Big Government, a la carte

by Mark Grannis - Libertarian for Congress MD - 8th District
Even die-hard fans of Big Government usually admit that a wide range of federal programs are pointless or worse. But often I meet people who are so attached to some particular program that they cannot bring themselves to accept any political philosophy that might lead to less money for their favorite. Almost everyone, including me, can find something in a $3.8 trillion budget that is personally appealing even though it can’t be justified on libertarian principles like the non-aggression principle. Whether it’s environmental regulations or high-speed rail or NASA or foreign aid, these people essentially ask: Can’t we embrace the benefits of small government generally but make an exception for my pet program?

This sounds theoretically possible, but I think our experience justifies us in saying it is not.  Big Government seems not to be available a la carte.  We have to take the bad with the good.  And that means that if the choice between private action and government program is at all close, we ought to have a very strong bias for the private option.  Because the pet programs we can’t justify as protections of our persons and property are almost never so great as to be worth the high social cost of a government that acts without strong limits.

It sounds pragmatic to make case-by-case determinations about federal programs instead of sticking to a strong limiting principle like the non-aggression principle. But the problem with ad hoc picking and choosing is that it makes members of Congress practically incapable of saying no to any significant constituency. It’s very hard to bail out banks and then say no to automakers or local governments. It’s very hard to explain why Congress should let the free market work in any sector unless Congress lets the free market work in every sector.  And it's very hard to blow money on any program as idiotic as “cash for clunkers” and then say no to equally idiotic proposals like "cash for caulkers" or "cash for can-openers."  The slope gets very slippery very fast, and we know that for a fact because we’re currently sliding down it at breakneck speed.


Some people think there is no limiting principle; that it’s OK to fund Big Government programs as long as they’re popular. After all, if more than fifty percent of us want to support such programs, why shouldn’t we? But it’s a fantasy to think that Congress responds only to numerical majorities. Sugar quotas are demonstrably bad for nearly everyone who buys sugar—a very large majority, as political majorities go. Yet sugar quotas persist precisely because the group they benefit is so much smaller than the group they injure. It is the concentration of very large benefits for a very small number of sugar producers that makes the sugar producers willing to spend relatively large amounts of money lobbying for the quotas. And it is the wide spreading of the costs of the quotas (through higher sugar prices) that virtually eliminates any significant opposition to the quotas. This phenomenon repeats itself on page after page of the federal budget, and the only way for us to change it is to insist on a principled basis for rejecting all appeals for special treatment of this or that business or industry.

Paradoxically, the pick-and-choose approach leads to wasteful spending so consistently that we really ought to consider it an iron law of politics: It is never possible to have the good spending without the bad. If you vote to fund mental health programs at the National Institute of Mental Health, you will someday learn that NIMH spent $823,200 to teach uncircumcised African men how to wash their private parts. You will be shocked, but you shouldn’t be.  Not any more.

And it’s not just the money, either; it’s also the power. If you vote for a federal government that sets itself up in charge of our environmental choices, there will certainly come a day when you will find yourself swearing at a low-flush toilet that doesn’t provide enough flush, or squinting beneath a compact fluorescent light bulb that doesn’t provide enough light. The same bureaucrats whom you hire to do the environmental stuff you made an "exception" for won’t be able to help themselves from doing all manner of other things that they just know are good for you. And now we’ve placed them in charge of our health care. How many times can they fool us with these “camel’s nose” maneuvers before we get wise?

This principled approach for rejecting federal programs even when they are wildly popular parallels our traditional approach to civil liberties. We stand up for the free speech rights of some pretty repulsive characters because we know our own rights are measured by what we allow them to say. We don’t let the sheriff beat confessions out of the guilty because we don’t want him to beat confessions out of the innocent. We need to bring that kind of thinking to the task of setting our budget and policy priorities. We need to think harder about the terrible programs whenever we’re debating a proposal we’re tempted to like.