Good News for the Deficit? Fiscal Conservatives Prevail in Primaries
Fiscal conservatism seemed the big winner in yesterday's primaries. By the end of the biggest voting day so far this year, Arkansas centrist Democrat Senator Blanche Lincoln had beaten back a challenge from a union-backed liberal Democrat, and California Republicans had nominated two Silicon Valley businesswomen to take on liberal Democrat opponents. Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett Packard, was nominated to run for governor against Jerry Brown, and Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay, won the nod to go up against Sen. Barbara Boxer.
"Career politicians in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., be warned because you now face your biggest nightmare: Two businesswomen who know how to create jobs, balance budgets, and get things done," Whitman said in her victory statement.
In Iowa, former governor Terry Branstad clinched his Republican party's nomination for another go at the same job. He ran a campaign focused on his management ability and beat a socially conservative opponent who had the backing of many right wing Republicans and evangelicals. It seemed like money, and not gay marriage, was on the mind of voters.
For folks like me who actually lose sleep over the deficit, it would be a good sign if the results had more to do with worries about government debt and less to do with incumbent versus challenger, men versus women, career politicians versus business careerists, left versus right. Should some of these more fiscally conservative candidates actually win governorships and seats in the House and the Senate, it could bode well for future budgets. Perhaps the state governments and Congress would roll up their collective (and I don't mean that in the socialist sense) sleeves and do the unpopular, difficult, deficit-hacking work that needs to be done. (And yes, I have been accused of being way too optimistic for a serious journalist.)
Policy observers believe 2011 could be the year of reckoning when it comes to the Federal deficits. The tax cuts originally enacted by George W. Bush expire at the end of 2010, and it would take new legislation to extend them. Everybody in Washington has their own price for a vote on that -- fiscal conservatives (and anti-tax activists) want to see tough budget cuts. And social program defenders and some deficit hawks won't vote to extend the tax cuts at all unless they come with some budget-balancing tax increases.
Not everyone who won a party nomination yesterday (or in earlier primaries) will win in their general election, but it's likely that the Democratic majority in the House and the Senate will be smaller, at a minimum. (Some say they could lose one or both chambers.) Democrats will still control the White House, but those centrist Blanche Lincolns of the party will likely hold even more sway behind closed doors than they did during the health care debate, and that was substantial.
Absent any more horrible disasters like oil spills and credit crashes, all of those checks and balances could yield compromise instead of gridlock. Picture a little bit of economic improvement, some spending cuts, a pinch of taxes, and the next Congress could change the trajectory of the deficit. That would be good for the left, the right, the men, the women, the politicians, the business people, and all of us trying to keep our own budgets on track.
More on MoneyWatch:
- Measures to Cut Budget Deficit Are All on the Table
- Top Economic Bloggers: Reduce Medicare and Social Security Spending
- What's Next for Taxes?
- VAT: New Tax Coming Soon?
Photo by Michael from NYC on Flickr.