Five years ago, then-President Clinton stated before Congress the essence of his contradictory agenda: “The era of big government is over,” he intoned, to great applause. Then he continued, “But we cannot go back to the era when people were left to fend for themselves.” The message was simple: Clinton wanted to pay lip service to smaller government — while declaring that Republicans dare not touch the welfare state. Is it any surprise, in the ensuing five years, that big government has gotten even bigger?
President Bush, at first glance, seems to present a contrast. In his address to Congress last week, he declared that taxes are “the people’s money” and that the surplus should be “refunded” to the people. It is more than just lip service; Bush’s tax-cut plan would reduce government’s projected revenues by an average of $160 billion per year over 10 years. At the same time, though, Bush promised to increase spending on education and Medicare, lock away trillions to shore up Social Security, and increase other programs by a “mere” 4 percent.
So here we are again. Government is going to get “smaller” — but it’s still going to get bigger.
This is the basic theme of today’s politics. There is a lot of talk about smaller government — but there is always some other priority that comes first.
The starting point of Bush’s budget is the one absolute that goes back as far as anyone can remember: increased government spending. Tax rates have gone up and down; deficits have gone up, down, and turned into surpluses; government spending has never done anything but go up. This is not even controversial. Neither Bush’s supporters nor his opponents have bothered to argue about it.
The budget’s second priority is to improve the government’s finances by paying down $2 trillion of debt over the next 10 years.
Then, as the lowest priority, there is the tax cut. The tax cut, you will notice, is carefully calculated to be just the amount of revenue left over after government has taken care of its needs. The $5.6 trillion in projected surpluses are pledged first to cover increased spending, second to debt reduction. Taxpayers are allowed to keep only the scraps.
But even that is too much for congressional Democrats, who denounce the tax cut as “risky.” The risk, it seems, is that Democrats might succeed in spending the surplus, so there will be “no money left” for tax cuts.
Lurking behind this budget squabble is the idea that the government’s needs come before the people’s rights. If politicians decide that they need more funding, or if they decide the government needs to reduce its debts — then individuals must sacrifice their right to keep the wealth they have earned.
Despite its famous tax cut, the Bush budget does little to reverse these priorities. By proposing enormous increases in a few programs and accepting, as an unchallenged absolute, the steady increase of most other government programs, it accepts the idea that the individual and his rights are subordinate to the government and its needs.
There is a persistent attempt these days to make us think that such issues as “free markets vs. big government” or “the individual vs. the state” are outmoded, that steady economic growth and government surpluses make it possible for us to have our cake and eat it, too — to have tax cuts and increased spending and debt reduction, all at the same time.
But basic principles cannot be dissolved. No amount of surpluses will let us evade the basic question: Who has the ultimate claim to our wealth — ourselves, i.e., the individuals who produce that wealth — or the government? Does the individual have rights, rights to his effort and to his property, that must be respected — or can his wealth be drained the moment a congressional leader claims to detect a “social need”?
Judging from the recent, razor-close election and the wishy-washy answers emanating from public opinion polls, the American people don’t want to take a definitive stand on that issue. They don’t want to be trod under the heel of government — but they don’t have the courage or moral confidence to assert their right to their own lives.
If we don’t take a stand on this issue, however, our politicians will. And the way things are going, it looks as if our right to keep our wealth will be the first thing on the chopping block when Congress starts to debate the Bush budget this week.
