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The Spectacle Blog
Getting government spending under control requires more than a few folks with green eye shades trying to make the numbers balance. It is necessary to reduce people’s expectations of government. Only when Americans ask for less can we roll back outlays and regulation.
The debt commission did not attempt to make this case. Robert Samuelson makes the point in the Washington Post:
But what was missing was a moral rationale for change, except for some familiar platitudes: “American cannot be great if we go broke”; or, “We have a patriotic duty … to give our children and grandchildren a better life.” The trouble with these pleasing lines is that they don’t address the practical question of why existing recipients of government support - farmers, the elderly, local governments, for example - should lose it.
Answers exist. It’s not in the national interest to subsidize farmers, because food would be produced at low cost without subsidies. It’s not in the national interest to subsidize Americans, through Social Security and Medicare, for the last 20 or 25 years of their lives because healthier people live longer and the huge costs make the budget unmanageable. It’s not in the national interest to subsidize mass transit, because most benefits are enjoyed locally: If the locals want mass transit, they should pay for it.
Other than a few legislators like Paul Ryan, who on the GOP side is willing to make this case? And will Tea Party members stand up for principle when specific cuts—in Social Security, farm subsidies, and more—are proposed?
Those who advocate cutting spending have to make both the philosophical and the practical cases.
View all comments (10) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Doug Bandow
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CalMark| 12.8.10 @ 12:40AM
Make a compelling case for "localization." Tell people they can use money no longer sent to D.C. (this means tax custs, of course) to decide locally how to deal with this stuff.
That way you avoid the "moral" dimension, which the liberals are so good at demagoguing.
Andrew| 12.8.10 @ 4:10PM
This is a really vital point. When we hand decision making over to other people who are far away from our circumstances, we are giving them the rule over us. Localization is not just a buzz word, but a core principle of conservatism.
Free people rule themselves. They take responsibility for the results of their decisions. Some of the decisions are dumb. They, being free, accept the consequences. That way the whole world doesn't have to.
But the basic impulse behind centralization is the desire to escape the responsibility for our decisions, which is the same thing as asking others to make our decisions for us, which means asking them to rule us, which means not being free people.
The moral dimension is actually very much in the conservatives favor if he can remember that morality means being responsible adults and that we only become that when we have to make and live with our decisions.
Disempower the State!
martin j smith| 12.8.10 @ 8:12AM
I think one has to deal with large problems gradually and in ways that can be absorded. For example this "deal" that included extention of unemployment and other subsidies. The idea is to use unspent "stimulous money" already available not new spending. Money is there, except Obama wants to use it for his political purposes and at the same time dig us into the ground. This is where to start. Challenge him on this !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Michael L. Hauschild| 12.8.10 @ 8:48AM
Martin,
Let us challenge you first. What is the practical differenece between old debt and new debt?
Curly Smith| 12.8.10 @ 8:52AM
You don't get any new graft with the old debt.
bluecollarbytes| 12.8.10 @ 8:16AM
We could still end up with a kinder, gentler more compassionate version of the Bush presidencies, including the lobbyist support systems that argue for their favored forms of govt welfare.
In all likelihood we will end up with the same paymaster, govt, doling out to its subservients- most who will look the same as today, with special emphasis on the newly-well-connected.
It's a problem of 'the people', first, given that our govt is supposed to be of and by the people. The people have allowed govt a mile here or there, resulting in govt laying all the roadwork. Govt is now fully entrenched as the be-all do-all. The federal govt has long been powerful, but is now on an open-ended quest for more power over every-day lives. It has to be said that 'we' asked for it intentionally and/or through busy indifference to the warnings. Successive generations have been raised in this brew to the point that it's taken a near collapse of the economy combined with govt's new unprecedented takings of power and money, to create a meaningful opposition- which the Republican Party can't even take credit for.
We have been the problem, which is why the country's future is still very much in doubt.
It's to early for the tea party movement to simply fall in line under the leadership of the professionals.
Alan Brooks| 12.8.10 @ 2:01PM
It's hopeless, Americans want the state to help THEIR families. I quietly mention it to libertarians and they go ballistic:
"MY grandparents are wonderful people!...."
You never get anywhere.
Yes, it iS hopeless in that respect- an obvious fact.
Alan Brooks| 12.8.10 @ 2:05PM
When are you going to admit America is about productivity and not about working together to "solve" our "problems"?
Is that what Madison wanted?