Andrew Sullivan: Is Bush a socialist? He's spending like one

The Sunday Times ^ | 9/25/05

[Uncle Joe Cannon]

September 25, 2005

The Sunday Times

Andrew Sullivan: Is Bush a socialist? He's spending like one

Finally, finally, finally. A few years back, your correspondent noticed something a little odd about George W Bush’s conservatism. If you take Margaret Thatcher’s dictum that a socialist is someone who is very good at spending other people’s money, then President Bush is, er, a socialist.

Sure, he has cut taxes, a not-too-difficult feat when your own party controls both houses of Congress. But spending? You really have to rub your eyes, smack yourself on the forehead and pour yourself a large gin and tonic. The man can’t help himself.

The first excuse was the war. After 9/11 and a wobbly world economy, that was a decent excuse. Nobody doubted that the United States needed to spend money to beef up homeland security, avert deflation, overhaul national preparedness for a disaster, and fight a war on terror. But when Katrina revealed that, after pouring money into both homeland security and Louisiana’s infrastructure, there was still no co-ordinated plan to deal with catastrophe, a few foreheads furrowed.

Then there was the big increase in agricultural subsidies. Then the explosion in pork barrel spending. Then the biggest new entitlement since Lyndon Johnson, the Medicare drug benefit. Then a trip to Mars. When you add it all up, you get the simple, devastating fact that Bush, in a mere five years, has added $1.5 trillion to the national debt. The interest on that debt will soon add up to the cost of two Katrinas a year.

Remember when conservatism meant fiscal responsibility? In a few years, few people will be able to. I used to write sentences that began with the phrase: “Not since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society spending binge. . .” I can’t write that any more. Johnson — the guns and butter president of liberalism’s high-water mark — was actually more fiscally conservative than the current inhabitant of the White House. LBJ boosted domestic discretionary spending in inflationadjusted dollars by a mere 33.4%.

In five years, Bush has increased it 35.1%. And that’s before the costs for Katrina and Rita and the Medicare benefit kick in. Worse, this comes at a time when everyone concedes that we were facing a fiscal crunch before Bush started handing out dollar bills like a drunk at a strip club. With the looming retirement of America’s baby-boomers, the US needed to start saving, not spending; cutting, not expanding its spending habits.

This was one reason I found myself forced to endorse John Kerry last November. He was easily the more fiscally conservative candidate. Under Clinton, the US actually ran a surplus for a while (thanks, in part, to the Gingrich-run Congress). But most conservatives bit their tongues. Bush promised fiscal tightening in his second term and some actually believed him.

They shouldn’t have. When Bush casually dismissed questions about funding the $200 billion Katrina reconstruction with a glib “It’s going to cost what it costs”, steam finally blew out of some loyal Republican ears. When the house majority leader Tom DeLay told the conservative Washington Times that there was no fat left to cut in the budget and that “after 11 years of Republican majority we’ve pared it down pretty good”, a few conservatives lost it.

Here’s the chairman of the American Conservative Union: “Excluding military and homeland security, American taxpayers have witnessed the largest spending increase under any preceding president and Congress since the Great Depression.” That would be correct. When you have doubled spending on education in four years, launched two wars and a new mega-entitlement, that tends to happen.

Here’s Peggy Noonan, about as loyal a Republican as you’ll find, in a Wall Street Journal column last week: “George W Bush is a big spender. He has never vetoed a spending bill. When Congress serves up a big slab of fat, crackling pork, Mr Bush responds with one big question: Got any barbecue sauce?”

Here’s Ann Coulter, the Michael Moore of the far right, a pundit whose book on liberalism was titled Treason: “Bush has already fulfilled all his campaign promises to liberals and then some! He said he’d be a ‘compassionate conservative’, which liberals interpreted to mean that he would bend to their will, enact massive spending programmes, and be nice to liberals. When Bush won the election, that sealed the deal. It meant the Democrats won.

