Hoorah! The new budget has arrived, and it proves Bill Clinton right:
The era of big government is over. The era of REALLY BIG government is just getting started, to be followed eventually by the era of government so big that it blocks out the sun and has its own gravitational field.
Why such prodigality from a self-professed conservative? Well, President Bush, goes the argument, has decided not to argue. Rather than attempt to shave a few billion pounds off Uncle Sugar's Brobdingnagian posterior, he has chosen to use the vast power of the federal government to achieve conservative ends.
Hmm. Well, it's hard to see how the prescription drug benefit advances conservative ideals, unless its baffling and labyrinthine procedures — Dr. Minotaur will see you now! — are a Rovian plot to poison people's attitudes toward nationalized health insurance. A government that grows to serve the needs of the right is a tool the left can use when it's their turn to muck things up, if such a day ever comes.
This approach fills conservatives with black despair. They want to see vast swaths of the federal budget put down like an old hobbling dog.
The Department of Education, for example, educates no one directly, and parents of both political stripes prefer local control over their schools. But they also want buckets of money skimmed from the general population and poured into their particular school, which is why everyone would squeal if Bush even proposed studying the department's elimination. He wants only stupid kids fit for burger-flipping or cannon fodder!
Who said they were mutually exclusive? Anyway, let no one say the Education Department has emerged unscathed in this budget. Check its Web site, ed.gov.
On the one hand, "discretionary appropriations" for education in the fiscal year 2007 budget represent a 5.5 percent cut from '06. On the other other hand, the '06 budget supposedly reflected "one-time costs for Hurricane Katrina relief" — apparently they saw the storm coming before anyone else and planned accordingly.
But even with the '07 cut, these appropriations are up $12 billion, or 29 percent, in the Bush years. On the other hand, the '07 budget eliminates 42 programs "deemed ineffective." Well, it recommends elimination. Congress will no doubt find a way to spent a few million to fund junior-high after-school buggy-whip oiling classes.
You can expect the news stories to fasten on that 5.5 percent cut, since the media seem to operate with three unspoken and largely unexamined assumptions: We don't spend enough on education; conservatives don't want to spend anything on education anyway since it leads to godless rational beliefs like "the Earth is round"; and a reduction in the overall rate of increase is tantamount to a reduction in funds.
Really? If you find two $5 bills and lose one, are you $5 ahead or $5 behind? The latter, if you work in Washington.
A reduction in the projected rate of growth is always a cut. Note the headlines about the
'07 proposals: "Bush's $2.77 Trillion Budget Plan Calls for Medicare Cuts," said The New York Times. The Washington Post had the same idea, and graciously upped the budget total: "Bush's $2.8T Budget Proposal Cuts Domestic Programs."
To which Democrats say: But of course. To which Republicans say: If only.
Conservatives will still, for the most part, vote Republican, even if they weep and rend their garments before checking off "R." Why? Because they see Democrats as the ones more likely to tax everything that isn't nailed down, levy "gravity user fees" for things that are, take away private health care, strangle school choice and want SpecOps to get a warrant before sabotaging Iranian nuke factories.
Sure, they may gain only 10 percent more voters instead of 15 percent. But ask any Democrat if that's a cut they could live with.
