A Fair – but Ultimately Misleading – Critique of GOP Budgets

Last week, I applauded the Chairmen of the House and Senate Budget Committees for proposing budgets that complied with my Golden Rule, which means the burden of government would grow slower than the private sector.

But my praise was limited because neither budget is ideal from the perspective of libertarians and small-government conservatives.

Even though the two proposals satisfy my Golden Rule, that’s simply a minimum threshold. In reality, there’s far too much spending in both plans, and neither Chairman proposes to get rid of a single Department. Not HUD, not Education, not Transportation, and not Agriculture.

Heck, the budgets don’t even go after low-hanging fruit such as the Small Business Administration, National Endowment for the Arts, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or Legal Services Corporation.

And it turns out that there’s another reason to be semi-disappointed with the…