« Qui custodiet ipsos custodes? | Main | Jordan Joins Gannon »

February 09, 2005

Why Congressman Johnny Can't Cut the Budget

David Corn is doing his best Diogenes impression, seeking for an honest conservative to denounce President Bush's budget numbers. I wish him luck on his quest (despite the opinions of many, I am not a conservative), but I don't think it's likely to matter.

Not that I disagree with many of Corn's issues. An honest budget would address issues like spending for Iraq and Afghanistan, projected costs of President Bush's Social Security changes, revising the Alternative Minimum Tax, the suddenly higher Medicare costs (and the unmitigated gall award goes to President Bush, who forced a prescription drug benefit through Congress last year and is now pledging to 'fix' the problems he's had a large hand in creating) and so on. I'm not familiar enough with budget history to know when (if ever) a President ever sent an honest budget to Congress, but those days are clearly well and truly gone. When today's politicians talk about cutting spending, they mean they'd like to pull some of it off the books so it's not counted. President Bush's budget is just more of the same,

To attempt to restrain government spending we need to examine the forces acting on the budget. As in any system, equilibrium is reached when the forces pushing spending higher are matched by the forces counseling financial restraint.

A large fraction of Americans believe that the purpose of government is to provide for their needs. These people therefore press for additional government spending on issues like health care, workplace safety, welfare, unemployment, housing assistance, etc. Since these needs are omnipresent and because additional government spending in such areas tends to create additional demand for such programs, this pressure is considerable.

We also have two huge entitlement programs on the books: Social Security and Medicare. Because Social Security is indexed, its costs are guaranteed to continue to grow indefinitely. Because it's indexed to wages, there isn't even a chance for payroll taxes to catch up. Medicare, meanwhile, is required to pay for health care, and there is no indication that health care costs are likely to stablize either. And because these programs are entitlements, they have nominally-guaranteed benefits. Congress could still cut or even rescind them, but their status makes that politically difficult (impossible, really).

Next we have Congresscritters and Senators who want to get reelected. An easy way to get reelected is to show your constituents what you've done for them. And nothing says effective politician like goverment dollars flowing into your district. Any politician who tries to stand in the way of pork, meanwhile, will quickly find himself short on people who are willing to vote for his bills. Much easier to agree to vote for Bob's endangered boll weevil protection to get his support for your federal goof-off center.

Finally we have the forces of special interest groups. The number of people who benefit from any particular government program is small, and so the benefits they receive are relatively large. The number of people who pay for any particular government program is large, and so the costs they pay are relatively small. When a government program is threatened, that means the beneficiaries face a significant reduction in income while the taxpayers face a minimal reduction in their costs. The beneficiaries are therefore far more vocal about the cuts, and the government (Richard Nixon notwithstanding) listens far more to the squeaky wheel than to the silent majority.

Against these forces stand not much. The only downward pressure on spending is whatever strength politicians can muster to resist the upward pressure. I am not aware of any politician being punished for allowing spending to grow. I suspect there are many more who have lost their office in attempts to restrain spending. Downward pressure is exerted only by the deficit and by some limited self-restraint that forces politicians not to expand the budget too much, too fast. These pressures are exceedingly weak in comparison with the upwards pressures.

The only way to stop the upwards pressure on the budget is for the voters to throw out politicians who don't control spending. While it's not impossible that this might happen, it is highly unlikely. The human race is notorious for its limited ability to look too far in the future. Immediate gratification is a far stronger motivator than wise long-term choices that cost short-term pain. Until that fact changes, hopes for restraining government spending will continue to founder on the shoals of reality.