Posted on 08/18/2003 10:03:59 PM PDT by optimistically_conservative
Somewhere between Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, conservatives may have lost the battle against big government.
Oddly enough, as the partisan differences grow sharper, the practical differences between the two major parties grows fuzzier, at least on domestic issues. Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard, describes Bush as a "big-government conservative."
The president has shown no discomfort with big government or increasing federal spending. In his first two years in office, Bush increased spending on schools by 40 percent. He's proposed a prescription drug benefit for Medicare that will cost $400 billion over 10 years. On both education and prescription drugs, Bush's top Democratic ally has been the icon of congressional liberalism, U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.).
While they acknowledge the reality of big government, Bush and Kennedy veer sharply from a common start. The No Child Left Behind Act is a good example. Some background:
Public schools are a responsibility of state and local government. The federal government contributes only about 7 cents on the dollar. It has concentrated its efforts on the heavy-burden exceptions: special education, the poor, and aid to local systems disproportionately affected by military bases. The point is that the federal government has rightly deferred to states and to local school boards to drive education.
Since 1965, the federal government has spent more than $120 billion on schools serving the poor with little to show for it. Bush, in seeking reauthorization two years ago, agreed to increase spending by 11.5 percent, including $9.1 billion for poor schools, a sum that is up to $12.3 billion in the 2004 budget, the most federal dollars ever.
Kennedy, who welcomed the spending, sees No Child Left Behind as a massive new infusion of federal money. He wants more. "Reform without resources is just hollow talk," he said. "The president's proposal may provide the money to test our children, but not enough to teach them."
Kennedy, starting with big government, finishes with bigger government. Bush, starting with big government, finishes with a distinctly different government -- not smaller, but decentralized.
Bush's education secretary, Rod Paige, argued that accountability requirements would provide essential information to parents, leading them to demand alternatives. Conservatives saw it as more unwarranted federal spending and without reforms, such as vouchers, dropped at Kennedy's behest.
Two years later, it's obvious that Paige was right. The federal government, taking a page from the liberals' book, has become the driving force in pushing states to embrace choice and to give parents more freedom in where they send their children. The direction is set, and No Child Left Behind has done it.
Americans have grown comfortable with big government, a legacy of the 1960s. As a culture, we have bought into the notion that adults can be as irresponsible as they choose in lifestyle decisions and government will construct a safety net to catch their consequences. In some cases, it's not irresponsibility; it is that adults have changed behaviors to conform to government incentives. In Georgia, for example, 73 percent of undergraduate students receive state grants, giving parents incentives to spend the money their parents saved for the children's college. Government has built a dependency and, since 25 percent of the nation's taxpayers pay 84 percent of the cost of government, there's no incentive to go back.
Bush grows government, but activates it for conservative ends, just as the Great Society programs of the 1960s did for liberals. Roles now are reversed. Conservatives push for change; liberals defend the status quo.
Liberals scoff at programs such as those promoting marriage or encouraging teen abstinence as foolish conservative activism by government. Maybe. But when was the last time you saw somebody smoking on television? No one thing works. But if liberal activism used government as a vehicle to drive society in one direction, conservative activism can use it to take society in another.
A serious effort must be made by the GOP to bring the federal budget under control. The #1 priority should be fighting waste, fraud and abuse in the federal bureaucracy. Under the current GOP Congress and the Bush administration, discretionarey spending has been out of control. In this regard, fiscal responsibility doesn't exist.
The Bush administration is capable of handling the War on Terrorism and being fiscally responsible at the same time.
Don't hold your breath.
The first thing the new Bush administration did was to cover up and close down investigations into Sh$%head Clinton's waste, fraud and abuse.
It hasn't done a damn thing since then except to increase government waste, fraud and abuse. Spending is completely out of control now, thanks to George Bush.
I'll vote Libertarian.
Big government is the problem. Not the solution.
The objective of the conservative movement in America today and conservatism in general, is to reduce the size and scope of the federal government, remove the excessive amounts of social welfare entitlement programs and get our elected officials to better follow the basic tenets of the US Constitution. For starters, this means reducing the tax burden on working American's, tightening the budgetary purse strings and holding Congress to higher standards in their public and civil affairs.
If you support the current level of government largesse that exists in the federal bureaucracy, you aren't a fiscal conservative. Period!
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