waltondammerung

Huzzah! Down with big government! grrrrrr!

I have read the "In Gov we trust" posts and responses with interest. As Amy well knows, I'm a bit of a skeptic when it comes to the federal government, especially the current Bush administration. I do agree with Amy that the separation of church and state serves to protect the church, in addition to protecting those who do not wish to be governed by a Christian-based body. However, Amy writes in her second post: "When has government funding ever improved anything? And when has it ever come without strings attached?"

With this statement, I disagree. Without Frankin D. Roosevelt's implementation of the Work Progress Adminstration and the Civilian Conservation Corps, thousands of Americans, including my grandfather's family, may have starved to death during the Great Depression. My great-grandfather lost all of his savings when the stock market crashed in 1929, and had it not been for the WPA, he would have been out of work, and his 11 children would have been out of food. To bring my examples more up to date, allow me to tell you about my friend Jen. Jen lives in Portland, and she is a member of Americorps, a network of national service programs that engage more than 50,000 Americans each year in intensive service to meet critical needs in education, public safety, health, and the environment. As an Americorps member, Jen only earns about $9,000 a year. Hence, she qualifies for food stamps. I do not begrudge the fact that Jen receives government assistance. In fact, I'm glad she does, because it allows her to tutor and mentor Portland youths about the importance of our national forests and rivers.

I agree that our goverment funded assistance programs are less than perfect, but I also believe it is unrealistic to think that faith-based organizations could possibly take care of all the needs of people who currently receive public assistance benefits.

Perhaps instead of investing billions of dollars into an unjust war over oil, the government might consider contributing more of the country's tax dollars into programs that will directly aid U.S. citizens. Between strong government programs and faith-based charities, a lot more Americans in need of financial aid need not suffer.

I was happy to see that my post actually showed up - I got a failure message of some kind when I posted it, and it brought back a blank screen After all that typing, I just gave up.

First, there's a difference between distrusting government, and distrusting a particular administration. Those who distrust government would not agree that the government should be "contributing more of the country's tax dollars into programs that will directly aid U.S. citizens." Rather, they might ask what possible relationship "tax dollars," which are taken by force of arms from the citizenry, have with the idea of "contributing" to those in need. "Tax contribution" is an oxymoron. Is the government entitled to tell me to whom I will contribute and how much I will give? Folks who oppose faith-based initiatives on separation grounds ask that question all the time about religious insitutions they do not wish to support with their tax dollars. The existing system is no different, except that it discriminates against people of faith rather than the faithless. Those of us who, if we paid less taxes, would contribute more to faith based charities are forced by the government to "contribute" to futile, faithless government programs. Suddenly I have a vision of medieval tax collectors in black hoods.

Some government programs have worked, but they take on a life of their own and become sacrosanct long after they have ceased to be useful. And there are economists who argue that the New Deal actually prolonged the Great Depression. But you'll have to ask Josh about that.

Now, we are in the position of having to examine the issue precisely because government has overstepped its bounds for decades, and convinced us that its role is to provide for the common welfare rather than the common defense. (In case you've forgotten, it's "promote" the general welfare....which has everything to do with property rights, which actually provide long term aid to the needy, unlike present day welfare.)

To see how far we've gone down this road, try to persuade someone that the government has no role in alleviating poverty (at least by throwing money at it) and watch the incredulous looks. Yet that was the common thinking of both parties prior to FDR. While one may doubt that private charity could alleviate various types of suffering across our nation, I would contend that it is the only thing that can do it consistently and effectively, and did so for well over a century before the government got into the poverty business. And in a time of considerably less economic prosperity than we now enjoy.

Do I think faith-based charities would be strengthened by government support? Not at all. But as long as government is in the charity business (and no politician of the day has the moral fiber to take the arrows that would fly if he opposed such a sacred cow), It would be gratifying to see some of the money spent where it might actually do some good.

In the meantime, I will continue to support those organizations that are built on the right foundation, and begrudge the funds that are extracted by force to support programs that do not have to demonstrate either their usefulness or success.

I am going to try to be brief. Ha.

