"To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing,
if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

Monday, October 04, 2004

I got a letter in the mail yesterday.  Many of you probably received the same thing.  It’s from the office of Bill Frist, and it’s called the “US Senate Majority Leader’s Survey 2004.” It purports to be a survey of Republicans on various issues, thus enabling the majority leader’s office to plot out the senatorial campaign.  There was one thing in the cover letter to the survey, however, that I just thought was asinine.  The capitalization and formatting in the quoted section below is exactly as it appears in the letter.

You see, the liberal Democrats don’t agree with President Bush.  They want BIGGER GOVERNMENT and HIGHER TAXES.  They want MORE OF YOUR HARD-EARNED MONEY to spend on their big-government programs.

Does anyone else find this laughable?  The Bush administration, and its allies in the Congress, have increased federal spending and expanded the size of government by something like 20%.  I’ll say one thing for the Democrats, when they come up with a spending proposal they also come up with the tax increases necessary to fund it.  The whole idea behind conservativism is that you cut taxes and you also cut spending at the same time.  Bush passed massive tax cuts, which I supported and still support.  He launched a war, which I supported and still support.  But now he’s talking about a new round of tax cuts.

Is he insane?  Look folks, we’re in the middle of a war.  Not only would I not support a fresh round of tax cuts during a war, but I would also support a modest tax increase to help pay for it. 

We’re all going to pay for this war eventually.  We’re all going to pay for the prescription drug benefit, or the rest of the nominally-Democratic social programs that Bush has signed into law during his tenure.  Yet the GOP political propaganda still points a finger at “those old tax-and-spend liberals.” Well, let me tell you something, I have a hell of a lot more respect for a tax-and-spend liberal than a spend-and-worry-about-paying-for-it-later Republican.  Think about it, here we have the Republicans who are spending on credit criticizing the Democrats who want to spend while raising the money first.  I never thought I’d hear these words come out of my mouth, but the Republicans are insane when it comes to their fiscal policy.

Any pretense of smaller government on the part of the GOP is officially over.

Update: Greetings Andrew Sullivan readers!  There’s a follow-up to this post here.