Liberal columnist Frank Rich’s latest uncritical hit piece in the Washington Post “The Tea Party Wags the Dog is illustrative of a tiresome trend. Writing on Congressman Paul Ryan’s rebuttal to the State of the Union, Rich claims that it tells you all you need to know about Ryan’s tilt to the right that for all his professed disapproval of increasing the debt limit during an Obama administration he voted to do so twice himself during the gushing deficits of the Bush years.”
For the past couple of years there has been a good deal of talk about how the conservative movement is “wagging the dog” in terms of fiscal policy becoming its primary concern. The braying fallacious calls from the political left always have the same message: “Bush spent a lot of money and you didn’t care!” The implication is of course that the solution to wanton spending is to spend our way out of it. I will reword their conclusion: Because President Obama’s predecessor spent like a wastrel it is not only somehow acceptable but necessary for him to do the same. Such incoherence could be dismissed out-of-hand solely for its lack of logic but when there are other substantive reasons to do so we should take the time to focus on those out of fairness.
The first step in dismantling this canard is pointing out that conservatives did criticize President Bush’s profligate spending. Of all places The Washington Post’s archives help to prove this point. Rich’s colleague Dana Milbank wrote back in 2003 that when Bush signed the Medicare prescription drug benefit into law (the cost of which now seems like a trivial $2 trillion over 20 years) the reaction from conservative leaders was extreme disapproval. NPR noted also in 2003 that Bush received punishing blows for his handling of education and farm subsidies. Jonah Goldberg a prominent conservative figurehead excoriated Bush’s “spending binges” on Townhall. Matt Lewis another conservative author claimed in a 2006 article that Pat Toomey and other principled fiscal conservatives were critical of Bush’s spending habits from day one.
The actions of individual congressmen do not always represent their constituents. (See the final health care bill.) Larry Elder gets at the point precisely in the Washington Examiner: “Tea Party supporters at least many of them did complain about the size of government pre-Obama. Now things have changed for the worse. Government is larger than ever with no sign of abating unless and until this administration is stopped.”
Whatever the case two wrongs don’t make a right. In that light I would like to point out that it is actually the left’s responsibility to prove why our government should continue national spending at these levels. Apart from the fact that this makes sense because they are the ones who want to keep at it in spite of the problems it has created let us humor the Post writer and think back through the Bush decade. If you remember the anti-spending hysteria now (correctly) attributed to Republicans was also characteristic of their political opponents during the Bush Administration. Regardless of the topic of discussion the right could always count on receiving a lecture about the War on Terror or on defense spending in general. The legitimate constitutional function of defense is on the chopping block but the unsustainable welfare state stays. Recall the desire for a second stimulus only a year ago a tacit admission that the first was a failure. The left’s popular solution is obvious: Spend more. When does it end? Where are the calls for responsibility from those so narrowly interested in the Pentagon’s budget?
For all the talk about how Republicans are one-trick ponies or the particularly loathsome falsehood that they are the “Party of ‘No'” they are the only ones seriously engaged with this critical issue. Obama gave the same lip service to a “spending freeze” in the 2010 State of the Union as he did this year but a freeze is not enough. Characteristically dismissive though some may want to be about the crushing burden of our national debt and entitlement programs these are the things that will destroy this country. Congressman Ryan has had his substantive plan for fixing unfunded entitlements and the deficit — his “Roadmap for America’s Future” — on the table since Pelosi’s Congress. Just last month the GOP unveiled its program of spending cuts one that is admittedly insufficient in scope but is a start in the right direction. For the moment the House leadership is behaving like adults giving me a sliver of hope that they might actually tackle politically unpopular issues necessary for the survival of this country.