The Public Policy/Return to Spender

...The "cap" on domestic spending increases-9.5 percent this year, 6.1 percent the next—is hardly a cap at all...

...has abandoned his attempt to restore the full deductibility of IRAs: "If we can't pay for them, they're not going to be seen in this budget...

...Constitutional limitations on the portion of the economy the government can seize, as well as requirements for congressional super majorities on any tax-hike or budget bill, would help, but appear politically out of reach...

...His tax sellout has been forgotten in the aftermath of the Gulf War...

...Consequently, appropriators for civilian discretionary programs will have more flexibility to spend than at any time since the 1970s...

...With higher spending will inevitably come higher taxes...

...In short, the President accepted spending increases to match revenue hikes as part of the agreement itself...

...No way, said the Russians...

...You guys keep coming to Russia and we keep telling you these things...

...residents have excuses for spending that exceeds projections, but George Bush has almost all of them-a recession, interest rate fluctuations, unexpected crises, including the S&L debacle and the Gulf War, etc...

...In fact, spending next year will rise $1.97 for every dollar in tax increases, the usual pattern...

...The agreement's most important provision—that spending increases in any of three areas (defense, domestic, international) must be counterbalanced by cuts in the same area—is a laudable one...

...the deficit rose, by $5.4 billion in 1988 and $11 billion in 1989...

...Moreover, because the law allows spending to expand in response to Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of The Politics of Plunder: Misgovernment in Washington (Transaction Books...

...Senators Hank Brown (R-Colo...

...Why do you think you know more about our life than we do...

...And under the budget agreement, domestic spending will rise through 1995 by 7.6 percent annually, far above the expected inflation rate of 4.2 percent...

...After all six budget summits in the eighties, spending wound up higher than had been agreed...

...It was May 5 last year and May 1 in 1980...

...pushed through the Senate an amendment that would allow entitlement programs to expand only if financed by spending cuts elsewhere, unless 60 members voted for a tax hike...

...she affirmed the need to balance group rights and individual rights (leaning strongly to the former...

...In January 1982, President Reagan projected spending of $879 billion in 1985...

...Tightening the cap to 3 percent, hardly unreasonable given today's spending base of $1.4 trillion, would save about $340 billion, enough to win back losses from last year's tax increase...

...Yet the pattern of the 1980s was that revenue increases sparked an orgy of spending increases...

...We have nothing to do with feminism...

...But, even assuming the pact holds-and Congress could vote to change it tomorrow-the same pattern appears to be recurring...

...President Reagan's last effort, in 1987, led to an agreement for $28 billion in revenue in exchange for a $76 billion deficit reduction...

...It did not work out that way...

...I am not quite sure how thatstarted a free-for-all...

...John Murtha (D-Penn...

...In anx event, Valerya Narbikova, a young novelist whose style is a cross between James Joyce and Henry Miller, decided to speak, too—about her women writers' group The New Amazons...

...In January 1985, he predicted $1.20 trillion in 1990...

...It's just a name," she said...

...Domestic spending, excluding interest, is expected to rise from $886 billion to $1.01 trillion...

...Between 1990 and 1992 alone, offsetting receipts will rise by $50 billion, hiding that much in spending increases...

...led the campaign for a $13 million industrial theme park...

...And Bush's January 1990 budget estimates of $1.27 trillion for 1992 and $1.48 trillion for 1996 have been upped to $1.45 trillion and $1.54 trillion, respectively...

...But "emergency" spending is not covered by the provision, and last spring, when legislators tried to use an "emergency" bill to push through a passel of the usual pork, it was the threat of a presidential veto, not the budget pact, that caused Congress to back down...

...Revenues are expected to grow far faster than outlays, going from $1.09 trillion to $1.56 trillion in 1996...

...Stanton, ever the gracious hostess, acceded to the Transfigurationists' demands and gave them the floor...

...Although President Reagan signed into law six major tax increases, essentially wiping out his 1981 cuts, in the eight years of his term, spending hikes (69.0 percent) outstripped revenue increases (65.3 percent...

...Public ridicule caused Congress to kill a $500,000 appropriation to renovate Lawrence Welk's birthplace, but dozens of similar examples remain...

...Next year's share will fall slightly to 24.2 percent, still the third-highest post-World War II level...

...Ladylike pretenses were dropped...

...Of course, said the Americans...

...The "changing economic conditions" loophole was used earlier this year to revise the cost of entitlement programs upward by $183 billion through 1995—in effect swallowing up all of last fall's tax hike...

