Barbara Ehrenreich: The Bloated Bush Government

Sometimes it’s hard to tell left from right. As I write this, the Republicans, and to a somewhat lesser extent, the Democrats, are scrapping internally over Iraq and immigration. Some Democrats want an immediate withdrawal from Iraq; others are willing to “stay the course,” wherever it may lead. Some Republicans want to make illegal immigration a felony – although how we will manage to incarcerate approximately 11 million more people has not been made clear. Others want an unlimited international supply of $6 an hour maids, busboys and leaf-rakers.

But the most confusing blurring of political differences has to do with the size of government. Traditionally, or at least according to time-honored cliché, liberals stood for “big government,” and conservatives stood against it. Reagan’s men wanted to “kill the beast” of government (not noticing how much Carter’s budget cuts had already starved it), and Gingrich’s gang eventually forced Clinton to declare the “era of big government” over. It was Clinton – not Reagan or Bush I—who shrunk welfare into a program of limited wage supplementation for severely underpaid single mothers.