Rodent Regatta

Craig Cantoni has been a friend for over ten years now. He and I worked together in Arizona some years ago and he remains one of the true critical thinkers that I’ve ever come in contact with. Other things he’s written can be found in the Arizona Republic or PHXnews.com. Take a look at this:

Republicans should enrich Democrats
By Craig J. Cantoni

As Milton Friedman has said, the debate about the stimulus effect of the Bush tax cuts misses the real problem—namely, that the regulatory state has grown so large that it sucks capital, investment and innovation out of the private sector. The key to economic growth is to cut the size and reach of government, which is something that even Republicans seem genetically incapable of doing.

Maybe it is time for the Republicans to think out of the genetic box and try this idea: Cut the size of government and return the savings to—hold on to your seat—Democrats. That’s right, I said D-E-M-O-C-R-A-T-S. Let me explain.

Take the departments of Commerce, Agriculture and Education—please take them! I picked these departments as examples because three-fourths of what they do is unnecessary.

The total budget for the three is $144.2 billion. Cutting the departments by three-fourths would result in an annual savings of $108.9 billion. The Republicans should propose cutting the departments by that amount and distributing the savings in cash to the poorest Americans—to Democratic constituents, in other words. To illustrate how much money that is, 5.4 million lower-income households could get a check for $20,000 apiece. Assuming that there are four people per household, that comes to about 22 million people.

Other departments could be cut to create even larger checks.

Conservative purists will say that such an idea does nothing to reduce confiscatory taxes on middle- and upper-income taxpayers—that it is another redistribution scheme. They would be correct. But given the Republican failure to cut the size of government in other ways, what is the alternative? At least the idea takes money from government coffers and gives it to private citizens, who in turn will spend it in the private sector, where it will trigger economic growth. And it has a huge political benefit. Twenty-two-million people would immediately switch their loyalties to the Republican Party.

If nothing else, it would be great entertainment to watch Tom Daschle, Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy fight the idea and explain to their constituents why they should not receive a $20,000 check.

Unfortunately, the problem with Republicans is that their underwear is too tight and they don’t know how to have fun, unlike Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton.