Small government conservatives and Republican leaning
libertarians face a difficult choice going into the polls this
year. President Bush and Vice President Cheney occasionally pay lip
service to restraining government growth, but they don’t mean
it.
When Bush came to power, the federal government spent just shy
of $1.8 trillion a year, and that was considered extravagant by
many. The proposed budget for next year is $2.4 trillion, and that
figure understates the total because supplemental legislation will
be submitted to cover the bill for Iraq. This year Uncle Sam will
spend over $500 billion more than he takes in in revenues. The
nation’s total national debt, as of October 21, was $7.4 trillion
and change.
The website for the U.S. National Debt clock reminds us
that debt has been piling up at what should be a worrying pace:
$1.7 billion per day since the end of last September. As the late
senator Everett Dirksen once morbidly quipped, “A billion here, a
billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money.”
Part of the Bush binge is due to something the president
couldn’t have foreseen: that Islamic terrorists would bomb D.C. and
New York, inaugurating the war on terrorism abroad and homeland
security at home. But spending on domestic programs has continued
unchecked. Bush has yet to veto a single bill, and his party, once
home to deficit hawks and budget slashers, has learned to stop
worrying and love entitlements and pork barrel spending.
The Republicans’ approach to highway spending, to borrow the
formula of another piece of legislation that the president is so
proud of, would appear to be, Leave no inch unpaved. Also, at
Bush’s urging, Congress passed a massive bill to subsidize the drug
purchases of our senior citizens — the richest group of retirees
the world has ever known. Republicans have traded thrift and
prudence for bread and circuses.
The horrible problem that small government-minded voters face is
that Senator John Kerry would be worse — possibly much worse. His
party’s response to Bush’s budget proposal for next year was to
complain that, with the exception of military funding, spending
isn’t increasing enough. Let me recast that for emphasis:
Democrats want to spend more money.
As president, the Massachusetts senator wouldn’t have the
stomach for spending cuts or entitlement reforms, and his proposals
for education and health care would be pricey. At best, a Kerry
administration would oversee targeted tax increases to pare back
the deficit and pay for more social spending. More likely, we’d
have a whopping tax increase.
At first glance, the choice is between a candidate who would
spend a lot more money, chip away at taxes, and at least whisper
the right sweet nothings about Social Security reform and a
candidate who would spend a whole lot more, raise taxes, and let
some other president deal with the problem when Baby Boomers start
to retire. Given those options, a lot of otherwise disaffected
conservatives will grab a clothespin and pull the lever for
Bush.
That’s not a hard vote to understand. If I had to cast the
deciding ballot between the two, I’d go for Bush. The lesser of two
evils is, well, less evil. But I live in Washington state, which
will not cast its votes in the electoral college for the president
unless Kerry’s campaign implodes. A vote for Bush here is wasted;
it amounts to cheerleading for an administration that could use a
stern talking to.
No thanks. I’m voting Libertarian for president this year, and I
encourage all small government conservatives in solidly Kerry
states to do the same. The logic behind this tactical voting is
simple: If your vote won’t count toward Bush’s victory anyway, why
not vote for a party — even a fringe party — that advocates a
much smaller government? It would be our own small way of standing
up to be counted at a time when so many of our elected leaders have
decided to sit this one out.
