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Subject: [ntt-list] Party of Bloat
Good
luck in the market, while the country is being led by the "Party of
Bloat."
From
the Murdoch-owned New York Post:
GOP: Party of
Bloat
May 8, 2005 -- THE Republican promise of smaller, less-intrusive
gov ernment is getting harder and harder to believe. Especially when a more
plausible plot line is unfolding every day: that the GOP has put aside the
ideals of Reagan and Goldwater in order to pursue a political strategy based on
big spending.
For the latest, check out a report just released by the libertarian Cato
Institute that tells a striking story about just how out-of-control spending has
gotten under President Bush.
Cato finds that:
* Bush has presided over the largest increase in federal spending since
Lyndon Johnson.
* Even excluding defense and homeland security spending, Bush is the
biggest-spending president in 30 years.
* The federal budget grew from 18.5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product on
President Bill Clinton's last day in office to 20.3 percent at the end of Bush's
first term.
Add to that Bush's massive Medicare prescription-drug benefit, expected to
cost $720 billion-plus over the next 10 years. (The money for that new
entitlement, the first created by a president in a generation, will start
flowing this year.)
Bush may have cut taxes, but that's not the same thing as shrinking
government. And when government expands, as it has under Bush, taxes will
eventually have to follow suit.
And Bush's wild spending spree is no anomaly. To Karl Rove's way of thinking,
it's the only way for the Republican Party to "seize the mantle of idealism"
from the Democrats.
As Rove told a conference of conservative activists in February, he believes
the GOP has in the past been too "reactionary." Republicans have to be
for things, not against them. They have to have "visionary goals."
This, Rove said, means "reforming" the tax code, health care, pension plans,
the legal system, public education and worker training; "building" an Ownership
Society of homes and businesses; "preparing" Americans for meeting "the
challenges of a free society; "building" a culture of life; "supporting"
religious charities, and "fostering" a culture of "service and citizenship."
If this isn't activist government — that thing conservatives used to be
against — it's hard to say what would be.
And it costs a lot of money, as Cato makes clear:
* The budget for the Corporation for National and Community Service (which
funds Clinton pet project Americorps) rose 76 percent from 1995 to
2005.
* The Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which pays for job training for
workers "displaced" by international trade, has almost quadrupled in size since
1995.
* The budget of the Department of Education (not long ago on the GOP's short
list for elimination) has grown by 38 percent in just four years under Bush.
Congress is no innocent victim here — it's an accomplice. Under Clinton, the
Republican Congress ratcheted down the president's spending proposals
year after year, according to the Cato report. But, under a united Republican
government, Congress has ratcheted up Bush's spending proposals (larding
them with pork) by about $91 billion from 2002-2005.
It's not always easy to see how radically Bush has transformed the GOP — from
Reagan's admonition that "government is the problem" to Dubya's own assertion
that "when somebody hurts, government has got to move." But it's a real
transformation — and an expensive one.
Average Americans will eventually feel it in the taxes that will have to be
raised to fund Bush's massive federal expansion.
Republicans who have stuck by the party's leadership mainly because of the
War on Terror will begin to feel it in 2006 and 2008, when they realize that Big
Government Conservatism is not a strategy or a philosophy — but a sellout.
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