David Boaz

“Bush Plan Reins in Domestic Spending” — Washington Post

“Bush budget to cut aid to Mich.” — Detroit News

“Bush budget puts pinch on domestic spending” — Boston Globe

Reality check:

Every year the headlines speak of budget cuts, and every year the federal budget rises. As I wrote two years ago:

There’s a conspiracy afoot to convince American taxpayers that President Bush has submitted a lean, mean budget for Fiscal Year 2006. The funny thing is, Democrats and Republicans are both in on it, and journalists are going along. A reality check is in order….

Democrats, Republicans, and journalists mostly agree that President Bush has submitted a lean, tight $2.57 trillion budget. Why? I think we have what dancers call a pas de deux going on here. Or maybe in honor of our Texas president and his aversion to all things French, we should just call it a Texas Two-Step: The president pretends to cut the budget, and Democrats pretend to believe him.

Both sets of politicians appeal to their bases that way. President Bush’s voters want to hear that he’s cutting the budget and saving tax dollars. The Democrats’ base of government employees and federal grant recipients want to see Democratic senators fighting budget cuts. When Kennedy and Clinton denounce Bush’s “devastating” budget cuts, their supporters become outraged at Bush. Meanwhile, Republican voters respond to such charges by becoming more supportive of Bush. They may have had some doubts about Bush’s commitment to fiscal conservatism, but the denunciations from Pelosi and her colleagues assuage those doubts.

Spending under President Bush has risen from $1.863 trillion in fiscal 2001 to a proposed $2.901 trillion in fiscal 2008. Not since Lyndon Johnson have we seen such rapid spending increases. But most of the responses to any new budget come from special interest groups–local governments, chiefs of police, Sallie Mae, AARP, veterans, environmentalists, health care providers, subsidized farmers–and they help to shape the perception that the budget is chopping programs.

Taxpayers would be better served if newspapers would run a nice clean graph–like the one above–with every budget story.

Don’t miss the latest from David Kirby and me on the libertarian vote. In Cato Policy Report (pdf; less attractive HTML version here) we report the results of our Zogby International poll of 2006 voters.

In the Zogby survey, 15 percent of voters gave libertarian answers to our three questions. And those libertarian-leaning voters showed the same shift away from Republican candidates that we had identified in the 2004 election. Clearly, “two more years of war, wiretapping, and welfare-state social spending” had not brought back any of the wandering libertarians.

We did some new tests in the Zogby survey. We asked voters to identify themselves ideologically. Full results are in the article, but most respondents whom we identified as libertarian described themselves as “conservative” (41 percent) or “moderate” (31 percent). Only 9 percent called themselves “libertarian.”

But . . . when we asked half the respondents, “Would you describe yourself as fiscally conservative and socially liberal?” we were quite surprised that fully 59 percent said yes. And when we asked the other half of the sample, “Would you describe yourself as fiscally conservative and socially liberal, also known as libertarian?” we knew the number would go down. But it only went down to 44 percent. So 44 percent of American voters are willing to label themselves as “libertarian” if it’s defined as “fiscally conservative and socially liberal.”

Read more…

In Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, Fred Barnes makes a point (paid reg. req.) that I made here last week: Hard as it to believe, Sen. Hillary Clinton may campaign as the least statist of the Democratic presidential candidates. Barnes writes:

As surprising as this may sound, Mrs. Clinton starts her campaign as the Democratic candidate furthest to the right. The only two Democrats who might have gotten to her right — Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana and former Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia — dropped out of the race. 

I had made that point. And I also noted that Sen. Russell Feingold would have criticized Hillary on civil liberties issues. With Feingold, Bayh, and Warner all out of the running, Hillary’s determination to constrain her big-government instincts during the campaign will be sorely tested as she fends off challengers like Sen. Barack Obama, former senator John Edwards, and maybe former vice president Al Gore.

