{"id":1876,"date":"2011-02-06T11:13:18","date_gmt":"2011-02-06T16:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=1876"},"modified":"2011-03-06T17:49:45","modified_gmt":"2011-03-06T22:49:45","slug":"saving-money-is-no-object-tea-party-budget-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=1876","title":{"rendered":"(Saving) Money Is No Object: Tea Party Budget Thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Big Picture Home Page<\/a>\u00a0| Previous Big Picture Column<\/a>\u00a0| Next Big Picture Column<\/a><\/p>\n

(Saving) Money Is No Object: Tea Party Budget Thinking<\/h2>\n

Published in the Maryland Daily Record\u00a0February 7, 2011<\/h3>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Arguably the most important law of them all is the federal budget.\u00a0 Its passage and contents are the precondition of the execution, enforcement and administration of all other federal laws and many state ones.\u00a0 Its provisions embody some of the most important political choices we as a nation make.\u00a0 So what politicians want to do with the budget really matters.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 However, it is not always easy to tell what<\/em> they want.\u00a0 Shortly after Barack Obama\u2019s State of the Union Address and the Republican response voiced by Congressman Paul Ryan on January 25, presidential advisor David Axelrod acknowledged on television that neither side had yet \u201cturned over their cards\u201d on the specifics of how to address our budget problems, though that was clearly coming soon.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A formal leadership position communiqu\u00e9 – sort of<\/h3>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The third voice in our budgetary debates, that of the Tea Party, has, however been heard.\u00a0 In a major above-the-fold op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/a>\u00a0on January 19, Dick Armey, former House majority leader, and Matt Kibbe, co-authors of Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto<\/a>,<\/em> provided a very clear picture of how their movement would handle the budget.\u00a0 This is the closest thing to a formal leadership position communiqu\u00e9 we are apt to receive from a movement that fancies itself as leaderless.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One logical solution to our budgetary shortfalls, i.e. raising taxes, is not even mentioned.\u00a0 We seem to have reached a point in our nation\u2019s dialogue where the idea of diminishing private wealth in order to maintain or better public goods does not even rate consideration.\u00a0 To be sure, the argument exists that increased taxes actually lower Treasury\u2019s bank balance.\u00a0 Armey and Kibbe cite the godfather of this kind of thinking, Milton Friedman.\u00a0 But the self-contradictory theory that giving the government less money somehow gives it more remains but feebly supported by experience.\u00a0 In real life it was called Reaganomics, and the evidence seems to have been that tax revenue increases accompanied the tax cuts during Reagan\u2019s years, but also that directly increasing taxes would have grown revenue far more robustly and not left us with as huge a deficit as Reagan saddled us with<\/a>.[1]<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Serious dismemberment<\/h3>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yet increased taxes are off the table in Tea Party-think.\u00a0 That leaves only one route to budgetary balance, and that is cutting federal programs.\u00a0 Well, \u201cprograms\u201d is hardly the word for it.\u00a0 These people are into serious dismemberment.\u00a0 They would simply eliminate the Departments of Commerce and Housing and Urban Development, and the Small Business Administration, for instance.\u00a0 They would de-fund NASA by 50%.\u00a0 They would sell off the government stake in Amtrak.\u00a0 They would end farm subsidies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Now Commerce of course runs the Census, the Patent and Trademark Office, the National Institute for Standards and Technology, the Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, for starters.[2]\u00a0 And HUD is at the forefront of programs designed to assure housing to those without market power to acquire it on the open market, like Section 8 and block grants to assist moderate income housing.[3]\u00a0 There\u2019s no suggestion in Armey and Kibbe\u2019s piece that these programs would be relocated.\u00a0 And obviously if they were, then the promised savings wouldn\u2019t materialize.\u00a0 So we have to assume they aim at the life of these programs, not only that of the departments that implement them.\u00a0 (No Census, though?\u00a0 Uh, doesn\u2019t the Constitution require one?)[4]<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Republican Study Group, a set of Congressman largely affiliated with the Tea Party, produced a report on January 20<\/a> that called for elimination of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (the foreign aid administrators).\u00a0 And most other discretionary spending would be cut by 15%.\u00a0 Meaning, Democrats pointed out, that DOJ would have to fire 4,000 FBI agents and the DEA would need to ax 1500 DEA agents, and Agriculture would need to cut 3,000 food safety inspectors.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And I haven\u2019t even touched on what the Tea Partiers want to do with entitlements.\u00a0 There isn\u2019t space.\u00a0 This discussion only covers \u201cdiscretionary\u201d spending.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The real dynamic<\/h3>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Does this seem like governing, in the sense of running the existing government?\u00a0 Obviously not.\u00a0 The dynamic here is that the Tea Partiers have seized upon the penury of our government as an excuse to try to change in very fundamental ways what government does.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One common theme is that the Tea Partiers want the government out of the business of helping economically-disadvantaged citizens.\u00a0 Hence the end of HUD, SBA and Americorps.\u00a0 Another is that the Tea Partiers want the government to stop directing the economy.\u00a0 The anticipated demise of Commerce and of farm subsidies is clear evidence of that, as well as the sought privatization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. \u00a0A third theme is the drastic diminution of government spending on infrastructure, like the \u201cprivatization\u201d of Amtrak (as if our freight railroads, which necessitated Amtrak\u2019s formation by starving passenger service over two generations, would buy it) or the end of urban mass transit grants, also called for by Armey and Kibbe.\u00a0 A fourth theme is attacking underwriting of the intellectual stimulation of the elite: CBP and NEA.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Of this thinking, we cannot exactly ask cui bono<\/em> in the classic sense,[5] as translated by Sherlock Holmes: \u201cWho is it profits by it?\u201d[6]\u00a0 The truth is, if all these government services were discontinued, each of the Tea Partiers would be personally hurt in ways they have not stopped to imagine.\u00a0 Yet, profit or no, their spokespeople claim to desire it and plan to work for it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One has to ask what kind of country the Tea Partiers desire, though.\u00a0 Clearly it is a big step away from a commonwealth.\u00a0 In Tea Party Utopia, it seems, the Partiers would get maximize their personal wealth, at whatever cost to the well-being of their fellow-citizens, even, or perhaps especially the poorest.\u00a0 It\u2019s a country where there would be no planning or direction of economic activity from Washington, apparently in the faith that an atomized economy could avoid obliteration by the better-organized economies of other nations.\u00a0 And a faith as well, in the teeth of historical evidence, that privately-funded economic forces undirected by government, would give us an adequate infrastructure.\u00a0 And in Tea Party Utopia, cultural elites would be denied the support and recognition that even the tiny sliver of the national budget dedicated to edifying them conveys.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A more perfect disunion<\/h3>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This would not be the \u201cmore perfect Union\u201d the Framers envisioned in the first phrase of our Constitution.\u00a0 This would be a more perfect dis<\/em>union, in which most of us would at the mercy of the mercantile aspirations of those with money, with whatever amelioration might be imparted by Adam Smith\u2019s Invisible Hand.\u00a0 Somehow that Invisible Hand would magically provide for the environment and for future generations.\u00a0 And consumers would be safe without safeguards (who needs those 3,000 food safety inspectors anyhow?) and informed without information (free at last, after NOAA\u2019s demise, to make up their own weather reports!).<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You may ask what kind of people would want to remodel our country this way.\u00a0 I\u2019m not in the business of casting aspersions, so I won\u2019t call anybody any names.\u00a0 But personally I would be ashamed to attend their Tea Party.<\/p>\n

