Different Reasons to Oppose a Congressional Appropriation

 

Just for the record, I do not believe that the only logical, consistent, and principled reason to oppose any particular government appropriation is because of a blanket opposition to all government spending.  To the contrary, there are many perfectly logical, consistent, and principled reasons on might oppose any particular expenditure.

1. One could see the thing itself as something inherently immoral that should be forbidden outright.
2. One could see the thing as inherently immoral but not realistic to forbid.  However, even if the thing is not in itself forbidden, government should not fund it with taxpayer money because that forces all of us to be complicit in it.
3. One can see the thing itself as unobjectionable but not a legitimate government function that should be done by private actors. (Example:  Too Big to Fail).
4. One can see the thing morally worthy, but believe that it is not a legitimate government function and should be funded by private donations.  (Libertarians and some evangelicals see social spending in these terms).
5.  One can see the thing as a legitimate government function, but not a federal function and believe it should be debated and decided at the state level.
6. One can see the thing as an appropriate federal expenditure, but not a high enough priority to fund with limited resources.
7. Or one can see the thing as wonderful, but just too expensive.

All of these are perfectly reasonable reasons to oppose any given federal expenditure.

However, Republicans are not very good at articulating a lot of these reasons. Trained for decades in seeing all government spending as inherently bad, they have difficulty framing an expenditure in any terms other than an objection to the amount, which often does sound illogical, inconsistent and hypocritical.

I remember, for instance, when Bill Clinton introduced the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act in 1994, Republicans were very much in favor of its coercive and punitive aspects.  But they were outraged that a small portion of the bill was dedicated to social spending, such as midnight basketball.  Midnight basketball was a program for giving young inner city males something to do during peak crime hours (roughly from two hours before to two hours after midnight), such as basketball.  And here was the thing.  Their objections were almost always voiced in terms of outrage over the expenditure, even though funding for midnight basketball was only $50 million out of a $33 billion bill, or about .15% of the total.  Republicans never objected to the the spending on coercive and punitive aspects of the bill (the great majority), but they were outraged that a small amount went to social programs.  It seems a safe assumption that the objection was not to the amount, but the purpose. When Republicans were more honest, they said that they objected to bribing people to obey the law.

Fast forward to today, and Republicans keep voicing their objections to military aid to Ukraine in terms of the price tag ($60 billion).  But balancing the budget by cutting Ukrainian aid would mean cutting by several thousand percent.  Furthermore, Republican keep claiming that aid to Ukraine competes on a zero-sum basis with any other spending priorities they might have -- aid to Israel, border security, disaster relief, etc.  Oddly enough, none of these other programs seem to be in competition with each other.

On the other hand, maybe I am being too generous to the Republicans.  Maybe their purported objections to the amount of spending conceals other motive that may not be mentioned in polite company.  The Wikipedia article on midnight basketball believes that Republicans' real objection to midnight basketball was that its beneficiaries tended to be Black.  And it seems quite clear that many Republicans' real objection to aid to Ukraine is that they want Russian aggression to succeed.