Andy’s right. This is the wrong turf on which to fight. Indeed, it is a depressingly European argument — that the “right”-of-”center” party can through sheer attention to detail make the left-wing state run more efficiently. You never can. The ratchet effect of Big Government is such that the minute you turn your back it resumes its inexorable growth.
Any credible Republican candidate should be proposing the closing or wholesale privatization of departments, bureaus, and agencies. If you’re not, you’re not serious.
My imminently forthcomingly imminent forthcoming book has a consistent message — that the projections for this and that for 2030, 2050, 2080 are all irrelevant. We have half-a-decade to turn this around. If we really intend (as is apparently foreseen by our bipartisan saviors) to add $7–10 trillion to the debt by 2020, then America is over — because clearly there is no intention ever to repay that money, and the world will make its dispositions accordingly.
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the U.S. secretary of education is the only education minister in the developed world with his personal SWAT team. That’s to say, only in America can education bureaucrats execute warrants and kick your door down and stick a gun in your face. It’s not a question of “capping” the rate of growth of the budget of the SWAT team. Nor of scrapping the SWAT team. It’s about abolishing an entirely superfluous government department.
The Democrats want to plunge over the cliff at full throttle. Too many Republicans think it will be fine as long as we go over the edge in third gear.
One final thought: Victor Davis Hanson has a poignant vignette today — the death of Denise McVay, a member of California’s dwindling productive class murdered by one of the ever swollen ranks of a leisured underclass. Read the offensively fatalistic shrug of a statement from what passes for law enforcement in that state. Anyone who thinks a post-prosperity America is in for genteel post-war Euro-style decline is deluded.
Exactly Mark, I laugh when the fiscal conservatives in the congress harp about capping the increase in spending. They must love the current amount of spending the ATF does in getting guns to the mexican cartels. They also love the current amount of spending that the government does in enforcing ethanol mandates. How about oil and gas drilling moratoriums? Not to little, not to much, just the right amount spent for these wonderlics. Capping spending for the TSA? Why not? Congress loves the current amount of fondling at the airport. The current amount of spending by the EPA deciding ozone ppm in anywhere, usa? We love that current amount, it's just right.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI forgot the latest just right amount of spending, it's the FDA and its new cigarette warnings. I just don't see how we can cut the budget of a government agency that has the power to provide us with pictures of diseased lungs and men smoking out their trachea.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI don't see the ratchet effect ever being controlled by political process. America's only hope is to restore individual liberty -- the unspoken "other half" of the limited government model.
Imagine citizens given the legal right to opt-out of the central-planners' tax-regulate schemes. The bureaucrats can turn their ratchets all they want; citizens can decide for themselves if Nanny is really bringing value.
The only way to limit government is to empower people. It's not a new idea, just a forgotten idea.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJust eliminate witholding, and watch the government shrink like the Wicked Witch in Oz.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou let everyone take their whole paycheck home, and you will never see any revenue, at all. Right now, any disposable income you may have is almost all taken by the government. Indeed, one of the worst byproducts of feminism is that most working women in traditional households, are, in fact, working as slaves to pay the government.
I wish someone like Andy would explain to me what actually constitutes slavery. Does it have to be 100%, in order to qualify? Once you factor in all the taxes, plain and hidden that we pay (meaning take the total amount spent by government at all levels and divide it by the number of taxpayers. Go ahead. I'll wait. Shocking, no?), we are all well above 50 or 60% slaves. And it gets worse. Historically, slaves were fed and housed by their masters. We aren't. So, if some percentage of a slave's output is his own maintenance, he is not a 100% slave, either. At what point can someone sue the government for violating the 13th amendment?
Just where does the slave/free fault line lie? I wonder. I think we're very close.
Local city government where I recently lived put the whole budget, including salaries, on a web site.
That would be a great start for the feds too.
Next step would be allowing me to direct 50% of my taxes to specific projects and departments. I would vote for that in a heartbeat.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Any credible Republican candidate should be proposing the closing or wholesale privatization of departments, bureaus, and agencies."
Absolutely right. The depressing thing about virtually all the Republican candidates is the timidity about putting forth a plan or a set of choices and working it.
