Big Government Speech
by Tad DeHaven

The American people tend to view politicians with a degree of skepticism similar to that of used-car salesmen. And it is no wonder. Politicians excel at manipulating the English language to sell themselves and their ideas. However, very rarely does the end product turn out to be what the voters thought they were buying.

A recent study by National Taxpayer Union Foundation (NTUF) adjunct scholar Mark Schmidt took a broad look at the vacuousness of political language in this country. The title of his paper, "The Orwellian Language of Big Government," pays homage to George Orwell's famous book, 1984. 1984 depicted a future totalitarian state that utilized deliberately misleading language in order to maintain control of its citizens.

As Schmidt writes, "A word or phrase is 'Orwellian' when it is impenetrably obtuse or even oxymoronic. Objective truth is eroded by the endless blowing of windy rhetoric. Reality is then constructed to suit the needs of the moment."

With a presidential election coming up in November, this "endless blowing of windy rhetoric" has quickly escalated into a tropical storm. And, as we approach the political day of reckoning, the American people can expect the discourse to escalate into a full-blown hurricane. Thus, in this heated political season it is important for conservatives to be on the lookout for Orwellian-styled rhetoric emanating from the campaign trail.

"Tax Cuts for the Rich." The Kerry campaign will continue to repeat this phrase ad nauseum to attack the Bush tax cuts. Given that the top five percent of taxpayers pay over 50 percent of all income taxes it is almost impossible to cut taxes without the "rich" benefiting. Moreover, the average taxpayer in the bottom 40 percent of incomes pays no effective income taxes. The truth is the Bush tax cuts benefited all taxpayers and actually made the federal income tax more progressive. A recent report from the Congressional Budget Office showed precisely this fact, yet Kerry's minions--and several uninformed sympathizers in the media--cried foul because the Bush tax cuts lowered the tax burden on the "rich."

"Fiscal Responsibility." To truly be "fiscally responsible" a politician would have to be a strong advocate and practitioner of both tax and spending reductions. Unfortunately, neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party appears to have a clue about true fiscal responsibility. The Bush Administration has presided over the largest increases in federal spending since the "Great Society" days of Lyndon Johnson. The White House chalks up this abysmal spending record to 9/11, war, and a faltering economy. However, as many analysts (including this one) have demonstrated, spending under the Bush Administration has skyrocketed across the board--all with Republicans in control of Congress.

But before Democrats start pining "fiscally responsible" badges on themselves, let us not forget that every profligate Republican proposal has been met with complaints from the Democrats that it wasn't big enough. And, the Democrats' Presidential candidate has called for the repeal of much of the Bush tax cuts in order to fund more government spending. NTUF analyst Drew Johnson recently calculated that Kerry's total agenda for his first year in office alone would result in a $226 billion spending increase. Calling for tax increases and more spending doesn't make you fiscally responsible; indeed, taken to its conclusion, it's socialism.

"Investments in...". Politicians of every stripe love to use business-like language to dress up their big government agendas. Government "investments" paid for with our taxed income tend to generate net returns on par with flushing money down an EPA-regulated toilet. But unlike other, real investments, if we don't contribute to the government's "mutual" fund (the U.S. Treasury) we could end up in jail--or worse. The fact is, an omnipotent state confiscating an individual's income and sending it to another citizen or group of citizens is not investment--it is legalized extortion.

"Exporting Jobs." Recessions and periods of sluggish employment tend to bring out the worst in economic ignorance among the political class. The latest fuss has been over the act of U.S. businesses importing services from abroad (also known as offshoring). As I will demonstrate in a soon-to-be-released paper, service importation is a clear net benefit to our economy. But, some politicians are muddying the waters and scaring gullible voters by claiming that jobs are being "exported." Jobs are not goods and services--they cannot be exported. Although the ramifications of offshoring are quite serious, it has thus far been difficult to have an intelligent debate thanks in large part to an opportunistic John Kerry running around the country moaning about "Benedict Arnold CEOs."

And the list goes on...

In the last four years we have been stuck with President Bush's bogus "compassionate conservatism," which has proven to be nothing more than "big government" with a Texas twang.

Union-backed politicians like Dick Gephardt are obsessed with Marxist talk about "working families." Somebody had better tell Dick that most of us white-collar folks aren't eating our Cheerios with champagne either.

The result of a massive government failure on 9/11 has been the creation of a "homeland security" bureaucracy. But this prompts the question: What was (is) the Defense Department "defending"? Worse, politicians of both parties are now routinely invoking "homeland security" to justify ridiculous spending proposals.

Finally, only the most shameless politicians can publicly claim that the federal government "spends" money when taxes are cut. Such an idea is of course ludicrous and illogical. However, this assertion is very popular with the Tom Daschle types who are arrogant enough to believe that your money belongs to the government in the first place.

The litany of inane words and phrases employed by politicians is extensive and Schmidt does an excellent job of reciting them. He concludes, "The Orwellian language of big government turns citizens into subjects." Schmidt also recognizes that although the U.S. is not the totalitarian state envisioned in 1984, we are in many ways heading down that path. As such, it is crucial for advocates of a free society on the frontlines of our nation's policy debates to provide the necessary clarity and reason that is sorely lacking today. Orwell would agree.

Tad DeHaven is an economic policy analyst with the 350, 000 National Taxpayers Union (www.ntu.org), a non-partisan citizen group founded in 1969 to work for lower taxes and smaller government. NTUF is the research arm of National Taxpayers Union.