Who Really Wants Smaller Government?

Whenever someone asks a conservative what exactly they believe, they predictably bring up a sound byte most of them don’t give a second thought: “smaller government”.

The problem with this sound byte is that it isn’t really a conservative belief. It is only something they give lip service to and it is designed specifically to avoid talking about what they really believe. What conservatives really believe, simply put, is that that the sole role of government is to “protect property”, which means their idea of government is nothing more than police and a military. Their vision of government is little more than a king and his army. If they can’t see a King doing it, they consider it an “entitlement” and don’t want the American government doing it. They can’t imagine a King providing unemployment insurance, social security or health insurance so they oppose all the American government doing any of those things. The problem with that is the preamble of the Constitution specifically states the purpose of our government is to do a lot more than merely protecting property, like providing for the general welfare, but conservatives who claim to support the Constitution conveniently ignore that fact.

The reality is, during the last decade, conservative Republicans oversaw the largest expansion of the federal government since the new deal. They created a brand new massive government bureaucracy, the department of homeland security. They also started not one, but two multi-trillion dollar unfunded and unending wars. Then they also passed another massive corporate welfare package, Medicare Part D, also unpaid for. So despite their rhetoric, what America actually gets when we elect Republicans is a LOT more government and a LOT more government debt, but since their expansions are in the narrow realm of what they think government should do, police and military, they have no problems with massively expanding the size and cost of government. Predictably, as soon as the newly elected administration started talking about reforming health insurance, something conservatives don’t think government should do, they pretended to be outraged at the national debt and refuse to admit their own role in growing it to its current size.

Consider that military spending in all its forms now constitutes 53.3% of total US federal spending. Consider that we have over 140 military bases on foreign soil, many of which serve no purpose except to cost us trillions and anger the locals as was the case with the Saudis who attacked us on 09-11-2001. We have an easy and obvious path to save trillions of dollars but conservatives oppose any cuts to military spending. Conservatives talk a lot about smaller government but they know to actually do it would negatively affect millions of average Americans, making it political suicide, therefore after a decade of being in control of all three branches of government they utterly failed to deliver on it.

The reality is that Liberals are the ones who truly want smaller government and are willing to make that happen.

Republicans stripped pandemic preparedness funds from the stimulus bill

What comes around goes around...

When House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who has long championed investment in pandemic preparation, included roughly $900 million for that purpose in this year's emergency stimulus bill, he was ridiculed by conservative operatives and congressional Republicans.

Obey and other advocates for the spending argued, correctly, that a pandemic hitting in the midst of an economic downturn could turn a recession into something far worse -- with workers ordered to remain in their homes, workplaces shuttered to avoid the spread of disease, transportation systems grinding to a halt and demand for emergency services and public health interventions skyrocketing. Indeed, they suggested, pandemic preparation was essential to any responsible plan for renewing the U.S. economy.

But former White House political czar Karl Rove and key congressional Republicans -- led by Maine Senator Susan Collins -- aggressively attacked the notion that there was a connection between pandemic preparation and economic recovery.

Now, as the World Health Organization says a deadly swine flu outbreak that apparently began in Mexico but has spread to the United States has the potential to develop into a pandemic, Obey's attempt to secure the money seems eerily prescient.

And his partisan attacks on his efforts seem not just creepy, but dangerous.

This goes back to the Republican cult-like belief in "small government". Their argument has long been that government has no role to play in public health issues. Thus, they ridiculed the idea that the government should spend any money preparing for a pandemic.

Let us remember that this belief extends to disaster relief, which was why we saw the abysmal federal response to Katrina in 2005. That's why "Brownie" didn't think anything of it when he wasted 24 hours trying to find a dog sitter while a major American city was drowning. He wasn't supposed to have a role to play anyway. The Red Cross and private charities were supposed to handle that stuff. In the minds of most Republicans the federal government was only there to shoot looters.

This is just a reminder of why Republicans suck so badly at governing. They don't believe in government. A Republican in government is like an atheist being a priest.