Posted on 02/09/2008 8:35:27 AM PST by rob777
Before my more conservative friends start leaping from buildings over Senator John McCain’s presidential primary victories, let me try to coax them back in from the ledge. Despite his myriad apostasies (e.g. McCain-Feingold’s free-speech limits, anti-ANWR-oil-drilling votes, a mixed tax-cut record, creeping Kyotoism, and cold feet on waterboarding), the Arizona Republican could do for fiscal responsibility what Ronald Reagan did for tax relief.
Thanks to the Gipper, tax reduction is as central to the Republican faith as the Resurrection is to Christianity. True, McCain heretically opposed President Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. However, he now appears penitent and observant. He proposes to make Bush’s tax cuts permanent and slice corporate taxes from 35 to 25 percent, among other reforms.
But in terms of limited-government, today’s GOP recalls the Roman Catholic Church’s excesses before the Reformation of 1517. For nearly a decade, Republicans have indulged in a spending bacchanal that shredded their moral authority and shocked Republican true believers. Like a latter-day Martin Luther, a President McCain may nail his own “95 Theses” to the U.S. Capitol’s front door and shame Congress, before it spends again.
Cato Institute researcher Michael Tanner cites White House figures to illustrate how Washington’s spending has waned and waxed since 1980. Under President Reagan, overall federal outlays decreased from 22.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product, to 21.2. On President G.H.W. Bush’s watch, spending increased to 21.4 percent. During the Clinton years, expenditures fell to 18.5. And during President G.W. Bush’s tenure, spending boomeranged to 20.7 percent of GDP.
“Reagan had a Democratic House to contend with, so anything he achieved was to the good,” Tanner explains. “The elder president Bush was sort of a non-event. Clinton and a Republican Congress represented the most fiscally conservative period. And this President Bush and a Republican Congress were a disaster.”
McCain largely has refused to be led into temptation. He supported 2001’s $143.4 billion No Child Left Behind Act, but fought 2002’s $180 billion farm bailout, 2003’s $558 billion Medicare drug entitlement, and 2005’s $286.4 billion highway bill, which contained 6,371 earmarks worth $24 billion.
“Those were the four biggest budget-busting bills of the Bush presidency,” notes Heritage Foundation fiscal analyst Brian Riedl. “And McCain voted against three of them.”
Wouldn’t it be refreshing for a President McCain, at last, to give America’s farmers the straight talk they so richly deserve?
“My friends,” McCain might declare before some Mid-Western barn, “when it rains, you cry for flood relief, and it cascades in. When the skies are cloudless, you scream for drought assistance, and it arrives. When your prices are low, you demand help, and the checks soon follow. Since last January, corn prices have climbed 123 percent. Soy beans are up 176 percent, and spring wheat has risen 274 percent. And yet Washington stands ready to grant your howls for $286 billion in yet another farm-welfare bonanza. Enough already. Please stop farming the government and go till your fields. The party is over. The trough is empty. Goodbye.”
Hayekian fantasy? Hardly.
McCain courageously opposed the wasteful, environmentally destructive federal ethanol program -- while battling his Republican rivals in Iowa.
“I will open every market in the world to Iowa’s agricultural products. I’m the biggest free marketer and free trader that you will ever see,” McCain said at the December 12 Des Moines Register debate. “And I will also eliminate subsidies on ethanol and other agricultural products. They are an impediment to competition. They’re an impediment to free markets. And I believe that subsidies are a mistake.”
McCain has stayed tightfisted on the hustings. According to a January 29 National Taxpayers Union study of presidential candidates’ promises, McCain wants $6.9 billion in new spending. Former Massachusetts governor Willard Mitt Romney favors $19.5 billion in fresh outlays. “Free-market” Romney’s automated phone calls in Florida actually slammed McCain because he “voted against the AARP-backed Medicare prescription-drug program.” Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee advocates $54.2 billion in government-funded initiatives. Romney’s ideological gymnastics and Huckabee’s folksy profligacy should worry taxpayers.
