The GOP Free Lunch
Over at the TPM mothership, Eric Kleefeld has flagged a rather amazing quote from House Minority Leader John Boehner:
We have a tougher job than our friends across the aisle. They've been offering Americans a free lunch for the last 80 years, rather successfully . . .Those of us that believe in a smaller, more accountable government, we have a tougher time making our principles relevant to the American people. But it's our challenge, and we've got to do it.
Whatever one thinks of the Democratic party, it is nothing short of astounding that a Republican party leader could make such a comment. What have the last 30 years of American politics been, if not, a free lunch. Broad-based income tax cuts, huge spending increases, more money for the military and all backed by deficit spending. The Republican party has been the ultimate guns and butter party, trying to convince Americans that we can spend billions on our military - and decry any limitations on American global dominance -- all the while cutting the tax revenues that pays for it.
This is a man who once said "I don't think you can put a price on freedom and security in our country" . . . when discussing the Iraq War. Where was John Boehner as the country's dependence on foreign oil increased, the largest entitlement program in 40 years (Medicare Part D) was rammed through Congress and the federal bureaucracy dramatically expanded?
Democrats are not blameless here. Their calls sacrifice have often been too few and far between (I, for one, would have loved to see President Obama do more last night to challenge Americans to sacrifice for the good of the country). But the honest truth is that the Republican have almost never made the tough choices that would make government either smaller or more accountable. Indeed, the only President in recent memory to make that effort was a Democrat, Bill Clinton. And is the Republican's rhetoric of preaching personal responsibility, but demanding precious little of it from the vast majority of the nation's citizens, that has dominated the political discourse for the past 40 years.
I'm all for ending free lunches and asking that individual Americans play a greater role in revitalizing America; but perhaps John Boehner should take a look in the mirror first before he starts to cast aspersions on the other party.
But the honest truth is that the Republican have almost never made the tough choices that would make government either smaller or more accountable. Indeed, the only President in recent memory to make that effort was a Democrat, Bill Clinton.
I think it would be fair to give a good portion of the credit for the effort to make government smaller and/or more accountable goes to the Republican Congress during Clinton's first term and the start of his second term. If he hadn't been confronted with a strongly anti-big-government Congress, Clinton would have never tried to make the government smaller or more accoutable. Of course, some time during Clinton's term the Republicans sort of forgot about that issue.
February 25, 2009 6:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't believe that's true. Didn't they start the Reinventing Government thing right away? Al Gore spearheaded it, I think.
February 25, 2009 9:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Republicans only worry about "big government" and spending when there's a Democrat in the White House. We're seeing the same song and dance again - the exact same Senators and House Reps who were a rubber stamp and blank check for George Bush are all of a sudden small government budget hawks.
February 26, 2009 9:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Uh-oh. First Michael Steele, then Bobby Jindal, and now John Boehner. The GOP is quickly running out of credible people of color.
February 25, 2009 7:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Is orange an ethnicity?
Oh wait, I almost forgot about Oompa-Loompas.
February 25, 2009 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
John Boehner - go back to your tanning Salon and shutup!
February 25, 2009 7:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
"(I, for one, would have loved to see President Obama do more last night to challenge Americans to sacrifice for the good of the country)."
I think his call for "responsibility" is tantamount at this point. Calls for outright sacrifice strike me as premature and counter to the notion of economic stimulus (a paradox, I guess). Calls to "serve" might be acceptable.
He could challenge us to work harder, produce more useful goods and services, and then buy more. That would grow the economy, for better or worse.
We are already sending much of our wealth overseas. Isn't that enough sacrifice?
February 25, 2009 7:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Insofar as responsibility is concerned, often it does involve a degree of sacrifice.
Maybe it means making sure that friend of your child's is safe until a parent picks them up after school, or you give them a ride yourself.
Or picking up the trash at the end of your street when you're walking your pet.
Or when you bu something, choosing the item with less packaging, to take a little weight off your local trash program, or being diligent about sorting out recyclables
Little things have little costs - but they're costs nonetheless.
And cumulatively, they can add up to some pretty impressive impacts.
February 26, 2009 10:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
It would be nice if the little things could make good big differences. I'm not an optimist on that.
I wonder what added challenge Cohen would have like to have noticed.
February 26, 2009 4:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Glaivester,
If the GOPer congress gets the credit for the budget surpluses of 1996-2001, does it also get the blame for the biggest fiscal blowout in history (pre-2008) in 2002-06?
