British conservative Toby Young writes:
For British conservatives, the US debt deal is a thing of beauty. Under the terms of the deal, the federal government will cut spending by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years and there won’t be any corresponding increase in taxation. That is to say, the American Government has agreed to tackle its deficit by spending cuts alone....
Even if the Tory Party had won an overall majority at the last election, it’s hard to imagine it adopting such a bold fiscal policy. Yet the American Government is on the verge of adopting this plan in spite of the fact that the Democrats control the Senate and the White House....
For believers in redistributive taxation and egalitarian social programmes...Obama was the last great hope....
Yet in spite of sweeping to power in 2008 and ensuring the Democrats won in both the House and the Senate, Obama has proved unable to sustain that coalition. Last night’s debt deal represents the moment when he acknowledged that trying to maintain the levels of public spending required to fund ambitious welfare programmes is political suicide....
What the Left hasn’t grasped – and what Obama has – is that for the foreseeable future no political candidate or party will be able to increase public spending and win re-election. Socialist welfare programmes have become politically toxic. A sea change has taken place within the West’s most developed countries and last night’s debt deal is a reflection of that.
It would be nice to be able to dismiss that as little more than gloating meant to demoralize progressives.
But when people like Jared Bernstein are saying pretty much the same thing (without the gloating), you have to take it more seriously.
I disagree that better negotiating skills would have made a big difference. The problem goes much deeper....
But before you go blaming the grown-ups, and I totally agree they're terrible negotiators, understand that the grown-ups had virtually no-one behind them....
If too many Americans don't believe in or understand what government does to help them, to offset recessions, to protect their security in retirement and in hard times, to maintain the infrastructure, to provide educational opportunities and health care decent enough to offset the disadvantages so many are born with...if those functions are unknown, underfunded, and/or carried out poorly, why should they care about how much this deal or the next one cuts?
Those of us who do care about the above will not defeat those who strive to get rid of it all by becoming better tacticians. We will only find success when a majority of Americans agrees with us that government is something worth fighting for.
Mcjoan says this is merely a matter of a vicious circle, with lack of government revenues leading to fewer and poorer government services, which leads to Americans being indifferent when they are cut or defunded further.
But the problem is even more profound than that.
As Robert Reich points out, the most important government services that people rely on every day are so woven into the thread of daily life that they're not visible even to those who use them every day.
A recent paper by Cornell political scientist Suzanne Mettler surveyed how many recipients of government benefits don’t really believe they have received any benefits. She found that over 44 percent of Social Security recipients say they “have not used a government social program.” More than half of families receiving government-backed student loans said the same thing, as did 60 percent of those who get the home mortgage interest deduction, 43 percent of unemployment insurance beneficiaries, and almost 30 percent of recipients of Social Security Disability.
Here are more of her findings:
Percentage of program beneficiaries who report that they “have not used a government social program”
529 or Coverdell |
64.3 |
Home Mortgage Interest Deduction |
60.0 |
Hope or Lifetime Learning Tax Credit |
59.6 |
Student Loans |
53.3 |
Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit |
51.7 |
Earned Income Tax Credit |
47.1 |
Social Security—Retirement & Survivors |
44.1 |
Pell Grants |
43.1 |
Unemployment Insurance |
43.0 |
Veterans Benefits (other than G.I. Bill) |
41.7 |
G.I. Bill |
40.3 |
Medicare |
39.8 |
Head Start |
37.2 |
Social Security Disability |
28.7 |
SSI—Supplemental Security Income |
28.2 |
Medicaid |
27.8 |
Welfare/Public Assistance |
27.4 |
Government Subsidized Housing |
27.4 |
Food Stamps |
25.4 |
So even if government does do a good job helping people with programs like these, it's STILL not getting proper credit for what it does.
This is a huge problem.
Rep. Jim McDermott had the right idea on how to fix this when he pushed for a "taxpayer's receipt" back in the spring:
Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., is among a band of people from inside and outside Congress who believe Americans should see an itemized receipt for their federal purchases. As early as this week, the Seattle Democrat plans to resurrect his bill to require the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to issue a detailed annual spending breakdown for each taxpayer....
McDermott's taxpayer receipt would expand on the simple pie chart now included in the 1040 tax form showing how much money the government takes in and where it all goes.
For 2009, the chart shows revenue from payroll, individual, corporate and other taxes covered 60 percent of federal spending; the rest is red ink.
The IRS breaks down spending in broad categories. Social Security and Medicare take up one-third of expenditures. Defense and veterans programs account for 22 percent, with roughly the same amount going to Medicaid and food stamps.
McDermott's proposal would further break down the categories to two dozen, including salaries and benefits for members of Congress. Military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan also would be listed as separate spending items.
The receipts would calculate how much of each taxpayer's money was spent on each category.
Third Way, the D.C. think tank, estimates it would cost $15 million a year to provide the receipts to taxpayers who mail in their returns. Seventy percent of households file electronically, and costs to generate receipts for them would be minimal.
An aid like that could help educate a lot of people, though not everyone of course. Also of course, the bill doesn't seem to have gone anywhere.
The WH has provided an online tool to do something similar. Though what's needed here is information that's sent to everyone, and not just provided to those who choose to seek it out at the WH website.
So, to sum up, all this suggests a starting point for pushing back on the conservative tide and promoting progressive ideas: people need to be better informed about what government is already doing for them that they value.
This is really obvious. If people are getting something of value, and they know they're getting something of value, all the foul lies and rantings spewing from the likes of Limbaugh and Hannity and Fox News wouldn't make a dent.
For example, Canadians get affordable universal health care. Though the right wing in Canada does their best to lie and spread dissatisfaction about it, the vast majority of Canadians would let politicians defund or dismantle their health care system only over their cold dead bodies.
In other words, they understand that they're getting something valuable (free health care when they go to the doctor) and they understand where it comes from (the government, paid for by their progressive system of taxation).
Americans, on the other hand, have been told by the propaganda of the right wing that Social Security and Medicare won't be there for them by the time they're eligible. And many don't even recognize that programs like SS and Medicare are government programs. In the immortal words of that Tea Partier, "Keep your government hands off my Medicare!"
Between that kind of ignorance, and the undermining of confidence in programs that work well that they'll even exist for you, it's no wonder many Americans no longer believe in the power of government to benefit their lives. Add in decades of strategic Republican underfunding of programs to make them less accessible, less efficient, and less effective. And add to that the deliberate placement by Republicans of people into positions who fundamentally disagree with the functions of those positions, like anti-civil-rights crusaders to head anti-discrimination departments, and it's no wonder they've been able to bring the very idea of government as a force for good into disrepute, and foment distaste if not outright hatred of it instead.
Technocratic, small ball, complicated delayed schemes like Obama's Affordable Care Act don't allow people to feel immediate value in their own lives. It becomes easy to dismiss as another failed, bloated, expensive government debacle when all people can see after over a year is programs they're not eligible for or that are still too expensive for them to afford. It's why progressives opposed health care reform that was neither Medicare For All nor included a robust public option. Both of those would have brought real and immediate value into people's lives, or at least people would have strongly anticipated that they would. They would have shown government could be the engine for good very tangibly in people's lives and helped restore confidence in government.
Organizing for progressive causes would seem to be a losing cause until "the cloud of uncertainty" is lifted regarding what government can, is, and should be doing to make your life better instead of worse.