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Last Monday the Government Accountability Office reported on 864 phone calls (PDF) to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which runs the new Medicare prescription drug program. GAO researchers received accurate and complete answers about one-third of the time. That’s not even halfway to a passing grade.
More specifically, conservatives get elected by promising to shrink government, but they can’t get re-elected without responding to constituents who want government to improve their lives. So, as Wolfe puts it, “contemporary conservatism is a walking contradiction. Unable to shrink government but unwilling to improve it, conservatives attempt to split the difference, expanding government for political gain, but always in ways that validate their disregard for the very thing they are expanding.”
