It's a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad time to be the world's oldest living democratic republic. Americans are down on their government, and -- like a Sitka spruce on Sarah Palin's property -- no branch is safe. The administration is slumping in the polls, the Supreme Court is taking heat for its highest-profile decisions, and Congress' approval rating is hovering near twenty-two percent, which, to put it in perspective, is fully ten points less than the proportion of games the Baltimore Orioles win.
The country is losing patience with a fiscal strategy that, like all fiscal strategies, has proven incapable of instant gratification -- though the glacial pendulum of the economy is at last on a positive trajectory, it has so far seemed to lack the velocity necessary to give the appearance of a vigorous swing. Progressives sympathetic to ambitious legislative initiatives are angry at conservatives for successfully watering down health care and financial reform, and conservatives who detest such programs are angry at progressives for successfully voting them through at all.
Whatever animosity the left and right harbor towards each other, however, is no match for the loathing the citizenry at large feels towards that dreaded, sprawling, faceless, corrupt beast -- an entity so repulsive that it literally gushes oil and routinely leads otherwise-sane gold prospectors to don tri-corner hats -- the federal government.
Anti-governance as an American political philosophy was, appropriately enough, best summarized by its patron saint. In his first inaugural address in 1981, President Reagan told our nation that "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem," and in doing so lent credence to an easy vilification that would become conservatism's shiniest and most durable lodestar for the next thirty years -- from Grover Norquist ("I don't want to abolish government... I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub") to the Tea Party's 'Don't Tread On Me' revival circus.
It's not just Republicans who abhor "big" government, either; moderate politicians from both parties can regularly be heard decrying the concept, and even liberals for whom a New New Deal would mean the best Christmas ever shy away from using the 'b'-word to describe the government they desire (in much the same way that they shy away from using the word "liberal" to describe themselves, or the way that they shy away from... everything). So toxic is the federal government these days that the House Minority Leader's master strategy for becoming Speaker rests on a Gandalfian plan to effectively halt all new regulations by putting them to a congressional vote (the almost-cleverly titled REINS Act). It's not difficult to read the political climate of 2010: government is bad.
Here's the thing, though; here is the deepest secret nobody knows, the root of the root and the bud of the bud: government is good. Government is good. It's how we bring our heads together to solve the problems we can't solve alone; it's how we let our voices and opinions be heard; it's how we protect those among us who need our protection; it's how we keep our country free from tyranny and injustice.
Ronald Reagan knew that: he expanded federal programs (including social security), signed the largest tax increase in American history, supported gun control legislation, and tripled the federal deficit. Barack Obama knows it too -- see the aforementioned legislative royal rumbles of the past eighteen months. If the private sector is the engine of our economy, government is the road that makes it safe to drive. We know what happens when cars go off the road.
Don't get me wrong: inefficient government, big or small, is not good. Reckless spending is just as damaging as reckless not-spending, and the problems imposed by bloated deficits are serious indeed. There are, to be sure, large federal programs that are undoubtedly unwieldy, oversaturated, or unwise. But those who demonize the institution of government as inherently opposed to the people -- those who see regulations and spending programs as shackles that serve only to hinder corporate and personal wealth and autonomy -- forget the truths laid down by our Founders.
Government is not against the people: it is the people. The laws they make are not shackles: they are "those wise restraints that make men free." The Rand-y specter (be it Ayn or Paul) of an inhuman bureaucratic monolith in a gray trench coat coming for your job, your wallet, your independence: it's just that -- a specter. It's us, coming to us, saying that for our country to prosper together we need to build a road, to build a dam, to raise an army, to make sure that our elderly can afford to be taken care of, to make sure that our businesses play by the rules, to make sure that we can breathe the clean air, get Americans back to work, lessen our dependence on the resources of other nations. It's us.