First, I will respond to what Vicky said. When I wrote: "When has government funding ever improved anything? And when has it ever come without strings attached?" I had in mind government funding for existing programs rather than programs initiated by the government. Programs like Medicare/Medicaid, which has some similarities to the faith-based initiative in that it is government funds provided to organizations or individuals for providing a service to the poor. (There are glaring differences, of course, but bear with me.) What Medicare & Medicaid have mostly done for the general welfare is to drive up the price of health care artificially high by requiring obscene amounts of paperwork, at a great cost to everyone involved, and then demanding that doctors charge all of their other patients the same price they charge Medicare/Medicaid. Of course doctors aren't going to lower prices for Medicare/Medicaid patients; they can't really afford to. So they raise everyone's prices. I would bet a significant amount of money that if Medicare/Medicaid had never existed, there would be no serious question of any need for universal healthcare coverage now. It would still be relatively affordable. The program has done nothing but complicate the work and raise the price of health care.

Medicare & medicaid are among many examples that give me pause when I think of allowing the government to stick its money in places that have been sacrosanct until now. They show me that government funded programs are grossly inefficient and require things of the organizations they fund that make them much less financially efficient as well. Also, when government funds are involved, blanket rules of "fairness" tend to take unequivocable precedence over personal judgment that could take individual circumstances into consideration, leaving them open for all kinds of abuse. That's not to say that fairness is not something to strive for, or that personal judgment is not often tainted by prejudice, but blanket rules do not work very well in huge beaurocracies like the government. Local organizations are better left to themselves, with the eye of public scrutiny to keep them in check.

I haven't forgotten my mom:
Let me resort to the adage that two wrongs don't make a right. Just because I'm unhappy that the government takes my money and gives it to programs that I wouldn't necessarily support on my own doesn't mean that I want it to take *more* of my money and use it to ruin perfectly useful charitable organizations.

Not to mention the huge transaction costs involved in government funding. If I gave a dollar directly to a charity, it would still be worth a dollar, but if I gave it to the government to give to a charity, it would probably only be about 50-70 cents by the time it made its way into charity coffers. There's simply more bang for your buck in giving directly to charity.

I promise this will be the last I say on this matter! Regarding last week's post that read: "Those of us who, if we paid less taxes, would contribute more to faith based charities are forced by the government to 'contribute' to futile, faithless government programs. Suddenly I have a vision of medieval tax collectors in black hoods."

First, I applaud those individuals out there who would gladly offer their tax money to charities. However, I can't forget that people, by nature, are greedy, and traditionally, the more money a person has, the more greedy that person becomes. This is not, of course, true in every single case. There are certainly wealthy individuals who contribute to charities. There are also a lot of wealthy people who hold on to their money, and I'm willing to bet if taxes were phased out, those people wouldn't donate a cent to any charity. Perhaps I should have more faith in the human race. Sorry, I don't. The rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer seems to be a trait that dates as far back as your medieval tax collectors in black hoods, which, by the way, was an excellent analogy, and it really made me think hard about what you wrote.

My other concern with eliminating government assistance programs and relying soley on faith-based charities is this: what will happen to the people who fall through the cracks? What about people who, like my grandma, receive social security and Medicare, but do not attend church? If she were to rely on faith-based charities for income, how would the church even know she existed? What about Jews, or Muslims? Would it be each faith's responsibility to care for their own? For a nation that is supposed to be united, that sounds like a lot of division to me. What about atheists? Would they not deserve assistance?

I'll be the first to admit that I am woefully ignorant about a lot of things, so I'm not trying to argue so much as to ask questions. I don't think the current solutions to public assistance programs are all that great, as Amy pointed out in her post about Medicare and Medicaid, but the idea of relying soley upon faith-based charities for support leaves me with a very uneasy feeling.

Yeah, some of the people I know who argue the loudest for the government to help the poor in every way possible don't lift a finger or give a cent for the poor on their own. So just because they're lazy and greedy, they want me to pay more taxes? It makes me pretty mad. (I'm not saying all liberals are like that, or even most. I am just thinking of a few people I know. RRRrr.)