Even though the Republicans have held Congress for over a decade and the White House for the past 5 years, the left is still succeeding at using government to redistribute wealth. So argues Patrick Chisholm in this editorial:

During the first five years of President Bush’s presidency, nondefense discretionary spending (i.e., spending decided on an annual basis) rose 27.9 percent, far more than the 1.9 percent growth during President Clinton’s first five years, according to the libertarian Reason Foundation. And according to Citizens Against Government Waste, the number of congressional “pork barrel” projects under Republican leadership during fiscal 2005 was 13,997, more than 10 times that of 1994.

Discretionary spending is dwarfed by mandatory spending - spending that cannot be changed without changing the laws. Shifting demographics combined with an inability to change those laws virtually ensures that, through programs such as Social Security and Medicare, America’s workers will be forced to redistribute a larger and larger portion of their income to other Americans in the coming decades.

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Certain trends have been favoring the left for the past several decades. In the early 1960s, transfer payments (entitlements and welfare) constituted less than a third of the federal government’s budget. Now they constitute almost 60 percent of the budget, or about $1.4 trillion per year. Measured according to this, the US government’s main function now is redistribution: taking money from one segment of the population and giving it to another segment. In a few decades, transfer payments are expected to make up more than 75 percent of federal government spending.

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The left has a powerful institutional force on its side: “public choice” economics. Our system of government is highly responsive to vocal groups that lobby for subsidies, government programs, and other special favors. Since the costs are spread out among all taxpayers while the benefits are concentrated among smaller segments of the population (such as retirees, in the case of Social Security and Medicare), the taxpayers have much less of an incentive to lobby against the measure while the beneficiaries have a huge incentive to lobby for it. Whenever those subsidies are threatened, the lobbies launch their barrages of politically effective complaints.

Forces favoring the left are virtually locked in. Even with Republicans in control, big government is destined to get a lot bigger.

This raises the question: for free-market conservatives, what’s the point of voting Republican anymore?

For decades, the Republican party has benefited from a fragile coalition of economic conservatives and social conservatives. These are two distinct groups that don’t necessarily have much in common aside from their shared disdain for the politics of the left.

For the time being, Republicans will probably be saved by the propensity of Democrats to remain embarrassingly weak on matters of national security. But that issue can be taken off the table if the Democrats nominate a foreign policy hawk (unlikely) or if the American public perceives less of a threat than they do now (possible, assuming American soil continues to remain free from attack). If economic conservatives sit at home during future elections, the Republican party will feel the pain of ignoring their roots. And if that happens, social conservatives will suffer as well.

For the health of the conservative movement, the Republicans in Congress better wake up soon. There are very many people who won’t bother showing up on election day if the choice is between one party of government and the other party of government.