Centerfield

Once again, I would like to point out that while I agree with you that government should provide baseline support with social spending, such spending should have built-in sunset clauses if for no other reason than to ensure that such programs are running efficiently, NOT being wasteful, and to ensure that they are actually still needed. I suspect that in many cases, programs could be gradually reduced over time and phased out instead of simply ending.

Something else that just occurred to me... I'd like to bring up the idea of line-item veto for the President -- whoever he might be. What effect might that have on appropriation bills?

I think the term "fiscally conservative" is being used way too broadly.

If you believe in balancing the budget and having reasonable controls on spending, you are "fiscally responsible" or a "fiscal moderate", in my book.

A "fiscal conservative", by constrast, is someone who truly believes in small government -- cutting a lot of programs and significantly lessening the role of government in our lives.

That's where the confusion comes in -- people who want to find a reasonable balance between spending and taxes, and who describe their position using that word "conservative" instead of the word "moderate", or instead of talking about "responsible" government.

Perhaps we could identify ourselves not as fiscal "conservatives" or "moderates," but by the amount of personal debt we are encumbered with at the moment. Families are not governments, but debt is a tool, and our commitment to one tool or another will have an impact on a wide variety of our decisions.

A "fiscal conservative" who has used debt as a major tool in his personal toolbox may have less legitimacy - at least in my perception - than one who is just paying off a reasonable mortgage.

Heather: The republicans tried to give the president (Clinton at the time) line item veto and the courts ruled it unconstitional.

William: your insight into fiscal conservative versus fiscally responsible is one I have not seen before. It makes good sense.

The key point is that we do not over burden our future generations, regardless of the size of govenment we choose.

Heather - I could get behind your suggestion of built in sunset clauses, but only as a mechanism of ensuring that the program is regularly re-evaluated. Poverty, for example, isn't going to go away any time soon. So, I would argue that it's perhaps a bit niave to think that just because a given program has been in existance for 50 years that it has therefore outlived it's usefulness and/or purpose. On the other hand, there are programs like Affirmative Action that were clearly designed to be a means of getting society from point A to point Z and that are therefore transitory in nature and genuinely ought to be ended at some point and not incorporated as an entitlement.

William - Your point about conservative versus moderate fiscals is well taken. However, I would argue that in today's climate, where we are faced with choices between tax and spend Liberals in favor of Big Gov. or borrow and spend NeoConservatives actively increasing the size of said Big Gov... the distinction between fiscal moderates and fiscal conservatives begins to look a bit moot.

Tallon - IMHO the courts were right to strike down the line item veto. On paper it sounds like a great idea. But, the reality is that it would render the Constitutional role of the Legislature nearly irrelevant. Clearly we can't count on our elected representatives to stand up for our Constitutional right to be adequetely and competently represented - not only with the line item veto, but also with the vote last year to blatently abdicate their Constitutional *responsibility* by voting to give the President a blank check to wage war on his terms. But, at least we have the courts looking out for our interests.

Kevin, et al:

Please explain to me how, exactly, a line-item veto would so drastically upset the checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches of government that it should be considered unconstitutional.

Kevin, your point about sunset clauses is the same as recommended by Greenspan -- not that they should end if they are still needed (even after 50+ years), but that at the very least the programs would have no chance of dropping off the radar and continuing long past their effectiveness or need.

Heather-

LIVA (Line Item Veto Act) represented one more in a long line of unconstitutional delegations of legislative authority to the executive branch. Marci Hamilton specifically talks about LIVA within the larger context of the nondelegation clause here ( http://www.constitution.org/ad_state/rep_nondel.htm ) in an excellent, easy to understand treatment of the Constitutional issues at hand.

LIVA was nothing more than a blatent attempt to pass responsibility for one's own choices off on someone or something else. As such it was as nonsensical and anti-democratic as the spat of term-limits laws passed all over the country in the 90's.

With term-limits laws we had majorities of the same minority of citizens who bother to vote seeking to duck responsibility for their own voting patterns. If a majority of those who bother to vote can agree that certain politicians need to go, then that very same majority can vote those politicians out of office. All term-limits do is to deny We the People choices.

LIVA did the same basic thing. With LIVA we had legislators seeking to pass off on the President the responsibility for reigning in pork-barrel spending. The problem is that what that really did was to set up the President as the sole arbitor of which pork-barrel spending was "appropriate" and which isn't.

"The people are masters of both Congress and courts, not to overthrow the constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it!"
— Abraham Lincoln