The national budget crisis has been melodramatized as a diabolical puzzle with no solution but an uncomfortable sounding one involving “biting the bullet,” “sucking it up” and “cutting to the bone,” with most of the biting, sucking and cutting being done by (and to) the great majority of us.
A certain logic limits our thinking about this: bloated Government spending is the problem; putting government on a diet is the solution. But a national poll reported in this paper on April 18th suggests another perspective.
According to this poll , two-thirds of us want government to be active in our behalf in raising taxes on the wealthier among us. Yes, it makes you wonder why in the recent election a lot of us elected representatives pledged to do the opposite. But it’s good seeing this show of sensible self-interest, of the sort that democracy depends on.
When it comes to cuts, those polled say: Hands off our medicare or medicaid. That’s big government we absolutely depend on. No balancing the budget on the backs of the less fortunate.
The poll would seem to suggest that we know we need government—not less but if anything more government than we have. But mostly government that knows what side it’s on, knows its job, it reason for being. Government is the only way we have medicare and other social safety nets. Government is the only way we can use taxes to level the playing field.
Capitalism, as we all seem to realize in the sadder-but-wiser aftermath of the recent financial crisis, is the ultimate fox in the henhouse, a greedy, dangerous child that can’t be trusted. When left to its own devices it will always make a tiny portion richer and richer and send the rest of us in the other direction. Capitalism , as we were recently reminded on the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, is a killer.
Our only shot at having a rational, fairminded grownup in charge is government. Yes, government has problems, but not, as is often suggested, of the nanny-state variety. More typically government fails in its over-indulgence of that unruly child of capitalism.
Also, according to the poll, neither Democrats nor Republicans want t o raise the debt ceiling. Nobody wants the ship of state to sink even farther beneath the waves. And there’s the rub. How to accomplish that, even with higher t axes on the wealthy, without cutting vital programs?
And this is where the commonsense of the poll breaks down. One obvious place to save huge amounts is military spending, but only 44% want to cut there, with 54% opposed.
It’s hard to guess the thinking of these respondents. However, other polls showing the current unpopularity of the Afghanistan adventure would tend to suggest that most of us might not mind if the 7 billion dollars per month, the current monthly p rice to keep that particular war going, were put toward food and education and maintaining vital programs.
And I wonder how the poll would come out if the defense spending question were asked: How would you like to have back the 1.2 trillion spent in just the last 10 years in unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to see what that would do to balance the budget?
Or: Do you think we really need to spend more on our military than all other countries in the world combined (as we do ) to hold our head up among nations?
The budget crisis as such would seem to be manufactured by those in and out of government who have their own agenda of appeasing corporations and the wealthy, and maintaining an obscene level of military might.
The solution to balancing the budget would seem to be right there in the thinking of the majority. It’s not rocket science. A key element: not less government but government clear on its job description, its reason for being: representing the interests of the majority of citizens.
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