How Can We Get The Government's Money Out Of Politics?

Buried toward the end of President Obama's State of the Union Address a couple of days ago was the usual progressive call to "reduce the influence of money in politics":

I believe we’ve got to reduce the influence of money in our politics, so that a handful of families or hidden interests can’t bankroll our elections.  And if our existing approach to campaign finance reform can’t pass muster in the courts, we need to work together to find a real solution, because it’s a problem.     

As with most everything else in this pastiche of vague platitudes, there were no specifics as to what he intends as the "real solution" to the supposed problem.  What would that be Barack?  Repeal the First Amendment?  (Progressive icon Senator Chuck Schumer has taken several runs at repealing the First Amendment in the name of "campaign finance reform" -- see for example here.)

Meanwhile of course Obama omitted any mention of the vast sums that the government itself spends every year to promote itself and its ongoing growth.  In his progressive world view, the government itself is just the neutral a-political experts using their perfect knowledge and expertise to improve the world.  Of course they need to explain how that works to the ignorant rubes!  Does Obama even realize that the government spends far more each year promoting itself and its growth than all the money contributed to political causes by all private citizens, rich and poor?  Without doubt, in Obama's mind, government using the taxpayer trillions to promote yet more government just doesn't count as "money in politics."

The SOTU came just a few weeks after the GAO slapped the Obama EPA for covertly using non-appropriated government funds to support enhancement of its own power via its new "waters of the United States" rules.  Here is a report in The Hill from December 14.  Excerpt:

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said a pair of social media campaigns by the EPA in support of its “waters of the United States” rule broke laws that prohibit federal agencies from promoting or lobbying for their own actions. . . .  “We conclude that EPA’s use of Thunderclap constituted covert propaganda, in violation of the publicity or propaganda prohibition,” GAO wrote.  We also conclude that EPA hyperlinks to the [Natural Resources Defense Council] and Surfrider Foundation webpages provided in the EPA blog post constitute grassroots lobbying, in violation of the grassroots lobbying prohibition.”  The GAO said the EPA also violated the law that prohibits spending government resources that have not been appropriated.    

If you don't remember from when this first came to light last May, EPA used the covert social media lobbying campaign to generate hundreds of thousands of astroturf comments on the proposed regulation.  Those comments were then used by EPA administrator Gina McCarthy in Congressional testimony in March in an effort to demonstrate supposedly overwhelming public support for the power-grabbing regulations, and to blunt Congressional criticism.  From a New York Times report on May 18:

“We have received over one million comments, and 87.1 percent of those comments we have counted so far — we are only missing 4,000 — are supportive of this rule,” Ms. McCarthy told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in March. “Let me repeat: 87.1 percent of those one-plus million are supportive of this rule.”

Caught red-handed, EPA's response was exactly what you'd expect:  hey, we were just trying to educate the public as to what was going on!  From The Hill:

“We maintain that using social media to educate the public about our work is an integral part of our mission,” EPA spokeswoman Monica Lee said in the statement.  “We have an obligation to inform all stakeholders about environmental issues and encourage participation in the rulemaking process. We use social media tools just like all organizations to stay connected and inform people across the country about our activities.”   

They have no idea that government self-promotion with taxpayer funds has any relationship at all to "money in politics."  Oh, and don't count on seeing a prosecution any time soon by the Obama Justice Department of those bureaucrats who spent unappropriated funds on illegal self-promotion.  

For a summary of just a few items in the tens of billions of annual government spending that goes to promotion of the growth of the government, see my article "The Main Business Of Government Is Promoting Its Own Growth."  Items covered there include the vast sums spent to encourage sign-ups for Obamacare; the aggressive campaign of the Obama administration to expand the usage of food stamps (SNAP); the Agriculture Department's fraudulent "food insecurity" surveys, cynically designed to promote expansion of DOA "nutrition" programs; the Census Department's fake "poverty" statistics, equally cynically designed to promote more completely ineffectual "anti-poverty" spending and programs; the vast grants by the Federal Reserve to community housing groups, much of which are used for lobbying for more government spending; and on and on and on.  

But hey, we need to "reduce the influence of money in politics."  That way, no one will be able to push back at all against the onslaught of government growth.       

Consensus Science And Orthodoxy Enforcement

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post laying out the basics of the scientific method.  Not that I came up with this; it's just the basic stuff everybody learns (or should learn) in junior high school.  Essentially, the idea is that every hypothesis is open for challenge by all comers at all times, and when observation or experiment contradicts a hypothesis, then that hypothesis is wrong and must be rejected.

But then there's the small problem that arises when accumulating data contradict some scientific hypothesis on which a lot of careers and funding and public policy have already been built.  The acute version of this problem occurs when a hypothesis has become official scientific dogma and is currently in use by some powerful government bureaucracy to enhance its power and advance its preferred policy agenda.  All of a sudden the problem is not so small to the people whose funding, status, perks and careers are on the line.  And thus we find in the community calling themselves "scientists" people in positions of high power and prestige who in fact are the opposite of scientists, and who have taken on the role of enforcing orthodoxy and suppressing contrary evidence in service of pre-established public policy agendas.  This may be anti-science, but it turns out it's a good way to get yourself lots of fancy titles, awards, grants, perks, and compensation.

Which brings me to the story of Marcia McNutt.  Dr. McNutt is the Editor-in-Chief of Science magazine, one of those premier peer-reviewed scientific journals that a budding scientist absolutely must get published in to rise out of obscurity and become someone in the field.  Currently Dr. McNutt has been nominated to be the next head of the National Academy of Sciences.  There is no other candidate.  Here is a picture of Dr. McNutt:

Yesterday I received a copy of an extraordinary email on the subject of Dr. McNutt authored by Peter Wood of the National Association of Scholars.   The email was sent by Wood to the membership of the National Association of Scholars, and a full version of it appears on their website.    Mr. Wood raises serious issues of what he terms "threats to the integrity of science" arising during Dr. McNutt's tenure at Science.  Essentially the issue boils down to McNutt turning Science from a organ of science into a tool of orthodoxy enforcement. 

Dr. McNutt has in her career found herself faced more than once with the challenge of what to do when an entrenched orthodoxy meets a substantial scientific challenge.  The challenge in each case could itself prove to be mistaken, but it met what most scientists would concede to be the threshold criteria to deserve a serious hearing.  Yet in each case Dr. McNutt chose to reinforce the orthodoxy by shutting the door on the challenge. . . .  Dr. McNutt’s dismissive treatment of scientific criticisms is disturbing.         

Wood treats three particular controversies in detail.  In each case the hypothesis in question is a main underpinning of government regulatory and/or environmental policy in some respect.  In each case the hypothesis has come into serious question based on observation and data that appear to contradict it.  In each case McNutt has used her role as Editor-in-Chief of Science to make sure that no paper presenting evidence contrary to the hypothesis can see the light of day.  I will quote Wood extensively on each of the three controversies.  You can then judge for yourself:

1.  The status of the linear no-threshold (LNT) dose-response model for the biological effects of nuclear radiation.  The prominence of the model stems from the June 29, 1956 Science paper, “Genetic Effects of Atomic Radiation,” authored by the NAS Committee on the Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation.  This paper is now widely questioned and has been seriously critiqued in many peer-reviewed publications, including two detailed 2015 papers.  These criticisms are being taken seriously around the world, as summarized in a December 2, 2015 Wall Street Journal commentary.  In August 2015 four distinguished critics of LNT made a formal request to Dr. McNutt to examine the evidence of fundamental flaws in the 1956 paper and retract it.  However, on August 11, 2015 Dr. McNutt rejected this request without even reviewing the detailed evidence.  Furthermore, Dr. McNutt did not even consider recusing herself and having independent reviewers examine evidence that challenges the validity of both a Science paper and an NAS Committee Report.

This is a consequential matter that bears on a great deal of national public policy, as the LNT model has served as the basis for risk assessment and risk management of radiation and chemical carcinogens for decades, but now needs to be seriously reassessed.  This reassessment could profoundly alter many regulations from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Environmental Protection Agency, and other government agencies.  The relevant documents regarding the 1956 Science paper and Dr. McNutt can be examined at www.nas.org/images/documents/LNT.pdf.