...The administration says that this time will be different, because it has an agreement with Congress...

...The budget itself lauds the President's proposals for record spending by the Department of Education 'The official figure is $167 billion, but Congress and the administration count some tax increases as spending cuts...

...Under the new budget, the deficit will balloon to $318 billion this year, and will probably exceed $300 billion next year as well, and President Bush does not seem in the least worried...

...A major justification for the high-tax, high-spend status quo agreed to last October was the size of the budget deficit, then at $220 billion, which officials close to President Bush said was a particular concern of his...

...changing economic conditions, the budget levels should be considered floors rather than ceilings, as analyst Stephen Moore has argued...

...and Pete Domenici (R-N.M...

...The administration projects that, by 1996, total federal outlays will run $1.54 trillion, up $131 billion from this year...

...The actual figures under Reagan, who benefited from lower inflation, were $678 billion and $808 billion...

...The Soviets looked perplexed...

...the actual level was $1.26 trillion...

...who has used his chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee to garner more than $1 billion in pork for his state, got $4.5 million to renovate a movie theater in Huntington...

...Unfortunately, the real numbers will be far higher, because of accounting tricks...

...Meanwhile, Richard Darman, director of the Office of Management and Budget, calls it "the toughest federal budget enforcement ever...

...We are left with both spending and taxing spiraling out of control...

...T he budget agreement discourages 1 cutting taxes unless there is a countervailing increase elsewhere...

...Between January 1989, when Reagan left office, and 1992, total federal expenditures will jump 27 percent—from $1.14 trillion to $1.45 trillion—with domestic ("discretionary" and "entitlement") spending accounting for $300 billion, virtually all of the rise...

...Bush is happily pumping money into a variety of domestic programs that Reagan successfully squeezed: Head Start, job-training, land acquisition, health and social programs, and research and development for just about everything...

...Nothing at all...

...Amid smiles and sisterly hugs, the conference was about to close with a luncheon at NYU's Deutsches Haus, where the audience could unwind...

...Certain residents are far worse off: people in the District of Columbia and New York work for the government until May 26, for instance...

...I felt like asking if she taped "All My Children," too...

...Worst of all, the agreement pumped up spending to outrageous levels before imposing any controls...

...Congress voted $19 million to study cow flatulence, $33 million for work on zebra mussels, $1.3 million to examine cow ticks, $800,000 to build bathrooms on Mount McKinley, and $200,000 to research locoweed...

...Furthermore, the federal government today accounts for a quarter of the economy, up from 23 percent just last year and the largest share since 1946...

...she found it hypocritical that the US...

...Robert Dole (R-Kan...

...Politically, the budget package has proved a brilliant success...

...El THE PUBLIC POLICY RETURN TO SPENDER C onventional wisdom holds that last fall's budget agreement between President Bush and Congress effectively blocks the systematic raiding of the Treasury that has characterized the last several decades...

...In her closing remarks, Stimpson miraculously managed to get to the left of every speaker...

...The good news, according to the Bush Administration, is that high spending and higher taxes mean the government will run a surplus of $20 billion for 1996...

...T he best test of Congress's budget- ' cutting sincerity will be its willingness to forego pork-barrel projects...

...that would have led them to turn their heads to my translator's booth and mutter, "He must be overworked...

...the total actually came to $946 billion...

...pushed through $590,000 for a new visitor center at the Fort Lamed National Historic Site, even though the Park Service rated the existing center satisfactory...

...Not one agency was killed by an agreement that included roughly $195billion in tax hikes.' The President and Congress actually established several new programs, including childcare subsidies and an expansion of Medicaid, before taking the pledge of fiscal sobriety...

...In it, Senate Budget Committee chairman James Sasser (Dann...

...by Doug Bandow and Head Start as "investing in the future...

...Too bad she did not equate sex with rape (this time...

...While they were approving tax hikes on everyone else, Congress voted $25,000 to study constructing a gym for staffers, $375,000 to modernize the House beauty parlor, $2 mil-lion to renovate the House kitchen and restaurant, and $6 million to convert the congressional subway into a nonstop people-mover...

...Stimpson, normally a study in steely composure, admitted she had cried throughout the show...

...According to the 'Pax Foundation, a Washington-based research organization, Tax Freedom Day-when people effectively start working for themselves came on May 8 this year, the latest ever...

