It’s a Gray Area:

I have been pondering the answer to the following two questions for several years: First, what actually is the basic liberal philosophy? See if you agree with my answer. In general, the liberal philosophy is that “Government can best address — if not cure — the ills of the world by spending money.” (Of course, it is our money that the government is spending.)

And second, what is the basic conservative philosophy? See if you agree with my answer. In general, the conservative philosophy is that “We should have as small and non-intrusive a government as possible, which is basically one that will provide us with things like a military and police force, foreign policy, justice system, national monetary system, some oversight and regulating of the marketplace, and a few other nationally oriented things like that.” One of the rationales for that philosophy is that individual people are in a better position to make good decisions about how to spend their money than the government is.

Unfortunately, the recent administration of President George W. Bush abandoned that conservative philosophy when it failed to veto huge congressional spending, and even sponsored much of it. For as long as I can remember, conservatives have been chastising liberals as people who would “tax and spend.” But the Bush administration took that one big step further with policies that would “tax, borrow and spend.” And that is a big reason why our country is in such fiscal trouble today. Therefore, as a practical matter, the Libertarians are the only political group that has held true to the basic conservative economic philosophy.

So now one of the policies that the Obama administration and Congress are pursuing is the so-called “Cash for Clunkers” program. As you know, this program contributes $3,500 to $4,500 to people who trade in their old “clunker” automobile for the purchase of a new one. And the program has been so “successful” that it has gone through the first $1 billion of tax money, so Congress has now added another $2 billion to it.