All,
In a comment a couple of weeks ago, I said that one thing I was waiting for as a Progressive is a version of President Obama's Race Speech (A More Perfect Union) applied to the government. We seriously need an effort to re-legitimize government action as an expression of popular will. Also, delivering such a speech would be the kick-off to a great deal of press and pressure for the President and Congress to treat our problems seriously.
I have cribbed some framing from Lakoff's Untellable Truths and hope that it helps to add to the persuasiveness.
I am submitting an imagined version of this speech for your comments and review.
Thanks,
OE2K
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I come to you to talk about an issue that has been in the headlines for the past week, which is the refusal of the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-controlled Senate to come to an agreement on raising our nation’s debt ceiling. As many of you realize, and many more of you should know, the statutory limit on how much debt the U.S. Treasury may issue has been raised many times as a matter of course over the past few years. We used the debt to pay for government programs, tax cuts across the board, and two major military campaigns abroad.
Tonight, we could argue about how high the limit should be, who is to blame for what part of the debt, or even who is to blame for this impasse. But, I would like to speak instead about something much more important to this country. That is the role of our government.
Back on the campaign trail, I said that I thought of Ronald Reagan as a transformational president, and that I aspired to his level of influence on history. Many on the left criticized me for this; perhaps this next statement may mollify them. There are two phrases that President Reagan used that have been the most destructive phrases in recent political history. The first is – you may have heard this as a joke – "we’re from the government and we are here to help you." The second is "Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem."
Neither of these sentiments is useful in a national discourse, any more than the idea that "religion is the opiate of the masses" or that corporations are the embodiment of evil. Any time that you mark an institution as illegitimate, you have decided to leave conversation behind. You have declared war. And I think there many people in this country who are quite happy with that assessment. I believe that most of them are still using peaceful means to oppose the government, but their antagonism is of a different character than the loyal opposition our republic was designed to foster. These are people that decry every government expenditure as a waste, urge people to refuse to pay their taxes as a matter of principle, and attempt to send everything they can into the private sector.
I do not believe that government is perfect. It certainly has its flaws and dysfunctions. But so do churches, businesses large and small, and even your local Little League organization. Institutions have flaws. But institutions are created to address specific human needs that a set of individuals lack the organization and structure to provide effectively for themselves.
And so this is the topic I wish to focus on tonight: the fact that our republic is built to represent the interests of all the people that vote in it and contribute to it. I want to mount a full defense of this essential institution and why calls for austerity are a snake oil sale compared to a recommitment to investment in this great nation. There are two truths that must be brought forward in this discussion.
The first truth is that power, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Those that always oppose regulation and wish to minimize government authority will tell you that stripping away laws gives us greater freedom. But my freedom ends when my fist reaches your nose. At one time, there were no laws that controlled where industrial firms could dump their toxic wastes. There were company towns where the prosperity that gainful employment brought rightfully earned the company the respect and loyalty of the community. But this loyalty was often abused, and the poisoning of the community’s water and air was sold as an inescapable cost of the business. The right to clean water and air became hostage to a need for the essentials.
Eventually the denigration of the environment reached doorsteps. Silent Spring touched off a pent-up realization of what we were doing to Mother Earth, and again we came together as citizens to insist that something be done. We declared that our home was just as important as earning a living, and that there must be a way to accomplish both. And we have. The efforts of the EPA have caused us to use far less energy per dollar of economic output (which has also benefitted us economically in a world without cheap oil), reduced the amount of toxics released into our world, developed responsible ways to clean up after ourselves during industrial activity, and caused the creative talent of this nation to develop an untold number of devices and technologies for stepping more lightly in our world.
There are also many moments in our history where the weight of law was required to affirm our Declaration that "all men are created equal." Our nation strives to the ideal of equal opportunity for all, but we have of course not always lived up to that high standard. It may be true that the South instituted their segregation policies into law with Jim Crow, but voter suppression and intimidation of the era was kept off the books. The Army also required no law to be segregated, nor did the North. Federal law served to eradicate not only Jim Crow and the informal systems of segregation, but also served to open the doors to all races in business, government, education, and even in the right to own a home where they desired. A similar struggle has been empowering women over the past few decades.
