Winning the Wrong Argument

Most people agree that massive national debt and perpetual trillion dollar deficits are bad.  There are some folks that see nothing wrong with these things, and some people that don't associate the debt and deficit with real money.  But generally speaking, people recognize that never ending deficits and massive debt are bad things.  Getting people to recognize the unfairness of creating a burden for future generations is pretty straightforward.  Unfortunately, conservative complaints about runaway spending are too often couched in terms of affordability, and burdens on future generations.  These arguments imply that there isn't really a problem with spending as long as we can afford it.

The dangers in using the affordability argument against government expansion are that the determination of affordability is too subjective and the definition of affordable is dynamic.  Arguments about affordability inevitably lead to the "fair share" debates and disagreements about taxation levels that we have been seeing.  There were things that were affordable in the late 90s, when the economy was booming, that aren't affordable today.  Municipalities all over the United States expanded their services and operations significantly in boom times.  Some of those cities are now filing for bankruptcy.  Just because they got away with excessive spending for awhile doesn't mean that it was the right thing to do before the economy turned down.  Affordability was the wrong measure to use for justifying that earlier spending.

For most of the 20th century we saw dramatic expansions of government.  While it is now clear that some of these activities had profoundly negative impacts on the economy, it wasn't always clear to the general public at the time.  After WWII a number of variables came together to result in a thriving economy that provided widespread confidence that government expansion was affordable, and even absorbed what would have otherwise been negative effects of some government actions.  We can learn from the lessons of the past that conditions can change quickly and that a dismal economy can rapidly become a thriving economy even in the midst of some very bad economic policies from the government.

The conservative core tenet of limited government is not rooted in affordability.  There are two basic reasons for conservative commitment to limited government; maximizing individual liberty, and basic morality.  Throughout history we have consistently seen that government expands in inverse proportion to the liberties of individuals.  The moral variable of the equation is simply that it is wrong to impose coercive taxes on people for anything more than the essential (legitimate) needs of government.  For instance, forcing an individual to contribute money to the funding of Planned Parenthood is immoral.  Planned Parenthood is not an essential government enterprise, and funding it can not be justified by affordability.

It has recently become common to hear statements by notable conservatives about how the bad decisions being made by the Obama administration will eventually result in an economic disaster that will reveal the fallacies of statist ideology.  This disaster will then presumably result in an embracing of conservatism, a resurgence of fiscal responsibility and a rejection of big government solutions.  Why conservatives think this would stick to Obama when nothing else does is a mystery in itself, but what if the disaster doesn't occur?  It is not impossible for the US economy to thrive over the next few years.  The United States is the world leader in natural gas production and is only now developing the capability to export that natural resource.  US oil reserves are now estimated to be the largest in the world.  The current administration could accrue enormous power and influence by picking the winners in emerging energy opportunities.  The resulting, hypothetical, economic boom could start bringing down the national debt.  That would not leave conservatives that have been leaning on affordability arguments in a good position for opposing government expansion.  Affordable socialism is still socialism, and still a mistake.

Of course nobody knows if there is an undetected economic boom lying just over the horizon.  It certainly doesn't seem likely at the moment, but we have seen unexpected booms before. It does seem that using arguments that rely on a bad economy, or appeal to the insecurity of younger generations, or the guilt of older generations is somehow not quite conservative.  The arguments used by conservatives to oppose government growth should be based on core conservative principles that are valid in every economic climate.