There's been a lot of news lately about the failure of some of our government agencies to perform their proper duties due to backlogs, incompetence, and sometimes even "scandalous" targeting of specific groups. Meanwhile, as we reflect on those souls who gave the ultimate sacrifice this memorial day, there are veterans from our most recent two wars who are still waiting for their initial benefits, bridges are collapsing, and violent weather, much of it most likely caused by climate change, is devastating our coasts and the heartland. Many critics in the Beltway and across the country have been piling on these beleaguered agencies for not acting quickly enough to deal with these issues. While there is some rightful blame to be placed on these agencies, remember that most of these agencies (the Veterans Administration, EPA, NOAA, IRS) have been swamped with tons of new work while not getting any additional revenue or employees to deal with the backlog. And much of this backlog and failure has been by design.
First of all, the primary reason we have such a huge backlog of veterans applying for benefits is because we created a lot more veterans, thanks to fighting two wars in the last decade. In the meantime, the Republicans ruled the White House and both houses of Congress for much of the last decade, and their primary goal was to bring government down to the size of a bathtub and drown it, as one of their disciples, Grover Norquist, so put it. They subsequently limited, halted, or cut funding to many of these agencies that deal with everyday Americans while lavishly rewarding the military-industrial complex and big business. Despite the efforts of most of our civil servants to do their jobs well, why would we expect these agencies to function properly when those in charge of overseeing those same agencies got into office by railing about how bad government is and now find themselves running them? Of course they aren't going to work well.
But then again, that's exactly what the GOP wanted, isn't it? They were all gung ho to get our country into war, but dealing with the veterans who returned was somebody else's problem. They were all ready to give huge, lavish tax breaks to the oil companies and the Koch Brothers to "drill baby drill", but who needs those agencies which track the weather and climate change due to the increase in greenhouse gases? And as far as the recent scandal with the IRS is concerned, these astroturf Tea Party groups bankrolled by Dick Armey, Sheldon Adelson, and other wealthy donors who swamped the IRS with requests for tax exemptions they probably shouldn't have received in the first place but ultimately got anyway, even if they had to wait an additional three to five days due to additional scrutiny, they hate the IRS anyway. Now they suddenly want Americans to be pissed at the IRS and the President by association because these agents were doing their jobs and not immediately rolling over and giving tax breaks to groups who fought against creating and getting healthcare for more Americans? Give me a break.
But as Mark Felt told those who were investigating Watergate in the 1970's, "follow the money." After all, who benefits most from a dysfunctional government? Of course, the wealthy. If the Republicans had their way, they would privatize all of the non-military, non-police, and non-intelligence agencies and farm that work out to private corporations, which would ultimately become even more expensive to the American people and most likely run even less efficiently than our current agencies. In that scenario, many veterans would be denied benefits and essentially be told to screw off. Meanwhile, our bridges, roads, and other infrastructure would continue to crumble, and thanks to climate change deniers, more cities would be at risk for widespread devastation due to bigger storms and hurricanes.
But isn't that the real plan to begin with?