Conservatives tend to distrust or disapprove of government for three reasons.
Two of those reasons lack ultimate practicality. The other, sadly, has been reinforced by the recent inability of the federal government to set up a functioning website that would allow citizens to obey a new law.
One reason for conservatives’ distrust or disapproval is that they tend to believe government programs foster a destructive culture of dependence that relieves personal responsibility and stifles human development.
That sounds better than it works. A social safety net, even one abused and culturally corrosive, is easier to criticize than remove.
A man said to me the other day that surely I would agree that public assistance should be limited to two children per recipient.
I said I’d like to agree, that I really would, because easy solutions are much more fun than hard ones. But I said that, sure as the world, someday somewhere a mother on welfare would give birth to a third baby. Then what are you going to do? Penalize an innocent over-the-limit life to which conservatives tend to be so otherwise devoted, at least in its pre-birth state?
And welfare is not only for poor folks. We could end farm subsidies. And then we could pay much higher food prices. We could end home-mortgage deductions. And then we could all pay higher income taxes. In Arkansas we could stop subsidizing new economic projects. So they’d all go to Mississippi.
The second reason for the right’s distrust and disapproval is the balance sheet, or imbalance sheet.
Conservatives believe government must reduce its size and scope abruptly, even traumatically, because it is living by routine deficits compiling big debts that cannot be sustained and will be left immorally to future generations.
But abrupt and traumatic reduction in government activity would constrict the economy, which is the last thing you’d want to do in an anemic recovery. It’s better to bring the deficit and debt down more slowly, more carefully, but surely, and to balance the nature of deficit reduction by reducing outgo while also increasing income.
Meanwhile, we must rely on delicate relationships—between the United States as a borrower and other governments as lenders. As long as lender and borrower need each other, then the relationship is the operative currency.
We’re not really dealing in dollars. We’re dealing in mutual necessity.
And now to the third and credible reason for conservative distrust and disapproval of government: It’s that government, facing no profit motive or competition, either will not or cannot achieve private-caliber efficiencies and quality of service that would be fair to the taxpayer both in terms of the responsible use of what he contributes in taxes and in the competent extension of the services he gets in return.
I have no practical argument with that, though there are, of course, two massive exceptions proving that rule: Conservatives tend to trust the government implicitly on military and intelligence matters.
Beyond that? Not at all.
This website debacle over Obamacare provides both a case in point and, sadly, a seeming justification for not trusting the government on Obamacare itself.
If I can buy something from Amazon with one mouse click and retrieve it from the porch in a day or two, then those of us venturing onto the health-insurance exchange website ought to be able, in three or four steps, to scan all the private carrier offerings in a user-friendly way and sign up to meet the government directive to buy.
For the federal government to order us to get health insurance and then not give us a competent mechanism by which to do that … well, it leaves me as unwilling as I am unable to rise to any defense.
Famed journalist and author Bob Woodward said over the weekend that the problem is that government operates on “autopilot” except for its vigor in creating secret operations. That’s a very unhealthy combination.
I do not agree with the raging argument from the right that the website debacle means government can’t accomplish Obamacare in general.
If the government could get the website functioning, then much of its work would be done. Private carriers would sell and provide the insurance.
Government’s main remaining role—other than continuing to administer Medicare and most of Medicaid, for which at least it has decades of practice—would be to calculate and apply subsidies for the private premiums.
Maybe that will be the next debacle. But the subsidies will take the form of refundable tax credits, and the Internal Revenue Service seems to be one of the more competent agencies of the federal government, right behind the NSA in tapping phones and the military in fighting, if not always winning, wars.
More likely, and I’ll explore this in the newspaper column tomorrow, the next round of outrage will concern sticker shock for persons with decently affordable individual plans that are being canceled and replaced by costlier facsimiles, made costlier by actuarial worries about the range of mandated benefits and the coverage of preexisting conditions.
A solution would be a simple amendment to make true what President Barack Obama promised—that if you are insured already, or if you were at the time of the law’s passage in 2010, then you may keep what you have. But that would require Republican cooperation on a fix, and Republicans simply want to obstruct.
If all this leads to a delay in health-care reform by which the entire initiative loses momentum and credibility, then the nation will have been done an epic disservice. We need universal health insurance and this is our last best chance for at least a generation, most likely.
In the meantime, the health-care marketplace’s website failings leave a nation rightfully exasperated and infuriated.
The other night we ordered a pizza on the smart phone. By one click, we chose hand-tossed crust. By a second, we ordered a large size. By a third, we selected half supreme and half vegetable lover’s delight. Then came email confirmation, and, in 20 minutes, a splendid meal.
And the government didn’t even order us to buy pizza.
It’s a good thing. If it had, we’d probably still be watching that little computer image—the circle with colored pie-like slices, suggesting a freeze-up—go round and round.
We need to reboot—right into our government’s backside.
It always stood to reason that conservatives couldn’t be wrong about everything.
John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.