Swamp-Creature Republicans by Dan Mitchell

 I don’t like big-government Democrats, but I’m even more hostile to big-government Republicans.

That’s because the Democrats don’t lie to me. They openly advocate higher taxes and a bigger burden of government spending.

Many Republicans, by contrast, publicly proclaim their support for fiscal restraint, but they push for bigger government when they think voters are not paying attention.

And they do it for despicable reasons. They do what they know is bad solely to get campaign contributions.

Let’s look at a couple of examples of Republicans siding with big government.

Here are some excerpts from a column in Real Clear Policy by Professor Mario Loyola.

Why are anti-establishment Republicans embracing the special interest racket of Washington, D.C.? …in order for government to be able to redistribute wealth among various groups, it has become a free-for-all of rent-seeking special interests whose general preference is for government-created cartels designed to transfer wealth from unsuspecting working families to themselves. …Curiously, however, the very Republicans who tend to most bewail ‘the swamp’ are increasingly prone to embrace the policies that created it in the first place. …the spectacle of supposedly anti-swamp Republicans shilling for every special interest racket with lobbyists in Washington. …The sugar program’s throttling of production is…effective in transferring wealth from consumers to sugar producers… The ethanol program has led to an area the size of the state of Michigan being devoted to the production of corn ethanol instead of food, producing a fuel that is terrible for cars and for the environment and raises the cost of both food and gasoline.

Not all Republicans are in favor of these bad policies.

But sugar subsidies and the ethanol scam rank as some of the worst handouts in the entire budget.

So it’s disgusting when even one Republican sides with special interests over taxpayers and consumers.

The Export-Import Bank is another example of an indefensible handout.

For purposes of today’s column, the key takeaway is that I want Republicans to be small-government Reaganites, not establishment big spenders like Bush or populist big spenders like Trump.

P.S. A few years ago, Playboy put together an amusing comparison of Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians.