It takes progressive leadership and real money to have a great country. If we want to live in a place where scientists see problems before they get here, where food is safe and families never go hungry, where children can read and no one is denied health care, where buses run on schedule and the arts flourish, we have to pay for it.
We can’t give away trillions of dollars in tax breaks to millionaires and expect them to take care of those things. The rich give some of their money to charities, and charities do a lot of good. But it’s not enough.
If we want a great country, we need a smart, vigilant government that’s soundly funded. You get what you pay for.
This central premise of good government is not as widely accepted as it once was.
In the previous century, the country had a progressive era that saw government regulation of banks, insurance companies and public utilities; higher food and water safety standards; an emphasis on science and education, and better conditions for workers. The New Deal gave us Social Security and other programs that lifted Americans out of poverty. The country came out of World War II victorious, bold and confident. Government was generally seen as a force for good.
But harping on government as a problem, a theme of Republicans since Ronald Reagan’s run for the presidency 40 years ago, has had a consequence. It has made Americans skeptical of the capabilities of the government and hostile to the prospect of tax increases to serve the common good.
The incessant push for austerity — with either the refusal to raise property taxes or the push for more tax cuts at the state and federal levels — has a consequence. It means we’re not as ready as we should be. It means, frankly, we’re not as great as we should be.
Greatness is expensive.
Imagine the nation’s response to the coronavirus outbreak if we did not have the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. surgeon general or the National Institutes of Health. Without the vigilance of government scientists — or research institutions like Johns Hopkins University funded by the government — where would we be?
It’s hard to imagine.
And it’s hard to imagine because those agencies actually exist. We expect them to protect us and to be constantly looking for ways to make us healthier.
But it’s one thing to be able to name government agencies responsible for the public health, it’s another to fully fund them, staff them with competent people and have them ready to deal with a new disease that develops overseas and threatens to disrupt American life.
And yet, when the current president released his fiscal year 2020 federal budget, he demanded a 12% cut to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and a 10% cut for the CDC. This is the same president who signed a $1.7 trillion tax cut in 2017 and increased spending on national defense by $56 billion.
Conservatives like to portray the federal system, with the exception of the Pentagon, as bloated and constantly in need of a trim. But millions of dollars from federal agencies flow to the states, and from states to counties and cities, and that’s particularly true in the realm of public health.
The American Public Health Association estimates that local health departments have 50,000 fewer employees than they had in 2008. That doesn’t sound like greatness to me.