February 25, 2009 8:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
If the GOPer congress gets the credit for the budget surpluses of 1996-2001, does it also get the blame for the biggest fiscal blowout in history (pre-2008) in 2002-06?
Most assuredly. (And Bush gets the blame as well). And I am not denying Clinton any credit, I'm just saying that he doesn't deserve all of the credit. About 2000 was when I started voting Constitution Party because I hated W.'s guts.
February 25, 2009 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bohner: "They've been offering Americans a free lunch for the last 80 years, rather successfully..."
You just don't get it, Bohner. It's not that Dems have offered the public a free lunch. It's that you've offered us a borrowed lunch and the bill has finally come due.
Oh, and that lunch turned out to be a giant s#$t sandwich.
February 25, 2009 8:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
TPM is one of the most powerful sites on the internet,
STOP IT
I think TPM views are smarter than "my team is better than yours"
The problem is not Dem. or Rep.
Demand a better smaller government.
Larger government, is both party's fault
The problem maybe GOV "Fed Money"
from nothing
See http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279
Take the time to watch it.
Stop the madness.
We used to want to Immigrate,
we are questioning it, TAXes and more TAXes
The US has been a great country don't lose it
Truth and justice for all!
What happened to that American standard?
I think the congress stole,
February 25, 2009 9:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Was that Haiku?
February 25, 2009 9:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
I want that Jindal
I want him so bad it hurts
but he goes nowhere
February 25, 2009 9:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
What on earth for?
As long as there are big businesses looking to screw me out of as much of my hard-earned cash as they can get away with, I intend to have a government that is bigger than they. (Waves at Exxon-Mobil, JPMorgan Chase, Cargill, Verizon, Dell, Blue Cross)
They are, after all, protected from my worst impulses, expressed via my 2nd amendment rights (as they should be). So they don't get a free lunch.
February 26, 2009 11:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
I like what Krugman said.
And three guesses who Beavis is and who Butthead is.
C
February 25, 2009 10:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Republicans don't classify the Pentagon as a bureaucracy. They view it as a war making version of Wal-Mart, with strict procurement standards and a highly efficient logistics operation. The 5 thousand military officers working in the Pentagon are valued as top drawer corporate executives, equivalent to those found in the best run technology firms.
February 25, 2009 11:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
My favorite bits of the Republican message :
1.) To communicate is to bellow. TV and radio blowhards deliver the message of the day in scornful, hectoring style. Whoever does not swallow the whole thing is a traitor, a bonehead, an enemy.
2.) Capital, meaning large accumulations of money, is our goddess. Capital must be free to go whither it will, across borders, into and out of any thing and any place, untaxed, unrestricted, adored, awed. Did the Sultan of Brunei buy the Statue of Liberty? Bow down !!
3. ) Science should be manipulated for political expediency. Scientists, especially Nobel prize winners, are idiots if we say they are. We scoff at educated people : doctors, judges, physicists. What do they know ?
4.) Never, never admit error. We blew $1,000,000,000,000 on a faked-up war ? Freedom is not free ! We turned the DOJ into a bordello ? Bah ! We ran the government with the idea that government is useless, harmful ? Pfft !
5.) The Big Lie is the way to make the sale. We assume you have never travelled outside the US, have never learned geography or a second language, have never read a book, have severely limited knowledge of almost everything. Therefore our sophistry seems reasonable.
There are still people lapping this stuff up ... amazing ...
February 25, 2009 11:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
That is all strictly a supply-side account.
The real question, however, is why the dittoheads want to buy the product, not how much fun it is for their Big Party betters to bark and bellow.
Happy days.
February 26, 2009 9:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
They've been offering Americans a free lunch for the last 80 years
Beats stealing lunches from Americans, the way the Republicans have for the last, oh, forty years, usually after beating them up in a figurative sense.
(I've never gotten free anything from the Democrats, except requests for money and votes, which they usually proceed to waste. Not that Boehner would have a clue about any of that.)
February 25, 2009 11:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, it's especially hard to make that case after the Republicans squandered $5,000,000,000,000 on the phoney war in Iraq, screwed the vets out of medical care, cut their wages, required them to buy their own protective gear, wouldn't provide them with vehicles that could withstand IED's, . . .
after they screwed up the economy with the housing bubble, floated by their iconic hero, Sir Cuts-A-Lot, conned people into buying homes they could not afford with trick mortgages that reset faster than you can say Bugs Bunny, fought off increases in fuel economy,
Methinks the Republicans are not really human -- they are some kind of mutation. Human beings do some stupid things, but what the Republicans have done to the country is beyond stupid -- it is criminal. But Boehner doesn't get it.
