Libertarians are pleased to have likely dodged the bullet of one-party government control.
Lots of people on the left and right found reasons to be a little unhappy, or downright miserable, about the election. The Republican Party lost the White House; Democrats have lost ground in the House, and their path to a Senate majority seems very narrow. But there is one group of people unreservedly happy — even ecstatic — about the results: those who lean libertarian. They got almost everything they wanted. On the one hand, Joe Biden has a friendlier record on trade and immigration, and on the other, they avoided the burst of spending that inevitably comes with unified control of the federal government. Old-school debt and deficit hawks will also be pleased, too, but libertarians are ecstatic. As one writer at Reason wondered, perhaps speaking for many libertarians, “Is this the greatest election of my lifetime?” In the early years of the Trump administration, with Republicans in control of Congress, the country saw a steady rise in spending and ballooning deficits and debt. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas might not have been quite right when he said that, after all, President Trump “didn’t campaign on cutting the debt.” Actually, Mr. Trump did, but in a throwaway manner, while putting more stress on continued, even increased, big spending and debt. And as is so often the case with one-party control, as in Mr. Trump’s first years, big spending took hold. According to the Cato Institute, over Mr. Trump’s four years, spending went up by a total of 10 percent. Something similar happened under George W. Bush: Spending shot up 24 percent. But what really seems like an effective arrangement for controlling spending is a Democratic president with Republicans in charge of at least one body of Congress.
