Republicans and Democrats applauded.
What a joke.
Government grew under Clinton, and grew even faster under his successor.
Government is so big today that more than half the population gets a major
part of its income from the state.
So says a study by economist Gary Shilling. Shilling, a Springfield, N.J.,
consultant and forecaster, says the portion of Americans feeding
substantially at the public trough stands at 52.6 percent. In 2000, it was
49.4. It seems unbelievable that in 1950, only 28.3 percent of Americans
lived off the taxpayers.
[http://www.racesimcentral.net/]. Shilling projects 60
percent by 2040.
One out of five Americans works for some level of government or for a firm
that depends on taxpayer financing. One in five also draws Social Security
or a federal pension. That number will grow as the baby boomers move on to
Social Security, which, let's not forget, is a transfer program.
Among other recipients of largess: Nine million are on food stamps, 2
million received housing subsidies, and 5 million go to school on the
federal taxpayer. In Shilling's reckoning, dependents of recipients are also
part of the group he calls "government beneficiaries."
Wasn't the welfare system reformed in 1996? On the surface, yes. Cash
payments are available only for a limited time and recipients are expected
to work eventually. Millions of women once on welfare have gone to work. But
the idea that the taxpayer has gotten a break or that overall dependency has
decreased is a myth. As the AP reported
[http://www.racesimcentral.net/]: "The welfare
state is bigger than ever despite a decade of policies designed to wean poor
people from public aid. The number of families receiving cash benefits from
welfare has plummeted since the government imposed time limits on the
payments a decade ago. But other programs for the poor - including Medicaid,
food stamps and disability benefits - are bursting with new enrollees. The
result ... is that nearly one in six persons rely on some form of public
assistance, a larger share than at any time since the government started
measuring two decades ago."
The handouts go to the well off, too. Farm programs and corporate subsidies
benefit big farmers and big business, and wealthy people draw large Medicare
benefits.
The Cato Institute says there are nearly 1,700 federal subsidy programs
spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
According to Michael Tanner's "Leviathan on the Right"
[http://www.racesimcentral.net/],
federal domestic spending under President Bush has risen 27 percent in real
terms, while discretionary non-entitlement spending has gone up 4.5 percent
a year. (Clinton's annual increase was "only" to 2.1 percent.)
Who'd have thought that a Republican president would challenge Lyndon
Johnson's spending record?
Government is "that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the
expense of everyone else," wrote Frederic Bastiat, the great laissez-faire
economist of Nine***th-Century France. Of course, everyone cannot live at
the expense of everyone else, but people who understand nothing about
economics try, egged on by politicians looking for an election-wining
coalition.
Government has no wealth of its own. Before it gives anything to anyone, it
must take from those who produced it. But the taking could discourage future
production, leaving less to be distributed by the politicians. Productive
Americans have forged ahead despite a constellation of transfer programs,
but how long will they continue to do so?
The European welfare states are learning that producers don't leave
themselves available for milking forever. Their economies are sluggish, and
unemployment is high. Government promises exceed resources, and citizens who
were guaranteed lifelong security find their benefits shrinking.
Yet this doesn't deter our champions of big government. Even the coming
Social Security and Medicare train wrecks don't faze them
[http://www.racesimcentral.net/].
So don't expect government to stop growing. The Washington Post reports
ominously: "In the four months since the midterm elections, the number of
new lobbyist registrations has nearly doubled to 2,232 from 1,222 in the
comparable period a year earlier."
The lobbyists go where the money and the power is.
Thomas Jefferson said, "The natural progress of things is for liberty to
yield and government to gain ground."
It's sad that that's no myth.