What Fiscal Conservatism Means

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Andrew Sullivan has been arguing for the past few days that, just because Bush has failed to make sweeping budget cuts during his time in office, doesn’t mean that small-government fiscal conservatism has been discredited as an ideology. Strictly speaking, that’s accurate, I guess, although I’d like to see more people start discrediting fiscal conservatism, because if a Republican ever came to power who was more willing to cut government programs than George W. Bush, it would be catastrophic.

Just to get beyond numbers here, Rose Aguilar has a good piece in Alternet today that does some reporting on what many of the government discretionary programs that pundits like Sullivan want to cut actually mean for real-life people. Here’s an example:

Every month, 80-year-old Sally Shaver pays someone to drive her to the Harvest Hope Food Bank in Columbia, S.C., to pick up a box of fresh produce, baked goods, dry cereals, juice, canned goods and cheese. “It really helps me out because after paying for my rent, phone bill and medication, I barely have enough for food,” she says. “If I could work, I would, but I have an artificial knee and a pacemaker, and I can’t get around.

Shaver, who worked as a nurse’s aide for most of her life, brings in $451 a month in social security. Her fixed income qualifies her for the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP), which is designed to improve the health and nutrition of low-income senior citizens, pregnant women, postpartum mothers, infants and children.

Last year, CSFP provided 536,196 people with a monthly box of food. Bush’s proposed budget for 2007 calls for a nationwide elimination of the entire program.

Now from reading Sullivan’s recent posts, I take it his brand of “fiscal conservatism” would preserve all the “good” programs for the poor—perhaps like the one above—while cutting all the “bad” stuff, like agricultural subsidies and corporate welfare and entitlements for the middle class and the like. (“[T]he bottom line,” writes Sullivan, “is that the middle class and the prosperous elderly are far too pampered by government in this country.”)

That’s all well and good in theory—I’d love to see corporate welfare ended, too—but in practice, when “fiscal conservatives” come to power, it’s only programs like the CSFP that ever get put on the chopping block, partly because 80-year-old Sally Shaver doesn’t have an army of lobbyists working in D.C. That’s how fiscal conservatives are always going to operate—cut programs for the poor while keeping their grip on power by catering to business interests. There’s no “magical” fiscal conservatism that will somehow get voted into office someday and do all the things Sullivan would like to see.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate