Winning the Culture War by Shrinking the Government

Republicans are about to take control of Congress because the Biden administration has wormed its way into every aspect of our lives. People have had enough.

The mask requirements at our schools, airports, and retail stores are set by
unelected federal bureaucrats
. The Pentagon worries about diversity and equity more than it worries about the crumbling state of our armed forces. The White House talks openly about
fighting states that try to ban the practice of putting gender-confused preteens on puberty blockers
.

If you think those actions are bad, get a load of the government’s nonactions. The FBI ignores those responsible for burning and rioting in major cities so it can focus on grandmothers who waved flags at the Capitol on Jan. 6. The White House has purposefully decided not to enforce our southern border. Officials talk openly about making us pay more for gas to pressure us into buying an electric car.

How did we reach a point where most economic and lifestyle decisions we make are so heavily influenced and even dictated by the government?

One big reason is the government has the manpower to develop and carry out these ideas, while the rest of us have to work so we can afford to pay millions of these “public servants” to torture us.

To get a sense of how big the federal footprint has become, the total GDP of the United States was about $20 trillion last year, and the federal government spent one-third of that: nearly $7 trillion. Congress gave most of that money to the bureaucracy, with few strings attached, in the form of continuing resolutions that simply add money to the system without bothering to manage it.

So while the U.S. economy is a big pond, our federal government is a big fish in that pond. That gives it outsize power to reinforce intrusive cultural policies — when this big fish swishes its tail, the ripples are felt everywhere. Stores, schools, and restaurants have no choice but to follow the swarm of mandates that flow from the federal office buildings that have all the answers.

Who can we blame for letting the government get so big? Blame everyone. Democrats clearly enjoy a big government, and while Republicans lament the rise of the “deep state,” they don’t do much to rein it in.

Most Republicans don’t think about shrinking the government anymore because they’re too busy fighting the culture war, which is just a symptom of the bloated bureaucracy. But cutting back the government is the most effective way to win the culture war. Conservatives can succeed in 2023 by taking three simple steps.

First, make managing the government a top priority. No more omnibus bills. Force committees
to do the work of examining budgets
and trimming wasteful spending with an eye toward making every department more effective with less money. Stop funding areas of the federal bureaucracy that fight its citizens, and stop allowing agencies to abandon such basic missions as border control.

Second, get on a glide path to paying down the $30 trillion national debt. Debt is more than just a theoretical problem. Countries with huge debt burdens put their very sovereignty at risk. We all watched the violent social unrest that unfolded when the world set stringent borrowing terms for debt-saddled Greece as it struggled to maintain its bloated social programs. Governments that care about their people don’t put them in that situation.

Third, remember that individual liberty means a smaller government. In 2021, the federal government spent $562 billion just to pay interest on the debt — an amount that rivals the Pentagon’s annual budget. This year, that number will likely eclipse $600 billion. Each one of those dollars is taken out of the hands of individuals and given to a government that will waste it or, even worse, use it to strip away whatever individual rights it hasn’t destroyed.

Ronald Reagan, a president many in the incoming wave of Republicans will claim to emulate, told us that “as government expands, liberty contracts.” It is time to see what happens when government shrinks.

Pete Kasperowicz (@PeteKDCNews) spent 20+ years as a reporter and editor in Washington, D.C., and was a speechwriter to former Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie.

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