The New York Times’ (October 20) front-page article says it all, “As G.O.P. Seeks Spending Cuts, Details Are Scarce.” Tea Party endorsed candidates are campaigning on the “small is beautiful” theme when it comes to the size of government. Yet, virtually none of them has identified any specific reductions in federal spending, nor have they indicated which federal programs or cabinet departments they would abolish.
Let me give them a hand. As Larry Kudlow pointed out on his CNBC show the other evening, the U.S. Constitution authorizes only four cabinet departments–Justice, State, Treasury, and War (now the Defense Department). In other words, most cabinet departments are not authorized by the Constitution. They should be phased out over the next several years. These include: Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, HUD, HHS, Homeland Security, Interior, Labor, and Transportation. The activities of these departments should be transferred to state and/or local governments. The nonprofit sector should eventually deliver all social services and the private sector could provide some services like roads, parks, etc. The Defense Department should be responsible for the activities of the Veteran Affairs.
Kudlow called for Tea Party candidates to take on all the excessive spending, including the Pentagon. This is the first time I have heard Kudlow call for a reduction in the bloated military budget. In fact, he is using the word “libertarian” more and more in his commentary. He is also bringing up the “l” word when he interviews his left wing and establishment GOP guests. And just last night (October 20) Kudlow interviewed former House Majority Leader Dick Armey who said the Tea Party folks are knowledgeable about the FED and other issues because they understand free market “Austrian economics.”
Armey did not mention the Chicago School or other so-called free market schools of thought in influencing the Tea Party movement. He singled out the Austrian School in educating the masses about the evils of statism, the FED, and the bailouts. In other words, a philosophical revolution is underway in America led by those who have been influenced by the works of Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, Murray Rothbard, Lew Rockwell, Hans Hermann-Hoppe, Robert Higgs, Walter Block, Joe Salerno, Tom DiLorenzo, Tom Woods, Robert Murphy and dozens of others past and present. The masses are reading the scores of books and articles written by these outstanding scholars, which means one thing—more of the public are learning that the welfare-warfare state is one big swindle and its days are numbered.
On the campaign trail, Tea Party candidates on economic issues have truth, logic and the Constitution on their side. They should be criticizing the big government polices that got us into the current mess—the income tax, crony capitalism, the FED, the out of control federal bureaucracy, fractional reserve banking, Ponzi schemes—Social Security and Medicare–and massive deficit spending. They should be calling for a restructuring of the federal government. They should be talking about how the federal government has been hijacked by the financial elites who have been making mega bucks off the backs of the average household. This is not easy to do in a campaign where the big government candidates call you an extremist at the drop off a hat.
So Tea Party candidates: don’t be wimps; your opponents are the “extremists” who want to maintain the status quo of the greatest swindle ever perpetrated on the America people—the welfare-warfare state.