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With the Democrats retaking Congress this week, it's notable to go back to a recent Op-Ed by Paul Krugman, which he basically hits out of the ballpark:

The truth is that the movement that took power in 1994 -- a movement that had little to do with true conservatism -- was always based on a lie.

The lie is right there in ''The Freedom Revolution,'' the book that Dick Armey, who had just become the House majority leader, published in 1995. He declares that most government programs don't do anything ''to help American families with the needs of everyday life,'' and that ''very few American families would notice their disappearance.'' He goes on to assert that ''there is no reason we cannot, by the time our children come of age, reduce the federal government by half as a percentage of gross domestic product.''

Right. Somehow, I think more than a few families would notice the disappearance of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- and those three programs alone account for a majority of nondefense, noninterest spending. The truth is that the government delivers services and security that people want. Yes, there's some waste -- just as there is in any large organization. But there are no big programs that are easy to cut.

He continues:

As long as people like Mr. Armey, Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay were out of power, they could run on promises to eliminate vast government waste that existed only in the public's imagination -- all those welfare queens driving Cadillacs. But once in power, they couldn't deliver.

That's why government by the radical right has been an utter failure even on its own terms: the government hasn't shrunk. Federal outlays other than interest payments and defense spending are a higher percentage of G.D.P. today than they were when Mr. Armey wrote his book: 14.8 percent in fiscal 2006, compared with 13.8 percent in fiscal 1995.

In a nutshell:

In the end, Republicans didn't shrink the government. But they did degrade it. Baghdad and New Orleans are the arrival destinations of a movement based on deep contempt for governance.

Read the entire piece as we enter a new era of adult supervision.

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