When did the GOP have either the White House and a majority in both houses of Congress, or a veto-proof majority in both houses of Congress? When they didn't, they had to get the democrats to go along, and that requires compromise.
They had the White House
and both houses of Congress for a considerable period during
George W. Bush's presidency. Care to be reminded of the net result, a large part of which
cost the Republicans that Congressional majority in the 2006 elections? I quote:
Consider the following policy proposals that have been floating around Washington in the months
leading up to the 2006 elections: a) creating a new cabinet-level Department of Families; b) giving every
child $2,000 at birth; c) having the federal government fund 70,000 new math and science teachers; and,
d) requiring every American to purchase health insurance. One might expect that those proposals were
made by liberal Democrats, perhaps Ted Kennedy or Hillary Clinton preparing for their Senate majority.
In fact, every one of them was made by conservative Republicans.
Or consider President George W. Bush. Bush was the first Republican since Eisenhower to run for
president without calling for cutting or abolishing a single government program. Since his election, Bush
has presided over the largest expansion of government spending since Lyndon Johnson initiated the
Great Society. Domestic spending has increased by 27 percent during his presidency. More people
now work for the federal government than at any time since the Cold War. Not a single federal program
has been eliminated.
The expansion of the federal government under the Bush presidency goes far beyond mere dollars,
however. For example, this president has
* Enacted the largest new entitlement program since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, an unfunded
Medicare prescription drug benefit that could add as muchas $11.2 trillion to the program's unfunded
liabilities.
* Dramatically increased federal control over local schools while increasing federal education spending by
nearly 61 percent.
* Signed a campaign finance bill that greatly restricts freedom of speech, despite saying he believed it
was unconstitutional.
* Authorised warrantless wiretapping and given vast new powers to law enforcement.
* Federalised airport security and created a new cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security.
* Added roughly 7,000 pages of new federal regulations, bringing the cost of federal regulations to
the economy to more than $1.1 trillion.
* Enacted a $1.5 billion program to promote marriage.
* Proposed a $1.7 billion initiative to develop a hydrogen-powered car.
* Abandoned traditional conservative support for free trade by imposing tariffs and other import
restrictions on steel and lumber.
* Expanded President Clinton's national service program.
* Increased farm subsidies.
* Launched an array of new regulations on corporate governance and accounting.
* Generally done more to centralise government power in the executive branch than any
administration since Richard Nixon.
Individually, the merits of each of these items can be debated. Taken as a whole, they represent an
undeniable shift toward big government. We've come a long way from Ronald Reagan's warning,
"Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem," to George W. Bush
saying, "We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move."
. . . Despite the Bush administration's many flaws, however, placing all the blame for the growth
in government with the president is unfair. On those occasions when the Republicans in Congress
broke with the administration, they never did so to demand less spending or a smaller
government. A Republican-controlled Congress, after all, appropriated $91 billion more for
domestic programs than the president requested during his first term. Indeed, the Republican
addiction to growing government began well before Bush was elected president. When Republicans
took control of Congress in 1994, the federal budget was $1.9 trillion. The Fiscal Year 2006 budget
totaled just over $2.7 trillion . . .
The desire to expand government seems to have infected the Republican Party as a whole. The
Manchester Union Leader describes an editorial board meeting with then-Republican National
Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie:
The result was a surprisingly frank admission that the Republican Party defines
"fiscal responsibility" as increasing the federal budget "at a slower rate of growth" than the
Democrats (his words). We asked him three times to explain why President Bush and the
Republican Congress have increased discretionary non-defense spending at such an
alarming rate, and why the party has embraced the expansion of the federal government's
roles in education, agriculture, and Great Society-era entitlement programs. "Those
questions have been decided," he said. "The public wants and expanded role in those
areas, and the Republican Party at the highest levels has decided to give the public what
it wants."
It is no wonder that on election night 2006 exit polls showed the voters viewed Republicans
as the party of big government by an 11-point margin. More than 39 percent of voters now
believe that Republicans, not Democrats, are the party of big government. Another 16
percent of voters believe that both Republicans and Democrats support big government.
