
a party-based democracy, and the GOP is the party that represents the
conservative grassroots. Yet the two diverge on this issue -- pretty
substantially. What is going on?
The answer usually comes back:
business interests. They want the cheap labor from legalization, and all sorts
of other groups -- agricultural or fishing concerns, for instance -- want new
carveouts for their own industries. They ply members of Congress with money,
lobby them aggressively, provide them with cushy jobs after they leave office,
and presto: the base asks for one thing, the party offers another.
This is all true, but it misses a
larger story, one that highlights just how difficult it will be for
conservatives to really change the way government works.
If you ever visit Washington, D.C.
you might discover it is a study in contrast. Go down to the National Mall,
tour the Congress, walk past the White House, and the buildings all reflect a
kind of simple, almost austere republican virtue. Nothing too fancy -- nothing
like Buckingham Palace or Versailles. Just sturdy yet impressive structures
that reflect our belief that the people temporarily occupying those buildings
are no better than anybody else.
Yet go a few blocks to the northwest
and you will see row after row of drab, indistinct office buildings, all of
which are pretty new. Who’s in there? Interest groups, for one. Consultants,
too. And lobbyists -- scores and scores of lobbyists.
A century ago, they weren’t really
there at all. Washington developed virtually overnight -- and not because an
important industry settled there -- like New York and the financial district.
There is no economically important seaport -- as with Los Angeles or New
Orleans. It is not a transportation hub like Chicago. They don’t make steel in
D.C., as they did in Pittsburgh or Birmingham. No -- Washington grew from a
sleepy farm town to a sprawling metropolis because the government grew -- and
those interest groups descended upon the nation’s capital to get a piece of the
government’s action.
Immigration reform is just another
piece; it really gets down to distributing federal largesse. Immigrant groups
get new legal status. Businesses get cheap labor. Fishermen and orange growers
get special exemptions. This is the kind of thing Washington, D.C. is very,
very good at. It’s the local industry, if you will: deciding who wins, and who
loses. In my new book, A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of American
Political Corruption, I call this the “interest group
society.” It defines our politics today.
This is why congressional
Republicans are so lousy on the immigration issue. It is not that they are
RINOs, it is that they are members of Congress. Implicitly, that is how
members of Congress, in both parties, view their job these days -- dispensing
benefits to those who ask for them (while writing big campaign checks).
This points to the big challenge
that conservatives face, and why we so regularly but heads with the GOP
leadership. Conservatives want to roll back the capacity of Washington to pick
winners and losers. We’re not interested in politics because to grab our slice
of the pie. We want a limited government that is committed to the public
interest -- something much closer to what the Founding Fathers invented. We
detest this massive, corrupt behemoth that sits upon the Potomac. That puts us
basically in opposition to most members of Congress, Republican or
Democrat, who view their job as growing government to satisfy the clamor for
more special favors.
And immigration is a classic example
of the problem. Immigration reform, at least as it was designed a few years ago
in the Senate, is bad for the country at large. It would raise the unemployment
rate and lower wages; worse, because its border security provisions are lousy,
it would not even solve the problem. Nevertheless, it is good for certain
interests -- immigrant activist groups and business lobbies. And members of
Congress -- including Republicans -- are inevitably inclined to follow those
groups at the expense of the public good.
And immigration is not the only
issue like this. How about farm subsidies? They get less play than immigration,
but the GOP signed off on a terrible farm bill last year that funnels billions
to giant agribusinesses. How about corporate welfare, like the Export-Import
Bank? Republicans have talked a good game about that of late, but what have
they really done? How about payouts in the corporate tax code? Again, lots of
chatter but few results. All three of these issues are like immigration --
interest groups want one thing while the public good requires something else.
And just watch the Republicans in Congress flock to side of the interest
groups.
Meanwhile, the issues where the GOP
is reliable -- like taxes and regulation -- are usually those where the party’s
interest-group patrons happen to agree with the conservative grassroots.
All of this suggests a huge problem
with getting rid of Obamacare. Conservatives worry about average voters being
transformed into federal clients through the subsidies -- but what about the
industry groups that Obamacare paid off? The insurers, the doctors, the
hospitals, the AARP, the pharmaceutical industry, and more? They all donate,
quite lavishly in fact, to congressional Republicans. They do not give so many
millions out of the kindness of their own hearts. They expect a return on their
investment. So don’t be surprised if the GOP win the presidency in 2016, and
the party’s proposal to repeal Obamacare turns out to be strong on rhetoric but
weak on the specifics. Just like immigration.
In other words, the party’s bad
approach to immigration is part of a much larger malady. Our government has
grown too big for its britches. The Framers never designed our institutions to exercise
so much power, and we should not be surprised that they exercise it
irresponsibly. Congress is particularly out of its depth. Members use the vast
authority they’ve been given not for the public good, but to reward the
interests that lobby them so thoroughly. If conservatives really want to roll
back the size and scope of big government, it is this culture -- this interest
group society -- that we have to dismantle.
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