You get the government you pay for

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Uncle Nunzi likes to say, “You get what you pay for.” I have a hunch that most of you agree, except when it comes to your government.

Too many of you believe when it comes to good government, you can get it on the cheap. Too many of you believe when it comes to paying for your Medicare or good schools or good roads, the money appears by waving a magic wand. Too many of you believe only your own expenses go up, but not the cost of government. When you believe you can get good government on the cheap, you buy the conservative hokum that even smart conservatives don’t believe.

Conservatives don’t believe you can attract good executives in private industry on the cheap. They tell us we need to pay CEOs millions of dollars to attract the cream of the crop. Conservatives don’t believe you get creative capitalism on the cheap and argue for higher profit margins. So long as you’re discussing the private sector, conservatives argue that money is the essential incentive. It’s only when they discuss the public sector that conservatives turn parsimonious (except maybe for defense spending, where big defense contractors make big bucks).

So what is it that good conservatives really believe? In the words of conservative guru Grover Norquist, they believe in a government that is small enough to drown in a bathtub. They believe low taxes are good because in starving government, one frees up capitalists to maximize profits. They don’t worry about the ever-expanding gap between rich and poor because they view the top earners as the success stories and the rest of us as losers. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney didn’t misspeak when he blasted 47 percent of the American people as “takers.” He echoed what the real conservative philosophy is when his ilk gathers around and talks in private. In order to justify the harshness of their belief system and sell it to the public, they label the less fortunate as lazy losers waiting for the dole. Conservatives don’t care about increasing the minimum wage either because they argue that fast food workers are pretty much high school kids working part-time entry level jobs. But no smart conservatives can really believe their own malarkey. All one has to do is look around to see that many of those jobs flipping burgers are now manned by older, skilled people who have lost their jobs.

Conservative radio talkers and Fox News have done a skillful job of convincing the average voter that he or she is overtaxed. The conservative mantra is “Thou shall not raise taxes.” Not ever. Not in any circumstance. Norquist even insists that true conservatives sign an oath to that effect. In a crunch, hey, all you have to do is cut spending. And when those cuts cause larger classroom sizes or potholes or fewer cops on the street or fewer health-care workers to meet the Ebola crisis, conservatives argue that just proves government doesn’t work. In today’s political environment, voting a conservative into office isn’t voting for someone to oversee government competently, but voting for someone to euthanize government.

Believe we’re overtaxed? The Citizens For Tax Justice report that the United States ranks third lowest in taxing its citizens. Only Mexico and Chile rank below us among the 24 countries included in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Even that conservative deity, President Ronald Reagan, raised taxes 11 times, according to his friend and former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.). Simpson was a member of President Obama’s Tax Reform Commission. He is a reminder of a time when Republicans were responsible enough not to spread myths.

The idea that one can never raise taxes has even taken root among today’s liberals, including President Barack Obama. Liberal politicians tend not to tell the truth about taxes in a different way than conservatives. Oh, they’ll admit that more revenue is needed alright, but pretend you can do it merely by taxing the affluent. Smart liberals know better. They know that one can’t pay the bills merely by bumping up the tax rates on rich folks. Sure, that would help, but wouldn’t come close to solving the problem. The dirty little truth that most liberals know but won’t speak is that taxes on the middle class would also have to go up. Go try to run on that proposition these days. So what we get from Obama and the liberal members of Congress is not that taxes on the middle class are too high, they are too low.

Am I saying that we automatically get a well-run government by raising revenue? No, that would be foolish. Conservatives don’t believe in government, so to an extent they’re off the hook here. Liberals profess a belief in an activist government that can act to right the wrongs of runaway capitalism. Therefore, liberals, when they gain power, have a special obligation to the rest of us. Liberals have to make sure government works. They must weed out programs that don’t and be even more ruthless than conservatives in eliminating waste. Liberals are the ones who should be wearing the green-eye shades.

A perfect government doesn’t exist, but 22 other countries acknowledge what we in America refuse to. We get the government we pay for. ■

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