I've a friend who runs a website/blog primarily for female entrepreneurs called
CapitalistChicks.com and found herself in need of some news and op-ed pieces.
Even with the general bent somewhere to my right, I volunteered to contribute some op-ed pieces, and suggested this one on how the two major parties have seemingly switched definitions within the last two decades or so. This idea was approved, provided that I "wasn't too partisan."
What follows is that submission, roughly a thousand words:
"If you want a fiscal conservative in the White House, you better elect a Democrat..." -Howard Dean, former Governor of Vermont and 2004 contender for the Democratic nomination for Presidental candidacy.
"The Republican Party was the one that wanted fiscal discipline, but now.... Now, they're spending money like drunken sailors; only as I've said before, I've never known a sailor, drunk or sober, with the imagination of some of these guys." -Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)
Not so long ago, the difference between the major players on the American national stage was pretty clear. The Democratic Party was the tax and spend party, the party of social and economic liberalism, the big government party; while the Republicans were all about tax cuts, fiscal and social conservatism, small government, and strong national defense.
It might be that last bit where it all started to go a bit swimmy. Like the former Soviet Union, the military-industrial complex, especially when taken in combination with both governmental and military bureaucracy, consumes a sizable portion of our Gross Domestic Product- 3.2%, and creates a lot of jobs in a lot of Congressional districts.
First, to put that 3.2% in perspective. It's significantly a smaller percentage than North Korea (estimated at 31.3%), the Saudis (13%) or Israel (8.75%), but aside from Greece is the largest in NATO. Moving away from percentages, in dollar amounts, that's roughly $450 billion dollars (as per the FY 2005 budget).
Let's put that figure in perspective. That's more money than any other nation in the world spends on defense. In fact, it's about as much as the second through twelveth ranked nations spend combined. Not only that, but it's a huge chunk of the budget- more than the $41 billion spent on child healthcare, more than the $34 billion for K-12 education. But before we go off on an "all military spending is bad" rant, let's come back to the military-industrial complex.
As we've just seen, there's a lot of money in national defense. It's not all going into the pockets of the troops in the field by a long stretch. Uniforms cost money, as do guns and bullets and ships and planes and tanks. Lots of money. And they're built all over the country, so they keep people working in Connecticut and South Dakota and Texas and California. Jobs are good for the economy.
Unfortunately, there are other things too. If we just needed military manufacturing to make the economy, we'd be fine. But the people who work making all those tools for people who break things and hurt people in the interests of enforcing foreign policy want things too- like cars, houses, and the like. So that's why there's a rest of the economy.
Now, during the Bad Old Days of the Cold War, it was a lot easier to rationalize lots of defense spending, because there was another superpower out there which could actively be construed as America's Enemy.
But Mr. Gorbachev tore down "that wall" fifteen years ago and the world suddenly changed. Now America's Enemies aren't worth a capital letter, but in keeping with an outdated policy, the Armed Forces should be capable of waging two simultaneous theatre wars at the same time, and, as technology continues to improve, the cost of their tools rises proportionately.
Since the beginning of the Clinton Administration, funding of public investment- that is, investments in infrastructure, research and development, and education and training- all traditional and important ways in which the government stimulates economic growth and private sector productivity have all sufferred, dropping from a Reagan-era high of 2.6% of the GNP to an estimated 1.2% for FY 2005.
Adding insult to injury, the George W. Bush Administration tax cuts may make the economy appear to be improving while actually having the opposite effect. Christian Weller, a macroeconomist with the Economic Policy Institute, writes:
Corporate tax cuts and reductions in capital gains taxes will likely improve the bottom line for companies and boost the wealth of stock holders, but they will do little to stimulate the economy. Businesses are unlikely to spend the money they will receive from lower taxes; rather, they are likely to save it, particularly so they can reduce their record level of debt. Stock holders are just as unlikely to spend all of their additional income from capital gains tax cuts, thereby reducing the effectiveness of this tax cut in enhancing demand. Both tax cuts are likely to increase corporate and private savings, which means less spending - exactly the opposite of what the economy needs right now.
Apparently, now, the old labels have lost their meaning. Or perhaps not as much lost as shifted. The mainstream of today's Republican Party seems to have abandoned fiscal conservatism in favour of social conservatism, Religious Right style; stuck with the principle of small government by pushing governmental deregulation of business to the extent where it has effectively gutted the Environmental Protection Agency and brushed aside the Endangered Species Act.
U.S. general elections tend to be won by the candidate who most successfully "runs to the centre." This will make the 2004 election particularly interesting, especially with a nation starkly polarized and partisan. Republicans should be worried at the noises the Religious Right has been making of late that the Bush Administration isn't pushing their agenda strongly enough- if the Administration runs farther to the right than it already is on social issues, it's at risk of alienating liberal-to-moderate Republicans (think Olympia Snowe and Lincoln Chafee), not to mention most Independents, as well as ceding the centre.
Additionally, it's concievable that in this election we could see John Kerry running to Bush's right on fiscal matters and the economy- and there's a pretty sizable set of Nobel laureate economists who've gone on the record about the Bush tax cuts as a bad idea for the economy- which may become a huge issue in the campaign. Doing so is unlikely to hurt Kerry with social liberals, but is likely to motivate some fiscal conservatives to support his ticket, and may not only provide the electoral votes to oust Mr. Bush from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but could potentially prove to have populist coattails which change the balance of power in the House and Senate.