Here’s Matt Welch:
If there are still believers in limited government cowering in the corner of the Bush-Frist-DeLay Republican tent, they might recover some of their lost sense of shame by picking up a copy of the Cato Institute’s new book, The Republican Revolution 10 Years Later: Smaller Government or Business as Usual? It’s a bracingly grim collection of essays from people who were generally enthusiastic about (and in some cases, participated in) the GOP’s historic recapture of the House of Representatives in 1994. Take Stephen Moore, who worked with House Budget Committee chairman John Kasich (R-Ohio) in drafting the Contract with America budget for fiscal year 1996. “Under President Bush (and a Republican Congress) federal outlays increased 28 percent between FY01 and FY05,” Moore writes. “Nondefense discretionary spending increased 34 percent during these four years. That fiscal policy is exactly the opposite of what was promised by Republican leaders when they first came to power in the 1990s,” Moore writes.