RE: Reagan vs. Bush: Federal Spending and Budget Deficits
Well, that's a shame. I actually thought there was more to McIntyre than simple GOP cheerleading.
Obviously, there is a dichotomy here that cannot be explained by simple polemics. On the one hand, critics of the Bush Administration's domestic spending policies fault them with the biggest expansion of government since Johnson's "Great Society," and on the other hand, neo-con apologists point out that Bush's spending isn't much out of line with Reagan's. Someone has to be wrong.
The answer is mostly in the axiom of "lies, damned lies, and statistics," but there is a little more to it than that. McIntyre is guilty of the same semantic spin that he has decried of the liberal press in the past.
First, it should be noted that a comparison of spending under Reagan and under Bush is largely an apples-to-oranges argument. Reagan faced a Democrat-controlled Congress for most of his presidency and during the two years he had a marginally Republican-controlled Senate, the leadership was of the neo-Marxist variety under the hand of Bob "Tax Collector for the Welfare State" Dole. Reagan had to fight tooth and nail for every penny of tax and spending cuts, sometimes with his own party. The increase in Federal spending under Bush, a fact McIntyre doesn't deny, has been a result of Bush's policies of "compassionate conservatism," cover language for socialism. The GOP-controlled Congress has been little more than a rubber stamp for Bush's policies and has taken advantage of the massive program increases to do a little entitlement skimming of their own. See also Ted Stevens. So, while Reagan battled the entitlement juggernaut, having to fight even members of his own political party to accomplish what he did, Bush has re-implemented the entitlement juggernaut, sometimes fighting members of his own political party to spend more on socialism.
Second, comparing the change in the economic fortunes of the country under Reagan and those under Bush, simply by throwing carefully crafted statistics at us is completely dishonest. A better statistic of the size and economic intrusiveness of government would be the burden of taxes on individuals business. Before Reagan, largely as a legacy of the Nixon and Carter Administrations, the overall burden of taxes on individuals was approaching 30% and on business was approaching 50%. The Reagan tax cuts actually diminished this burden to under 25% on individuals and under 40% on business. Reagan's tax cuts materially reduced how much the government looted its citizens' pockets and allowed them to keep and spend more of their income. The result was the largest peacetime expansion of the economy in our history and the Bush-Clinton-Bush triumvirate still reaps the political benefits today. The Bush "tax cuts" were mere window dressing, evidenced by the fact that the tax burden on individuals has continued unabated in its climb toward 50% since he became President. Couple this with the fact that real wages continue to decline (mostly due to the ever-increasing presence of women in the workforce, but that's another issue) and prices continue to climb. The Bush Administration did not abandon the economic fairy tale adopted by the Clinton Administration to prove that inflation does not exist.
Finally, simple statistics do not address the ideological and political impacts of the socialist makeover of the GOP under Bush. Reagan sought to dismantle government apparati that simply grew themselves and were ever more intrusive into the economic aspects of American life. During the Reagan Administration we repeatedly heard the essential question, "Is this a proper function of government?" During the Bush Administration the question is no longer asked by the GOP leadership and those in the GOP rank-and-file who ask the question are relegated to "extremist" and "hardcore unappeasable" status. The so-called right-wing extremism of the Reagan years acted as a counterbalance to the American slide toward Marxism and pulled us back to the relatively center-left economic and political climate of the pre-Nixon years. The triangulation of the Bush political machine has marched the GOP to a left-of-center position, thereby forcing the opposition party, the Democrats, to the extreme left and leaving us with no counterbalance to prevent a fall into a planned economy.
All the neo-con spinning aside, the Bush Presidency will be seen by history, in my opinion, as an unmitigated disaster, both for the American experiment as well as the viability of the Republican Party as an opposition force to the Marxist Democrats. The methods of the Clinton and Bush political teams have reduced American politics to a juvenile shoving match, with contests to see who can subvert the dialogue best in order to further the partisan con game. McIntyre has done nothing with this essay other than to show that he can toss off an occasional shove with the best of his neo-con allies.
