Is Chuck Schumer on Crack?
A very bad deal.
By Jonah Goldberg
December 11, 2001 4:00 p.m.
here they go again.
On Tuesday, December 11, Sen. Charles Schumer made the formal announcement on the Washington Post op-ed page that the "new New Deal" has begun. "The president can either lead the charge or be run over by it." No doubt the president is grateful for the heads-up from the liberal first-term senator from New York.
Actually, Schumer is just the latest in a parade of liberals to announce that "Big Government Looks Better Now" (that's the headline of Schumer's essay).
In October, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman (brilliant on the Middle East; increasingly dimmer as he moves away from it) declared: "President Bush denigrated Washington during his campaign and repeated the selfish mantra about the surplus that 'it's your money — not the government's money.' How thankful we are today that we have a Washington, D.C., with its strong institutions — FEMA, the F.A.A., the F.B.I. and armed forces…" More recently, a New York Times "newsitorial" on the front page announced that "Big Government is Back in Style."
But my favorite such argument came in the November 19 edition of the proudly Lefty magazine The Nation. Former LBJ aide Bill Moyers writes, "This catastrophe has reminded us of a basic truth at the heart of our democracy: No matter our wealth or status or faith, we are all equal before the law, in the voting booth and when death rains down from the sky."
Putting aside the fact that we would all be just as equal when death rains down from the sky if we lived in a dictatorship or a socialist utopia, Moyers takes this truism and seems to translate it into a justification for single-payer health care, the repeal of NAFTA, and a television network dedicated solely to exposing the evils of corporations and conservatives (which is funny if for no other reason than that that's what Moyers has been doing at PBS for 30 years).
So, in a sense, Schumer is a Johnny-come-lately on the whole topic. The significance of Schumer's manifesto-lite is that it telegraphs Democratic arguments going into the next election cycle. Already, in a memo written by James Carville, Stanley Greenberg, and Bob Shrum, the Democrats' top strategists have made it clear that they will not challenge the president on the war overseas. In return, they plan to be in charge of security at home. And, not just the sort of security we associate with airports, borders, and bomb-sniffing dogs. They want to be in charge of economic security, health security, and environmental security. As my colleague Ramesh Ponnuru writes, "their project is to channel Americans' instinctive nationalist reaction to the attacks into a statist communitarianism rather than, say, tighter border control."
But, just because Schumer's not alone in making this argument has nothing to do with the fact that the argument itself is absurd. "The era of a shrinking federal government has come to a close," writes Schumer. "From 1912 to 1980, the federal government grew with little interruption…. For the next two decades, the federal government stopped growing, and by some measures even shrank, with Bill Clinton doing more of the shrinking than any other president."
Alas, this is all pretty dishonest. He picks 1980 as a date, solely because that was the year Ronald Reagan was elected, not because there was any sizable decrease in the size and scope of the federal government in 1980 (recall that he wasn't even inaugurated until 1981). Indeed, it's hard for both conservatives and liberals to admit, but gross welfare spending went up on Reagan's watch. Meanwhile the government grew under Reagan because the Gipper spent lavishly on defense. In turn, the "shrinking" Schumer lays at Bill Clinton's feet--and upon which Bill Clinton himself rested his claim to "reinvent" government --was almost entirely the result of a massive downsizing in defense-related jobs
Regardless, Schumer argues that big government is needed to ensure national security here at home. "For the first time, we are engaged in a war in which more Americans are likely to die on the home front than on the battlefield." Hence: "For the foreseeable future, the federal government will have to grow." Because, "Only one entity has the breadth, strength and resources to lead…." You guessed it. The Feds! This, according to Schumer, is the "'new' New Deal."
Well, somebody needs to show Chuck a copy of a high-school civics textbook. The proposition that the federal government should provide for the safety and security of its citizens is the "original deal," not a new one or even a "new, new" one. It's in the Constitution of all places. That much-storied, though sadly overlooked document which happened to establish the federal government — and Schumer's job — in the first place. In fact, it's in the very first paragraph:
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
In fact, later on in the Constitution, it actually states that Congress is authorized to tax only for the purposes of defense and the general welfare. It takes an arrogance peculiar to liberal democrats to repackage the fundamental purpose of the U.S. Constitution as a "new" excuse for government funding.
Which is my main peeve with all of the post-September 11 opportunism of liberals looking to force-feed an already bloated government. The suggestion that the attacks of September 11 were the consequence of a "too-small" federal government is criminally stupid (See " Government Makes a Comeback?").
The more obvious, honest, and accurate conclusion is that the federal government was way too distracted. The federal government spends an awful lot of time — and money — policing the size of classrooms, the ingredients of potato chips, and the generosity of milk subsidies but not nearly enough policing the borders and the airports. If you hired a security guard to watch for shoplifters, wouldn't you be annoyed if he spent all day wearing a walkman, playing video games, and stuffing his face with pork rinds?
Which is why the complaint that George Bush's tax cut is "selfish" or "irresponsible" or "dangerous" in the wake of 9/11 is so disingenuous. The federal government, even after Bush's allegedly crippling tax cuts, still spends trillions of dollars every year; the vast majority of that money goes to things that would make the Founding Fathers plotz.
Schumer says that the president will have to "face down the hard right" in order to provide for domestic security. But this misses the point that the vast majority of conservatives have always championed a strong national defense and vigorous law-and-order policies. What they've opposed is the sort of costly and anti-constitutional social engineering championed by the likes of Chuck Schumer. Indeed, if Chuck Schumer were less interested in, say, providing pork to the teachers' unions and more interested in "providing for the common defense," he wouldn't see the need to repackage the Constitution as a "new" New Deal.
nationalreview.com
excellent article, thanks to Drudgereport.com for linking to it. |
