ALEXANDRIA, VA — There can be little doubt that our economy
is increasingly out of control. Government bailouts of Wall Street,
banks, and auto companies have been growing. The Bush administration
initiated these efforts, and the Obama administration has increased
them dramatically.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said in early June that the
nation needs to begin planning now to eventually bring taxes and spending
in line; he warned that large budget deficits, if sustained, could
deepen the financial crisis and choke off the economy. His statement
reflects the growing concern among economists and investors that the
nation’s long-term fiscal imbalances could stand in the way of
economic recovery by driving up the interest rates that the government,
business, and consumers pay to borrow money. The rate the government
pays has already risen in recent weeks.
The national debt is projected to double from about 41 percent of
the economy last year to more than 82 percent by the end of the next
decade. After that, things will get worse, budget analysts say, as
more and more members of the baby boom generation receive benefits
from Social Security and Medicare. The latest government estimates
show Social Security beginning to pay greater benefits than taxes collected
by 20l6, a year sooner than projected last year. The so-called trust
fund will be depleted by 2037, four years earlier than 2008 predictions.
Medicare is in even worse condition, paying out more in benefits than
collections for the second year in a row. So far, President Obama has
offered no plan to rein in these costs.
When you have a huge budget deficit and need to reduce it, you have
only two options: cut spending or raise taxes. Our politicians do not
want to do either. They do not want to raise taxes because that would
antagonize the voters, especially those who trusted “no new tax” pledges.
And politicians have a vested interest in continued increases in spending
— not in cuts.
Members of Congress subsidize, in one form or another, a host of special
interests — farmers, businessmen, universities, labor unions, welfare
recipients — and each group has a special Political Action Committee
(PAC) that contributes to Members' campaigns. Cuts in the subsidy will
provoke cuts in the contributions. The result: every group gets what
it wants, and budget deficits skyrocket. Added to all of this business-as-usual
subsidization are the bailouts of failed banks, Wall Street firms,
and auto companies — turning traditional ideas of free enterprise
on their head. Sadly, both Republicans and Democrats have been co-conspirators
in this undertaking.
We have, in fact, created in America a permanent political class that
has an interest in ever-expanding government. This is something the
Founding Fathers sought to prevent — and would be sorry to see.
Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Edward Carrington, observed that “the
natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to
gain ground.... One of the profoundest preferences in human nature
is for satisfying one’s needs and desires with the least possible
exertion; for appropriating wealth produced by the labor of others,
rather than producing it by one’s own labor.... In other words,
the stronger the government, the weaker the producer, the less consideration
need be given him and the more might be taken away from him. A deep
instinct of human nature being for these reasons in favor of strong
government, nothing could be a more natural progress of things than
for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”
It was because of their fear of governmental power that the Framers
of the Constitution limited government through the Bill of Rights and
divided its authority through our federal system. By establishing the
executive, legislative, and judicial branches — and by dividing authority
between the state and national governments — the Framers hoped to
ensure that no branch of government would ever obtain so much power
that it would be a threat to freedom.
The kind of activist government we have now — involved in every aspect
of people's lives, now even running an automobile company — is the
opposite of what the Founding Fathers had in mind. From the beginning
of history, the great philosophers predicted that democratic government
would not long preserve freedom. Plato, Aristotle, and, more recently,
De Tocqueville, Lord Bryce, and Macaulay, predicted that men would
give away their freedom voluntarily for what they perceived as greater
security. French political philosopher Bertrand De Jouvenal noted that “the
state, when once it is made the giver of protection and security, has
but to urge the necessities of its protectorate and overlordship to
justify its encroachments.”
Voters say that they are against big government and oppose inflation
and deficit spending, but when it comes to their own particular share,
they act in a different way entirely. Long-time Minnesota Congressman
Walter Judd once recalled that a Republican businessman from his district “who
normally decried deficit spending berated me for voting against a bill
which would have brought several million federal dollars into our city.
My answer was, 'Where do you think federal funds for Minneapolis come
from? People in St. Paul?'.... My years in public life have taught
me that politicians and citizens alike invariably claim that government
spending should be restrained, except where the restraints cut off
federal dollars flowing into their cities, their business, or their
pocketbooks."
If each group curbed its demands upon government, it would not be
difficult to balance the budget and restore health to the economy.
Human nature, however, leads to the unfortunate situation in which,
under representative government, people have learned that they can
vote funds for themselves that have, in fact, been earned by the hard
work of others.
This point was made 200 years ago by British historian Alexander Tytler: “A
democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only
exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess out
of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes
for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury
— with the result that democracy collapses over a loose fiscal policy,
always to be followed by dictatorship.”
The Founding Fathers never envisioned the creation of a permanent
political class such as the one we have now. They believed that men
would be farmers, businessmen, doctors, lawyers, teachers — and would
devote several years of their lives to public service and then go home
to continue their careers. Today, however, we have professional politicians
— men and women who support their families by holding political office
and intend to do so for many years. Their motivation is clearly whatever
will permit them to do so, not the long-run best interest of the country.
Still, we must keep in mind that Members of Congress respond to our
demands. As long as we seek to be subsidized by government, the politicians
of both parties will comply. In this sense, our own selfishness —
as well as theirs — is the culprit.
See this article at News
Blaze.
The Conservative Curmudgeon archives
The Conservative Curmudgeon is copyright © 2009
by Allan C. Brownfeld and the Fitzgerald
Griffin Foundation.
All rights reserved. Editors may use this column if this copyright information
is included.
Allan C. Brownfeld is the author of five books, the latest of which
is The Revolution Lobby (Council for Inter-American Security). He has
been a staff aide to a U.S. Vice President, Members of Congress, and
the U.S. Senate Internal Subcommittee.
He is associate editor of The Lincoln Reveiw and a contributing
editor to such publications as Human Events,
The St. Croix Review, and The Washington Report on Middle
East Affairs.
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