To refresh your memory, Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president in 1981 and cut taxes dramatically. The result was a huge budget deficit as Congress (including Republicans) was unable to significantly cut spending. When Stockman finally left the Reagan administration in 1985, the federal debt had nearly doubled.
In his book -- and this is important -- Stockman concluded that Congress (and the American people) wanted a certain level of government spending. To avoid deficits, they should be expected to at least pay for it. Sounds simple, right? But I'm afraid it's a lesson many Americans haven't quite grasped yet.
I'm reminded of all this by -- you guessed it -- an article in today's Times, "A House District Liked Its Earmarks, and Then Elected Someone Who Didn't." It's about a district in New York that elected a tea party Republican, Nan Hayworth, to Congress last November. She and her constituents are against earmarks -- sort of (all emphasis mine):
Ken Schmitt, the Republican supervisor of Carmel, supported Ms. Hayworth in her campaign. But he is among many in the district who can point to benefits that earmarks provided his town: nearly $150,000 to buy high-technology cameras for police cruisers in 2009.
“Do I support banning them completely? No, I don’t,” Mr. Schmitt said, adding that each project should be considered on its own merits.
Steve Axinn, the president of Lake Oscawana Civic Association, agreed. “Not all earmarks are the same,” he said. “There are some that are good and some that are clearly abusive. It is the responsibility of our elected representatives to know the difference.”
Mr. Axinn, a lawyer who is registered as a Democrat, knows a good bit about the subject. He was instrumental in persuading Ms. Hayworth’s predecessor, John Hall, a Democrat, to deliver $400,000 in earmark financing to reduce the high levels of phosphorous in Lake Oscawana in Putnam Valley.
“This was a good thing that could not have been done without that grant,” he said.
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Ms. Hayworth’s predecessor, Mr. Hall, secured nearly 70 earmarks totaling $51.9 million during the four years he was in office, according to an analysis by Taxpayers for Common Sense.
But Mr. Hall, aware of the controversy surrounding these spending items, put in place internal measures requiring any earmark his office sought to meet certain criteria, including that it create jobs locally or fulfill a public health and safety need in the district, according to a member of his former staff.
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Charles Duffy, the supervisor of the town of Lewisboro, is a registered Conservative who campaigned for Ms. Hayworth. But he said he believed that local officials ought to be able to call on their Congress member for help with a local need, though he says the system could be fixed.
“You want your federal representatives to still be able to help your region,” said Mr. Duffy, whose town includes the hamlet of South Salem, where nearly $200,000 went to build a library.
That was also the sentiment in Dover, a town that received $250,000 to replace a century-old bridge that state engineers deemed unsafe, according to interviews and public records.
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Ms. Hayworth has supporters. Douglas Bloomfield, the Republican supervisor of the Town of Goshen, said he backed her stance, arguing that the federal deficit needs to be brought under control.
But he also told a story about one earmark he requested.
In 2007, he said, he went to Mr. Hall’s office seeking money to replace the main water line running into a subdivision with 160 homes. Mr. Hall eventually delivered, securing an earmark of nearly $400,000.
Mr. Bloomfield accepted it. Why? “Our particular one was great because it’s absolutely required,” he said.
And that's the problem. As Stockman put it so well, people want government to provide goods that the private sector cannot. What they didn't understand then -- and still don't, apparently -- is that they have to be paid for. And this is what I think the tea partiers -- and the rest of America, for that matter -- will eventually come to understand.
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