By Robert Reich
For years, conservatives warned that
liberals were “defining deviancy downward.” They said that by tolerating bad
social behavior, liberals in effect lowered what was deemed acceptable behavior
overall – allowing social norms to decline.
There was never a lot of evidence
for that view, but there’s little question that Donald Trump is actively
defining deviancy downward for the nation as a whole – whether it’s by lying,
denigrating basic democratic values, celebrating tyrants around the world,
using his office to build his family wealth, or stopping at nothing to win the
presidency.
Now comes his budget. Budgets are
overall expressions of values and priorities. Trump’s budget is cruel and
deviant.
He proposes to cut federal spending
by more than $3.6 trillion over the next decade, much of it
for programs that help the poor (Medicaid, food stamps, Social Security
disability, and health insurance for poor children) – in order to finance a
huge military buildup and tax cuts for corporations and the rich.
Trump’s budget won’t get through
Congress, but it defines deviancy downward in 3 respects:
1. It imposes huge burdens on people who already are hurting. Not just the very poor, but also the working class. In fact, among the biggest losers would be people who voted for Trump – whites in rural and poor areas of the country who depend on Medicaid, food stamps, and Social Security disability.
Yet will they know that Trump is
willing to sell them out to the rich and corporate interests, or will they fall
for the right-wing Republican propaganda (amplified by Fox News and yell radio)
that the budget is designed to help people take more responsibility for
themselves?
2. It sets a new low bar for
congressional and public debate over social insurance in America, and of government’s
role – far lower than anything proposed by Ronald Reagan or George W.
Bush.
It pushes the idea that each of us
is and should be on our own, rather than that we are part of a society that
benefits from social insurance – spreading the risks and costs of adversity
that could hit any one of us.
As White House OMB director Mick
Mulvaney absurdly put it, the government should show “compassion” for
low-income Americans but it should “also…have compassion for folks who are
paying [for] it.” That illogic eliminates the justification for social
insurance altogether.
The budget thereby frames the debate
over Trumpcare, for example, as “why should I pay for her pre-existing
health problem if I’m healthy?”
3. Finally, the budget
eviscerates the notion that an important aspect of patriotism involves
sacrificing for the common good – paying for public services you won’t
use but will be used by others and will thereby help the nation as a whole,
such as schools, roads, clean air, and health care.
Trump’s budget celebrates a cruel
and virulent form of individualism – much like Trump himself.
Until Trump, this
view of America was considered deviant. But Trump is defining deviancy
downward.
We are a better nation than this.
ROBERT
B. REICH is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of
California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing
Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for
which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries
of the twentieth century. He has written fourteen books, including the best
sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and "Beyond
Outrage," and, his most recent, "Saving Capitalism." He is also
a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause,
a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the
award-winning documentary, INEQUALITY FOR ALL.