BIG SPENDER
A sobering report from the Cato Institute advises that government spending was up 33% during the first four years of the current Republican administration. That’s the largest overall increase since Lyndon Johnson floated his “Great Society.” Take out defense spending and the cost of homeland security and George Bush has still managed to outspend Lyndon Johnson.
Once upon a time, Republicans stood for limited government and balanced budgets. Sadly, that’s all changed. According to the Cato report, “Most Republicans in Washington today have shown that they are more interested in expanding government than in scaling it back.” Many of us cast our vote to keep a big spending liberal out of office. Instead, we got a big spending Republican. In my view, big government is a parasite devouring the sustenance of our people and converting those they subsidize to subservience and dependence. Both political parties now resort to vote buying and the rewarding of constituents with subsidies. That’s why the Cato Institute says, “The GOP establishment in Washington today has become a defender of big government.”
Years ago I wrote these thoughts. “No country ever edged further out on a financial limb than the United States. The gargantuan debt, the leveraging, the trade and budget deficits don’t represent some new sort of progress or advanced economic strategy. They are as old as man, and whenever they have been practiced so wantonly, an enormous price has been paid. We trifle with laws that we don’t fully understand.”