“You would not have to look hard for reasons to dislike McCain,” says Cato’s Michael Tanner. “But if spending is what you care about, he is far more conservative than either Romney or Huckabee.”
“Can you try to be fiscally prudent if you also insist on adding 20 million poor illegal aliens to Medicaid and Social Security?”
....and don’t forget the wasted hundreds of billions he will spend trying to cure the sham and lie of human caused Global Warming.
What a crock..
I’m not fan of Romney, but at least he had to make it where you can’t just lay a tax on the peasants to raise more revenue. Talking about McCain—a career civil service boob-as fiscally “competent,” is something like taking diet advice from Rosy O’Donnel.
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You do know MA is a very liberal state where he could just make the tax payers pay for abortion
And to call a navel commander a civil service boob is despicable..
as opposed to the great military mind it take to be a missionary in france?
Who said I trashed Reagan? He did run up the national debt and we did change from a creditor to a debtor nation on his watch. No way around that.
I don’t want a president who thinks he’s an economic genius and can micro-manage markets. Usually, folks who claim a subject matter expertise also feel the need display it.
Keep taxes as low as they can be, keep regulations at a minimum, and trust to the collective genius of the markets, is the approach I want, and that doesn’t require a PhD.
McCain has a 100% rating from the NRA..
I think people who support McCain as a fiscal conservative have lost sight of the forest for the trees. Sure, he might (again, that’s might) be able to cut $20 billion to $50 billion annually in earmarks, but then it has been estimated his global warming legislation will cost the economy at least 1% a year or $140 billion and his amnesty plans will cost at least $100 billion a year. Add in additional costs for taxpayer funded lawyers and judges helping terrorists clog the U.S. courts when he closes Gitmo and brings them to the U.S. McCain also voted for the latest $150 billion giveaway which will do little to grow the economy and add few additional jobs. I hardly consider McCain a fiscal conservative.
I am all for getting rid of earmarks and reducing social spending that is a drag on the economy and curtails the rights of individuals (including McCain’s global warming and amnesty legislation), but the focus needs to be on how you grow the economy(GDP), and what level of debt is reasonable to increase that growth rate. Even AAA companies (the highest credit quality) have debt because it is cheaper than equity and increases your growth rate. People always talk about how much the government debt has grown under Bush, but forget how much the GDP has grown. The real issue is what is total debt to GDP (very little change under Bush including going through the Clinton recession and 9/11) and is that an appropriate rate to maximize economic growth. McCain doesn’t understand this hence his votes against the Bush supply side tax cuts. Several studies have shown that it is the reduction in tax rates at the highest levels, i.e the investing and private business class, that drives the majority of jobs and economic growth.
Mentioning McCain in the same sentence as the greatest Republican ever is an afront to the principles of America. Reagan was the greatest anti-communist that ever lived.
McCain could pass for a communist, let’s have not more comparisons.
Why are you still fighting that battle? Relax, he’s gone.
The key word here is "appears". A very large leap of faith over logic.
It happened 20 years ago. Get over it.
Well Naval Officer Jimmy Carter really was an excellent Commander in Chief by your point of needing military understanding.
McCain tried to cut funding for the B-2 Bomber program and the C-130 transport among other programs and went along with Clinton’s cuts to the military in the 1990’s.
My prediction is that as a budget hawk, McCain will have 90% of the cuts affect the military.
Vets and current military who voted for him will curse their decision after he gets through with the military.
How long can he rely on getting support for his military service?
Wesley Clark was a general and a greater boob I've never seen!
Excellent point. Many people just don’t understand that in the long run, amnesty and [effectively speaking] no borders trumps everything. Nothing else will be accomplished once we are overrun by Mexican illegals.
Nothing of what it is claimed McTemper is actually good for will come to pass after the invasion is complete.
Take your boy’s advice and calm down.
Pleease. There are plenty of incompetents in the military. Patriotism and a uniform do not confer intelligence and common sense on anyone.
My father was a 3 war Marine and a career officer. I have heard some very interesting (and scary) stories of dimwittery and incompetence.
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