Winter 2016—Back To Basics: Our Problem With Big Government

This post is the twelfth in this blog’s history; on January 6^th of this year, this site saw its three-year anniversary come and go, and after three years of seasonal expounding of conservative ideals and applying them to the socio-political happenings of our country, I thought it was high time to get back to one of the basic and fundamental building blocks of the conservative philosophical premise: that big government is bad, and that smaller, more limited government is good.

Government’s job is not to “even the playing field” or to engineer the perfect society. Government’s job is simple and limited in scope: to protect us and our fundamental, God-given rights. This premise is the heart and soul of our Constitutional form of government.

America actually just lost one of its greatest champions of small government and Constitutional principles. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, whose death at age 79 comes after nearly 30 years of faithful service on the U.S. Supreme Court, passed away on the night of February 12 or the morning of February 13, and it seems fitting to me to celebrate this great man’s life and career by taking a step back and considering one of the original intentions of the Founding Fathers in regards to the form of government our country was supposed to have.

Antonin Scalia was famous for taking an “originalist” viewpoint of the Constitution, for striving to remain true to the Founding Fathers’ original meaning and intent with regards to the kind of government structures they hoped would remain in place for the American federal republic. Edwin Meese III, a former U.S. Attorney General who worked for President Ronald Reagan, paid tribute to Justice Scalia with these words: “He was a historic jurist, an exceptional legal scholar, and a stalwart defender of the Constitution as it was given to the nation by our Founders. He fulfilled President Reagan's greatest expectations by his commitment to the rule of law and his personal integrity.”

In my own studies, it has become clear to me that men like George Washington, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin originally envisioned a United States federal government with limited scope and power. I believe these Founders would have been shocked to discover the great extent to which the federal government has stretched its proclaimed prerogatives in recent years. Even men like John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, known for embracing a more activist role for the federal government than their contemporaries, would have been surprised and disappointed to find out just how much money and power is spent today by the U.S. government on projects and programs ranging from welfare and housing to healthcare laws and tax codes.

I believe that government is getting too big, and that big government is truly THE big issue (no pun intended) of this upcoming 2016 presidential election. To be more specific, I believe this election cycle is going to end up being a referendum on President Barack Obama’s particular brand of big government, which has unfortunately raised federal expenditures to record-high levels. The results of this election will reflect—for good or ill—the American public’s attitude towards the two major political parties: the Democrats, who have embraced and perpetuated the idea of big government until it has gripped our nation with historic amounts of mismanagement, stagnation, and inefficiency, and the Republicans, who have generally failed to organize a grassroots opposition to Obama’s systematic attack on the private sector and his expansion of liberal government—even though they’ve had a good five years with the popular support to do so.

Now, it’s true that conservatives have always had a kind of public relations problem when it comes to economic policy. After all, fiscal conservatism—low taxes, reduced government spending, and minimal government debt—and balanced budgets have remained very unpopular ever since the era of the Great Depression. In a world where entitlements to conspicuous consumption and free handouts are all the rage (and, in more academic and high-minded circles, considered to be sure signs of America’s “compassionate” identity), a pay-as-you-go mentality combined with a sense that there are some things government should just never spend more money on is sure to turn people away from right-wing values.

The conservative PR problem only got worse with the end of World War II, when American liberalism “discovered” the answer to all of our country’s economic woes; at that time, and lasting all through the 60s and 70s, the wizards of smart on the left wing of the American political spectrum honestly believed that the best way to rescue a country suffering from recession or depression was to spend, spend, spend. Massive government spending, combined with a few other tenets of Keynesian economic thought, was the big takeaway lesson learned by liberals in the wake of the 1940s.

With the implementation of economic policies from the Kennedy and Johnson White Houses, government spending soared as federal money was used as never before to socially reengineer the country. The 1960s saw government using taxpayer dollars in unprecedented ways; government power in redesigning the makeup of society was tied to government’s ability to spend money anytime it considered a social cause to be worthy of investment. As the years went by, liberal economic thinking came to be expressed by the analogy of an equidistant triangle, a triangle with three points respectively labeled “federal taxing,” “federal spending,” and “federal power.” The goal for the American left was to expand the points of that equidistant triangle in an outward direction; by the rules of mathematics and geometry, the outward expansion of one point on an equidistant triangle necessarily requires and accompanies the outward expansion of the other two points of the triangle.

