The defining political issue of 2012 won't be the government's size. It will be who government is for.
Americans have never much liked government. After all, the nation was conceived in a revolution against government.
But the surge of cynicism now engulfing America isn't about government's size. It's the growing perception that government isn't working for average people. It's for big business, Wall Street, and the very rich instead.
In a recent Pew Foundation poll, 77 percent of respondents said too much power is in the hands of a few rich people and corporations.
That's understandable. To take a few examples:
-- Wall Street got bailed out but homeowners caught in the fierce downdraft caused by the Street's excesses have got almost nothing.
-- Big agribusiness continues to rake in hundreds of billions in price supports and ethanol subsidies. Big pharma gets extended patent protection that drives up everyone's drug prices. Big oil gets its own federal subsidy. But small businesses on the Main Streets of America are barely making it.
-- American Airlines uses bankruptcy to ward off debtors and renegotiate labor contracts. Donald Trump's businesses go bankrupt without impinging on Trump's own personal fortune. But the law won't allow you to use personal bankruptcy to renegotiate your home mortgage.
-- If you run a giant bank that defrauds millions of small investors of their life savings, the bank might pay a small fine but you won't go to prison. Not a single top Wall Street executive has been prosecuted for Wall Street's mega-fraud. But if you sell an ounce of marijuana you could be put away for a long time.
Not a day goes by without Republicans decrying the budget deficit. But the biggest single reason for the yawning deficit is big money's corruption of Washington. And it's not just corporate welfare.
One of the deficit's biggest drivers -- Medicare -- would be lower if Medicare could use its bargaining leverage to get drug companies to reduce their prices. Why hasn't it happened? Big Pharma won't allow it.
Medicare's administrative costs are only 3 percent, far below the 10 percent average administrative costs of private insurers. So why not tame rising healthcare costs for all Americans by allowing any family to opt in? That was the idea behind the "public option." Health insurers stopped it in its tracks.
The other big budgetary expense is national defense. America spends more on our military than do China, Russia, Britain, France, Japan, and Germany combined. The basic defense budget (the portion unrelated to the costs of fighting wars) keeps growing, now about 25 percent higher than it was a decade ago, adjusted for inflation.
That's because defense contractors have cultivated sponsors on Capitol Hill and located their plants and facilities in politically important congressional districts.
So we keep spending billions on Cold War weapons systems like nuclear attack submarines, aircraft carriers, and manned combat fighters that pump up the bottom lines of Bechtel, Martin-Marietta, and their ilk, but have nothing to do with 21st-century combat.
Declining tax receipts are also driving the deficit. That's partly because most Americans have less income to tax these days.
Yet the richest Americans are taking home a bigger share of total income than at any time since the 1920s. Their tax payments are down because the Bush tax cuts reduced their top rates to the lowest level in more than half a century, and cut capital gains taxes to 15 percent.
Congress hasn't even closed a loophole that allows mutual-fund and private-equity managers to treat their incomes as capital gains.
So the 400 richest Americans, whose total wealth exceeds the combined wealth of the bottom 150 million Americans put together, pay an average of 17 percent of their income in taxes. That's lower than the tax rates of most day laborers and child-care workers.
Meanwhile, Social Security payroll taxes continue to climb as a share of total tax revenues. Yet the payroll tax is regressive, applying only to yearly income under $106,800.
And the share of revenues coming from corporations has been dropping. The biggest, like GE, find ways to pay no federal taxes at all. Many shelter their income abroad, and every few years Congress grants them a tax amnesty to bring the money home.
**
Get it? "Big government" isn't the problem. The problem is big money is taking over government.
Government is doing less of the things most of us want it to do -- providing good public schools and affordable access to college, improving our roads and bridges and water systems, and maintaining safety nets to catch average people who fall -- and more of the things big corporations, Wall Street, and the wealthy want it to do.
Some conservatives argue we wouldn't have to worry about big money taking over government if we had a smaller government to begin with.
Here's what Congressman Paul Ryan told me Sunday morning when we were debating all this on ABC's This Week:
If the power and money are going to be here in Washington, that's where the influence is going to go ... that's where the powerful are going to go to influence it.
Ryan has it upside down. A smaller government that's still dominated by money would continue to do the bidding of Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry, oil companies, big agribusiness, big insurance, military contractors, and rich individuals.
It just wouldn't do anything else.
If we want to get our democracy back we've got to get big money out of politics.
We need real campaign finance reform.
And a constitutional amendment reversing the Supreme Court's bizarre rulings that under the First Amendment money is speech and corporations are people.
Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.
Follow Robert Reich on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RBReich
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If you don't want the government you don't like to abuse the power you'd like to give to the government you do like, then don't give that power to any government.
If the government was relatively impotent, then it would have little to offer, and power brokers wouldn't throw money at it. By concentrating power in the federal government, we've created a power honeypot.
