Voice For Liberty

Category: Role of government

  • Who is more compassionate?

    Arthur C. Brooks, writing in the January 16, 2006 Wall Street Journal, debunks a stereotype about conservatives (those in favor of smaller government) being less compassionate and caring than those who are in favor of more government spending on social programs.

    Professor Brooks tells us that according to the General Social Survey in 2002, “the proponents of government spending are six percentage points less likely to give money to charity each year than the opponents, and a third less likely to give money away each month.” But that’s money. What about something else, like donating blood? “Once again, it is those opposed to government aid. These supposedly uncompassionate folks are 25% of the population, but donate more than 30% of the blood each year. Meanwhile, supporters of government spending to the poor are 28% of the population, but donate just 20% of the blood. If the whole population gave blood like opponents of social spending do, the blood supply would increase by more than a quarter. But if everyone in the population gave like government aid advocates, the supply would drop by about 30%.”

    Is this an example of “do as I say, not as I do?” Or are advocates of big government really more comfortable with government-run social program than private programs?

  • How government makes us unhappy

    Arthur C. Brooks, associate professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Public Affairs, has a commentary in the December 8, 2005 Wall Street Journal titled “Money Buys Happiness.” Rich people, the author tells us, are much more likely to say they are happy. Although we are becoming richer as a whole, the percent of people saying they are “very happy” is the same today as it was 30 years ago. Some people say it’s the rich having relatively more than others that makes them happy. This excess happiness of the rich being bad, they say, we should use progressive taxation to improve our “moral fiber” by making after-tax incomes less divergent.

    But is this a good idea? “In fact there is another explanation for unchanging happiness levels over time which is rather less supportive of income redistribution. As incomes rise, so generally do levels of government revenues and spending, and there is evidence that these forces work against personal income on the overall level of happiness. For example, a $1,000 increase in per capita income is associated with a one-point decrease in the percentage of Americans saying they are ‘not too happy.’ At the same time, a $1,000 increase in government revenues per capita is associated with a two-point rise in the percentage of Americans saying they are not too happy. In other words, not only can money buy happiness, but it may be that the government can tax it away as well.”

    Mr. Brooks also tells us that donating money and time — that is, the giving of charity — illustrates the link between money and happiness: “Givers of charity earn substantial mental and physical health rewards, even more than do the recipients of charity — empirical evidence that it is indeed more blessed to give than to receive.”

    The actions of government can swamp private charity efforts. In the week after hurricane Katrina, I read that private donations had reached $600 million. I thought that was wonderful, until the next news story told me that Congress had just approved some $60 billion in relief, that being described as merely the down payment on the final spending. Government spending overwhelmed private charity, even though not many seem satisfied with the government response, and there are many stories of effective help supplied privately.

    So when government taxes us to pay for programs that take the rightful property of one person and give it to another to whom it does not belong, government harms us in two ways: it taxes away happiness and reduces our capacity to engage in charitable activity.

  • Big government is thoroughly entrenched

    Writing from Orlando, Florida

    The November 16, 2005 Wall Street Journal contains an editorial titled “Fiscal Chicken Hawks.” This article reveals the trivial amounts of federal spending that is being fought over: “The reality is that over the next five years the total federal budget is expected to exceed $13.855 trillion. The Republican faux-Slimfast plan basically erases the rounding error, or the $0.055 trillion, and leaves the $13.8 trillion untouched. To put it another way, the GOP plan reduces the increase in the federal budget by a microscopic 0.25% over the next five years.”

    Faced with even this barely noticeable reduction in spending, advocates of big government are in full fighting trim: “Their Congressional leaders, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, have denounced even these paltry GOP savings as ‘shameful’ and ‘immoral.’ They even brought a dozen Katrina Hurricane victims to Washington, trotted them out in front of the national media, and proceeded to lambaste Republicans for shredding the social safety net.”

    The reality is that federal spending, even under a Republican President and Republican-controlled Congress, has been increasing rapidly, and will probably continue the same way: “For the past five years federal spending on anti-poverty programs has increased by 41%. Medicaid, which provides health care for the poor, is scheduled to grow by 7.9% a year, and under the GOP plan it would grow by 7.5% a year. Either way the program expands by more than double the rate of inflation through 2011.”

