Editorials/Nice Guys Finish Last/Unspeakable Hyphenates
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
EDITORIALS
NICE GUYS FINISH LAST
by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
Americans are an amiable and sanguine people. In a word, they are nice. They are neither as rapacious as they are portrayed in cinema and...
...The big-spenders remain Washington's enduring force, despite the present alarm over deficits...
...Americans have not always held this dulcet assessment...
...Where did it come from...
...The average Americano knows...
...Some of the hyphenates- mainly the revenue-enhancers and the big-spenders but also many budget-balancers-prescribe a tax increase to reduce government borrowing...
...delegation in Geneva...
...and Soviet military capabilities continues to grow...
...spending by some 40 percent, and on strategic forces the Soviets have been outspend-ing us by almost 100 percent...
...I have just finished reading a timely report that comes to this conclusion while putting the kabosh to the delusion of parity...
...The Soviets have over 980 sea-launched ballistic missiles to our 616, theirs carrying between 2,000 and 3,000 warheads while ours carry 5,536...
...Moscow also outnumbers us in heavy bombecs by 400 to 325...
...Engineering, revealed all this gloomy news in testimony to the celebrated Ninety-Eighth Congress...
...This time around Dr...
...These are people who believe that wealth comes not from enterprise but from government appropriations, and they speak from personal experience...
...In 1960 the interest paid on the national debt was less than $130 a head...
...Yet the deficit is a serious thing...
...I hope he does not forget the findings of this report...
...Continual high rates of government borrowing will, as the economists say, "crowd out" the private borrowing that is crucial for a rising rate of productivity and economic growth...
...Even in these days of budget restraint, they nip away with more money here, more money there...
...But can we amass these deficits forever...
...They are budget-cutters, but on Capitol Hill they are outnumbered and outshouted...
...I shall relish each episode, but there is reason to doubt that even under our amazing President we have suddenly reached parity with Moscow...
...But let those happy citizens who can baaish from mind America's years of neglect and the Soviets' years of activity consider this: "Currently, the Soviet Union has a 4-to-l advantage over the United States in deployed ICBM throw weight, the best single measure of force capability...
...I offer this up as evidence of the Americano's peaceful cast of mind...
...Americans are simply too nice a people to harbor grim thoughts...
...The answer is that we cannot rid the Republic of it, because Washington's other hyphenates, the multitudinous big-spenders and the heroic tax-cutters, are active too...
...Of all the hyphenates, only the tax-cutters save the citizenry from incessant fleecing...
...During the 1970s Social Security's benefits to retirees rose by 50 percent in real dollars, though the average employee's earnings increased not at all...
...We have just sent a large and luminous delegation to arms control talks in Geneva, and now there is this splendid specimen of a man Mr...
...Well, far be it from me to darken Ronald Reagan's Era of Good Feelings even a little...
...This year it will exceed $200 billion, which comes to almost $1,000 a head for every man, woman, and child...
...The deficit has reached nearly 5 percent of the Gross National Product...
...In fact there is reason to believe that in strategic capacity we continue to fall behind...
...They are neither as rapacious as they are portrayed in cinema and song, nor are they as fetched by things militaire...
...These expenditures have grown from 2.3 percent of the GNP in 1960 to 6.6 percent in 1984, while defense spending as a share of GNP fell by one-third, at least until 1980...
...EDITORIALS NICE GUYS FINISH LAST by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...but tax increases that seize personal savings also impede the economic growth by reducing private investment...
...In March 1983,42 percent feared that the Soviet arsenal had surpassed ours...
...The report's title, "Can America Catch Up...
...It has made my fondness for my fellow Americanos all the more intense...
...Whether the hyphenates know it or not, they are muddling toward a substantial reduction in our standard of living...
...Our defense allocations had been diminishing for years both in absolute terms and as a percentage of Gross National Product...
...had remained on top...
...From 1974 to 1983 they spent $250 billion more than the United States...
...Forty-four percent believe we have achieved parity...
