.5 Cheers for Bush’s Budget

“The fundamental difference between the two parties is how big the government should be.” So says Republican enforcer Grover Norquist. But nearly everybody agrees: Democrats bring big government, Republicans bring small government. It’s not true, though.

In the years 1960 through 2002 (the ones listed in the Economic Report of the President), the size of federal government averaged 20.87% of the economy under Republican presidents and 19.58% of the economy under Democratic presidents. Republicans remain the bigger spenders even if you subtract defense, if you start with Reagan instead of Eisenhower or if you assign responsibility with a one-year lag.

When Democrats respond to any Republican budget-cut proposal like robots programmed to express alarm, they reinforce a spendthrift impression that does them terrible political damage, and isn’t even true. By and large, they are making that mistake again this week. There is much worth knocking in the fiscal 2006 federal budget President Bush released Monday, but there is also some worth praising.

A president’s budget proposal should be judged procedurally, as an accounting document, and substantively, as a concrete expression of the president’s political philosophy: Is this document a true measure of the president’s intentions, what they will cost and how they will be paid for? And are his intentions for the government worthy?

Whatever Bush may say about his philosophy and his intentions, his budgets have said something different. He is a believer in running the government on borrowed money. He took a huge surplus, turned it into a record deficit and now brags that he is on track to fulfilling his farcically modest year-old promise to cut the deficit by half before he leaves office. Budget experts doubt even this. The new budget, like the last, doesn’t include the $80-billion supplement he needs for the continuing war in Iraq. Nor does it contain a penny for his Social Security privatization scheme, which the administration admits will cost billions immediately and trillions soon enough. Bush calls for repeal or reduction of various taxes, then counts on the revenue anyway.

Until this year, Bush’s general formula (leaving aside the wars on terror: Afghanistan, Iraq and now tyranny in general) has been cut taxes, mainly for the wealthy; pay for it by credit card and leave spending pretty much alone. Now, safely reelected, he wants to take big chunks out of many traditional government spending programs.

Please remain calm. This is not all bad. For one thing, it reflects a scandalously belated but apparently sincere (and perfectly justified) concern about the swelling deficit. Second, unless he is bluffing, Bush’s 2006 budget reflects an admirable willingness to take on some sacred cows. We especially applaud his tough words and semi-tough plans about government welfare for farmers. This program begins with a misguided goal (protecting a way of life), fails to meet it and costs a fortune. It hurts poor people in this country (by raising the cost of food) and poorer people in developing countries (by closing off this country to the only things they can produce).

Bush likes to emphasize, when explaining his cuts, that he favors government programs that work over programs that don’t work. That is not a trivial consideration. We would add another distinction: government programs that help poorer people versus programs that help richer ones.

It is not a sufficient defense of a government program to say it helps the “middle class.” Programs aimed at the middle class are often the most popular and the most pointless: taxpayers subsidizing themselves. If Bush really wants to take on Amtrak -- all aboard!

By contrast, Bush’s proposal for a tax credit for builders of affordable homes for people at 80% of the median family income has all the characteristic flaws of the Bush “compassionate conservative” approach: A tax credit is a hidden subsidy and hard to evaluate; the benefit goes directly to someone who is probably very well off (a home builder) in the hope that it will indirectly benefit someone who is not badly off (lower middle class), while housing programs directed at actually poor people are targeted for sizable cuts.

The coming days will see campaigns from groups affected by Bush’s proposals, claiming that life as we know it will end (or, possibly, continue -- whichever is worse) if he gets his way. Even those with more enthusiasm for government than our president claims should treat these pleas skeptically.