Every time I hear about how big government is, I think about how inclusive it is. Civil Rights came down from big government, education for special needs and bilingual students came down from big government, unemployment compensation for citizens squeezed out of work came from big government. What role did private enterprise or the states play in rescuing these deserving citizens? Who was willing to address these needs but big government?
The federal government has become scapegoat for all that we lack, from employment to our choice of doctors. But is it the regulations that make voters chafe or is it the inclusion of less deserving people who don’t resemble us, the ones who speak differently, who could not afford college, who depend on Food Stamps to feed their families, who worship other gods, or who lack the proper identification to vote? The deserving poor have become a swelling number. The only way to shrink government is to exclude their benefits, to raise the qualifications to vote, to attend college or to receive food rations.
Big government is big because it serves so many. Sure, it is bloated and bureaucratic, and most legislators can agree to starve the bureaucracy. But the chronic bloat can only be shrunk by starving those who benefit, the others, the less deserving.
When the right wing declares we can not afford big government, the subtext is we can not afford to care for the others. When Governor Romney exhorts students to borrow from their parents to pay for college, is he thinking of parents who have no assets beyond the house they live in? When Senator Ryan says we will pay for our health care with smaller allocations called “vouchers,” is he writing off the chronically ill, whose care burdens the healthy ones? When the Tea Party legislators voted to end unemployment compensation twice in the last three years, were they thinking of fellow citizens who lived in another part of town and attended a different church?
The enemies of big government content themselves by believing that all who deserve these services will receive them, while the others will hopefully not attend their churches or schools or, when desperation prevails, will be locked away from their society. They are the undeserving, the illegals, the profane, the illiterate, the slum-dwellers. We should not care for the others, the ones who drain off benefits our children should have.
No one says these things out loud in an election year, and if they are so impolitic, they will be soundly chastised like Representative Todd Akin, who articulated indiscreetly what the Republican platform had already implied. But really what is the subtext of shrinking government, when we get past the consensual cutting? It is preserving our government, so we are insulated from your needs.
The message is shrouded in fiscal policy, in preserving tax cuts, in shrinking the deficit, in liberating the entrepreneur, but the real message is: make sure there’s enough for me and my kind. “The rest of you are on your own,” as President Obama is fond of remarking ironically.
This week, watch how many ways the right wing can scramble this message, so it sounds like responsible planning and freedom from regulation. Then ask yourself: who is included and who excluded from these plans? Who are judged deserving and who deemed acceptable losses?