Tight right, wide left

I became a conservative 25 years ago because I rejected liberals’ consistent choice of ideology over people. I loved my political friends (most of whom at the time were liberal Democrats), but their dogma always triumphed as they moved effortlessly from working in campaigns to high-level government positions. While their electoral rhetoric focused on helping people, once in office, they expended a great deal of energy protecting and promoting a philosophy that government knew best. No doubt both ends of the political spectrum try to translate ideology into policy ideas. But my liberal colleagues seemed particularly rigid when it came to veering away from a government-knows-best credo. They rejected any commonsense solutions or new ideas that helped people and fell outside this paradigm. It was all about defending and expanding a philosophy.

Sadly, a quarter of a century later, not much has changed — in fact, if anything, the problem has metastasized in this city. Liberals in Washington still regularly elevate ideology above the Americans they claim they want to help. Nowhere is this truer than in the current management of Congress. New ideas and commonsense solutions are routinely sacrificed at the altar of liberal ideology — meaning many positive initiatives end up as burnt offerings to left-wing orthodoxy.

Whether it’s building a bigger State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), new federal mandates on emissions for the auto industry or bringing about lower prescription drug prices, the answer is always the same from the Democrats. How can we achieve these goals by building a bigger, more far-reaching federal infrastructure? That’s the true goal, and it’s usually reflected in the content of many Democratic policy proposals. Means replace ends; bureaucracy trumps outcomes; ideology triumphs over people.

A senior House staffer told me a story last week about a conversation he had with a savvy environmentalist that underscores this point. “He told me the problem with the environmental movement is that they only want to ‘attack the smokestack.’ It doesn’t matter if you can give them a better way to clean up the environment; because of their ideology they only want to focus on controlling the smokestack.” Piles of regulatory precepts may add to the weight of federal rulebooks, but do not necessarily give us cleaner air. This worship of an ideology is displayed in a variety of other areas today in Congress, he told me. “I can write a policy that insures more kids, with less money, and provides better health outcomes,” he said. “But if the federal government doesn’t get bigger in the process, they’re not interested. It makes me question what’s really important — better health or bigger government.” Ideology trumps people.

Among the many tragedies of the war in Iraq is how it sidetracked the White House and the public’s attention from many important domestic policy debates. President Bush will never receive the credit he deserves for trying to foster a new dialogue about improving the welfare state. Even if he tried to focus more on these issues, Americans are not paying attention — their minds are in Iraq. But think about a variety of White House initiatives aimed at breaking the government’s monopoly on compassion. School choice, personal retirement accounts and expanded consumer-directed health care are all Republican proposals aimed at helping people in new and innovative ways. Yet they face near universal scorn from liberals because they loosen the shackles of the federal government’s domination. Again, it doesn’t matter that they might help kids learn better or seniors secure a better retirement. If ideas don’t feed the size and scope of the federal bureaucracy, they don’t deserve a place on the menu.

But don’t conservatives fall into the same trap? Aren’t they just trying to “privatize” vital government programs? Not at all. School vouchers don’t replace public schools; personal retirement accounts don’t replace Social Security; health savings accounts don’t replace the Medicare program. “Privatization” has become the weapon of choice for liberals bent on bludgeoning critics who dare to challenge the federal government’s complete domination over these programs — a canard aimed more at instilling fear than fostering hope and opportunity.

So as the debates play out this year — on important questions like improving health care, protecting the environment and reforming education — ask this: Is Congress constructing a bigger bureaucracy or fresh ideas? And what are they defending, a specific ideology or American citizens? Liberals in Washington have answered these questions. Sadly, those most in need of promising reforms always suffer the consequences.