Taxation without representation is abject tyranny. Contemplating armed revolt against the government at a time when tax burdens are at their lowest point in more than sixty years is abject stupidity. I'm all for voters of all political stripes enthusiastically ridding the beltway of politicians whom they feel are being irresponsible with our money, but let's be clear that the very notion of government spending is not irresponsible in and of itself. We all want a federal government that is sleek and unobtrusive -- even the liberal-est of the liberals. But big problems call for big solutions, and, yes, sometimes that means an American government big enough to rise to the challenges we now face together.
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It is not really the size of Govt that people are screaming about. It is the ownership of Govt by the Few, and the refusal of those IN Govt to do the Work of the People or the Will of the People or anything for any of the People, other than themselves and their rich masters. It is the FAILURE of Govt, this Govt, the last Govt, to do its job.
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I agree that this is supposed to be the way of it.
As memorialized in our Declaration of Independence, ".. to secure these rights [Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness], Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,..."
Without some form of government, individual liberties are protected from would-be infringers only by those whose can protect themselves. However, government is not above the possibility of being such an infringer itself. To continue the quote above, "... — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government... "
As Jefferson points out here, and echoes in other writings, government will not always be good. In fact, "[t]he natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."
At some point any government may cease to be by the people and constant vigilence is required to ensure it does not become so, for once liberty is lost it is not easily regained.
Well intentioned big government has often gone woefully awry. Health care (including the consequences of private insurance) is an excellent example of good intentions and bad results. Payments by third parties to doctors and hospitals have caused prices to skyrocket. When the lion's share of cost is paid by a third party, then the person receiving care has absolutely no incentive to control costs. If we accepted substantial deductibles (including Medicare and Medicaid), people would shop around, and doctor's and hospital's prices and wages would fall. Most auto mechanis have their prices for generic services (oil changes, brake replacement, etc.) posted in plain sight. Shouldn't doctors and hospitals be required to do the same thing?
Private home purchases promoted through the auspices of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae without adequate vetting of buyers have been a significant contributor to the current economic collapse.
Like medicine, college tuition has ballooned because of government grants and loans. These loans ofter saddle the unsuspecting students with a lifetime of debt.
Dreaming again, aren't I?
But, what's been proven true is Beard's, 'An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution'. He states, "Inasmuch as the primary objective of a government, beyond mere repression of physical violence, is the making of rules which determine the property relations of members of society, the dominant classes whose rights are thus to be determined must perforce obtain from the government such rules as are consonant with the larger interests necessary to the continuance of the economic processes, or they must themselves control the organs of government."
The objectives haven't changed and that is the problem with our government, regardless of size.
The majority of those we call "The Founders" were men of wealth who needed protective tariffs, land owners who needed protection as we killed Native Americans to steal their land, slave owners who needed protection from slave rebellions and bond holders who wanted tax money to pay off those bonds. The people, slaves and lower classes, weren't represented.
Since wealthy American Colonials put themselves in charge we have been taxed to transfer money or land owned by 'the people' to them, the American ruling class, and that is still what is happening. They used propaganda to manipulate the lower classes into fighting their rebellion, then refused to pay most of the soldiers who fought, renigged on other promises of compensation and when the soldiers couldn't pay their taxes they seized the property for themselves.
When a large amount of capital is held to cover the debt, there is a lost opportunity, since that money could be used for other non government investments. This creates a crowding out effect for private enterprises. As a result, private businesses will find it harder to borrow and will be required to hold larger portions of cash to cover business operations.
If you look at current balance sheets, businesses are holding cash and credit has remained tight for well over two years while Federal debt has sky rocketed. It may not be as cut and dry as I have stated here but there is a strong link between the two.
I really appreciated this statement in your well written article. the problem is, if large and small government are both inefficient, increasing the size merely increases the gross amount of inefficiency.
I was reading something recently (no citation) where one of the stimulus programs had the back of the hand analysis done to it. Simply by taking the cost of the program and dividing it by the number of jobs created. In this case it $500,000 / job.
I understand that is a simplistic case, however i think by framing this example and many others that exist with the idea that these expenditures are done with borrowed money, should make us think twice before making a small inefficiency a large on.