Today the federal government continues to grow under both Republican and Democrat administrations and neither the Congress nor the President is taking a serious look at reducing the size and scope of government. The United States, especially in the 20th century, has seen a continual growth in the size and power of the federal government. The Progressive era in the early part of the 20th century saw a push by reformers to increase the regulatory power of the federal government to respond to the economic, political, and social problems that resulted from the industrialization during the Gilded Age. Progressives believed that the social contract of limited government and economic liberty was no longer sufficient to deal with the complications of a modern society.
The first wave of progressivism emerged with the presidential administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. The modern administrative or regulatory state emerged in the first wave of progressivism. The federal government also continued to grow during the First World War when President Wilson centralized a majority of the economy. The Great Depression in the 1930s enabled the second wave of progressivism under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The New Deal institutionalized the administrative state, modern presidency, and initiated the welfare state. Roosevelt and the philosophy behind the New Deal argued that as the economy and capitalism changed the federal government needed to step in and provide economic security. The New Deal legacy continued through the presidential administrations of Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, and in the mid-1960s President Lyndon B. Johnson built on the Roosevelt tradition by declaring war on poverty and launching the Great Society.
The current recession has provided another opportunity for progressives to call for reform and for additional Keynesian-style spending proposals. The federal budget is over $3 trillion, the national debt is $11 trillion, and the current budget deficit is approaching $2 trillion. In addition the federal government, along with state and local governments, are thirsting for additional tax revenues, but quenching that thirst is getting more difficult. The federal budget is also under tremendous stress with the looming entitlement crisis of Social Security and Medicare.
Chris Edwards, Director of Tax Policy Studies at Cato Institute, recently wrote in Tax & Budget Bulletin that “the government is also increasing the scope of its activities, intervening in many areas that used to be left to state and local governments, businesses, charities, and individuals.” Edwards reported that by 2008 “there were 1,804 different subsidy programs in the federal budget.” “We are in the midst of the largest federal gold rush since the 1960s,” noted Edwards. This is true when examining the health-care and environmental policy proposals, and the push for new regulations to provide a new form of economic dependency.
Edwards and his colleagues at Cato Institute have done remarkable work in finding constitutional solutions to reduce government programs and spending. The current path of government growth and spending is not sustainable and perhaps policy leaders should be asking the question of what would former Treasury Secretaries Alexander Hamilton and Andrew Mellon recommend?
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Public Interest Institute. They are brought to you in the interest of a better informed citizenry.
John Hendrickson is a Research Analyst with the Public Interest Institute in Mount Pleasant, IA.
Web site: www.limitedgovernment.org.
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