All of this came to be because the cultural leaders of the day – those that told us it was not only okay to treat people poorly because of skin or creed or gender – were overwhelmed by a community of decency. That community cemented its gains through the government, with both proclamations and laws that served to reaffirm our belief in an equal nation. Those in opposition to this equal were powerful people – they benefited from a system where brother was against brother, and there were people that could be abused without protest. Or in some cases, they simply needed a villain to attract attention from themselves. But in either case, the absence of government action did not lead to a lack of power dominating people’s lives. It simply meant the power was more arbitrary and brought to bear in a less fair and predictable way.
These examples lead clearly to the second truth that has been neglected in recent discussions. The second truth is the reason that so many of us came to Washington in the first place, and why so many civil servants and federal employees come to work every day. The truth is: a democratic government’s mission is a moral one. Democracy is a form of government in which citizens come together to provide for mutual protection and empowerment for a better future for ourselves and our children.
We know about the types of mutual protection we grant each other through government. Our police forces, firefighters, and military protect us from violence and natural disaster. The government is also now entrusted with ensuring that your family will have safe food every night at the table, that there will not be toxic waste in your drinking water. We work to be sure that your children’s toys are not laced with poisons like lead paint. But also, some of our most effective protections are not even noticed. The Center for Disease Control watches around the world for exotic diseases like SARS and the avian flu, and has responded quickly in the past few years to prevent outbreaks from becoming epidemics. Finally, my administration has worked to extend protections to everyone’s health, because without a healthy body and mind, very little else is important.
Another ideal of democratic government is to empower its citizens with basic infrastructure that can be leveraged to achieve dreams. In an industrial or even post-industrial world, education is essential. It must not be subject to the whims of a market or ability to pay if opportunity is to be kept equal. Another key part of our infrastructure is our system of roads, bridges, and rails. Anyone looking to start a small business immediately inherits a means to get his or her goods to market – again, an important element of opportunity. An information economy requires access to electricity and data, and again that infrastructure is provided to all without prejudice. Thanks to the efforts of the FDR administration, electrical service is available to all corners of the nation and available to drive new business. The Internet has done the same for data, although we have not been as proactive in closing the divide between bandwidth access haves and have-nots as we should have.
A final area of empowerment has been in the realm of research. This is an era of high technology, and research is both an expensive and risk-laden affair. Make no mistake, our country is hardly the only one engaged in a competition for the next big thing. The private sector is excellent at research, but is limited by the amount of risk it can take on. Because the needs of the nation are far more diverse than any one firm, it stands to reason that we can invest collectively. We do not know where the pay-off for a given line of basic research falls, and so we all pay in to the system as a lottery. The National Institutes of Health, NASA, and National Science Foundation bring in many exciting discoveries every day. And every day, talented and bright entrepreneurs, corporate employees, and even inventors in their garages can sift through this pile of new knowledge in the hopes of finding the next great idea.
Now, this all sounds like government has a big job and it does. There is a reason that responsibility is divided between cities, counties, states, and the federal level. Some needs are national; others are best left to the local communities to work out for themselves. And this is not to suggest that government should do everything – far from it. There are many places in which the private sector can be more effective, more innovative, and take larger risks. But it is not axiomatic that public is superior to private, or private to public. Each type of institution has its role in our lives.
And now, we should come to the greatest issue facing our government today – the federal deficit. We have demanded too much of our government and paid too little in the past few years. We took on two major wars without asking the citizenry to pay for them upfront. An economic catastrophe in our financial sector has required us to provide support to companies and individuals alike. Many people in this country still need help back to their feet and an economy that can put their talents to use.
