Cato Unbound now has up the second article on the libertarian Democrat discussion. The DLC's Bruce Reed does a rather honest job of explaining why the Democratic Party isn't about to abolition government, but pragmatic libertarians should vote for the Democratic Party if they want smaller government, limited government, and an end to corporate welfare.

Forget the sweet nothings that Republicans have whispered in your ears for decades. The last 15 years have given us a perfect laboratory experiment to measure actual results. Bill Clinton produced the first balanced budget and the first surpluses in 30 years. He cut the size of the federal workforce by 400,000, and imposed a level of spending restraint the federal government hasn’t seen before or since. As Cato bravely pointed out, George Bush did just the opposite, squandering surpluses, abandoning all restraint, and presiding over the sharpest increase in domestic spending since LBJ.

If the record isn’t enough, look at our agendas. Going forward, Democrats are the ones insisting on restoring annual spending caps and pay-as-you-go-rules to put the teeth back in fiscal discipline. The Bush White House and congressional Republicans continue to oppose it, and claim deficits don’t matter. We now have a quarter century of evidence to prove that Republican tax cuts will never shrink the size of government—on the contrary, they just delay the day of reckoning, and add interest. Republicans aren’t starving the beast; with their steady diet of annual tax “cuts,” they’ve created a bigger, hungrier beast that eats more and makes government fatter. Democrats, on the other hand, have learned that prudence is a prerequisite for progressivism.

I haven't seen much reaction to the article yet, I think it was put out today. So far, I feel like Reed was less offensive than I thought he'd be.