The difference is that Democrats keep succeeding in enacting strangling regulation, and Republicans keep failing to "kneecap" social programs.

What major social program has seen funding cut since the 1970s? The percentage of the economy that goes to means-tested welfare has almost doubled from 1970 to today: https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/inline-images/B.... The only blip was right after the 2008 recession, but spending has mostly recovered since that time.

Now, I support welfare spending. (I'd like it better if we focused more on cash transfers to the poor, though.) But the notion that any major social program has ever been "kneecapped" is a myth.

Perhaps not a kneecapping, but Planned Parenthood recently lost a sizeable chunk of its federal funding thanks to a domestic variant of the global gag rule[1].

The 2018 omnibus budget contained a variety of funding cuts for social programs. A good example of a dramatic reduction is the 21st CCLC (a funding stream for afterschool programs) being eliminated entirely, to the tune of $1.2 billion USD[2]. That was part of a larger >10% cut to education programs as a whole, which I would consider significant.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/health/planned-parenthood...

[2]: https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget18/budget-fa...

Sure, programs get cut or funded based on various political considerations, and there might be cuts some years and growth other years. And there is a deliberate attempt to stymie provision of abortion services. That's a fair point.

But overall, education spending consistently goes up over time: https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/index.html#ch...

> On a per-pupil basis and adjusted for inflation, public school funding increased: 24 percent from 1991-92 through 2001-02 (the last year for which such data are available); 19 percent from 1996-97 through 2001-02; and 10 percent from 1998-99 through 2001-02.

Maybe this is a nitpick, but: it can be both true that per-pupil spending goes up and that spending on social programs via the DOEd goes down.

A concrete example: the current DOEd has increased funding of both charter and private schools. We can go back and forth on whether elements of that constitute social programs, but I think the point about it not being tied to the larger funding trend stands.

That’s true in principle, but it’s not a significant factor in the aggregate. Almost all US social programs are government-administered. To your example, we are behind Western Europe in the area of school choice: https://www.edchoice.org/engage/faqs/how-does-school-choice-...

Similar stories about in other areas. In Europe it is common for private companies to operate transit systems. (Stockholm’s subway is operated by the same company that operates Hong Kong’s.) In the US, nearly every large transit system is operated by government workers on the government payroll.

Oh? Obamacare is the recent, big one that comes to mind. The crazy thing is that the "charitable" parts were part of it back in 1991, when it was considered a right-wing proposal, but the Overton window moved so far to the right that today's right wing called them socialism and kicked them out the door.

Goverment funding has been chopped for state schools, housing projects, the list goes on. The right kills social programs on a practically daily basis. Not to mention shifting the tax burden away from the upper class and towards the middle class. If your taxes have been going up over the last 30 years, it's because you aren't upper class.

And yeah, social spending has increased ever since we shipped all the jobs to China. Democrats rationalized it by promising to use the new revenue on social programs; Republicans put a stop to that straight away. The American middle class got double-teamed. Privatize the gains, socialize the losses!