By MICHAEL SOLON
Lose the battle but win the war—that is the redeeming hope congressional leaders offer to their rank-and-file members on the coming votes on the Obama health-care plan.
While diehards still insist that a government takeover of health care will be a net winner this fall, more and more Democrats understand this is a career-ending vote. And so their leadership presents them with the following proposition: Do the right thing and over the long run the power of our party will be stronger as the workers in roughly one-sixth of the U.S. economy will behave more like public employee union members. The sacrifice won’t be in vain. While that prospect may be comforting, it is far from certain.
As to whether the 2010 elections will be gentler or harsher than the 1994 elections on the congressional majority for pushing health reform in spite of public opposition, top Democratic pollsters Pat Cadell and Doug Schoen have issued their warning in a March 12 Washington Post op-ed. If Democrats fail to pass health care, they “will face the brunt of the electorate’s reaction. If it passes, however, Democrats will face a far greater calamitous reaction at the polls.”
No doubt exists that other critical domestic problems are far more grave than in 1994. Back then, the deficit was $200 billion or about 2.9% of GDP. Today, the president projects a deficit of $1.5 trillion or 10.6% of GDP. The unemployment rate of 9.7% today stands half again as high as the 6.1% rate of 1994. The economy and jobs far outpace health care as the top issue.
So based on domestic issues alone, the political storm of 2010 should exceed that of 1994. Many elected officials won’t survive. But will their health-care reform be saved? Democrats do believe that once the full plan kicks in, it will score as a net winner over medium to long term. Yet for every popular reform—guaranteed insurance issue and a ban on exclusions for pre-existing conditions, for instance—unpopular burdens such as the individual mandate exist.
Further, such a view is static, ignoring the dynamics of the deficit and the slow economy. After the deepest recession in the postwar era, our economy is experiencing one of its weakest recoveries. Together, these two facts present a fiscal landscape where deficit reduction must turn to federal spending reduction. No meaningful program of federal spending restraint can avoid health care.
But if all the new spending might be at risk, should Democrats feel secure about the crown jewels of the health-care plan: insurance mandates and other regulations that are sure to make it unprofitable and nonviable and open the door to a full government takeover?
Of all the political consequences that could flow from the national health-care effort in 2010, the potential of the fall elections to shift 2011 redistricting to the Republicans’ advantage may be most important. That puts the long-term viability of the president’s health-care reform in serious jeopardy, no matter the outcome of the 2012 presidential elections.
While the election of 1994 did signal a political realignment, none of that alignment translated into the much more permanent benefit that redistricting could provide in 2010 if the GOP takes over state legislatures across the country. In 1994, Republicans took control of a majority of the state legislatures for the first time in half a century. They took control of a majority of governorships for the first time in almost a quarter-century. Republicans picked up 12 governor seats, almost 500 state legislative seats, and gained control of 20 state legislatures. Yet virtually none of that power shift translated into a longer-term benefit of redistricting.
What advantage might Republicans have preserved if redistricting occurred after the 1994 elections? Consider the state of Washington. In the 1994 election, the state’s eight Democrat and one Republican congressional delegation swung to two Democrats and seven Republicans. Yet after the 2001-02 redistricting, the Washington delegation shifted back to six Democrats and three Republicans. What if redistricting had enhanced the prospects so that one or two of those Washington State seats were now Republican? A gain of just one seat out of nine statewide may not seem like much, but applied to a national level, that alone would wipe out the current Democratic majority in the House of Representatives.
As Democratic legislators consider their choices, many are missing the impact of an electoral wipeout in 2010 on the redistricting of congressional seats as well as those in the state legislatures. The electoral advantage gained from 2011 redistricting would extend the short-term pain of 2010 at least through the redistricting of 2021. Democratic sacrifices may be for naught.
Mr. Solon, a former policy adviser for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, is the principal of Capitol Legistics.
