Choice and accountability -(deficts don't matter - conservative means C&A)

[papau]

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/031215/opinion/15barone.htm

Nation & World 12/15/03
By Michael Barone
Choice and accountability


Many conservatives are complaining that George W. Bush is a big-government conservative--or not a conservative at all. They complain about the Medicare prescription drug law he and the House and Senate Republican leadership pushed through, the first major expansion of Medicare since 1965. They call him a big spender, noting that discretionary spending has been rising more rapidly than under Bill Clinton. They complain that he pushed through the first education bill giving the federal government a role in setting standards. They complain about the farm bill he signed in 2002 and the energy bill he championed this year.




All those complaints have some substance. But for the most part Bush did not really campaign as a small-government conservative. A different theme runs through the major policies he advocated in the campaign and the major policy changes he has pushed through as president, a theme that can be summed up in two words: choice and accountability. The Bush tax cuts let you have the choice of how to spend more of your money, and you are, as always, accountable for the results. The education law forces the states to hold students and teachers accountable and gives them some choice in deciding how to do so. The Medicare prescription drug bill contains health savings accounts and competition experiments in 2010, which are attempts at providing more choice and more accountability.



Cold decisions. To be sure, Bush has made compromises. Congress was unwilling to vote for all of the tax cuts he proposed; he and the Republican leadership made cold decisions and got what they could. (House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas like to say that if you pass a bill by more than one vote, you have given away too much.) Bush gave up early on school vouchers, and it's unclear how strong the state standards will be. The Medicare prescription drug bill contains much less provision for competition than Bush wanted; DeLay at one point excluded Thomas from the conference committee to whittle the provision down. It's not clear that the bill will lead to the choice-and-accountability healthcare system that conservatives like Thomas and former Speaker Newt Gingrich want.


Bush has redefined conservatism. It is now not the process of cutting government and devolving powers; it is the process of installing choice and accountability into government even at the cost of allowing it to grow. This is an attempt to move government in the same direction as the private sector, which now offers much more in the way of choice and accountability than it did in the 1950s and 1960s, when big corporations and big unions established wage rates, when you worked for one company until age 65 and then depended on that one company and Social Security for your retirement income.<snip>

[papau]

1. Of course some conservatives disagree - Conservatives Criticize Bush on Sp

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40090-2003Dec5.html

Conservatives Criticize Bush on Spending
Medicare Bill Angers Some Allies By Dana Milbank
Saturday, December 6, 2003; Page A01

Last month's passage of a Medicare prescription drug benefit that could cost $2 trillion over 20 years, after three years of sharp increases in federal spending, has provoked an unusual barrage of criticism of President Bush from conservative leaders.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page accuses Bush of a "Medicare fiasco" and a "Medicare giveaway." Paul Weyrich, a coordinator of the conservative movement, sees "disappointment in a lot of quarters." Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist with the National Center for Policy Analysis, pronounces himself "apoplectic." An article in the American Spectator calls Bush's stewardship on spending "nonexistent," while Steve Moore of the Club for Growth labels Bush a "champion big-spending president."
"The president isn't showing leadership," laments Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation, who calculates that federal spending per household is at a 60-year high. "Conservatives are angry."

Such criticism is rare for Bush, who has assiduously courted the GOP's ideological base and has, in turn, built up enough goodwill that he can afford to stray from conservative orthodoxy, as he did on Medicare. This anger does not represent a political danger for Bush in the short term, conservatives leaders say, because it comes largely from conservative intellectuals, while grass-roots conservatives remain intensely loyal to Bush for his tax cuts, war leadership and antiabortion efforts.<snip>

The issue came to a boil this week, when White House economic aides summoned conservative economists to allow them to vent their rage. But according to participants, the session did little to dampen their anger. Joel D. Kaplan, the deputy director of the White House budget office, displayed a chart showing that, outside homeland security and defense, spending was falling. But under tough questioning, one participant recounted, Kaplan conceded that his figures did not include the series of "emergency" supplemental measures requested by Bush each year. <snip>