“Consequently, Bush has enacted massive new spending programmes, obstinately refused to deal with illegal immigration, opposed all conservative Republicans in their primary races, and invited Teddy Kennedy over for movie night. He’s even sent his own father to socialise with ageing porn star Bill Clinton.” Ouch.

Conservatives have been quietly frustrated with Bush for a long time now. Honest neoconservatives have long privately conceded that the war in Iraq has been grotesquely mishandled. But in deference to their own party, they spent last year arguing that John Kerry didn’t deserve his Vietnam war medals. Social conservatives have just watched as the president’s nominee for chief justice of the Supreme Court pronounced that the constitutional right to abortion on demand merited respect as a legal precedent. This hasn’t cheered them up. The nativist right, long enraged by illegal immigration, has been spluttering about foreigners for a while now. But since few want to question the war publicly, oppose the president’s nominees to the court, or lose the Latino vote, the spending issue has become the focus of everyone’s discontent.

All I can say is: about time. I believe in lower taxes. But I also believe in basic fiscal responsibility. If you do not cut spending to align with lower taxes, you are merely borrowing from the next generation. And if a Republican president has legitimised irresponsible spending, what chance is there that a Democrat will get tough?

This may, in fact, be Bush’s real domestic legacy. All a Democratic successor has to do is raise taxes to pay for his splurge, and we will have had the biggest expansion of government power, size and responsibility since the 1930s. What would Reagan say? What would Thatcher? But those glory days are long gone now — and it was a Republican president and Congress that finally buried them.

[NCLaw441]

If this liberal author thinks Bush is a socialist, he should be supporting, rather than attacking, him.

[A'elian' nation]

Bush does have the power to veto bills. He signed the unConstitutional No Child Left Behind Act, among many others.

AND the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.
I love Bush, but what was he thinking ?

He has to start vetoing something !

[JeffAtlanta]

Emotional appeals about burdening our children with debt is hyperbole.

Why? The money has to be paid back with interest one way or another.

[podkane]

It looks like the lesson is that if you want to get tough on deficits, elect a Republican Congress and a Democrat president. They won't give him what they'd give a Repubican president, and he won't get what his own Democrats would give him.

The electorate seems to have been at least subconsciously "splitting their vote" for years. The current repub control of the government is actually quite slight, and could very well shift in the next election. The 51-48% victory for GWB, war president, over weak and vacillating JFK, wasn't commanding, and may have indicated an uneasiness with giving all power to one party - even when it's a party one agrees with.

The wisdom of the Constitution isn't any particular politics, but the dynamic of opposition and separation of powers.

One thing Clinton DID have, for a while, was the line-item veto. I can't argue competently for its constitutionality, but for the 1.5 years he had it, he was able to use it to point out the particularly egregious pieces of pork, often benefitting only one individual or company in a district. The amount he actually vetoed was microscopic compared to the overall budget, but it was symbolically very powerful, and it served to help curb the worst offenders in the pork payout.

[skeptical_con]

"Using Currency as the Primary Weapon
I hate to admit it, but the Chinese have done a masterful job. While America’s media is hypnotizing us with frivolous entertainment such as American Idol or The Amazing Race, they are totally ignoring the perilous economic time bomb the Chinese have placed against us. The Government of China is holding U.S. currency and Treasury notes in a $1.9 trillion Treasury bond trap. When they pull the trigger on their “primary weapon,” the dollar will crash..."

http://www.energybulletin.net/4301.html

I certainly don't have the understanding of economics necessary to evaluate this claim but I certainly hope, Ven erable Bede, that you are right and our large foreign debt. is no threat. I would love to be proven wrong. Nonetheless even if this is overly dramatized it continues to strike me as ominous.

[Cobra64]

Bush is spending like a socialist, and his successor will be a socialist. Our country is going downhill fast.

I agree.

[Cobra64]

I guess the veto pen ran out of ink?

[Venerable Bede]

Would you prefer a higher marginal tax rate on your income, higher federal gas taxes, corporate taxes, capital gain, and divident taxes or fiscal responsibility from your government? Congress agreed to Bush's spending bill and asked for even more. The Democrat's version of NCLB and the Medicare drug bill were almost 30% higher than what was approved. To put the blame for all federal spending at Bush's feet ignores the 535 members of Congress who are all after their own piece of the pie.

