Mr Bear’s response to my column begins inauspiciously, with a made-up quote of cartoon leftspeak (the “evil tool” bit). Later on, there is a second exercise in creative license, also with inappropriate quotation marks, that I said porkbusters were a “grave danger to the Republic.” Besides being manufactured, the quotes distract from the main thrust of my argument: the “Porkbusters” don’t know what pork is. They have no substantive criteria for identifying government waste.
So Bear’s whole premise is a distraction. But since he elevates it, I’m happy to unpack a little bit in that direction. Our chief porkbusters are prominent enthusiasts for our excellent adventure in Iraq, one whose prodigious waste of money is all but obscured by the human tragedies it presents every day.
The Eisenhower phrase has become a cliche. But I saw the actual speech for the first time a few months ago, and it is pretty chilling. Listen to the whole thing. Heh.
Is this a fair connection? I didn’t milk it very much in the column, but here’s why I think it is. A well-founded concern for waste and mismanagement in government would properly dwell on defense procurement (including earmarks), not superfluous exit ramps in Indiana. The issue here is not the level of detail provided, which Bear attributes to limited resources. It’s the basic theme of the campaign.
Now Bear says he is interested in “eliminating waste and ensuring transparency” (that’s a real quote). In my piece I explicitly endorsed the transparency facet of the porkbuster campaign, as I have in the past on my own site. But it is hard to escape the conclusion that porkbusters is really more ambitious and ideological: to take on “the overall fiscal fiasco that we call the federal budget.” What does that mean? Government, it bad, except when building nations in sandy places.
Getting back to my column, as any neutral reading would agree, the actual focus of my argument, meaning the stuff that has the most words attached — whether you buy it or not — is threefold:
1. The pork obsession glosses over the minor role of pork in the budget, now and in the future. What somebody said back in 2005 is irrelevant, like the small print on the bottom of those drug advertisements.
2. The purportedly neutral generality glosses over the predominant roles of defense and tax pork.
3. Most important: the pork discussion fails to identify pork. They can find items that look silly, that probably are silly, as well as a lot of stuff that might or might not be worthwhile.
In the interests of pissing off even more people, I will reference an argument made by former Congressional Budget Office director Robert Reischauer: (paraphrasing, not quoting directly) the onus against government spending has the perverse effect of generating a greater volume of earmarks including dubious activities. The reason is that open public debate about spending priorities tends to get squashed by incoherent rants about big government, so the political itch of public officials, interest groups, and the electorate gets scratched by routing more money through the back door of earmarks.
To reduce government waste, support constructive debate on government spending.