It is hard to believe that at the same time that we have gone into debt that there would be a shortage of government investment, but there is. Our roads and bridges are still in need of repair in many parts of the nation. Many homes that were left empty as a result of irresponsible banking have been gutted and must now be cleared away to make room for regrowth. This is simply to break even. There are things that other nations have done to be competitive in the 21st Century, such as bringing broadband Internet access to all citizens. This is to our time what the Interstate highways were in the 50s, and will likely be used in as many amazing and unforeseen ways as the original superhighways were.
Also, this is only the work that needs to be done in the purely economic realm. We also have a true energy crisis on our hands. The days of cheap, high-grade coal and oil is coming to an end. We are having to tap more exotic and difficult-to-reach natural gas deposits. And of course these sources of fuel are changing the climate of this planet, which will impact our crops and our water supplies. Once vibrant communities may be dried up as water tables shift, requiring either relocation or massively expensive irrigation systems. Farmers may have to shift from once-profitable crops with which they are comfortable and into new ventures. In some cases, lands simply will lose their ability to produce. The science behind this is real and as rigorous as it can be. And the question is not whether or not we spend to deal with global warming, but when and on which terms. I would prefer the terms to be of my own choosing. Again, the time is now when we have so much productive capacity in this country that is being left unused.
Because of our unused productive power: the factories left unused, the millions at the unemployment lines – these challenges present opportunities. The jobs that are needed to rebuild our country are both high-tech and old-fashioned. Those with pocket protectors and welding torches will both be needed. Planting the seeds of our renewal will take many hands in shared work and shared service. The opportunity is there for us to put America back to work to do something productive, which is to follow in the footsteps of our forefathers and step into the future.
"But President Obama," I hear you all say. "All this work is very expensive." And in some ways it is – investing it what matters will always cost. As I have said, we have a major deficit. We have asked for sacrifice from the American people. And many have sacrificed already through no fault of their own or no request. They have lost their livehoods and homes. We have investigated a reduction in the types of necessities that government provides.
There is a related problem I would like to describe. We once called this a nation of great economic opportunity. Immigrants came from poverty and were nurtured by transplant communities here until they were well-enough situated to open businesses and bring new products to other Americans. They worked hard in farms and factories to build up their families. People born here have done much the same thing. And some of us have become so fantastically wealthy.
Wealth and royalty are two separate things, and I would not like to suggest that one leads directly to the other. The difference, at least in principle, in this country is that the wealthy here start from far humbler beginnings and can lose their way at any time. When wealth is passed from parent to child, that is when it becomes royalty. And there are those in my opposition that want this to happen. They have manically opposed anything that even smells of inhibiting this entitlement, which is to have the wealthy create a generation of unduly privileged offspring.
Now, as a parent, I understand the instinct. I want Sasha and Malia to have the best. But I also want them to have something they can point to with pride when they are my age and say "I did that myself. I struggled through that and I am a better person for it."
There is also a larger moral principle at play. In a country where we have so much, it is unconscionable to have gated palaces with fantastic wealth while so many are going hungry. Especially when so many of the hungry just had gainful employment, worked hard, played by the rules, and are now living in their cars or on the streets. When that happens, we must look to proclaim that we are our brothers’ keeper and pass the hat.
As I have outlined before, we can provide employment rather than simply charity. Many of the people we would look to help have charity as the last thing they want. They want to contribute. They want to bring pride to themselves and their families. And they can do it by rebuilding America for the future in the ways that I have outlined.
I wish to pay for this upfront. In the days ahead, I will propose a levy for solidarity on our nation’s top earners and the investment community. Those that have done the best in the worst of times will be called into service and sacrifice for the good of their country. If the past is any indication, they will likely receive their rewards in due time, as a healthier nation provides clever captains of industry and finance with new opportunities. Repairing our standing in the world will also provide new opportunities. Again, I ask the strongest among us to lend their strength to their countrymen and countrywomen in a time of great need.
Government is not perfect. Like any institution, there are dysfunctional behaviors of self-preservation. There is waste. There is incompetence. This is also true of corporations, churches, and yes, even your local Little League. This institution has a noble basis and a strong tradition. It is time for us as Americans to use it as effectively as possible to deal with the challenges before us, as we look to all other institutions to do the same. God bless America.