A bone to pick with Bartlett on federal spending

It is certainly true that the Constitution is not self-enforcing − a reality that has yielded a Leviathan far larger and more intrusive than envisioned by the Founders. That is why citizens, or at least individual members of Congress, would have to be given legal standing to sue to enforce the limit. Why would this be a problem?

Bartlett never actually argues that federal spending is not too high, or that a limit is a bad idea. All of his arguments are mechanical: It is difficult to define things, Congress will attempt to circumvent the limit, it takes too much time and effort to make big change, etc. None of this whining has much to do with the central issue of whether the Hensarling/Pence proposal would move the nation in the right direction. Bartlett concludes with an embarrassed lament “that I wasted so much time on [the Hensarling/Pence proposal] writing this post.” On the contrary, he should be embarrassed about wasting his readers’ time with such weak arguments.

Alan Reynolds is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Benjamin Zycher is a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute.