Financial Times Editorial - Bush's mini reshuffle
Financial Times Editoria - Bush's mini reshuffle
Published: April 19 2006 03:00 | Last updated: April 19 2006 03:00. Copyright by The Financial Times
George W. Bush yesterday delivered both good and bad news in his ongoing reshuffle. The good news is that Rob Portman will make a strong White House budget director because he has genuine influence on Capitol Hill. The bad news is that Mr Portman was doing an excellent job as US trade representative at a critical stage in the Doha round partly because of his influence on the Hill.
It is no disrespect to Susan Schwab, who yesterday replaced Mr Portman as USTR, to conclude that her appointment sends a retrograde signal to America's partners just two weeks before the deadline for a Doha framework deal. A trade lawyer with little political clout, Ms Schwab will find it far tougher than her predecessor to win over a Congress that looks increasingly sceptical of further trade liberalisation. Even Mr Portman, who might have become house majority leader had he remained on the Hill, could only scrape last year's Central American free trade agreement through Congress by a narrow margin.
The timing is not helpful. Ms Schwab has just over a year before Mr Bush's "trade promotion authority" expires, which allows the administration to submit trade deals to an all-or-nothing vote. In practice, that would give her just a few months to persuade Congress to back any Doha deal, assuming (a big assumption) there were one. Yesterday's move will hardly reassure America's partners that Mr Bush is serious about that outcome. The political calendar is also against Ms Schwab, who must deal with a Congress preoccupied by the build-up to mid-term elections in November - never a propitious time to sell tariff cuts or farm subsidy reductions to legislators.
Conversely, Mr Portman's move gives Mr Bush an opportunity to restore "fiscal sanity" to this year's increasingly tattered budget process. The house went into Easter recess without being able to agree on a 2007 budget resolution. The bitterness be tween Republican fiscal conservatives, who want to show voters they can control public spending, and more spendthrift Republicans is getting worse. Mr Portman should use his clout to ensure the deficit falls well below the forecast $423bn (£239bn). And he should weigh in on the side of lawmakers who are pushing for restrictions on earmarking, in which pet spending items are inserted into larger bills.
All this could prove academic unless Mr Bush takes broader steps to rejuvenate his presidency. With a narrower window, Ronald Reagan in 1987 restored his fortunes by appointing Howard Baker, a former senator, as chief of staff and embracing detente with Gorbachev's Soviet Union. In Joshua Bolten, Mr Bush has a good new chief of staff. But he lacks a credible agenda for what remains of his term. There would be no better place to start than by launching a credible plan to restore fiscal discipline.
Published: April 19 2006 03:00 | Last updated: April 19 2006 03:00. Copyright by The Financial Times
George W. Bush yesterday delivered both good and bad news in his ongoing reshuffle. The good news is that Rob Portman will make a strong White House budget director because he has genuine influence on Capitol Hill. The bad news is that Mr Portman was doing an excellent job as US trade representative at a critical stage in the Doha round partly because of his influence on the Hill.
It is no disrespect to Susan Schwab, who yesterday replaced Mr Portman as USTR, to conclude that her appointment sends a retrograde signal to America's partners just two weeks before the deadline for a Doha framework deal. A trade lawyer with little political clout, Ms Schwab will find it far tougher than her predecessor to win over a Congress that looks increasingly sceptical of further trade liberalisation. Even Mr Portman, who might have become house majority leader had he remained on the Hill, could only scrape last year's Central American free trade agreement through Congress by a narrow margin.
The timing is not helpful. Ms Schwab has just over a year before Mr Bush's "trade promotion authority" expires, which allows the administration to submit trade deals to an all-or-nothing vote. In practice, that would give her just a few months to persuade Congress to back any Doha deal, assuming (a big assumption) there were one. Yesterday's move will hardly reassure America's partners that Mr Bush is serious about that outcome. The political calendar is also against Ms Schwab, who must deal with a Congress preoccupied by the build-up to mid-term elections in November - never a propitious time to sell tariff cuts or farm subsidy reductions to legislators.
Conversely, Mr Portman's move gives Mr Bush an opportunity to restore "fiscal sanity" to this year's increasingly tattered budget process. The house went into Easter recess without being able to agree on a 2007 budget resolution. The bitterness be tween Republican fiscal conservatives, who want to show voters they can control public spending, and more spendthrift Republicans is getting worse. Mr Portman should use his clout to ensure the deficit falls well below the forecast $423bn (£239bn). And he should weigh in on the side of lawmakers who are pushing for restrictions on earmarking, in which pet spending items are inserted into larger bills.
All this could prove academic unless Mr Bush takes broader steps to rejuvenate his presidency. With a narrower window, Ronald Reagan in 1987 restored his fortunes by appointing Howard Baker, a former senator, as chief of staff and embracing detente with Gorbachev's Soviet Union. In Joshua Bolten, Mr Bush has a good new chief of staff. But he lacks a credible agenda for what remains of his term. There would be no better place to start than by launching a credible plan to restore fiscal discipline.
posted by Carlos T Mock at 7:36 PM
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