A Trillion Here, a Trillion There: The Summer of Our Discontent

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In a recent column on the link between deficits and interest rates, Kevin A. Hassett provides some startling facts. "The U.S. set the record for government spending in July--a whopping $332.2 billion in that month alone. No government in history has ever spent so much. . . . By year's end, the deficit for this year is likely to be almost $2 trillion and the total public debt close to $12 trillion." Michael Barone describes the political response, noting that the tea party and health care protesters are raising an important issue: should we vastly increase the size and scope of the federal government?

Arthur C. Brooks provides an answer: "Despite the vote in November, it is clear that when Americans are not in an abject panic, we dislike government fiscal promiscuity. The president's sinking approval ratings are due precisely to his free-spending ways." Karlyn Bowman echoes his view that the administration's spending spree has produced the slide in his approval ratings. She notes that "in late July, the Pew Research Center reported that President [Barack] Obama had lost significant ground handling the economy and deficit, with approval rates tumbling. . . . No single factor explains the erosion except 'cumulative sticker shock.'"

 "Dissatisfaction is spreading into open protest as members of Congress try to explain the president's policies to the public," says Brooks, "Angry voters have engaged in high-profile town hall meetings around the country over a proposed health care overhaul that protesters complain is unaffordable, socialistic, incomprehensible, and which their representatives have not even read." Bowman notes that "while some of the sentiment at recent town hall meetings may be orchestrated, much of it is real. The weight of opinion about government today is that it is getting too big."   

Barone looks at what Democrat leaders are doing and says they seem to be assuming that "the economic distress of the financial crisis and deep recession would create an appetite for larger government." This assumption is not supported by survey data, says Bowman: "Perhaps surprisingly, Americans are less generous about what they want government to do when times are tough." She concludes that "Democrats have misread the mood on the public's appetite for more government."

According to Bowman, the Obama administration's spending is raising concerns about the deficit, an issue that usually has little intensity. Brooks takes a step back and makes a broader point about Americans' concerns with excessive government spending. "It is not just that we think it is wasteful and ineffective (although most recognize this to be true). Americans actually think the government makes it harder for people to get ahead in life," he said.

Hassett argues that Democrats should explain why it is acceptable to increase the deficit so much, given the argument they made that the Bush tax cuts would cause interest rates to rise because they would increase the deficit. "If Obama wants to pursue more spending," he said, "he should at least level with us and explain why he believes we can afford to risk higher interest rates."

People and Programs

Resident Fellow Scott Gottlieb, M.D.

Resident fellow Scott Gottlieb, M.D., has been very busy recently, writing about proposed health care legislation in the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and on Politico's Arena. He has done television interviews on Fox News Channel's Live Desk and the Glenn Beck Program and sparred with Dr. Howard Dean on CNBC's Squawk Box. Gottlieb says President Barack Obama "has revealed his lack of understanding about aspects of medical practice and the reasons for rising health care costs." Instead of directly regulating medical decisions, as current proposals would do, Gottlieb writes, "If Mr. Obama is serious about lowering costs, he'll need to reform the economic structures in medicine--especially programs like Medicare." Dr. Gottlieb continues to see his patients.

For the first time in fifty-four years, Japan's party leadership may change. Resident scholar Michael Auslin has been following the developments and examining the platform of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which is expected to win in the August 30 contest, and the probable reaction of the Liberal Democratic Party to a momentous defeat. The DPJ has ambitious plans and promises a stronger focus on addressing domestic concerns, Auslin writes, but for the DPJ "to take on Japan's legion of special interests while rigorously scrubbing the budget, reforming the civil service, eliminating 'all vested interests' in Japan's tax code, and passing major new spending initiatives may prove to be too much too soon." AEI's Dan Blumenthal and Gary J. Schmitt wrote about the implications a change of leadership could have on Japan's foreign policy, saying that while "Tokyo's foreign policy is unlikely to change drastically . . . there will be changes." How those changes affect the United States will depend both on U.S. policy and the DPJ's effectiveness. Auslin will moderate a panel discussion on September 2 on Japan's election.

The twenty-first season of AEI's Bradley Lecture Series will commence September 8 with Sam Tanenhaus, editor of The New York Times Book Review, discussing his book, The Death of Conservatism (Random House, 2009). Tanenhaus argues that for seventy-five years conservatives have been split into two factions: the "realists" who believe in the virtues of government and the "revanchists" who distrust government and society. He argues that the revanchists have won the argument and that this has caused conservatism to falter. AEI's Steven F. Hayward and Henry Olsen will respond to Tanenhaus. Click here to register for the series.

Resident Scholar Christina Hoff Sommers

Resident scholar Christina Hoff Sommers pointed out errors in University of California, Berkeley, lecturer Nancy K. D. Lemon's widely used textbook, Domestic Violence Law. The Chronicle of Higher Education published Lemon's defense and a response from Sommers that has generated scores of letters from classicists and historians agreeing with Sommers. To defend her claims about the prevalence and history of domestic violence, Lemon relies on statistics and studies taken out of context and claims Romulus of Rome not only lived but also codified law. Sommers's response is targeted and clearheaded. "My complaint with feminist research is not that the authors make mistakes, but that the mistakes are impervious to reasoned criticism," Sommers says. "They do not get corrected and the critic's motives are impugned."

AEI's softball team, the Brooks Brothers, completed a successful summer season in the Think Tank Softball League. The squad finished the season with a 9-4 record, making it one of the top teams in the league. Key contributions came from a number of individuals, as over fifty AEI employees, interns, and friends of the Institute participated during the course of the season.

Hot Off the Enterprise Blog

"In answering the question of whether it is better to be loved than feared, Machiavelli wrote, 'one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with.' Ignoring Machiavelli's advice, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wants to be feared and loved at the same time. . . . His demonstration of power makes him loathed rather than feared by the population, while his attempt at winning the love of the public only emboldens the opposition and alienates regime henchmen who feel abandoned by their Supreme Leader. Such weaknesses remind the Iranian public of another Iranian leader, the Shah, whose indecisiveness at times of crisis emboldened and energized the opposition in the late 1970s." [Read the full post]

--ALI ALFONEH