That's an astounding 55 percent of voters who believe that Republicans are a big-
government party. Even 29percent of Republicans said the Republicans are the "party of
big government," while an additional 17 percent of Republicans said both parties fit
that description.
Of course the Republican Party has always had its moderates or "wets." And many
conservatives have honoured their commitment to limited government more in rhetoric
than in action. Unified government power, with the House, Senate, and presidency all
controlled by the same party, nearly always yields more spending and bigger government
than divided government. But this rejection of the traditional conservative small government
agenda represents something different. The recent drift by Republicans and other conser-
vatives toward big government is not just a result of political pragmatism, addiction to
pork barrel politics, or the desire to curry favour with constituents who appear to demand
government solutions to the problems that affect them. Rather, it represents a slow but
steady change in conservative philosophy, one that rejects a Reaganite skepticism about
government in favour of a belief that big government may not be such a bad thing after
all, if it can be harnessed to conservative ends . . .
To some extent big government conservatives simply style themselves as realists who are
adapting traditional conservative ideals to the public mood. Underlying their approach is
a belief that, in the end, reducing the size of government is impossible. And, if the growth
of government is inevitable, conservatives should stop worrying about the size of
government and simply try to make the best of it. For example, Fred Barnes, executive
editor of The Weekly Standard, who claims credit for coining the term "big govern-
ment conservative," criticises those conservatives who "cling to the hope that some day,
somehow, the federal government will be reduced in size" . . .
This view seems unduly defeatist. Public opinion polls consistently show a majority of
Americans say they would prefer smaller government with fewer services to a larger govern-
ment with more services. Moreover, the political, academic, and media climates are cer-
tainly more hospitable to limited government themes than they were in, say, the late
1970s. That was a time before the advent of conservative talk radio or think tanks. Con-
servative ideas like school choice or individual accounts or Social Security reform were
little more than quaint academic concepts. Yet, that was the period when Ronald Reagan
was able to rise to the presidency. In contrast, big government conservatism appears
to have led Republicans to electoral disaster . . .
Traditional conservatives operated from a position of humility when it came to what govern-
ment could accomplish. They rejected what (F.A.) Hayek called the "fatal conceit" that
government can redesign society according to some sort of rational plan. But big
government conservatives share with contemporary liberals a belief that government
can design policies based on incentives and penalties that will result in people's behaving in
exactly the way policymakers seek. For both liberals and big government conservatives,
government is neither good nor bad. It is simply a tool to be used in the pursuit of
higher goals.
---From Chapter One, "Big Government: It Isn't Just for Liberals Anymore," in:
Remember, Bill---I have no more taste for Donald Trump than you have.
But I
have noticed that, here and in other forums I'm sure I have no need to name, there are
those among Mr. Trump's most vociferous and recalcitrant supporters now who were, once upon a time,
among the crowds in those places who were vociferous and recalcitrant supporters of the Bush presidency
and its concurrent Republican Congress no matter how unapologetically those Republican'ts contributed
to the continuing metastasis of big government. And the kind of invective they poured upon anyone standing
athwart that metastasis yelling "Stop!" in those places just might have embarrassed even the eminent
vulgarian Trump himself.
Somehow, they found religion again with the advent of His Excellency Al-Hashish Field Marshmallow
Dr. Barack Obama Dada, COD, RIP, LSMFT, Would-Be Life President of the Republic Formerly Known as
the United States, but that seems to have taken hold most when bleating about the "caving" of the
Republicans on Crapola Hill in the age of Obama.
But when
that type of Trumpet blows his or her horn about the uselessness of the Republican Party and its
contribution to the infestation they seek a china shop bull such as Mr. Trump to destroy, they are blowing
about the monster they suckled once upon a time.
Say I:
Screw this monkey business about making America "great" again, and get back to the
idea of making America
free again.
