PUBLIC CHOICE TRUMPS IDEOLOGY. I just finished Buck Wild: How Republicans Broke the Bank and Became the Party of Big Government. It's by Stephen Slivinski of the Cato Institute, yet another libertarian disgusted with the Republican proclivity to become more interested in being re-elected than in restoring the national government to its Constitutionally enumerated and limited powers. For Book Review No. 47, I'll note that the work is more likely to shore up the converted than to change many minds. But at page 50 his description of President Bush (41)'s loss to President Clinton is a precise characterization of the recent Congressional election, which occurred after Buck Wild went to press. "If Republicans are going to act like Democrats anyway, what's the use in showing up to vote for a GOP candidate?"

He's not referring to civil rights or environmental policy or negotiating with Communists.

He's referring to the use of the power of the purse to smooth passage of legislation. Relatively small expenditures can ensure veto-proof majorities on major legislation, and the failure of the gasoline and tire taxes to cover all the costs of providing and maintaining roads make transportation bills such as the notorious 2005 bill, passed just before Katrina and Rita, popular. That beneficiaries of relatively small expenditures have incentives to defend those expenditures much stronger than those who must pay taxes further strengthens the temptation to buy peace.

Where the book fails, however, is in offering any concrete proposals to tame the public choice dynamic, which is at work whether both houses and the White House are held by the same party, or if there is some division of the government.