Don't Just Stand There, Veto Something!
By Ryan Walsh (05/17/05)
People often ask me if I am a Republican.
“Practically speaking,” I usually respond, “I am a Republican. But I am a conservative before I am a Republican.”
It may seem like semantic nit picking, but the distinction is an important one. Despite its handful of differing factions, conservatism has espoused the same core principles since its intellectual founding. From Edmund Burke to William F. Buckley, Jr., conservatives have consistently favored the liberty of the individual over the enlargement of the state.
The Republican Party is a different story. To maintain popular support, its party platform must always attempt to accommodate a majority of voters in each election. So, when the whims and wishes of the American people change, the Republican Party must adjust accordingly, moving either to the left or the right on the political spectrum.
President Bush, although a self-described conservative, is a case-in-point. Since the public has shown little interest in controlling federal spending and has instead given its tacit approval to big-government largesse, Bush has approved massive spending increases. In 2005 alone, it is estimated that a Republican president and a GOP-led Congress will spend $22,039 per household, marking the largest amount of inflation-adjusted federal spending since World War II.
Of course, the president has made lackluster promises to cut non-defense discretionary spending, but as the final 2005 budget reveals, what most of Washington considers a “cut” is actually a slowing of the growth rate of new spending.
Instead, to dispel his current image of being a reckless spendaholic, President Bush ought to veto without hesitation the pork-laden, prodigal, and irresponsible bills that frequently land on his desk. He can start with the energy and highway bills.
Bush touts the former as a crucial step in achieving true energy independence, but one is left to wonder how a $2 billion subsidy for the coal industry, subsides for agribusiness, and a $50 million subsidy for a transit bus demonstration program could possibly accomplish this.
The president is trying to make it look like he’s “doing something” about high gas prices when the issue is simply beyond his control. Wasteful pork spending will only exacerbate our energy troubles, not solve them.
Bush has warned that if Congress sends a highway bill costing more than $284 billion to the White House, he may veto it. Yet the Senate’s version of the bill, as it stands today, already surpasses Bush’s limit by $11 billion. What makes this bill so objectionable, however, is not the extra $11 trillion. Rather, to its core, the bill is stuffed with gratuitous pork projects like, for example, a new program to fight obesity among adolescents.
Wasteful spending, to various degrees, has played a parasitic role in budgetary politics since the late 18th century. But when President Grover Cleveland took the helm of the executive in the 1880s, his administration nearly brought fiscal profligacy to a grinding halt.
With veto pen fearlessly in hand, Cleveland famously nixed a bill that would have appropriated $10,000 in special subsidies for Texan farmers suffering under a drought. He explained, “Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character.”
In Bush, perhaps fiscal conservatives wish to see a bit more Cleveland and a little less Clinton.
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