Categories: Andrew Coyne, Capital Read

Budget '09: Tories take a final leap into the void

by Andrew Coyne on Tuesday, January 27, 2009 4:46pm - 165 Comments

Say what you like about the Tories: they don’t do things by halves. When they spend, they spend. When they go into debt, they do it $100-billion at a time. And when they decide to put an end to conservatism in Canada — as a philosophy, as a movement—they go out with a bang.

We can safely say that the strategy of incrementalism, at least, has been put to bed. With this historic budget, the Conservatives’ already headlong retreat from principle has become a rout: a great final leap into the void. For there will be no going back from this, for the party or for the country. Whatever the budget’s soothing talk of “temporary” this and “extraordinary” that, and for all its well-mannered charts showing spending obediently returning to its pen, deficits meekly subsiding, “investments” repaid in full, we are in fact headed somewhere we have never been before. We are on course towards a massive and permanent increase in the size and scope of government: record spending, sky-high borrowing, and — ultimately, inevitably — higher taxes. And all this before the first of the Baby Boomers have had a chance to retire, and cough up a lung.

Also at Macleans.ca
Budget ‘09: The Overview
Budget ‘09: Bailout
Budget ‘09: Stimulus
Budget ‘09: Economic Outlook
Budget ‘09: Personal Finance

Tags: Budget 2009, budget09, conservatives

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John D

Is there any BS conservative idea Jarrid doesn’t believe in? I hope his lot are in charge of the Conservative’s next election campaign. Mike would get his 2 seats wish. If not, I’m sure Palin will be looking for campaign staff.
SAB

I’ve thought about this some more.

Are we sure this isn’t an idealogical budget?

The only way to claw our way out of this defecit will be to raise back the taxes or cut spending.

Presumably, the conservatives (or even likely the Liberals) will resort to spending cuts rathern than raising taxes.

Sisyphus

Yup.

http://ragingranter.blobspot.com Raging Ranter

Sure would be nice to think that. Comforting, in a warm-brandy-after-being-out-in-the-cold kind of way.

http://? Terry Stavnyck

So Andrew Coyne says he likes this budget as he will save 1300$ by spending 10,000$ renovating his home!?!
Yes, and the unemployed will get crumbs. Aren’t they the real victims in this economic crisis. Rich people like Andrew the publisher of a news magazine will get more money than the single mother struggling to survive and feed her children or that unemployed neighbor who is going to get a five week extension in EI, while the EI fund sits on a huge surplus, but now Andrew can top up his new registered tax free savings account.
Yes, this budget is good for Canada; the richest of the rich in Canada.
I suggest Mr. Coyne pay his renovator Cash, and he’ll save a lot more than 1300$, perhaps then he might think differently about whether this is a good budget.

http://ragingranter.blobspot.com Raging Ranter

You might want to develop the habit of reading posts before commenting on them. It may help avoid embarrassments like this in the future.

David

Harper looks like a turtle in that picture. I can’t decide whether it’s Franklin or Yertle.
David Spike

The bad news, as suggested above by Andrew: spending our way out of a global recession will not work (will actually fuel inflation).

The good news: “stimulus” is what the uneducated masses demand, so better have conservatives managing the spending (hopefully much less than announced and temporary, if they are smart) ,
than liberals buying votes across the country for “green shaft” initiatives.
oompus boompus

“1. He is proceeding with his firm objective of gutting the power of the federal government by reducing its revenue stream (tax income) and so reducing its power.”

I think there’s something in that. But let me put your point in another way. “He decided to govern as badly and as self-interestedly as possible, securing his grip on power by giving people billions of dollars in freebies and telling them fairy tales about how it can easily be paid for in the future, knowing full well that it will eventually cripple the economy and bring the government crashing down, sometime in the future when he won’t be holding the bag. Then, during his retirement, he can assure them that accelerating the collapse of their welfare state by making it bigger and more powerful was his selfless plan all along.”

“2. He is showing Ignatieff that there is only one alpha male in Ottawa, by deliberately including these tax cuts for the middle class in the budget.”

Good call. They definitely remind me of a bunch of chimpanzees squabbling over who gets the biggest bananas and who gets to, um, service the taxpayers the most frequently. The alpha chimp’s strategy is this: grab the fattest bananas while assuring the other chimps that the banana leaves he is giving them are just as good as the real thing, casting doubts on the competing male chimp’s ability to trade banana leaves for bananas with enough wisdom and foresight.

“3. Harper is also forcing Ignatieff and the Liberals to be a party to his overall objective of reducing the power of the federal government, by cutting its revenue through these middle class tax cuts.”

Indeed. He’s offering enough bananas to the other would-be alpha chimps to make them participate in his banana-leaf ponzi scheme, consoling themselves with the hope that when the collapse comes and the job of alpha male is once again up for grabs, there will still be enough bananas left in the forest to make dominating the other chimps and confiscating their bananas worth the effort.
http://ragingranter.blobspot.com Raging Ranter

Rona had just announced she’s ready to legislate the Ottawa bus drivers back to work. Ignatieff COULD have championed this issue, as I have been stating for weeks. He COULD have earned himself a half-dozen seats in the NCR if he’d have been associated with ending this strike. Ottawans are suffering in a BIG way, and they would not have forgotten him if he’d have pressured the government to act on this. Presumably he was too afraid to offend his coalition partners as long as he though there was a chance he still needed them. Shows you what kind of political instincts Ignatieff has. He’s right up there with Dion.
kody

The opposition controls the house,

if they want to.

It’s up to Iggy. If he wants this we’ll have it.

And Jarrid is right. The parties the rest of you support either a) will agree with it, or

b) think its not enough.

Shame, shame on the opposition from bringing this all on.
Sojourner

What a drama queen.
Sam Sweiti

Andrew, in those two paragraphs you’ve said it all. Our economy is going down the crapper and on top of that, there is no real and clear exit strategy which is quite alarming.