Posted on 02/15/2006 12:43:35 PM PST by Small-L
Imagine, for a moment, you’re back in 2000. A visitor from the present day arrives and tells you that Washington is spending almost $22,000 per household, the most since World War II and one third higher than it was in 2001 {sic. I think she meant 1991]. Your reaction?
If you’re like most conservatives, you’d probably say, “I guess the liberals won.”
We know otherwise. And that makes the spending impossible to explain. In fact, some people wind up sounding a bit foolish. They’ll sheepishly admit that, yes, budget mistakes have been made. But, they say, we’ve simply drifted off course.
Sorry, but that explanation (or, I should say, rationalization) won’t wash with Mike Pence. The third-term congressman from Indiana and head of the Republican Study Committee recently delivered a hard-hitting address to the Conservative Political Action Committee (C-PAC) that demolishes such misguided thinking. Among the highlights:
It’s one thing to drift off course. It’s another to continue that course when half the crew and passengers are pointing out that nothing looks familiar, not to mention the tens of millions of Americans lining the shoreline screaming, “You’re going the wrong way!”
In short, we’re no longer adrift. We might’ve been when we started, but now “off course” is the accepted course.
The evidence is overwhelming. While President Bush has called for increases in non-defense spending of 4 percent for the last five years, Congress has delivered budgets spending more than twice that each year. Congress has spent $380 billion more than the president requested under Republican control.
We are in danger of becoming the party of Big Government. And for the sake of our party and for the sake of the nation, we must say, “The era of big Republican government is over!”
When I think of the state of our movement in Washington, it reminds me of a story:
There was this construction worker, Mac, who’d bring his neatly and lovingly packed lunch to work each day. Mac would sit down, open the brown paper sack and pull out a cheeseburger, chocolate cake and peanut butter cookies. He’d look at his fellow workers and complain, “I can’t believe it! A cheeseburger, cake and cookies again! How am I ever going to lose weight?!”
After about a month of hearing him complain, one of his buddies finally said, “Come on, Mac! If you’re so concerned about your weight, just ask your wife to send you off with something different.” To which Mac replied, “What you talkin’ about? I pack my own lunch!”
The key question to remember is: Who’s in control here?
Congress might ask itself the same question. We control the spending and the process ... and we wonder how the things got to such a state?
Fiscal integrity and moral integrity are inseparable issues. You can’t complain about the sharks while you’re holding a bucket of chum.
We are not, as a party, bereft of ideas, we are bereft of will -- the will to even consider ideas that might touch on the sacred cows of federal spending. If we are still on the wrong course, it is because we choose to be.
Every day, we sail further into the dangerous waters of Big Government Republicanism ... perilous straits for a society built on personal responsibility and freedom. We risk finding ourselves past the point of no return on the Road to Serfdom.
If we must look over our shoulder to see that shining city on a hill, we are sailing in the wrong direction.
The answer is not mutiny. It’s not time to abandon ship. It’s time for a major course correction!
We need to stop, set anchor and reset our heading based on what we know to be true about the nature of government:
· That government that governs least, governs best.
· That as government expands, freedom contracts.
· That government should never do for a man what he can and should do for himself.
· That societies are judged by their treatment of the most vulnerable: the aged, the infirm and the unborn.
But it’s not enough to know these truths. We need to choose to put them into practice.
The conservative movement is at a crossroads. Are we committed to the ideals of limited government, fiscal discipline and traditional moral values or not?
These are hard questions to face. But we ignore them at our peril. The time to address them is now, before the ship drifts so far off course that we find ourselves -- and the future of our country and children -- wrecked on the rocks of Big Government.
Unfortunately, 2001 is correct. Spending has much more than doubled since 1991.
Off course?
Lost at sea.
This is why I fear a flat tax rate. It starts out a good idea but leave it to the Congress to squander and destroy in their incessant need to spend taxpayer dollars. Case in point: Social Security.
During WWII, when spending was over $20K per citizen per year, the annual budgets were spending between 73.0% and 89.9% on "National defense", and only 2.1% to 10.2% on "Human Resources", aka. welfare and entitlement programs. Today we spend, 17.4% on National defense and 65.3% on Human Resources. The Feds have flipped spending priorities. This is Euro-socialism lite. Period. And every year we continue down this road, the closer we are to full blown socialism. Time to put on the brakes and for the GOP to return to its conservative roots.
That would be wonderful, but the majority of Americans have now gotten used to spending, and anyone who advocates a rollback would be lucky to get 10% of the vote. Even Reagan couldn't slow down spending on welfare significantly, he just slowed down its growth a little.
Mike Pence knows what's going on.
The new GOP philosophy is clearly to coopt the Democrats' long-standing tradition of pandering and buying votes like drunken sailors, while culturally drifting left and sailing toward the mushy-middle of fiscal and moral relativism.
Principled GOP statesmen (yes, "statesmen") like Mike Pence will either lead and reestablish the integrity and platform of traditional GOP values, OR be shunned and marginalized as a "disruptive" conservative maverick."
So goes Pence, so goes the Republic.
Yup
mark
"...I am almost certain that national defense gets the overwhelming majority of the federal budget."
Not even close. The National Accounts are somewhat arcane, to say the least, but the bottom line is that the feds spent about $2.5 billion in calendar-year 2005, around $600 billion of that on national defense. However, if you focus just on federal government purchases of goods and services ("consumption expenditures and gross investment"), then national defense comprises a majority of such spending - roughly two-thirds or about $600 billion out of around $900 billion. Most of the rest of federal spending is devoted to transfer payments to persons (over $1 trillion) and interest payments on the debt (about $250 billion).
The problem is, fewer and fewer people actually pay the income taxes that are spent on them. Every tax cut that comes along removes more people from the income tax rolls shrinking the tax base. Therefore more and more people don't see taxes as being too high and don't have a problem voting for more taxes on other people. Everything is fine with them and they have become the majority.
With 10% of the people paying more than 50% of all income taxes collected they have little voting clout getting more and more screwed as the base shrinks.
And yes, Republicans are just as much responsible for this situation as Democrats. No more money for Republicans from me until they actually do something about this, and I assume that will never happen...
spending in billions
2001 2006 (budgeted) change
Entitlements 1007.7 1456.5 + 44.5%
Debt Interest 206.2 220.1 + 6.8%
Discretionary 649.3 1032.1 + 59.0%
Total 1863.2 2708.7 + 45.3%
Discretionary spending breaks down as follows:
spending in billions
2001 2006 (budgeted) change
Defense 306.1 532.2 + 73.8%
Non-defense 343.3 499.9 + 45.6%
Defense is 19.6% of the federal budget. All figures are from "Budget of the US government" on the White House website.
Reagan also had success in reducing non-defense related discretionary spending.
Sorry. Human resources gets the most. With Social Security taking the lead, followed by spending on Medicare/Medicad.Here ya go. omb.gov Section 3, Table 3.1
If it was defense related it would show as part of the budget. There is discretionary spending and then there is non-defense/non-security related discretionary spending. Welfare entitlement spending has nothing to do with defense spending. Homeland Security budget is about $30 billion a year. Drop in the bucket.
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