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The Spectacle Blog
Herewith, several explanations of the spending numbers. While conservatives clearly aren’t winning big in the spending wars, we’re doing better than many conservatives have recognized. Much, much more must be done, of course, but the trend towards extravagance has been significantly slowed, although not yet reversed.
First, here is why things are bad, and why the sequester is not, historically speaking, going to purvey much pain. We’re so far outspending Bill Clinton as to make him look like a heartless tightwad (which, of course, he wasn’t).
Second, and this is important, here’s how conservatives have stemmed the tide, starting with the much-maligned debt-limit deal in 2011. Aside from the absolutely horrendous “stimulus” of 2009 (which followed the bad Pelosi-Bush stimulus of 2008), conservatives have decisively stopped further growth in domestic discretionary spending, which is the category we most directly control in the House. Granted, as shown in that first essay, this is operating from an elevated baseline. But what I didn’t put in there is that it does not assume the 2009 stimulus as the baseline, but instead it is compared to the baseline where Bush left it. In short, it’s just bad, not quite goshawful. (And…. please, before you bash me, do read the whole thing. I make clear I am not celebrating one bit, but just going through the numbers to show a little progress.)
Third, my CFIF colleague Tim Lee explains quite convincingly why the deficit/debt problems result from over-spending, not from under-taxation. Key passages:
So if revenues for 2007 and 2013 are the same, yet the 2013 deficit is nearly one trillion dollars, we can isolate the obvious culprit: excessive spending.
For the record, it should also be noted that 2007 was the last year in which Republicans controlled Congress and the White House; it was several years into the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, and it was the year in which cumulative spending on the Iraq and Afghan wars peaked.
Accordingly, it is false for anyone to blame the “Bush tax cuts,” wars “that weren’t paid for” or supposedly spendthrift Republicans as the deficit bogeymen. We had never witnessed a trillion-dollar deficit in our nation’s history, but in the years since Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid captured Congressional control and Barack Obama captured the White House, we have seen four trillion-dollar deficits in a row.
Fourth, here’s why corporate tax rates in particular needs to go down. As I’ve done before, I suggest a zero option.
There: That’s enough for now.
View all comments (9) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Quin Hillyer
http://spectator.org/blog/2013/03/07/conservatives-are-not-losing-s
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lsudolemite| 3.7.13 @ 4:42PM
Yep, we're winning so huge that the House just passed its version of yet another CR to fund the feds through September. I wonder how many more of these victories we can stand.
Quin Hillyer| 3.7.13 @ 4:58PM
Yes. The CR is funded at the SEQUESTER levels. That's a 5% cut in domestic discretionary spending from last year. It's a step in the right direction. We're against a leftist Senate and a hard-left president, but we've got them ALMOST down to Bush levels (which themselves were of course way too high). And Obama's approval rating is dropping. We'll be able to build bigger victories on this smaller one.
lsudolemite| 3.7.13 @ 5:25PM
Thanks for clarifying. But we've been told multiple times how the GOP could use the sequester as leverage in budget negotiations. And unless the Senate miraculously grows a spine by the end of March, that isn't happening. They clearly don't want to fight Obama head-on over the budget, even less so as the 2014 midterms loom, and Obama treats us to the predictable cavalcade of human props and horror stories about Grandma's SS checks and Medicare getting cut off, legions of police and firefighters out of work, and Sandra Fluke denied her free contraception.
Derek Leaberry| 3.7.13 @ 4:53PM
But for short detours in 1981 and 1995, Republicans have lost the spending battle for nearly a century. Let's not con ourselves. For instance, the last gargantuan Bush budget came in at about $ 2.7 trillion and Obama's current is about $ 3.8 trillion largely due to his 2009 increase in the base line. Are any Republicans coming out for repealing the 2009 Obama "permanent" increase? Of course not. Implicitly, the Republicans endorse Obama's explosion in spending. They love pork, too.
