Bush's Big Government Conservatism

In a strange op-ed in Sunday's New York Times, David Brooks offers the first (somewhat) honest defense of "big government conservatism" that I've seen. Brooks writes:

Bush set off on a journey to define what he
called "compassionate conservatism" and what
others call big government conservatism.

It's been a bumpy ride. Over the past five years,
Bush has overseen the fastest increase in
domestic spending of any president in recent
history. Moreover, he's never resolved the
contradiction between his compassionate
spending policy and his small-government tax
policy.

But gradually and fitfully, Bush has muddled his
way toward something important, a positive use
of government that is neither big government
liberalism nor antigovernment libertarianism.
He's been willing to spend heaps of federal dollars,
but he wants that spending to go to programs
that enhance individual initiative and personal
responsibility.

As with most of Brook's writing, this particular column sounds a lot more like a post-hoc rationalization of Bush administration policy than a principled justification of it. That said, give Brooks credit for at least acknowledging, albeit in passing, the massive contradiction at the heart of Bush's "big government conservatism." Brooks observes that Bush has "never resolved the contradiction between his compassionate spending policy and his small-government tax policy." That's quite an understatement. Brooks makes it sound as if this is some minor inconsistency, a mere wrinkle that Republicans need to iron out at some point down the road.

It's not that easy, however. Bush and the GOP have made it abundantly clear that tax cuts are their signature issue and their chief priority. Bush's first term tax cuts--which disproportionately favored the very richest Americans--are still the accomplishment of which conservatives are the proudest. Following Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration has promised to spend over $200 billion in relief efforts but has made it absolutely clear that tax increases are out of the question. Indeed, they still wish to make Bush's previous tax cuts permanent. And in perhaps the best example of misplaced priorities I've ever heard of, TIME Magazine reports that Republican legislators are currently combing through the obituaries of Katrina victims trying to find at least one victim of the storm who is subject to the federal estate tax. The hope is that somehow such a person can be used to help revive political momentum for the GOP effort to repeal the estate tax, a tax which affects only the richest 1.2% of Americans (so far they haven't had any luck finding their ideal victim).

Let's face it, Bush is more likely to appoint Ted Kennedy to the Supreme Court than to raise taxes, and Brooks knows it. So what we are left with is an entirely incoherent and untenable governing philosophy. We spend and spend and spend some more--including fighting wars and rebuilding entire cities--and we do it all with borrowed money. We run record deficits and incur massive debt, and with no plan or even thought given to how this debt will ever be repaid. Moreover, we rely entirely on foreign countries (some of them hostile) to loan us the money we need to run these deficits. It's like living off a credit card which has interest rates set at the whim of your neighbors (some of whom don't particularly like you). In short, it is fiscal insanity.

But what about the supposed upside of Bush's "big government conservatism?" Brooks praises Bush for moving away from "big government liberalism" and toward supporting "programs that enhance individual initiative and personal responsibility." But alas, even this is false praise. Brooks simply contrasts Bush's spending choices against an inaccurate caricature of "big government liberalism." As Mark Schmitt points out, "[l]iberals/Democrats are absolutely interested in new and market-based approaches, if they work." Indeed, many such programs were implemented during the Clinton years. Liberals are concerned with the effectiveness of policies; they are not ideologically wedded to any particular conception of the government's role. The same is not true for conservatives, whose antipathy towards government and ideological obsession with market-based proposals has led them to advocate programs that are poorly thought out and unlikely to be effective. This phenomenon can be seen the current GOP effort to use the Katrina reconstruction project as a laboratory for every pet program ever churned out by a conservative think tank. Some of these ideas have merit, but other worthy ideas are undoubtedly being left off the table because they don't fit a narrow ideological vision of what a government program should look like.

So Bush's "big government conservatism" is essentially a combination of 1) massive tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans 2) unprecedented spending on an ideologically-constrained set of initiatives and 3) massive borrowing from foreign countries. This simply isn't a sustainable, coherent, or sensible governing philosophy, much less a praiseworthy one.