[1] \u00a0\u00a0I do not purport to be an expert in this area.\u00a0 I am impressed, however, with the Wikipedia article on Reaganomics<\/a>, last viewed by me February 6, 2011, which includes a large section analyzing in detail the revenue impact of the various tax laws passed during Reagan\u2019s time, and which I think supports my generalizations above.\u00a0 There is also a counter-argument to be made that at the end of the Reagan era, the tax cuts legislated at the beginning had all been effectively offset by other tax increases.\u00a0 See this Forbes<\/em> piece<\/a> by Bruce Bartlett.\u00a0 The issues here also get all tangled up with economic growth, which indirectly affects tax revenues.\u00a0 However, my point here is focused on one pair of variables only: tax cuts and tax revenues.\u00a0 And on those, I submit, the evidence is clear enough: the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, Reagan\u2019s big tax cut that changed the upper brackets forever, diminished tax revenues, and did not raise them.\u00a0 And to the extent Milton Friedman or his latter-day apostles say otherwise, they are wrong.<\/p>\n

[2]\u00a0\u00a0 To start learning about what Commerce does, start with the official website<\/a>, and drill down.<\/p>\n

[3] \u00a0\u00a0Start here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[4]\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cThe actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.\u201d\u00a0 Art. I, \u00a72.<\/p>\n

[5]\u00a0\u00a0 A favorite expression of Cicero\u2019s.<\/a><\/p>\n

[6] \u00a0\u00a0Found in The Naval Treaty<\/a> (1893).<\/p>\n

Copyright (c) Jack L. B. Gohn<\/p>\n

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One has to ask what kind of country the Tea Partiers desire, though. Clearly it is a big step away from a commonwealth. In Tea Party Utopia, it seems, the Partiers would get maximize their personal wealth, at whatever cost to the well-being of their fellow-citizens, even, or perhaps especially the poorest. It\u2019s a country where there would be no planning or direction of economic activity from Washington, apparently in the faith that an atomized economy could avoid obliteration by the better-organized economies of other nations. And a faith as well, in the teeth of historical evidence, that privately-funded economic forces undirected by government, would give us an adequate infrastructure. And in Tea Party Utopia, cultural elites would be denied the support and recognition that even the tiny sliver of the national budget dedicated to edifying them conveys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2248,2235,2219,84,2229,2251,2223,2245,2222,2253,2206,2232,2247,2207,2239,2214,2240,2215,2227,474,2255,2238,2252,2242,656,2221,2237,2202,2236,2244,2241,657,2210,2208,2249,2209,2213,2230,2217,2218,2233,2225,2257,2220,2246,2226,2224,2205,709,404,219,2204,2231,2256,55,2228,1468,2216,2203,2211,2212,2199,2200,2254,2243,2234,2201,278,803,2250],"class_list":["post-1876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bigpicture","tag-adam-smith","tag-aid","tag-amtrak","tag-barack-obama","tag-block-grants","tag-bruce-bartlett","tag-bureau-of-the-census","tag-cbp","tag-census","tag-cicero","tag-congressman-paul-ryan","tag-corporation-for-public-broadcasing","tag-cui-bono","tag-david-axelrod","tag-dea","tag-deficits","tag-department-of-agriculture","tag-department-of-commerce","tag-department-of-housing-and-urban-development","tag-department-of-justice","tag-dick-armey","tag-drug-enforcement-administration","tag-economic-recovery-tax-act-of-1981","tag-economically-disadvantaged-ditizens","tag-fannie-mae","tag-farm-subsidies","tag-fbi","tag-federal-budget","tag-federal-bureau-of-investigation","tag-federal-national-mortgage-insurance-corporation","tag-food-safety-inspectors","tag-freddie-mac","tag-give-us-liberty-a-tea-party-manifesto","tag-house-majority-leader-dick-armey","tag-invisible-hand","tag-matt-kibbe","tag-milton-friedman","tag-moderate-income-housing","tag-nasa","tag-national-aeronautics-and-space-administration","tag-national-endowment-for-the-arts","tag-national-institute-for-stqandards-and-technology","tag-national-oceanographic-and-atmospheric-administration","tag-national-passenger-railway-corporation","tag-nea","tag-oceanographic-and-atmospheric-administration","tag-patent-and-trademark-office","tag-paul-ryan","tag-president-barack-obama","tag-president-ronald-reagan","tag-reaganomics","tag-republican-response-to-state-of-the-union-address","tag-republican-study-group","tag-richard-armey","tag-ronald-reagan","tag-section-8-housing","tag-sherlock-holmes","tag-small-business-administration","tag-state-of-the-union-address","tag-tax-cuts","tag-tax-increases","tag-tea-party","tag-tea-party-movement","tag-the-naval-treaty","tag-the-poor","tag-u-s-agency-for-international-development","tag-u-s-budget","tag-us-constitution","tag-wall-street-journal","tag-weather-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1876"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1895,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1876\/revisions\/1895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}