BCT Editorial – 6/9/05

This page was last updated on June 10, 2005.

Hot air; Editorial; Beaver County Times; June 9, 2005.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“The next time you hear someone railing against ‘big government,’ consider the following, courtesy of columnist Matt Miller: Seven programs make up 75 percent of federal spending.

“They are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, military pensions, civil service pensions, defense and interest on the national debt.

[RWC] In case you missed it, all of these expenditures – except for national defense and military pensions – are the result of big government. Read the U.S. Constitution and you’ll find it says nothing about Socialist Security, Medicaid, and Medicare. Civil service pensions wouldn’t be an issue if we didn’t have too many “civil servants” and idiotic defined benefit plans for retirees. Likewise, interest on the national debt wouldn’t be an issue without big government and the “free lunch” it promises.

“Miller also notes that ‘a good chunk of the quarter of the federal dollar that’s left’ goes for ‘everything from NASA to national parks to the National Institutes of Health, not to mention student loans, farm subsidies and homeland security.’

“Please, when it comes to cutting spending, don’t even bring up foreign aid, which accounts for less than 1 percent of federal spending. The same goes for the waste-fraud-and-abuse canard, which is always good for a chuckle, too.”

[RWC] What’s funny about cutting abuse, fraud, and waste? The real dollars are in killing illegitimate government activities (Socialist Security, Medicaid, etc.), but should we ignore abuse, fraud, and waste until we can kill the programs?

“Here’s the real bottom line: You can’t make a significant dent in federal spending without going after the seven programs cited above. Everything else is hot air.”

[RWC] This is a real hoot. If you’ve read Times editorials over the years, you know their economic, political, and social positions provide no room for cutting government spending.