That is the unfortunate and sinister relationship between federal taxation, federal spending, and federal power. When any government decides to increase the taxes it extracts from the people, the natural tendency for that government is to spend that money on some new program or policy. The natural result of that expanded program or policy is always more government power wielded over the heads of the citizenry. And naturally, increased government power only whets the appetite of greedy politicians who are more than happy to raise taxes yet again, usually citing some new cause or emergency or crisis that requires the immediate and drastic attention of the taxpayer.

The cycle is never-ending, the triangle ever-expanding.

As of this February in the year 2016, federal spending is out-of-control and is projected to grow even faster in the future, burdening Americans and saddling future generations with a massive, unaffordable debt.

A case that provides a perfect example of our government’s spending crisis is the shocking and depressing expansion of the federal food stamps program over the last decade. According to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank headquartered in Washington, DC:

“The food stamp program is the nation’s second largest means-tested welfare program; its costs have risen from $20.7 billion in 2000 to $83.1 billion in 2014. Contributing to this rapid expansion is the enrollment of able-bodied adults without dependents, which has risen from nearly 2 million in 2008 to around 4.7 million today. Benefits to these individuals and related administrative expenses cost the taxpayers around $10.5 billion per year.”

Approximately 2.7 million new Americans on food stamps; such is the result of the so-called “Obama recovery.”

The experts at Heritage have gone on to conclude that there is only one way we Americans can reverse this threatening tide of government spending: Congress should cut current spending and rein in future spending through entitlement reforms, without raising taxes, and while assuring full funding for America’s defense.

Entitlement reforms? Yes indeed. As unpopular and as uninspiring as it is to the American public to hear us conservatives shouting “Stop!” from the sidelines, this IS the one sure way to get America back on track; cutting federal spending—especially on entitlement programs—is the single best way to get our country out of the financial mess it’s been suffering from for over a generation.

Entitlements—government programs guaranteeing access to benefits for members of a specific group and based on established rights or by legislation—are the single biggest factor in sucking the American federal budget dry. The payout for entitlements must be reevaluated and reined in, and this must be done so quickly. Again, speaking of the food stamps program, the Heritage Foundation recommended that:

“Welfare should not be a one-way handout…the U.S. government should require constructive behavior from able-bodied recipients in exchange for benefits. Specifically, able-bodied adult food stamp recipients without dependents should be required to take a job, prepare for work, perform community service, or at a minimum search for employment in exchange for aid and assistance at the taxpayers’ expense. This reform would save taxpayers $9.7 billion per year.”

These kinds of reforms need to be applied to ALL federal entitlement programs.

According to my sources, a typical budget for the United States government will EASILY see more than 60% of all federal spending used on entitlement programs like welfare, Social Security, unemployment, and medical coverage and healthcare. This is a big problem when considered in the light of the equidistant triangle analogy. As a conservative, I am not opposed to the government spending a reasonable amount of money to provide a publicly-funded “safety net” for people who hit hard times, whether they be elderly, unemployed, underemployed, disabled, a struggling college student, a single parent, or any other combination of a variety of situations where an individual is not fully equipped and able to provide for their needs. However, the problem our country is currently facing is quite different from merely providing for everyone’s needs. Federal spending on social welfare and entitlements has long reached levels that stifle individual accountability and incentive to work. Worse still, having over 60% of the federal budget dedicated to social welfare and entitlements has led to massive and unfair wealth transfers that take money from hardworking and genuinely successful Americans in favor of free handouts to millions of undeserving and underperforming free riders who milk the system simply because federal laws and tax codes allow them to get away with it.

On October 12^th, 2011, Patrick Louis Knudsen, who is the Grover M. Hermann Senior Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs at The Heritage Foundation, gave his own personal testimony before Congress on this grave matter. As part of his testimony, Mr. Knudsen had this to say to the assembled legislators:

“Spending control has never been more important than it is today. All of you are well aware of the extraordinary deficit and debt crisis the government faces; and although you may differ on the causes of this problem, and how best to solve it, surely you all agree it must be addressed. My own view is that the root problem is spending. It is spending that creates the need for taxes and borrowing, and so curtailing the growth of spending is indispensable for shrinking deficits and debt. Therefore, if a President offers credible proposals to reduce spending, Congress should give them serious consideration.”

Mr. Knudsen went on to explain how stupid it is for government to spend more and more money on federal programs without checking to see if those programs are actually working as they should. He also detailed how Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are sucking up government spending at levels which will soon initiate an economic crisis. He recommended that American presidents should not be afraid of being unpopular when they veto a bill for spending too much; he added that, unfortunately, presidents don’t seem to do this anymore.

