Keeping America competitive requires affordable government. The federal government is by far the biggest expense for successful American businesses and industrious American workers, because the industrious and successful pay nearly all federal income taxes. Runaway government spending has increased the cost of production for business and lowered the standard of living for consumers.
Federal spending will rise 43 percent between 2001 and 2006, according to Chris Edwards, the author of "Downsizing the Federal Government." In the State of the Union Address, however, President Bush said, "Every year of my presidency we've reduced the growth of non-security discretionary spending."
Putting such new math aside, federal spending is still rising by 8 percent a year, twice as fast as the incomes of those stuck with the bills. Yet the president wants to spend more on compassion (foreign aid) and more on competitiveness (anything at all).
"Preparing our nation to compete in the world is a goal all of us can share," he supposes. Competitiveness is a goal politicians can share, because it is a handy excuse to spend money. I rarely get a chance to agree with Paul Krugman, but I admired his 1994 article in Foreign Affairs, "Competitiveness: A Dangerous Obsession." Krugman warned that "thinking and speaking in terms of competitiveness ... could result in the wasteful spending of government money supposedly to enhance U.S. competitiveness."
In the name of competitiveness, President Bush boasted of having already wasted $10 billion on energy boondoggles and talked about making energy "more affordable" by making government more expensive. He proposes to "double the federal commitment" to basic research in physical sciences, plus an extra 22 percent on energy research to "move beyond a petroleum-based economy" to one based on "wood chips and stalks or switch grass." And hot air.