This weekend’s short-term budget agreement has made it clear that, despite the radical ideologies that have been on display in Washington in recent months, it is possible to find a middle ground between the extreme right and the extreme left in order to stabilize our economy. This will be absolutely critical in the weeks ahead as we develop a budget for next year and a long-term strategy.
It is good to note that, at root, under all the politics, there is a significant difference in moral vision at work in the budget fight—a fundamental difference in how people view their responsibility to other people.
Democrats tend to believe that, in a democracy, individuals have personal freedoms, but also have a responsibility to their community. That responsibility takes the form of using government to protect people and to give them the opportunity to share in the benefits of democracy. This is what drives us to fund social infrastructure—from highways to social security—and to protect the ability of even the poorest to get an education and health care.
Republicans tend to believe that, in a democracy, individuals have the freedom to achieve whatever they are able to accomplish, but that they are not their “brother’s keeper.” Each person is responsible for himself. This is what drives Republicans to want to limit government and trust the private sector, which is the environment in which individual achievement thrives. While some recently have noted the difference between “small government conservatives” and “big government conservatives” (who want to control behavior), the small government approach is more classic American conservatism.
Interestingly, both positions have evolved to incorporate moral positions that are, at least on the face of it, antithetical to the tenets described above, but that may offer deeper insight into why the two philosophies differ. Democrats, for instance, believe in the individual’s responsibility to the community, but also defend the individual’s right to decide on moral issues—abortion, gay marriage, etc.—even when their decisions are in opposition to community standards. Republicans believe in the individual’s right to be free of government intrusion, but also call for government control over individual actions (again, abortion, gay marriage, etc.) where individual decisions might threaten community moral standards. At issue in both positions is a moral understanding of the limits to community and individual rights and obligations.
The beliefs of both parties have their roots in the 1800s. Republicans—the party of individual freedom—was, of course, the party that advocated for the elimination of slavery. That moral stance also brought to the party Quakers and others who believed in individual responsibility and in the power of small communities to provide moral direction. Democrats, on the other hand, took their modern form as advocates of working people—including immigrants and African Americans—who needed protection from the robber barons of industrialized America’s “gilded age.”
Today, we are facing a very different cultural and economic environment. The two perspectives have become increasingly polarized. It is hard to find a middle ground where rational decisions are made that reflect our best efforts to solve a problem as a society. Yet the middle ground is exactly where we need to be. We need to decide that, ultimately, it is not enough to protect the freedom of individuals to invest in companies that send jobs overseas. And, it is not enough to maintain entitlements that burden our grandchildren with unbearable debt.
Here are some starting points:
1. One cause of big government is our international military commitment. We should close down our longstanding military operations in Germany and Japan. World War II has been over for more than 60 years. The Soviet Union is gone. We simply don’t need to be there. Let’s bring home these troops—or most of them, if we need to maintain a presence at a lower level. However, let’s keep the troops active—it would be wrong to push a lot of unemployed soldiers back into the domestic economy—and put them to work on domestic issues: repairing roads, improving our public parks, supporting public services, etc. Over time, we could transform our standing military into a broad-based community service corps that, ideally, would be a desirable first stop for young men and women after high school graduation. The result would be to reduce the cost of maintaining the troops overseas, bring one pillar of big government under control, and redirect the personnel cost to domestic public service.
2. Social Security is an important safety net for America’s senior citizens. We should not throw it away. Instead, we should confront the outdated assumptions of the system, which was established at a time when life expectancy was 69 years. Today, financial advisors regularly suggest that people take an early pension, since they can expect to recoup the loss through a longer life. This may be good financial planning for the individual, but it undermines the social purpose of Social Security. Rather than take away the safety net, we should strengthen it by making it more reflective of today’s demographics. Keep the general retirement age at 66, but (1) limit early access to Social Security to people who can demonstrate a real need for early (age 62) access to their funds and (2) limit access until age 70 for those who have other sources of retirement income of more than $100,000 annually.
3. Rather than simply cut Medicare and Medicaid, clean them up to eliminate waste and abuse. The TV ads that offer seniors “free” motorized carts paid for by Medicare are an example of just how blatant the mis-use of Medicare and Medicaid have become. Because these services cover the costs, older people who enter the medical system tend to be over-tested and over-medicated. We need to tighten up how people qualify for devices like carts and require doctors and hospitals to better justify the services that they provide, often without the active consent of the patient. Cutting fraud and abuse is the best way to reduce these health-care costs.
4. Reduce or eliminate federal subsidies for oil companies. They are seeing record profits; they do not need any help.
5. Eliminate or reduce tax breaks for wealthiest individuals—those in the top 1 percent of the population. The idea that these breaks on individual income create jobs is nonsense. A fair tax system that properly distributes the burden of providing social services needs to be developed, with fewer loopholes and exceptions.
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