For someone who isn’t even on the ballot this year, Rick Scott sure is commanding an outsized portion of attention. Let’s face it: If you look like a lightning rod and act like a lightning rod, you’re going to attract electricity.
And that’s how Scott likes it. Today, we are assembled to sing Scott’s genius.
Just now, Florida’s junior U.S. Senator, head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and former governor must be happier than a kite-flying Ben Franklin in a thunderstorm. Everybody on the left is hurling bolts his way. Armed with a quiver of half-truths and innuendo, President Biden is working the Gold Coast today, hoping to boost flagging Democrats by giving Scott static.
Biden’s message, resurrected from Democrat campaigns of every decade since the 1930s, targets the usual suspects — retirees. Once more, the ancient hobgoblin of GOP penury emerges to stalk our blissful golden years: Republicans want to end Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
It’s right there in Scott’s self-described “11-Point Plan to Rescue America,” after all, says the White House. Where? Right there, old-timer, under No. 6, Government Reform & Debt: All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years.
Never mind the qualifier familiar to at least 22 state legislatures with sunset laws on their books: If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.
Listen, Scott rarely shrinks from bold (what the other side calls “controversial”) policy proposals. And his Rescue America scheme is nothing if not bold. Other terms leap to mind: brash, revolutionary, outrageous, astounding, and even nuclear.
(And that’s its supporters talking.)
There’s plenty of fascinating stuff in Scott’s manifesto (school choice; official race, color, and ethnicity blindness; secure borders; shrinking the federal workforce, and outsourcing redundant federal agencies), but the sunset provision is Ground Zero for Democrats.
Every piece of federal legislation comes with a five-year sunset clause. Every piece? Yep. That’s what the man said.
Well, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are the result of federal legislation. Them too? Yessir. Them too.
But … but … but … aren’t those enormously popular programs? And wouldn’t Scott’s plan, if adopted, put them at risk? What are Republicans thinking?
For openers, high-profile Republicans, including Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, leaders of the GOP’s Senate and House minorities, have given wide berth to the entire slate. Sunsetting each and every piece of legislation dating back to the regulation of administering certain oaths (June 1, 1789) is — at this moment, anyway — the proverbial bridge too far.
Never mind that McCarthy himself has proposed sunset commission bills. Even George W. Bush, the GOP’s only two-term president since Ronald Reagan, pushed a sunset commission in 2006. With control of Capitol Hill in the balance, sunsetting is suddenly politics’ third rail.
For his part, Scott insists he wants a mechanism to force Congress to address those social programs’ shortcomings before they become a crisis. Put them on the block every five years, and lawmakers’ attention surely would be concentrated.
Factcheck.org gives Scott and Republicans the benefit of the doubt, citing Democrats for “go[ing] too far in ads and social media claims.”
Still, a general sunsetting of federal legislation — whether after five years, 10, or longer — has several fascinating implications. Among them:
- Proponents of bills that become laws in emergencies — because no crisis should go to waste — would have to prove themselves afresh in calmer seas, possibly with different majorities or a less sympathetic White House.
- Sunsetting would force Congress to confront how administrative agencies had interpreted its work, providing an incentive to affirm or amend the real-world consequences of its legislation.
- Making sure that popular laws remained on the books would occupy much of Congress’ energy, leaving less opportunity for mischief.
- Additionally, looming sunsets would force, with urgency, lawmakers to confront the shortcomings or unanticipated consequences of even their most popular and successful earlier work. Can-kicking, a favorite pastime of elected officials, would be severely reduced.
Yes, Scott has proclaimed a scary truth out loud. Plenty of silliness goes on in Congress, and far too often, that silliness becomes law that metastasizes beyond imagination.
Putting a hard deadline on the effectiveness of what Washington has wrought might not be a foolproof vaccine — viruses adapt — but it would attack the symptoms.
If we had a Navy cap, we would tip it on behalf of Rick Scott’s brazen savvy. We’re eager to see if the lightning he’s attracted produces thunder that rumbles beyond Election Day.
