Moralizers create moral confusion

Last spring, during a debate between his organization and the IU College Democrats, current IU College Republicans chairman Justin Kingsolver said increasing federal debt was “not just irresponsible” but also “immoral.

Since then, the debate over health care reform and expansion of the Tea Party protests into a broader movement have led to more claims of moral certainty on economic issues from conservatives.

Republican prospects are looking good for the 2010 midterm elections, but the party’s conservative base acts like the only trade-off Americans face is one between freedom and tyranny when it comes to the size of government. This perspective offers few solutions to any real problems.

This is not to say that fears of big government aroused by the recession are completely illegitimate. Government debt is blowing up right before entitlement programs are set to gobble up more and more of the budget. That same debt can worry markets and make credit tighter for everyone at a time when employment is hovering around 10 percent.

Bailouts to save the auto and financial industry and a large stimulus bill might leave the government with a much bigger footprint even after the crisis is over.

But most of the conservative gripes over the deficit and the Democratic health care proposals misrepresent the real trade-off Americans face when it comes to government intervention in the economy.

Tightening the government’s belt during a recession involves raising taxes or cutting spending, which makes the economy weaker, which undercuts tax revenue and leads to the need for the tigntening of even more belts.

Indeed, Republicans proposed their own stimulus bill focused on tax cuts that would have added hundreds of billions to the same deficit they are complaining about.

Subsidizing the health insurance of the poor and regulating insurance companies to make health care more accessible can make the economy less efficient, but it would also make it much more equitable.

Reforming how Medicare pays out benefits could help control the health care costs that will cause problems with entitlements, but conservatives freaked when such proposals were discussed.

The Tea Party movement, however real its proponents’ concerns might be, has played a big role in distorting the debate about government.

Richard Behney, a plumber from Fishers, Ind., who is running in the Republican primary in hopes of unseating Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and who helped organize the Tea Party movement in Indiana, did little more than spout nonsensical platitudes about choosing between freedom and slavery when he spoke at the IU College Republicans call-out meeting last week. Fortunately, many young conservatives seemed dissatisfied with Behney and thought the other candidates who spoke were much better.

There are plenty of people in the Republican Party who understand the real challenge is making government spending on programs like Social Security and Medicare sustainable and that solving problems like climate change and health care could require more action by the state.

There just isn’t any guarantee that Republicans will govern like that if they win in 2010.


E-mail: nrdixon@indiana.edu