The End of Small Government

Artigo de William Niskanen na American Spectator.

The war on terrorism has been a rationale for increased spending, but not its primary cause. President Bush has endorsed a substantial increase in spending for agriculture, defense, education, energy, homeland security, Medicare, and transportation -- only a trivial amount of which is a direct response to Sept. 11 -- all the while refusing to veto a single spending bill. The primary cause of the rapid increase in federal spending to date is that the Bush administration and too many Republicans in Congress have embraced big government conservatism in both foreign and domestic policy at the expense of their traditional party commitment to fiscal responsibility.

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The primary condition that will threaten a substantial increase in the federal spending share of GDP is the combination of unfunded promises for Social Security and Medicare and a substantial increase of the ratio of retirees per worker -- a problem that will become clearer as baby boomers begin to retire in 2008. The primary cost of the war in Iraq and Katrina relief may turn out to be the inability to gain bipartisan attention to these much larger long-term problems. Whether the era of small government is over depends primarily on how these long-term problems are sorted out, not on the temporary spending for the war in Iraq and Katrina relief.