Bush's Big Government Conservatives
Barnes, Fred
THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR VOL. 23, NO. 4 / APRIL 1990 Fred Barnes BUSH'S BIG GOVERNMENT CONSERVATIVES Don't confuse them with Bigger Government Liberals. They're simply men who've stared political...
...He's never been accused of being a minimalist...
...I would urge conservatives to view the existence of government programs as an opportunity to make things better," declared Bennett...
...Big government conservatives are programmatic...
...Kemp is bold enough to use liberal means—activist government—for conservative ends...
...We think we may have received the largest increase of any major program since his inauguration...
...Bennett is explicit on this point...
...Plans were set for Bush to announce the new program in Newark...
...Bush established a National Space Council and made Quayle the chairman...
...It was terrific instincts," said Mark Albrecht, executive director of the Space Council...
...Anna Kondratas, who runs homeless and 14 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1990 community grant programs, was initially spotted by Kemp when she appeared on C-SPAN...
...Bennett's war on drugs consists chiefly of stepped-up law enforcement, which conservatives always back, and Quayle's space program has patriotic appeal and an important military dimension, which also won't hurt with conservatives...
...Why tilt at windmills on an issue that has been decisively resolved by the American public for fifty years...
...They like to be in favor of things because that puts them on the political offensive...
...Still, he went along the next two years with efforts to hold spending at the Department of Education to roughly $15 billion annually...
...HUD, he said, "has too much of a role to play in helping low and moderate income people get on the ladder of opportunity...
...Because his anti-poverty ideas have a liberal ring, Kemp has more explaining to do to conservatives than Bennett and Quayle...
...Third, Bennett, Kemp, and Quayle view government far more benignly than the Reagan crowd did...
...So was James Miller, first chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, then budget director...
...Now we need HUD to dismantle disincentives and advance the correct incentives...
...A program of spending cuts has political appeal on occasion—one was 1981 when deep Reagan-Stockman cuts passed Congress—but such times are few and far between...
...With Quayle's support, the space program is backing away from privatization, which was pursued vigorously under Reagan...
...At least I hope so...
...What caught his attention was that she seemed "activist" and "compassionate" and "market-oriented," all the things he likes in a conservative...
...You are either on offense or you are on defense...
...If you couldn't get rid of substantial portions of government with the conservative revolution led by Ronald Reagan, you are probably not going to do it with anybody," he told Adam Meyerson of Policy Review in 1988...
...He said Jefferson was right about the least government being the best...
...Kemp didn't give up, and Bush wound up announcing the program in Atlanta in November...
...Okay...
...It was opened to the page headlined, "A' 47 Percent Increase For Exploration Activities Will Support The Moon/Mars Initiative...
...Bennett's metamorphosis, largely unnoticed at the time, was both important and prophetic...
...IT n 1985, William Bennett's first year as secretary of education, he loyally defended all of President Reagan's proposed budget cuts, including a sharp reduction in federal spending on education...
...The homeless "will receive more than $1.4 billion not only for shelter, but for the professional treatment they need to restore their chances to live a normal and dignified life...
...American companies aren't equipped to compete against other countries in space, Albrecht said...
...Kemp won't concede he's a big government conservative...
...And he lobbies the President...
...People, it turns out, like big government, not bigger, but roughly as big and expensive as it is now...
...At his instigation, the federal education budget sent to Congress by Reagan was boosted to $21 billion...
...Vouchers aren't Kemp's only antipoverty tool...
...Bennett disputes that...
...The efforts failed badly, as Congress added another $5 billion each year...
...You are never in between...
...The new budget hadn't been released yet...
...This is the largest increase for any major agency of the government," it said...
...Kemp asserted the same on the narrower issue of whether to cut Social Security benefits or dismantle the entire system...
...We believe that if you look atmajor programs in the budget, there may not be any with a 69 percent increase since the President took office," he said...
...Trying to cut more won't succeed, and it's politically risky...
...This way, he arranged an early session with Bush, who signed off on HOPE (Home Ownership and Opportunity for People Everywhere...
...If Kemp, Bennett, and Quayle succeed, they're bound to start a trend...
...Four attitudes make them a distinct group...
...I'm a limited government conservative," he said...
...They also included another page from the budget with a paragraph noting the 24 percent increase highlighted...
...They're simply men who've stared political reality in the face and decided to use government for conservative ends...
...He zinged Sununu and Budget Director Richard Darman in an interview with the Wall Street Journal...
...Indeed, why continually dredge up an issue that really has little to do with the survival and extension of democratic capitalism and has caused more conservatives to lose elections than any other single issue...
...But it didn't...
...That makes him a big government conservative in my book...
...N of one conservative of the Reaganite, small government ilk has _r4 a top-tier job in the Bush Administration...
...Then, alone among Bush Administration officials, he refused to compromise with Darman, insisting on taking his case to Bush...
...he wrote two years ago to Ed Crane, president of the libertarian Cato Institute...
...Cheney had wanted to scrap it...
...The one thing that I have learned in government is that politics is like a football game in which two things count, time and possession," Bennett said...
...It was bad market assessment...
...You could be a reformer but not a cutter...
...out uayle has been less philosophical than Bennett or Kemp in spelling is brand of conservatism...
...I don't blame him for rejecting the big government label...
...Only the government can do that...
...He emerged as the forerunner of a new breed, the big government conservative, that is now flourishing in the Bush Administration...
...Still, he noted Bush "has proposed a $2.1 billion housing grant program that will increase low-income homeownership...
...Bush's announcement on July 20 that American astronauts would return to the moon was regarded as a triumph for Quayle...
