Since this may turn into a debate I put this topic here. Of course feel free to move this of course. What has Shrub done to actually shrink goverment?
Um… well… he, um, said, he said that smaller government was good.
And then, near as I can tell, he enlarged the government.
I think he combined a lot of little natioanl security forces into one big one, right?
He zapped it with his shrink-ray!
Or at least he woulda, had the EEEEEVIL LIBERALS not SABOTAGED it!!!
But no, really… Bush really can’t do much to “shrink” government. A lot of that is on Congress.
Well, he got rid of about 858 government employees.
Soldiers, I think they’re called.
Well, I guess shrinking “government” to “goverment” is a step in the right direction.
You are absolutely correct. Those dastardly N’s have to be removed from our language. Do you know what N stands for? N stands for NAZI!!!
Absolutely nothing. Government (even non-defense, non-homeland security) has grown during his term. I find it amusing when liberals say that Bush is a bastard for cutting programs for the poor. I wish! Bush has only incresed funding for these programs, and yet he’s getting attacked for “cutting” them. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, I guess.
One small thing I can think of that may be a shrinking of government – in the No Child Left Behind Act, it removed a lot of government strings from federal funds going to states and school districts. For example, before that there were a multitude of small programs that all got a few million dollars to promote smaller classrooms, civics education, writing, etc. Now, states get a large pool of money and they can use the funds on these initiatives if they wish, but they can also use the funds to meet other needs if that’s what they want to do. So that reduction in red tape may qualify, but it’s not like the bill actually reduced government involvement in education.
Cite?
Uh, what? The No Child Left Behind Act was a completely unfunded mandate. The states didn’t receive a dime. There’s your smaller government!
If you define shrinking government as in reducing the number of federal civilian employees, the Administration rewrote A-76. If you think this will improve government productivity, make government more responsive to the People and save tax dollars, I have a bridge I can sell you. Cheap.
If you define shrinking government as in reducing government tax revenue, you haven’t been paying attention since 2001.
Well, he got the country in a lot of hot water…
Here’s two:
http://www.cdfactioncouncil.org/FY04%20Budget%20Report.htm
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=14473&CFID=5083076&CFTOKEN=90250775
There are quite a few more out there similar to this.
Now it’s your turn to give a cite. However, let me save you the trouble, because it’s obvious that you’re unaware of exactly what the NCLB Act is. The Act itself does not provide any money to states, it only authorizes money to be spent on certain programs. Federal money for education is appropriated in the annual Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill. The NCLB Act is the statute that governs how the states can spend that money.
There is a lot of misinformation about the NCLB Act. For one, it’s not an “unfunded mandate.” In fact, it’s not a mandate at all. States don’t have to abide by anything in this bill if they don’t take any federal money. However, if they accept federal money, then they must comply with the Act. The feds aren’t forcing states and school districts to do anything. It’s simply saying that if they want federal money, they must comply with these rules.
Two, if the federal appropriations for education were so small that it was costing states more money than they are receiving to implement the Act, it would seem logical that states would simply refuse the money. I mean, who’s going to accept money if the conditions attached to that money actually end up costing the recipient? If you’ll notice, though, no states have done this (though some have discussed it). It seems clear that states prefer to bitch and moan about the higher standards they must produce while still wanting federal money. If they are so fed up about the standards, though, they can just renounce the money and produce absolutely no results if they wish.
Three, the Act has a provision that if the federal government doesn’t provide funding for anything mandated in the Act, the states don’t have to do it.
Four, there is sufficient federal money flowing to education to pay for the Act. When Bush came into office, federal speding on education was $42.2 billion. Now it’s $56 billion. States are certainly receiving a lot more money now than in 2000.
Well, he’s had a hard time filling judicial spots, does that count? 
Bzzt. I asked for cites of “liberals say that Bush is a bastard for cutting programs for the poor”. You provided cites of non-profit action groups doing so. I’d like a list of actual liberals, preferably in politics.
Bzzt, again. I can’t prove a negative. If you’d like to prove that states receive “a large pool of money”, then provide that proof. Otherwise, your argument is invalid.
Not necessarily. First off, there are more people, more students and more teachers now than in 2000. Secondly, an increase in the federal budget for education doesn’t mean there wasn’t a reduction in state budgets for education (which there most certainly have, due to decreased incoming tax money due to the recession). If overall spending (fed + state) money has increased per child, I’ll eat my hat.
