The Spending Threat | Chris Edwards | Cato Institute: Commentary

The Spending Threat | Chris Edwards | Cato Institute: Commentary: "So why do politicians keep driving taxes and spending higher? One reason is that most Republicans in Congress have abandoned spending restraint. Consider House Minority Leader John Boehner. He heckles Obama's spending as 'one big down payment on a new American socialist experiment.' But the president recently challenged him to find specific programs to cut, and the best Boehner and his team could do was a list of cuts worth less than 1 percent of the bloated federal budget. If Obama is a 'socialist,' then the House Republican leadership is 99 percent socialist.

Republican leaders have forgotten that the best defense against big-government Democrats is an aggressive offense. In the mid-'90s, the GOP proposed abolishing whole Cabinet departments and eliminating the deficit with spending cuts. That changed the terms of the debate, helping derail President Bill Clinton efforts to grow the government. With spending in check, the economy soared during his term."