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Volume CXXXIII, Number 12 |
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The New GOP?
ED HOLMES
CONTRIBUTOR
My liberal friends (they like to call themselves "progressive") ceaselessly complain about Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress. Yet a look at recent domestic policy reveals that conservatives ought to be the ones complaining.
A glance at just some of the numbers is enough to make Barry Goldwater turn in his grave. Non-defense spending for the 107th Congress has increased by an exorbitant 18.6%. Total increases in entitlement spending for the elderly is expected to amount to $157 billion by the end of Bush's first term (according to the CBO). We've seen the biggest increase in federal spending on education in decades. Inflation-adjusted, federal spending per household is over $20,000 a year, the first time in over half a century. There's the $400 billion (yeah, right) Medicare Prescription Drug Modernization Act, the $190 billion farm subsidy bill, and, until recently, the 30% steel tariffs. Bush has yet to veto one bill. I get the compassionate part, but where's the conservatism?
Sadly, 2004 has started in much the same way 2003 ended, with the $375 billion omnibus spending bill, signed into law by Bush. This bill highlights the new trend of Congress in bypassing the process of federal agencies, governors, and mayors competitively awarding federal grants to competent applicants. Instead, Congress has begun selecting grant recipients themselves.
The result is that organizations and local governments effectively trade campaign contributions for earmarks through lobbying firms. The new spending bill includes 7,932 such earmarks. Among them is a $200,000 earmark for the First Tee program, run by the World Golf Association. Now I understand what the President meant in his State of the Union when he said of the tax cuts, "These numbers confirm that the American people are using their money far better than government would have-and you were right to return it."
Needless to say, the Democratic primary combatants have their own big-spending ideas. By generous estimates, the Bush tax cuts will cost $140 billion in 2004 federal revenues, but even the most frugal Democratic contender, Joe Lieberman, proposes $170 billion in new annual spending. It seems rather hypocritical of Democratic contenders to criticize Bush for the deficit while simultaneously proposing policies that will only widen it. This bipartisan trend of federal government profligacy only looks more dismal when put in the long-term perspective. Economists Jagadeesh Gokhale and Kent Smetters of the American Enterprise Institute estimated in a study last summer that "the money the government is promising to spend outstrips the taxes it can expect to collect by $44 trillion -20 times that of today's federal budget, and four times more than America's GDP." Our generation will face the brunt of such irresponsibility. Clearly, neither Democrats nor Republicans are willing to do anything about big federal spending, or the resulting inefficiency, lack of accountability, economic stagnation, and overlapping bureaucracy.
So while the Democrats and Republicans quarrel and quibble this year to see who can drive this country further into the ground, I will again vote for the Libertarian Party. I hope those of you who support limited government and/or do not want to see our generation pay for current politicians' recklessness do the same. That is unless you are opposed to the other Libertarian tenets, namely, individual liberty, personal responsibility, and peace.
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