Cut Now, Think Later: An Undiscussed Problem

It's no secret that in a struggling or contracting economy, people want government to scale back on spending, and government responds, sometimes rightfully, with an assessment of which services and spending items are absolutely necessary and useful, and which are frivolous. In the present situation, in which government has balanced its budget irresponsibly, and racked up a not-so-healthy amount of debt in the process, calls for a no-frills assessment of spending and spending priorities are especially relevant. And on top of these circumstances, beyond the general, bipartisan understanding that the US government needs to do a better job of maintaining its finances, whether by reducing spending, closing tax loopholes and raising taxes, or some combination of the two, conservatives and Republicans have almost monolithically taken the 'tea party' position that we need to cut, cut, and cut some more. No tax increases, just cuts.

There are many, frequently discussed problems with this mentality: it's economically nonsensical, it directly contributes to job reduction, it places an unreasonable burden of 'sacrifice' on the lower and middle classes, and, given the unyielding nature of its proponents, it has put in jeopardy the full faith and credit of the US government. You might wholly disagree with PMB's assessments here, but you've certainly heard or read about these issues, and their surrounding debates.

What no one seems to be discussing, however, is a separate set of unforeseen consequences of a cut now, think later approach to spending cuts.

What PMB is talking about here, more explicitly, is crude valuation, the process by which we decide whether something is worth it or not. With a cut now, think later approach, we'll surely take a hasty, oversimplified approach to valuation. In higher education, this type of hasty approach takes the predictable turn of funding science, technology, math, and engineering programs (with each of these being construed in such blanket, general terms as to be entirely useless in the valuation process), and cutting the arts and humanities (incidentally, an unintended consequence of this policy in Britain has been an oversupply of workers in these fields, contributing to unemployment rates for many STEM-field graduates being higher than those of graduates in other fields). In fiscal policy, the equivalent of these hastily designated mainstays is perhaps defense spending, along with some science and medical institutes (the NIH, for example); but more or less everything else, for the rabid budget-cutters, is 'on the chopping block' (from large and expensive programs like social security and Medicare to tiny and inexpensive ones like NPR, the NEA, and the NEH).

The problem with making the same old assumptions about what's a staple and what isn't, or what's useful and what's not, especially when we have the economic gun pressed to our heads (or when we drum up that kind of hyperbolic reaction to our current economic difficulties), is that we can't predict what our future will hold, and what we'll need to address its challenges. We can't predict whether tearing down the National Endowment for the Humanities, perhaps the only organization with any Federal advocacy influence for nearly half of what we esteem as 'the liberal arts and sciences,' will deal a final blow to the teaching and learning of foreign languages in the US in an era of globalization. We can't predict whether de-funding NASA will deprive us of future morale-boosting (and residual-economic-benefit-producing) endeavors, like landing on the moon, or sending commercial aircraft beyond the atmosphere. These kinds of things can sound ridiculous, but, as Gregory Petsko, professor of biochemistry at Brandeis, has so convincingly argued, it also seemed ridiculous to continue funding virology programs after we figured out vaccines but before HIV came around, just at it seemed ridiculous to think that anyone would need to know anything about Arabic or cultures of the Middle East before September 11, 2001.

Time For Welfare

There are strong arguments to be made for having a smaller government versus a larger one, but these arguments are rarely made, even, and perhaps especially, among Republicans who want smaller government.

Libertarians argue powerfully for the virtues of a small government that allows for the least possible interference in the lives of individual citizens going about their business freely. They argue that government is, as James Madison suggested ('If Men were Angels, no Government would be necessary'), a necessary evil, one that is best kept on as small a scale as possible, and only intervenes in the lives of citizens in order to protect the unbridled self-interest of one against that of another: to provide baseline order for the State of Nature such that individuals cannot trample upon the Natural Rights of others.

Republicans, on the other hand, typically skip the nuts and bolts of the libertarian argument in order to arrive at a general understanding that government is bad. This is manifested frequently in the talking point 'government ruins everything,' a sibling of 'the private sector does everything better than the government,' and 'when was the last time the government did something well' (you get the picture). As Milton Friedman once said, 'If you put the Federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there'd be a shortage of sand.'

