A David Brooks Two‐fer!
Couple of notes on recent David Brooks‐related program activities. First, he calls the small‐government wing of the conservative movement un‐American. No, honestly, he does:
At the end of [1995], when the radical conservatives in the Gingrich Congress shut down the federal government, they learned that the American public was genuinely attached to the modern state. “An anti‐government philosophy turned out to be politically unpopular and fundamentally un‐American,” Brooks said. “People want something melioristic, they want government to do things.”
Then, in today’s column for the Times, Brooks points out how screwed up the legislative process is, a function of myriad rent‐seekers, lobbyists and special interests. His foil? The farm bill:
Interest groups turn every judicial fight into an ideological war. They lobby for more spending on the elderly, even though the country is trillions of dollars short of being able to live up to its promises. They’ve turned environmental concern into subsidies for corn growers and energy concerns into subsidies for oil companies.
The $307 billion farm bill that rolled through Congress is a perfect example of the pattern. Farm net income is up 56 percent over the past two years, yet the farm bill plows subsidies into agribusinesses, thoroughbred breeders and the rest.
The growers of nearly every crop will get more money. Farmers in the top 1 percent of earners qualify for federal payments. Under the legislation, the government will buy sugar for roughly twice the world price and then resell it at an 80 percent loss. Parts of the bill that would have protected wetlands and wildlife habitat were deleted or shrunk.
My colleagues on The Times’s editorial page called the bill “disgraceful.” My former colleagues at The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page ripped it as a “scam.” Yet such is the logic of collective action; the bill is certain to become law. It passed with 81 votes in the Senate and 318 in the House — enough to override President Bush’s coming veto. Nearly everyone in Congress got something.
Funny thing, though: I bet I can think of a much, much better example of what Brooks is driving at here. After all, at least there was broad elite consensus that the farm bill was depraved. But where could we find an example of a legislative product where literally all interests are tied up in rent‐seeking and resource extraction? Ah, right:
In current national security politics, there is debate, but all the interests are on one side. Both parties see political reward in preaching danger. The massive U.S. national security establishment relies on a sense of threat to stay in business. On the other side, as former defense secretary Les Aspin once wrote, there is no other side. No one alarms us about alarmism. Hitler and Stalin destroyed America’s isolationist tradition. Everyone likes lower taxes, but not enough to organize interest groups against defense spending. A scattering of libertarians and anti‐war liberals confronts a bipartisan juggernaut. The information about national security threats comes to Americans principally from people driven by organizational or electoral incentives toward threat inflation.
Physician, heal thyself. Yet more evidence the that contemporary Right offers nothing of value to libertarians.
