Rep. John Boehner has a piece on why House Republicans need to go on a ‘low pork diet’. It seems as though the GOP members of the House are finally getting the message that spending like Democrats doesn’t exactly endear them to their own base. Boehner observes:
We must start by addressing the growing practice of unauthorized earmarks–language in spending bills that directs federal dollars to private entities for projects that are not tied to an existing federal program or purpose. The public knows the practice better by a different name–pork-barreling. Unauthorized earmarks squander taxpayer dollars and lack transparency. They feed public cynicism. They’ve been a driving force in the ongoing growth of our already gargantuan federal government, and a major factor in government’s increasing detachment from the priorities of individual Americans. Earmarks have also fueled the growth of the lobbying industry. Entire firms have been built around the practice. As more entities circumvent the normal competitive process, confidence in the system erodes, encouraging others to take the same shortcuts.
The explosive growth of earmarks have caused spending to skyrocket in recent years – and getting rid of earmarks is an important first step in cutting back on the explosive growth of government spending. Congresscritters can easily throw in a few earmarks to keep the pork rolling in with relative impunity – and while projects like Porkbusters help expose this wasteful spending, it’s still rampant and is likely to be until the political culture in Washington changes.
And therein lies the problem: we have a political culture in Washington that has gone off the rails. Government has expanded dramatically in the post-World War II period. The power, size, scope, and intrusiveness of government grows year after year, and the freedoms of the American people keep receding in its wake. This trend is unsustainable – the strength of this country isn’t found in the size and scope of its government but in the ability of its people to translate their genius and effort into something that can expand and refine our economy and society.
In other words, if you’re a liberal, think of government as a massive honking SUV, like the results of a drunken tryst between a Ford Excursion and a Hummer H2. It does do some good, but it belches out smoke, gets 1 mile to the gallon (on a good day), requires it’s own gas tanker, pushes other cars off the road when it passes, and keeps getting bigger and more inefficient.
Ultimately, fighting pork is like putting that monster SUV on cleaner gas. Yes, it runs a little better, but that doesn’t necessarily shrink its size. Ultimately we’re still stuck with a behemoth that takes up every lane on the highway.
Congress can and should get serious about pork. Boehner and Shadegg are serious anti-pork crusaders – because they know that’s the sort of thing that will keep them in office, and there isn’t a greater power in the ‘verse that acts on Congress than electoral self-interest. Even Blunt is being dragged kicking and screaming into the world of fighting pork. The fact that House Republicans are talking reform says that they have some electoral interest in doing so, and that’s a good thing.
Boehner also pledges to reform the lobbyist system, which seems like a given with the Abramoff scandal in full swing. However, making it harder for diverse interest groups to petition Congress won’t necessarily help – the right to petition government is enshrined in our Constitution, and every time Congress tries to limit political speech, it just makes things worse. Remember how McCain-Feingold was supposed to clean up elections? Well, after millions of dollars were poured into MoveOn.org, Media Matters, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, etc., 2004 was one of the dirtiest and most vitriolic campaigns ever – at least when messages are coming from candidates they have some inclination towards keeping things clean. It’s easy to see lobbyists as convenient scapegoats, and lobbying reform will likely be a hot topic in Congress in the next few months.
But ultimately, if the voters stop caring about pork – and I’m looking at you, fellow Republicans – then the same old business as usual culture will quickly return. Washington has always been a fetid swamp, and the fact that we’ve built some nice marble façades over it doesn’t change what it is. It’s up to us to demand responsibility, accountability, and remind our Congresscritters that we have a limited government for a reason.
As P.J. O’Rourke wrote over a decade ago, Washington D.C. often resembles A Parliament of Whores – and unfortunately, we’re the whores. So long as we demand more and more government, that’s precisely what we’ll get. House Republicans need to get serious about reducing the size and intrusiveness of government – and so should we.
“House Republicans need to get serious about reducing the size and intrusiveness of government – and so should we.”
If “pork” means Medicaid and student loans as it did last month, you’re on a losing crusade. The only way that Americans would concur with continued cuts in popular programs is if the GOP also putting a moratorium on its insatiable tax-cutting binge. Something tells me that’s not gonna happen, meaning the Dems are gonna have you guys right where they want them with Independents heading into November.
And that’s why the Democrats will always be on the wrong side of this issue. Do you honestly think that every dollar that goes into programs like Medicaid or student loans actually does what it’s supposed to? That cutting those programs is somehow some kind of horrible affront to common decency? That not even cutting but slowing the rate of growth on those programs will leave people without an education or health care?
Bullshit like that explains why we have a government that expands like kudzu. Quite frankly, if the GOP had the balls to really cut government down to size and could pass laws that would ensure it stayed that way, it would be worth having divided government. Sadly, counting on the Democrats to fix things is about the most idiotic thing that anyone could do – not only do Democrats want to spend far more, but they’d take money from the productive parts of society to do it.
