The question Obama doesn't want you to ask
By: Timothy P. Carney
Examiner Columnist
January 23, 2009
“Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions—who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans,” President Barack Obama said in his inaugural address on Tuesday.
For these non-believers, the president had scorn: “What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them—that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.”
In practice, we know what this means: Obama wants more federal spending, more federal regulation, more federal mandates, and more federal prohibitions. It means the president—like all presidents—wants more power.
And objecting that the Constitution limits his power, or that more federal or presidential power is inherently corrupting or destructive—that’s out of line. The only legitimate question to ask about the new powers the president wants is “whether it works.”
But that raises another question: Works for whom?
Government action almost always picks winners and losers. “We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines,” Obama promised Tuesday. “We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.”
These lines caused elation, no doubt, among the well-connected contractors who will get the tax dollars to build the roads, as well as among the developers who bought land cheap waiting for taxpayers to pave their driveway—the same class of businessmen who funded the campaign for tax hikes in Northern Virginia.
Also celebrating these words—confident bigger government “will work” for them—are those like T. Boone Pickens, Goldman Sachs, and Archer Daniels Midland who have invested in ethanol or sun and wind power, counting on added injections of taxpayer cash.
And the guaranteed winner whenever government grows? The lobbyists. “Big government is back,” exclaimed lobbyist Mark Ruge to The Hill newspaper this week. “It’s going to be a very, very active Congress.” That means more lobbying.
Obama called for “a watchful eye” over markets—meaning more regulation—in the context of a correct observation that “a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.” But what “favors the prosperous” more?
A free market in which each businessman needs to convince investors and consumers to willingly part with their own money? Or a centrally managed economy in which the businessman needs only hire the right lobbyist to beg the lawmaker for favors?
A quick glance at this nascent administration helps answer that question:
• President Obama, as was reported in this column last week, has proposed a shift in telecom policy that would profit a company whose vice president for policy was advising Obama’s transition team.
• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as a U.S. senator, was the champion of rewarding her donors with earmarks.
• Treasury secretary-designee Timothy Geithner was an author of the $700 billion bailouts that transfer taxpayer dollars to his former Wall Street colleagues.
• Attorney General nominee Eric Holder approved Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich, a wealthy businessman who fled to the Swiss Alps before facing trial for a slew of charges including “trading with the enemy”—Iran, during the hostage crisis. Rich’s wife contributed over $1 million to the Clintons.
Conflicts of interest, quid-pro-quo dealings, and appearances of impropriety are certainly not unique to Obama’s team or his party. A few Washington Republicans are in jail for just that sort of thing. But increasing government—however good the intentions—always gives an advantage to those who have the most access to government decision-makers.
So, with all due respect, Mr. President, it is still appropriate to ask “is government too big?” And, to be fair, this raises the question, too big for whom?
Certainly, government is not too big for the banks, the Wall Street firms, the insurers, and developers all pocketing bailout money and crowding out competition with new regulation. The government is not too big for the politicians and the bureaucrats gaining more power by the day. Government is not too big for the lobbyists, made more valuable, more influential, and richer by the week.
But for the taxpayer and the entrepreneur, for the consumer who sees his income shrink through taxes, his dreams obstructed by regulatory hurdles, and his choices dwindle and prices rise through government, that inappropriate question seems worth asking.
Examiner columnist Timothy P. Carney is editor of the Evans-Novak Political Report. His Examiner column appears on Fridays.