Obviously, there is a dichotomy here that cannot be explained by simple polemics. On the one hand, critics of the Bush Administration's domestic spending policies fault them with the biggest expansion of government since Johnson's "Great Society," and on the other hand, neo-con apologists point out that Bush's spending isn't much out of line with Reagan's. Someone has to be wrong.
The answer is mostly in the axiom of "lies, damned lies, and statistics," but there is a little more to it than that. McIntyre is guilty of the same semantic spin that he has decried of the liberal press in the past.
First, it should be noted that a comparison of spending under Reagan and under Bush is largely an apples-to-oranges argument. Reagan faced a Democrat-controlled Congress for most of his presidency and during the two years he had a marginally Republican-controlled Senate, the leadership was of the neo-Marxist variety under the hand of Bob "Tax Collector for the Welfare State" Dole. Reagan had to fight tooth and nail for every penny of tax and spending cuts, sometimes with his own party. The increase in Federal spending under Bush, a fact McIntyre doesn't deny, has been a result of Bush's policies of "compassionate conservatism," cover language for socialism. The GOP-controlled Congress has been little more than a rubber stamp for Bush's policies and has taken advantage of the massive program increases to do a little entitlement skimming of their own. See also Ted Stevens. So, while Reagan battled the entitlement juggernaut, having to fight even members of his own political party to accomplish what he did, Bush has re-implemented the entitlement juggernaut, sometimes fighting members of his own political party to spend more on socialism.
Second, comparing the change in the economic fortunes of the country under Reagan and those under Bush, simply by throwing carefully crafted statistics at us is completely dishonest. A better statistic of the size and economic intrusiveness of government would be the burden of taxes on individuals business. Before Reagan, largely as a legacy of the Nixon and Carter Administrations, the overall burden of taxes on individuals was approaching 30% and on business was approaching 50%. The Reagan tax cuts actually diminished this burden to under 25% on individuals and under 40% on business. Reagan's tax cuts materially reduced how much the government looted its citizens' pockets and allowed them to keep and spend more of their income. The result was the largest peacetime expansion of the economy in our history and the Bush-Clinton-Bush triumvirate still reaps the political benefits today. The Bush "tax cuts" were mere window dressing, evidenced by the fact that the tax burden on individuals has continued unabated in its climb toward 50% since he became President. Couple this with the fact that real wages continue to decline (mostly due to the ever-increasing presence of women in the workforce, but that's another issue) and prices continue to climb. The Bush Administration did not abandon the economic fairy tale adopted by the Clinton Administration to prove that inflation does not exist.
Finally, simple statistics do not address the ideological and political impacts of the socialist makeover of the GOP under Bush. Reagan sought to dismantle government apparati that simply grew themselves and were ever more intrusive into the economic aspects of American life. During the Reagan Administration we repeatedly heard the essential question, "Is this a proper function of government?" During the Bush Administration the question is no longer asked by the GOP leadership and those in the GOP rank-and-file who ask the question are relegated to "extremist" and "hardcore unappeasable" status. The so-called right-wing extremism of the Reagan years acted as a counterbalance to the American slide toward Marxism and pulled us back to the relatively center-left economic and political climate of the pre-Nixon years. The triangulation of the Bush political machine has marched the GOP to a left-of-center position, thereby forcing the opposition party, the Democrats, to the extreme left and leaving us with no counterbalance to prevent a fall into a planned economy.
All the neo-con spinning aside, the Bush Presidency will be seen by history, in my opinion, as an unmitigated disaster, both for the American experiment as well as the viability of the Republican Party as an opposition force to the Marxist Democrats. The methods of the Clinton and Bush political teams have reduced American politics to a juvenile shoving match, with contests to see who can subvert the dialogue best in order to further the partisan con game. McIntyre has done nothing with this essay other than to show that he can toss off an occasional shove with the best of his neo-con allies.
posted by Anonymous | 11:22 AM
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