The Volokh Conspiracy

But I will say that it takes real chutzpah for Rove to praise Bush for "understand[ing that] free markets provide the best path to a more hopeful tomorrow," while simultaneously praising Bush's massive prescription drugs boondoggle.

Well considering that Rove was referring to President Bush’s policies (specifically tax cuts) which were designed to increase economic growth and job creation, I don’t think it’s chutzpah on Rove’s part to praise Bush for his policies in that area. President Bush along with Congress does deserve criticism for spending but while many fiscal conservatives favor both policies designed to spur economic growth and restraining spending they aren’t the same issue.

As far as Medicare Part D, I didn’t support it but considering that it lead to Health Savings Accounts, introducing the concept of means-testing to Medicare, and used competition through multiple competing plans rather than government price controls and fewer choices, I don’t see it as being all that different in principle than school vouchers which many libertarian-minded voters support. I can see complaining about the cost or objecting to it on some belief that Medicare is someone going to continue without eventually having some form of prescription drug coverage but considering that the opponents of Bush’s drug benefit on the Left largely objected because they saw it as paving the way for the eventual privatization of Medicare, it’s arguably a quasi-free market reform much like school vouchers even if it does increase the amount spent by government on health care particularly when the alternative was more likely to harm the free market by enacting a price control regime in the form of “negotiation.”

Just as laughable is the claim that President Bush "put America on wartime footing in the dangerous struggle against radical Islamic terrorism."

As far as Medicare Part D, I didn’t support it but considering that it lead to Health Savings Accounts, introducing the concept of means-testing to Medicare, and used competition through multiple competing plans rather than government price controls and fewer choices, I don’t see it as being all that different in principle than school vouchers which many libertarian-minded voters support.

The big difference is that "libertarian-minded" voters would never support a tiny voucher program if it came packaged with a trillion dollars new spending on traditional government schools. Medicare Part D is a small HSA program packaged with an enormous increase in government spending. Even assuming that HSAs are desirable (a question on which free market advocates disagree among themselves), no serious pro-market person could possibly believe that this is a defensible tradeoff.

It's a campaign document (even though Dubya isn't running for anything anymore). Internal consistency isn't a hallmark of such documents. I still think quite a few of the points made in it are correct, but others can and certainly will disagree.

Liberty,

You point is correct to an extent for tax cuts, although no legitimate research has found that tax cuts in an established economy will be made up dollar for dollar in economic growth (at its best, it is less than a dollar in growth).

More importantly though, current spending, and entitlements created that last for a long time, will require future taxes without other cuts. Our current deficit will require payment in the future (plus interest). Unless you are stating that the Medicare plan creates returns from economic growth greater than the cost of debt, we will need future tax money to pay for such program. This will either require cutting future spending (of the amount spent today plus interest) or increasing our debt (which in theory has some unknown limit) or raising taxes.

A subtext of the claim that Bush will be viewed more kindly by history than he is presently is the notion that posterity sees with clearer eyes than contemporaneous observers. Is that assumption well-founded? Obviously, certain decisions (e.g., invading Iraq) can't be fully evaluated without the context of ensuing developments. But we also know that the accuracy of memory and reportage suffers with the diminishing proximity to events over time and a multiplicity of reporters, each of whom interposes another layer of distortion between what happened and the audience for his iteration. Eventually most people know only what’s filtered through the distant narrative of a historian whose version has prevailed in a largely ritualized struggle, of which accuracy was just one among many determinative factors.

Curious that when discussing the future bills this administration has left us with, people are mentioning Medicare but not the war in Iraq. Just because that $500 billion or so isn't counted in the official budget numbers doesn't mean it's not real money.

Perhaps because the war in Iraq, no matter how expensive, is temporary; it isn't a so-called "entitlement" which will only grow and grow and grow because of selfish old people.

So, David, are the old people in every other industrialized democracy "selfish"?

And just out of curiousity, what's your best guess at how much the Iraq war will wind up costing the U.S.?

Finally, in the judgment of history/historians, which would you predict will be considered money better spent? Helping the elderly with health care, or the Iraq war?

Perhaps because the war in Iraq, no matter how expensive, is temporary; it isn't a so-called "entitlement" which will only grow and grow and grow because of selfish old people.

You obviously are not paying attention to Administration rhetoric on how long the war will last.