Like Ike?

Trump tackles big government

By January 1953, the Republicans had been in exile from the White House for two decades, the longest such drought for either Republicans or Democrats in American history. These two decades also saw the most rapid growth in the size of the federal government in American history. The New Deal in the 1930s had spawned numerous government agencies, and World War II had extended government's reach into areas of life previously untouched by federal spending.

Republicans were eager to dismantle big government, and as Dwight Eisenhower took his inaugural oath they prepared to whack away at agencies and spending and taxes. But a funny thing happened on the way to the chopping block. They discovered that everybody’s boondoggle was somebody’s lifeline.

It started with Social Security. Republicans called it socialism, and many had been saying since its creation in 1935 that they would repeal it as soon as they had the chance. Many Republicans assumed that their chance would come after the 1940 election, which would send Franklin Roosevelt off to retirement. Had Roosevelt indeed retired, they might have had their way. Before 1940, Social Security was overwhelmingly a drain on the incomes of working Americans, who wouldn’t collect pensions until their working days ended.

But World War II gave Roosevelt an excuse to break the unwritten two-term rule. Roosevelt was followed by fellow Democrat Harry Truman. By the time of Eisenhower’s election in 1952, millions of Americans were receiving monthly pension checks from the U.S. Treasury, and many millions more were expecting to. Social Security had become part of the mental landscape of America. Eliminating it was impossible. Indeed, far from killing Social Security, the Eisenhower administration and Congress expanded its coverage.

Eisenhower, a moderate Republican, wasn’t unhappy about Social Security’s survival. Nor was he unwilling to invest new money in federal projects that served the national interest. He launched construction of the interstate highway system, the largest and most expensive public works project in American history.

Yet in one area Eisenhower was disappointed with his failure to rein in spending—especially since it was the area of his greatest professional expertise. Eisenhower had been a career military officer, educated at West Point and trained in the army during the 1920s and 1930s before becoming a five-star general during World War II. He had seen the modest-sized army of the interwar decades becoming the behemoth of the anti-fascist war. America’s military had diminished after the defeat of Japan, but the emergence of the Cold War prompted a rebuilding. Eisenhower worried that maintaining a large peacetime military establishment would bankrupt the United States, killing the goose that laid the golden egg that made all the military spending possible.

He ordered his generals and admirals to cut back. He directed his strategists to deemphasize conventional forces, which were costly because manpower-heavy, and rely on nuclear forces, which delivered “more bang for the buck,” in the parlance of the time.

He couldn’t even get the army brass to go along. Some of the generals disputed Eisenhower’s reasoning about nuclear weapons being usable in a European conflict. Others simply didn’t like seeing the ranks of their subordinates cut, which lessened their own importance and career prospects.

The generals complained to Congress, where members with military bases in their districts linked arms with members whose districts included conventional-arms manufacturers and workers. The counterattack succeeded brilliantly. Far from cutting spending, Congress increased it.

Eisenhower lamented his defeat. In January 1961 he followed the example of America’s first general-president, George Washington, and delivered a farewell address. He emphasized how the “military-industrial complex” had taken on a life of its own. “This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience,” he said. “The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government.” Eisenhower hoped his successors could get a handle on things. He didn’t sound optimistic.

Eisenhower’s experience perhaps has lessons for the present. Donald Trump has railed against big government for years. He didn’t do much to curtail it during his first administration, but he has pledged to do more the second time around. His nominations for cabinet and other posts include sworn enemies of the “deep state,” as Republicans call permanent civil servants, the federal workers not appointed by presidents. He has created an informal department of government efficiency, tasked with trimming trillions from government spending. His aides are devising a plan to reclassify large numbers of federal workers to make them subject to dismissal.

Trump might have better luck than Eisenhower. But he’ll face similar challenges. The greatest will be that while everyone opposes wasteful spending in theory—that is, on the campaign stump—obtaining agreement on what constitutes waste is hard in practice. It might be the case that most federal employees are Democrats, but the consumers of the services they provide are from both parties and no parties. Most Republican recipients of Social Security are as attached to their monthly payments as Democrats. Republicans rely on Medicare just like Democrats. This is why Trump has said he won’t touch those programs. But exempting them greatly reduces the potential for cost-cutting. Republicans like defense, so Trump will have to tread carefully there.

A dirty secret of Republican politics is that Republican states receive more in federal spending than they pay in federal taxes, while for Democratic states the opposite is true. Thus any broad cuts in federal spending would cause more Republican pain than Democratic.

This might not matter to Trump, who is a lame duck. But other Republicans hope for political futures. Trump is an old man. He will be the oldest president in history by the end of his second term, older than Joe Biden, who was essentially forced to retire on account of age-related conditions. Trump's hold on the Republican party will end, one way or another. Republicans are already looking past him, albeit quietly. They will have to deal with the pain spending cuts produce.

Maybe Trump isn’t really serious about dismantling the federal government. Maybe his projection of trillion-dollar cuts is merely his opening bid in political negotiations. Maybe he'll accept much smaller cuts and declare victory.

With Eisenhower, what Americans saw was pretty much what they got. His Kansas honesty was one of the things they liked most about him. Trump is a different character. We'll have to wait and see if his campaign against big government turns out differently than Ike’s.