Unlike the democrats, and George W. Bush, conservatives want smaller government.
Why?
If your federal government can house the homeless, feed the hungry, Medicare the elderly, and now entirely take over health care and fix it, why on earth would anyone want to reduce its size and responsibility? Why not have Hillary care: a single payer socialist medical system here in the United States? Wouldn’t that be an improvement? Obviously what we have now is increasing in cost far more rapidly than inflation would indicate it should. Millions can’t afford health care and are forced to sit for hours in emergency rooms, with the illegal aliens, in order to see a doctor. And notice that among its many sins, the medical profession has carefully failed to cure cancer even though they’ve had research money flowing into their coffers for decades. So why not? Why not try Hillary care? Furthermore, why not have the government expand until it takes care of its people from cradle to grave?
Why are conservatives so against this and all other government expansion?
Because the federal government is the most dishonest, wasteful way to get anything done.
In the 1990’s, Bill Clinton’s people said “Oh, the reason government works so poorly is the wrong people are running things.” Well, the Clinton democrats had eight years and nothing changed in the workings of government. And under Big Spender George W Bush, who is not, I repeat not a conservative, things are earmark-pork barrel business as usual, just as it has been for the last 50 or so years.
Our federal government has steadily become increasingly dishonest and inefficient until today the result is just sickening to any reasonable person. This is why conservatives want smaller government – because of its abysmal track record. Smaller government is obviously the direction the country should go in. To demonstrate this, I’ll close with one of many examples:
Manipulating Data to Encourage Spending
The Army Corps of Engineers spends $5 billion annually constructing dams and other water projects. Yet, in a massive conflict of interest, it is also charged with evaluating the science and economics of each proposed water project. The Corps’ “strategic vision” calls on managers to increase their budgets as rapidly as possible, which requires approving as many proposed projects as possible. Consequently, the Corps has repeatedly been accused of deliberately manipulating its economic studies to justify unworthy projects.
Investigations by the GAO, The Washington Post, and several private organizations have found that Corps studies routinely contain dozens of basic arithmetic errors, computer errors, and ridiculous economic assumptions that artificially inflate the benefits of water projects by as much as 300 percent. In one case, a study’s authors inflated a project’s benefits by using a 2.5 percent interest rate that dated back to 1954. In many cases in which the Corps calculated that a project would be a net benefit, arithmetic corrections revealed that the costs would be many times greater than the benefits. By that point, of course, the unnecessary and wasteful project is often underway and cannot be stopped.
These errors appear to reflect more deception than sloppiness. A Washington Post investigation uncovered managers ordering analysts to “get creative,” to “look for ways to get to yes as fast as possible,” and “not to take no for an answer.” After a public outcry, in 2002, the Corps suspended work on 150 projects to review the economics used to justify them. However, given the combination of Congress’s thirst for pork-barrel projects and the Corps’ built-in incentives to approve projects that will increase its budget, real reforms seem unlikely.