    But there is good news. By switching to GEICO, I saved a lot of money on my car insurance. Seriously, our own home state senator has been up to some good work: “Senators Sam Brownback of Kansas and John McCain of Arizona have joined with five first-term Republicans to propose some genuine cost cutting. Their plan would delay the Medicare prescription drug bill, adjust Medicare benefits to seniors with incomes of more than $80,000 a year (or $160,000 for a couple), cancel highway pork projects, end dozens of obsolete spending programs, and cut all domestic discretionary spending programs by 5%.”

    Federal and state spending continues to grow rapidly. Politicians seem unable to resist its allure. If we would realize that almost all this spending is taking money from one person and giving it to someone else to whom it does not belong, we could evaluate this spending in its proper moral context.

  • Catastrophe in Big Easy demonstrates big government’s failure

    Writing from Orlando, Florida

    An excellent article by David Boaz of the Cato Institute titled “Catastrophe in Big Easy Demonstrates Big Government’s Failure” (available here: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=4819) explains how miserably the government at all levels performed before and after Hurricane Katrina.

    The disaster started long before this year, when government spent a lot of money in Louisiana, but didn’t protect it from hurricanes: “During the Bush administration, Louisiana received far more money for Army Corps of Engineers civil projects than any other state, but it wasn’t spent on levees or flood control. Surprisingly enough, it was spent for unrelated projects favored by Louisiana’s congressional delegation.”

    After the hurricane struck, it seemed that government spent most of its efforts trying to keep out the scores of private-sector entities that were responding to the need. “Meanwhile, despite FEMA’s best efforts, immediately after the hurricane the private sector — businesses, churches, charities, and individuals — began to supply services to the victims.”

    What really hurts is to realize who it is that suffered the most. “Who were the people who suffered most from Hurricane Katrina? The poorest residents of New Orleans, many of them on welfare — the very people the government has lured into decades of dependency. The welfare state has taught generations of poor people to look to government for everything — housing, food, money. Their sense of responsibility and self-reliance had atrophied. When government failed, they had few resources to fall back on.”

    After all this, who could want more government? It seems that some do — quite a few, according to The New York Times, which today published an article titled “Voters Showed Less Appetite for Tax Cuts.” It contains this sentence: “It may be, some analysts suggested, that after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and this year’s Gulf Coast hurricanes, Americans saw the value of government investment in infrastructure, public safety and other services and are now more willing to pay for it.”

    I think if people looked at the job that government does, compared with what the private sector can do even when it is not required to do so, they would realize that more government is not the answer.

  • How government destroys self-reliance

    Writing from Lexington, Kentucky

    There is a problem when government interferes with what people should be doing for themselves. Government can destroy the incentive to provide for yourself and your family.

    For the families of victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorists attack on New York, a board determined how much the family should receive in compensation based on a variety of factors, including the age and earning potential of the deceased. Then, the award was reduced by the amount of any life insurance the deceased had. We should ask what is the message given when government does this? What is the incentive to forgo current spending in order to buy life insurance, when the government may take the benefit that you paid for away from you? That’s exactly what happened to the people who had their own life insurance. The government took it from them, and they were worse off for having it. Conversely, for those who did not provide their own insurance, the government provided it for them, at no cost.

    For those who suffered losses due to floods from hurricane Katrina in Mississippi, that state’s attorney general is suing insurance companies to force them to pay for flood damage, even though the usual homeowner’s policy fairly shouts that flood damage isn’t covered. If Mississippi succeeds in forcing insurance companies to pay for flood damage, what message does that send to those who sought to protect and provide for themselves by paying flood insurance premiums for years? At minimum, the government ought to refund the premiums they paid, if government is to give the same benefit to those who paid no premiums.

    These two examples illustrate how, in an effort to appear compassionate and help unfortunate victims of tragedy, government destroys the incentive to provide for one’s own self and family. When government forces the same outcome for everyone, the same result for those who sacrificed and prepared and for those who didn’t, we might ask why even bother preparing?

  • How government insurance destroyed New Orleans

    Writing from Chicago, Illinois

    In the September 3, 2005 New York Times, columnist John Tierney educates us on the difference between private insurance and government insurance. Currently, the flood insurance that’s available through the federal government, because the premiums are so low, doesn’t fully reflect the costs of assuming that risk. And even as cheap as the flood insurance rates are, not many people bought it.

