Collender on Fiscal Conservatism

Stan "The Man" Collender had another good column yesterday. Comments follow: You've heard the song before, probably on a country station. It sometimes crosses over into the mainstream and seems to get a lot of airtime in Washington just before the Redskins play the Cowboys. With apologies to Willie Nelson, my guess is that the parents of would-be fiscal conservatives are singing their own version of the song these days. Start with George W. Bush, the self-professed fiscal conservative who has done more to damage the notion of fiscal conservatism than any big-spending liberal has ever done. The Bush administration has proposed and agreed to some of the biggest increases in spending since the Great Society. In the process, some of the largest hikes ever in federal borrowing will have occurred while this president is in the White House and the amount spent on interest by the federal government will be much higher than it would otherwise be for decades to come.

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A Must-Not Read: "Bush and Earmarks" in WSJ

Friends don't let friends read Wall Street Journal editorials, so regard this a must-not-read message to those otherwise interested in the lobbying, ethics, and earmark reform bill that Congress passed almost unanimously just before the August recess. Here's what you're not missing in today's Bush and Earmarks: a litany of factual misstatements, convenient omissions, and political advice so bad -- urging the president to veto the lobbying and ethics bill on account of its "sham earmarks reform provisions" -- that even George W. Bush will probably reject it.

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The Fall of Imperial Rove

A lot of people are commenting on Karl Rove's departure and its implications. From a a fiscal policy perspective, Rove (and President Bush's) governing philosophy has a basic incoherance in its advocacy of tax cuts and a larger state. Rove, i'd venture, was no "starve the beast" advocate, in the style of lunatics like Grover Norquist who want to "destroy" government for some pathological reason I can't identify. Deficits to Rove were never a means toward shrinking the government. They were an unfortunate consequence of Bush's "have my cake and eat it too" attitude about fiscal policy.

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Katrina Recovery Update

The Brooking's Katrina Index released its latest report on the slow-going hurricane recovery. The report explains a few of the policy barriers to a full recovery: Despite this progress, many other obstacles to recovery remain.
  • The Road Home program will stop accepting applications after July 31, largely due to the estimated $5 billion shortfall in the program. Neither Congress nor the Louisiana legislature have committed to providing additional funding for Road Home.

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CBO Estimates Cost of Infrastructure Commission

CBO has released a cost estimate for an eight-member commission that would be established to "complete three studies and issue recommendations regarding the infrastructure needs of the United States." A day after the I-35W bridge collapsed in Minneapolis, the Senate approved, by unanimous consent, a measure that would create the National Commission on the Infrastructure of the United States, which CBO projects would cost $4 million over its three-year lifespan.

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The Unseen FY 2008 Budget Dialogue

The Parable of the Cave-In? In the parable of the cave, Plato describes the difference between the appearance of the handshadows on the cave wall, which is all that observers see and know of reality, political and otherwise. The shadows are distortions projected for popular consumption, while leaders' actual words and gestures indicate the reality that is to follow, according to Plato in The Republic, his most famous dialogue.

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NPP: Half of Those Eligible Receive Food Stamps

A report by the National Priorities Project finds that of all people that are income-eligible to receive food stamps, only half actually receive them.
  • Half of all low-income people did not receive Food Stamp Program benefits.
  • Counties with lower poverty rates and higher median household incomes had lower percentages of low-income people that were Food Stamp recipients.
  • A significant number of counties, 13.2 percent, had below-average percentages of Food Stamps, yet had above-average poverty rates.

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Fiscal Liberals, Be Not Afraid: The Power To Defeat The Right Is Within You

National Journal's Clive Crook deftly devalues "starving the beast" as a political tactic, which asserts that tax cuts can put pressure on lawmakers to reduce the size of the government. "Starve the beast" exponents are not demanding packages of lower taxes and lower spending. They are saying that lower taxes will sooner or later wear spending down anyway. When you look at those cases -- instances where taxes have been cut independently, with no connection to new spending plans -- spending does not fall, say the Romers. In fact, it rises a bit. "Starve the beast" does not work.

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From Compassionate to Cruel Conservatism

President Bush, once a wily "compassionate" conservative who passed the largest recent expansion in government health insurance and radically broadened the authority of the federal Department of Education, which Ronald Reagan threatened to destroy, has become predictable.

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New Challenge? Get In Line

Bush ($): My suggestion would be that they revisit the process by which they spend gasoline money in the first place...From my perspective, the way it seems to have worked is that each member on that committee gets to set his or her own priority first, and then what's ever left over is spent to a funding formula.

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