Say we can cut everything 5% and freeze it for five years (or however long it takes) to balance revenues with spending or we can cut whole departments and programs (spending on NPR and Head Start) and those decreases would offset entitlement decreases proportionately. Its about choice, period. But government spending is killing the private sector and, if that cow dies, there's no milk for ANYTHING.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"The price of liberty is constant vigilance."
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse-Thomas Jefferson
You make a good point Mr. Steyn. However, can you convince a Democratic Senate and President that you are correct? Ultimately, if you cannot do that then your points are good but not practical.
It doesn't make me a RINO to point out that since we can't get a Dem Senate or Prez to eliminate the Dept. of Ed., let's get the best we can and live to fight another day. We have "changed the conservation" as you so quaintly mock and if we continue to "change the conservation" then we can get more public support until eventually the public can understand the necessity of an idea like eliminating the Dept. of Ed. Until you get the public on board and get more GOP in office, you can't get anything done because this is a DEMOCRACY and you can't unilaterally impose your will on others.
In short, I completely agree with you and would love to implement your ideas. I have every intention of voting for people who feel the same. However, I am not a RINO (not that you have said that in this article, but the charge has been flying around a lot, especially in the comments) if in the meantime I take what I can get and continue to fight for more in the future.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBingo. Saying that Ryan isn't far enough to the right makes perfect the enemy of good. It's like griping about Castle not being conservative enough last year; the alternative was having a Democrat win that is a straight-line liberal vote.
We need to have straight-line conservatives in the south and midwest, especially in the Senate. Too many times we've allowed Dems to steal seats, and too many times we've allowed RINOs to represent easy-win seats. We get those victories and we can start having dreams of removing cabinet posts.
Fussing that it isn't happening *while Democrats are in power* is profoundly silly.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDavid,
I'm going to guess that Mark Steyn would respond to what you said with "that's all well and good, but you're assuming that there's some political way out of this mess. I disagree."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDavid et al - Either you, or I, misunderstood Mr. Steyn's focus. As I understood it, he's (rightly) given up on the next year and a half. Obama and the Dems aren't going to cut anything, and we know it. I think he's looking to 2012 and beyond, when the GOP presumably retakes the WH and Senate, and has virtual carte blanche to make real cuts. No one expects anything like this from Obama. Steyn's saying that when the GOP retakes power, they need to be ready to make real, immediate, permanent cuts. Anything less is a waste of time.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf the timeline to turn things around is that short, then yes, it is over for us. At least it's over for America as we know it. I think it will continue on for a good long while as Amerika the quasi-police quasi-socialist state with new Quasi-Politburo "Super Congress" installed this week running things for El Presidente.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think "America as we know it" has already faded. That coincided with our embrace of the welfare state.
Even in this crisis the culture still wants to be dependent on Big Nanny. And to maintain that racket, it also needs YOU to be dependent.
If any of that is accurate, then what outlet remains for the American spirit? The wolf isn't at the door, the wolf is in the kitchen eating your provisions. Financial collapse is a footnote.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou make a good point, that America was forever changed when we began to enslave people to the welfare state. I think the best possibility of preserving some of the former America is to engage in things like the Free State Project, or other movements attempting to congregate liberty-minded folks in certain geographic areas that can possibly weather the future collapse of the overall country.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseActually, Boozhwa, the wolf is in your kitchen eyeing your baby in the highchair. He's already eaten the provisions.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBaby says: "Wait, so you want me to study in school, work hard, and invest in a good career... so I can pay your debts? Are you on crack?"
Great: now it'll be even harder to convince my kids to not be slackers.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Are you on crack?"
Might as well be.
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And, my son is now figuring out how not to be a slacker, but how to look like one to the government. I'm still unsure if that's something to be proud of or not......
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGreat: now it'll be even harder to convince my kids to not be crackheads.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMark Steyn...Andy McCarthy...VDH three voices of sanity remaining at NRO.
Here's a quick political map:
Pied-eyed Libertarians/Conservatives: Obama has a 90% disapproval rating. The American Left is dead!
All right-of-center politicians: We have to work toward the best deals we can get in a nation that is divided about 50-50.
All left-of-center politicians: It's time for the rich to finally pay their fair share.
ME: The reckoning hits within the next 5-20 years. There is no politically negotiated way out of this. Gird your loins. In the meantime, just go to work and do whatever it is you do. What the hell else are you going to do?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI love ya Mark, but we don't have a half-decade to turn this around, its already too late to turn this around.
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