Progressives Helping Limited Government?
by Donald Devine

Isn’t it great? Progressives are so solicitous about the welfare of limited government conservatives they are taking time from their victory celebration to give us their advice for our future. “New Democrat” inventor E.J. Dionne proposes now that small government conservatism is dead, we should model our future on Richard Nixon and become successful centrists like him.

His Washington Post pal Sebastian Mallaby even proposes for us to ally with Democrats. “Precisely because Democrats want government to provide social insurance against the volatility of globalization, the party has an interest in cutting unneeded federal spending. Precisely because entitlements are expanding so expensively, the party needs cost-saving ideas from anyone who has them -- including libertarians.” Citing a Cato Institute research director, he notes the only problem is they have to realize “the time has passed when libertarians could seriously hope to cut government.” In the future, “the ambition of realistic libertarians is not to shrink government but to contain it.”

So us poor limited government types have come to this--Richard Nixon or the Democrats? It is bad enough from the left progressives. Commenting upon the 2006 election, Rich Lowry, editor of the presumably conservative National Review magazine asks: “Which cuts in government would have in and of themselves increased the party’s popularity? Expanding the wildly unpopular gap to coverage in the Medicare prescription drug bill—the so-called donut hole—to save on entitlements? Cutting student loans? Even “earmarked” spending for special projects back home?”

“Minimal government” is even dead for the future. A following National Review editorial added. “Republicans are not going to risk alienating large portions of the electorate in order to win over half a percent of voters” who are libertarian in their voting. Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard, even tells us to throw Ronald Reagan overboard, claiming he “was a small government conservative but found it impossible to govern that way,” calling his boast of cutting government a “myth.”

Sorry all of you out there in progressive land, those who are so concerned for us, the Reagan cuts were not a myth. Barnes cites the growth in total government spending relative to GNP during Reagan’s tenure as proof. But President Reagan was clear he was going to increase defense spending to win the cold war. If one looks, at non-defense total spending, including entitlements, Reagan’s spending went down from 17.9 to 16.4 percent of GDP during his tenure. His non-defense discretionary spending went down 10.4 percent. Limited government is difficult since Reagan was the only modern president to do it--but it is not impossible.

Mallaby has a point that Democratic presidents have done somewhat better on discretionary spending than Republicans. George W. Bush is the number one spender in modern times on domestic programs, increasing non-defense, non homeland security discretionary spending by 41.3 percent. Bill Clinton only increased it by half that (at 20.0%, although he need the help of a GOP Congress) and Jimmy Carter was even lower at half the Clinton rate. As far as Dionne’s advice, Richard Nixon was nowhere near the center but was breathing down Bush’s neck for second place for the big spending honors at 40.8 percent increase in the domestic discretionary account.

Americans in fact now perceive the Democrats as the limited government party. An On Message Inc poll found that voters in twelve toss-up Republican districts believed Democrats were more likely to keep spending under control (38% to 21%, with 31% saying neither), to reduce the deficit (47-22%), cut taxes for the middle class (42-29%), and more trusted on fiscal matters generally. While Lowry claims the GOP did cut spending the last two years and received no credit for it, in fact spending increased (albeit by a very slightly lower rate than earlier) and anti-spending voters obviously knew it and voted appropriately.

Limited government is not all about spending, however. Ronald Reagan let people know cutting spending is not just to save money. “We're not cutting the budget simply for the sake of sounder financial management. This is only a first step toward returning power to the States and communities, only a first step toward reordering the relationship between citizen and government. We can make government again responsive to the people by cutting its size and scope and thereby ensuring that its legitimate functions are performed efficiently and justly.” To be effective politically, cutting spending must be part of a larger vision of how government and people should interact.

Contrary to progressive myth, Reagan and other limited government supporters are not tightwads. As a new book by Arthur C. Brooks “Who Really Cares” documents, conservatives contribute more to charity than progressives. Those who support limited government simply believe government will work better if it does what it can and should do and leaves the rest to state or local governments, private associations, proprietors and corporations, churches and charities, and families and individuals. Although progressives of left and right want to forget, Katrina was the perfect example of how big government actually makes things worse.

The national government quickly sprang into its relief efforts just as the storm hit and FEMA immediately set up its security pass system to screen those allowed to enter the affected zones. This quickly stopped unauthorized entry into the areas needing assistance most. Florida attempted to send 500 airboats that could not get clearance and even Bush housing secretary, Alphonso Jackson, complained at a cabinet meeting that his attempts to send emergency housing were thwarted by homeland security red tape.

