Blame the GOP for High Federal Spending...

[Updates below.]

But a great deal of the problem is with the Loyal Opposition:

President Bush sent Congress a $2.4 trillion election-year budget on Monday featuring big increases for defense and homeland security but also a record $521 billion deficit.

To battle the soaring deficits, Bush proposed squeezing scores of government programs and sought outright spending cuts in seven of 15 Cabinet-level agencies. The Agriculture Department and the Environmental Protection Agency were targeted for the biggest reductions.

[...]

Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass, called on Congress to reject Bush's spending plan, charging it was the "most antifamily, anti-worker, anti-healthcare, anti-education budget in modern times.''

Note how Mr. Kennedy frames the ideas here. You are anti-family, anti-worker, anti-healthcare, and anti-education if you cut or hold down the spending in the budgets of the federal agencies that are involved with the administration of programs that impact familes, workers, healthcare, and education. It's grotesque.

It's the very essence of the statist nanny handholding hell so many people still cling to and want to continue imposing on the rest of the country. With people like Mr. Kennedy still in power and still keeping a great deal of the country in agreement with them, I can't concieve of a true limited government reform movement any time in the near future. It would probably take two generations for a new philosophical cycle to rotate through, but by that time the nation's financial situation may have deteriorated to too dangerous a point.

The Republicans have let so many opportunities for real change go unapproached that I've given up on them. They need the system to remain mostly as it is.

UPDATE(2/3/2004 1:20pm)
David Bernstein makes a critical point:

Here is the money quote from the Post: "In all, Bolten said, the budget would kill 65 federal programs and significantly trim 63 others. That would save $4.9 billion in the next fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1." Remember, that's $4.9 billion out of a $2.4 trillion budget; after a 20%+ real increase over three years; and after adding a new budget-busting Medicare entitlement. That Bush is really taking an axe to the budget!

Bush is taking the barest first steps and I don't know what's more troubling: that these steps rouse such strong opposition or that there were **65** federal programs sitting around that cut be axed easily. Why weren't they cut last year?

UPDATE(6/3/2004 1:13pm)
Can't Cut the Budget; Politicians Will Eat Me!

UPDATE(6/18/2004 5:03pm)
Whom to Vote For?

Posted by Drizzten at February 02, 2004 08:59 AM