A discussion on one aspect of the most recent GOP Pres debate.
I’ll start with my disclaimer: I have not picked a Presidential candidate to support yet. Okay, with that firmly in mind, I’d like to start a discussion on what I thought was one of the most interesting parts of the debate last night.
The exchange that began between Senators Paul and Rubio on spending and defense, which Sen. Cruz later jumped into.
The exchange began with a moderator’s question to Sen. Rubio about his plan for child tax credits, when he defended. Once Sen. Rubio was done, Sen. Paul jumped in to criticize Rubio’s plan as not conservative, and Rand went on to say words to the effect that “this is all on top of the $1 trillion more that Marco wants to spend on defense, without paying for it.” They went back and forth, then Sen. Cruz pushed his way in to say there was a middle way, namely, spending more on defense but actually paying for it with cuts elsewhere (naturally he pointed people to his website where they could see his recently introduced set of proposed cuts… gotta have the website).
After Rubio defended his child tax credit as pro-family and noted that the most important job any of us will have is that of being a parent, Rand jumped in.
Rand stated (and Rubio did not dispute) that Rubio’s child tax credit plan will cost approximately $1 trillion (the implication was that this would be over the next ten years), AND that Rubio wants to raise defense spending by about $1 trillion over the next ten years. Rand went on to say that while he wants to restore our military, Rubio’s approach is wrong (“not conservative”) because it is not paid for. Rand said he wanted a better military, but he didn’t want America to go bankrupt.
Rubio responded by defending both the child tax credits and increased defense spending.
For purposes of this discussion, let’s treat these as two separate disputes, one over defense spending and one over child tax credits.
Rand’s basic point was that whatever the merits of either proposal, at a point in time when America is almost $20 trillion in debt, it is not conservative to propose such enormous amounts of new spending without providing any way of paying for it. Rand seemed intent on driving home his view that Rubio’s proposals are not conservative.
Rubio vigorously defended both proposals. First, he passionately gave a patriotic pitch for more defense spending – rattling off many of the dangers America faces around the world right now (sometimes in graphic detail, e.g., jihadist beheadings in the Middle East). Rubio asserted that the world is worse off when America is weak, President Obama has hollowed out the military, and we can’t have an economy if we’re overrun by the various threats he cited.
I think this received the loudest cheers of anything during the debate from the people in the arena.
Rubio never indicated that he intended to pay for the increased defense spending. The implication was that the additional debt was worth it to strengthen our military by $1 trillion (we are skipping discussion of how they equated more money to a stronger military). I would consider this a classic neocon position.
Rubio also called Rand an isolationist (a point on which Rand did not fight back).
I’m assuming most of you saw the exchange to which I refer, so I haven’t put every detail in here. I find this to be a fascinating division within the GOP, and an incredibly important one.
I will share that in both of these disputes, I agree with Sen. Paul. I believe the idea of more military spending without offsetting cuts when we have a debt larger than our entire economy can only be defended if we are in a war on the order of World Wars I or II, and that is not the situation we are in right now. Ten or fifteen years ago, I would have agreed with Sen. Rubio. But not anymore, I’ve learned too much over those ten or fifteen years.
One way I look at this issue is across time. I want a better military in 2015, but I also want us to be able to afford a strong military when we get to 2020, and 2030, and so on.
Re the child tax credit, all you have to do is look at the family picture at the top of this page to see that more and bigger child tax credits are very much in my pecuniary interest! And while I appreciate Sen. Rubio’s sensitivity to families as he crafts his tax proposals (again, ten or fifteen years ago, I would have agreed with Sen. Rubio on this point too), I believe that we need to get the government out of the business of picking favorites. There has to be some floor at which taxation begins, and it makes sense to set it on a per person basis, thus reflecting the cost of raising children to some extent, as argued by Sen. Rubio, but changing the current numbers should be a much lower priority than making sure we not only balance the budget, but start paying down the debt we are going to pass along to our children.
Also, note that this is a benefit in the form of a tax credit, it has no impact on economic growth at all.
Before I move on to Sen. Cruz’s interjection into this discussion, let me say one more thing about Sen. Rubio’s defense/national security positions. I think I understand clearly how he would approach defense spending and the conduct of foreign affairs, including his willingness to use our military fairly aggressively. Rubio is a neocon. To some Republicans, that’s a plus, to some of us, it’s not.
I do not have that level of clarity with Sen. Paul.
On to Cruz…
Sen. Cruz managed to elbow his way in after the Rubio/Rand exchange to say “there’s a third way.” Cruz made a point of saying that he agreed with both Rubio and Rand on part of what each of them said. Cruz argued that we do need to spend more on defense, but that we should pay for it.
Cruz then went on to talk about a plan he recently released that contains what he described as over $500 billion of spending cuts. I appreciate this position, but I think the debt is so bad, I want to see the cuts implemented first, then we can talk about other spending (preferably less than the cuts, which is not what Cruz proposed).
These sorts of differences within the GOP have grown over the years, and they don't always fall on ideological lines.
So, that's my discussion starter. What do you think?
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Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty
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