Megan McArdle, who once gave herself the Randian if not randy moniker of “Jane Galt,” now presents herself as a shockingly blasé Washington insider, a realist who knows that “real change” in DC is impossible, because what’s real in Washington is compromise:
“Everything you do in Washington is a compromise. There are a lot of people in the country, and most of them don’t care about what you want. To get money spent or unspent, taxes raised or lowered, you have to give those people something they do want. The result is an ugly mess with little resemblance to the original plan.
“Don’t like it? Welcome to representative democracy. If you have a plan to deal with this problem that doesn’t involve fantasizing about the sudden (but nonviolent) disappearance of more than half your fellow citizens, we’re all ears. Otherwise, this is what we’re stuck with.”
All too true, Megan. But then she lets fly with this one: “even Reagan ultimately made little progress at cutting down the overall size and scope of government, and at best modestly curtailed its expense.” Uh, no, Megan, that’s not what happened. Reagan didn’t decrease the expense of the federal government. He increased it. Federal spending rose from $746 billion to $1144 billion under Reagan. Despite a healthy economy, the size of the federal debt rose from 22.3 percent of GDP to 38.1 percent. “Reagan taught us that deficits don’t matter,” as Dick Cheney so eloquently put it, explaining why the Bush Administration was entitled to cut taxes and increase spending like there was no tomorrow, or at least no tomorrow that Republicans would have to pay for.