    What’s wrong with government insurance that’s priced too low to cover the risks it insures? First, the taxpayers as a whole have to pay to subsidize something that benefits only a few. Second, as Mr. Tierney writes, building strong levees is a long-term project that protects against something that probably won’t happen before the next election — the time horizon of most politicians. “Members of Congress will always have higher priorities than paying for levees in someone else’s state.”

    Also, government insurance isn’t subject to the discipline of having to make a profit. Private insurance companies must earn a profit over the long haul, so they will charge rates commensurate with the risk, and they will seek ways to reduce the risk. They might decline to insure property in the riskiest areas, and they will pressure governments to build and maintain the protections that, sadly, we learned failed in New Orleans when levees broke under conditions they should have survived. Private companies have the discipline to do this. Governments don’t.

    In his column, Mr. Tierney tells us the history of fire protection in America, and how private fire insurance has worked to ensure the fire safety we have today.

    Some may say that the poor of New Orleans couldn’t afford to live where they did if they had to pay flood insurance premiums that were priced properly. That’s something that government can’t cure — except that government will try by spending untold billions. But after New Orleans is rebuilt, it is likely that before too long the same situation will exist as did before Katrina. Do we really expect anything else?

  • Book Review: Winning The Future

    Winning The Future
    Newt Gingrich
    Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2005

    This book by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich outlines his prescription for what America needs to do to avoid decline. The five threats Gingrich identifies are Islamic terrorism, that God will be driven from American life, that America will lose its patriotic sense of self, that America will lose its economic supremacy to China and India, and that future demands of social security and Medicare will collapse our system.

    To counter these threats, Gingrich says we need a 21st century contract with America. The contract is quoted at the end of this review, as it appears on the author’s web site newt.org/winningthefuture.

    I particularly found what Gingrich has to say about American education important. He quotes the Hart-Rudman Commission on American National Security, which in 2001 concluded that the greatest threat to America was a terrorist attack. The second greatest threat is “the failure of math and science education. In fact, in an unanimously approved provision, the Commission said that the failure of math and science education is a greater threat than any conceivable conventional war in the next quarter century.”

    Further, “For the last twenty years, we have tried to improve education while accepting the fundamental principles of a failed system guarded by education bureaucrats and teachers unions.” Also: “There has been a steady growth in the amount of money spent on red tape, bureaucracy, and supervision. We now have curriculum specialists who consult curriculum consultants who work with curriculum supervisors who manage curriculum department heads who occasionally actually meet with teachers.”

    Interestingly, Gingrich proposes paying students, starting in middle school, to learn math and science. What a refreshing idea! Instead of them learning to work at McDonald’s after school for spending money, they could earn it by taking the tough courses that so many young children seek to avoid.

    This idea, and other creative and refreshing ideas make this book worthwhile to read.

    The 21st Century Contract with America

    I

    Defend America and our allies from those who would destroy us. To achieve security, we will develop the intelligence, diplomatic, information, defense, and homeland security systems and resources for success.

    II

    Transform the Social Security system into personal savings accounts that will enable every worker to have higher retirement incomes from their own work and avoid the need for financial support from their children.

    III

    Recenter America on the Creator from Whom all our liberties come. We will insist on a judiciary that understands the centrality of God in American history and reasserts the legitimacy of recognizing the Creator in public life.

    IV

    Establish patriotic education for our children and patriotic immigration for new Americans. To achieve this,we will renew our commitment to education about American citizenship based on American history and an understanding of the Founding Fathers and the core values of American civilization.We will insist that both our children
    and immigrants learn the key values and key facts of American history as the foundation of their growth as citizens.

    V

    Meet the triple economic challenges of an explosion in scientific and technological knowledge, an increasingly competitive world market, and the rise of China and India by implementing:

    A new system of civil justice to reduce the burden of lawsuits and to incentivize young people to go into professions other than the law.
    A dramatically simplified tax code that favors savings, entrepreneurship, investment, and constant modernization of equipment and technology.
    Math and science learning equal to any in the world and educating enough young Americans to both discover the science of the future and to compete successfully in national security and the economy with other well-educated societies.
    Investing in the scientific revolutions that are going to transform our world—particularly in energy, space, and the environment.
    Transforming health care into a 21st Century Intelligent Health System that improves our health while lowering costs dramatically. In the process, American health care will become our highest value export and foreign exchange earning sector.

