Kimberley Strassel, a Wall Street Journal editorial fiction writer, yesterday produced a fine piece of outrage that managed, in a mere 1000 words, to encapsulate modern conservatism's fundamentalist fiscal philosophy: "Trillions for defense, but not a sixpence for homefolks."
Ms. Strassel's precise target was, of course, the horrifying State Children's Health Insurance Program bill -- bipartisan legislation that recognizes that lower middle-class children without healthcare nevertheless shall remain healthcare-less despite their demographic status, unless something is done. Imagine that.
Her larger target, however, was the general idea that big spending on little people and other assorted domestic spending are signs of a civilized society. Sure, living, breathing people in pain might derive some temporary benefit from insured access to healthcare -- such as that possessed, no doubt, by Ms. Strassel herself -- but, for heaven and Hayek's sake, what about the cost? You know, to the people of means?
Ah, there's the rub. And no truly civilized society would burden its betters with such fiscal outlandishness. Nonetheless, observes the medically insured Strassel, "Congress will soon ship the White House a bill that throws huge amounts of new dollars at the government's health-insurance program for children.... What happens next will demonstrate whether the beleaguered Mr. Bush has any hope of getting his party to toe the fiscal line in upcoming spending battles, and by consequence whether Republicans have any hope of restoring their fiscal credibility with voters."
Yet Ms. Strassel fears the unconscionable that haunts conservatism's sensibilities -- that although Congress is "demanding at least $30 billion more than Mr. Bush's own generous $5 billion Schip increase..., more than a few [Republicans] are thinking about next year's elections, and how nice it would be to avoid claims that they helped throw impoverished kiddies to the health-care wolves."
Isn't that just like a bunch of nervous pols? If they had any real guts and genuine conservative instincts, they'd instead fight like wolves themselves to undo all those weepy child labor laws and put the little buggers to the additionally undone minimum-wage stake, where they could then work and not deduct healthcare tax credits on income they don't have and healthcare they can't afford.
But I speak of Ms. Strassel's perfect world, and since even dreamy and irresponsible liberals are in conservative agreement that we can never achieve social perfection, it is unfair, I suppose, to accuse Ms. Strassel of advocating the effort.
So let me be fair and stick to what she did write. But wait, I misspeak again, for once again it's what she didn't write that caused my amused befuddlement.
As I read Ms. Strassel's piece, something -- granted, just a little something -- in her 1000-word diatribe against big spending seemed to be missing. I read on, knowing -- knowing for sure -- that she'd eventually encounter the huge fiscal elephant. But alas, although the offensive "SChip" is cited nine times as evidence of possible Republican irresponsibility, not once did the words "Iraq war" and its accompanying big spending land in her commentary.
This puzzled. For if a fiscal boogeyman lurks anywhere, it's probably in the half-million-dollar-a-minute expense of the war -- that would be nearly three-quarters of billion dollars a day -- which is what a recent "analysis of the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard public finance lecturer Linda J. Bilmes" (the latter of whom has "placed the total cost of the Iraq war at more than $2.2 trillion, not counting interest") has availed for Ms. Strassel's fiscal edification.
Yet, not a word about this from the nice lady at the fiscally aghast Wall Street Journal.
Fortunately, however, he of foreign-policy as well as today's fiscal neoconservatism, the American Enterprise Institute's Frederick Kagan, has taken up the slack. I don't want to twist his words, so I'll let the delicate Mr. Kagan explain this puzzler himself: "Either you think the war in Iraq supports America's national security, or not. If you think national security won't be harmed by withdrawing from Iraq, of course you would want to see that money spent elsewhere. I myself think that belief, on a certain level, is absurd, so the question of focusing on how much money we are spending there is irrelevant."
And there you -- I -- have it. I was dwelling in a warped world's level of absurdity, one in which the fiscal irrelevancy of $21 billion a month spent on the president's ego and desperate legacy -- a.k.a. national security -- simply never occurred to me.
I'm humiliated and humbled, and I promise to never be so absurd again. Thank you, Mr. Kagan, for pointing out the obvious; and thank you, Ms. Strassel, for assuming it's so bloody obvious it need not even have been mentioned.