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Part 7: Party Performance and Spending
The 2008 presidential election primaries have been entertaining to say the least.
As usual, it seems like when the Republican candidates are not trying to out
fiscally conservative each other, they stop momentarily to shoot a "tax and spend"
arrow at the various and sundry Democrats.
They seem to be preaching the gospel of fiscal conservatism with all of the
enthusiasm of a tent revival meeting. As the meeting progresses, the preaching
gets more exciting. Competition between preachers becomes more intense as the
crowd gets more and more riled up against the sin of government spending. "Just
give them Democrats a chance", they would argue, "and they will spend us poor
over burdened taxpayers out of house and home."
Yes sir, to listen to them Republicans, you would think they all ran their
state/city/Congress uphill for ten miles, buck naked in the snow on a $1.57 a
head. Now if the country could only see the light they could run the Federal
government on much less than $1.57 a head because of volume.
Meanwhile back at the Democratic ranch, the ranch hands seem to be fussing over
how to reallocate the Federal kitty. They just can't seem to agree on how much
feed to send to the education and healthcare troughs.
Such behavior must be sinful, in the eyes of the Republican candidates. "Those
Democrats are trying to educate and heal the masses on the backs of poor
overworked taxpayers. Yes sir, they will have us all in the poor house. You just wait
and see...," they muse.
With all the hyperbole and good clean kidding aside, we do need to ask ourselves if
the "spend" part of the "tax and spend" label is really true. Do Democrats try too
hard to solve the country's problems on the backs of poor overworked taxpayers,
or are we looking at a case of the Republican Emperor wearing no clothes?
The question of which party is the biggest spender is critical to many voters'
decisions. If it is true that the Democrats are the big spending party as the
Republicans say, then it would make sense those voters who are concerned about
more government spending than is necessary or prudent would favor the
Republicans. If the evidence suggests that both parties were responsible for
roughly the same amount of spending then voters who are concerned with the
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