    VI

    Work to include every American in a system of patriotic stewardship so every person has a real opportunity to pursue happiness as their Creator endowed. Prepare for the aging of the baby boomers and their children so we can have active healthy aging with the best quality of life, the longest period of independent living, and the greatest prosperity. We will:

    Develop a system in which those who wish to stay economically active are encouraged and incentivized to do so because active people live longer and healthier, have a greater opportunity to pursue happiness, and are less of a burden on their fellow citizens;
    Develop a system of independent living and assisted living that increases the years in which people can be on their own and in most cases enables people to live their entire lives with freedom and dignity;
    Develop a new model of quality long-term care in which both the care and the quality of life are compatible with a twenty-first century American expectation of progress and innovation.
    Use the new technologies and new scientific knowledge to turn disabilities into capabilities and change government regulations and programs to help every American achieve the fullest possible ability to pursue happiness.

    VII

    Change the mindset of big government in Washington by replacing bureaucratic public administration with Entrepreneurial Public Management so government can operate with the speed, effectiveness, and efficiency of the information age.

    VIII

    Balance the federal budget and insist on a lean government, low tax, low interest rate economy to maximize growth in a competitive world.

    IX

    Insist on congressional reform to make the legislative branch responsive to the needs of the 21st century.

    X

    Ensure an election process that is honest, accountable, accurate, and free from the threat of illegal votes or subsequent litigation.

    If we insist on these goals and insist on electing leaders at all levels dedicated to these goals, we will be able to leave our children and grandchildren an America of safety, health, prosperity, and freedom that would make our parents and grandparents proud.We too will have done our duty to our country and our achievements as citizens will be worthy of the America we inherited.

  • George W. Bush leads in discretionary spending

    In an article published by The Cato Institute (Bush Beats Johnson: Comparing the Presidents), we can read this:

    Revised data released during the summer by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provide analysts the ability to make side-by-side comparisons of the spending habits of each president during the last 40 years. All presidents presided over net increases in spending overall, though some were bigger spenders than others. As it turns out, George W. Bush is one of the biggest spenders of them all. In fact, he is an even bigger spender than Lyndon B. Johnson in terms of discretionary spending.

    This is before the prescription drug plan spending has started, and before costs from the recent hurricanes were known.

    It makes me long for the days of the Clinton presidency, when a Congress led by the opposing party seemed to hold spending in check. But now that Republicans hold both Congress and the White House, it seems that spending is spiraling out of control.

  • Beneath the Radar

    Beneath the Radar
    by Richard Nadler

    On June 3, the Supreme Court of Kansas issued a ruling requiring the state legislature to appropriate an additional $853 million per year to Kansas schools, K-12. The basis of the decision, said a unanimous court, was a clause in the Kansas Constitution: “The legislature shall make suitable provision for finance of the educational interests of the state.”

    The increase equals roughly 20% of the state’s entire general revenue budget.In comes at the end of a fifteen year period during which Kansas’ expenditure per pupil doubled, exceeding the rise in consumer prices by 29%.

    In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court refused, in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, to “equalize” school spending. No trend better illustrates judicial activism than the steady stream of state school finance decisions that followed. From Connecticut to California, liberal courts have broken legislative budgets and spending caps.“Equalization” has served as a pretext for tax increases in some states, and for attacking local control of schools in others.Indeed, “school finance litigation” has become a multi-billion dollar business, commanding its own corps of specialty lawyers and expert witnesses.

    To a large extent, these developments passed beneath the radar of conservative opinion makers. The fights are sporadic and local.Moreover, conservative icons want no part of them. Victory against the education lobby carries a political price; grumbling acquiescence to a court does not.Thus, the most prominent conservatives in Kansas – men like Attorney General Phill Kline, Sen. Sam Brownback, and Sen. Pat Roberts – have absented themselves from public debate over the Kansas court’s actions.

    The rationales state jurists present for assuming control of legislative functions have become bolder.In its June 3rd decision (Montoy v. Kansas), the state supreme court spills as much ink justifying its jurisdiction as its remedies.The latter are predictable and formulaic:more money for public education; less local control for district patrons.But the former are bold and exciting.In explicating their takeover, the Kansas Supremes cite a growing body of literature from law journals and other states, as well as their own precedents.Fans of republican government should take note.