While the current Republican leadership spends money like drunken sailors, at least they’re pursuing policies that will keep the economy solvent longer – while the Democrats would have the economy going straight down the tubes rather than taking a more circuitous route.
And if the Democrats keep up the kind of bullshit they’ve been throwing out for the last 6 years, the Independents and everyone else are more likely to say “a pox on both your houses” and stay home in November. People are sick and tired of the same crap from Washington, and the idea that Nancy Pelosi is any better than Tom DeLay is a laughable assertion.
You will viewed as monsters if you cut programs targeted to the poor while simultaneously insisting upon deficit-financed Bush-era tax cut #337, deficit-financed Bush-era tax cut #338, deficit-financed Bush-era tax cut #339, etc…90% of which will go to families making $250K per year or more. You have zero credibility calling for belt-tightening while continuing to cut taxes. The era where you can get away with enriching millionaires with future generations’ money has passed.
Except that silly little straw man doesn’t match the facts of the matter. Thanks to the economic policies of this administration the US survived the attacks of 9/11, the collapse of Enron, Global Crossing, and WorldCom (all scandals originating in the previous administration). The US economy has grown at a healthy rate, and unemployment is at a low 5%. Furthermore, tax revenues increased.
The deficit has nothing to do with taxation and everything to do with unsustainable levels of spending and a demographic crisis which threatens nearly every democratic society on the planet.
And which party is the one demanding more spending and dragging their feet on any kind of entitlement reform?
And that’s the party we’re supposed to entrust to fix things? Give me a break!
You know I get pissed at the repubs drunken spending ways, then read comments like Marks and realize that the libs would make this defict a whole lot worse.
“Thanks to the economic policies of this administration the US survived the attacks of 9/11, the collapse of Enron, Global Crossing, and WorldCom”
All purely anecdotal. Personal income tax cuts almost exclusively targeted to the wealthy deliver some of the poorest returns on investment of any use of government money. The Clinton-era tax rates, who people like yourself assured us back in 1993 would devastate the American economy for generations, produced a higher economic growth rate and revenue flow than what Bush’s multiple deficit-financed tax cuts have done since 2001. If Gore had been elected and maintained Clinton-era tax rates, I have no doubt that economic growth would have followed a nearly identical trendline to what the Bush economy has….except that the higher tax rates would be producing revenues sufficient enough to balance our budget within the next couple of years.
“And which party is the one demanding more spending and dragging their feet on any kind of entitlement reform?”
The Republicans. Their solutions cost more than the problem. The cost of Social Security privatization alone would cost a minimum of $1 trillion….all money that would be pocketed by stock brokers looking for a payback on all the campaign contributions they’ve made to the elephants. Ditto for the GOP prescription drug plan, which ultimately costs more money than the Democratic plan for a universal entitlement would have, since the manipulated means of forcing “competition” among drug company providers amounts to a mind-bogglingly large corporate welfare payola that ultimately leaves most seniors continuing to pay the lion’s share of their own prescription drug costs. Again, priority #1 for the GOP is to hump the legs of the business barons buttering their bread….all on the taxpayer’s nickel and ultimately providing a worse (and more expensive) program for beneficiaries than an entirely government-funded program would.
Democrats will never be able to hike Federal spending through expansion of government bureaucracies the way that Republicans are able to hike Federal spending through manipulative and anti-market subsidies to every corporate boardroom in America as a comically artificial means of producing “competition.” As long as the Republican Party is bought and paid for by business interests, your nostalgia for its days as a party of “smaller government” will only manage to continue disappointing you.
No, they didn’t.
The Clinton tax increase was passed in 1993. Clinton later lowered capital gains taxes in 1996 – and it wasn’t until after the 1996 tax package that economic growth took off.
Except I don’t think you’ve sat through an economics class in your life. Higher tax rates do not equal higher revenues. The GDP growth during this presidency is directly attributable to a more favorable tax climate – and even Alan Greenspan stated clearly that reductions must come from the expenditure side, not the tax side.
Pure bullshit. The transition costs, even if they were $1 trillion, are dwarfed by the total unfunded liability which over the next 75 years would be at a minimum $3.7 trillion, with the total unfunded liability under current demographic trends at $11 trillion over an infinite horizon – and that assumes people don’t live longer than they do. If living past 100 becomes common in the next 75 years (which seems likely), the system will be in even worse shape.
But again, the typical Democratic strategy of deceit and invective takes precedence.
Wanna bet? Expansion of federal bureaucracy is the single biggest reason we’re in this mess in the first place.
This is precisely why the Democratic Party is functionally retarded when it comes to economic policy – and that’s giving them credit.