[Newsbot]

Filibuster Cartoons
Title: Melting the tip (click to view)
Date: October 18, 2010
When you ask your average Republican candidate what he plans to do once elected, his answer is simple and straight-forward: reduce the size and cost of government. But when you press the matter further, things quickly get very dark and muddled.

A popular conservative theory holds that one of the main reasons government costs so much, and taxes are so high, and the country is in such deep debt, is because the nation's politicians are simply a bunch of incompetent, corrupt, spendthrifts. They create massive government programs with little accountability, fritter away billions on frivolous projects and faddish causes, and feather their own nests by cramming bills full of all sorts of pork and earmarks for their own districts. Obviously that is indeed the case to a considerable extent, but even so, problems of corruption and incompetence seem to be of fairly marginal economic consequence, when viewed as merely one component part of a much bigger budgetary picture.

In the United States, the percentage of the federal budget that politicians can easily play around with — that is, non-defense, discretionary spending — only represents a paltry 16%. The rest is all permanent programs or one sort of another, mostly entitlements and defense. And since Republicans consider cutting defense spending the ultimate taboo, that just leaves entitlement programs as the most serious candidate for pruning.

Problem is, state entitlements remain popular with the American people, particularly medicare and social security, the two biggies. Indeed, in a sort of cruel irony, many Americans, even conservative Americans, feel particularly entitled to subsidized retirement income and medical welfare precisely because their government is so expensive, and they've been paying so much into it over the years. It's the one redeeming quality of big government, after all — hang around long and eventually you'll get yours.

In this sense, America is not terribly different from most other western welfare states. The huge protests we've seen in Europe lately over their various retirement cutbacks are easily imaginable in the United States, which is probably why the Republican Party, even in its most grim-faced, anti-Obamacare hour, still likes to champion itself as the stalwart defender of medicare, and why so many conservative politicians declare that their mission is to "save" social security, rather than restructure it in any serious way (George W. Bush having already disastrously walked into that minefield).

In short, the Republican narrative about fixing the budget is extraordinarily shaky, and Republican politicians often have to spend just as much time trying to dodge the logical inconsistencies mentioned above, as promoting their own vision. A particularly amusing instance of this phenomenon in action can be found here, in this video of California GOP Senate candidate Carly Fiorina being interviewed by FOX's Mike Wallace. Wallace, hardly a liberal media hack, consistently presses Mrs. Fiorina to explain just what she would cut in the budget, other than the vauge chimera of "waste, fraud and inefficiency." And Mrs. Fiorina, of course, has very little to say.

[The_Doctor]

Republicans claim their not for big government. Yet, they love the Military Industrial Complex. Giving use tax cuts to millionaires and billions yet not pay for two wars.

[Teikiatsu]

That may have been the truth in the past, but more and more Americans are beginning to understand that we have to peel back entitlements and yes, we have to reign in some defense spending.

Note: support of the military is a Constitutional requirement of the American government whereas Welfare is not. While there are corners that can be cut, 'the grand military complex' should not be cut as much as the social programs. But there must be cuts.

[Teikiatsu]

The_Doctor wrote:

Republicans claim their not for big government. Yet, they love the Military Industrial Complex. Giving use tax cuts to millionaires and billions yet not pay for two wars.

1) The tax cuts were for everyone
2) War spending is finite, social program spending is forever* when you have weak-spined politicians.

*well, at least until it is no longer sustainable after a few generations.

[Pseudonym]

This kind of thing has always bothered me. You hear little bits and pieces from here and there about entitlement reform, but whenever anyone starts to make it a big issue, it is pretty much political suicide. You have to get in power to change the system, but you can't get in power while talking about changing that system. However, I get the impression that public opinion is turning around on this, and that if someone really tried, they could explain reforming entitlements in such a way as to make it a serious issue. There are a couple politicians who are making this work - Chris Christie is currently one of my favorites, New Jersey's governor is taking on public sector unions to enact and pass pension reform in the state.

[Marcus_Ozius]