Republicans use this partially developed argument to justify a wider ideology, that which proclaims that because government is bad, less government is good. As you can see, this is blatantly tautological: the assumption that government is bad, that it's worse at solving certain problems than the private sector, and that it poses a greater threat to liberty than certain institutions within the private sector, is rarely substantiated. This assumption that government is bad is then taken by Republicans as the foundational reason for arguing that the absence of government is good. The tautology of this thinking is actually put into practice via the Republican political strategy of 'starving the beast': by fighting to cut government revenues and slash government funding, programs, and provisions, Republicans limit the effectiveness of the government in doing the jobs we assign it, thereby producing many of the very ill effects, inefficiencies, and inadequacies that constitute the Republican charge against government. This process is further complicated by the 'soft' but influential relationship between individuals in government and the private sector: the blame for problems created by and in the private sector can be easily deferred to the government, since the government is ultimately pushed (via lobbying and financial contributions) in many cases to do the bidding of powerful private-sector interests. Republicans can plausibly blame the mortgage crisis, for example, on government policies to get more Americans to own their own homes than was ever reasonable, despite the fact that such a policy was precisely what the private-sector real estate and lending lobbies asked for.

That background aside, the purpose of this article is to address another Republican strategy aimed at dismantling and discouraging the government's role in providing unemployment and welfare benefits to underserved (not undeserved) Americans.

When we engage in partisan debates about welfare, we hear two basic positions. Democrats argue that the government should play a leading role in providing for society's poor, given the lack of systematic, private-sector care for the poor. They argue that individual charitable contributions aren't enough, because individuals often don't donate their charity dollars efficiently or systematically. Republicans argue that private and faith-based charitable endeavors are not just adequate, but more effective than government welfare and social support programs. For Republicans, government handouts only breed laziness and dependence on more government handouts.

In a time of high unemployment and plenty of civil unrest, it's time to come to terms with a few things, and then reframe the welfare debate.

For one, we must realize that, while many things are indeed better handled by the private sector, some kinds of things are better left to government. These things usually involve systematizing something required on a large and relatively uniform scale. Regulating industries like air travel and food, for example, are jobs for which the profit incentive isn't always the most efficient way to ensure safety. Basic environmental protection (and resource protection), as well, is something that private companies will fail to do, such that government agencies are well positioned to provide guidelines and enforcement to make sure the water tables are toxin-free, or a company can't dump biohazardous materials in a local park. Government need not control all aspects of these endeavors; but government is the best entity to take the lead on safety and regulation where other entities fail to do so, to the detriment of the people.

Providing systematic welfare is another one of these tasks that is best led by government. The profit motive does not provide incentive to provide for those who, by the very definition of their neediness, have already fallen through the system. Further, a private-sector meritocracy is a fine way to distribute resources to a point; but it provides no guidelines whatsoever for tending to the baseline needs of individuals who, for lack of a better way of putting it, 'lose.' Because very few would be so callous as to suggest that the 'losers' in such a system should simply wither away and die--that they somehow deserve it because they are either incapable or lazy--it makes sense to develop systematic charitable solutions for the inevitable problem of caring for those who, for whatever circumstances, fail to care adequately for themselves. This is perhaps the sine qua non of a civilization, a civil society. And no matter how many church groups and individual philanthropists we have to help the needy and contribute charitable funds, such a slapdash method does not reach everyone. More importantly, however, it does not provide the framework for everyone who needs to be reach to gain clear-cut access to assistance. The Republican-hijacked virtue of self-reliance is jeopardized when needy individuals, without internet access or even a phone book (if they still make those), have no clear-cut, systematized, widely located place they can go for help in the first instance.

At the same time, we need to understand that government assistance doesn't have to come in the form of handouts. It's perfectly reasonable to require needy individuals who are physically and mentally capable to work for their welfare checks, for example, by cleaning up and organizing within their communities. And for those who are not capable--the mentally ill, the chronically sick, for example--how could anyone dare say that government provisions are only making these people 'lazy,' or that their dependence comes form government, rather than personal circumstances, disability, illness, etc.?

A crucial mark of a truly rich and advanced society is the ability to care for its poorest citizens. Anything less than that isn't civilization.