The Tea Party Isn't Really About Spending — Or Is It?

I must confess that I like Kevin Drum at Mother Jones.  I almost never agree with him.  But he’s clearly an intelligent, earnest, thoughtful commentator.  About a week ago I came across this from Drum:

There’s little evidence that extreme conservatives are any more concerned about spending now than they’ve ever been, and over the past 30 years they’ve never been concerned about spending. They didn’t cut it under Reagan, they didn’t cut it under Bush Sr., and when they finally controlled the government completely under Bush Jr., they didn’t cut it then either. Hell, Social Security privatization never got anywhere even within the Republican caucus despite the fact that it was sold relentlessly and dishonestly as a free lunch. Actual cuts in spending were never on the radar.

The tea partiers are angry not over spending, but because a Democrat is in the White House. Rick Santelli’s rant, which kicked off the whole movement, occurred one month after Obama took office. That was before the auto bailout, before health care reform, before financial reform, before the Iraq drawdown, before cap-and-trade, and before extension of the Bush tax cuts was even on the horizon. The only thing that had happened at that point was the stimulus bill, but even as big as that was, everyone knew it was a one-time shot, not a permanent change in spending levels.

Really, there’s just no evidence at all to suggest that tea partiers are any more upset about the level of spending and deficits than they ever have been. Rather, they’re upset because the spending is currently being done by a Democrat. As soon as Republicans are doing it, they won’t really care anymore.

Several points here:

(1) One must always remember that Presidents cannot pass budgets by themselves.  Congress controls the purse-strings.  So when we talk about Presidents increasing or decreasing spending, it’s actually more complicated than that.

(2) Entitlement spending has been increasing steadily due to factors that are (absent legislative change) largely outside the control of Presidents.  It’s best to pay attention to “discretionary” spending.  Also, what is spent, or what has to be spent, in relation to national defense is not always under a President’s control either.

(3) Reagan was the most forceful proponent of small-government conservatism in recent memory, and he succeeded in some respects and failed in others.  Reagan increased spending on defense from the Carter years — and that spending was arguably worth it, as it helped bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union — but he decreased non-defense discretionary spending by nearly 10% in his first term.  In his second term, the same spending stayed flat.

(4) After Reagan, Bush the Elder and Bush the Younger departed progressively further and further from the small-government principles of Reaganite conservatism.  They may have been right to do so, or they may have been wrong.  But, as I am arguing in a piece to be published at Patheos today, it is demonstrably false to say that no conservatives objected to the big-spending ways of the second Bush administration.  In the article I will point to some of the thousands of examples, but let me point to one more here.  The Independent Institute in 2004 complained about the massive spending increases under Bush (with a nice graphic):

President George W. Bush is now on his way to becoming the first full-term president since John Quincy Adams (1825-1829) to not veto a single bill. The result is a congress that has been completely unconstrained in satiating its appetite for pork and corporate welfare. In response, Democratic challenger John Kerry has maligned alleged spending cuts and called for even higher taxes and spending. The consequence is that we now have two parties competing to see which can grow government faster.

From the massive increases in agricultural subsidies in the farm bill of 2002, to the new Medicare prescription drug entitlement of 2003; from the 47% increase in the defense budget, to the 80% increase in education spending, George W. Bush has demonstrated that “limited government” is not part of his political vocabulary.

Things would change to some extent.  Bush II did not grow the government nearly as much in his second term, and he sought immediately after his reelection to move social security money (at least partly) out of government control and under private control.  Bush was dramatically reducing the deficit year to year, and, if it were not for the economic collapse, probably would have handed over a government with roughly a balanced budget.

(5) Kevin Drum points to how quickly Santelli’s rant followed after Obama’s inauguration.  But this only goes to show that the anger had already been building under Bush.  It was a response to TARP and the stimulus bill and the mortgage bailouts, and many of the things Drum mentions that had not yet come to pass were nevertheless already under discussion, such as Obama’s new budget and the auto bailouts, as well as financial market regulation reform, cap and trade, and even the health insurance reform.  It was already becoming clear that we were dealing with precisely what Obama had declared (at least in the general election) that he was not: a very, very big spender.  It was hard to see how there would not be significant tax increases coming down the pipe, and, along with them, sluggish economic growth and high rates of unemployment.

Plus, it’s taken time to build a broader Tea Party movement, so the cause of the objection at the time of Santelli’s rant is not the only important thing.  As time has gone on, and the government and deficit spending have grown and grown and grown, so too have the ranks of the Tea Party.

Drum wants to say, of course, that since the Tea Party could not have been motivated by strictly economic concerns, therefore it must be motivated by blind hatred of a Democrat or a black or whatever.  But economic concerns are a sufficient cause and a sufficient explanation for the Tea Party movement, both in its beginnings and as it has evolved over time.