I have two items for my write-up today on M. Stanton Evans' Clear and Present Dangers: A Conservative View of America's Government (copyright 1975).
1.
A significant point in my reading of Evans' book thus far has been that
the Left has not been consistent in its stances on the distribution of
power within the U.S. Government. Prior to President Richard
Nixon, prominent leftists supported a strong Presidency and a weak
Congress, for they believed that the President should have the leeway to
enact reforms, whereas they regarded Congress as slow and too tied to
the status quo. What's more, a number of liberals applauded Executive
Privilege when the Eisenhower Administration used it to keep information
from Senator Joseph McCarthy! And, even during Nixon's Presidency,
there were leftists who supported giving the President broad powers,
such as the authority to implement wage and price controls. And yet,
with Watergate and other scandals in the Nixon Administration, many on
the Left were bemoaning that the Presidency had become too strong and
abusive of power, and they expressed support for greater congressional
oversight.
Evans narrates that, during the 1930's, there were
leftists who were critics of judicial review, since judges had
overturned key aspects of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. With
the Warren Court, however, the Left was singing a different tune, and
courts were even legislating from the bench, going so far as to mandate
school bussing in certain regions of the U.S.
Evans' problem with the Left is that it supports a government of human beings rather than a government of law.
For Evans, the Left doesn't care which branch of the government has
more power: it's just interested in its agenda getting passed! Evans acknowledges that conservatives, too, have been inconsistent on
the distribution of power within the U.S. Government, and he believes that
the government's authority should be limited by laws. According to
Evans, if government authority rests on the whims of human beings rather
than law, disaster can result, for what if the human being
wielding power chooses to abuse it?
I wrestled some with
this issue in my second post about Evans' book, so I won't do so here.
I'd like to ask a question, though: Where would (or did) Evans stand on
the nuclear option during George W. Bush's Presidency? Remember
when Democrats in the Senate were hindering the confirmation of some of
Bush's judicial appointments, and Republicans were calling for a
nuclear option that would eliminate a filibuster and thus expedite the
confirmation process? What did Evans think about that? On the one hand, Evans appeared to support a congressional filibuster in Clear and Present Dangers.
On the other hand, Evans on page 104 expresses concerns about judicial
activism, in which the court sets policy rather than simply negating
laws, and he states that "the Congress and the Presidency should have at
their disposal means for limiting the court if, in extremis, such limits are required."
2. Chapter 6 is entitled "The Growth of Government".
Evans argues that government spending is increasing massively and is
becoming a burden on taxpayers, and not just the wealthy ones. Evans will talk later about the issue of progressive and regressive taxation, and I'll discuss that tomorrow. In
my latest reading, however, Evans challenges a liberal argument that
defense spending is the main problem in the federal budget, and that
there would be more money to go around (for the poor and others) if the
defense budget were cut.
Evans acknowledges that the
defense budget has waste, but he does not believe that the defense
budget is the main problem, for U.S. government spending on defense is
rising at a slower pace than domestic spending, plus domestic spending
takes up more of the federal budget. Evans may have a point there. You
can see here
a chart on U.S. Government spending for Fiscal Year 2010, and the
defense budget makes up 20 percent (though the article raises other
considerations, sometimes documenting its claims, and sometimes not).
Quite
a few times, I've heard people on the Left say that welfare does not
make up much of the federal budget, for, in terms of the federal budget
as a whole, not a whole lot of money has been spent on Aid to Families
with Dependent Children (AFDC) or Temporary Aid to Needy Families
(TANF). That is true, but there is more to federal domestic spending
than that, for federal domestic spending includes health care,
education, public housing, job training programs, and the list goes on.
I would not propose abolishing these programs, mind you, but I tend to
agree with Evans that, if we are concerned about the growth and the
amount of U.S. government spending, then we cannot just expect for cuts
in the defense budget to suffice. In my reading thus far, Evans
primarily focuses on how more government spending leads to a greater tax
burden, but many of us can think of other problems that accompany more
government spending: deficits, a higher national debt, etc. I wouldn't
revert to being a conservative over these issues, however, for I think
that one can reconcile a leftist political orientation with fiscal
responsibility. After all, countries that have national health
insurance spend less on health care than the U.S. does! I don't have
to support an inactive federal government to believe that the federal
government should spend money wisely.
I liked something that Evans
said on pages 110-111: "All of us stand in two different relationships
to government spending: On the one hand we are, in some fashion or
other, beneficiaries of what government is doing----if not in the form
of subsidy, then in the enjoyment of some protection or service we
consider essential. On the other hand, we are all in a sense victims of
the system, in that we must pay the bills through taxes or inflation or
submit to other social costs imposed by the enlargement of government
powers. Politically speaking, the crucial question is which of these
capacities is uppermost in our minds. If most people view themselves as
beneficiaries of what the government is doing, then it is
reasonable to expect them to favor increased spending and official
intervention. If most people view themselves as victims of
what the government is doing, then it is reasonable to expect them to
favor less spending and official intervention. The subjectively onerous
tax level is that which causes the second perception to replace the
first."
Evans goes on to argue that many Americans are seeing
themselves as victims rather than as beneficiaries of government. My
guess is that there are good and bad factors behind that: there are many
who feel overtaxed because, well, they are overtaxed, but
there are also some who don't want to pay taxes to support the common
good: public schools, parks, etc. I'm not talking so much about those
who believe that there is a lot of government waste that taxpayers
shouldn't have to pay for, but rather those who don't care about public
schools because their kids are not in public schools (to use an
example).
But I can see Evans point: for people to support
government spending, they have to believe that it helps them
somehow----at the very least by making their society a better place. A
while back, I referred to economist Bruce Bartlett's statement that, in
Europe, people don't mind higher taxes as much because they get what
they're paying for, in terms of benefits (see here).
Similarly, I once heard a Canadian say that, even though he paid more
taxes in Canada, he didn't mind that because at least he didn't have to
worry about his medical needs there. In my opinion, the U.S. Government
has to work on taxpayers getting their money's worth, by ensuring that
money is spent wisely and efficiently. One reason that I like
President Barack Obama is that he supports the government helping
people, but he also has expressed a desire to eliminate governmental
inefficiencies and waste, and in some cases he has done so (I think of
Medicare).