Posted on 09/25/2005 10:56:29 AM PDT by Uncle Joe Cannon
September 25, 2005
The Sunday Times
Andrew Sullivan: Is Bush a socialist? He's spending like one
Finally, finally, finally. A few years back, your correspondent noticed something a little odd about George W Bush’s conservatism. If you take Margaret Thatcher’s dictum that a socialist is someone who is very good at spending other people’s money, then President Bush is, er, a socialist.
Sure, he has cut taxes, a not-too-difficult feat when your own party controls both houses of Congress. But spending? You really have to rub your eyes, smack yourself on the forehead and pour yourself a large gin and tonic. The man can’t help himself.
The first excuse was the war. After 9/11 and a wobbly world economy, that was a decent excuse. Nobody doubted that the United States needed to spend money to beef up homeland security, avert deflation, overhaul national preparedness for a disaster, and fight a war on terror. But when Katrina revealed that, after pouring money into both homeland security and Louisiana’s infrastructure, there was still no co-ordinated plan to deal with catastrophe, a few foreheads furrowed.
Then there was the big increase in agricultural subsidies. Then the explosion in pork barrel spending. Then the biggest new entitlement since Lyndon Johnson, the Medicare drug benefit. Then a trip to Mars. When you add it all up, you get the simple, devastating fact that Bush, in a mere five years, has added $1.5 trillion to the national debt. The interest on that debt will soon add up to the cost of two Katrinas a year.
Remember when conservatism meant fiscal responsibility? In a few years, few people will be able to. I used to write sentences that began with the phrase: “Not since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society spending binge. . .” I can’t write that any more. Johnson — the guns and butter president of liberalism’s high-water mark — was actually more fiscally conservative than the current inhabitant of the White House. LBJ boosted domestic discretionary spending in inflationadjusted dollars by a mere 33.4%.
In five years, Bush has increased it 35.1%. And that’s before the costs for Katrina and Rita and the Medicare benefit kick in. Worse, this comes at a time when everyone concedes that we were facing a fiscal crunch before Bush started handing out dollar bills like a drunk at a strip club. With the looming retirement of America’s baby-boomers, the US needed to start saving, not spending; cutting, not expanding its spending habits.
This was one reason I found myself forced to endorse John Kerry last November. He was easily the more fiscally conservative candidate. Under Clinton, the US actually ran a surplus for a while (thanks, in part, to the Gingrich-run Congress). But most conservatives bit their tongues. Bush promised fiscal tightening in his second term and some actually believed him.
They shouldn’t have. When Bush casually dismissed questions about funding the $200 billion Katrina reconstruction with a glib “It’s going to cost what it costs”, steam finally blew out of some loyal Republican ears. When the house majority leader Tom DeLay told the conservative Washington Times that there was no fat left to cut in the budget and that “after 11 years of Republican majority we’ve pared it down pretty good”, a few conservatives lost it.
Here’s the chairman of the American Conservative Union: “Excluding military and homeland security, American taxpayers have witnessed the largest spending increase under any preceding president and Congress since the Great Depression.” That would be correct. When you have doubled spending on education in four years, launched two wars and a new mega-entitlement, that tends to happen.
Here’s Peggy Noonan, about as loyal a Republican as you’ll find, in a Wall Street Journal column last week: “George W Bush is a big spender. He has never vetoed a spending bill. When Congress serves up a big slab of fat, crackling pork, Mr Bush responds with one big question: Got any barbecue sauce?”
Here’s Ann Coulter, the Michael Moore of the far right, a pundit whose book on liberalism was titled Treason: “Bush has already fulfilled all his campaign promises to liberals and then some! He said he’d be a ‘compassionate conservative’, which liberals interpreted to mean that he would bend to their will, enact massive spending programmes, and be nice to liberals. When Bush won the election, that sealed the deal. It meant the Democrats won.
“Consequently, Bush has enacted massive new spending programmes, obstinately refused to deal with illegal immigration, opposed all conservative Republicans in their primary races, and invited Teddy Kennedy over for movie night. He’s even sent his own father to socialise with ageing porn star Bill Clinton.” Ouch.
Conservatives have been quietly frustrated with Bush for a long time now. Honest neoconservatives have long privately conceded that the war in Iraq has been grotesquely mishandled. But in deference to their own party, they spent last year arguing that John Kerry didn’t deserve his Vietnam war medals. Social conservatives have just watched as the president’s nominee for chief justice of the Supreme Court pronounced that the constitutional right to abortion on demand merited respect as a legal precedent. This hasn’t cheered them up. The nativist right, long enraged by illegal immigration, has been spluttering about foreigners for a while now. But since few want to question the war publicly, oppose the president’s nominees to the court, or lose the Latino vote, the spending issue has become the focus of everyone’s discontent.
