Waiting for a Republican Rollback of Government? Don’t Hold Your Breath

The Republicans failed on health care, but now they are offering a new plan for tax and spending cuts, with a promise of smaller government.
But the GOP, with few exceptions, seems about as creditable as the Democrats and their flawed, small-business killer, Obamacare. Many of the Democrats are people who subscribe to a socialism without doctrines; a kind of backdoor collectivism. So now, as they expect the Republicans to fail and lose control of Congress, naturally many of them are waiting for their chance to ram a single payer health care system down the throats of already overtaxed Americans.
Many Americans thought they were voting for less government in 2016, but they have been disappointed again and again by a party that doesn’t seemed interested in rolling back government.
Sir, Could You Just Give Us One More Chance? Still, Republicans, in their recent budget document say they will get taxes and spending right this time. This is reminiscent of the character Hoover in the 1970s movie Animal House. In the wreckage of a college homecoming parade that he and his fellow expelled hooligans have just destroyed, he pleads with the college dean, ‘This may seem an inappropriate time to bring this up, but could you just give us one more chance?’
Republicans want just ‘one more chance’ to roll back an out of control government that they helped to build. So now they have offered their proposals in their economic game plan, ‘Building a Better America,’ the GOP’s ‘Plan for Fiscal Responsibility’ coming out of the House Budget Committee. It calls for cutting taxes and details the outrageous overreach of government.

This post was published at Ludwig von Mises Institute on April 28, 2017.