The only way America is going to get small government is by letting the current dysfunctional system explode as the American people deserve. At heart, a majority of Americans are socialist at heart when it comes to spending and libertarians when it comes to taxing themselves.
JD| 3.7.13 @ 5:15PM
Sigh.
More evidence of even those who think they stand for the Right actually being duped by Leftist misrepresentation.
The fact is that spending grows even without legislation to make it worse. All that spending that Democrats term "nondiscretionary" (another term that many conservatives blindly agree to use) is spending that increases each year without any legislative action. So we psuedo-froze "discretionary" spending while the nondiscretionary skyrockets. Congratulations!
The legislature doesn't run the country. It's run first and foremost by unelected agencies and second by formulas. But don't worry - they've written books full of other formulas that set spending growth as a baseline and consider it a "cut" if we fall below that baseline!
Go ahead, Quin. Celebrate your "stopping the inflation-adjusted growth in discretionary spending". You'll fit right in with the Democrats who think that America spends a lot less on welfare than it used to because the program technically called "Welfare" has shrunk while being replaced (many times over) with other programs and goodies distributed through the tax code:
http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/0...../index.htm
The fact that you even think this is a victory is more evidence of the Left's having thoroughly won the War on Truth.
Quin Hillyer| 3.7.13 @ 5:28PM
You obviously didn't read the linked articles. I answered (and agreed with some of) every one of your points in those articles. Of course we need to get entitlements under control. And of course we have no reason to celebrate. I said all those things. I just laid out the facts on the discretionary side. It was a simple exercise -- and it's not JUST cutting from projected increases.
JD| 3.7.13 @ 5:44PM
I read your "stemmed the tide" link. But your headline says we're not losing, and your first paragraph ends with "significantly slowed." Neither are true.
As has been the case on all issues recently, a tiny step in the right direction is "won" at tremendous political cost, then followed by two steps backward.
In addition to the irrelevance of the "cuts" actually won next to the tremendous growth still happening, this little sequester game allows Obama to tell the public that the Right won, to blame us for any upcoming pain, and to win another round of electoral victories. That's all his people need - a tiny piece of evidence of Democrats not getting their way every so often so they can keep telling the public that things will be better if only Democrats get their way more. And our "wins" are always so very tiny!
You may be bathing in the celebratory glow from a few libertarian editorials about "victory", but there are a WHOLE LOT of people out there who lean left and are being energized by the sequester. And not in a way we want.
The messaging war is what matters. It's how Democrats keep winning. They focus on message while we focus on substance, and we end up losing both. If we "win" a little sequester but they succeed in their "now you own the economy" "draconian cuts" "look who's suffering due to heartless Republicans" spin, they've won the big picture. And when they cash in that win, we'll be far worse off.
We have to win on message, not symbolic budget gimmicks.
JD| 3.7.13 @ 5:51PM
We should refuse to use the terms "discretionary" and "nondiscretionary". They imply things to the common public that aren't true. The "nondiscretionary" just happens to be the stuff the Left loves the most. Small wonder!
All federal spending matters the same.
Oldefarte| 3.8.13 @ 11:52AM
The small Republican majority in the House should be commended for their causation of the lack of typical passing of legislation since 11/4/08 which naturally results in increased governmental spending to fund same. My opinion is that these Republicans would stand a much better chance of possibly obtaining oil/gas exploration/transportation [via Keystone] implemented which would significantly boost our economy. Also, they should be able to concentrate on politically highlighting the humongous areas of governmental wasteful spending and to generate political heat from taxpayers on the elimination of same. Spending reductions by government can have just as much economic stimulative effects as would tax reductions, in that less necessary governmental borrowings would result in more financial capital then becoming available to the private sector of the economy, in addition to sending a powerful signal to same that governmental growth is receding [and therefore that the private sector should begin to use its now tucked-under-the- mattress funds to increase their plant/equipment and employee hirings. Some of the governmental workers let go will become re-hired by private industries as same increase their operations, thereby lessening the scenerio painted by Democrats of employments decreases by government!!!!!!!!!!!!