Quote:
Originally Posted by Karl F
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Perhaps no one has offered a meaning for your article because it is too difficult to find one. That Bloch selected a few sets of data from the many that might be relevant to whatever he is trying to show makes it impossible to come to any real conclusion, other than one that he might be trying to arrive at by selective choice of data.
The top marginal rate of taxation as a raw figure is meaningless since at the time that it was 90% those in that bracket were paying less due to exemptions and loopholes than they paid after Reagan's reform even though the top rate was lower. So the 90% figure is irrelevant for any analysis.
The use of Democrat and Republican as any consistent parameter of measurement or comparison supposes that the parties were consistently the same ideologically or politically throughout the time period he selected. Were the Bush Republicans the same party as the those in that 10 year period between 1910-20 that spent a low percentage of GDP and actually saw the National debt drop every year? Hardly. The Republicans of today are more like the Kennedy era Democrats. And what does that say about the evolution of the Democrat party if it is far to the left of the JFK era?
Nor does he factor spending as a ratio of GDP. That also has gone up consistently in his selected time period with no consistent differentiation between the ideologically and politically evolving parties. Astoundingly, the era he chose saw a dramatic rise in spending as a ratio of GDP from about 8% to over 40%.
Nor does he mention or factor in the influence of the" fourth branch" of modern U.S. government--the administrative agencies. Amazingly, the era he chose is almost precisely the Progressive era in American political history. It is during this progressive era that that fourth branch of government was created and has grown into the most prolific policy and legislating branch of the Federal Government. It is specifically this era that has seen the kind of government spending that he tries to analyze. And it is during this progressive era, which his chart shows, that the National debt consistently rose regardless of party in power.
The previous segment of American history from 1791 to about 1930 was the Constitutional era in which the Federal Government was constrained by Constitutional bounds. The late 19th century saw an influx of political administrative theories enter American academic study in political science. American Universities previously did not have such advanced studies since administrative agencies had not become a significant factor in American governance. Europe was where the progressive minded studied the subject and where they were influenced by the efficient administrative theories and systems in Germany and France. Woodrow Wilson was one of those students as well as Frank Goodnow, both of whom became leading scholars and proponents in the U.S. of the administrative system of govenance. The problem, in this country, with such a system, is the Constitution. It does not allow for the delegation of legislative power to unelected agencies. Goodnow viewed reverance for Constitutional law as "superstitious" and an obstacle to genuine political and administrative reform. A main problem, among others, is that the Constitution declared that an individual's rights are "unalienable." They cannot be taken away by government, which made it difficult for government to be in charge of private property. The Progressives believed, in contrast to the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, that rights are not conferred by a creator, but by society. And they are determined by legislative authority in view of the needs of that society. Social expediency rather than natural right, determines the sphere of individual freedom.
The Progressives were in absolute and open opposition to natural law and social compact theory which they claimed had no historical justification and the focus on individual liberty "retarded development" and expansion of government. They believed in "historical progress" and that we had historically arrived at a time when the fears of oppressive government that created the Constitution were no longer relevant, and that we could depend on administration of patriotic, objective, neutral, politically disinterested experts in their field of competence to administer the will of the people. So the idea of "consent of the governed" must be replaced by deference to the expertise of administration. Goodnow felt that politics is "polluted"and full of "bias" whereas administration is about the "truth." So the Constitutional separation of powers was an obstruction. That separation rested on three tenets:
1. The principle of non-delegation--Congress cannot delegate its legislative power. That power must be exercised soley by Congress.
2. Each branch of government is responsible for its power and cannot usurp the power of another.
3. The executive branch has the responsibility of administration.
Goodnow proposed, instead of the tripartite separation of legislative, executive, and judicial, a dual separation between politics and administration--politics would discover the needs of society, but expert technocrats would be appointed to manage in unbiased fashion those needs. Thus, the adminstrative function would be the relevant one and would even, by dint of its managerial power, craft regulations, codes, laws. He professed that the Court should also be adminstrative, not just umpires, but involved, through "interpretation" in making law. The latter 19th century to about 1930, was the seminal period of the progressive movement but remained mostly theoretical because the SCOTUS had not yet become what the progressive academia was developing in the schools of law. But a major step was taken with the 16th ammendment and its Federal grant of power to collect income tax.
While the Constitutional era prevailed the national debt was not the problem it is today. There were brief periods within budgets in the 1830's that the Federal Government was in fiscal surplus not merely as an expression of annual budget but that of its total debt. The lows of $33.7 thousand in 1835 and $37.5 thousand in 1837 were the deficits of those years. The Constitutional limitation on Central power, and its effect of power contradicting power, and placing legislation strictly in the hands of elected legislators, not only restricted the Government's ability to spend, it made it physically impossible to pump out reams of law. Of course, today, through the Federal bureaucracy we can easily add 40,000 pages to the Federal Register annually
The Great Depression was the opportunity for the Progressives to translate their theory of administrative government into actual practice. The movement had been openly espousing its theories of a "living" Constitution, and its dismissal of the original one as wholly inadequate for the times. Wilson had already written in 1885 that the nation had to move from constitutional to administrative questions, and Goodnow had written that "the great problems of modern public law are almost exclusively administrative in character." So FDR, with the nation in "crisis" was allowed to shift from those pesky Constitutional questions to the creation of unconstitutional agencies that have since grown in number to the hundreds and have gone even beyond the scope of being a "partner" with politics, but actual spheres of government possessing legislative, executive, and judicial power--Madison's definition of tyranny. And the universities had provided a host of scholars, lawyers, and eventual judges that embraced the progressive view of an outdated Constitution that, in Goodnow's words is "worse than useless." They were available for Roosevelt to pack his Court with willing accomplices, and they couched their decisions in legal language that pretended to "interpret" the Constitution, but knew they were stretching and outright contradicting the original language and intent in order to allow the massive progressive "reforms."
The Court has since abandoned the principle of non-delegation that was the main tenet of separation of powers, thus vitiating the other two tenets, and has thus allowed the expansion of Federal power beyond all original intention through its myriad of independent regulatory agencies. And the Court has become, as Goodnow wished, not merely an umpire, but a legislator. All this in the name of a more "efficient" administration of the "will of the people" for their own good. What has been eliminated, for efficiency, is that slow legislative process of debate among differing legislators elected by differing constituencies. Somehow, "the will of the people" is known by a few, select, "experts" administering through executive agencies, and they are free to impose that will back on the people who have no say, who are not asked for the consent of the governed. Elena Kagan, one of Obama's Supreme Court appointees, came from the school of administrative law, and she posited in a Harvard Law Review article that "We live today in an era of presidential administration."
It is ironic that progressive ideology will say that force in foreign relations is not necessary, it is even counter productive--that it is better, even the only way, to use diplomacy, to negotiate, to lead by example, but, when dealing with ones own citizens, it is more "efficient" to administrate from the center rather than deliberate amongst the differing representatives of the people.
Would not this fourth uncontrolled, unelected, administrative branch which creates the bulk of laws and regulations and which is so little discussed, and which has facilitated the shift of both parties to the progressive left, have a role in that massive Federal debt and those huge annual deficits--regardless of which "party" is in power?
Hybrid Mode
