'We'll all become conservatives': Jeb Bush pledges budget reform in Florida

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/20/jeb-bush-florida-budget-reform

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Former Florida governor Jeb Bush returned on Monday to the state capitol to accuse the federal government of broad incompetence and present himself as the person to fix it.

Touting his record as a steward of the Florida economy and scourge of do-nothing bureaucrats, Bush sought to create sparks in the damp caverns where people go to discuss deficit spending, federal procurements and civil service contracts.

The presidential candidate mixed in some politics. He railed against absenteeism in Congress, without mentioning by name the member with the worst attendance record, according to a February study – Florida senator Marco Rubio, Bush’s former ally and Republican presidential rival.

Bush also went out of his way to praise Senator John McCain – “a real hero, by the way” – after a weekend in which a remarkable amount of political oxygen was consumed by another White House pretender, Donald Trump, and his attack on McCain’s war record.

The bulk of Bush’s speech, however, was given to workmanlike promises to reshape the federal budget, founded on boasts, some of which have attracted robust skepticism, about his record in two terms as Florida governor.

Bush said, as he did last month in announcing his candidacy, that he would lead the country to 4% economic growth, pointing to Florida’s 4.4% growth and 1.3m jobs added during his tenure, from 1999–2007.

Much of Florida’s nominal success, however, was driven by the real estate speculation that made the state ground zero for the national housing bubble that burst just as Bush left office. In the next four years, the state shed 900,000 of those 1.3m jobs.

In his return to Tallahassee on Monday, Bush called for a balanced budget amendment, line-item veto power for the president, an overhaul of defense department procurements, a federal hiring freeze and an end to automatic “baseline” funding increases.

“It doesn’t matter who’s the cause of all this,” Bush said. “It’s time to reform all these things to make government smaller so that we can rise up again.”

Looking past the numbers, Bush cast the promise of smaller government in terms of political enlightenment, with capital-R Republicanism as an end. “A self-governing society doesn’t need the kind of government we have,” he said. “By our very nature we’ll all become conservatives, because demands on government will subside.”