A VAST GULF SEPARATES MOST OF US FROM OUR SOCIETY'S ELITES

It was a Democratic President and brilliant historian, Woodrow Wilson, who reminded his countrymen that the history of freedom is the history of attempts to restrain the power and reach of government to contain it within its proper and necessary sphere. Consider the following facts:

Federal spending has risen from 16 percent of Gross National Product (GNP) in 1950, through 18 percent in 1960, 20 percent in 1970, 22 percent in 1980 to 25 percent in 1991 a depressing number to be sure, but an even more depressing trend.

In constant 1991 dollars, today's $1.4 trillion federal budget has doubled in size since 1970 and grown by 50 percent since 1980.

Federal taxpayer liabilities including the public debt, loan obligations, insurance, credit guarantees and the like now exceed $15 trillion, up from $9 trillion in 1980 and $2 trillion in the early 1970s.

Entitlement spending in real dollars has doubled roughly every eight years since 1950.

We are indebted to Stephen Moore of the free market Cato Institute for these figures. Taken together, they establish beyond any question that government is the great growth industry, even though it loses money on every sale; that government grows through good times and bad; and that its surest product is the stifling of that very private initiative on which all our livelihoods and economic futures depend.

Based on past spending trends and current forecasts for benefit programs, Stephen Moore projects our future to be this grim scenario:

In 1991 dollars, the annual federal budget by the year 2000 will approach $2 trillion, and by the year 2020 about $4 trillion. But assuming annual 4 percent inflation that 4 trillion in 2020 dollars will be $12.3 trillion.

The federal government will consume 27 percent of the nation's GNP by the year 2000 and 32 percent by 2020 (remember: this does not include state and local government expenditures, which would be added to these to get the total, escalating cost of government at all levels).

Total federal liabilities will surpass $20 trillion by the end of the century, representing a debt of almost $300,000 for every family of four in the United States.

How should a free, self-governing people regard numbers such as these? What do they mean for the survival of freedom? How will they affect our lives, and those of our children and grandchildren?

It's clear that we can't go on this way. I believe that in these numbers, and in others like them that could be adduced in state after state nationwide, lies the explanation for Tuesday's stunning election results. That election was unquestionably one of the most remarkable of my life.

Analysts and elected officials are sifting through the rubble of discarded incumbents, lifetime politicians and failed tax issues, trying to discern a common thread. I'll give you one. It is this: Ordinary Americans, not one in a thousand of whom could cite you the figures recited above, nonetheless understand "in our hips" that the unchecked growth of government threatens our lives, our very existence as free people. We ordinary Americans are rebelling against elites from every sector who claim tell us what is good for us.

I use the term elites with some reluctance, but imperfect though it surely is, it will have to do. For I refer to every kind of elite you can imagine. There's Big Government, the permanent establishment of the political/governing class, which is nothing less than a parasite threatening its productive host. There's Big Media, both print and electronic, whose interests most often parallel those of their pals in the governing establishment which is to say that those media are too given to cheering on the expansion of government. There's Big Education, the public education establishment, with its insatiable demands for more money amid refusal to enact meaningful reforms to improve results. And of course there's Big Business, which millions of Americans correctly see as aiding that Big Government as it slips the noose around the necks of small business the great American engine of opportunity, growth and new jobs.

Is my term "elites" inaccurate? Well, to take one example, who was out front on Proposition B? Who was it trying to persuade us to add $385 million in new taxes on Missourians at a time when most of us have seen a recession shrink our after-tax incomes? Why, the aforementioned elites, of course.

Big Education was there, leading the charge as it has for years. (Does it even need to be said?) Big Business signed on the Missouri Chamber of Commerce endorsed early; so did the crusty old Associated Industries of Missouri (AIM), with its famously effective taxpayer watchdog group the Taxpayers Research Institute of Missouri (TRIM). (It was left to The Heartland Institute, a little-known free market outfit in St. Louis, to point to the dangers to our economy of so large a tax increase.) Big Media was on board: almost every newspaper in the state pumped the issue, ceaselessly quoting proponents; then, at the campaign's end, nearly every major newspaper endorsed Prop B.

Big Government salivated at the prospect of another $400 million flowing toward Jefferson City year after year after year, as far as the eye could see. Only one major group was not on board the Proposition B train as it pulled out of the station the people. Those people turned out in much larger than expected numbers for an off-year to defeat it statewide by a margin of more than 2-1. The issue passed in two university counties; in 84 counties it lost by 2-1; in 14 counties it lost by margins of up to 5-1.

Is there a disconnection between ordinary Americans and the class of elites who claim to speak in our name?

In Tuesday's edition: Are the elitists in the administration of George Herbert Walker Bush well-positioned to deal with a gathering revolt of Americans against a government they see as out of touch? Will the great Commander in Chief of Desert Storm be a one-term President?