The divide between conservatives and liberals is more about what government should do, not how big it should be.
A common thread in American political discourse is that claims that the big thing that divides liberals and conservatives is the size of government. Hence the idea of “big government liberals” and Grover Norquists quotes about wanting to shrink government until it’s small enough that he can “drown it in a bathtub.”
This narrative may be accepted as gospel by pundits and political reporters, but I think it obscures what’s really going on. Both liberals and conservatives want to spend money on things, they just differ on should get funding and what shouldn’t. So conservatives may characterize the 2009 stimulus and gigantic boondoggle that will bankrupt the nation, but I don’t recall that many Republicans demanding an end to the Iraq War because it cost over a trillion dollars.
This reality was on display in The New York Times the other day when they ran a great piece outlining how Texas has spent half a billion dollars since 2005 on “securing the border.” They have a lot of great examples in the piece, like how the Texas game wardens now have a giant Apocalypse Now style river patrol boat equipped with multiple .30 caliber machine guns, or their brand new $7.4 million surveillance airplane.
Texas’s governor Rick Perry responds to complaints about this policy the way you’d think a conservative Republican from Texas would with the Times quoting him as saying, “My citizens’ safety is what is foremost here.” And that’s a fair point, after all that’s part of the job being a governor. But it’s not like drug gangs or refugee children are the only things threatening the people of Texas. And meanwhile Governor Perry has steadfastly refused to enact the provision of Obamacare that would expand Medicaid in his state. So yes people can be killed by drug smugglers, but then again lots of people die from lack of health care and lots of people don’t get health care because they don’t have health insurance.
In short liberals like to spend money on government things like education, health care, and what not. And conservatives like to spend money too, just on things like river gunboats and other stuff as well. Now I suppose that the sum total of what liberals want to spend money on is greater than the sum total of what conservatives want to spend spend money on, but at the end of the day the difference probably isn’t that huge. In fact, liberals want to shrink government in some cases, like say by cutting back on defense spending. But very few American political voices, other than libertarians, are demanding that we reduce the size of government itself. The question is just what government should be doing.
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Now lets look at my state, Illinois which is virtually broke, * The auto racetrack in Madison has received $5 million in capital construction funds since a private owner bought and reopened it in 2012 for NASCAR events and other exhibitions. * Democratic Senate President John Cullerton pushed for $10 million in capital construction money to renovate the historic theater – The 4,300-seat theater was built in 1925 and closed in 1981. The full renovation is estimated at between $50 million and $70 million. n(lets not leave out the fact that Chicago, where this theater is located has one of… Read more »
Correction, Illinois is not “virtually broke, it is broke.
John, how many times have law enforcement personnel been fired on from Mexican territory in the past 5 years? How many people have the Zetas and Golfos killed? How well armed are the Zetas and Gulf Cartel soldiers? How many TMU boats does the Texas DPS have? How many miles of river do they have to cover? Are they also responsible for the intracoastal waterway? How big is the Texas state budget? What do the people who live in Brownsville, Mission and Del Rio think about the efforts of DPS to secure their border? Why can’t my friends return home… Read more »
Just a reminder John, Texas doesn’t have a state income tax. I do in Illinois and the state is broke.
I see the mod-squad’s hit again.
Zapped me too. When the facts come out to play the author runs away.
I think you just proved the point of the article. Obviously conservatives want to spend money on stuff, they just want things like river gunboats and such. If I were King of Texas I would have spent some (maybe even all) of that half a billion dollars on things like education and healthcare, but I get that the electorate in Texas doesn’t agree with me. You’re right that the cartels kill a lot of people in Mexico, but across the border here in the US it’s a different story. Last time I checked there weren’t daily gun battles in Austin.… Read more »
As I suspected- you don’t know the answers. And you haven’t read any books about the subject.m You’ve displayed an astonishing ignorance of the subject matter. Si no sabe no debe hablar.
Law enforcement officials have been fired on nearly 100 times from Mexican territory across the Rio Grande. We aren’t talking about Austin- we are talking about Del Rio, Mission, Brownsville etc. hundreds of miles away.
“Si no sabe no debe hablar.” Isn’t that what John does?
Currently Texas spends $80 billion on education and $49 billion on health care. Projections are by 2018 $100+billion on education and $60+billion on healthcare. Given the border crisis, ya really think it’s out of line what you mentioned their spending money on? And then there is this – Texas’ GDP rose by 4.8% last year, the second-largest increase in the country, behind only North Dakota. Part of this growth came from the state’s robust energy sector. While Texas is the nation’s largest energy producer in the country by a wide margin, it also has a more balanced economy than other… Read more »
I forgot to mention …. Education is 33% of their budget and healthcare is 20% of their budget.
You forgot to add to this Republican’s dislike of taxes, which sometimes makes them less fiscally responsible than their liberal counterparts. There was a chart in the new york times a few years ago (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24sun4.html?_r=0) that charted where the deficit came from- the unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan account for one huge chunk, and the tax breaks Bush enacted count for another. Democrats might be “tax-and-spend,” but at least they propose paying for the stuff they want (although granted, by “the rich,” a group that includes anyone who makes more money than you). What truly maddens me in this… Read more »
In terms of rhetoric about the deficit I personally subscribe to Jonathan Bernstein’s theory of a “War On Budgeting” in the GOP. That is when the GOP talks about deficits they don’t mean “yearly difference between money coming in and money going out of the US Treasury” (the actual definition of the word deficit) instead they basically mean “spending money on stuff I don’t like.” Hence how Republicans rarely acknowledge that tax cuts increase the deficit. Full argument here: http://plainblogaboutpolitics.blogspot.com/2011/01/gop-war-on-budgeting.html
This post is complete BS from the fake taxes article to the outrageous oversimplification of what “all” Republicans supposedly think. It’s a great example for what’s wrong in American politics today. One side is infallible and the other side is evil. The sheep continue to be herded…. Sadly.
Yeah, watch out for that big bad government. Better stop using all public roads, ignore all government agencies who warn you about tornadoes and hurricanes, don’t call the Coast Guard when your boat is in trouble, and refuse to accept cash from anyone. That’ll teach those guvment folks a lesson….