After Alexander and Montgomery turned back Rommel at the Battle of El Alamein in 1942, Churchill told his audience at the Mansion House, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” That, I think, is how we should view the debt-ceiling victory — for it is a victory. For the first time in many years we have stopped government’s remorseless advance. We must go on to win many more victories if we are to see government shrunk back to its rightful size, but the first victory is often the hardest to obtain.
There are many more battles to fight. Our first job, it seems to me, is signaled by the desperate GDP and manufacturing numbers announced in the past few days, which have been obscured by the political news, but which are keenly observed by the markets. We have to get Americans back to work and the key to that is deregulation.
Regulation currently costs us $1.75 trillion annually — so over the decade of our $1 trillion spending victory, we will see $17.5 trillion thrown away in regulatory costs. The costs are particularly burdensome on small businesses — about $10,000 annually per employee. Regulation is an important reason why most small businesses do not plan to hire anyone in the next year.
If we want to get America back to work, we have to tackle the bureaucracy itself. Scott Walker of Wisconsin has already shown what benefits taking on the public sector can bring. It is time to take that fight national and expose what bureaucrats and regulators are doing to America. Spending will be part of that battle, but only a small part. The battle is about the role of government in American life, and our victory in the battle of the debt ceiling should embolden us for a far bigger battle now.
— Iain Murray’s latest book is Stealing You Blind: How Government Fatcats Are Getting Rich Off of You.
"For the first time in many years we have stopped government’s remorseless advance"
Wow, really? If this is even remotely true, I would expect that the 2013 federal budget will be less or equal to 2012 in inflation-adjusted dollars. Will it? Of course not.
Sorry, but this relentless cheerleading by NRO types for this horrible "deal" is pathetic.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseQuote: "We have to get Americans back to work and the key to that is deregulation."
Why, as soon as most Americans really believe that, you can be sure that things in government will change.
As for me, I put the theory of deregulation right up there with global warming. EVERYONE agrees, if you limit whom you ask.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo a defeat is when a trillion-dollar health care travesty gets jammed down your throat, and a victory is when a trillion-dollar health care travesty is, well, um, I guess a victory is when a trillion-dollar travesty is allowed to remain untouched.
Hell of a low bar you guys are setting. Is it any wonder the Progressives steamroll you every time?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhen you are in a hole, the first step is to stop digging.
With this bill, the GOP is digging deeper, just not as fast.
In no way, shape or form can this be called a victory, unless delusional thinking counts.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWe stopped government's relentless advance by (if the bill passes) raising the debt ceiling $2T, and adding at least $7T to the debt over the next ten years? We just got run over by a tank. They cut bupkis, and like the $61B in cuts in the 2011 budget that actually amounted to $300M, this will become clear in the coming days.
Let us celebrate this deal with a 5% drop in stocks, and further proof that the economy is far from recovered. What a mess.
The 80+ Tea Party conservatives in the House should vote no.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOnce again I think people have to stop and think...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis didn't happen over night and can not be corrected in one fell swoop. When applying brakes, you don't stomp on them... they have to be applied with care and precision to achieve the wanted outcome. How do you think this is any different? Any reduction is better than none. Keep in mind... as the vehicle (government spending) slows, the brakes can be applied with greater pressure (spending reductions, this will produce the wanted effects. At least we aren't still stuck in the ditch...
Monty, think about it, but don't take too much time. There are no brakes being applied here. The accelerator is being slightly lifted from the floor .. and the wall is right in front of us.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePerfect analogy. Well said.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFor the USA, I am afraid that this debt ceiling issue is the "Beginning of the End".
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNo, you're wrong.
This is the beginning of the end. Of deficit spending, and of the US Dollar.
No clearer signal could be made that there will be no reversal of government borrowing until the system collapses upon itself. Good luck to you all, and here's hoping for a return to the founding fathers' intent on the other side of the Greatest Depression the world has ever known.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis bill is not just a policy disaster, it also shows that the fight for the control of GOP is just beginning. It is such a disappointment to see that what we thought was a complete remake of Republicans in Nov 2010 into a conservative party turned out to be just 22 voices in the House and 2-3 in Senate. Before we can start fixing the country, we need either to win over GOP or tear it down and build a new party for 2016. In just blows my mind - after NY-26 fiasco, where a fake Tea Party candidate cost GOP a safe seat, how can they be so unconcerned about a possibility that EVERY GOP seat will get a bona fide TP challenger? They seem to be much more worried about what WP or CNN will say about their "intransigence". How stupid can stupid get?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt would have been nice if the Tea Party could have found a home in the Republican Party, but I feel pretty naive for ever having thought that was more than wishful thinking.
