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.
or pick more conservative ones in the primaries...sorry to say, we have a congress that reflects the attitude of the people....they see the US Gov't as the national Lotto...
Aren't you so glad you spent time back in '02 'winning back the Senate'? How'd that go?
It went well...two words...Justice Roberts...
Socially conservative and fiscally liberal. Years ago, that would describe...a Democrat.
Yeah, true, there's a point of no return on the tax rate/revenue collected ratio, for sure. Higher taxes can very easily decrease revenue. But at least they screw the rich, which is more important.
The thing that gets me is that to believe, as many do, apparently even freepers, that taxes should be set as high as will gain the max revenue, you also have to believe that government deserves and is better able to spend your money than you are.
I think it's crazy, but America's mindset seems to be moving steadily leftwards.
How'd your place do on Tuesday? OK, I hope.
Boy, is that good to see. I think about Barry almost every day--glad he didn't live to see what's going on now.
A moderate that may lean conservative from time to time but at no time stand for conservative values even when that requires disagreeing with standard RNC talking points. That's just great. He may be right of O'Connor (which we don't know yet) but he's not Scalia or Thomas
It’s impossible to increase the fiscal size of government long term without raising taxes.
I wouldn't label Bush a socialist. I'm just calling him a spendthrift. And I don't think there's anything conservative about passing the costs of present spending to future generations, ESPECIALLY when that means going into hock to a Communist nation (yes, they are still Communists). This is arithemetic, not hyperbole.
Also, one could point out that Reagan cut taxes and Bush cut taxes, so your point that taxes never go away is incorrect on its face.
Socialism is a whole lot more than spending. Bush is NOT a socialist.
Why not have a new GOP majority leader? Tom Delay does not care about balancing anything. There has to be a better Republican in Congress. Plus then we wouldn't have to listen to all the libs whine about his scandals.
exactly right.
Borrowing doesn’t replace, it just delays. But you know the phrase, “When you owe the bank a million, they own you. When you own the bank a billion, you own the bank.” China is much more dependent on trade with us as a percentage of GDP than visa versa, especially if Japan and Australia are thrown in. And that doesn't begin to address their other vulnerabilities.
I agree that just promoting how tax hikes don’t increase revenue is a kind of final defense. If that’s all we were using to argue against them, I think we’d be on defense rather than just flexing our defense,.
With the way IT diversifies media, cultures and economies, I think social trends are harder to measure. For every 10 reasons I could list that we’re moving leftwards, I could list 10 to counter them.
No house flooding here, just a half block closer to the Ocean. I guess Rita missed you, how about Katrina? She at least blew a bunch of limbs around here.
I happen to agree with your point that increasing taxes decreases revenue, at least it does at the levels used today.
But I've pretty much come to the opinion that the income tax is the means by which the federal goverment became so powerful and broke the bonds by which the Constitution formerly bound it, so I'd almost like to see the tax abolished.
I do think we're moving steadily leftwards, with pockets of resestance like FR. I'm not optomistic that it can be reversed, but who knows?
Katrina came almost over us, but as a minimal cat 1, she wasn't much problem. Lots of branches down, lots of trees in the neighborhood down, a few roads blocked. Neighborhood was out of electricity for the better part of a week. Still, no big deal.
Rita scared us more, I actually put up some shutters, but she turned out to be a non event for us, thankfully. I heard that Key Largo got more breeze from Katrina than Rita, but had some flooding on the ocean side from Rita, since she passed south.
I think that conclusion would be inevitable depending on how much time someone spends in right leaning media. When I tune into he left, they’re generally under a shared belief that we’re increasingly manipulated by neocon and corporate lies with Bush rapidly eroding the last 40 years of social “advances”.
My head hurts…
Well, we're definitely under Republican govnerment, which should mean a decrease in social engineering. IMO, though, the Republicans themselves are moving leftwards. For instance, I think that W's operating premise is similar to that of the Dems, that the state should play a major role in shaping society...
I am very aware of the differences, I don't need a lecture on economics That said, whether one is on the supply side or demand side, Bush is spending money like LBJ, who was a Keynesian. "A rose, by any other name, is still a rose".
But you know the phrase, “When you owe the bank a million, they own you. When you own the bank a billion, you own the bank.” China is much more dependent on trade with us as a percentage of GDP than visa versa, especially if Japan and Australia are thrown in.
"Reagan had faults. He was lazy; silent on Aids for four years; he let the savings and loan crisis fester into a calamity; he allowed goons to run an illegal foreign policy in Iran; his Middle Eastern policy was catastrophic. Withdrawing from Beirut was perhaps the green light for the kind of terror that we now have to face there."
Sullivan is a queer Brit whom sees what he wants to see... as all democrats and RINOs do.. Strangeness is not queer to Andrew.. Andy is for a democracy(Britain, France, Germany, Cauckistan) and therefore thinks america is a democracy.. as do all three Bush's... I've heard all three Bush's say America is a democracy with my own ears. Andrew Sullivan is a strange brew of contradictions and quite queer.. as are the three Bush's.. with the word queer being used in all available alternative uses..
No, I didn't miss it. Andrew is not a loyal Republican. He doesn't claim to be one. And I didn't say he was one. What I said was that he's not a Democrat. And he's not: He's a Libertarian. Which is not to say that all Libertarians would agree with any or all of the points Sullivan makes in the quote you provided. Libertarians disagree among themselves to at least the same extent as Republicans do. And this thread is a great example of Republicans not agreeing with each other. Democrats would be no different in this regard.
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