“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” were the prophetic words of Spanish philosopher George Santayana in his 1905 paper “Reason in Common Sense.” True to his point, our republic is repeating mistakes and today’s message revolves around that great American symbol of our frontier, the outhouse. (Stick with me. This could get a little wild, but I will tie it together at the end.)

In 1933 America’s unemployment hit 24.9% and President Roosevelt launched the Work Project Administration (WPA) as part of his New Deal. This was Roosevelt’s stimulus plan; the predecessor to Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Their premier project was the government designed WPA outhouse, and the economy of the free world hinged on the success of this American crapper.

Once customers paid $17 for materials, the WPA constructed each outhouse with “free labor”. (If you consider the government pulling tax dollars from your neighbor’s wallet to build you an outhouse as being “free”.) Today such redistributions of wealth are proposed to give us “free” healthcare. Thousands of new WPA privies were built across rural America and I am one of the few politicians with sufficient first hand experience to say their outhouses were the Cadillac of crappers.

The Griffith Sheep Camp, in the Dayton Gulch drainage of the Big Horn Mountains, had a WPA outhouse. It had all the deluxe-model amenities like concrete floor, vent pipe, and dual seats. (Dual seats are not for use by two participants at the same time. No two normal cowboys, or sheepherders, will ever simultaneously share a two-holer; such behavior is only seen in women and I haven’t the column space to address that complicated social phenomenon…actually I am sorry I mentioned it at all.) Dual seats allow you to alternate sides so Mother Nature can compost the size of your deposits. This extends your sanitary facility’s lifespan before necessitating a new hole, because relocating an outhouse is not as easy or romantic as it sounds.

We had a non-WPA designed outhouse at our Lake Creek Cow Camp. I remember using it a week after my brother, Dana, had slid it over a new pit. He was terribly ambitious and the new hole was a good six feet deep. I sat there pondering the magnificence of the new privy when it dawned on me “this must be what business consultants are referring to when they stress the importance of ‘long-range planning’; dig a deep hole and you won’t have to move your crapper so often.”

Since 1933, enlightened politicians slowly replaced the composting WPA outhouses with the modern, concrete vault type. These new style facilities are scattered across public lands and rather than composting, their effluent is pumped and trucked to municipal sanitation facilities. The public is told this is for environmental reasons but actually it is preferred because it is more expensive. Anything that increases government’s operational budget increases said department’s power and since money is “free”…bigger and more expensive is always better. Thus, government grows.

Figuratively speaking, our government outhouse is full and we need to either dig a new pit or pump the vault. Unfortunately, we are broke. Montana’s Governor Schweitzer, a self-proclaimed fiscal conservative, has increased state spending by 48% during his tenure. In response to our financial woes he requested department heads immediately trim 5% from their budgets. This is a nice gesture but the miniscule size renders it meaningless. It is the equivalent of scooping two shovel’s worth from the Kerns outhouse prior to a family reunion. Full is full and broke is broke.

There are huge state budget cuts looming and left-leaning, big government politicians will crucify us conservatives for demanding fiscal responsibility. To avert this, department heads will cut items and programs that inconvenience the greatest number of voters, such as locking the door of every rest-stop or outhouse on public land. The Forest Service utilized this technique masterfully during the proposed budget cuts of the Reagan years. There is nothing like running from locked outhouse to locked outhouse carrying a four-year-old with a full colon, to convince voters of the need to elect tax-and-spenders. Budget items like Montana’s Department of Natural Resources purchasing an extravagant fleet of expensive helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, will not be cut short by whiny taxpayers falling on hard times. Instead, they lock the outhouse.