The Math Behind the Sin of Profligacy

I have weighed in a few times here on the overemphasis many libertarians have made on issues that have been arbitrarily labeled as Civil Liberties as opposed to liberty as a whole. Like many I have advocated supporting those who are most interested in protecting our liberty on the whole, which at this point means a few Republicans, libertarians and other independents and essentially no Democrats to send a message that the profligacy of our government and its expanding tentacles is fervently opposed by many of us. So I am in no way upset the Republicans lost so many seats, they deserved to lose them as a party. Why does that not mean we should support the Democrats? That we in fact should fear them, and why I believe that gridlock is not a sure thing in reducing spending without a change of heart from the Republican party?

There are a lot of reasons that this arbitrary distinction between civil liberty and economic liberty should be resisted, but before we delve further into that, and why the siren song of the “libertarian Democrat” and other flim flams should be resisted, maybe we should start by quantifying how large is the difference between the two major parties on spending, regulation and taxes. We have all heard the question “how much worse than the Republicans can the Democrats be?” Surprisingly given the evidence of the increased spending of the last six years, a lot worse. Mind bogglingly worse. Let me show you what I am talking about, from Senator Schumer:

I don’t think we want taxes to move higher at all; the kinds of things we’re talking about easily funded about rearranging federal priorities making sure that some of the shelters are closed — the offshore shelters and things like that. But the Democrats are against increasing taxes. We want to become more fiscally responsible.

I want you to as well Senator, I want you to as well. Given that in recent weeks Schumer has been talking up the less regulation “responsible Democrat” line (does that mean that the Senator admits Democrats have not been responsible?) I think we should investigate his behavior. For that I turn to the National Taxpayers Unions examination of 2005 which examines every vote, not just cherry picking, but every vote, and determines whether it will increase spending or regulation as well as taxes. They then weight them by the dollar amount of those effects. When looking at that for our Senate as a whole we get an average rating of 44% and a median score of 50%. Pretty damn poor from the perspective of those of us who desire a smaller less intrusive government. So why so low?

Was Senator Schumer a positive, or at least not a big negative? In fact his score was 13%! Let that sink in, whenever it came down to spend more, regulate more or tax more the vote was to increase all three over the available alternative at a rate that amounted to 87% of the time. His votes would have the opposite effect with the weighted result being only 13%. Okay, but Schumer is a liberal Democrat from New York. What about the party as a whole? Well, the average Democrat came in at 12% and the median rating was 10%. The Republicans? 69% and 70% respectively. What about the House? Democrats 17% and 16% and Republicans 60% and 59%. I think that lets us know how much worse the Democrats can be and the answer is much, much worse.

Now of course we can quibble with the methodology of the NTU, but in perusing the various rating and vote tallying systems, whether Democrat leaning or Republican leaning, the results are the same. The difference is huge. It shouldn’t be surprising. Despite all the crocodile tears about big government under the Republicans shed by many a Democrat, on every spending bill I can remember, the complaint, despite the huge increases under Bush, has been about cuts and insufficient spending on particulars. The accusations about profligacy have all been general in nature, on actual bills we see something different.

“So, why have we seen these huge increases in spending with the Republicans in power then?”

Good question. What we have seen is how changes at the margin can make a huge difference. First of all, the Democrats under Bush have, according to the NTU, become more disposed towards increasing the size and scope of government since the nineties. Possibly then we might see with the influx of “moderate” Democrats those impulses moderated a bit. I am not hopeful however that this will be a large moderating influence. In almost all cases we are seeing more profligate politicians replacing less profligate politicians. While they may be less profligate than the Democrats they are joining, they are far more profligate than those they replace. All things being equal that should mean a vast expansion in spending.

The second factor is that Republicans have become marginally less resistant to the growth of the state’s spending as well as regulatory growth, especially spending though. So while the Republicans have improved somewhat on taxes, and have significantly slowed the regulatory states growth, they have significantly deteriorated on spending. Not all, but a large enough minority to do the trick has become less resistant over time.

Let us make an abstract example. Suppose that in a relatively closely divided House and Senate where one can expect the Democratic party to vote almost with unanimity for growing the state, that Republicans on spending decline from a rating of 80% to 75%. That may sound small, but given that all it requires is majority support on a few attempts to increase spending over the course of a year to drastically increase spending, that is in fact huge. On any given bill to increase spending on education for example, one can expect that essentially every Democrat will support it, or oppose it only because it will not increase it more. If 10% of Republicans defect on that proposal to the more expensive option the more expensive option will prevail. On most issues the anti-spending coalition may hold, but if several times a year the Republican see that kind of defection then not only will those bills pass (and when you are talking about overall increases in the 5% to 15% a year range only a few areas have to be increased above inflation to get you there) but in order to keep bills from failing more often all bills are made more generous, if less generous than the profligates would like. Small changes on the Republican side made large differences in spending possible. The point isn’t that Republicans are especially profligate (though this should in no way be meant to claim that this relative difference is in any way not shameful) but that that the Democrats are so radically profligate relative to Republicans that even small changes at the margin by Republicans have outsized effects. All the data points that way.

