Smart government is better than
small government.
I
suppose the sequestration of the federal budget isn’t as dumb as deliberately
going over the fiscal cliff, but it’s plenty dumb. Just as the economy was
showing signs of climbing out of the hole it’s been in for four years, along
come the Republicans to stomp on its fingers.
The best you can say is that it won’t be as quick a demise as a trip over the cliff — it’s more like waterboarding. Some people will hardly notice it at first — the exceptions being the poor, the young, the sick, and furloughed government workers — but it will eventually send unemployment back up and tax revenue down.
And,
curiously enough, it will do virtually nothing to address our long-term budget
deficit. And that’s what all of this brouhaha is supposed to be about.
The
good news is that Mitt Romney will now be able to afford Muzak for his car
elevator.
Which
apparently pleases Republicans just fine. So long as taxes don’t go up,
everything is good.
Conservatives
in general, and Republicans in particular, worship at the altar of small
government. A government that governs least governs best, they say. Oh, and
government isn’t the solution, it’s part of the problem. They’re wrong.
We
are a large, wealthy country, home to scores of giant multinational
corporations. We live in a global economy. What makes you think we can get by
with a small government?
Big
government, far from being a terrible thing, is a necessity if we’re to compete
in the global marketplace and take care of our responsibilities at home.
Without
big government, who will protect the public from the rapacious instincts of
capitalistic forces? Who will work to make our air clean, our water pure, and
our drugs safe? Who will try to see that the average working stiff gets a fair
shake?
I’ll
save you the trouble of trying to think of an answer — it’s nobody.
It’s
not as though we haven’t tried small government laissez-faire capitalism
before. The industrial revolution of the 19th century was the very model for
it. Companies did pretty much as they pleased.
The
result: company towns that enforced a form of serfdom on their workers, child
labor, open and sometimes brutal discrimination against women, blacks, and
other ethnic minorities. We had fraudulently promoted unsafe drug supplies,
unchecked pollution, and hellish working conditions in mines and factories —
all in the name of making a buck for the privileged few.
That’s
your small government.
We
slowly crawled out from under that oppressive system through government action
fueled by the progressive movement of the early 20th century, the New Deal of
the 1930s, and many vibrant social movements.
And
now Republicans want to take us back to that Hobbesian, all-against-all
society? Count me out.
You’ll
notice that I’m blaming Republicans exclusively for this mess we’re in. That’s
because it’s all their fault.
There
are those who claim that Republicans and Democrats share equal blame, or that
President Barack Obama has refused to compromise. Don’t believe it.
Obama
wore out two sets of trousers during his first term going on his knees to
Congress and pleading for cooperation. He got none.
Republicans
are still playing that game. They think they can solve our deficit problems by
cutting government alone. They can’t. That’s the path Europe has taken.
How’s
that working out for them anyway?
I
don’t want to sound as though big government is the answer to every problem or
that it’s an unadulterated good. It’s not. It too can be oppressive, wasteful,
and stupid. You have to watch it like a hawk.
But
the solution to bad government isn’t small government. It’s smart government.
OtherWords columnist Donald Kaul lives in Ann
Arbor, Michigan. OtherWords.org
