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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Michael M who wrote (40873)	12/11/2001 5:46:08 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 82486

While I am no fan Hilary or Schumer, I'm not sure I would call them communists. I find this paragraph, from the article you linked to, interesting. "The era of a shrinking federal government has come to a close. From 1912 to 1980, the federal government grew with little interruption. The modern conservative movement, beginning with Barry Goldwater in 1964 and attaining power with Ronald Reagan's victory in 1980, argued that Washington had grown too large, too inefficient and too out of touch. Even liberals had to admit there was some truth to this argument. 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. But our new situation has dramatically reversed that trend. Within a few years, those like Dick Armey and Tom DeLay, who believe that any time the federal government moves, its fingers should be chopped off, will be fighting an increasingly desperate rear guard action." Interesting but almost completely inaccurate. Particularly the bolded part. The federal government never stopped growing, it didn't even slow down much. Clinton did slow the growth of spending but that was mainly do to the benefit of the end of the cold war and the shrinking of the military. Non-military spending continued to grow at a good clip. While spending growth slowed it continued, and taxes grew faster. Also during Clinton's administration the growth in regulation accelerated. Hardly a time of shrinking government. Even the Republicans rarely pushed for a shrinkage of government preferring to grow at a slower rate. Sometimes they even abandoned the idea of slower growth and started pilling the pork on as fast as possible. Tim