...Kemp was just as zealous—but not as reckless—as Bennett...
...Government help must "be matched by the commitment of recipients to take actions to become self-sufficient...
...Quayle's pet project is the space program...
...It's not an oxymoron...
...He doesn't want to be Secretary of Vouchers, as palatable as that idea is to conservatives...
...Kemp goes further...
...It sounds liberal, and Kemp isn't...
...T hat touches on another trait of big 1 government conservatives: they're given to boasting about how much money they get for their programs...
...In 1988, Bennett rebelled...
...Despite the well-known budget constraints, and despite cuts by Congress in our proposal, our 1990 civil space budget is nearly 12 percent larger than 1989's," Quayle said in a speech last January...
...On the contrary, he showed up in May 1989 at a Senate hearing to praise the program and swap compliments with Kennedy for having proposed it...
...The contrast with the Reagan Administration couldn't be more striking...
...At the National Press Club in January, he said drug war spending had soared 69 percent...
...The top conservatives under Reagan, particularly in his first term, were passionate opponents of federal programs, except Pentagon ones...
...There was no political gain in ruthless cutting," explained a Bennett aide...
...He began his drive to create and fund a new conservative anti-poverty program by privately lobbying Darman, Sununu, Quayle, and others at the White House...
...Second, big government conservatives are programmatic...
...Kemp bristled last fall when the Wall Street Journal urged that HUD be eliminated, its funding used instead in the battle against drugs...
...His first success came in spring 1989 when he worked out an arrangement with Defense Secretary Richard Cheney to save the planned national aerospace plane, the one that's supposed to fly from New York to Tokyo in two hours...
...Today he favors cutting the payroll tax...
...So was Martin Anderson, Reagan's chief domestic policy adviser and a libertarian...
...The President split the difference between Bennett and Darman...
...Budget director David Stockman favored "minimalist" government, the least amount possible...
...In the process, Bennett may have alienated Darman...
...There is never a time-out...
...Persuasive as the attacks on the program's effectiveness were, Quayle didn't flinch...
...You either have the ball and are moving it against them, or they are moving against you...
...Worse things could be said...
...Bennett believed, correctly, that he was more on Reagan's ideological wavelength than most Cabinet- members...
...as Reagan stated in his inaugural address, that government is the problem, not the solution...
...In his appearance at the Press Club last November, Kemp couldn't match Bennett's claim...
...It must have pained Quayle to know that Bush's space budget would be hiked another 24 percent for 1991, and not to be able to announce it...
...If laissez-faire economics had prevailed in America from 1776 to 1976, maybe we wouldn't need HUD...
...Given the success of earlier government-run space missions, I'm willing to buy the Albrecht case...
...And Stockman was deeply skeptical of a lot of military spending, too...
...But big government conservatives are thriving...
...Kemp argues that poor people need more than a chance...
...To them, no domestic program was sacrosanct, not even Social Security...
...Providing this is proper in a conservative war on poverty, according to Kemp, so long as there's a "two-way proposition...
...The vice president takes the job seriously...
...Three of the four leading conservatives under Bush—Drug Czar Bennett, Vice President Dan Quayle, and Jack Kemp, the secretary of housing and urban development—qualify...
...At HUD, Kemp has been careful to hire top officials who share his view...
...Kicking NASA in the butt is necessary, they're so bad," says a Quayle adviser...
...But it makes the point...
...He's a conservative who's not only accepted but is exploiting big government...
...Since we're going to have big government anyway, it makes sense to have conservative big government...
...They need help—child care, job counseling, training, education—that only government can offer before they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps...
...Then the next wave of conservatives in the Cabinet will be eager to emulate them...
...Edwin Meese, a White House counselor before he became attorney general, didn't go quite that far, but he was bent on reducing the size of government...
...As a senator, Quayle joined with Teddy Kennedy to pass the $2.4 billion measure in 1982 over the objections of the Reagan White House...
...But he's demonstrated his positive view of government by his persistent support for the Job Training Partnership Act, which gives subsidies to businesses to train disadvantaged workers...
...When I inquired at Quayle's office, his aides sent me the "space and biotechnology" section from the Bush budget...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1990 15...
...They've concluded there's a good reason why Reagan failed, in eight years, to pare the size of the federal government...
...To his surprise, Bennett found himself almost alone among Cabinet members in publicly talking up the cuts...
...He had entered the Cabinet as a confirmed Reaganite...
...They like to be in favor of things because that puts them on the political offensive...
...The program was subjected to a new barrage of criticism from conservatives after Quayle was picked as Bush's running mate...
...But that was scrapped when the scandal from Samuel Pierce's HUD days engulfed the agency...
...Quayle has also taken to prodding the National Aeronautics and Space Administration...
...First, they're realistic...
...Bennett got into a bitter dispute with the White House over funding in 1991 for the drug program...
...The fourth, John Sununu, the White House chief of staff, probably does also (though it's hard to know for certain, since he's more a policy broker than an advocate...
...Just being a minimalist is not being consistent with a more activist, programmatic conservative model," said Kemp...
...They believed, Fred Barnes is a senior editor of the New Republic...
...But at least there's no question about his commitment to the federal government's role in curbing drug trafficking...
...Fourth, big government conservatives aggressively seek to broaden the scope and maximize the funding of their programs...
...In trimming programs and curbing spending, Reagan got as much as anyone could...
...In the 1991 budget, Kemp got only a fraction of the additional funds he'd sought, but $2.2 billion over three years will get the program off the ground...
...It's also true that government is best that does the most for people," he added...
Vol. 23 • April 1990 • No. 4