2.  Extensive evidence of scientific misconduct in the epidemiology of fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5) and its relationship to mortality.  Since 1997 EPA has claimed that lifetime inhalation of about a teaspoon of particles with diameter less than 2.5 microns causes premature death in the United States and it established an national regulation based on this claim.  Science has provided extensive news coverage of this issue and its regulatory significance, but has never published any scientific criticism of this questionable claim, which is largely based on nontransparent research.

Earlier this year, nine accomplished scientists and academics submitted to Science well-documented evidence of misconduct by several of the PM2.5 researchers relied upon by EPA.  The evidence of misconduct was first submitted to Dr. McNutt in a detailed June 4, 2015 email letter, then in a detailed July 20, 2015 Policy Forum manuscript “Transparent Science is Necessary for EPA Regulations,” and finally in an August 17, 2015 Perspective manuscript “Particulate Matter Does Not Cause Premature Deaths.” Dr. McNutt and two Science editors immediately rejected the letter and the manuscripts and never conducted any internal or external review of the evidence.  This a consequential matter because many multi-billion dollar EPA air pollution regulations, such as, the Clean Power Plan, are primarily justified by the claim that PM2.5 is killing Americans.  The relevant documents regarding this controversy can be examined at https://www.nas.org/images/documents/PM2.5.pdf.

3. Science promotes the so-called consensus model of climate change and excludes any contrary views.  This issue has become so polarized and polarizing that it is difficult to bring up, but at some point the scientific community will have to reckon with the dramatic discrepancies between current climate models and substantial parts of the empirical record.  Recent evidence of Science bias on this issue is the June 26, 2015 article by Dr. Thomas R. Karl, “Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus”; the July 3, 2015 McNutt editorial, “The beyond-two-degree inferno”; the November 13, 2015 McNutt editorial, “Climate warning, 50 years later”; and the November 25, 2015 AAAS News Release, “AAAS Leads Coalition to Protest Climate Science Inquiry.”

Dr. McNutt’s position is, of course, consistent with the official position of the AAAS. But the attempt to declare that the “pause” in global warming was an illusion has not been accepted by several respected and well-informed scientists. One would not know this, however, from reading Science, which has declined to publish any dissenting views.  One can be a strong supporter of the consensus model and yet be disturbed by the role which Science has played in this controversy.  Dr. McNutt and the journal have acted more like partisan activists than like responsible stewards of scientific standards confronted with contentious claims and ambiguous evidence.  The relevant documents and commentary regarding the Karl paper and McNutt editorials can be examined at https://www.nas.org/images/documents/Climate_Change.pdf.

So how does a Marcia McNutt come to be the unopposed shoo-in candidate to head the National Academy of Sciences?  My hypothesis is that those promoting her candidacy know that she can be counted on to protect any important orthodoxy from serious challenge.  This is one hypothesis I'd like to see proved wrong; but don't count on it.

Manhattan Contrarian Award For The Most Transparent Self-Promotion By A Government Agency

You know that it's budget season in Washington when the news pages become filled with one story after another put out by government agencies trying to get their budgets increased or, possibly, trying to avoid the budget ax.

There's a real art form to this.  Champion players of the game know that you need to come up with something that accomplishes multiple difficult goals all at once.  First, whatever it is (call it the "McGuffin")  must justify a big increase in your budget because after all, that's all that really counts in the end in Washington.  Second, the McGuffin must be associated with a seemingly plausible story that can be sold without giving any overt hint that you are just playing a totally cynical game for more money to grow your empire.  (This one is relatively easy because the press is ridiculously gullible, particularly in any area that involves growth of government.)  Third, the McGuffin needs to be sufficiently catchy that it gets on the front pages and headlines of lots of papers and web sites and news shows.

And having read those criteria, I know what you are thinking.  You are thinking that it is impossible to beat the annual "food insecurity" scam put out by the Department of Agriculture (DOA).  For those unaware of it, every year around this (budget) time, the DOA comes out with a report declaring that some 15 to 20% of Americans have been determined to be "food insecure."  (This year's report does not seem to have come out yet, but the 2014 version is here.)  This is the most cynical and blatant self-promotion by the DOA seeking more money for its food stamp and other nutritional programs.  Dozens of free-food-advocacy organizations can be counted on to immediately pick up the survey results, equate them with "hunger," and go to bat lobbying for more money for the DOA.  And the gullible press laps it up, running one article after another, never thinking to ask how the DOA can already be spending some $80 billion per year on almost 50 million food stamp beneficiaries without ever making a dent in the "food insecurity" problem (if indeed it is a problem).  The "food insecurity" metric has been carefully crafted to be completely impervious to reduction no matter how much is spent on food programs.   It's the perfect scam!

