Chart 1: Inflation Adjusted Federal Spending

The current debate (and significant wailing) about the budget proposal rolled out recently by Chairman Ryan got me thinking about whether these ‘massive cuts’ we are talking about are historically significant.

I noticed that all of the charts talk about government spending as it relates to GDP (effectively the size of our economy), and that led me to the graphic on the right here (from an earlier version of the Heritage Foundation’s Budget Chart Book).

Now that may be fair – as growing GDP indicates growing population or improving productivity or both. And more people means more government, right?

Well…

Chart 2 is a measure of that same government spending divided by the number of households in the country (and no, we are not cramming more people into households these days); this indicates that spending per household has also been increasing over time.

Now Chart 3 is the one all over the news and YouTube lately – the one where the newly proposed budget resolution ‘brutally cuts’ every program you love while keeping every program you hate; and you can see how the projections for the next 70 years show an ever-shrinking government – right?

Only it never shrinks at all! These projections are based on predictions that our economy will continue to grow at a decent pace and that we GROW government at a slower pace. So that green blob of debt that you see shrinking to nothing in the chart is getting smaller mainly in relation to the size of our economy!

So a few key points:

1. Under current policy government will continue to grow at an unsustainable pace – so any argument that the status quo ante be maintained is ridiculous. Sorry – you cannot have the current state of affairs. The enslavement of every American to support the current system cannot even save it, as it is collapsing under its own weight. The only serious option for getting things under control involves making changes to entitlements and defense spending to control their costs.

2. Under the proposed policy, the federal government STILL grows. It is cut once up front back to the level of those austere, lean years of the Bush 2 era (not so long ago, eh?), held pretty much constant for a couple of years and then allowed to grow more slowly (Chart 4). The projections assume that we grow our way out of crisis mode – only seriously getting into paying down the debt after 2020 (where you start seeing a respectable ‘surplus’ that can be used to start paying back some of those deferred tax increases. To be clear, the Republicans get the blame too – any year in which lower tax rates were not matched with lower spending (resulting in deficits) was simply a year in which a hidden tax increase was passed on to our kids.

3. Chart 5 finally illustrates clearly that this new budget proposal merely tries to stop the bleeding of red ink in federal budgets that has been going on relentlessly for decades (and has already begun a fall into the abyss that becomes catastrophic in a decade or two under current policy). In the near future it tries to get us to a point where we can tread water while growing our way out of this mess. Later it eases into a small surplus (required to pay down the debt and reduce the burden of interest payments in future annual budgets). And all of this, while vilified by all sorts of folks looking out for their own interests, is done without ANY dramatic cuts to the federal government!

The Ryan proposal seems pretty tame to me.

Chart 2: Federal Spending per Household

Chart 3: Path to Prosperity

Chart 4: Future Federal Spending

Chart 5: Deficits and Surpluses

In Witness, Whittaker Chambers notes that feeling men of all stripes cannot help but be moved by the plight of their fellow man as they stuggle through the world – daily facing the curse of the world and struggling with disease, poverty, injustice, and death. He observes that the Communist is responding to this crisis by trying to ensure that all men are treated justly. The truly idealistic Communist seeks the good of all in his effort to promote a fully egalatarian society through the power of government.

The results of the last election affirm the insight of Chambers in stating that you cannot fight such a revolutionary spirit by simply standing for the status quo ante. The furor of the revolutionary can only be overcome by a counter-revolutionary spirit that is just as zealous in standing for an opposing principle.

Many pundits these days are rejoicing or mourning the death of conservatism based on a cursory analysis of the last election. There is ample bickering within the Republican party about the decisions made in the campaign and about the reasons for their defeat. I have heard of several who espouse a more moderate party going forward to try to win the middle and stand against the extreme liberal (socialistic and even communistic) forces represented by President-Elect Obama and his forthcoming administration.

It seems to me that the lesson of history, and the wisdom of Whittaker Chambers in particular, rails against such a course. It is not a moderate or lukewarm philosophy that can stand against the power of the revolutionaries who want to turn the United States into a mothering, protecting entity that will at least ostensibly attempt to provide justice and succor to all. It seems to me that what is required is an empassioned, articulate defense of the principles of liberty that conservatism represents.

What is required is a shout from the rooftops that socialism and communism are evil – that even though these concepts seem prima facie to be noble and good, they make great promises about the good of society and being fair to all – they fail to account for the fact that every human being has a soul. That to oppress the soul of a single human being for any well-meaning cause is to commit the greatest of atrocities. The abstract good of the collective can never be allowed to cause harm to the individual. The conservative also desires to save the world – but one life at a time, one family at a time – in the small, but also in the concrete. This is why The Forgotten Man must never be forgotten.

President-Elect Obama made a comment on the stump about selfishness. His claim is apparently that the desire of an individual to act as a free moral agent – making his own decisions about his life, liberty, and property – constitutes a selfish act. The desire to reduce the scope of government – and lets not forget that government exists by consent of the governed - and act freely with the ability and substance that we have – is not selfish – but simply the only sane course of action. In a masterful verbal pivot he compares his childhood act of sharing his own lunchtime sandwich with another child to the federal government taxing working Americans and redistributing those funds to others. This is more akin to a young Obama forcing one child to give a portion of his sandwich to another.