A footnote: Barnes and I have both ignored New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, who has persuaded Larry Kudlow that he’s a “a pro-growth, tax cutting Democrat.” Maybe moderate Democrats will have a choice after all.

In today’s Washington Examiner, I have a column on future directions for the Republican party. One point:

Republicans need to look to the future: Younger voters are more likely to be libertarian, more likely to accept gay marriage, and more likely to have voted Democratic in 2006.

Republicans need to reach them before the Democrats lock them in. They can do that with an optimistic, inclusive message of liberating people from the dead hand of the federal bureaucracy — a smaller and less intrusive federal government, encouragement of enterprise and economic growth, a government that respects but doesn’t embrace religion, and a de-escalation of the culture wars.

This morning on Anti-Marketplace Radio–heard on tax-funded NPR stations–there was a fine example of the quiet, unconscious liberal bias that pervades NPR and other mainstream-liberal media. Host Scott Jagow interviewed Jody Heymann, director of the McGill Institute for Health and Social Policy, who had just published a report on paid leave around the world. The segment began, “The U.S. lags far behind the rest of the world when it comes to workplace policies such as paid maternity or sick leave.”

Then Jagow asked, “Where else is the U.S. falling short?” Noting that no federal law mandates paid vacations or sick leave, he asked, “How much are states picking up the slack and how much is the private sector picking up the slack?”

So where’s the bias? Let us count the ways. First, of all the studies in the world, only a few get this kind of extended publicity. It helps if they confirm the worldview of the producers. For instance, I don’t believe Marketplace covered this Swedish study (pdf) showing that the United States is wealthier than European countries (perhaps most provocatively, that Sweden is poorer than Alabama — perhaps because Europe has the kinds of laws the Heymann study advocates). Second, Heymann was allowed to appear without a critic. Third, the interviewer never asked a critical question. He never noted that the countries that Heymann was praising are poorer than the United States and in particular that many are suffering from high unemployment brought on by such expensive labor mandates. Fourth, look at the language of the questions: “lags behind,” “falling short,” “picking up the slack.”

The unstated, perhaps unconscious, premise is that countries should have mandatory paid leave and other such programs. If we don’t, we’re “falling short” and someone must “pick up the slack.” Language like that, which is very common in the media, posits government activism as the natural condition and then positions any lack of a government program as a failure or a problem.

Amazing Grace is a beautiful song, but I’ve never been entirely comfortable with it. I didn’t like that line “saved a wretch like me.” I don’t think I’m a wretch. Nor are most of my friends.

But once I learned the story behind the song (with a little help from my friends at the Mackinac Center), I became more sympathetic: John Newton, who wrote Amazing Grace, really was a wretch. Now a new movie is going to bring that story to millions of people.

John Newton was a slave trader and by his own testimony an infidel. He was converted to Christianity but continued in the slave trade. Eventually, however, he renounced that vile life and became an evangelical minister in the Church of England and an abolitionist. “Was blind but now I see,” indeed.

Among the people who heard his preaching was a young member of parliament, William Wilberforce, who was inspired to lead a long campaign for the abolition of slavery — from his maiden speech in 1789 to the final passage of the Abolition Act a month after his death in 1833.

This is one of the greatest stories in history. And now it is the subject of an impressive new movie. I’ve only seen the trailer, but the production values are obviously good, and I’m told that the movie is great. Michael Apted directed. Ioan Gruffudd (best known as Horatio Hornblower) plays Wilberforce. It also features the fine British actors Albert Finney, Rufus Sewell, Ciaran Hinds, Michael Gambon, and Toby Jones. It opens on February 23.

The story of Newton, Wilberforce, abolition, and Amazing Grace is very popular among evangelical Christians. It’s an unambiguous advance for human freedom and dignity in which evangelicals played central roles. And that’s why the movie is produced by Bristol Bay Productions (owned by Philip Anschutz, a billionaire conservative) which also produced Ray. Anschutz owns another film company which produced The Chronicles of Narnia.

