REAL CONSERVATIVE WISDOM (part one)

From the Washington Post via the Houston Chronicle, George Will on the growth of Federal spending:

The conservatism that has left the GOP adrift

But, then, the limited-government impulse is a spent force in a Republican Party that cannot muster congressional majorities to cut the growth of Medicaid from 7.3 percent to 7 percent next year. That "cut" was too draconian for some Republican "moderates." But, then, most Republicans are moderates as that term is used by persons for whom it is an encomium: Moderates are amiably untroubled by Washington's single-minded devotion to rent-seeking — to bending government for the advantage of private factions.

Conservatives have won seven of 10 presidential elections, yet government waxes, with per household federal spending more than $22,000 per year, the highest in inflation-adjusted terms since World War II. Federal spending — including a 100 percent increase in education spending since 2001 — has grown twice as fast under President Bush as under President Clinton, 65 percent of it unrelated to national security.

In 1991, the 546 pork projects in the 13 appropriation bills cost $3.1 billion. In 2005, the 13,997 pork projects cost $27.3 billion for things like improving the National Packard Museum in Warren, Ohio (Packard, an automobile brand, died in 1958).

Washington subsidizes the cost of water to encourage farmers to produce surpluses that trigger a gusher of government spending to support prices. It is almost comforting that $2 billion is spent each year paying farmers not to produce. Farm subsidies, most of which go to agribusinesses and affluent farmers, are just part of the $60 billion in corporate welfare that dwarfs the $29 billion budget of the Department of Homeland Security.

Click here for the rest.

Will, who I generally disagree with for numerous reasons, is absolutely right to observe that the GOP dominated Congress has gone totally mad with spending. I'm sure that the bespectacled bowtied one and I could argue for hours about what tax dollars should be spent on, but we are both in agreement that the Federal Government is essentially hemorrhaging money, which will much sooner than later result in grave consequences for the US economy. The long and the short of it is that deficit spending is financed by borrowing, but the enormous scale of government borrowing squeezes the money supply which results in either higher interest rates or higher inflation. Either result is death for growth; no growth means no jobs, and, ultimately, starvation in the streets. That's not surprising: the deficit trap has been known to economists for decades. What's surprising is that Republicans were elected to make sure that doesn't happen. But here we are.

To be honest, I don't really know what conservativism means anymore.

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