Same as the old boss?

During the Vietnam War, the rock group The Who expressed an age-old sentiment about political change in the classic song “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

Among the best-known lines in the song is this: “Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss.”

Now that the dust has begun to settle in the aftermath of last week’s midterm elections, it is with a healthy sense of skepticism that I evaluate the plans and promises of the incoming Republican majority in the House of Representatives.

Like all hopeful advocates of a strictly limited federal government that respects the Constitution, I’d very much like to believe the federal government is on the verge of significant course correction.

I’d like to believe that we might soon begin not merely halting the growth of federal spending, but actually reducing it — not merely slowing the pace at which new regulations and federal agencies are created, but actually eliminating them.

However, I have reviewed the GOP’s tepid, nonspecific Pledge to America, and I am disappointed to find that the only segment of the budget the party feels comfortable cutting is non-defense discretionary spending, which excludes spending on entitlement programs and the military, by far the largest portions of the federal budget.

In addition, if recent history is any guide, even the most resounding of Republican victories rarely results in the elimination of unconstitutional departments and agencies like those Ronald Reagan pledged — and failed — to abolish, such as the Departments of Education and Energy.

Even when Republicans gain significant power in Congress and a mandate to limit the growth of government, as they recently have, things tend not to pan out as advertised.

As Cato Institute President Edward H. Crane reported in 2000, “the combined budgets of the 95 major programs that the Contract with America promised to eliminate (had) increased by 13 percent.” He said this six years after Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America swept dozens of allegedly small-government conservatives into Congress.

On the social policy front, I'd also like to believe we might soon see advocates of personal freedoms from both sides of the aisle join forces to end restrictive policies on military service by gays, immigration and drug prohibition, among other things.

But the reluctance of leaders in both major parties to apply principles like equal rights, freedom of movement and freedom of choice to issues like these is, much like Reagan's and Gingrich's failed crusades for fiscal restraint, thoroughly disheartening.

Fortunately for their “narrative,” as the official spin seems to be euphemized these days, GOP leaders will have a ready excuse for any lack of major progress in the next two years: With a Democratic president and Senate, it’s just too tough to enact the sort of reforms necessary to make a significant difference in the effort to shrink the state.

I must grant that this excuse will hold some water. However, this excuse doesn’t work for explaining the ballooning debt, deficits and regulatory regime we saw during the early years of the last decade, when Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress.

It also doesn’t absolve them of responsibility for coming to the table with an extremely weak set of proposals for limiting the size and scope of the federal government.

A divided Congress will probably result in a somewhat less energetic, somewhat less intrusive federal government. But come January, when the new bosses get to work, don’t expect them to behave much differently than the old bosses.


E-mail: jarlower@indiana.edu