I read this post on Red State about which presidencies saw the greatest increase in spending. One part of the post left me gobsmacked. The post shows a graph of discretionary spending growth that shows the spending growth skyrocketing during the Johnson and George W. Bush presidencies with the Clinton 1 term showing serious fiscal restraint. To explain this the author writes:
Allegedly, according to this simple calculation, the most fiscally disciplined Presidents were President GHW Bush, Nixon, and Clinton. Reagan and Carter are in the middle of the pack, and yes, Johnson and GW Bush stick out like Christmas Shoppers with black American Express cards.
What do President Johnson’s elected term and President G.W. Bush’s first term have in common though? War. Do conservatives consider defense spending in Vietnam or Afghanistan and Iraq to be wasteful, liberal growths in government that are to be discouraged? Of course not [emphasis added]. We all know that if you’re an anti-war budget hawk your name is Ron Paul, and nobody likes Ron Paul.
So the argument is that only “liberal growths of government are to be discouraged?” It is completely fine to spend $455 billion on the Iraq war so far and for the Pentagon to ask for another $190 billion more. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing fiscally conservative about this kind of spending.
I’m not militantly anti-war, but this war is awfully expensive and where are the benefits of the half a trillion we’ve spent so far? There needs to be some value for money and I’m seeing precious little value.
And then there’s the idea that we could just use a small portion of that money to buy all the opium that’s produced in Afghanistan – thus usurping a major tool of power the Taliban holds.
As for Iraq, there are about 28 million people there – you can do the math about how much cash we could have given to each citizen for what we’ve spent so far. Ok, that’s maybe a little too supply-side for some of you conservative types, but would have made for an interesting political/economic experiment.
It would have made a very interesting political/economic experiment. Another interesting experiment would have been to buy Saddam off for $1 billion at the start of the war.
Also, if the US gave money to Iraqis based on reductions in violence, that would be interesting as well. If Iraqis had an actual financial stake in reducing violence, as opposed to an uncertain financial stake in reducing violence (which they have now), hopefully there would be better incentives to ferret out the factions creating the violence.
It is really too bad that our drug policies are so bad. What can we do for Afghanistan in the long run if we continue to have the same policies and we can’t find a bigger cash crop for the Afghans?