BIG GOVERNMENT, SMALL STATE

A 'Big Government Conservatism': George Bush hasn't put a name to his political philosophy, but we can. (FRED BARNES, August 15, 2003, Wall Street Journal)

The essence of Mr. Bush's big government conservatism is a trade-off. To gain free-market reforms and expand individual choice, he's willing to broaden programs and increase spending. [...]

When I coined the phrase "big government conservative" years ago, I had certain traits in mind. Mr. Bush has all of them. First, he's realistic. He understands why Mr. Reagan failed to reduce the size of the federal government and why Newt Gingrich and the GOP revolutionaries failed as well. The reason: People like big government so long as it's not a huge drag on the economy. So Mr. Bush abandoned the all-but-hopeless fight that Mr. Reagan and conservatives on Capitol Hill had waged to jettison the Department of Education. Instead, he's opted to infuse the department with conservative goals.

A second trait is a programmatic bent. Big government conservatives prefer to be in favor of things because that puts them on the political offensive. Promoting spending cuts/minimalist government doesn't do that. Mr. Bush has famously defined himself as a compassionate conservative with a positive agenda. Almost by definition, this makes him a big government conservative. His most ambitious program is his faith-based initiative. It would use government funds to expand social programs run by religious organizations. Many of them have been effective in fighting drug/alcohol addiction and helping lift people out of poverty. So far, the initiative has had only a small impact, its scope limited by Congress.

Another trait is a far more benign view of government than traditional conservatives have. Big government conservatives are favorably disposed toward what neoconservative Irving Kristol has called a "conservative welfare state." (Neocons tend to be big government conservatives.) This means they support transfer payments that have a neutral or beneficial effect (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) and oppose those that subsidize bad behavior (welfare). Mr. Bush wants to reform Social Security and Medicare but not shrink either.

That last seems somewhat incorrect. Rather, we might say that under George W. Bush's vision of the welfare state, the government would force individuals to exercise freedom, a contradictory sounding thing to be sure. But once you accept that conservatives have lost the war over the welfare state, and that people are simply going to insist that there be a social services net beneath them throughout their lives, then perhaps this is the best option remaining to those of conservative instinct.

What this emerging vision proposes is that rather than have the central government collect and then disperse monies for these services as they are needed, the individual be required to pay into a variety of funds for a lifetime, retain some significant degree of control over them, and, in essence, dispense the monies to himself. What ends up happening in such a regime is that, as a threshold matter, one has one's freedom taken away--one is given no choice whether to participate in the system or not. This is a bitter pill for conservatives to swallow. However, one is then returned the better portion of the liberty that we no longer enjoy today when that once confiscated money is put into the personal accounts that each of us would administer or rendered into vouchers. On its face--though it might be a different story in practice--this appears to add up to a society with greater freedom than we have now and with a considerably smaller state, even if it has some sizable government programs. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 16, 2003 7:12 AM