    In the Sunflower State, judges, legislatures and schools co-existed for a century and a half without it entering the heads of the first to replace the role of the second in appropriating for the third.But today, Kansas courts assume a right to determine public policy on the basis of the presentations of litigants before the bar.Explicitly adopting the rationale of a Kentucky court, the Kansas justices quote it:

    “…[In this case] we are asked – based solely on the evidence in the record before us – if the present system of common schools in Kentucky is ‘efficient’ in the constitutional sense.… To avoid deciding the case because of ‘legislative discretion,’ ‘legislative function,’ etc., would be a denigration of our own constitutional duty.To allow the General Assembly (or, in point of fact, the Executive) to decide whether its actions are constitutional is literally unthinkable.”

    In other words, the “record” that is presented in the course of litigation not only can, but must, replace the form of “fact finding” that goes on in state legislature.To refrain from a decision based on the limitations of the knowledge base available through litigation is “unthinkable.”

    In fact, the imperfection of the legislative process provides the rationale for intervention.“Specifically,” say the justices in Montoy, “the district court found that the financing formula was not based upon actual costs to educate children, but was instead based on former spending levels and political compromise [Italic mine-RN].”

    The rules-based actions that legislative bodies apply to base-line budgets are thus structurally suspect.A process so arbitrary invites review.But once a case has been presented, how are the constitutional duties of the three branches of state government defined?Once again, the Kansas court cites its Kentucky peers:

    “The judiciary has the ultimate power, and the duty to apply, interpret, define, and construe all words, phrases, sentences and sections of the Kentucky Constitution as necessitated by the controversies before it.It is solely [italic added by the Kansas justices – RN] the function of the judiciary to so do. This duty must be exercised even when such action serves as a check on the activities of another branch of government or when the court’s view of the constitution is contrary to that of the other branches, or even that of the public.”

    Now, the relevant entries of Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary define “Apply” thus: a) “to bring into action, to put into operation or effect (as in a law);” andb) “[to] put to use, especially for some practical purpose.”

    These phrases describe the traditional function of the executive branch in our state constitutions.What the Kansas Supreme Court has substantively claimed is an exclusive right to make law on any case brought before it.The constitutional oaths state executives take, like those of legislators, are in vain.

    States are a particularly promising venue for this brand of juridical monopoly.The Kansas Justices cite a 1991 Harvard Law Review article to explain:

    [U]nlike federal courts, state courts need not be constrained by federalism issues of comity or state sovereignty when exercising remedial power over a state legislature, for state courts operate within the system of a single sovereign.”

    So our “single sovereign” is liberated from lesser sovereignties, as well as the constitutional claims of its co-equal branches of government.

    For how long can the court claim this license? Harvard Law explains: “… the Court too must accept its continuing constitutional responsibility… for overview… of compliance with the constitutional imperative.’

    To summarize:The public policy dicta of a state court need not be constrained by the messy squabbling of elected legislators, nor by facts neglected by the litigants-at-bar; nor by the constitutional duties of its co-equal branches; nor by lesser political subdivisions; nor by time itself.

    It was a persistent dream of socialist and fascist thinkers of the twentieth century to replace the noisy, class-influenced machinery of democracy with a professional corps of experts who would design economic and social institutions in the interests of the people.In Montoy, the Kansas Supremes set their hands to it.But the best they could produce was a rehash of fragments of the legislature process, ripped from their moorings in popular sovereignty.

    The court adopted a single study by a single committee of the legislature.The justices treated its proposals as law, and rammed them down the throats of all concerned.Montoy’s policy prescriptions – more funding for public schools, less local control – would have surprised the U.S. Supreme Court justices who rejected a “remedy” in 1973. For the majority, Justice Powell wrote:

    It is also well to remember that even those districts that have reduced ability to make free decisions with respect to how much they spend on education still retain, under the present system, a large measure of authority as to how available funds will be allocated. They further enjoy the power to make numerous other decisions with respect to the operation of the schools.The people of Texas may be justified in believing that other systems of school financing, which place more of the financial responsibility in the hands of the State, will result in a comparable lessening of desired local autonomy. That is, they may believe that along with increased control of the purse strings at the state level will go increased control over local policies.

    But then, Powell was constrained by those silly federalist principles.

    — Richard Nadler is president of America’s Majority, a not-for-profit dedicated to building the demographic base of the conservative movement.