This post originally appeared at https://www.bootsandsabers.com/2023/07/01/growing-government-is-our-bipartisan-pastime/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=growing-government-is-our-bipartisan-pastime

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Yes, it’s early – on a Saturday – because there won’t be a paper on the Tuesday due to the Independence Day holiday. Here’s a part:

All in, the budget that the Republican Legislature passed — before Governor Evers makes it worse with his veto pen — spends $97,407,275,400 over two years. That is a whopping 9.2% increase in spending over the previous budget. They managed to just squeak under a double-digit spending increase.

Lest one thinks that the spending is being driven by additional federal funds, the general fund, which is the state’s main checking account, is spending 11.5% more than the previous budget.

Even with huge legislative majorities, the Republicans’ best proposal is to grow government by almost 10%. That is pathetic. It is difficult for this conservative to muster the vim to rally behind the elephants when the output of the effort is just a larger government with a few conservative baubles as distractions.

As we celebrate our Independence Day from the oppression of arbitrary and oppressive government, I took the opportunity to, once again, read our hallowed Declaration of Independence. One feels the frustration building throughout the document. We appear to be at this point in the cycle of liberty:

“… all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”