 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
Bush's fiscal common sense is good news for taxpayers and the economy alike. Without resistance from the executive branch, Congress appears poised to once again open the flood gates of spending. Unfortunately, the more the government spends, the less capital there is for the private sector to invest, create new jobs, and get the country back on the right economic track.
Who will join President Bush in his fight for fiscal sanity? Conventional wisdom in Washington suggests it won't be the Senate, which is historically looser with the purse strings and has given no indication that it will show any restraint this year. Furthermore, with the Democrats controlling the Senate, the overtly partisan Majority Leader Tom Daschle has little incentive to work with the president in an election year. There is hope, however, that the House of Representatives will join the president in his effort to rejuvenate the economy and rein in out-of-control federal spending. The arguments for the Republican-controlled House to join the president's war on pork should be convincing for any member who believes in fiscal prudence. To begin with, the president is asking the House of Representatives to abide by budget numbers they themselves agreed to in their budget resolution this spring. Living within your own budget hardly seems like too much to ask — just ask the average American who does it everyday. Furthermore, a wartime president has called upon Congress to make some small sacrifices in domestic spending so that our limited resources may be focused on winning the war against terrorism. The time for pontificating about sacrificing for the war is over and the time for action is here. Besides, Bush is hardly asking for significant sacrifice. Should Congress stick to the president's budget request, non-defense, discretionary spending will still be nearly 13% higher in 2003 than it was when Bush took office in 2001. During World War II, Congress initiated rationing for rubber, gasoline, silk, milk, eggs, and various other consumer goods that the American people stoically accepted. Meanwhile, federal outlays on "human resources" (the category of federal spending that most closely resembles today's non-defense, social spending) during WW II decreased by 55%. In sharp contrast, our present day Congress can barely limit spending increases to an annual rate twice that of inflation. How about spending restraint for the simple reason that it would be desperately needed even without a war? Spending the last five years (since the dawn of surpluses) has been out of control — even by Washington's standards. If Washington doesn't reel in the spending soon, there will be serious ramifications for the future well-being of our economy. It could also lead to even louder calls for severe tax increases to pay for all of this new spending as our surpluses quickly disappear. In a seminal study examining the relationship between government spending and economic growth, Dr. Richard Vedder, an economics professor at Ohio University and a member of the National Taxpayers Union's Board of Directors, notes that
Dr. Vedder goes on to observe that there is actually an inverse relationship between government spending and the unemployment rate. So much for Keynesian pump-priming. So, while our economy struggles to recover from the latest recession, Congress is threatening to suck much-needed resources out of the private sector through massive increases in non-defense, discretionary spending. To make matters worse, an alarmingly (but alas, predictably) large number of elected officials are beginning to voice support for tax increases to fund their excesses. Everyone from Uberliberal Hillary Clinton to the much praised "moderate" Joe Lieberman has already jumped on the tax-hike bandwagon. America is in desperate need of a leader who will stand up for taxpayers and inject some economic sanity into Washington politics. President Bush took the first step toward assuming that mantle of leadership by refusing to spend Congress's extra pork. He should continue that leadership by vetoing any appropriations bills that bust his budget. The House should join the president in protecting the American economy by only passing bills that adhere to the president's budget. Lots of people in Washington have been "talking the talk" of fiscal responsibility recently; we're about to find out how many are willing to "walk the walk." Those who aren't shouldn't be surprised if their constituents walk straight to the polls this November and remind them that talk is cheap. — Eric V. Schlecht is director of congressional relations for the National Taxpayers Union.
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
<% dim printurl
printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%>
welcome signal of fiscal restraint was sent by the White House at the
administration's recent economic forum in Texas. While at the round-table,
Bush announced that he would not spend an additional — and unrequested
— $5 billion that Congress had included in the recently passed supplemental
appropriations bill.