So come on, is it really possible to top that one?  Yes!  Check out the front page of today's New York Times.  It's the old NASA "we may have found water on Mars" scam!  And where there's water, there must be life!  "Liquid Water, and Prospects for Life, on Mars."   NASA held a news conference on this yesterday, reporting on a new article they have just released.

“This is tremendously exciting,” James L. Green, the director of NASA’s planetary science division, said during a news conference on Monday. “We haven’t been able to answer the question, ‘Does life exist beyond Earth?’ But following the water is a critical element of that. We now have, I think, great opportunities in the right locations on Mars to thoroughly investigate that.”    

And, he was about to add, if you just give us another, say, $50 billion a year, we can build a lot more space stuff and send it off toward Mars and keep reporting back every year for the next 50 years (at budget time) that we may have just discovered some evidence that there is water on Mars.

OK, he didn't really say that.  That would not be in accordance with the strict rules of this art form, where you are never supposed to give away that this is just cynical playing for more money.  But let's see how NASA's effort stacks up against the rules of the game:

• Does it justify a big increase in the budget?  You betcha!  Do you see Jim's reference to "great opportunities in the right locations on Mars to thoroughly investigate that."  We need to send another spacecraft to Mars!  Or how about two or three!!!  "John M. Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for science, [is talking about] sending a spacecraft in the 2020s to one of these regions, perhaps with experiments to directly look for life."
• Does it give any hint that this is just a cynical ploy to increase the budget?  Well, as totally obvious as this game is to any thinking person, the New York Times doesn't mention the subject one single time in its article.  Are the people at Pravda just particularly gullible?  Try these stories from CNN, the Washington Post, USA Today, wired -- and that's just the start of dozens of stories that can be found with a simple Google search of "NASA water on Mars."  Really, how naïve are these people?
• Does it generate lots and lots of high-profile and front-page press stories that just parrot the agency's line without asking any embarrassing questions?  See previous bullet point.

And it actually gets a little worse -- or, I guess, better, if you're looking to win the prestigious Manhattan Contrarian "Most Transparent Self-Promotion By A Government Agency" award.  A website called Quartz seems to be on to NASA's game, and points out that the U.S. has agreed by international treaty not to send any spacecraft to a place on Mars near water, since to do that would be likely to contaminate the water with earthly microbes.

[E]ven if NASA was 100% certain that there is liquid water on Mars, it could not do anything about it.  The world’s space powers are bound by rules agreed to under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty that forbid anyone from sending a mission, robot or human, close to a water source in the fear of contaminating it with life from Earth. 

So then why are they using the "water on Mars" angle to suggest research missions that actually can't be carried out?  Quartz has the answer:

NASA’s hype around the discovery of liquid water on Mars can be explained by its constant need to increase funding for its work. 

Is it possible to be any more cynically budget-grubbing than these guys?  NASA, you have won the "Most Transparent Self-Promotion By A Government Agency" award for 2015!

The Regulatory State And The "Main Project" Of Government

A couple of weeks ago economist John Cochrane of the Hoover Institution had a very important blog post that I have just now seen.  It is titled "Rule of Law in the Regulatory State."   The post records and expands on a presentation that Cochrane made at a Hoover panel discussion in July celebrating the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta.

Cochrane's post is a thorough treatment of what I have called the "main project" of the government and all of its agencies, which is to grow the government and expand the power of the agencies.  They may say that they are just regulating banks or drug companies or polluters or whomever in the public interest, but whatever actual regulatory thing they may be doing at any given moment is always secondary and subsidiary to the main project of growing the agency and the government and expanding their powers.

