| Doubling taxes would be devastating. Cutting spending in half would not... More likely, a return to truly Constitutional government of a more modest size would create an economic Golden Age.
One of those things is a tendency to think in terms of First Principles, like "why are we here?" Time magazine once told a story about Bush, early in his adminstration, asking a group of generals "Why do we have a military?" Time, of course, offered this up as evidence of Bush's vast ignorance, that he had to ask generals what the military was for. But it's often a useful question, and one that generals haven't thought about for a very long time. One way to shape the course of the Federal Government, far beyond the ability of Democrats or other weenies to mess with what you did afterwards, is to decide that the purpose of the Federal Government will be this. And then lock the government into huge, long-term spending programs that do this and are so expensive that there is no money to do that. Were Hillary herself to be elected in 2008, she will find herself with very little maneuver room to do Grand New Things. Because Bush is deciding now what all the Grand New Things are going to be for the forseeable future... like 25 or 30 years. This prescription drug benefit is not going to go away. It's going to turn into an instant Sacred Cow that can never be cut, lest granny die. The Space Program is probably cuttable, but Bush is setting things up so that a big chunk of the money will have already been committed by the time he leaves town. So the marginal cost of getting the rest of the way to Mars will be quite low. The scientists will scream bloody murder to keep it. We have to choose our battles. Can conservatives win the battle of government spending? Can we convince a voting majority of this nation that "improvement" lies in the direction of lower federal spending? I say no, and I say that because there is absolutely no historical evidence that that is what the public wants. These big, symbolic, sweeping actions catch people's imaginations. Everybody knows that their share of it is 55 cents, so what the Hell, let's vote for chicken in every pot. I'm not saying that's good, but I am saying that that is what happens. Leave 50 cents lying around on the table, and some politician will come up with a program to spend it, and people will vote for it. I am not making this up. I've been a voter for 30 years, and I've been on the losing side of a whole bunch of elections because "my" side led with the exciting cause of 'saving money' while the other guys offered an end to poverty, singing birds, and a Sun that comes up too-morrow. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting something else to happen. Trust me on this. Or ask Bob Dole. Being the party of "saving money" is the road to electoral ruin. You do not save money that way. All you do is give the other guys more power to spend money their way. In Heaven it might be different, but that's how it is here on Earth. Given that, what's the next best thing to do? I say it's lock up the spending in ways that don't particularly cause a lot of trouble in the form of Social Engineering Gone Haywire, like the Great Society programs did. Give the Democrats the money to run animal husbandry experiments on people, and they'll do it. We know that because they did it. So... shoot the money into space. Spend it on drugs for old people. Not much mischief there; we get a lot of R&D, probably a bunch of spinoff commercial products and new medicines that will drive incremental improvements in the economy, without creating an army of social workers peeking in on people to see if they're eating their spinach. That may be as good as it gets, given the fact that we have to share the Earth with 30% liberals and 30% people who really don't know what to do, but get all excited about singing birds and happy rainbows. |
There were a couple of articles on here yesterday concerning the impact of Presdident Bush's education, particularly the Harvard MBA, on the way he thinks and does business.