"Fiscally conservative, socially progressive"
That's how Howard Dean described himself as Governor of Vermont. And if you Google the phase, you'll find lots of politicians (many in Canada) describing themselves that way.
Since it's clear that many voters are "fiscally conservative" and since it's also clear that the Republican party is not, there might be a chance for those disenfranchised voters to find a home in the Democratic party. Someone like myself, for instance.
But what does it mean to be "fiscally conservative?" Does it mean that you subscribe to Reagan-omics? God, I hope not.
The first thing to do is to distinguish between "fiscally conservative" and "fiscally responsible" (a term used by Dr. Dean to avoid the common conservative/liberal friction). If you use your own finances as a guide, you can see the difference between being "responsible" and "irresponsible" when it comes to money matters. Clearly, borrowing a pile of money that you aren't willing/able to pay back for something of little long-term value is being irreponsible. And if that doesn't describe the GOP under Mr. Bush, then I don't know what does. Note that it's perfectly OK to borrow money responsibly... we do it whenever we take out an affordable mortgage.
I'm assuming that we're all "fiscally responsible." If we aren't, then we're in big trouble... the publicly held debt is currently $4.9 trillion and we pay roughly $220 billion (4.5%) each year in interest. Every dollar of that $220 billion is being spent for nothing of value. Do we even remember what that $4.9 trillion was spent on? If we didn't have that debt, do you think we could find a better way to spend that $220 billion?
So, let's return to the fiscally conservative-versus-liberal distinction. Here's something I found describing conservative accounting principles:
High quality earnings result from the use of conservative accounting principles which do not overstate revenues or understate costs.
This is
exactly the opposite of Reagan-omics, the Laffer Curve, and supply-side economics. A fiscal conservative, then, believes
Every government program is based on modest assumptions of the program's benefits, and slightly pessimistic assumptions of the program's cost. For any new program, the costs must be significantly outweighed by the benefits.
where a program's costs and benefits include intangibles such as "market disruption" and "national security" and such. And if new programs must survive a cost-benefit analysis, what about existing programs?
Every government program is periodically reviewed for projected costs and benefits. Any program whose projected costs are consistently worse than its benefits is restructured, replaced, or removed.
For example, what about stationing 37,000 troops in Korea? Does that make any sense? Maybe it did twenty years ago, but what about now and for the next ten years? At $50K per soldier per year, that's $18 billion that we're giving to South Korea so that they can continue to build cars which put Detroit workers on the unemployment line.
My last rule goes to the heart of what, I feel, distinguishes a fiscal conservative from a fiscal liberal...
If, at the end of a fiscal year, the understated benefit of revenue (tax) programs and the overstated costs of service programs result in a budget surplus, that surplus is used to pay off the national debt rather than as an incentive to reduce taxes or expand services.
I don't want that debt to go to my son.
How can a fiscal conservative be socially progressive? Well, it's not that hard
if you abandon the simplistic notion that a problem must be completely solved by a government solution.
The "80/20" rule should be used: It takes 20% of the effort to solve the first 80% of the problem. This means that modest government programs can have truly significant effect. Think about that when you consider a single-payer
national health plan, for example.