Academic

ROSS DOUTHAT: We need conservative class warfare: In case after case, Washington?s web of subs?

By Glenn Reynolds

ROSS DOUTHAT: We need conservative class warfare:

In case after case, Washington?s web of subsidies and tax breaks effectively takes money from the middle class and hands it out to speculators and have-mores. We subsidize drug companies, oil companies, agribusinesses disguised as ?family farms? and ?clean energy? firms that aren?t energy-efficient at all. We give tax breaks to immensely profitable corporations that don?t need the money and boondoggles that wouldn?t exist without government favoritism. . . . All of this ought to be grist for a kind of ?small-government egalitarianism,? in the economist Edward Glaeser?s useful phrase, that seeks to shrink government by attacking Washington?s wasteful spending on the well-connected. And sometimes conservative politicians make moves in this direction. President George W. Bush?s Tax Reform Commission proposed sharply reducing the mortgage-interest deduction. House Minority Leader John Boehner, to his great credit, recently floated the possibility of means-testing Social Security. Many Republican senators have been staunch critics of corporate welfare.

Hey, remember PorkBusters?

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on July 12, 2010 (boomark / email).