Posted on 08/15/2002 6:23:47 AM PDT by That Subliminal Kid
by Veronique de Rugy
August 8, 2002
Veronique de Rugy is a fiscal policy analyst at the Cato Institute.
President Bush may be repeating the sins of his father. Although elected on a Reaganesque, tax-cutting platform, he has veered left. President Bush has signed a bill to regulate political speech, issued protectionist taxes on imported steel and lumber, backed big-spending education and farm bills, and endorsed massive new entitlements for mental-health care and prescription drugs. When the numbers are added up, in fact, it looks like President Bush is less conservative than President Clinton.
It makes little sense to discourage one's core supporters prior to a midterm election. Yet that is the result when a Republican president expands government, which Bush is doing. Also, academic research on voting patterns shows that a president is most likely to get re-elected if voters are enjoying an increase in disposable income. Yet making government bigger is not a recipe for economic growth. After all, there is a reason why Hong Kong grows so fast and France is an economic basket case. But you can't tell that to the Bush administration.
Administration officials privately admit that much of the legislation moving through Congress represents bad public policy. Yet they argue either that everything must take a back seat to the war on terror (much as the first Bush administration treated the war against Iraq) or that compromises are necessary to neutralize issues such as education. But motives and rationalizations do not repeal the laws of economics.
In less than two years, President Bush has presided over more government expansion than took place during eight years of Bill Clinton. For instance:
The education bill expands federal involvement in education. The administration originally argued that the new spending was a necessary price to get vouchers and other reforms. Yet the final bill boosted spending and was stripped of almost all reform initiatives. And there is every reason to believe that this new spending will be counter-productive, like most other federal money spent on education in the past 40 years. Children and taxpayers are the big losers.
The farm bill is best characterized as a bipartisan orgy of special interest politics. Making a mockery of the Freedom to Farm Act, the new legislation boosts farm spending to record levels. Old subsidies have been increased and new subsidies created. Perhaps worst of all, the administration no longer has the moral credibility to pressure the European Union to reform its socialized agricultural policies. Taxpayers and consumers are the big losers.
The protectionist decisions on steel and lumber imports make free traders wish Bill Clinton were still president. These restrictions on world commerce have undermined the productivity of U.S. manufacturers by boosting input prices and creating massive ill will in the international community. American products already have been targeted for reciprocal treatment. Consumers and manufacturers are the big losers.
The campaign finance law is an effort to protect the interests of incumbent politicians by limiting free-speech rights during elections. The administration openly acknowledged that the legislation is unconstitutional, yet was unwilling to make a principled argument for the Bill of Rights and fair elections. Voters and the Constitution are the big losers.
New health-care entitlements are akin to throwing gasoline on a fire. Medicare and Medicaid already are consuming enormous resources, and the burden of these programs will become even larger when the baby-boom generation retires. Adding a new prescription-drug benefit will probably boost spending by $1 trillion over 10 years. A mandate for mental-health coverage will drive up medical costs, making insurance too expensive for many more families.
These Bush policy decisions make government bigger and more expensive. They also slow the economy and hurt financial markets (seen the headlines lately?). For all his flaws, President Clinton's major policy mistake was the 1993 tax increase. Other changes, such as the welfare-reform bill, NAFTA, GATT, farm deregulation, telecommunications deregulation, and financial-services deregulation, moved policy in a market-oriented direction.
Perhaps most importantly, there was actually a reduction in federal spending as a share of gross domestic product during the Clinton years. Yet spending is headed up under the Bush administration.
To be sure, much of the credit for Clinton's good policy probably belongs to the Republican Congress, but that is not an excuse for bad policy today. And on one positive note, President Bush has "promised" to fight for partial privatization of Social Security. Yet, so far, President Bush has not vetoed a single piece of legislation. Needless to say, this means it will be rather difficult to blame "big-spending" Democrats if the economy continues to sputter.
This article originally appeared on National Review Online on August 8, 2002.
THe guy is not very focused and needs a good spanking.
bush's big government socialist spending stands on it's own as wrong.
From inside the fiscally conservative camp, our president and the gop have left the building.
I can hardly wait to see what happens to our paychecks once our military invades iraq........
thats going to cost hundreds of billions for years to come.
Ron Paul in 2004
He talked about the extra $5 billion tacked onto the supplemental bill ..... he was forced in this bill to spend all of the $5 billion or none of it ..... he stated emphatically the other day that his message was to spend none of it.
Check out this link ...... Bush won't budge on deficit
Several quotes from the article ......President Bush went to the heartland yesterday to repeat the challenge he laid down for Congress to restrain deficit spending and move quickly to aid the war on terrorism.
[snip]
In the war against terrorism, Mr. Bush said he wants the Senate and House quickly to resolve their differences over two versions of a bill to provide "a significant increase in defense appropriations."
Bush also says repeatedly (including during the speech today) that the money spent in Washington is not the government's money ..... it's the people's money. And he gave us the largest tax cut in decades. His predecessor said that he didn't want to give a tax cut because he didn't trust us to spend our own money wisely ...... instead, he gave us a huge tax increase.
Re the Education Bill, one fact often overlooked is that it gives much more control over the money to those on the state and local level. While there are many aspects of the bill that I'm not particularly happy with, it's at least a step in the right direction. It also leaves the door open for the approval of vouchers ...... but we must get a Republican majority in the Senate and keep the one in the House for that to happen.
In his speech today he also spoke strongly in favor of becoming less dependent on foreign oil (think ANWR), of common-sense forest management, of the creation of the new Homeland Security Department, and other things that Daschle opposes ...... right in his face on his own turf!
NO, but he signed them all and didn't fight against them either. Bush is all gung-ho for spending. Sometimes I think Gore is using mind control on him.
However Bush makes the mistake of looking for really progressive ideas at times. He should look back at older bolder ideas indeed, like Reagan's. He simply does not get that there is no messianic idea out there except the ones which keep away such ideas from ever reaching power status. The tax reform thing should be dealt as a way to insure it to pay for the checks and balances, mindful of checks and balances, and instead of imposing power, protecting powers.
Electing Algore(d) would have made the slide into the quicksand just a little quicker instead of drawing the agony out for another decade. Where is our Francisco Franco or Alberto Fujimori when he's needed? It would take something like one of these guys to kick the criminals who entered our country illegally the hell out of here and close the borders to any further immigration! Then he'd have to send the porkbarrel fatcats home to keep them out of the way while an enema was administered to our government and bureaucracy.
He hasn't been all that hot in the area of respecting the constitution either.
But, hey, at least he kicked some ass in Afghanistan and he routinely tells the UN and the environmentalists to shove it, in polite diplomatic language.
Overall, I'd give him a B minus or a C plus, depending on my mood.
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