[hosepipe]

Andrew Sullivan is correct.. Bush is a big government republican..
Sullivan IS a big government democrat.. like all democrats are..
The logic of this hit piece is QUEER.. but then... so is Sullivan..

[sourcery]

If this liberal author thinks Bush is a socialist, he should be supporting, rather than attacking, him.

Sullivan is not a 'liberal' in the modern sense. His positions are mostly congruent to that of liberals on social issues, and on some but by no means all 'liberty' issues (individual rights vs. government power.) However, Sullivan is implacably opposed to socialism, to the New Deal and to the Great Society--more so than most Republicans. Were he elected President, most Federal spending other than for Defense would be stopped by Executive Order on Day 1 of his Presidency (he would declare it Unconstitutional.) Or to say the same thing in far fewer words: He's a Libertarian.

[Canard]

"To put the blame for all federal spending at Bush's feet ignores the 535 members of Congress who are all after their own piece of the pie."

Of course they all share some responsibility. But only one of the 536 people you mention has the ability to singlehandedly approve or veto a particular spending bill.

[JeffAtlanta]

To put the blame for all federal spending at Bush's feet ignores the 535 members of Congress who are all after their own piece of the pie.

I think that everyone blames congress too. The problem is that none of these spending bills would have become law without the signature of the president.

While Bush may not be solely responsible for the spending bills, he is completely responsible.

[sourcery]

Sullivan IS a big government democrat

Sorry, you're quite wrong. Evidence: Andrew Sullivan: Reagan freed us all.

[Praxeologue]

The Government of China is holding U.S. currency and Treasury notes in a $1.9 trillion Treasury bond trap. When they pull the trigger on their “primary weapon,” the dollar will crash..."

Please confirm statistics you read from biased, ie Democrat, sources, before you post them.

At the end of September 2004, foreigners held about $1.9 billion of U.S. federal debt. Japan held $720 billion of this amount. China was in second place with $174 billion: i.e. less than 10% of foreign-held debt and just over 3% of total federal debt.

China is not in a position to crash the U.S. dollar, much less the U.S. economy.

That statement could change in a decade if we keep running the same deficits, but it is misleading to make that claim today.

[skeptical_con]

Unrestricted Warfare is the English title of a book on military strategy written in 1999 by two Colonels in the People's Liberation Army, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. It is a work regarding military strategy. Its primary concern is how a nation such as China can defeat a technologically superior opponent (such as the United States) through a variety of means. Rather than focusing on direct military confrontation, this book instead examines a variety of other means. Such means include using International Law (see Lawfare) and a variety of economic means to place one's opponent in a bad position and circumvent the need for direct military action.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrestricted_Warfare

[skeptical_con]

Any debt must be paid back, with interest, so running up the deficit to reconstruct the Gulf region carries a cost, at least to future generations. Foreign holdings of U.S. government debt exceeded $2.03 trillion in July, meaning that every man, woman and child in the United States owes foreign investors $6,846. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/20/AR2005092001650.html

[skeptical_con]

Any debt must be paid back, with interest, so running up the deficit to reconstruct the Gulf region carries a cost, at least to future generations. Foreign holdings of U.S. government debt exceeded $2.03 trillion in July, meaning that every man, woman and child in the United States owes foreign investors $6,846. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/20/AR2005092001650.html

[Black Tooth]

CONGRESS controls spending.

Like another poster said, should we get rid of the Republicans in Congress? And who is the one that can veto spending bills?

[JOE43270]

No, President Bush is not a Socialist. The congress and their pork barrel spending are the Socialists. He is the executive branch of our government and the congress are the theives. He is directed by the United States Constitution to do what the elected legistlature directs him to do. Wake up and read the United States Constitution, it's not that long and it doesn't take a college degree to understand it.

[xzins]

Sullivan forfeited his right to speak.