Republicans

The Republicans are attempting to overturn the changes that the Democrats have made to our health care system. I see this as a move to show their constituents that they support smaller government in this area. No one seriously thinks that they have much chance of actually being able to change the law. The Republicans put their best efforts into defeating the proposed changes, but they lost because they didn't have the numbers. If the vote were held today, they might be more successful, but they don't have enough people in the Senate to repeal the law.

This presents a problem for people who would like the Republican party to do more than make symbolic moves in support of smaller government. What can we do to actually reduce the size of government?

The first thing that I would say is that the Republicans must do nothing to expand the social welfare state. The worst thing that they can do is to come up with some new program, such as the prescription drug benefit enacted under George W. Bush. Capitalism isn't about coming up with “better” social programs than the Democrats. It is about leaving resources in the private sector so that people can get jobs and won't need government assistance.

Once an entitlement program is enacted, it is very difficult to get it removed. It is much easier to prevent it from being passed in the first place. These programs are part of the government's so-called mandatory spending. This simply means that the programs require an act of congress to be removed. Discretionary spending on the other hand requires an act of congress in order to continue.

One approach that the Republicans might try is to ask for cuts in mandatory spending in return for the continuation of discretionary spending that the Democrats want. The fact that by far the chief area of discretionary spending is the military hurts the Republicans' bargaining position considerably. If they wanted to cut military spending, they would be in a much better position to do so.  Of course they haven't expressed an interest in cutting all forms of social spending.