This column was originally published at Townhall.com. Comments welcome there.

The Bush Administration has discovered what liberals have known all along: the Constitution is a mighty comprehensive document, giving the federal government powers over the minutest aspects of our lives.

Case in point: apparently Bush & Co. have discovered that there is a right to miniature golf defined in the U.S. Constitution.

That’s the upshot of a new set of rules updating the Americans with Disabilities Act being released for public comment this Tuesday. Other new rights include easier access to light switches in hotel rooms by moving them 6 inches lower, wheelchair lifts in courtrooms to provide easier access to the witness box, and wheelchair lifts to provide easier access to stages in auditoriums. And the miniature golf courses? Soon at least half the holes will have to be easily wheelchair accessible.

It is, of course, utterly ridiculous that such things are matters of federal regulation. Unfortunately, it is not innocuous.

Not too long ago most Americans believed in at least the concept of limited government; more recently at least conservatives and most Republicans did. But now it seems that only a few libertarians still feel bound to even consider the possibility of limits to federal powers before proposing the imposition of ever more burdensome rules from Washington.

It may seem strange at first to see great danger in the latest proposed extension of federal power. After all, who could object to making the world a better place for the disabled? And that is what these rules are intended to do.

But intentions don’t matter in the real world. Consequences do.

And as a consequence of the Bush Administration’s new proposed regulations, the federal government is now asserting a legitimate interest in the design of miniature golf courses, the placement of light switches in hotel rooms, what is broadcast when on stadium scoreboards and video monitors, and a whole host of other, equally trivial aspects of our public and private lives.

If such minute matters of our daily lives are of legitimate concern to federal regulators, it becomes hard to see just what isn’t legitimate fodder for federal regulation.

The new ethos driving the expansion of government power appears to be: as long as government officials have (or can assert) good intentions then they should be granted unlimited powers to achieve their goals.

The founding fathers, of course, would have found this attitude puzzling, to say the least. First of all, they would have considered it ridiculous to simply assume good intentions on the part of anyone in power, and they would have deeply distrusted the idea that even well-intended expansions of power wouldn’t be dangerous. The only sane form of government, in their view, would be a greatly limited government with powers constrained to those absolutely necessary to protect our natural rights. And those rights, we can safely say, don’t include a right to unobstructed miniature golf.

Americans are becoming more and more accustomed to the idea that government should have power to do “good” things, not just those things necessary to defend our lives and liberty. And as a consequence of this gradual shift in attitude our freedoms are more at risk every day.

Again, consider these new rules being proposed by the Bush Administration: in order to achieve the well-intended goals of making the lives of the disabled a bit easier they will be requiring, on pain of federal fines or prosecution, millions of private individuals and businesses to spend billions of dollars to comply. Because when it comes to federal regulations, the simple rule is comply—or else.

This column was also published at townhall.com

Americans are justly worried about the long-term economic effects of the current mortgage crisis and the credit crunch that has resulted from it. Politicians are scrambling to reassure voters that everything is under control, or that at least they have a plan to deal with the crisis.

Yet the size of the current economic problems we face is dwarfed by the coming disaster that politicians of all stripes are ignoring. Barring any serious shocks to the financial system, the tools that the Federal Reserve is using (and inventing) will likely mitigate the harm to the overall economy. Unfortunately the looming fiscal crisis we face will not be so easily dealt with.

You can get a good sense of the scale of the crisis by visiting the Heritage Foundation’s 2008 Federal Revenue and Spending Book of Charts (http://www.heritage.org/research/features/BudgetChartBook/index.html). The name implies that the book will put you to sleep, but trust me, it is more likely to keep you up at night.

A quick scan of the Heritage report will turn any true conservative’s stomach. It turns out that the Federal Government is far better at creating crises than the private sector. However irresponsible people in the private sector have been at times, our fearless government leaders have beat them by a mile in that department. After all, as the executives at Bear Stearns found out, the consequences for failure can be dire. In government, it is not always so.

Federal Spending is on an unsustainable path. And it’s not earmarks, silly spending projects, or even welfare that is going to do us in. It’s the entitlement programs and the growing national debt that are on track to destroy the American economy and the American way of life unless we do something about the problem. Yet while we have heard from each of the major party candidates about schemes to deal with the current economic mess, none of them has seriously addressed this larger looming crisis.

Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are already eating up an enormous fraction of the Federal Budget. In fact, over the past 40 or so years Federal discretionary spending has risen by 152% in real dollars, while mandatory entitlement spending has increased by 759%. Mandatory (entitlement) spending now makes up 58% of the Federal budget—twice as much as in 1965—and because it’s on autopilot it is going to eat up more and more of the budget unless politicians make the necessary changes.

