Supersize My Government

For only $99,000,000,000,000.99 we'll supersize that for you!

Robert Samuelson, economic journalist extraordinaire, writes:

WASHINGTON -- The question that President Obama ought to be asking -- that we all should be asking -- is this: How big a government do we want?

Without anyone much noticing, our national government is on the verge of a permanent expansion that would endure long after the present economic crisis has (presumably) passed and that would exceed anything ever experienced in peacetime. This expansion may not be good for us, but we are not contemplating the adverse consequences or how we might minimize them.

How to Fight Back Against Obscene Spending
The case conservatives should be making is a non-partisan one: We are on a fiscally unsustainable path. We don't want either party spending more money. In order to fight this fight, first we've got to acknowledge a few skeletons in the GOP closet:

* Yes, Reagan grew the deficit, but it was in the cause of breaking the back of global communism. He got it done, and then military spending went back down.

* Yes, Rush Limbaugh and other conservative standard-bearers used to not care about deficits, even going so far as to poo poo the notion that they were a threat. That was then (when deficits grew no faster than GDP), this is now (projected deficits will overtake GDP projections and keep skyrocketing from there.)

* Yes, George Bush spend too much money. But if he was irresponsible in pursuit of security, then President Obama is four times as irresponsible in pursuit of windmills and government bureaucracy.

* Republicans used to scorn the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). They now tout the CBO's damning projections as an effective rebuttal to the Social Democrats' agenda. It is true, when the GOP wanted to pass their agenda, the CBO played the same role: Using actual facts and figures to puncture the fantasy bubbles that politicians of both parties are so fond of. It's all sunshine and lollipops until an adult steps in with a dose of reality.

Cutting earmarks and pork won't get the job done
Our government is systemically overleveraged: There is no way it can pay for everything it has promised everybody. Even higher taxes won't do it. Dismantling this structurally untenable debt will involve breaking promises and slaughtering sacred cows. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and government pensions (including military pensions) account for over half of the annual federal budget.

Restoring Fiscal Sanity Won't Be Easy
If the GOP were to gain enough power to restore fiscal sanity, it still would not be easy, since there are no easy answers, just unsatisfying trade-offs. They would face a hellstorm of invective from the left, with the press megaphone propagandizing all the way: The children, the elderly, the indigent, cold-hearted, cruel, Hitler...

The news would be an endless parade of heart-tugging misery, with The Ballad of Tom Joad playing full-blast in the background. Hard-working, abused Okies will be played by our brothers and sisters from south of the border. Inner city ghettos will simmer and seethe with rage, threatening to boil over at any time. An avalanche of stories about hardworking people fallen victim to GOP cruelty will assault our senses daily.

You get my drift. These are the emotional arguments we must deal with if we really want to get our fiscal house in order. Given that Republicans and Democrats alike profit nicely from the current system, I don't think any of this will ever happen until China moves in to repossess the collateral.

RCP - Robert Samuelson