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.
You will get no argument from anyone here that the GOP congress, especially the senators have been a huge disappointment.
That being said, congress has given Bush everything that he has asked for except in the area of judicial appointments. Bush would probably prefer spending bills that did not have so much pork, but he hasn't cared enough to veto one, threaten a veto or even complain about it.
He has also called for new entitlements that were his idea and did not originate in congress.
Thank gawd this, as of yet, hasn't become a function of government.
When the line of government assistance crosses the line to government dictation, when it comes to personal finances, then all freedom is lost.
People still have the right to be stupid with their finances and this maintains an atmosphere of person freedom.
And at the same time creates classes of the "haves" and the "have not's".
He has with a majority of support to do so from most American people! : )
There's going to be a lot of "haves" on Wall Street this year. I've never seen so many 28 year olds already spending those half million dollar bonuses.
How does that make him socialist?
There's the difference between him and Kerry. Kerry would have tripled my taxes.
Personally, I have never conveyed such an attitude toward GWB.
My understanding is that, more than ever, spending bills are not single issue/topic spending and designed to aviod a veto (especially with there being no line item veto). Bush is definitely not one to be negative, but the most appropriate place to put pressure is on Congress.
Why don't you just say you don't like President Bush. I'm not defending him, I'm defending his office. This is not personal it's AMERIACA. Why don't you see if you can take on 535 guys by yourself.
I trust you don't consider that to be a bad thing?
Your being "conservative" in your statement aren't you. ; )
Since I have no dog in that particular fight, I judge it to be a source of amusement. There are few things more interesting than a 28 year old running around Manhattan with a half million dollars burning a hole in his pocket.
I don't dislike him. I do dislike the spending that the GOP has engaged in and President Bush has been a prime mover in the effort.
My allegiances are not a man or his career, but to the nation and the constitution. The spending that President Bush has signed into law is bad for the nation so he should be taken to task on that matter. This is not a small issue either.
It is not clear why creating new entitlements that we do not have the money to pay for is a good thing if a person with an (R) next to their name proposes it.
"In any case, it's still a gross exaggeration to call the President's extravagance 'socialism'."
The word "socialism" is one of the most misused and misunderstood terms on these kind of boards. Almost any spending is "socialism."
Also remarkable is for five years Bush has done what he has yet people still mark him as a victim.
Fact is he is a corporate conservative. If the corporation profit from government assistance, he gives it, if they want to profit from decreased regulation, he gives in the name of "free markets."
Bush made his money as a corporate conservative - the Arlington stadium subsidies.
Until "conservatives" call Republicans on a balanced budget and figure out that the hints they might do something about social issues like abortion are insincere we will continue to see these bizarre discussions wherein Bush is a paragon of conservatism and if conservative principles are not evident he's a victim.
To a small degree the deficits are not his fault. To the budgets he proposes Congress adds about another 5% of pork - so he's responsible for about 95%.
In reality Bush has endorsed a program that is one of the most socialistic in US history - his Social Security reform plan (what we know of it.) He wants to take surplus funds from treasury notes and convert them into stock - a massive governement ownership of the "means of production." The verbal trick hiding the socialism is calling the scheme "private accounts."
"Why don't you just say you don't like President Bush. I'm not defending him, I'm defending his office. This is not personal it's AMERIACA. Why don't you see if you can take on 535 guys by yourself."
Having the ability to take on 535 guys by himself is one of the requirements of the office of President.
That would require a "black and white" mindset.
It's much easier to say nothing at all at 100 words a minute via conversation, when the liberal "gray thinking" is used as an approach to confronting realism.
This way it is much easier to debunk the truth.
"There's going to be a lot of "haves" on Wall Street this year. I've never seen so many 28 year olds already spending those half million dollar bonuses."
Big year for them and their partner lobbyists. CAFTA, drug company subsidies posed as charity, reducing the bankruptcy rights of the middle classes, etc.
Rational economic profit strategies dictate better efficiencies by giving political parties campaign money to change laws than making and selling products.
If a credit card company lowers your minimum payment but triples your bill, are you really ahead?
The tax cut was a very good thing but should have been followed up with spending cuts. As the deficit gets bigger and bigger, the tax cuts will be blamed rather than the spending and it will poison the public against future tax cuts.
Deficit spending is a de facto tax increase. The money that is borrowed has to be paid back, with interest.
It all makes sense now. You live in a black and white world were President Bush must be 100% correct on all things or 100% wrong.
I'm a realist....
It can all turn on a dime and frequently does, though most people don't believe that.
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