...Max Kampelman, until recently the Committee's general counsel, is, of course, the head of the U.S...
...If astringent measures are not taken, our yearly deficits will reach $300 billion by the end of the decade...
...Senator Domenici's labors are in vain...
...Now it is bilingual education that is fattened, then it is the Rural Electrification Administration-up 579.4 percent in fiscal year 1984...
...Until very recently that would have been an appalling figure...
...According to this poll, a majority of Americans now believe that their government has achieved nuclear parity, at least, with Moscow...
...Yet somehow today the majority of Americans believe that the Reagan Administration has overcome the Soviet advantage in just two years while spending considerably less than Moscow...
...is illuminating enough...
...Today it is over $500 a head...
...Only 35 percent slept secure in the delusion that parity was upon us, while 15 percent were patriots and insisted that the U.S...
...That kind of burden should put the brakes to economic growth...
...Do you know what kind of hyphenated Americans they are...
...UNSPEAKABLE HYPHENATES If the news stories are accurate, Capitol Hill is now alive with budget-balancers, budget-cutters, revenue-enhancers, and other such hyphenated politicos, all avid to protect our economic well-being by lowering that mysterious deficit...
...Yet let a budget-balancer or budget-cutter suggest, say, a freeze on Social Security's cost-of-living adjustments, and the big-spenders shout as though orphans were being heaved into the street...
...Any analysis of the nuclear balance is, perforce, complicated and, owing to the secretive nature of the data, speculative...
...Republicans and conservative Democrats would have united in prophesying national bankruptcy...
...Mikhail Gorbachev-a man who with his lovely wife, Raisa, could become the JFK of the Soviet Union, a suave member of Parliament kept repeating on network news last March: Kamelot in the Kremlin...
...By the end of the decade it will have risen to almost $750...
...In league with the special interests that their lush programs have created they exert continual pressure for more spending...
...Only 23 percent fear that the "Evil Empire" is ahead...
...Of all the hyphenates, then, it is the big-spenders who have brought us to this unenviable condition...
...Gallup's wizards found that 24 percent hold that triumphant notion...
...Richard DeLauer, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Post column syndicated by King Features...
...Those moral colossuses whose sensibilities were shaped by the viruses of the 1960s will spot in these common-sense observations blasphemy and error, but let me direct them to a recent Gallup poll...
...How can we rid the Republic of it...
...In a recent government poll 81 percent expressed their concern...
...In 1983 Americans had good reason to believe that we had slipped behind the Soviets in strategic capability...
...Over the past two decades voluptuous increases in Social Security and Medicare have accounted for all of government's increased share of GNP...
...But that was before the advocates of big government in their wisdom gave so many Americans a stake in government spending, thus creating little mafias of special interests always helpful with suggestions for new programs, always vigilant for the first hint of budget cuts...
...Let those who would cut back on defense ponder this: "The gap between U.S...
...but, of course, all the hyphenates led by the big-spenders let out an enormous howl...
...Several members are on leave to the government where they are active participants in our arms control policy...
...Whether the government borrows funds or expropriates them, economic growth suffers...
...The result is economic incoherence that is almost certain to leave us with still larger deficits...
...What is more, ever since detente put a smile on our faces in the early 1970s, the Soviets have been energetically increasing their defense budgets to the point that by 1981 the dollar costs of all Soviet military activities surpassed ours by 45 percent...
...Our fat and lazy government munches crapulently on too large a hunk of the Gross National Product, and no group on Capitol Hill has the power or the self-restraint to end the debauch...
...Martin Feldstein, formerly chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and a prudent fellow if there ever was one, has suggested modest cuts in the cost-of-living adjustments that engaud Social Security and Medicare, along with some additional taxes...
...From 1974 to 1983 Soviet military spending exceeded U.S...
...Spring is in the air...
...It is the work of the estimable Committee on the Present Danger, composed of some of the Republic's most distinguished students of the military balance...
Vol. 18 • May 1985 • No. 5