So how moderate are these new Democrats? Can the state possibly be restrained if Republicans get just a little backbone? Well, let us look at one of those moderate Democrats who didn’t win a seat in the Senate, Harold Ford. Why Ford? Because he has a record in the House we can check. Harold Ford’s rating was 15%. Harold Ford talks a good game, and supports gun rights and other things which are not to be ignored. On the growth of the state in general however he is worse than any Republican. Even the miserable Tom Delay scored 55%. Lincoln Chafee scored a 33% and the two moderates from Maine 40% and 35% rspectively. The moderate Democrats are not moderate on spending unless a NTU score in the teens is your idea of a moderate. They are moderate (though I think moderate is an awful term) on social and possibly defense issues (for example: Joe Lieberman with an NTU rating of 9%.) Not necessarily a good sign for those of us who want a more liberty leaning congress.

“Okay, but you haven’t mentioned all that pork from the Republicans.” Another good point. However, pork isn’t a budget buster. It is a spending problem, but if I had to choose between keeping pork and voting the wrong way on the big ticket items then pork I’ll take. In fact we need to attack both. Let me take three prime pork barrel offenders and lets look at their overall record according to the NTU.

1. Tedd Stevens- 68% Pretty weak, but vastly better than any Democrat.
2. Don Young- 59% Awful, but vastly better than any Democrat.
3. Robert Byrd- 10% Enough said.

Want more evidence that it isn’t really a Republican problem as much as an institutional problem? Well, I refer you to this post of mine on Bradford Plumer’s admission of the importance of Pork to progressives. More telling however as I pointed out in the comments is that when it came time to actually do something about pork who supported the bipartisan measure to make pork more transparent? Well, despite many a courageous Democrat such as Obama, the vote was rather one sided.

• Republicans 199 for 24 against
• Democrats 45 for 147 against

Obviously Republicans are willing to do something about it, even if some of their most powerful members are part of the problem. The Democrats as a whole were not.

What can we expect going forward? Michael Kinsley points out why we shouldn’t be encouraged while discussing his dissatisfaction with the Democratic proposals put forward:

Honesty is not just therapeutic. Fiscal honesty is a practical necessity. A New Direction for America rightly denounces the staggering fiscal irresponsibility of Republican leaders and duly promises “pay-as-you-go” spending. But in the entire document there is not one explicit revenue raiser to balance the many new spending programmes and tax credits.

I think Mike in decrying the irresponsibility of Republicans might have noted that the Democrats supported vastly more spending, even though they knew the tax rates that would be in effect. Which by the way points out the hollowness of the Democrat mantra about they would at least have kept tax rates higher and left us with lower deficits. Hogwash. If that was a principled argument then they would have voted against the new spending unless taxes were raised. I would have loved that and they might have even gotten my vote this time around. I think that shows where their priorities lay and probably still do. More importantly, if their spending desires had been in place then the deficit would have been about the same, even with the higher taxes. Still, Mike’s point is accurate if incomplete. The Democrats will not get us out from under the staggering expansion of the state we have seen this decade.

“Uh, didn’t you urge us to punish the Republicans by voting for only a select few and independents?” Yeah, I did.

Let me take a deep breath here. Well, I am an uncertain ally of the Republicans anyway, so if you tend to vote for them you must understand my lack of attachment to start, nor is spending the only issue, which I will explore more next. However, to the extent I prefer the Republicans it is largely because the Democrats are so much worse in this area. If the Republicans are going to be a viable brake on the government it is only if they act more like the Republicans in the ’90′s. I don’t think that was going to happen absent a scare. Hopefully this is it, but I have to say I think it is doubtful they will accomplish much to restrain the growth of the state without a major change. I am really expecting things to be about the same, but obviously depending on several factors it could be worse or better in the short run. Only a united Republican party will be able to restrain Reid, Pelosi and friends in my estimation.

Maybe the Democrats will pull back now that their votes in favor of greater spending will actually carry the day, but if not, Republicans will have to make significant changes in their voting habits to make spending grow slower, much less reverse the trend. I am not hopeful given what I have heard from Snowe, Dukakis and the habits of many Republicans in office now. Gridlock only works in the minority if the Republicans want to restrain spending almost all the time, not 70% of the time. Even 30% of the time voting the other way means increases well ahead of the growth in GDP when the other side in the majority is voting for profligacy 80% of the time, which would be a huge improvement for the Democratic party. Maybe that will happen and I am certainly hoping that is true, but I doubt it. My hope is that the Republicans will improve enough for the situation not to be worse, with the help of a few veto’s by Bush. The other hope is that the Republicans meanwhile will regather and be ready for prime time again in two years. A slim reed, but sometimes chances need to be taken. Meanwhile we need to be supporting the Mike Pence’s and Tom Coburn’s of the world and working to make libertarians and libertarian leaning politicians inside and outside of the Republican party viable. If nothing else, if we do so, the path to gridlock will be easier come 2008.

UPDATEx2: Rick Moran from Right Wing Nuthouse and laughingman make a couple of points I should address. I didn’t want to go too much into the methodology but in reading my post again I think some things are unclear. Since the NTU’s method deals only with bills actually presented it is most useful in looking at relative differences between candidates. Rather than explain more or try and rewrite the post extensively, please take the time to read the link.

[tags] pork, spending, Democrats, Republicans, libertarian, Bush, NTU [/tags]

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