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There has been a lot of discussion in the Blogosphere over spending, tax cuts, and political parties. Josh Claybourn has been banging a drum on this one for a while but got all heated up again recently (see here, here and here). Andrew Sullivan chimed in as well. Via Balloon Juice I came across this Cal Pundit post.

In a very rough paraphrase what everybody is implying is that Republicans don’t want to cut spending anymore than Democrats do and that conservatives rarely bring it up because they are fawning all over President Bush. Josh for one is hopping mad about this and frequently demands to know what conservatives are going to do about it. So of course I feel compelled to add my two cents. What follows is my roughed out reaction to all of this.

The first thing I want to point out is that politics is the art of the possible. The reason I bring this up is that Josh and number of libertarians seem to think that the GOP can rocket to supremacy with a platform of radical cuts in government. This is obviously not true. Secondly, Josh seems to think that smaller government is the end all be all of conservative politics. I think this might have been true of a certain generation of GOP conservatives but it is no longer true. I don’t mean that conservatives would’nt prefer less federal spending and less government in general but rather that smaller government is not always THE priority issue or the one that trumps all others. The fact of the matter is that being a deficit hawk rarely gets you very far. Look at Newt Gingrich and the so called Revolution of 1994. Did they help push Bill Clinton and the D’s towards deficit reduction? Probably, but they did so largely at their own electoral expense. Oh sure a lot of that was ham handed showdowns over budgets, MediSacre tactics and the like but a lot of it was also due to public sentiment. It is simply hard to cut government programs and not get tarred as “hurting people.” If the GOP is a little nervous about cutting programs it is because it got burned before on the issue.

What the GOP has tried to focus on lately is spending on issues they feel are more central to government; restrain other areas of spending; and cut taxes. Out of this mindset comes block grants to the states and more market based programs. The emphasis on tax cuts is twofold: if we don’t send it back they will spend it; and tax cuts will grow the economy and reduce the deficit. Despite Josh and Andrew’s worries the GOP hasn’t suddenly decided to go on a spending spree. Rather politics are simply reflecting the general mood of the electorate. When the times were good in the 90′s politicians pushed for more spending because there seemed plenty to go around. Constituents didn’t want to see programs cut when there was a surplus. Politicians have to get elected to keep their jobs and they sensed that cutting programs wasn’t going to get them the votes that programs would. Bush hasn’t abandoned restrained spending as a goal. He has set a goal of 4% growth. He mentions in his speeches right along with the tax cuts and he has threatened vetoes for appropriation bills that are overloaded. In addition Bush has attempted to focus the current spending in better ways. For example rather than cut Head Start Bush sought to focus and improve the program so it actually accomplished something. Obviously he did this because he thought it was a wiser electoral strategy AND good policy.

I think the biggest issue that is being overlooked is the obvious point that the GOP is simply the better of the two options. If anyone out there honestly believes that in aggregate a Democrat majority in Congress would result in less government, I have got some prime Ocean front property in Iowa I would love to sell them (remember Clinton/Gore cut mostly the millitary to shrink “government”). Josh and others have pointed to this USA Today article to show that Democrats are actually better than Republicans at restraining spending. But the article is not as simple as these bloggers seem to indicate. First of all the survey covers the years between 1997 and 2002, a practically unprecedented boom time and a period when a number of GOP Governors were elected to office. As the article points out, spending rises quicker when one party controls the legislature and the governorship. During this time a large number of states were controlled in this fashion by the GOP. Related to this is the fact that if you took this survey two years from now things would be a lot different as those same GOP legislatures that overspent in the Nineties are cutting like mad to balance their budgets. Also worth noting is that the focus on the states doesn’t take into consideration regional differences. Obviously a Democratic State Legislator from Texas is quite different from one in California or New York; to say nothing of urban versus rural, etc. Lastly, spending dynamics are different at the state level. There are certainly more conservative Democrats at the state level than there are at the federal level. The simply fact remains that, in aggregate, most Democrats are for more government plus a host of issues that are diametrically oppossed to conservatism (abortion, gun control, judges, family, taxes, etc.) Given the candidates, the history, and the platform it makes sense for conservatives to support a GOP majority. If the majority is thin, as it has been recently, prudence requires care in raising one issue above others.

Of course, this in no way means that I will stop encouraging my representatives to cut spending. I am all in favor of less Washington spending and more local control for example and I communicate this whenever I get a chance. I just happen to think that I can best get my message across by working within the GOP. I am all in favor of getting better candidates into primaries and workling hard to elect candidates that are for smaller government. If conservative Democrats emerge who are credible leaders on this issue I would certainly consider supporting them but right now I prefer the GOP retain control of congress and a growing deficit is a risk I am willing to take.

Next I will try and explain why deficits don’t scare me right now.