What are the consequences of not facing up to the growing entitlement problems? According to the Congressional Budget Office entitlement spending and paying interest on the debt could drive federal spending to almost 80% of the American economy in coming decades. And that is without any significant growth in discretionary federal spending. Spending on interest alone could account for up to 40% of our economy because of the deficits we will wrack up if we don’t reign in entitlement spending.

The American economy would collapse long before we reach that point. As more and more of our economic resources are diverted to federal spending on entitlements, investment will dry up and economic growth will slow to a crawl. America’s economy already depends upon huge inflows of capital from abroad. How many dollars do you think the Chinese will want to sink into an American economy that is dominated by government spending on entitlements?EuropeandCanadahave their own entitlement problems, so don’t expect any help there.

Politicians have been eager to take credit for innovative ideas to address the current credit crunch, all the while ignoring the fact that they are the true authors of the greatest economic crisis our country could ever face. Without real action soon, government policy will have undermined our economy’s ability to even maintain our current quality of life, no less grow and prosper.

We are all expected to cheer as the politicians bash the “greedy” corporate leaders who are blamed for getting us into the current financial mess, but what about the responsibility of politicians for putting America on the path to financial disaster in the coming decades? Nobody believes that we can keep things as they are, but nobody wants to talk about what it would take to reform entitlements to make them sustainable.

It is ironic to think that Americans are being sold on the idea that only government can save our economy from the recklessness of the financial industry. However mistaken, reckless, or even irresponsible private citizens have been in recent years, the scale of the problem is nothing compared to the one consciously created by our political leadership. Think about that as you listen to politicians’ promises.

###

by David Strom

It’s long past time for the nanny state crowd to sit down and shut up.

We’ve been hearing from them for years about the added health care costs of smoking and obesity, and have meekly submitted to ever greater regulation of our private lives in the name of promoting a greater public good, saving health care dollars.

A few hearty libertarian types have had the courage to push back against the tide based upon the quaint notion that it is nobody’s business we do or what we consume as long as it is legal.

But in an age where governments have the right to require seatbelt and helmet use and prohibit the ingestion of bad fats, the conventional wisdom is that there is no part of daily life that is beyond government regulation.

This is particularly true in matters of health. As government has assumed a greater and greater share of the cost of health care government officials have assumed a larger role in trying to cajole and regulate what and how we consume.

The intellectual backbone of the recent wars on smoking and obesity has been the contention that smoking and being fat are not truly private matters, inasmuch as our individual health status imposes costs on society at large. Being a smoker, or being fat, costs society dearly because it is more expensive to treat unhealthy people than healthy people.

By this logic literally everything we do would be a legitimate target of regulation because most choices we make directly or indirectly impact our lifespan, mental health status, or other variables that social engineers might find of interest.

As a proponent of individual freedom and responsibility, I don’t accept this premise as many do. But what if the underlying argument is false? What if smokers or fat people aren’t more expensive to society?

What if they actually are cheaper to care for than their better behaved counterparts? What then happens to the intellectual framework that has propped up the recent spate of social engineering projects aimed at changing our habits through coercive means?

Well, according to a study performed by the Netherlands National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, those unhealthy fat people and smokers turn out to be just that: actually cheaper to care for.

Healthy people, you see, live longer and cost more. And, just like their less healthy counterparts, they still get sick and die eventually.

According to this study thin and healthy people have lifetime health care costs that are nearly 30% higher than smokers, and about 12% higher than fat people. All those costs associated with being unhealthy are outweighed by the fact that people who die younger are cheaper to care for. And that doesn’t include pension costs.

Does this mean that instead of imposing health impact fees on cigarettes and fast food we should now subsidize them, due to their societal benefits? Or perhaps we should impose a tax on juice bars and running shoes?

Of course not. It is none of the government’s business whether you are a health nut or a slob. It wasn’t before when all those nonprofits and government officials were warning about the dire fiscal consequences of our unhealthy behaviors, and it isn’t now that it turns out that being unhealthy is cheaper (at least if you are Dutch). Government shouldn’t be in the business of making lifestyle choices for citizens.

Everything we do has become of legitimate interest to the state. As we have outsourced responsibility for more and more of our basic needs to an ever more powerful nanny state, we have ceded more and more of our freedom.

And as this study shows, our interests are not so clearly in line with government’s. Even if you believed it was in principle a good idea to exchange freedom for security, it turns out that our interests are not always congruent with the State’s. In fact, the State is better off if you die off as your productivity starts to decline. Should the government then shape policy and provide incentives to get your behavior in line with its interests? Of course not.

It’s time to get off the kick that government has any business shaping our individual decisions. Classical liberalism, on which our government is supposed to be based, assumes that governments are instituted among men to protect our lives, our liberty, and our pursuit of happiness. They do not exist to force, cajole, or even nudge us into behaving as some social engineer would like us to.

###

David Strom is President of the Minnesota Free Market Institute