Inform Your Consent

Today I watched the third installment of Palin’s interview with Charlie Gibson, which aired on 20/20 last night.  My central concern is this: I wasn’t expecting Sarah Palin to be a foreign policy expert, by any means.  But she demonstrates a frightening lack of understanding about the fundamental workings of our national government and the basic benefits we earn and expect from paying taxes over our lifetime. 

The key exchange was on three things the McCain-Palin reform ticket would do that would depart from Bush economic policies.  Palin said they would 1) reduce taxes (apparently Bush never did that?), 2) control spending and 3) “reform the oversight and overseeing agencies and committees.” 

Gibson pressed on where savings come from, and specifically asked about entitlements like medicare and social security–ah, the third rail of politics.  The longest, most evasive answers in American politics surely come out for this question.  Because entitlements are no longer on a sustainable trajectory; fewer workers are supporting more beneficiaries every year.  Palin didn’t evade at all.  She jumped in, responding that they would find efficiencies in every department of the government, and, when pressed on social security and medicare entitlements, she insisted that bureaucrats have to be prodded to find efficiencies at “those agencies.”  

Governor Palin, entitlements are not agencies; they are benefits we trigger when we reach a certain age or retirement status.  Bureaucrats don’t decide what the entitlements are; they merely administer them according to the rules Congress and the President design.  

Now, you can surely save some money at a bureaucratic agency by, for instance, going paperless in record-keeping.  And perhaps there are two offices doing the same thing; so consolidating them could save a couple of million dollars, certainly.  But the cost of RUNNING entitlement programs is nothing compared to the benefits themselves ($440 million for Medicare benefits in 2007).  That is because Social Security and Medicare benefits are what is called mandatory spending–money that will be spent automatically.  So for Palin to talk cutely about finding “efficiencies” among the complacent bureacrats at these agencies demonstrated to me that she knows nothing about how our federal budget actually works.  Eighty percent of the budget is defense programming and mandatory spending on entitlement benefits.  I don’t see McCain-Palin cutting big defense budget items like missile defense (remember the Star Wars program from the 1980’s?  It’s back.). 

Now, if you mean what you say about earmarks, then when Congress nixes the authorization for a bridge to nowhere in your state, don’t reallocate the money–send it back.  When Gibson asked her about earmark requests she made as governor and as mayor, she responded in this way: 1) in the case of the state requests, ok, but those came through their wildlife and research systems (as if she had no approval over them?) and 2) in the case of the Wasilla requests, for which they paid a Washington lobbyist $30,000, Alaska is thousands of miles away and how else could they possibly “plug into the federal budget” for infrastructure needs, which she thinks is appropriate to do.  

So, earmarks are bad when you are on the campaign trail, and good when you’re bringing home the bacon. 

I swear, I would stop blogging about Sarah Palin if she would just go away.  Or, at least if she would stop sounding like such a trainwreck for an already weary nation.