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.
"Usual response by a republican/conservative not to answer."
You have an answer.
"Answer this question: How has Bush made your life better?"
LOL, typical tack of a troll: change the subject from their comments.
Tell me, why did Ruth Bader-Ginsburg not have to answer any questions, yet Roberts does?
An apt name. Canard you are, canards you write. "Bush is a socialists" that is why Kerry and all the other Hysteric Leftists are running around screaming about how it is all Bush's "neglect" and "tax cuts" that caused the Levees in NO to break. That is why all the Dems lined up in lock step to make sure NO Soci Scecurity reform would move forward (You are aware Soc Security is the Feds biggest single spending program right?) If you think a Kerry/Clinton/Dean/whomever Demo admin would not be spending it 3 or 4 times as fast you have NOT been paying attention to what goes on in Congress.
Wordly Philosophers reads like a popular history, but it's been responsible for more people entering the field than any other single book. It hooked me on economics, and I dated an economist for more than a year without taking an interest.
"How has Bush made your life better?"
Personally, my finincial situation has never been better. I'm out of debt and own my home. I'm making more money than ever before and my investments are doing well. I'm even thinking of buying a second vacation home.
Also, a great part of the increase in government size and budget was for required national security purposes like Homeland Security, the integration of communications and liaison between the many law enforcement agencies, new security equipment, etc. If memory serves correct, Pres. Bush was against federalizing the airport screeners, but Congress and strong national consensus pretty much forced him to sign on.
FEMA too, has been modernized and expanded, mostly due to 9/11 and the very realistic concern of future attacks. The military budget itslef has been greatly increased since 9-11 also, not just for Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans, but for general equipment technology upgrades.
Still, I do think the President is too free with spending and tends to overlook American citizens' needs in favor of helping out foreign nations and illegal immigrants. This was evidenced when he forgave the forty billion dollar debt with Africa and almost simultaneously signed a bill that made it harder for AMERICANS to get out of debt, (the new bankruptcy laws). The money spent on programs and benefits for illegal aliens is another outrage, as is the entire modern immigration policy.
In any case, it's still a gross exaggeration to call the President's extravagance 'socialism'.
History and bios are my favorite reading. I also like mind sciences stuff also. Most modern fiction doesn't grab me at all - whenever I do read fiction, it's all older stuff. Go figure.
Well see that's okay. He has the wrong letter by his name. So you can call him a socialist. But dare not speak ill of anyone on our 'team'. Then it's compassionate conservatism.
In fact, it's still a socialistic move. And by the clearest sense of the word. But the faithful will not allow a word spoken against our leader. If a Democrat did these things, Limbaugh, Hannity, and the rest of the cheerleaders would be up in arms
Then definitely check it out.
I'm off to work.
What? He (Sullivan and others), act like these hurricanes never happened, and that the President just woke up one day and decided to spend millions of money. He can't win, no matter what he does, and I'm sick of it. There's plenty of 'pork' to get rid of in budget.
The problem with this is that we are not taxing and spending but borrowing and spending. The surplus is gone and now we have an enormous deficit that is being financed by China. China could throw our economy into chaos without firing a shot, all they would have to do is call in the loans issued since Bush took office.
Is the GOP majority in Congress or not?
Perhaps my Constitution is different than yours. He does sign these bills into law. And Bush has never met a spending bill he doesn't like. But you're right. We should be irate at Congress more importantly for listening to his nonsensical suggestions for waste in the first place. Aren't you so glad you spent time back in '02 'winning back the Senate'? How'd that go?
Point out the Constitutional basis for spending tax dollars on rebuilding the Gulf Coast. I'll even help out a bit. Here's James Madison on the issue...
To refer the power in question to the clause "to provide for common defense and general welfare" would be contrary to the established and consistent rules of interpretation, as rendering the special and careful enumeration of powers which follow the clause nugatory and improper. Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and limited one hitherto understood to belong to them, the terms "common defense and general welfare" embracing every object and act within the purview of a legislative trust. It would have the effect of subjecting both the Constitution and laws of the several States in all cases not specifically exempted to be superseded by laws of Congress, it being expressly declared "that the Constitution of the United States and laws made in pursuance thereof shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges of every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." Such a view of the Constitution, finally, would have the effect of excluding the judicial authority of the United States from its participation in guarding the boundary between the legislative powers of the General and the State Governments, inasmuch as questions relating to the general welfare, being questions of policy and expediency, are unsusceptible of judicial cognizance and decision.And he even would have disagreed with the $300 billion for highways. Although I don't expect Republicans or Democrats to rescind their stance on that issue either....A restriction of the power "to provide for the common defense and general welfare" to cases which are to be provided for by the expenditure of money would still leave within the legislative power of Congress all the great and most important measures of Government, money being the ordinary and necessary means of carrying them into execution.
If a general power to construct roads and canals, and to improve the navigation of water courses, with the train of powers incident thereto, be not possessed by Congress, the assent of the States in the mode provided in the bill can not confer the power. The only cases in which the consent and cession of particular States can extend the power of Congress are those specified and provided for in the Constitution.
"that is why Kerry and all the other Hysteric Leftists are running around screaming about how it is all Bush's "neglect" and "tax cuts" that caused the Levees in NO to break"
Funnily enough some politicians will take any opportunity to criticise opponents. Do you think a Kerry administration would have pushed for more funds to be allocated to New Orleans' flood defences?
"If you think a Kerry/Clinton/Dean/whomever Demo admin would not be spending it 3 or 4 times as fast you have NOT been paying attention to what goes on in Congress."
It's not a matter of speculation that this administration spends more than the previous one, that's fact. Now there are various reasons that might be offered for that, but the base facts are there.
I find it very hard to imagine that a Kerry administration would be spending money '3 or 4 times as fast' as the current administration that has itself hugely expanded federal spending however, there is no reason historically or rationally to see why that would be the case.
CFR,pork laden highway bill, farm bill. Said he would sign the assault weapon ban if congress renewed it.
I doubt them. While it is true that Congress spends the money, Bush has yet to veto a bill which would include oh, I don't know, a spending bill? Bush's own proposals include massive spending. It isn't like we have a spendthrift Congress and a President who can't do anything about it. We have a spendthrift Congress and a President who likes it that way. The fact is that Bush is a socialist and Kerry is somewhere between a socialist and a communist. The difference is a difference of degree, not of kind.
Excellent point, Keith! It's a shame the Constitution doesn't give President Bush any power to restrict the orgy of runaway spending our liberal congress has engaged in!
Maybe the Rockefeller wing. The Gingrich wing has apparently departed.
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