William Voegeli: Amid Record Debt, We Need a Welfare State We Can Believe In –- and Afford
[William Voegeli, the author of "Never Enough: America's Limitless Welfare State," is a contributing editor to the Claremont Review of Books.]
'Liberalism has always promised more," but it must now "become less generous and more rigorous," writes William Galston, a senior fellow at the liberal Brookings Institution. The prospect of annual federal deficits averaging $1 trillion for the next decade requires no less.
It's doubtful that many other liberals are going to heed Mr. Galston's call. As President Johnson said in 1964, "We're in favor of a lot of things and we're against mighty few." The liberal position has always been that whatever the size of the welfare state, we'd be better off if it were larger....
Ronald Reagan summed up his presidency and entire public career in the farewell address he gave in January 1989: "[M]an is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts." From which it follows that as government contracts, liberty expands, an all-purpose argument that whatever the size of the welfare state, we'd be better off – freer – if it were smaller.
The voters, when presented a choice between liberal social programs and conservative tax cuts, have replied with a resounding, "Yes!" Fifty percent of respondents to a recent New York Times survey preferred "a smaller government providing fewer services" to "a bigger government providing more services," which only 37 percent favored. Yet in the same survey, 76 percent agreed that "the benefits from government programs such as Social Security and Medicare [are] worth the costs of those programs." Even 62 percent of those who support the "tea party" movement thought so!
Such contradictions have always been awkward, but were rendered manageable in past decades by the combination of economic growth and the shift of government spending from the military to the welfare state. (In 1958 the federal government spent 10.2 percent of gross domestic product on national defense and 3.7 percent on human resources; by 2007 it spent 4 percent on defense and 12.3 percent on human resources.)
Those paths of least resistance are now closed. The economic future is too daunting for us to grow or borrow our way out of our problems, and the geopolitical one is too daunting to keep shifting resources away from national defense....
Read entire article at CS Monitor
'Liberalism has always promised more," but it must now "become less generous and more rigorous," writes William Galston, a senior fellow at the liberal Brookings Institution. The prospect of annual federal deficits averaging $1 trillion for the next decade requires no less.
It's doubtful that many other liberals are going to heed Mr. Galston's call. As President Johnson said in 1964, "We're in favor of a lot of things and we're against mighty few." The liberal position has always been that whatever the size of the welfare state, we'd be better off if it were larger....
Ronald Reagan summed up his presidency and entire public career in the farewell address he gave in January 1989: "[M]an is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts." From which it follows that as government contracts, liberty expands, an all-purpose argument that whatever the size of the welfare state, we'd be better off – freer – if it were smaller.
The voters, when presented a choice between liberal social programs and conservative tax cuts, have replied with a resounding, "Yes!" Fifty percent of respondents to a recent New York Times survey preferred "a smaller government providing fewer services" to "a bigger government providing more services," which only 37 percent favored. Yet in the same survey, 76 percent agreed that "the benefits from government programs such as Social Security and Medicare [are] worth the costs of those programs." Even 62 percent of those who support the "tea party" movement thought so!
Such contradictions have always been awkward, but were rendered manageable in past decades by the combination of economic growth and the shift of government spending from the military to the welfare state. (In 1958 the federal government spent 10.2 percent of gross domestic product on national defense and 3.7 percent on human resources; by 2007 it spent 4 percent on defense and 12.3 percent on human resources.)
Those paths of least resistance are now closed. The economic future is too daunting for us to grow or borrow our way out of our problems, and the geopolitical one is too daunting to keep shifting resources away from national defense....