A new addition to the right-hand column

I was hesitant to put Ralph Smith’s badge up because I keep hearing rumors his district will be drawn out of existence. Still, he is my favorite State Senator, so I’m putting him up there.

The next addition will come soon – and it could be a surprise to some.

Revenues in Virginia up by another $152 million

Governor McDonnell informed the legislature that revenues are expected to be $152 million higher than was initially believe just a couple of months ago (WaPo).

For the most part, McDonnell asked that the money be used prudently: $50M to the “rainy-day fund,” $38M to scale back the accelerated sales tax nonsense, and another $38M to get a head start on repaying the VRS loan.

About $19.2M was left without any recommendation – at least from the Guv. If they asked me, there is the little matter about unfilled judges . . .

Cross-posted to BD

The Ryan budget and its implications

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan announced the GOP budget for Fiscal Year 2011 – a reduction of $74 billion from the President’s proposed budget (National Journal).

That’s a roughly 2% reduction in the growth of spending (from 7% to 5%). That doesn’t seem like much, but I ran through the numbers what would happen if, say, budget growth was 2% lower than projected for the entire decade (based on CBO numbers here).

Keep in mind, CBO projects the “as is” budgets (annual growth rate: 5%) to have deficits of over $600 billion as far as the eye can see.

Cut the annual growth rate to 3% on average, and the budget balances in six years.

Something to keep in mind; this may seem a small step, but it is a step, and more like these can turn things around more quickly than we realize.

Cross-posted to VV

Meanwhile, in New York . . .

. . . Governor Andrew Cuomo presented a budget that eliminated a $10 billion deficit without a tax increase (New York Post). It turned out to be a lot eaier than anyone thought, in no small part because the deficit was driven by automatic spending increases built in every year by law (in Albany, this is called “current services” budgeting; in Washington, “baseline budgeting”).

Cuomo expressed “shock” at the practice, although its been in place since long before his father was governor (NYP).  Odds are the real surprise was that the baseline had so many mandated increases that, left alone to its own devices, state spending would go up 13% this year alone.

Or, as Cuomo himself put it in an op-ed to the Post – itself a dramatic political statement for a Democrat (emphasis added):

In Albany speak, “deficit” means the amount needed to fund the 13 percent increase (as opposed to a normal rate of increase). For example, if one assumed these programs would increase at the rate of inflation (instead of 13 percent) the $10 billion deficit is really a $1 billion deficit.

Yikes!

Even without that $9 billion in fantasy-land spending, Cuomo’s budget reduced people and agencies. He also demanded, loudly, that the current services/baseline nonsense be destroyed by the force that created it: the state legislature.

That should be fun to watch.

In the meantime, Cuomo has already established himself as the most reasonable Democrat in America. If he can get his budget – and the reforms – through the legislature (I’m betting the Assembly controlled by his supposed allies will be much tougher sledding that the barely Republican Senate), they’ll be talking about a White House run – whether Andrew wants it or not.

Cross-posted to BD

Egypt needs a republic, not “democracy”

If you’re looking for a rollicking yet informative debate on events in Egypt, look no further than NRO‘s The Corner. Optimists and pessimists have been going back and forth for days, and just about every post has made me think a little more about what is happening over there and what we can (let alone should) do.

That said, there are some aspects of the discussion that need serious revisiting. If anything, Americans debating the Egyptian situation, from the “highest” ranks of punditry to the “lowest” blogger, and hamstringing themselves due to historical memory loss and unintentional provincialism. Shaking this off would be immensely helpful.

The worst example – and the most important – is the notion of “Western-style democracy”. In fact, some of the most successful recent examples of elected government are from outside the West. Japan has been holding free and fair elections longer than Spain, Portugal, or Greece, despite a cultural drive for consensus that exists almost nowhere in Western Europe. Taiwan transformed itself into a free nation despite an acceptance of corruption that makes this New Jersey native blush (although that is starting to change on the island). Indonesia – a geographical scatter-zone, geologic podwer keg, and cultural polyglot – has still managed elected government for a dozen years. South Korea has seen governing parties dissolve (twice), yet popular government has hummed along for over two decades.

In each case (to say nothing of the other non-Western elected governments running from Palau to Peru), vastly different cultures have managed to build governments on the consent of the governed.  Why? Because the governments themselves incorporate the cultural uniqueness of the nations. No better example of this exists than (of all places) Afghanistan, where a penchant for regional warlords, history of apparent corruption tolerance, terrible luck in neighbors, and a decade-plus war with the Taliban produced . . . two elected branches of government that check and balance each other while giving nearly everyone a stake in its survival (note: the Parliamentary elections of 2010 are the greatest success you didn’t notice).

Sadly, the diversity within the free world is not something understood by most Americans or Europeans. In part, that’s because our vocabulary is off.  “Western-style democracy” is usually a code for democracy-plus-limited-government: i.e., a government that does not restrict speech, religious worship, or property ownership (to name a few).  There actually is a word for that, one which perfectly described this kind of government: republic.  Sadly, that word fell out of favor, and created a situation where we all know what we mean, but have trouble saying it.

This is especially problematic where the Middle East and Central Asia is concerned. Just about every republic that would pass muster with the average American has some form of institution keeping elected government from becoming a slow-motion mob.  In most of Western Europe, it’s an upper legislative house not elected directly. In France and the United States, it’s the separation of executive and legislative power (with the Supreme Court increasingly usurping some of the role for itself in the latter).

For most of the Middle East and Central Asia, it is the military which fills that role. We might not be very comfortable with that, but odds are they are wondering how 5 out of 9 fellows and ladies in robes can change our nation with a piece of paper. More importantly, said role is still considered an acceptable topic of debate. Just as the role of the Supreme Court is an issue in American politics, the role of the military is an issue in Turkish and Pakistani politics.

Already, it appears the military is attempting to play a similar role in Egypt. What it means for that country, I’m not yet sure. What I do know is the strange notion that Egypt’s only options are “Western-style democracy” or a Wahhabist dictatorship is ridiculous.

So what should we do? To the extent that we are heard (and we are) we should recommend a government that relies as much as plausible on the consent of the governed, with institutions in place to keep said government out of mobocratic territory. We do not need to insist what the government’s appearance or the restricting institutions are; that is exactly the inflexibility that gets us into trouble.

The best defense against a Wahhabist regime is neither a dictatorship (as Elliot Abrams noted in The Atlantic, Mubarak’s slow-motion demise should have shown us that) nor pure democracy (which can become mobocracy quite quickly), but a republic in the traditional sense of the word. I still believe Egypt can build, and with some help, keep, a republic that grows more democratic over time (just as ours had) and fits its culture.

Cross-posted to VV