Expecting the New Year to see a rollback in the breakneck growth of government seems like too much to ask.
After eight years in which President Obama has been no slouch in the government spending department, Democrats are left to contemplate whether they might have actually done better had they nominated an explicitly socialist candidate for president.
Certainly, the Democratic Party’s rising stars are almost uniformly to the left of Hillary Clinton, who was closer to Jill Stein than Ayn Rand on the proper size of government herself.
Republicans have fared little better. With the exception of President Reagan’s first two years in office, the GOP’s work to curtail government spending and borrowing has generally been confined to when Democrats hold the White House.
And even under Reagan, government spending and borrowing grew. During most Republican administrations, the party’s lawmakers barely pretend to be principled fiscal conservatives even in their rhetoric.
The last time Republicans held both the presidency and Congress, they borrowed money to finance both a war of choice and the biggest new entitlement program since LBJ’s Great Society. Discretionary spending grew nearly twice as fast as when congressional Republicans were mud wrestling with Bill Clinton. This wasn’t solely due to the fight against terrorism after America was attacked on 9/11 — witness the expansion of the Department of Education.
President-elect Trump isn’t any more of a limited government guy than George W. Bush. If Bush was a compassionate conservative, implying conservatism isn’t compassionate without that modifier, Trump has emphasized he is willing to be compassionate without the conservative modifier.
“I will not let people die in the streets if I’m president,” Trump declared in a healthcare exchange with Sen. Ted Cruz during one of the Republican presidential debates. Both Trump and the Democrats believe the alternatives are some form of liberalism or dying in the streets. Conservative politicians do little to correct this perception, as evidenced by that debate performance.
Republicans could move in a more Trumpian direction. Not only do presidents tend to shape their parties, but Trump’s victory may have demonstrated that flipping the Rust Belt is the GOP’s most plausible path to an Electoral College majority — and that talking trade restrictions and industrial policy may do more to win over those voters than discussing entitlement reform.
So it looks like 2017 will be the latest in a long succession of years of big government. But there is another more hopeful way to look at it.
Majorities in Congress plus the Oval Office afford Republicans the opportunity to not just stall government growth but reverse some of it. Obamacare could be repealed, regulations could be rescinded and taxes could be cut.
Conservatives may not be running the show, but they do have a place at the table. Mike Pence will be vice president. Mick Mulvaney is the likely budget direction. Tom Price, a champion of Obamacare repeal, is the probable Department of Health and Human Services secretary. Elaine Chao, nominee for transportation secretary, actually did more with less as labor secretary.
Liberals complain Trump’s Cabinet nominees seek to gut their agencies from within. In most cases, that’s an exaggeration. But to make any progress from a conservative perspective, it is necessary to have departments run by Republicans as serious about limiting government as their Democratic predecessors were about enlarging its size, cost and scope.
Democrats could learn a thing or two about the value of limited government. Many of them genuinely fear Trump. Maybe they will finally discover that the executive power expansions they were perfectly willing to tolerate, even cheer, under Obama is a bad idea because he won’t always be the one wielding that power.
Do liberal Democrats want a President Trump assembling extrajudicial “kill lists” or approving drone strikes on targets who happen to be American citizens? Do they want him to go to war without congressional approval, as Obama did in Libya and in resuming hostilities in Iraq without an anti-Islamic State authorization of force? Do they still want warrantless mass surveillance or indefinite detention?
In 2013, the liberal pundit Molly Ball ridiculed those who hesitated to give Obama powers they wouldn’t want a Republican to exercise.
“President Obama would have exercised better judgment and he has exercised better judgment,” Ball said. “What would George W. Bush do? That’s our standard? We would never allow a power to the presidency that we wouldn’t feel comfortable giving to George W. Bush?”
How does Ball feel about that argument now that Trump is about to be president? We limit government power precisely because we are not always going to elect officials who we like, trust or who are even necessarily good.
Make no mistake: I’m not predicting this bipartisan reawakening of anti-statist spirit. The oath of office taken by politicians, swearing to uphold and obey the Constitution, is discarded as quickly as most New Year’s resolutions.
But we can always wish for the triumph of hope over experience this time around.