If God’s amazing grace caused John Newton to give up slave trading, then who could object? But you don’t have to be a Christian to appreciate what promises to be a well-made movie about this great triumph of liberty.

And for those of us who struggle in the vineyards year after year, trying to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, the story reminds us that humanity has made great progress toward freedom, that each battle for freedom can be long and seemingly futile, but that the goal is worth time and money and effort.

I was once challenged by a Chicago School economist, who thinks everything can be measured, to name the most important libertarian accomplishment in history. I said it was the abolition of slavery. OK, name another, he replied. “The bringing of power under the rule of law,” I suggested. He wanted to know how you would measure that. But even without a caliper we can see the importance of that accomplishment. We can also see that neither of these is yet a final victory.

May Amazing Grace inspire us to continue working, as long as it takes, to liberate men and women from the arbitrary rule of others and to constrain power with the chains of law.

Cross-posted from Comment is free.

Reading the Washington Post write-up of Gov. Jeb Bush’s speech to the National Review Conservative Summit, you have to wonder just what he’s saying. The Post reports:

Jeb Bush delivered yesterday in Washington a resounding endorsement of conservative principles, bringing his audience repeatedly to its feet.

In his lunchtime remarks to the Conservative Summit, Bush struck every conservative chord, blaming Republicans’ defeat in November on the party’s abandonment of tenets including limited government and fiscal restraint….

He added, “If the promise of pork and more programs is the way Republicans think they’ll regain the majority, then they’ve got a problem.”

Jeb said he was talking about the Republican Congress, and Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review noted that he offered

a vigorous defense of his brother. Bush, at the beginning of his lunch speech, directed comments to the press gathered, noting emphatically: “I’m not going to criticize the president of the United States.” Among other accomplishments, Bush noted, “I like Justice Roberts. I like Justice Alito…” and tax cuts. He would also go on to defend the president’s immigration policy.

Read more…

Nebraska senator Chuck Hagel burst onto the national scene this week as the leading critic of President Bush’s “surge” plan for Iraq. After his widely reported speech at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, he’s become a hot topic in the blogosphere.

His possible presidential candidacy made the front page of the Washington Post today, and he got a love note from Peggy Noonan at opinionjournal.com (probably to be printed in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal). The Post says, “He is reviled by his party’s conservative base.”

Yes, right now the only thing conservatives know about him is his opposition to George W. Bush’s war plans, and conservatives are still inexplicably in thrall to the big-government Bush. But I’ll predict that over, say, the next 12 months leading up to the Iowa caucuses, Hagel is going to look increasingly wise and prescient to Republican voters. And as they come to discover that he’s a commonsense Midwestern conservative who opposed many of the Bush administration’s worst ideas, he’s going to look more attractive.

To see what all the fuss is about, click here.

As he counts his money and ponders an independent bid for the presidency, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has won one competition. He’s the biggest nanny-statist around. Sure, Bangor is banning smoking in cars if children are passengers, and Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee wants to get rid of cigarettes, and Texas wants to require parents to attend parent-teacher conferences, and Kansas wants to require all seventh-grade girls to get vaccinated against a sexually transmitted infection. But for sheer nannyism, can you beat this?

Available soon: an official New York City condom.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration wants to reduce rates of sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS, and part of the strategy is the aggressive promotion of free condoms. Officials say more people will use them if they have jazzy packaging.

One idea is a subway theme, with maps on the wrappers.

“Brands work, and people use branded items more than they use nonbranded items, whether it’s a cola or a medicine even,” Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said.

Never say the Republicans don’t learn from their adversaries. On NPR, historian Timothy Naftali discusses responses to State of the Union speeches. He notes a tough response by House Republican leader Robert Michel to President Clinton in 1993, in which Michel complains about the way the “Clinton spin doctors” are changing the meaning of words. In particular, he grumbles, “Patriotism now means agreeing with the Clinton program.” That’s certainly a definition that (with the change of one word) the Bush spin doctors and their conservative supporters have endorsed wholeheartedly.