...his support for huge spending increases has been obscured by projections of a declining deficit...

...In late 1982, the TEFRA tax hike, then the largest in history, caused the deficit to rise from $128 billion to $208 billion in one year...

...The administration would have us believe that these are moderate increases, indicating that the budget is finally under control...

...Spillers inquired politely...

...If only that were so...

...Robert Byrd (D-WV...

...Tatyana thundered along...

...Praising the last one, the black critic Hortense Spillers, she stressed that in this country African culture had largely preceded the European...

...These figures are far higher than Ronald Reagan's largest deficits, which one newspaper headlined in 1988 as "Reagan's Greatest Legacy...

...In January 1980, President Carter projected total outlays of $633 billion in 1981 and $787 billion in 1983...

...Patyana turned and asked me to get another bottle from the bar...

...had supported the Soviet dissidentswhile crushing the opposition at home...

...Counting all levels of government, taxpayers have never been more burdened than today...

...Congressional term limitations would help oust the most effective porkers and discourage legislators from looting the treasury in an attempt to win re-election...

...30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1991...

...According to Rudolph Penner, former head of the Congressional Budget Office, "The new process treats discretionary spending generously...

...Taxes took 19.1 percent of GNP last year, will take 19.4 percent this year, and are expected to rise to 20.0 percent in 1996-the highest level since the 20.1 percent of 1969 and 1981...

...Even leaving aside the W bailout, Bush is a bigger spender than Carter, Johnson, and Tillman...

...Marginal adjustments might be possible...

...But don't expect George Bush to back any of these measures...

...claims the pact is "the most demanding fiscal discipline Congress has ever imposed on itself...

...The government treats some revenues as "offsetting receipts," which it uses to cut reported spending levels...

...Florida got $1 million for a performing arts center, Texas $1.7 million for a bee laboratory, Iowa $2.2 million for the Thilored Clothing lbchnology Company, Arkansas $2.7 million for a fish farm...

...Although touching and sincere, the film was stylistically dated, with a jazz soundtrack suggesting that Gogoberidze had watched too much Claude Lelouch...

...Wine glass in hand, Valerya was pure artiste: "Nope...

...The only long-term hope for controlling lawmakers is to create outside institutional mechanisms to constrain them...

...Alas, the President's apparent success in the Washington power game cannot obscure a far more important failure: his status as the biggest tax-and-spender ever...

...Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill...

...Even at the height of World War II, when the state and local tax burden was considerably lower, the federal government took only 21.7 percent of the GNP in taxes...

...And he has frustrated the Democrats who, despite having won large and continuing spending and tax increases, have been forced into the unpopular game of playing one interest group against another...

...Between 1989 and 1991, spending for agriculture rose 12 percent, for energy 13"percent, interior 18 percent, transportation 20 percent, Congress and eduTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1991 29 cation 21 percent, Treasury and the Postal Service 29 percent, and housing and social programs 31 percent...

...Naturally, the call for frugality never affects Capitol Hill...

...Perhaps it was a mistake to serve wine with Russians in attendance...

...Advocates of last year's budget accord promised that every dollar in tax hikes would yield $2.05 in "spending savings," doublespeak for cuts in otherwise planned increases...

...Within minutes, the place was the verbal equivalent of a Western saloon, with the talk coming down to one issue: Is it harder to be published if you are a woman...

...Stanton was left alone, all alone—her faction, including Stimpson, had fled quietly—and she was actually wringing her hands...

...The Senate recently refused to cut Social Security tax rates, even though most Americans pay more in payroll tax than in income tax...

...And Scott Hodge of the Heritage Foundation has proposed the "Four Percent Solution't-- capping domestic spending to save $225 billion through 1995...

...After five of the six summits, the deficit rose...

...Moreover, history suggests that the chances of the administration's predictions being met are slim, to say the least...

...The women were tearing the mike from each others' hands, and I was racing around like Phil Donahue on speed...

...Why do you never listen to us...

...It's really time to go," said Stanton, all hope of being heard gone from her voice...

...All told, Bush will spend roughly $667 billion more from 1990 to 1995 than if he had maintained Reagan's spending rates...

...In the first two years of the Bush Administration, domestic outlays rose ten percent a year, higher than those of any President since Franklin D. Roosevelt, including Lyndon Johnson...

...the House has balked at approving such a measure...

...The Las Angeles Times recently headlined one article: "Budget Agreement Having Positive Effect on Congress...