I'm reading Plutarch's Lives lately, and it just keeps seeming more and more interesting to me the parallels that tend to happen in a society that overdevelops the safety net. We think of the social safety net as being for the benefit of the weak, but, in reality, it benefits the strong more than anybody else.
A safety ensure a certain amount of stability and gives the teeming masses a vested interest in the system. A life can fall this far and no further, so why risk what you've got in order to support some new system that exists for the purpose of taking away what you have?
The difficulty, though, is that safety nets have existed largely in the case of states that possessed Empires. Athens, Rome, the modern European powers. A safety net was conceivable because they had the resources gathered from exploiting others. The money had to come from somewhere, and it did. It came from a booming population and foreign markets/trade.
The despots of history were not, as a rule, of the party of the strong in the early stages. In those early stages, the popular leaders who become tyrants are/were almost always of the popular party, the party promising peace, land, bread, or bread and circuses, or that inscrutable notion of "change".
The difficulty, though, is that a safety net requires expanding economy and expanding population to maintain itself. This is possible only within certain contexts. If the economy declines and the birthrate falls, these systems are unable to function. During these troubles, the military industrial complex comes to the fore and artificially creates a population/economic expansion by way of Empire. If Empire is not an option, then the military oftentimes becomes a haven of safety and security, a safety net by any other name. In a contest between civilians and soldiers, who is likely to win? And thus you get the crisis of the 3rd century, possibly soon to be the crisis of the 21st century.
No government that gives something is capable of taking it away unless it is feared by the people. Only the immediate threat of something worse will make people take a personal hit. Democracies are things of the people. The people who run a country are, by and large, a representation of the country as a whole, be it for good or ill. In a self centered, greedy, short sighted society, the leaders will behave accordingly, and it is far easier to put off problems than to lose one's job. Until a crisis arises, it is difficult to imagine any action happening. If you look at modern Greece, you can see that even with a crisis, unions are protesting for not receiving money that simply does not exist for them to receive. When the bread stops flowing, when the circuses die down, then suddenly the horror of the strong is realized. The masses, having nothing to lose, pose a danger of rising up and doing something. To that end, the safety net stands until such time as those in power view some external threat as more horrible than their own people, and the people, if they are not going to wreak havoc, must have the fear of some outer power instilled in them.
We've too few enemies to ask ourselves to sacrifice. The generations past gave us so much that we would require so little, yet we've not even been willing to give what little is required.
I am curious to see what will come to pass, even if I am a bit worried. There is always a chance of a group of people bucking the curve and doing what is right and necessary, but I find that to be unlikely.
We'll see.

[Kjorteo]

I believe this is why Jon Stewart, in a surprisingly civil and well-spoken debate with Eric Cantor (this is the guy who's doing the Rally to Restore Sanity, though, I suppose) challenged the right-wing narrative that they're the ones who oppose wasteful Government spending, as opposed to... what... Democrats being for wasteful Government spending? No, it's just that both sides want to limit Government to the stuff they want it to do.

[BartSimpson]

Kjorteo, sorry, but the Democrats only want to limit how much the government lets people keep after taxes. And they only want to cut the military when it's fighting a war they didn't start.

[Zipperfish]

Another fantastic cartoon and insighful commentary, JJ.

[SparcVark]

There are some Republicans talking about drastic restructuring of Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security, like Paul Ryan down the road from me in Janesville. Also, Chris Christie (Too Big To Fail!) is demonstrating that people will respond to hard truths and tough decisions about public finances when their leaders are straight with them.

But I'll agree with JJ that there are not nearly enough. I think a lot of politicians will keep ignoring the impending budget catastrophe until we have a bond rating comparable with Zimbabwe and people stop loaning us money.

[Zipperfish]

The reasons that wannabe politicians focus on waste and inefficiency are that (a) it makes the current government look bad and (b) it promises cuts in taxes but no cuts in service. There are enough old adages that should warn listerners of people promising something for nothing, but, alas, this is still the the most-drawn arrow from the politician's quiver. Probably because a more honest response will have negative implications for a politician's electoral aspirations.

I'm not even sure that efficiency, in and of itself, is necessarily a desired end. I'm convinced that, in Canada, a huge amount of money is "wasted" in various territorial squabbles between the federal and provincial governments. They're taking each other to court, or they both claim jurisdiction in a particualr area and their is duplication of regulation, etc. When the feds and the provinces (or states) go at it, the entire war is funded by the taxpayer. So you get the opposite of efficinecy, where you're actually funding two sides to fight each other.

But this constant to-and-fro between federal and provincial/state powers is also a strength of our system, particualrly if you consider a federation a superior form of stae to the unitary state. It also adds a robustness to the system--problem areas are constantly shored up in these internecine disputes. If the province didn't fight for its jurisidiction the federal government would become too powerful, and vice versa.

[Marcus_Ozius]

Governmental inefficiency is built into the U.S. Constitution. An efficient government would have been a theoretical threat to liberty. With a moderately self reliant population, governmental inefficiency is a safeguard. The difficulty comes in when the government is supposed to supply too much.

[JJ]

Zipperfish wrote:

Another fantastic cartoon and insighful commentary, JJ.

Thanks a lot, Zip!

Teikiatsu wrote:

Note: support of the military is a Constitutional requirement of the American government whereas Welfare is not. While there are corners that can be cut, 'the grand military complex' should not be cut as much as the social programs. But there must be cuts.

Well, to be fair, the constitution does talk about promoting "the general welfare." But if we're going to be restrained in our interpretation of what that means, it seems to me that we should be equally moderate in determining just how big a slice of the GDP is really needed to "provide for the common defense."