Can We?

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The story of America in the twentieth century was the story of the growth of government.  It has accelerated and decelerated, and even retreated at times, but taken together, it looks almost inexorable—it grows and grows, slowly choking out freedom and economic activity.  If we can’t figure out a way to stop it, it will eventually destroy the republic.

The government keeps growing no matter whom you ask or how you measure it; for example, consider the following:

1. Adjusted for inflation, federal spending per household has nearly tripled in the last 45 years.
    
2. Government spending now accounts for 40% of all economic activity in the country; it was half that, 20%, 60 years ago.
    
3. Local, state, and federal government spending combined, adjusted for inflation, are nearly six times what they were 60 years ago (first chart at the bottom of this page; see also the second chart).
    
4. In the last 40 years, federal spending grew about eight times as fast as median household income.

I know some conservatives have already given the country up as lost, but some of us are holding out hope.  All good things (in this world) must come to an end, and America cannot last forever; no nation can.  Nonetheless, in the battle of today, I think America may yet prevail, and so live to fight another day.

In fact, I wonder whether President Obama, surprisingly, will play a key role in that victory.  Let me explain.

It’s difficult to imagine how current trends and existing political pressures could ever produce sustained restraint in federal spending.  We have huge entitlement programs, like Social Security, that are already unsustainable, even by their own count.  A politician can’t very well advocate cutting spending on any of them, because the beneficiaries of such programs will definitely hold it against him in the next election, while the beneficiaries of the cut (i.e., all the rest of us, who may pay less in taxes because of it, and will definitely enjoy a more robust economy) may or may not reward his public service with commensurately more support.  At best, the benefit to us is more diffuse than the cost to the “entitled” persons; at worst, we won’t even realize that the benefits to us are connected to that particular legislative act, and won’t have any sense that there’s anything to reward.  Thus, the welfare state operates like a ratchet:  It can grow, but it can’t shrink.

I think one way this might be overcome is with a constitutional amendment; indeed, that’s arguably exactly what constitutional amendments are for, to overcome what would otherwise be a limitation of majoritarian democracy.  (E.g., we have the First Amendment protection for freedom of speech because otherwise politicians might be pressured to criminalize any opinion that a clear majority of the population strongly disliked.)  I have a friend who is skeptical that a constitutional amendment would do much good—he figures if the pressure is strong enough, politicians will figure out some way around it, some narrow interpretation that makes it ineffective as a restraint—but, again, I’m hopeful.  I don’t know what the best form would be for such an amendment to take; several possibilities come to mind:

1. Limit total federal spending to a fixed percentage of GDP.
    
2. Require a balanced budget.  Taxes are somewhat unpredictable (a tax sets the rate relative to something, or a set quantity per instance of a triggering event, but that doesn’t tell you how many dollars it will bring in that year); so I would tie it to hard numbers by limiting spending this year to the amount of total revenues last year.
    
3. Take the vote away from anyone currently receiving government benefits (e.g., Social Security checks) or currently employed by the federal government.

It may be true that any such amendment, under normal circumstances, would be as politically impossible as restraining spending without an amendment.  But these aren’t normal circumstances.  President Obama, God bless him, has (at least in some ways) taken our country further down the road of statism, and faster, than we had ever gone before, and a lot of people don’t seem to like it.  As the “Tea Party” movement shows sustained popularity and Republicans enjoy unprecedented popularity (10-point advantage in generic ballot according to Gallup, higher than in any midterm election since 1942, when Gallup started keeping such numbers; 12 points according to Rasmussen, “the largest advantage ever measured for the Republicans”), I wonder at what point we have enough popular frustration to support the extraordinary step of amending the Constitution.

President Obama has been compared to FDR.  Liberals will say that the New Deal was good and should be emulated, while conservatives will say that the New Deal made the Depression worse and that any resemblance to FDR is one of Obama’s failings.  Regardless of what you think of the New Deal, another possible parallel occurs to me:  FDR is basically the reason we have the Twenty-second Amendment, right?  Perhaps BHO can become the reason we have the twenty-eighth.

In any case, we’d better find some way to reverse the growth of government.  Benjamin Franklin, asked what the Constitutional Convention had wrought, said, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”  It remains to be seen whether we can.