Less than one week ago, I identified three potential vehicles for some long-overdue fiscal reforms to restrain the burden of government spending.
In that post, I suggested that the “continuing resolution” was the best vehicle since lawmakers obviously would have to consider legislation to provide funding for the rest of the 2013 fiscal year.
The debt limit, by contrast, creates too many opportunities for demagoguery. Geithner and Bernanke have already demonstrated, for instance, that they’re willing to prevaricate and scare financial markets.
It’s much smarter to pick a fight on the “CR” since there not even a make-believe risk of default. Instead, the only thing that happens is that the “non-essential” parts of the federal government are shut down.
So I’m delighted to see that Ted Cruz, the new Senator from Texas, understands that the shutdown fight in 1995 led to very good results. I wrote a piece for National Review making the same point, so I’m delighted to hear someone else singing from the same sheet of music. Pay close attention at the 3:15 mark of this video.
My only quibble is that he mentions the debt limit as the vehicle for the fight, when he should have mentioned the CR.
But I’m nit-picking. Cruz seems to get it. He puts the focus on the disease of too much government rather than fixating on the symptom of too much red ink.
He also understands that high tax rates discourage productive behavior, so he’s obviously not a fan of the President’s class-warfare approach.
Last but not least, you’ll also see he gave a very strong response on protecting the 2nd Amendment immediately following his discussion of fiscal policy.
Seems like there’s a chance he could be a second Rand Paul.
[…] though that seems like a fantasy outcome for people like me from the Cato Institute, I actually don’t think libertarians, fiscal conservatives, and other advocates of smaller government should make the debt […]
[…] Senator Cruz Identifies the Wrong Vehicle, but Pushes the Right Strategy to Restrain Spending […]
[…] though that seems like a fantasy outcome for people like me from the Cato Institute, I actually don’t think libertarians, fiscal conservatives, and other advocates of smaller government should make the debt […]
I have heard Ted Cruz several times on American Family Radio and he is very sharp. I am very excited about him joining the Senate and I do think he will follow in Rand Paul’s footsteps!!!
My impression of Cruz is that he is quite full of himself, an instant expert, with a simplistic answer for everything and now with a license to legislate. I hope he studies, learns and gets over his know-it-all attitude. He certainly has a lot to learn. He could start by reading this blog. It’s full of good information and argumentation.
No, Ted Cruz does not get it. He thinks that other people’s lives are his to consume provided that the activity is prescribed by sanctimonious claptrap in the form of constitutions, statutes, and the loooooong scribblings of judges. This premise has been relied upon by the worst of despots, too.
Cruz thinks also that there is a theoretical correct amount of taxation such that amounts above that may be called robbery, evil, etc. Yet merely setting up a taxgathering operation makes it easier to cause the problems which all of you claim to oppose so much. Probably he has all of the usual excuses.
Q: Why does Senator Ted Cruz believe as he does?
A: He’s greedy, ignorant, delusional, and immature.
The senator is not part of a solution but instead someone new to delay the day of reckoning. In the meantime most Americans will carry on with the important business of using government to live at the expense of others while pretending to be free and just. This is how things have been since even before the glorious revolt that was financed in part by a currency scam and by borrowing made easier by the power to tax. And the USA will end badly in proportion to the stubbornness of its apostles and apologists.
But it’s possible to conceive a plan to wind down the USA, and it’s possible to put such a plan into action. In fact, Americans might also get the credit for closing the chapter of history about republicanism, which has been given adequate opportunity to show that it deserves respect. In the meantime, Americans deserve heaps of blame for helping to spread an ugly, despotic religion around the world such that there is a significant possibility of establishing a world government during the lifetimes of people old enough to know what the USA and the UN are.
It should go without saying that we need a religion. Neither theism nor “free markets” need apply, however. There’s no basis for belief in a god, and “free markets” is coded language for the freedom to do anything, no matter how heinous, on the pretext of commercial liberty.