I have been criticized in the past for suggesting that modern liberalism often seems to support government spending, as such, without much regard to the need for and efficacy of any particular program. Thanks to Leonard Fein for unintentionally supporting my point. In essay in the April Moment magazine, Fein, in the course of explaining why American Jews should stay liberal as a matter of Jewish values, critiques the president’s latest budget proposal:
It is a budget of a poor country, a country that cannot afford food stamps a hungry, that plans to cut between it to the 2003 and thousand people from the program mostly working people with families and children; a budget that says to Amtrak “if you can’t make it in the open market, you don’t deserve to survive”…
Hold on! Amtrak? You mean the Amtrak that is largely used by wealthy business travelers (with poor people using Greyhound?) The Amtrak that wastes billions of dollars running nearly empty trains to the districts of influential congressmen? The Amtrak that spent untold millions purchasing new high-speed trains, but never got around to upgrading the tracks to accommodate higher speeds? An Amtrak, in short, that redistributes wealth upwards, is run in a corrupt manner, and is grossly mismanaged? Is protectinig this was modern liberalism is all about?
In fairness to Fein, he does go on to talk about Pell grants, Medicaid, and other programs intended to help the poor. But I think his inability to distinguish between government spending that actually serves liberalism’s purported goals, and wasteful government boondoggles that receive reflexive support because they exist outside the market is an endemic problem that modern liberalism has yet to adequately address.
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