New at Reason

Jonathan Rauch argues that a Washington, D.C. divided against itself is probably a good thing for liberty.

Comments

martin | November 6, 2006, 9:22am | #

Totally agree with the byline.

Too much power in one hand is like fish after a week.

The Wine Commonsewer | November 6, 2006, 9:55am | #

Won't work. Assuming divided power slows down the arterial bleeding of tax money, which is only slightly plausible, the patient is still going to bleed out eventually.

Every CONgress and every president has spent more than its predecessor for as long as anyone alive can remember.

martin | November 6, 2006, 11:00am | #

TWC:

Without having done the research, I don't think your last sentence would hold up. Spending under Clinton did go down, for example. The picture is a bit more complicated. It is a fact that a majority of the population now demand services that used to be provided privately. Various safety programs, education, protection of all kinds of groups, environmental, to name a few. Government is not a one-way street, even if it often feels like one.
A divided Congress is way better than one party's power-brokers being able to ram through any idea fitting their ideology, no matter how destructive and expensive.
In congenially bipartisan displays of hubris they will still be able to agree on some populist measures and come next election they will still point the finger at the other guy claiming it was he alone who was all for it.

Isaac Bartram | November 6, 2006, 11:39am | #

Spending under Clinton did go down, for example.

I don't think so. TWC is right spending has never gone down. Clinton benefitted from a bubble in tax revenues that made it look like we were running a surplus.

Spending still continued to increase, it's just that for a short time revenues increased faster. Then things returned to normal.

ChrisO | November 6, 2006, 12:43pm | #

I don't think so. TWC is right spending has never gone down. Clinton benefitted from a bubble in tax revenues that made it look like we were running a surplus.

And that was accomplished only by raiding the Social Security trust fund, IIRC. Also, people look at the deficit and forget the humongous outstanding debt. The interest on that debt is one of the faster growing parts of the federal budget. Theoretically, we should just be hacking and slashing the budget without tax cuts just to pay down the debt, but I wouldn't hold my breath. I have a feeling we're going to "pull an Argentina" on that sometime in the future.

Isaac Bartram | November 6, 2006, 12:56pm | #

"Raiding" the Social Security "trust fund" has been SOP since the inception of the plan. Indeed it was the primary reason for setting up the schemme the way they did in the first place.

"Raiding" the Social Security "trust fund" just made the Clinton surplus look bigger just as it made the deficits we ran in most of the other years out of the last sixty or so look smaller.