Conservatives, especially Tea Party activists, claim to want the nation to live within its means and to reduce the size of government as a whole. ”Evil big brother government” has been a rallying cry for conservatives since the Ronald Reagan days. Yet they have never followed through on this promise, even when they had full control of the federal government. Actually, they did the exact opposite when they had full control. Right now in Great Britian they are preparing to cut government spending by 19% over four years. Oh wait it gets better, they are also going to raise some taxes in order to get back into balance. Its amazing to actually to see what a REAL fiscally conservative agenda looks like.
Not everything is going to be cut at the same rate. Defense is only taking an 8% hit. Could you imagine trying to cut into our own massively bloated wasteful defense spending at all, let alone 8%? It would never happen. The only people calling for that are true Libertarians, not the circus clowns of the GOP and Tea Party. If a person touting themselves as a fiscal conservative does not even mention reigning in defense spending, then I assume they are not serious or truly interested in fiscal sanity. In general they just want to target “waste and fraud” which do not account for nearly enough to lower costs. Should we reduce waste, yes, but that doesn’t make it a feasible answer to balancing a budget.
Two of the departments being spared cuts are education and science. Actually, the education department is being asked to reduced by around 1% a year while the science budget will increase around a half of a percent a year. Wait, do you mean the UK conservatives aren’t going after education spending as one of the biggest issues? How odd. How odd of them to invest in the future of their nation by supporting health, science and education. They should be making it as hard as possible for teachers to do their jobs and touting pseudo-science as reality.
There are other spending cut but the list is too long for me here, so I will link to one BBC story about it that gives a good overview. I don’t know if these cuts will actually work, but it will be very interesting to watch over the next few years. I can’t wait to contrast it to the nonsense we are going to see in D.C. over the next few years, where basically nothing will get done. I will take all of this back if ONE, just one, prominent GOP figure calls for real cuts to defense and Social Security. I will not hold my breath for that to happen, however. I am not hopeful for where we, as a nation, are heading long term but I hope I am proven wrong.
