Bush vows to fix Washington culture

Jeb Bush outlined Monday a detailed plan to rein in the size of the federal government and to curb the influence of the lobbyists who live off it, calling for a 10 percent reduction in workers, an immediate hiring freeze, a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget and a six-year waiting period before members of Congress can become lobbyists.

Invoking his record as a budget watchdog during his time as Florida’s governor, Bush vowed to replicate that approach during his first term as president if the 2016 election sends him to Washington, which he held up as a model of unyielding dysfunction.

“The overspending, the overreaching, the arrogance and the sheer incompetence in that city — these problems have been with us so long that they are sometimes accepted as facts of life,” Bush said in Tallahassee, not far from Florida’s Capitol. “But a president should never accept them, and I will not.”

Bush also vowed to “challenge the whole culture in our nation’s capital.”

His speech amounted to a pointed rebuttal to his Republican rivals in the presidential campaign who have questioned the depth of his conservatism. It also appeared to be an attempt to portray Bush as he defines himself: a serious leader prepared to govern, rather than a clever speaker without a meaningful record, as he depicts many of his opponents.

Bush said his policies could reduce the size of the federal workforce by 10 percent in four years. Much of that, he said, would be accomplished through attrition and a strict system of replacing every three departing federal workers with one new employee.

In a proposal likely to be greeted with deep opposition from federal workers and the unions that represent them, Bush demanded changes to the Civil Service system that would make it far easier to punish and replace employees.

“There are a lot of exemplary employees in the federal government, but they’re treated no better than the bad ones,” Bush said. “And the bad ones are almost impossible to effectively discipline or remove.”

But he held out a carrot along with the stick: merit pay and bigger raises for high-performing workers and managers who save money for the government.

Bush took direct aim at K Street, Washington’s collection of lobbying firms that have long employed former lawmakers to do the bidding of major corporations.

He proposed heightened levels of disclosure that would require members of Congress to report every meeting with a lobbyist on a weekly basis. The information would be posted on congressional websites.

Bush has been critical of the lobbying culture, regularly repeating an anti-Washington message during his fledgling presidential campaign. But he also has tapped the fundraising potential of the K Street crowd, bringing in millions of dollars for his super PAC from Washington lobbyists, political operatives, lawyers and business leaders.

Possibly, his boldest plan: requiring an inflexible sixyear ban on lobbying for departing members of Congress. Currently, departing House members must observe a “cooling-off period” of a year before lobbying on Capitol Hill, and departing senators must wait two years.

“We need to help politicians to rediscover life outside of Washington,” Bush said. “Which — who knows? — might even be a pleasant surprise for them.”

Elsewhere in the Republican Party, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, one week after launching his bid for the 2016 presidential nomination, signed a bill Monday that outlaws nonemergency abortions at or beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy.

The governor’s signature on the new law — which was passed without any Democratic support — makes Wisconsin the 15th state to pass similar bans. There is no exception for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.

Walker, speaking with reporters after the bill signing, said he was confident it would survive any legal challenge, calling the five-month ban a “reasonable standard.”

“For people, regardless of where they might stand, when an unborn child can feel pain I think most people feel it’s appropriate to protect that child,” Walker said.

Under the new Wisconsin law, doctors who perform an abortion at or after 20 weeks in nonemergency situations could be charged with a felony punishable by up to $10,000 in fines and 3½ years in prison. Doctors could also be sued for damages.

Doctors would be allowed to perform abortions beyond 20 weeks only if the mother is likely to die or suffer irreversible injuries within 24 hours.

Walker has a long history of opposing abortions. His record includes defunding Planned Parenthood; requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, a law currently blocked by a federal court judge; and requiring women to have ultrasounds and be shown images of the fetus before having an abortion.