Campaign reform is only part of the problem. Being a member of congress is an important and difficult job. They should be paid accordingly. And when they leave office they should not be allowed to have any influence in politics whatsoever. No consulting jobs (i.e. lobbying) or any other job where they can wield political influence. Let's pay them say 5 million a year with a million a year pension. That will allow them to become wealthy while still doing what is best for the country, not some special interest group or company. I can't think of a better way to bring common sense to the forefront of politics instead of money.
"The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity.
It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, and more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the Bankers in the rear.
Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe.. corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money powers of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed."
~Abraham Lincoln
I am concerned that the remainder of this decade will bring unprecedented destructions in humanity that will dwarf the old Cold War era fears.
It occurred to me that we could just withhold our taxes en masse and let all the big money people play in the sandbox with their privately owned government and feel all important and lofty. Meanwhile, We, The People could all take our money and start a new government, with a new capital city, with a new and fairer tax structure and financial system, etc. Form a parallel country, as it were, occupying the same space as the mess we have now, to make the existing one irrelevant -- a rump government (pun intended) which will shortly go out of business, having died from neglect. Occupy America, indeed.
Yeah, it's a pipe dream, but wouldn't it be great to make a fresh start? I fear what we have is corrupted beyond all cure.
Why all the redistricting and gerrymandering? To secure principalities of influence so politicians can stack the deck. For many, federal government has become the HR department for major corporations.
Imagine if there was one representative and one senator for every 50,000 people; and the present salaries of legislators were spread among them? They wouldn't "meet" under the dome, they would meet virtually. It would make representatives more accessible to constituents, end lobbying and corporate purchase (there would be too many), and put an end to 11th Hour vote manipulation. It would also open up the party system to more groups.
Why do less populous regions have the same representation densely populated areas? Surely we can figure out something better: one citizen, one vote, equal representation. Get rid of the present system of the millionaire's club of influence.
How do we pay for this? Pool the present salaries and divvy it up. Offer Medicare For All -- whatever legislators do to that system, they do to themselves and their families.
Here is the answer to Robert's problem: Politicans in a Democracy must run for office. This costs money. They get donations by supporting legislative regulations favoring their donors. Their most generous donors get the most favored treatment. Therefore the richest doners take over government.
Is this so difficult to understand? Or should we have more regulations that regulate the regulators?
1) reverse Citizen's United
2) term limits for Congress
3) public financing of campaigns
These would be a start to fixing the problem.
1) $2 trillion - Could have been saved if defense budget had been about 1/3 less than it was (wars not included). We and our allies already have 80% of the world’s defense budget. Military defense contractors paid politicians for this benefit.
2) $4 trillion – two useless wars. Military defense contractors paid politicians for this benefit
3) $6 trillion – cumulative trade deficit for last 10 years. U.S. based multinationals paid politicians to allow them to offshore jobs and then import products back here with no tariffs.
4) $2 trillion – tax revenue lost by top 1% paying 20% instead of 35%. $15 trillion in “earnings” over 10 years x 15%. Some in the top 0.1% paid politicians for this benefit – we lose again.
5) $2 trillion – a total guess (probably low) of tax revenue lost due to top 300 corporations paying 18% (not a guess) instead of 35%, corporate taxpayer subsidies, tax “holidays”, etc. Corporations paid politicians for this benefit – we lose again.
6) $2 trillion – interest paid on the above $16 trillion debt over 10 years.
The above total is about $18 trillion. I’m sure I’ve left out a lot. What’s our total debt, $15 trillion?
My husband and I are sledding down the rocks right now - we are seniors and hoping for legalization for safe and peaceful human euthanasia so that we can decide when we need to go. That way, we don't need to depend on anyone to help us, sustain us, or prevent us from helping to solve the problems overwhelming our younger generations by making ourselves scarce if we want to.
I think it's due to social engineering over the last 50 years and the next wave will be the convenient and necessary legalization of human euthanasia where seniors, like myself, can choose our death date and exit gracefully and painlessly without much cost, leaving this mess that is, sadly, attributed to my generation by younger, struggling generations who may be improved by smaller numbers of available workers with increased leverage.
After all, someone has to do the heavy lifting and it isn't the wealthy - individuals and corporations, (now considered individuals thanks to Citizens United), who are going to do it.
Hey! what can I say, I'm Irish. I'd like to get drunk at my own wake too. :o)
I have worked in health care and know that providers basically increase the amount of morphine in the system IV style for those terminal anyway until they basically suffocate to death. Most die oblivious to pain but absent from family surrounding them and it's a sad lonely parting without their actual consent.
We treat our pets with more dignity here.
The individuals you cite want "life" rights for all - but, at least in this country, we are not taking care of either the impoverished. Babies forced into life by law and those who want to give up their lives voluntarily but can't because of the law - who is making the decisions there? Also - who is going to enforce these laws?
It's really exhausting ..... all of it.
- David Rockefeller, Memoirs, page 405