Train Wreck
February 21, 2005
There
can be no greater evidence that the GOP controlled Congress and
White House have created a perfect situation for a national fiscal
train wreck than when Howard Dean, the incoming chairman of the
Democrat National Committee, can actually run to the right of us
Republicans on restoring fiscal sanity to the federal
government. The train is coming right at us on the issue of
fiscal responsibility. This Congress and, unfortunately, my
President, are busily wasting what precious wisp is left of a
Party that once stood for limited government. We don't stand for
this principle anymore, and actually, we don't even talk about it
anymore. We haven't reformed a thing in government, eliminated a
duplicate or ineffective program, or challenged the status quo in
any department other than for Homeland security. When an
enterprising moderate Democrat figures this out, you can turn out
the lights for the GOP. We will be finished.
The
train wreck begins with the federal budget, which has, even
without the considerations of war, grown at a faster pace under
GWB than under any other Republican President. "Earmarks", or
special appropriations for members of Congress, are numbering in
the tens of thousands now. We used to call that "pork -
barreling" when Rostenkowski was leading the Democrat spending
machine in the early 1990's. Our pork barreling is now three
times what the Democrats were spending in 1990. While the present
budget does attempt to deal with runaway discretionary spending,
his budget still provides for a 5.4% increase next year and very
large deficit spending.
With
Medicare spiraling to bankruptcy, we passed an unnecessary drug
benefit for seniors, adding trillions to the cost of this already
obsolete way of funding healthcare. There might not be any worse
bureaucracy in the federal government than the Health Care
Financing Administration and now we are allowing it to grow
without substantive reform. We know the program is unnecessary
because hardly any seniors are signing up for it in this voluntary
stage. Soon the benefit will be "free" for all seniors. Indeed,
many Republicans were intimidated into voting for the plan, even
though drug companies have hundreds of programs for low income
seniors which essentially provide them free drugs. Now that we
paying for Warren Buffet and Ross Perot's Viagra, we have no way
of knowing what this beast is going to cost or how we are going to
pay for it.
The
President deserves high marks for taking on the issue of Social
Security, but his solutions are way too complex and the
"trillions" of "transition" costs are not at all necessary. We
can save Social Security with 5-6 changes in the current system
(see
http://www.fresnolincolnclub.org/mikes_archive.htm) and the
only aspect of this that will actually "cost" money is a new
mandate preventing Congress from stealing the Social Security
trust fund assets, and finally paying off what previous Congresses
have already stolen. Clearly, the system needs to be fixed, but I
haven't seen one idea that really empowers people to put more away
for themselves. This argument will be lost because we've made it
too complex and don't propose entrepreneurial solutions.
State
and local governments have nothing to show for massive increases
in the federal budget. Infrastructure is crumbling, the
interstate highway system is a mess, and there are no plans to
expand transportation capacity despite intolerable traffic and
steady population growth. Despite record increases in federal
spending on education the local districts are pleading poverty and
most aren't delivering a better product due to poor parental
involvement and fiscal mismanagement and outright malfeasance in
dealing with their own budget issues. Local governments,
including Fresno's, are now looking for tax increases as a way to
boost revenue, ignoring all evidence to negative effects on the
local economy. It's a battle we will fight.
The
most maddening aspect of this train wreck is that we could be
actually solving problems. Every member of the House of
Representatives is in a safe seat now. The political risk of
reforming the federal government is minimal. Incumbents will win,
even if they support strident reforms in how we spend money and
manage federal finances. Instead, we are sliding to where the
Democrats were in the early 1990's and behaving just as badly. By
the end of this decade, if not saved by population migration to
the South or an outright implosion of the Democrat Party, the GOP
will be out of the majority in either the House or Senate, and we
will have no one to blame but ourselves. For lack of courage,
lack of leadership, and the failure to seize a historic
opportunity to change Washington, unless there are major changes
in the way the House and Senate direct the budget process, all
will be lost, sadly, for the GOP.
Michael Der Manouel, Jr. |