Size of government-plank-TheVanguard

==Vanguard PAC: Size of Government==
Vanguard PAC stands for a principled fiscal conservativism. While recognizing the need for tax cuts to stimulate economic growth and increased defense spending in a time of war, we nevertheless strongly oppose the repeal of the budget spending caps enacted by the Republican Congress in the 1990s. These budget caps were put in place to limit government spending, and Congress should not repeal them. The spending caps have provided fiscal discipline and are a prime reason why the budget was balanced despite the profligate spending proposals of the then-incumbent Democrat administration. Instead of breaking the caps, Vanguard PAC maintains that the best way to restore balance to the federal budget is through the fiscal discipline of spending cuts sufficiently large not only to solve the immediate fiscal issues facing America, but also to bring the size of our federal government back in line with its Constitutional limits.
Vanguard PAC calls for a comprehensive review of all federal government spending, leading to the elimination and/or privatization of unnecessary, unconstituional, obsolete and redundant departments, agencies, and commissions.
We also stand for a properly-crafted Balanced Budget Amendment with a super-majority provision making it extremely difficult for Congress to raise taxes.
But more than mere fiscal conservatism, we stand for Constitutional government. The federal government has long ceased living within the confines of the U.S. Constitution. That document clearly defines what government may and may not do. Moreover, it does so for a reason: when central government grows beyond certain bounds, citizens have less actual control than is rightfully theirs. The Founding Fathers believed it was much easier for regular folks to complain to a state representative or justice of the peace down the street than to a Congressman in Washington, and they divided power accordingly. They were right.
	
This is not so much ideological as practical: Washington doesn't have all the answers. Just look at welfare reform: in only two years, the states were able to reduce welfare rolls across America by more than half, placing supposedly "hopeless" people in good jobs, all because we took the power out of Washington and placed it closer to the people.
It's not just that "the government that governs best governs least": it's that when states and communities have the power to break out of a federal "one-size-fits-all" solution, they do a better job and get better results. We can do the same with many other programs, and with equally impressive results. We simply have to follow the Constitution, and believe that freedom works.
 
===Related Articles===
4/6/1998, Rod D. Martin: "Taking the Road of Courage"
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