February 25, 2009 11:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
If the Republicans had simply done what they talk, there would not be a problem. The Democrats have set out to do just that. For example: "Those of us that believe in a smaller, more accountable government". Also something about the R's being the party of education, supporting fair taxes, helping small businesses, etc., etc., and so on, also. They did the exact extreme opposite every time. In the name of conservatism they ruined the U.S. and in all probability, the whole world. I apologize. My list of examples segued into a rant.
The Republicans talk a delicious pie. All the Dems have to do is give Americans a taste.
February 26, 2009 7:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
wrong - republican message has been easy to understand. white monied supremacy. hateful and vicious racebating. you work for me, i disrespect you and steal your money - i rule with fear and suspicion, the American people are guilty [take off your shoes]. Vilify, obstruct, call down God and country on your long list of enemies.
Your fear and unimaginative pre-enlightenment thought masquerading as love of country has matured into the ugly mess we're in from Baghdad to Wall Street to your banks and SUVs.
it's not that the message is hard to understand - WE'RE SICK OF YOUR MESSAGE.
Mastodon party is not conservative, it's stone age. Wake up, you're time came and went. If you want a seat at the table, bring something of value - no one wants to hear from self-righteous money-grubbing pest exterminators anymore.
If this nonsense keeps up much longer, the patient American people will look to the Reign of Terror as the kind of cleansing Washington has been begging for - and that kind of change will be ugly and last decades.
Enough already.
February 26, 2009 12:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Notice how he insults the American people as a bunch of freeloaders. Typical Republican disdain for everyone but their CEO friends (who never get free lunches, of course, on their corporate jets).
February 26, 2009 7:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Don't know if this counts as 'recent memory' but there was another Democratic President who tried to make government smaller and more accountable. His name was Jimmy Carter, and in trying to do so, he totally split his party, came close to becoming the first Democratic President since Franklin Pierce to be denied renomination, and eased Ronald Reagan's path to the White House.
A President who does not hold onto his base, and keep them enthused, is a one-term President--ask Carter, (the shade of) Gerald Ford, or George H.W. Bush. Barack Obama, despite his dislike of Punch-and-Judy politics and his urges toward bipartisanship, is well aware of this.
February 26, 2009 9:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sure there would, if you mean what the Party of Grant and Hoover have been talkin’ since Master Dubya left town.
Their real track record was eminently satisfactory to the Big Management faction that has (almost) always run the militant extremist GOP. If their Political Capitalist and Political Christojudaean factions did not get much steak, still, there was at least lots of sizzle.
But no elephants worth mentionin’ really want the Gospel accordin’ to the Concord Coalition, not even Neocomrade Unsecretary of Commerce J. A. Gregg himself.
Happy days.
February 26, 2009 10:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Boehner has it right. As does de Tocqueville. We are now in position where the majority can vote themselves whatever they wish from the treasury, without paying income taxes. Meanwhile those same people are relying on an ever shrinking number of people to foot the bill.
Stiglitz estimates the Iraq war cost to date is $1.3 Tril, or roughly the same amount of pork and pandering passed and pending within a matter of days! And you people think this is a good idea? Well of course, you're not getting your taxes raised.
Don't be surprised when the projected revenue from tax increases doesn't actually come in. The real taxpayers are smarter than you are, and will find a way to avoid the taxman. You on the other hand will have to make up the difference. Keep up the good work.
February 26, 2009 12:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just so you know, I am getting my taxes raised. But if that is what it takes to get this country back on track for my kids and their kids I'm willing to take the hit. That is what makes this country what it is, people willing to sacrifice for the greater good.
I know that concept is missed on you. The Most Selfish Generation just does not get it.
February 27, 2009 11:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
John Boehner, the champion of the Student Loan Industry, now wants to lecture US about socialism. That's rich!
We're coming for You next Boehner. Get ready to play alot more golf. Those pained expressions on your face during the Inauguration were not misplaced.
Nah,nah,nah...nah,nah,nah....Ha,ha,ha...Goodbye!
February 27, 2009 10:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
In other news, I just heard Rush Limbaugh suggest to an adoring female fan/caller that he would close the "gap" among independent women -- who, he acknowledged don't especially love him -- by having women send in pictures of themselves BEFORE he would take their calls.
His fan said it put her off. He wondered why.
Where can one get a transcript of this classic, CLASSIC, interchange with a narcissist?
February 27, 2009 2:30 PM | Reply | Permalink