All I can say is: about time. I believe in lower taxes. But I also believe in basic fiscal responsibility. If you do not cut spending to align with lower taxes, you are merely borrowing from the next generation. And if a Republican president has legitimised irresponsible spending, what chance is there that a Democrat will get tough?
This may, in fact, be Bush’s real domestic legacy. All a Democratic successor has to do is raise taxes to pay for his splurge, and we will have had the biggest expansion of government power, size and responsibility since the 1930s. What would Reagan say? What would Thatcher? But those glory days are long gone now — and it was a Republican president and Congress that finally buried them.
Sullivan is correct.
If you want to read a good piece on Marx, check out The Worldly Philosophers. Probably the best book written on the lives and thinking and works of the economists. The author is far to the left, but the book is brilliant.
Neato, thanks! I always try to expand my personal map of the world whenever I can!
Sorry Andrew, you're still inconsequential.
I think you meant to say the government takes money to make money.
Well, considering that equality of means, fairness as determined by the state, central planning, democracy and collectivism are actually things valued by the Democrats over and above individual freedom and property rights, I think it not unfair to refer to them as socialists.
You are correct perhaps in stating that they are not socialists strictly according to the exact meaning of the word, since they are not actually (yet) calling for state control of the means of production, nor are they using the above terms. Nevertheless I do not mind seeing them referred to as socialists since at a fundamental level, their mindset is the same.
I won't argue with you if you wish to refer to them instead as leftists, and reserve the socialist tag for the few really true ones like Hillary and Pelosi. But the rest are still pushing us leftwards as hard as ever they can, in other words, toward socialism, whether they see themselves as such or no. They are all operating in the traditons from which socialism is derived.
Probably "communist" is not strictly accurate, except maybe for Hillary, but the Democrats are still closer to communism than they are to American traditions of freedom, so I for one think they deserve it when they get called commies.
I know an elderly couple who managed to escape many years ago from Rumania, which was still behind the Iron Curtain. They have had no trouble referring to Democrats as socialists, refusing to vote for them since, as they said, they already knew what it was like to live in a socialist country. The gentleman a few months ago, on hearing support from me for Bush, looked at me and said, "You like Bush? He is just a socialist too." An interesting perspective from one who had first hand experience.
Regarding this notion that Congress, not the president, controls spending:
First of all, others have already pointed out that the president has veto power, and that your comment is simply an attack on Republicans in Congress. But in addition, you're ignoring how the real world works, distinct from the theoretical, academic world where one learns everything about government from the constitution.
In the real world, Bush has priorities and pushes Congress to enact them. He can bend members of Congress to his will because he can, say, refuse to campaign for them. Or he can refuse to fund projects in their districts. Or he can do any number of other things to exert influence. True, a president is not a dictator; he can't do anything he wants. Congress feels influence from many sources, not just the White House. But the White House sure is a big one. And in the case of President Bush, he very strongly pushed (or even initiated) a number of big spending bills, pressuring legislators who didn't want to go along.
"This has always been the prize of the Republican effort, control of the Supreme Court."
???
What does the Supreme Court have to do with lowering taxes?
The Supreme Court being controlled by Liberals has done quite a bit of harm.
It was the Republican Congress that kept Clinton's spending in line. Now they just want to get reelected and are essentially buying votes. Bush is just not standing in their way.
"Supreme Court controlled by liberals? Don't understand.What harm do you mean?"
*snort*
Wow.
Guess you don't recall some of the moronic decisions made by the court.
Considering you're trying the tack of "I don't know what you are talking about", it would be best then if you'd retract your statement found in post 64.
"This has always been the prize of the Republican effort, control of the Supreme Court."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1491052/posts?page=64#64
Funny, by your post 64, you admit that Libs are in control.
I don't care who you are, that's funny.
Wickard v. Filburn is one example among far too many to enumerate here.
I'll have to agree with many of Sullivan's points here. Bush and the GOP congress are spending money like drunken sailors.
Response: In all probability he is not a socialist. He is in fact a politician, in America, in 2005 A.D. That means he thinks no further than getting elected and keeping his popularity reasonably high. Possibly he has enough foresight to think of his cohorts future in government and certainly of his personal future economic security.
I agree with you. 'Leftist' is a very appropos word for many dems, though that's not to say they are strictly socialists or communists.
That being said, there are many democrats who aren't all that liberal nor all that leftist at all. My mayor in Las Vegas, Oscar Goodman, is a democrat but he has a bad attitude: the business of LV is his business, and he won't let sympathy for homless folks, for example, get in the way. He is a good guy and will get my vote when he is up for election again.
As a general principle though, your points stand. Very well said!
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