Writing in Reason Nick Gillespie and Veronique de Rugy argue in favor of the “19 Percent Solution” to our fiscal mess. That is, they advocate limiting federal spending to 19 percent of GDP. That figure happens to coincide with the fairly steady federal tax haul of about 19 percent, which has held for decades no matter what the pols in office did regarding tax rates.

Well, this is all right as a starting point. It’s like a terribly obese person setting as an initial goal fitting into last year’s outgrown pants. It should not be the long-run goal, however, because federal spending of 19 percent (the politicians will regard that as their entitlement) still means enormous waste of resources — subsidies for all manner of things politicians like, government programs that ought to be left to voluntary action, employees who, as the Declaration of Independence said of British colonial officials, “harass the people and eat out their substance.”

Our long-run goal should not be to limit federal spending to 19 percent of GDP, but to limit it to just those few functions the government should perform under the Constitution.