At this point, I don't care that a 3d Party means Democratic victory in the short run. If I'm going to get Demcoratic policies, I'd prefer they were enacted by Democrats, rather than with Republican assistance.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt is difficult to overstate the stupidity of this statement.
Democrat policies: Increase spending by $1 trillion a year.
Republican policies: Decrease spending by some piffling amount, maybe $10 billion a year.
That means the difference between Democrat policies and Republican policies is $990 billion a year.
If people take this advice, enjoy your government health care("single provider", "universal"), enjoy relentless economic decline due to ever-expanding "green" mandates, and enjoy of course the industrial scale vivisection of unborn infants.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSell it down the river, Ian--we aren't buying. To way that with this deal "we have stopped government’s remorseless advance" is somewhere between comical and an insult to our intelligence.
To pick out just one of many fatal flaws, this deal undoes the principle good that had come out of the budget debate so far--establishing the precedent that each dollar of increased debt limit should be balanced with a dollar of spending cuts--by establishing a new and perverse precendent: that every dollar of entitlement cuts (or any other non-defense spending cut) should be balanced by a dollar of military spending cuts.
In one fell swoop, such a precedent assures that fiscal conservatives can NEVER prevail. I'll look forward to Veronique de Rugy posting with better researched numbers, but by my back-of-the-envelope calculation, that means a balanced budget, which requires a 40% cut in spending, would require zeroing out military spending entirely, while leaving medicare/medicaid/social security consuming about 40% of spending.
The government would go from being a welfare program with some tanks to being a welfare program with no tanks. No thanks.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNo mistake: this deal is probably the best that could be made in 2011, with Dems in control of the Senate and the White House, and a political culture infected by almost a hundred years of entitlement programs and government-solves-problems folly.
This problem cannot be fixed until the national political culture is sanitized, and that will only happen when the upcoming horror really hurts a few million people. That's human nature. We are infants about to wander into the adult world, unprepared and weak. We are going to have to learn the hard way.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm finding especially offensive this morning the ongoing efforts to persuade us that the total refusal by the Republican leadership to represent our interests is a good reason to support them in coming elections.
Sorry, no. We said in '09 that we would give Repulicans one more election cycle, and '10 gave Republicans massive victory. Obviously, it's true that there's only so much that can be done with only 1/2 of 1/3 of the government, as the saying goes. But what can be done is far more than what is being done. Republicans could stand athwart growing government forever by refusing to raise the debt limit. Now, instead, they're going to agree that the only path to a balance budget is 1-for-1 cuts between entitlements and military spending? That's a path that requires us to zero out all military spending to balance the budget, while leaving medicare/medicaid/social security as 40% of all spending.
Time to support 3d party nominations.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNot 3rd party..
Time for a NEW second party.. leave the republicans to be the 3rd party, and go off into the distance like so many failed political parties in history such as the Whigs, the Federalist Party etc..
Frankly, I think if all the people who are for REAL liberty, and real republican(little r) forms of government left, the remnants of the Republicans would go back into the Democrat party.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell, I agree that will be the net result. A bit tragic, given that the Democratic Party is also on the edge of fission. I'd hoped the Republicans could hold it together long enough to take advantage of that meltdown. But like I said, if this is what the Republican Party give us when they do have power there's no reason to mourn its loss.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseEither Iain Murray is a gullible idiot, or he thinks we are. Agreeing to grow the government a bit less quickly than originally planned is not stopping anything. As a previous commenter, it signals that the only way the political class will stop blowing up our gargantuan debt is if credit markets shut them out.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell, it is a victory. And thanks to those who note it was not possible without the determination of those called tea partiers. What it is not is stopping the government's remorselsess advance. ($217 B / yr. from the baseline when we currently borrow $140B a month. Puh-lease.)
The fact that so very many on our side overestimate this tiny victory and the urgency of avoiding fallout over facing the problem squarely diminishes the likelihood of the necessary many victories even being attempted. Even though there was a huge compromise by most conservatives subscribing to "tea party" fiscal attitudes, even Michael Ramirez portrays tea partiers as willing to cut their noses off to spite their faces. That betrays a fundamental lack of courage and consistency at the expense of what got us into this mess in the first place - political class expediency.
On the "plus side," Romney and Pawlenty will apparently make it a campaign issue in appealing to their base (until after the nomination when they campaign to the center).
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