Rand Paul: Now that I’ve Been Elected, I Have Discovered that Earmarks Aren’t All that Bad!
I am as eager as the next conservative to see the Republicans tear into government spending. I want to see Obamacare tossed out a window of the Capitol like an old mattress. I want to see department budgets crushed. I want to see the bureaucrats driven before us. I want to hear the lamentations of the Cabinet Secretaries. I am just a little bit eager to get about the work of turning our sclerotic money-suck into something far, far smaller.
But I might have to wait a little bit. See, it seems that the lure of bribery cash earmarks might prove too much for Rand Paul, one of our newest and most libertarian Senators-elect, to resist. I’d like to tell you this surprises me, given Rand’s tough talk on earmarks, but it doesn’t. Rand’s father Ron, touted as as a true fiscal hawk, has been a rather large fan of “bringing home the bacon” and it seems that the nut didn’t fall far from the tree.
I wrote last week that the GOP will never make the big cuts necessary to save us from financial ruin if it can’t put down its favorite re-election toy. That job is going to get a lot more difficult if Paul, who should be the most vocal proponent for an earmark ban given his campaign hype, has already started started to salivate over his chunk of the federal budget and all the awesome votes he can buy with it.
UPDATE: Doug Mataconis rides to Paul’s defense with a weak sauce argument about how earmarks aren’t really much of a much.
Other Posts of Interest:
- Ron Paul is Not the Answer, Unless the Question is “Who Can Destroy the Republican Party for the Rest of My Lifetime?”
- Smaller Government Begins with an Earmark Ban
- It’s Time for John McCain to Put Up or Shut Up on Earmarks
Category: The Economy and Your Money, The Republican Minority
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Earmarks is a smokescreen anyway. They never amount to more than two or three percent of the entire federal budget, so its like having a dog that's infested with fleas and just picking off twenty or thirty of them and ignoring all the rest of them, as well as all the eggs they've lain in your carpet. Whenever I hear somebody carrying on about earmarks, I don't take them seriously to be honest with you. Its just a game to make people think they're serious about cutting the deficit. If you really want to cut the deficit you have to end foreign aid, cut entitlements by at least ten percent, and cut the military budget by at least an equal amount. Until I hear somebody say that they can talk all the crap about earmarks they want, they'll be talking to the hand.
You can't dismiss earmarks as being a small percentage of the budget, then bring up the military budget (which is also a small percentage of the defense budget). Earmarks are the beginning. If you can't cut them, you can't cut anything at all. More, as I've written here more than a couple times, getting rid of earmarks gets rid of a very powerful incumbent retention tool. It's hard to overestimate the value of an earmark to the re-election chance of a member of Congress.
As for the rest, it won't work. Foreign aid will be with us always, as it should. The military budget does need to be cut, but cutting it in half is suicide (and always has been). I get the whole isolationist argument, but it's folly. America has never worked that way and, with the world as it is, imaging that we will prosper doing otherwise is just silly.
I never meant to suggest that earmarks should be ignored, just that the focus on them as a major problem is grossly overstated. If taxes and regulations were lowered to an acceptable level, there would be no need for earmarks anyway, the economy would improve to the point they would not be so necessary. As it stands now, people are paying so much in taxes and their economies are being stunted so greatly by oppressive regulations. The states are just getting back what their people pay in to the feds. In some cases they get more back than what their citizens pay, in other cases not as much, but its still taxpayer money from Washington that never should have gone there to begin with.
Drop the taxes to a reasonable amount, cut regulations to the bare bones minimum and this stuff will work itself out. But there will still need to be some spending cuts, and any idea that the military budget is untouchable is going to be a non-starter. We have way too many bases overseas. Let the Euros start paying their own way. Same with Japan. With the exceptions of our obligations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf which is vital, and South Korea, everything else should be drastically reduced or in some cases eliminated. Plus, stop producing these outmoded weapons. We could probably cut well over ten percent with little problem if any. It just takes political will to do so.
Couple that with a freeze on federal hiring and we might-might-get this mess worked out. But its going to take sacrifices across the board. Earmarks aren't going to even begin to cut it. About like putting band-aids over multiple stab wounds.
It's a first step, and a necessary one, I think. Like I said before, if we can't make the modest cuts in earmarks, then what real chance do we have of making the far more drastic cuts we'll have to make to pull us back from the brink? Start there, then go bigger, but start there.
The main thing, by far, is to lower the taxes and drastically reduce the regulations. That should be the main and the first priority. Like I said, if you do that, suddenly earmarks are not an issue, because they won't be as necessary. You'll still have them, and you can still work to reduce them, but they shouldn't be used as a smokescreen to keep from lowering taxes and regulations, and that's precisely what the Democrats will do, and the GOP to a large extent will play along with them.
For one thing, the GOP can say they've kept their word, and the Democrats can say it proves they can get serious about cutting spending. And haven't you noticed, by the way, many Democrats are suddenly talking about cutting earmarks? Ever wonder why?
I say its because they can avoid the tax cuts and regulation reductions if they use earmark reform as a smokescreen.
It would be too easy for them to point to earmarks as proof of their success and then drop it at that on some other pretext. Then the next thing you know people are going to be demanding the earmarks back. Think about it. There's a reason politicians bring home the bacon as a way to get re-elected. The reason-it works because people want it, and these politicians know that.
I don't know if I'm really getting my point across to you or not, but let me put it this way. Politicians are slimy and they'll play you all day long.
Earmarks must be stopped as a matter of principle. You want something, put your proposal out there in the sunshine and see what happens; quietly burying it in some other legislation is just more smoke and mirrors, and we absolutely have to stop that. Have to, for the integrity of the system (what little it has left).
It's a litmus test, potentially. Anyone who is hypocritical enough to oppose earmarks in a general way and then goes after them for his jurisdiction should be highlighted by the conservative populists and have his/her actions used as a "Strike One" against them re: being supported in their next election.