Poisoning The Chalice

FOR THE past thirty years conservatives have been trying to reform the vast empire of government subsidy and patronage we call the welfare state. Conservatives have worked to ease the distortions built into the economy from a peverse tax system. They have worked to enable the forces of “creative destruction” through deregulation. They have tried to unwind the cruel and unjust system of welfare benefits. They have tried to introduce choice into the monolithic system of compulsory education. And they have tried to move away from the first dollar free-at-the-point-of-delivery model of health care.

Not surprisingly, our liberal friends have resisted the forces of change. A century ago they began their program of legislation to provide free education, free health care, generous assistance because they believed that it was the right thing to do. They enacted their program confident in the knowledge that every educated, progressive-minded person agreed with them.

But now, a century later, their rigid programs of education, health care, and welfare assistance are long past their sell date. Initiated with boundless hope they have slowly wound down, year by year, and how exist mainly as patronage programs by which our liberal friends maintain themselves in their sinecures and their clients in their pensions.

In the last decade, especially, our liberal friends have struck out with remarkable venom against those who would seek to reform their welfare state colossus, and in doing so they have poisoned the chalice of US democracy. By blocking all reform, especially in the subsidies for home mortgages, they have brought on a perfect financial storm, and true to the chapter and verse of their tactics manual, have ruthlessly blamed it all on the incumbent Republicans.

That means that Americans will likely elect Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) next week to be president. And he has promised more of the same: more pensions for Democrats, more subsidies for liberal-favored constuencies and initiatives, and more government direction of the national life.

Conservatives believe that we are already long overdue for root-and-branch reform of the welfare state. We believe that Americans should be in charge of the efforts to enhance and improve their communities. We believe that government programs are the least effective way of adapting to the future. We think that the bureaucracy-and-subsidy model has be tried and has failed.

But our Democratic friends are determined to give it one more college try, and if they win they will have a mandate to do so. Unfortunately they will be handed a chalice that they have tarnished and poisoned. In their intransigence they refused, while in opposition, to allow it to be refreshed and renewed. We saw this intransigence before, in 1990, when Democrats led by Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell refused to allow a capital gains tax reduction to ease the pain of recession.

The American people are fed up with the poisoned chalice that politicians in Washington have been soiling for the last decade. They want sensible, practical reform. Next week, most probably, they will call for a change in the national executive branch. That is the one great power they possess.

But they will expect that change to lead to reform. If it doesn’t—and we believe here at Road to the Middle Class that they are unlikely to get it from President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Leader Reid—they will be back in two years or four years with a firmer demand for change.

That is what democracy is all about.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.