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Redstate
Fighting
Obamacare: The Difference Between Cutting Spending and Limiting Harmful
Government
By Daniel Horowitz
October 14th, 2013
As Mitch McConnell puts the finishing touches on his terms of
surrender, here are some thoughts to ponder.
Republicans and conservatives have spent the past few years messaging
their platform to the American people built upon budget-speak.
It’s all about the debt and cutting spending.
In reality, we don’t have a spending problem per se, we have a big and
harmful government problem. The two are not always the same.
All of us who follow policy issues very closely understand that debt in
itself is not just a problem for the federal balance sheet, it will
have to be paid back by our children and grandchildren. However,
most people don’t see it that way, at least not in a meaningful
way. What people care about is loss of employment, lower/stagnant
wages, the rising cost of living, and personal liberty. It is our
job to prioritize an agenda both in substance and messaging that
directly addresses the harmful effects of government on jobs, standard
of living, and personal liberty. The federal budget is secondary,
and will take care of itself once we restore government to its proper
role.
For example, we spend roughly $8 billion in discretionary spending
funding the EPA each year. Now, is that $8 billion in wasted
spending contributing to our debt? You betcha. But the more
serious problem with the EPA is not the $8 billion in discretionary
spending, but the hundreds of billions that are removed from the
private economy in the form of lost jobs and higher cost of living (not
to mention personal liberty), as a result of the regulatory regime.
Hence, when we cut the operating budget of the EPA from $8.4 billion to
$8 billion via the sequester, are we really limiting government?
Not really. We are cutting spending, which slows the debt crisis
ever so slightly, but we are not really providing relief to the
American people in a way most people understand or feel in any tangible
way.
Which brings me to the current showdown and Obamacare. Mitch
McConnell is getting ready to completely surrender on Obamacare so long
as the sequester is preserved.
For the rest of this article and more, go to Redstate
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