Actually, the Children’s Defense Fund is an incredibly liberal advocacy group, and E.J. Dionne is a liberal commentator. Of course, if you want more, here’s something from John Kerry’s website: “Touring a struggling job-training site, Democrat John Kerry sought to refocus the presidential race on pocketbook issues, warning of “almost criminal” cuts in bedrock training and education programs. . . . Kerry accused Bush of slashing $1 billion from job-training programs. ‘You shouldn’t be abandoned and struggling the way you are today,’ he said.”
As mentioned above, the federal funds that go towards education are $56 billion this fiscal year. That’s a pretty large pool of money for the states to draw from. For example, here are a few programs that offer a large pool of money from the federal government:
$14,528,522,000 for Title I aid to disadvantaged children.
$1,236,824,000 for Impact Aid for school districts with large amounts of federal land in them.
$5,834,208,000 for School Improvement Programs
$11,307,072,000 for Special Education
33% more? That’s how much more federal money is going to education than when Bush came into office.
This has nothing to do with our question. We’re talking about federal money, not state money. My assertion was that states now are receiving a lot more money for education from the feds than when Bush came into office. The plain facts from the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill backs me up. In your original post you said that the NCLB Act was an unfunded mandate. I showed you that it wasn neither a mandate nor was it unfunded by the feds. State funding doesn’t play into this at all.
Though it’s irrelevant to this discussion, let me see what I can find.
According to the American School Board Assn., per pupil spending in 98-99 was $7013 and in 2002-2003 it was $8383.
Interesting numbers, Renob - thanks. Got a link for those ASBA figures?
During Reagan’s campaign and for a while during his presidency, the Pubs talked a good talk about reducing the size of the federal government, lowering taxes, etc.
I doubt that Reagan was completely insincere in his rhetoric, but it just never happened. Not under Reagan nor under the two Bushes.
It’s never going to happen, either. No matter how much libertarians and conservatives yap, you can’t really make govt. much smaller than it is now. Sure, it should be made more efficient; maybe there are lots of ways money and resources could be saved. But the kind of programs we have now are the ones we need, and we need a lot more (hint: healthcare for all).
The Pubs now know this just as much as anyone, and, unlike Reagan, their rhetoric is no longer sincere. When they talk about shrinking government, they are 100% BSing.
Here you go, Munch: http://www.asbj.com/evs/04/2004pdf/EVS04_southwest.pdf
And I have to agree with Aeschines on his point that the size of government we have now will not really shrink any. However, it’s not because it’s the size that “we need” (I’ll get to that point in a minute) but because there is no incentive to shrink it. I worked in the Senate for a while and every day I had constituents telling me and my boss how much good program X was doing. Every small government program has its constituency, and as soon as any efforts are made to eliminate it, cut its funding, or even only hold its funding at the previous year’s level, you have a variety of people calling you and meeting with you telling you how much good program X is doing, particularly in your home state. Only the most determined push for the elmination of these programs will succeed. Of course, this push will only come rarely, because if the program is eliminated there will be no one who notices or applauds it (except maybe a few people at the Cato Institute or Citizens Against Government Waste), but there will be a group of people in your state who will know that Senator Y did nothing to protect their pet program X, and Senator Y will surely lose their votes. There is no constituency for cutting government; there is only the constituency that wants their program protected and increased or the constituency that wants a new program to benefit them.
As far as government being the size we “need,” I have to disagree. A cursory reading of the omnibus appropriations bill from last year will show that there are a ton of government programs and agencies that are unnecessary: Minority Business Development Agency, Impact Aid, Commission on International Religious Freedom, National Institute on Aging & The Administration on Aging (OK, I’ll give you one, but not both), Railroad Retirement Board, Alaska Railroad Rehabilitation, Election Assistance Commission, Allowance and Office Staff for Former Presidents, etc.
Even if we conservatives/libertarians concede that there should be federal aid to education, federal aid to the disabled, TANF, etc., liberals should still see that there are still a host of smaller programs, such as the ones I listed above, that are doing things the federal government has no business doing. Of course, each of them has a constituency, and any attempts to touch them will result in a firestorm of criticism. Thus, they go on year after year, usually receiving increases.
I agree with what you said about the psychology and sociology of the matter. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
But the conventional wisdom seems to be that the fiddle-dee-dee programs you listed, whether good or bad, are such a tiny percentage of the federal budget that eliminating them wouldn’t change much. Once you get past servicing the debt, the military, and the Big Bertha entitlements (SocSec, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.), you really don’t have much left. And even most of that goes to things like the EPA, Dept. of Energy, etc.
At any rate, do the Pubs EVER give a figure in their rhetoric? Smaller government, uhkay, by what PERCENT can we shrink it?
Insincere bullpoo only.