Lost: 1 Veto Pen
It would be nice to have a President that isn’t afraid to use the veto pen. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” is just another way of saying “spend spend spend.” If McCain is serious about limiting the size of the federal government (which I sincerely hope he is) then he’ll need to find the veto pen that Bush seems to have lost. Once you start a revenue stream, either incoming or outgoing, it’s extremely difficult to stop it. Liberals want to increase both. Conservatives want to decrease both (or at least they used to).
But this will only prevent the government from growing. What’s really needed is serious reform that reduces or eliminates unnecessary (and unconstitutional) programs. This may be asking too much from a career politician, but the federal government has gotten way out of control.
More than the promise of vetoing pork-laden bills, I’d like to hear McCain’s (or anyone’s) plan for shrinking the federal government.
