Jewish World Review Dec. 8, 2003 / 13 Kislev, 5764
Michael Barone
Choice and accountability
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |
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.
What is next on Bush's list? Social Security. In the past quarter century the
private sector has moved from defined-benefit pensions to defined-contribution
pensions. Defined-benefit pensions gave you little choice and no
accountability: If the LTV Steel pension fund or the United Mine Workers
hospital fund went belly up, you were out of luck (or lobbying Congress for a
federal bailout). With defined-contribution pensions, you make the choice of
how to invest the money in your 401(k), and you are accountable for the
results.
Bush campaigned for Social Security individual investment accounts in 2000
but, with many congressional Republicans queasy, has not mentioned them
much since. I think he is going to return to the issue next month and make
Social Security a major issue in the campaign. Most proposals have talked of
letting you invest 2 percent of your 12.4 percent Social Security tax in the
market. But the nonpartisan chief actuary of the Social Security
Administration has just costed out a proposal to let you invest 6.4 percent
and concluded that it would leave the system sound "through 2077 and
beyond." Bush's Social Security appointees have been keeping in close
touch with the leaders of the AARP, whose support was critical in passing
the Medicare bill. Individual investment accounts would move America toward
more choice and accountability, away from dependence on big institutions
and toward more independence and self-reliance. That is Bush's brand of
conservatism, and it is in line with changes in the character of the country.
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Michael Barone Archives
JWR contributor Michael Barone is a columnist at U.S. News & World Report
and the author of, most recently, "The New Americans." He also edits the biennial "Almanac of American Politics". Send your comments to him by clicking here.
©2004, Michael Barone
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