Posted on 01/24/2016 6:00:12 AM PST by UMCRevMom@aol.com
National Review reports Republican voters care more about 'intrusive' government than 'big' government:
"The rise of conservative populism has triggered yet another round of soul-searching in the conservative movement about the proper size and scope of the federal government. As my colleague, Jim Geraghty, notes today, most Americans seem just fine with big government. In fact, that's been the case even of core tea-party supporters at the very height of the movement. How easily we forget recent history, but in 2011 FreedomWorks "crowdsourced" a deficit-reduction plan and found that 40,000 core tea-party activists were reluctant to make any financially meaningful changes to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
Combine those entitlement programs with national defense — which conservative voters are loathe to cut — and even classical tea partiers aren’t willing to touch 70 percent of the federal budget. Throw in interest payments on the debt, and three-quarters of the world’s largest budget is not just off-limits but set to grow considerably. After all, the American population is aging, decades-old weapon systems need replacing, and national-security threats persist. Big government isn’t going anywhere.
But in the real world, there’s an experiential difference between "big" and "intrusive" government. For example, let's contrast Social Security with, say, Common Core. It's the rare American who would say that Social Security is oppressive. The federal government's largest single program is experienced as a modest payroll tax and a (for now) modest but important check for older Americans. Common Core, by contrast, represents an utterly insignificant budget outlay at any level of government but is causing parents and kids enormous anxiety from coast to coast.
Even a program like Medicare — which is certainly experienced as "intrusive" by doctors and other health-care providers — is less oppressive to everyday Americans than the complex regulatory superstructure that makes it more difficult to do everything from start a business to add a room to your house. Indeed, far from experiencing the Roosevelt-Johnson entitlements as oppressive, millions of Republican voters see Social Security and Medicare as indispensable in enabling their lifestyles."
As planned, several of these entitlement programs are entrenched and have created dependency. If they all the medical laws and regulations were cancelled tomorrow including pharma (+ 5 years on paten rights) and there was a whole sale pull out by government, things would certainly go batty for a time.
BUT, I think people would be amazed at how soon prices would drop and how much more affordable health care actually is.
National Review has taken a severe hit with its credibility of late. This is a blatant attack against Cruz:
“Republican care more about ‘intrusive’ government than ‘big’ government.”
Only Cruz runs on the idea that big government inherently *becomes* intrusive government. Reducing the size, power, and scope of government is the *only* way to reduce its intrusiveness.
Only Cruz runs on the idea that big government inherently *becomes* intrusive government.If you're going to pretend to know who believes what you're going to have to pay closer attention to what the ones you're opposed to are actually saying, not what someone told you they said.
I digress, but when I saw that picture it reminded me Challenger was 30 years ago this week.
It is a matter of degree. While the other candidates talk about cutting government, they are invariably talking about some trimming or other. Remember that for his good game of talking about cutting government, even Reagan just reduced the rate of growth of government.
Often the truth about who you are is only expressed with clarity by those who hate and fear you. None other than Robert Reich gave perhaps the best recommendation for Cruz in condemning him, that I have ever read:
“He denies the existence of man-made climate change, rejects same-sex marriage, wants to abolish the Internal Revenue Service, believes the 2nd amendment guarantees everyone a right to guns, doesn’t believe in a constitutional divide between church and state, favors the death penalty, opposes international agreements, embraces a confrontational foreign policy, rejects immigration reform, demands the repeal of “every blessed word of Obamacare,” and takes a strict “originalist” view of the meaning of the Constitution.”
To Reich, that is horror itself. But I challenge anyone to come up with as clear and conservative an agenda as that in any other candidate.
At this point, my only question is whether Cruz would be better as a POTUS or as a justice on the Supreme Court for say 30 or so years, replacing a liberal and making the SCOTUS solidly conservative.
I guess I'm not a core Tea Party activist. I'd like to make financially meaningful changes to Medicare and Social Security, starting by continuing to raise the eligibility age - for those more than 15 years from eligibility.
https://www.ssa.gov/pressoffice/IncRetAge.html
According to Social Security's website, the eligibility age is rising gradually: "The age for collecting full Social Security retirement benefits will gradually increase from 65 to 67 over a 22-year period beginning in 2000 for those retiring at 62." I'd like to see that increase at the same rate again, eventually raising the age for full benefits to 70, 72, or whatever is needed to control costs.
I would like to see the entire Obamacare Medicaid expansion repealed, no phase in other than the end of the calendar year in which a real president in inaugurated. Then I'd like to see Medicaid reviewed to see what else should be cut.
As for the military, I'm a big fan. However, I saw lots of opportunities to cut military spending. There are far too many programs that have no connection to delivering ordnance on target or preventing America's enemies from launching a successful attack. There are far too many programs that are more about social engineering or rewarding a congressional district than about defense. They should all be eliminated.
There is a lot more room for cuts. The added cuts start with the Department of Education, the Department of Commerce, and . . . um . . . one more agency that I've forgotten. I'd throw in Energy, EPA, HUD, HHS, Agriculture, and Homeland Security. The few (very few) positive responsibilities of any other those departments/agencies can be absorbed by others.
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