“Waste, fraud, and abuse” is a phrase we’re going to hear frequently as the Trump administration slashes the administrative state. In light of that, we should be clear what the president and his allies really mean when they use those words. We all know that there are ways our government could become more efficient or more effective. But this project isn’t really about trimming the fat — it’s about cutting you loose.
Austerity has long been an aim among right-wing leaders who want the government to spend less and tax less. Their end goal is to overturn what they view as a wealth grab by those who benefit from publicly funded programs. But that’s a losing message in a democracy, and particularly in one plagued by high levels of income insecurity. Just look at the popularity of Social Security, which conservatives have been looking to kill from its inception. Nearly 90 percent of Americans — regardless of political persuasion — support the program.
Instead of outward hostility toward the have-nots, right-wing rhetoric for most of the past several generations has been about independence and self-help. Milton Friedman, in making the case for Barry Goldwater’s presidential candidacy in 1964, argued that although it may be tempting to use government “to do directly for the people what the people seem at the moment not to be able to or to want to do for themselves,” such efforts would only weaken “the capacity of the ordinary man to provide for his own needs.” Friedman acolyte Ronald Reagan, himself a master rhetorician, made a similar argument two decades later: “Government is not the solution to our problem,” Reagan told the American people in his 1981 inaugural address, “government is the problem.” Two years…
Auteur: Jack Schneider