Cochrane asks a very important question:  Do you ever notice a major regulated entity publicly criticizing or attacking its government regulator, even for the most outrageous of conduct?  As examples, do you ever notice a large pharmaceutical company publicly criticizing the FDA -- even, for example, when the FDA instigates criminal prosecution for what is the clearly constitutionally protected free speech known as "off-label marketing"?  Or do you ever notice a big bank publicly criticizing one of its regulators or the Justice Department -- even when the regulators and prosecutors initiate one after another completely phony shakedown prosecution for things like "robosigning" of mortgage documents or "insufficient controls" over money laundering or supposedly "defrauding" Fannie and Freddie?  Or do you ever notice a large securities firm publicly criticizing the SEC -- even when the SEC regularly initiates phony non-insider insider trading enforcement actions in the unconstitutional rigged forum of its own administrative law judges?  Or do you ever notice a large mining company publicly criticizing the EPA -- even when needed permits are unjustifiably held up for years?  And so on and on for many more examples.

And of course the answer is that with extremely limited exceptions the large regulated companies in these and many other industries do not and cannot publicly criticize the regulators because the regulators hold sway over innumerable discretionary approvals and actions that the regulated companies need to operate.  The regulators are supposed to be disinterested, neutral experts just looking out for the best interest of the public.  But what they care about far and away above everything else is that they should never be criticized publicly.  If you want their go-ahead on any one of a hundred things you want to do, the price is that you must support their political agenda, at the top of which is that the agency and its power must grow.  And if you make the mistake of criticizing them publicly, they have infinite ability to harm or destroy your business -- the FDA can delay the approval of your next three drugs for years; the bank regulators can disapprove your next merger or design a "stress test" that you cannot pass; the EPA can shut down one of your mines or never let you open one in which you have invested millions; etc., etc., etc.

This rule of law always has been in danger. But today, the danger is not the tyranny of kings, which motivated the Magna Carta. It is not the tyranny of the majority, which motivated the bill of rights. The threat to freedom and rule of law today comes from the regulatory state. The power of the regulatory state has grown tremendously, and without many of the checks and balances of actual law. We can await ever greater expansion of its political misuse, or we recognize the danger ahead of time and build those checks and balances now. . . . 
We’re headed for an economic system in which many industries have a handful of large, cartelized businesses— think 6 big banks, 5 big health insurance companies, 4 big energy companies, and so on. Sure, they are protected from competition. But the price of protection is that the businesses support the regulator and administration politically, and does their bidding. If the government wants them to hire, or build factory in unprofitable place, they do it. The benefit of cooperation is a good living and a quiet life. The cost of stepping out of line is personal and business ruin, meted out frequently.  
Cochrane then goes through a litany of no fewer than thirteen instances where individuals and industries are systematically coerced to do the political bidding of regulators due to some combination of vague or endless (Dodd-Frank, Obamacare) statutes and regulations and unbounded discretion given to the regulators.  The examples range from bank regulation (Cochrane cites the "stress tests" -- that can be engineered to destroy any bank in regulatory disfavor -- and the "robosigning" shakedowns); the SEC (he cites insider trading actions brought before SEC ALJs); the FDA (approvals held up for as long as 20 years for the politically disfavored); campaign finance (the Scott Walker "John Doe" investigations); Education (the retaliatory investigation against Laura Kipnis for criticizing the DOE's made-up policies for how colleges should deal with allegations of sexual abuse); and many more.  There is this quote from EPA Region 6 head Al Armendaris caught on tape discussing how to deal with some oil companies who were pushing back against an EPA initiative:

The Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years. . . .  we do have some pretty effective enforcement tools. Compliance can get very high, very, very quickly.

A remarkable thing about all of this is the extent to which these highly discretionary and therefore lawless regulatory regimes are extremely recent.  This is not how the American government has traditionally operated.  Sure some bank regulation existed going back to before World War II; but the real explosion is just in the last five years with Dodd-Frank.  The EPA only goes back to the 70s, and their gigantic mission expansion, including the currently-attempted takeover of the entire energy sector of the economy, is again in the last few years.  Obamacare only dates from 2009.  Most so-called "money laundering" regulation only started in the 70s, with a big expansion in the Patriot Act of 2001.  And so forth.

