Government Funded Education
February 12th 2011 12:55
According to the Washington Post, opinion polls show that the public favors the GOP proposals for roll-backs of Federal spending, and rejects the idea of raising the debt ceiling. This is bad news for the Republicans – as long as the Democrats can communicate the facts, not always their long suite.
The Tea Party Republicans ran on a platform of no new taxes, tax rollbacks, and reduced spending. It appealed to a lot of people who could relate to the idea that if we the people have to live within our means, the government should too. It’s a simple enough concept to sell, but not an easy one to live with. In the same way, businesses have supported the Republican policies of reduced regulation – because the titans of industry don’t understand what’s going on either. Life is like that. While there is waste in government spending and a lot of needless regulation, the reality if that neither one is unreasonably high considering the size of the United States and the programs the government supports, and cutbacks in spending translate into cutbacks in services.
With the economy on the skids, federal spending has helped cities pay for police and teachers. Even programs which can be identified as wasteful, like our oversized prison system, have been a source of jobs in depressed areas. Every modern weapons system, even those the Pentagon says we don’t need, provides jobs. It would be one thing if we could transfer the money and the jobs to more useful programs – have the people building tanks repair bridges, have prison guards set up wind farms – but even if the skills can be transferred, even if the new projects are in the same areas as the old ones, the Republicans want budgets cut, not transferred. The budget cuts mean increased unemployment at a time when the economy is just slowly showing signs of revival. Unemployment means reduced spending, which spreads out – fewer movie tickets, fewer restaurant meals, less of everything. Close a factory and the stores that depend on the factory workers as customers also close. Close the stores and the movie theaters and gas stations feel the impact. At a time when we should be trying to keep factories open and hiring, when the economic recovery is weak, the GOP is offering policies which will make things worse all around.
It won’t take long to realize the mistake – not when there are fewer police, larger class sizes, people being dropped from Medicaid. We’ll feel the impact even before the layoffs spread, and we won’t like it.
A recent poll Really Long Link showed that a high percentage of people who claimed they had never benefitted from government programs, had – ranging from grants for education to Social Security and Medicare. Perhaps some people simply don’t realize that these are government programs – if only because they work too well. Politicians rail against the career civil servants, but the reality is that most of these programs work with incredible efficiency for the majority of people with far lower overhead costs than the private sector. The freshman Republicans in the House of Representatives are demanding Draconian cuts, and the old line leadership has lost control. This will be a formula for more lay-offs and a double dip recession. It will also be a lesson in civics, as people learn that checks and benefits they’ve taken for granted are really government programs they’ve complained about. It’s just a shame that people who already know how a civilized society operates have to pay to teach the ignorant – but it seems even that is a government program.
The Tea Party Republicans ran on a platform of no new taxes, tax rollbacks, and reduced spending. It appealed to a lot of people who could relate to the idea that if we the people have to live within our means, the government should too. It’s a simple enough concept to sell, but not an easy one to live with. In the same way, businesses have supported the Republican policies of reduced regulation – because the titans of industry don’t understand what’s going on either. Life is like that. While there is waste in government spending and a lot of needless regulation, the reality if that neither one is unreasonably high considering the size of the United States and the programs the government supports, and cutbacks in spending translate into cutbacks in services.
With the economy on the skids, federal spending has helped cities pay for police and teachers. Even programs which can be identified as wasteful, like our oversized prison system, have been a source of jobs in depressed areas. Every modern weapons system, even those the Pentagon says we don’t need, provides jobs. It would be one thing if we could transfer the money and the jobs to more useful programs – have the people building tanks repair bridges, have prison guards set up wind farms – but even if the skills can be transferred, even if the new projects are in the same areas as the old ones, the Republicans want budgets cut, not transferred. The budget cuts mean increased unemployment at a time when the economy is just slowly showing signs of revival. Unemployment means reduced spending, which spreads out – fewer movie tickets, fewer restaurant meals, less of everything. Close a factory and the stores that depend on the factory workers as customers also close. Close the stores and the movie theaters and gas stations feel the impact. At a time when we should be trying to keep factories open and hiring, when the economic recovery is weak, the GOP is offering policies which will make things worse all around.
It won’t take long to realize the mistake – not when there are fewer police, larger class sizes, people being dropped from Medicaid. We’ll feel the impact even before the layoffs spread, and we won’t like it.
A recent poll Really Long Link showed that a high percentage of people who claimed they had never benefitted from government programs, had – ranging from grants for education to Social Security and Medicare. Perhaps some people simply don’t realize that these are government programs – if only because they work too well. Politicians rail against the career civil servants, but the reality is that most of these programs work with incredible efficiency for the majority of people with far lower overhead costs than the private sector. The freshman Republicans in the House of Representatives are demanding Draconian cuts, and the old line leadership has lost control. This will be a formula for more lay-offs and a double dip recession. It will also be a lesson in civics, as people learn that checks and benefits they’ve taken for granted are really government programs they’ve complained about. It’s just a shame that people who already know how a civilized society operates have to pay to teach the ignorant – but it seems even that is a government program.
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