Schumer's No Cuts Politics

Senate Democrats gets a free pass to hide under Sen. Chuck Schumer's brand of attack politics while pretending to favor spending cuts and debt reduction and to oppose tax increases.

(By PAUL A. GIGOT, Wall Street Journal) - Not long after the 2008 election, a triumphant Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) stopped by our offices to announce that American politics had changed forever. Never again would we be able to argue successfully, as we had since Reagan, for smaller government. The American electorate had declared it wanted a permanently larger entitlement state. The 2010 election certainly cast doubt on Mr. Schumer's thesis, but it's worth keeping his claims in mind as we watch the senator emerge as the single biggest obstacle in Congress to spending cuts.

His role has been obvious for some time, but a revealing and generally laudatory article by Meredith Shiner in Roll Call this week lays out the Schumer strategy of assailing House Republicans as radical, in particular demonizing House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in personal terms, and opposing any Democratic concessions on entitlements. Mr. Schumer also led the internal fight against releasing a Senate budget, though Democrats control that body and are supposed to pass a budget resolution under the 1974 budget law.

This is cynicism squared, but Mr. Schumer has been getting away with it because the press pack has fixated on the political narrative of House Republicans vs. President Obama. This gives Senate Democrats up for re-election next year a free pass to hide under Mr. Schumer's brand of attack politics while pretending to favor spending cuts and debt reduction and to oppose tax increases.