The only section of Cochrane's post that I find disappointing is the last one, dealing with what to do about this situation.  Given the fundamental threat to our democracy and constitutional government posed by the metastasizing administrative bureaucracies, some fundamental changes are in order.  Cochrane has some good suggestions, like giving the people more rights to appeal and to challenge regulatory decisions in court.  But I'm not sure that would make much difference.  Here are my proposals:

• The courts, and particularly the Supreme Court, need to do their fundamental duty and enforce the number one provisions of the Constitution, which are that only the Congress has legislative powers and only the courts have judicial powers, and all legislative powers and judicial powers currently residing in administrative agencies are unconstitutional and done.  And only the President has executive powers, so all executive powers residing in the so-called "independent" agencies (like SEC, FTC, FCC -- where the President cannot fire people) are unconstitutional and done.
• And then Congress needs to shrink the U.S. Code by about 80%.

Being the optimist that I am, I actually think that we may see some progress on these fronts within my remaining life time.  But of course the agencies will use all of their powers to prevent any push back from ever gaining traction.

 

The Main Business Of The Government Is Promoting Its Own Growth

On Monday May 18 the New York Times had an article on government self-promotion that has gotten at least some attention.  The article is "Critics Hear E.P.A.'s Voice in 'Public Comments,'" by Eric Lipton and Coral Davenport.

Seems that EPA administrator Gina McCarthy recently testified before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on the subject of some new regulations relating to drinking water.  To demonstrate to the Committee how popular the regulations are, McCarthy cited some one million or so public comments, nearly 90% of which, she claimed, supported the rule:

“We have received over one million comments, and 87.1 percent of those comments we have counted so far — we are only missing 4,000 — are supportive of this rule,” Ms. McCarthy told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in March. “Let me repeat: 87.1 percent of those one-plus million are supportive of this rule.”

But it turns out that the supposedly supportive comments were in response to a social media lobbying campaign orchestrated by EPA itself:

Late last year, the E.P.A. sponsored a drive on Facebook and Twitter to promote its proposed clean water rule in conjunction with the Sierra Club. At the same time, Organizing for Action, a grass-roots group with deep ties to Mr. Obama, was also pushing the rule. They urged the public to flood the agency with positive comments to counter opposition from farming and industry groups.

Anything wrong with that?  It's just the latest example of a federal government with trillions of dollars of annual taxpayer money to play with, using the money for goal number one, which is promoting the ongoing growth in size and power of the federal government itself.  How can ordinary citizens possibly amass resources to push back in any meaningful way?  Over at Powerline, Steven Hayward cites this latest government abuse as one more example in what he calls "The Crisis Of The Administrative State."

[T]oday’s administrative state—the increasingly independent fourth branch of government—has transformed government into its own special interest faction, lobbying itself on behalf of itself—increasingly in partisan ways.

Good job New York Times and Steven Hayward.  But the problem I have is that this latest EPA gambit is just the tip of the iceberg, and there is very little systematic attention paid to the vast scope of government self-promotion in all areas.  As soon as you start looking at this, you start realizing how pervasive and revolting the whole enterprise is.  I have previously covered this, for example, here, here, here and here.  Examples are literally everywhere:

• The aggressive campaign during the Obama administration to grow the number of food stamp recipients, including sending government representatives out as door-to-door salespeople to sign up new dependents, resulting in a doubling of food stamp expenditures and near-doubling of the number of recipients to approximately 46 million during a time of supposed economic recovery.
• The campaign to sign up recipients for Obamacare, reported by the Associated Press to have cost $684 million annually.
• The Department of Agriculture's fake "food insecurity" surveys, designed so that no amount of food aid will ever be found to reduce food insecurity, and thus to support endless promotion of the growth of the Department of Agriculture.
• The Census Bureau's fake "poverty" statistics, again carefully designed so that no amount of government spending can ever make the number of people in "poverty" go down, and thus to support advocacy for more and yet more spending.
• The outrageous convention that government spending on goods and services, no matter how wasteful, is counted at 100 cents on the dollar in the GDP, thus making it falsely appear that any cuts to even the most wasteful government spending reduce GDP.
• The vast distribution of money by the Federal Reserve to housing and other community activists who in turn lobby the government for more spending on their pet projects.  A 2014 article by Charles Calomiris, cited at the link, estimated this spending at $850 billion in the period 1992 - 2006.

It would be easy to go on all day with this.  But I would like to remind readers that we once had a President who thought that shrinking the government was a good idea, and who actually forbade members of his administration from advocating for growing their budgets.  That President was Calvin Coolidge.