In Maryland (and in many other states) we received a significant amount of snow today. The snow is so deep that there is no way that you could drive on the roads unless they are plowed.
Fortunately, the government is plowing the roads.
When the Tea Party & the Republicans say that they don't like government, I guess that they don't like the government plowing the roads. Maybe they would like to sit in their houses and wait days for the snow to melt. And maybe they would like local businesses to suffer a loss of income because none of the employees could get to work to keep the businesses open.
It is the role of government to act for the common good. And government provides us with essential services that improve the lives of every citizen.
So the next time you are at the water cooler talking to your coworkers about the snow, please make sure that you gently remind them that the snow plows that allowed them to get to work were paid for by their tax dollars, and that the cost of snow removal is not an insignificant amount. According to David Buck, a spokesman for the Maryland State Highway Administration, Maryland has already spent $80,000,000 on snow removal as of last weekend--before the monster storm that we got today. Given that the population of Maryland is a little less than 6,000,000, this means that the government has already spent more than $13 per person on snow removal in Maryland as of last weekend.
And the next time that they talk about the need to cut government, please ask them if they really would have liked to have been stuck in their house longer because the government had to cut back the amount of money it was spending on snow removal.
We need to frame the debate about the role of government. Government does a lot of good, and we need to make sure that people realize it.