Via John Cole, Jon Henke has some ideas on how to make the government live within its means. Some of them are, to a liberal like me me, bad, notable the flat tax. Some seem more ideologically desirable than economically smart (deficits can be a good thing, particularly for countercyclical stimulus: read your Keynes), and some of them seem good. And to focus in on the good, what's the argument against outlawing all riders?
All specific expenditures will be voted on independently; riders are prohibited. If Congress wants to load up a spending bill with Pork, then each Congressman will have to vote up or down on each individual item. If a majority of Congressmen/Senators believe that a $233 million bridge in Alaska is a worthwhile use of public money, let them vote accordingly—individually, specifically and publicly.
Now, there may be bills where you can't do this, but generally speaking, a similar idea should be workable. You could, for instance, set up an independent office that judges whether riders are integral to the aim and purpose of the bill and, if not, they must be voted on separately. Is that possible? Or, as is entirely likely, am I just wholly missing some crucial aspect of congressional procedures that makes this totally unworkable?
Aside from the rider, though, Jon Henke is running into a problem he really can't solve. American government may be bloated by pork, but it's big because Americans are operatively liberal, they envision a positive, active role for the federal government and are overwhelmingly hostile when conservatives raise a hand against those priorities. Ask Newt Gingrich how easy he found it to simply slow the growth in Medicare spending in the mid-90's. Ask liberals how effective they've been at funneling money away from the absurdly wasteful Pentagon. Bottom line is that you can use pork cuts and rider elimination to slash away at the margin, but the vast majority of government spending is in large, cherished programs and the defense budget. And unless you can convince Americans to turn on those programs or eschew more tanks, limited government is an impossible dream.
