This comes on the heels of a US$15 billion bailout of the airline industry, US$10 billion of which was in loan guarantees. Airport security will now be the purview of the federal government.
Historically government outlays as a share of gross domestic product rise in wartime. Historically they don't retreat to previous levels afterwards. There is reason to doubt this expansion of government will be temporary, as it's touted to be by some politicians.
More troubling is how the lesson of Sept. 11 became that we need bigger government when Sept. 11 represented the government's biggest failure to discharge its duties in 60 years, according to Steve Moore, president of the Club for Growth in Washington, DC. "We spend US$2 trillion a year on the most expensive government in the history of the world, and the one thing it's supposed to do is protect us from foreign enemies," Moore says.
"We need smarter government, not bigger government. If the federal government can't protect our national security, it is the height of folly to empower it to do much of anything else."
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