Mr. Knudsen really got to the heart of the matter when, in his testimony, he talked about how cutting the wasteful and corrupt programs of the federal government from the budget should be standard operating procedure for any Congress. Members of Congress like to complain that they spend too much time on the federal budget, but that’s their job. Budgeting is what governing is all about. As he put it:

“From time to time, Members of Congress may complain they spend nearly all their time on the budget—and if you were to follow my recommendations here, that would be even more true. But I would say two things about that. First, if you believe, as I do, that budgeting truly is governing, then budgeting is the most fundamental exercise of your responsibilities. Second, considering the very real spending and debt crisis this country faces, I would hope all of you are willing to spend every minute of your time on the budget until you get it sustainably under control. The stakes are as high as they have ever been, and the outcome truly does lie in your hands.”

 

Knudsen clearly understands the unholy triangle of federal taxing, spending, and power. He clearly seeks to force our politicians to take that unholy triangle seriously, and to do their best to limit the growth of our federal government—growth which has stifled the private sector and our free economy, and limited and de-incentivized the working American’s drive to succeed.

We need politicians who are willing to take on conservatism’s challenging PR problem of commonsense financial responsibility. We need leaders who are unafraid of selling the idea of fiscal of conservatism. It will be hard to do this when so much of the American electorate has demonstrated their willingness to go along with liberalism’s enticing solution of spending, spending, and more spending. But just because it will be hard does not mean it’s not right.

Electing politicians who believe in a small government that spends as little as possible is always important in any election. But it is particularly important in the 2016 presidential election. Why?

I can think of two big reasons.

First, the office of President of the United States, for better or worse, has become a “bully pulpit” from which the president wields an enormous amount of rhetorical and public opinion powers that can shape political policies and societal trends.

Second, Barack Obama has used his presidential pulpit to preach a more radical form of big government intrusion into the private economy than any of his predecessors since the 1960s. This flies in the face of all the freedom and prosperity we have gained since the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s, and we now desperately need a president who will turn the tables.

To conclude this blog post and paint the issue of big government into the bigger picture of what’s happening to our country, it needs to be remembered that ending the big government legacy of Obama’s presidency is just one reason why Americans should elect a conservative into the White House later this year. Barack Obama’s administration—in addition to inappropriately increasing the federal government’s role in our lives—has done everything it can to eliminate America’s positive influence on the world stage and has lent its support to special interest groups and social causes that have done great damage to public morality and virtue. It’s a blessing to know that after January, 2017, Barack Hussein Obama will never again be President of the United States of America. Unfortunately, his legacy of government expansion into the private sector, moral chaos in the public arena, and unprecedented anti-Americanism at the highest levels of political leadership will probably last into the far future. It is because of the potency of Obama’s legacy that Americans today so desperately require a leader who will repudiate liberalism’s lies—a leader who will show us that the way to a better America and a better world does not pass through federal agencies and government bureaucracies that spend money faster than a drunken sailor.

As we Americans work our way through the 2016 presidential campaign, we MUST NOT lose sight of the most important goal of all: we must be willing to do almost anything within our Constitutional framework to deny the Democratic Party another four years in the White House. The very character and spirit of the United States of America is currently under attack, and the primary perpetrator is the Democratic Party. From the very day of its founding, the Democratic Party has specialized in being on the wrong side of history. The party was literally founded on the goal of removing the issue of slavery from the national discourse, thereby allowing the oppression of an entire race to be permanently institutionalized. After the Civil War, the party flew the flag of racism, segregation, and Jim Crow. Beginning in the days of the First World War, the Democrats switched banners and flew the colors of the left-wing Progressive movement. Later, the Democrats became the party of liberalism. Still later, they became the party of the communist-inspired New Left. Under Barack Obama, the Democratic Party has completed its transformation into the foremost organization in our country dedicated to limiting America’s positive influence in the world, and to turning the federal government into a petty tool for social engineering and an agent of cultural rot.

There are good people in both of the major political parties, and there always have been. I appeal to these people to wake up and recognize that another four years of Democratic governance from the White House—combined with lackadaisical compliance from the weak-willed Republican Party leadership—may very well result in irreparable damage being done to the spiritual fabric of the American republic.

--Christopher Peterson, February 27th, 2016