The armed forces, Coast Guard and the rest of the national government only claimed to have rescued 8,500 people in the wake of the hurricane. Most (30,000) of the troops were state National Guardsmen and only 3,000 were federal, most of whom arrived later. Local first responders rescued 27,000 people in New Orleans, six times more than the military. Little St. Bernard Parish officials alone rescued 8,000. But most rescues reported by the media were made by private parties, rescuing people with their own boats and resources. The greatest part of the private effort was that the overwhelming majority of people went to their automobiles all by themselves and escaped any harm whatsoever. Individuals, families, neighbors and local government are the limited government solution to social problems, including big ones like natural disasters, and Katrina proved they actually were the ones that accomplished the most.

Private and local resources solve problems; big government gets in the way. When trying to send a private helicopter to the scene, one congressman representing the area was told that FEMA was in charge, the FAA was in charge and the military was. He never found out who actually was. A mayor in his district was put on hold for 45 minutes, security forces blocked scores of private rescue boats from docking on the river, and a sheriff was told to e-mail a request for help when he had no electricity.

Take the critical function after 9/11 of protecting the homeland against foreign penetration. “Citizenship agency lost 111,000 files” is the story of how the Department of Homeland Security’s Citizenship and Immigration Services division not only misplaced files but also awarded citizenship to 30,000 aliens without the necessary information. In another example, a 30-year DHS official pleaded guilty to taking $600,000 to falsify documents for “hundreds” of illegal aliens. In the wake of the close 2000 election, Congress pushed electronic voting systems on state and local officials but a later federal review of its consequences was well summarized by the story headline, “Security of electronic voting is condemned.” The farm program aids big, wealthy farms most, chasing out family farmers. The low income education loan program actually widens the gap between rich and poor states.

The central idea of progressivism is that experts will produce and enforce plans for the public welfare. It is based on the limited government idea of the rule of law, from English common law and John Locke, to create fair rules for all to protect them from injury but it additionally aims at promoting positive good. As long as the rules are known, few in number and oriented to preventing harm--keeping its scope narrow, as Reagan put it--rules help society. When progressive experts create positive welfare rules for everything, it all breaks down. An excellent example occurred recently in suburban Washington’s wealthy and Federal employee-rich Fairfax County. A good progressive state law required that all meals served to the public must be prepared in a kitchen that has been inspected by the county health department. Vigilant officials investigated meals served to homeless people escaping winter hypothermia in local houses of worship and found they were being served in unapproved kitchens, primarily individual homes! The expert bureaucrats ruled this must stop.

“We’re very aware that a number of homeless people eat out of dumpsters and mom’s pot pie has got to be healthier than that,” retorted Jim Brigl, CEO of the Fairfax Area Christian Emergency & Transitional Services private charity. “We’re not trying to come across as being a heavy-handed government,” replied the official, refusing to back down. Fortunately, local elected officials stepped in and reversed the ruling, allowing the moms and local churches to keep feeding the homeless during the winter. It was lucky for the homeless this was a local government for the national bureaucracy would never retreat so easily. The county was obliged to obey the law and that is that.

Modern Western governments regularly adopt positive welfare rules such as these that push private charity out. The bureaucratic replacements more often than not fail but the solution is to propose ever more rules to solve the problems they have created or exacerbated. More is spent and less is done effectively. Soon no one knows what all of the rules are. It is not that the rules are malevolent as in more leftist regimes, they are incomprehensible and conflicting, impossible to follow and destructive of private alternatives in their overall effect.

Ethics and Public Policy fellow Yuval Levin writes that the threat from government is no longer “explicitly” to destroy the tension between freedom and traditional values that is the essence of limited government—that “government is no longer the greatest danger to both.” He is concerned that the “parenting class” that is the support of both freedom and tradition craves security and that if this demand is not met properly, especially for health care, this middle class will be willing to trade freedom to obtain it. He wisely calls for balance. Yet, neither this class—nor anyone else--will be satisfied by a progressive, one size fits all solution. Indeed, seventy years of this is the very cause of the unease Levin rightly argues needs to be addressed.

Levin recognizes that, “The conservative insight that government power is inherently corrosive of the roots of self reliance must not be forgotten and surely remains true.” But he also says this “must also not be turned into a case against all uses of public policy for public ends.” True; as long as Ronald Reagan, following the Constitution, is the guide that the means be mostly more free ones--individuals, families, associations, communities and states--in a limited government that actually can achieve both traditional ends and free means.

In short, too big a government is still the greatest danger to both freedom and traditional values. Big government simply does not work. Neither Nixon-progressives nor Democrats nor big government conservatives have a solution. Against the billions in government foreign aid, the greatest welfare success today is a private bank that lends very small amounts to the world’s poorest to start new business so they can support themselves, so obvious even in the homeland of the welfare state that it won Muhammad Yunus the 2006 Nobel Prize.

Donald Devine, the editor of Conservative Battleline Online, was the director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management from 1981 to 1985 and is the director of the Federalist Leadership Center at Bellevue University.