Is Ron Paul Worthy?
Ryan | 6 08 2007If you're a first time visitor, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed, which will keep you up to date with all the latest New School Politics posts. Thanks for visiting!
Two opinion pieces today, one in the Wall Street Journal and one in the Dallas Morning News, shed some negative light on the libertarian Congressman.
First, a revelation from the WSJ editorial entitled “Ron Paul’s Earmarks” (just the title could strike fear into the heart of any Ron Paul admirer):
After reporters started asking questions, the Congressman disclosed his requests this year for about $400 million worth of federal funding for no fewer than 65 earmarks. They include such national wartime priorities as an $8 million request for the marketing of wild American shrimp and $2.3 to fund shrimp-fishing.
When we called Mr. Paul’s office for an explanation, his spokesperson offered up something worthy of pork legends Tom Delay or Senator Robert C. Byrd: “Reducing earmarks does not reduce government spending, and it does not prohibit spending upon those things that are earmarked,” the spokesperson said. “What people who push earmark reform are doing is they are particularly misleading the public–and I have to presume it’s not by accident.”
On the other hand, good libertarians should want to start cutting somewhere. The problem with earmarking is that each year the habit grows by leaps and bounds so that it now represents real money. It is also a gateway to political corruption–a la Duke Cunningham, and other Congressmen currently under investigation for trading favors for earmarks.
Mr. Paul is one of Congress’ better fiscal conservatives. So the fact that even he feel obliged to grab multiple earmarks is all the more reason to keep fighting for transparency in the earmark process, as well as for the line-item veto, which would give Presidents a chance to impose some spending discipline from outside Congress.
Mr. Paul’s defense is in vain. This does not change the fact that Mr. Paul’s request increases the demand for government appropriation of private funds. The $400 million in frivolous projects proposed by the Texas Congressman is money that is taken from private producers and out of the private market and does nothing more than further erode the private citizens’ economic liberty.
While Congressman Paul still stands as most in favor of individual liberty on the domestic front among presidential candidates, this development is, at least, troubling. Keep in mind that $400 million is a lot of money, and the day that we all start saying that it is not a large sum, we know that the size of our government has gotten out of hand. If all 535 congressmen got $400 in earmarks for their own constituencies–like Dr. Paul desired–that would amount to a total of over $200 billion in earmarks. I wonder if the Congressman would be in favor of that?
The second editorial mention of Ron Paul was by Mark Davis of the Dallas Morning News:
File all that under disturbing quirkiness. But it is the Ron Paul take on fighting terror that makes him unfit for even the briefest consideration for the presidency.
In the now-famous May 15 GOP debate in South Carolina, he stood out among the crowded field by blaming America for 9/11. “We’ve been over there,” he lectured. “We’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years. … What would we say here if China was doing this in our country?”
That phony equivalency rises to the level of sheer moral idiocy, and it doesn’t stop there. Dr. Paul’s longstanding unfortunate tendency is to rope Jesus into his war objections. Today, the notion of going to war to actually prevent additional terrorism strikes him as antithetical to the concept of a “Prince of Peace.”
We should expect sixth-graders to recognize that peace is not the mere cessation of hostilities. Peace is what you get when the good guys win.
Joined by a host of Democrats who clearly do not view America as “the good guys,” Ron Paul has shown he is one of many otherwise respectable Americans wholly unworthy of the White House.
As I have said many times, I have plenty of problems with Dr. Paul’s foreign policy and I think that Davis lists some of them here in an entertaining manner. For one, the origin of hatred for America in the Islamic world is ideological and it goes far deeper than something as nominal as American foreign policy in the post-Cold War era. Try the fact that Islamist believe that God–through his prophet Mohammed–wants Muslims to wage a jihad against all cultures and peoples that do not conform all aspects of their lives to Islam.
The second troubling fact is that he uses–as Davis says–Jesus to justify his foreign policy. My question is, what major war in America’s history could General Christ have won?
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Regarding the issue of Ron Paul's acceptance of earmarks for
Barry Day | 6 08 2007Regarding the issue of Ron Paul’s acceptance of earmarks for his district, perhaps his congressional office was less clear than Representative Paul himself regarding this issue. As stated in his Texas Straight Talk weekly column:
Earmark Victory May Be A Hollow One
June 18, 2007
Last week’s big battle on the House floor over earmarks in the annual appropriations bills was won by Republicans, who succeeded in getting the Democratic leadership to agree to clearly identify each earmark in the future. While this is certainly a victory for more transparency and openness in the spending process, and as such should be applauded, I am concerned that this may not necessarily be a victory for those of us who want a smaller federal government.
Though much attention is focused on the notorious abuses of earmarking, and there are plenty of examples, in fact even if all earmarks were eliminated we would not necessary save a single penny in the federal budget. Because earmarks are funded from spending levels that have been determined before a single earmark is agreed to, with or without earmarks the spending levels remain the same. Eliminating earmarks designated by Members of Congress would simply transfer the funding decision process to federal bureaucrats rather then elected representatives. In an already flawed system, earmarks can at least allow residents of Congressional districts to have a greater role in allocating federal funds - their tax dollars - than if the money is allocated behind locked doors by bureaucrats. So we can be critical of the abuses in the current system but we shouldn’t lose sight of how some reforms may not actually make the system much better.
The real problem, and one that was unfortunately not addressed in last week’s earmark dispute, is the size of the federal government and the amount of money we are spending in these appropriations bills. Even cutting a few thousand or even a million dollars from a multi-hundred billion dollar appropriation bill will not really shrink the size of government.
So there is a danger that small-government conservatives will look at this small victory for transparency and forget the much larger and more difficult battle of returning the United States government to spending levels more in line with its constitutional functions. Without taking a serious look at the actual total spending in these appropriations bills, we will miss the real threat to our economic security. Failed government agencies like FEMA will still get tens of billions of dollars to mismanage when the next disaster strikes. Corrupt foreign governments will still be lavishly funded with dollars taken from working Americans to prop up their regimes. The United
Nations will still receive its generous annual tribute taken from the American taxpayer. Americans will still be forced to pay for elaborate military bases to protect borders overseas while our own borders remain porous and unguarded. These are the real issues we must address when we look at reforming our yearly spending extravaganza called the appropriations season.
So we need to focus on the longer term and more difficult task of reducing the total size of the federal budget and the federal government and to return government to its constitutional functions. We should not confuse this welcome victory for transparency in the earmarking process with a victory in our long-term goal of this reduction in government taxing and spending.
(From http://www.ronpaullibrary.org/document.php?id=836)
… In other words, given that the funding levels are set before the funds are allocated, and if one agrees that it is preferable for an elected representative to allocate the funds as opposed to an unaccountable bureaucrat, then Rep. Paul acts responsibly in his constituents’ best interests.
However, he is the first to say that the *real* problem is the size of government and the amount of money we are spending in these bills in the first place.
[...] Ht: Barry Day for his comment on “Is Ron
New School Politics » The Economic Consequences of Earmarks | 7 08 2007[...] Ht: Barry Day for his comment on “Is Ron Paul Worthy?” [...]