No, the GOP is not ‘Reaganesque’
By JACK KENNY
theunionleader.com
THE REPUBLICAN Party of George W. Bush is “very much the party of Ronald Reagan,” Ed Gillespie, the party’s national chairman, wrote last week in response to recent editorials in The Union Leader and New Hampshire Sunday News. It is “the party of lower taxes, less regulation, strong national security and, yes, fiscal responsibility.” Fiscal responsibility? Do tell.
During an interview with The Union Leader publisher and two of the paper’s editors, Gillespie said the party was in favor of increasing federal spending “at a slower rate of growth” than the Democrats. That prompted a Sunday News editorial lamenting that “the days of Reaganesque Republican railings against the expansion of federal government are over. No longer does the Republican Party stand for shrinking the federal government, for scaling back its encroachment into the lives of Americans, or for carrying the banner of federalism into the political battles of the day.” OK, but when did the Republican Party stand for any of those things?
The chairman, apparently, was unable to name one agency or department of government Republicans are looking to dismantle. But Gillespie, who said he joined the Republican Party because of Ronald Reagan, might also have a hard time naming any program or agency dismantled during the glory days of the “Gipper.” Perhaps he could name one: The Comprehensive Training and Employment Act. It was replaced by the Jobs Training Partnership Act, co-sponsored by Ted Kennedy and a Republican senator from Indiana named Dan Quayle. The idea that jobs training is a legitimate function of the federal government was never seriously challenged by the Republicans.
And Reagan never really championed the budget-cutting, agency dismantling “revolution” dreamed of by some of his most ardent supporters. He preferred to talk about eliminating “waste and fraud.” “Well, most people when they think about cutting government spending, they think in terms of eliminating necessary programs or wiping out something some service that government is supposed to perform,” Reagan said in his 1980 debate with Jimmy Carter, “I believe there is enough extravagance and fat in government.”
Addressing the nation on his first budget proposals, Reagan said: “It is important to note that we are reducing the rate of increase in taxing and spending. We are not attempting to cut either taxing or spending to a level below that which we presently have.” Reagan had barely settled in at the White House when domestic policy adviser Ed Meese told The New York Times that Social Security, Medicare, veterans’ benefits, Head Start, Supplemental Security Income and ghetto jobs programs would be exempt from spending cuts.
Candidate Reagan was fond of saying that a government agency has the closest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see in this world. President Reagan proved it. Reagan was elected in 1980 on a platform that called for the elimination of two specific cabinet-level departments created during the Carter years. Yet the Department of Energy went on promoting boondoggles like the Clinch River Breeder Reactor, while the Department of Education went from a mere $14.7 billion budget in 1981 to $21.5 billion in 1989. The latest Bush budget has it slated for $53.1 billion next year. I guess you could say that’s “Reaganesque.”
Reagan’s “railings” against big government and wasteful spending were never more eloquent than on the subject of federal farm programs and their tangled web of subsidies, price supports and production controls. Yet in 1986, Reagan was proud to tell the farmers at the Illinois State Fair: “No area of the budget, including defense, has grown as fast as our support of agriculture.” In one year, he boasted, his administration would spend more on farm support programs “than the total amount the last administration provided in all its four years.”
The number of federal civilian workers grew by more than 200,000 in Reagan’s eight years. The budget went from just under $600 billion to slightly more than $1 trillion. Annual deficits, meanwhile, soared past $200 billion and on toward the $300 billion mark. It is ironic, to say the least, that the man who cheerfully presided for eight years over a near doubling of the federal budget and a tripling of the national debt has become the unquestioned paragon of conservatism in America.
The real legacy of Ronald Reagan was brought into focus last week by U.S. Sen. Judd Gregg, a Republican on the Appropriations Committee. Gregg had just announced a $7 million appropriation for the widening of Granite Street in Manchester and $13.67 million for the relocation of the federal office in building in Portsmouth. The expenditures are “fiscally responsible,” the state’s senior senator explained, because they fall within the President’s deficit target of $480 billion for next year’s budget.
Imagine that. The “conservative” party in America now defines “fiscally responsible” as anything within $480 billion of a balanced budget. As the old “Gipper” might have said, that’s “close enough for government work.”
Manchester resident Jack Kenny is a freelance writer.
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