EVEN THE GOP ADMITS: BIG GOVERNMENT IS HERE TO STAY!

…Hoover Dam........just a sign of big government?

 

Conservatives: Like it or not, Americans actually do love BIG government.

 

OK, for how many years, or decades, have the Republicans been complaining about the Democrats and their push for “big government”.  All we have heard from them for years is tax cuts, budget cuts, all spending must have some way to pay for it and all those other conservative ideological rants.

 

And now they are all upset that their president just agreed with Democrats to pair a Hurricane Harvey relief package with a three-month extension of the debt ceiling and a bill to fund the government for the same amount of time.  All of that instead of the 18-month extension of the debt ceiling the GOP wanted.

 

Think about this for a long moment. The Republicans are mad because their preferred option was for a huge government aid package that was coupled with the debt ceiling and the funding of the government as they had done against President Obama for driving massive government spending cuts.  With that option being taken off the table in favor of the huge government aid package and nothing to drive the desired spending cuts, this deal just validated the concept of big American government. 

 

Republicans are the ones who now have to make sure their ideological disputes don’t interfere with the on-going functioning of our government.  This is different from their usual way of using the idea of big government dysfunction as a weapon for trying to force cuts and smaller government.

 

This definitely wasn’t how the GOP envisioned that things were headed back in 2016 when they finally resigned themselves to a President Donald Trump being the leader of their party.

 

Oh sure, he was an unstable, ignorant New Yorker who ran a nakedly racist campaign and got caught bragging about his ability to sexually assault women with impunity. And sure, he didn’t seem to care much about the GOP's ideological agenda. But what were they going to do? Vote for Hillary Clinton or a third-party candidate? Not on your life.

 

As the anti-tax hawk, Grover Norquist once put it, all the GOP really needed was to “pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to be president of the United States.” The Republicans would then just send their president one sweeping bill after another, and he’d be signing them.  Before they knew it, they would all be living in the glorious small-government paradise that Ayn Rand had promised.

 

 

Sorry, with this prez, that ain't gonna happen.

 

Now Republicans are in the position of arguing that it would be terribly irresponsible to NOT increase the debt ceiling for an extended period of time.

 

Let’s face it.  Neither Trump nor the GOP seriously looked into developing a real “repeal and replace” plan for Obamacare.  Trump’s dumb idea for tax reform was offered on a single, 8 ½ “ X 11” piece of paper, now how serious is that?  Remember when the big deal was going to be fixing the nation’s infrastructure?  So, where that program headed today?

 

The reality is that whether they like to admit it or not, Americans actually do love big government, and the GOP has learned that this president requires absolute loyalty, but seldom responds in kind.

 

Oh, Americans might respond to all the rhetoric about getting government off their backs.  But when it comes to the things government actually does, they want as much of it as can be offered.  They don’t want Medicaid slashed, or tens of millions of people to lose their health coverage. When Americans finally got a look at the cruel, ridiculous programs that the Republicans were offering for America’s health care, they recoiled in total horror.  There's a good reason that the Republican's American Care didn't make it!

 

The House of Representatives with the help of Democrats, have passed a $7.85 billion aid package this week for victims of Hurricane Harvey, though the New York Democrats did reminded all Texans of how the GOP had voted against the Hurricane Sandy aid package for New York and New Jersey. 

 

When these hurricanes hit, it reminds everybody that when your house floods or blows down, it’s not the small, tight-fisted government that you go to for help.  It’s the very big federal government you look to for help.

 

The Libertarian, just “take care of yourself” issue doesn’t fly in the aftermath of a major natural disaster like a hurricane, flood, earthquake or tornado.

 

There are those independent Texans that seem to every few years claim that they are going to secede from the union.  Even their GOP members, which have complete control of the state, they love nothing more than shaking their fists at that: “guv-mint interference from Washington”.  And today they are telling those dastardly Washington bureaucrats to get their nose out of the Lone Star State’s business, as they are begging the federal government for a massive bailout.

 

The Texas Governor, Greg Abbott, is someone who is so conservative, that he makes his predecessor, Governor Rick Perry, look like a liberal Bernie Sanders.  But Abbott now says he expects the American taxpayer to give his state between $150 and $180 billion in the Harvey bailout.  And that's money Texas doesn't have to re-pay.

 

Not quite so self-reliant now, are they?

 

This is not to say that Donald J. Trump is not wreaking havoc on big Washington bureaucracies. 

 

Many agencies have become horror shows of outside corporate influence or just outright pure neglect, particularly at the EPA and the Department of Education.

 

Oh, and Jeff Sessions as Trump’s AG is busy rolling back the clock on voting rights, drug policy and whatever else he can get his hands on. Trump is appointing a raft of right-wing judges. Look anywhere in government, and you’re likely to find that the Trump administration has hired over 100 former federal lobbyists.  If you’re somewhat more conservative, there’s a bunch of changes you might be pleased about.

 

However, that doesn’t say Trump is making progress on the many Republicans’ ideological goals.  At a fundamental level, it’s becoming clear the Trump years will not bring the transformation that the Republicans dreamed of when they imagined having complete control of the government.  It's very clear that Americans aren’t demanding tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, although the Republicans may still be passing those cuts. Most Americans definitely don’t want their safety nets cut to ribbons and they don’t want the banks freed to do whatever they want. Americans do actually like the way big government works.

 

Republicans have always been terrified that Democratic rule will end up validating and entrenching an activist government.  They seriously believe that given the chance, Democrats will enact a bunch of generous giveaways that the public will be loath to part with, making the GOP’s project of dismantling government all the more difficult.

 

That basic fear is not unreasonable.  Look at their problem right now regarding Obamacare that, even with its big problems, the ACA has become very popular with a lot of its members. 

 

But it is now appearing that through a combination of their incompetence, the latest negative circumstances and the essential unpopularity of most of their agenda, it’ll be a Republican rule that will still show us all, "big government is here to stay".

 

Live with it!

 

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