A Beltarian Explains Sanity

Beltarian Megan McCardle tells us she is sane:

... I am not delusional, and I did not fall off of a turnip truck last night...

How so? Well, she knows that big government can not be cut down to size overnight. In fact, she would like to see government cut down, by the government expansion method.

One of the areas where the hard-liners and I depart is that they do not consider cuts from the future baseline to be "real" spending cuts; they want absolute cuts, or at the very least, per-capita cuts.  I do not think that this is realistic--and not because I think that it would be somehow impossible to have a smaller government.  We could certainly do less, and I agree that we should.  But we cannot do it instantly.  It is not politically possible, and it is not even fiscally possible.

She then creates the strawman that hard-liners want everything to be cut literally overnight:

 It would, for example, be eminently possible to have a private air-traffic control system.  But we cannot privatize the system by August 3rd.  Similarly, I think we could use a Singapore or Chilean style private accounts system to save for retirement, but we cannot arrange for today's Baby Boomers to have started saving in 1972--at least not without some fairly massive government spending on time-travel research.

It's true that hardliners want to see actual real cuts, as opposed to slowdowns in spending, but we are a far, far way from shutting down the entire government air traffic control system on August 3. It could be done over a six-month to twelve month period, but since McCardle is sane and didn't fall of a turnip truck she is warning about the dangers of this occurring next week. Further only a Beltarian would think that a Singapore or Chilean style private accounts system is a free market, non-government solution for saving. What's the problem with being allowed the freedom to save any damn way you please, without government involvement?

Her solution to protect us from planes falling out of the sky next week is to increase the size of government. Yup, she doesn't want real cuts, just cuts from the increases in the "baseline" scenario, which would result in an increase in spending.

The much derided baseline cuts are, unfortunately, the best hope for long-term smaller government.  Throwing away because you think you ought to be able to eliminate the Department of Education does not make sense to me on any level, moral or practical....

Just holding the line--or even giving a minimum of ground--on spending is a huge victory for the GOP.

Notice, how if you are a Beltarian, you ignore all the billions spent on wars that, as Ron Paul points out, are funds that should be used at home to make good on promises made domestically. Not a word about those kinds of cuts, if you are Beltarian sane.

And, if you are a Beltarian sane, you don't actually call for raising taxes (to support your "cuts" from the "baseline"), but you do note:

The failure to think specifically applies to taxation, incidentally... If you want to raise more tax revenues, stop thinking about corporate jets and the carried interest, and start thinking about eliminating the mortgage interest tax deduction for all earners, and allowing the AMT to kick in on the upper end of "middle class" incomes. 

With Beltarian sanity like this, who needs madness?