Draining the Tub

Right-wing strategist Grover Norquist once famously said, "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

That was always an ugly metaphor, but never so much as now, when for the last week we have seen the victims of Mr. Norquist's crusade against government spending drowning in the "bathtub" that used to be the city of New Orleans. How very prescient of him. How proud he must be.

For years now we have been whittling away at the ability of government to do what it is designed to do at the most basic level: take care of us. Not in the metaphysical sense, not in the psychological sense, not even in the economic sense (though you could certainly make the argument), but in the most basic sense of keeping its citizens alive. If we have a right to expect anything of government, certainly we can expect that.

But the government has failed. The president has failed, the agencies of the federal government have failed, the Congress of the United States has failed. Miserably, thoroughly, fatally.

Some, like Mr. Norquist, might argue that this just goes to show that you can't expect anything from government, that we might as well, if you'll pardon the expression, drown it in the bathtub and be done with it.

But that would be the wrong conclusion.

Right-wing politicians tell us that we should put our faith in the private sector to deliver goods and services that governments are unable to provide. But that isn't the way markets work. Markets respond to money; it's what they're designed to do. The market wasn't there for the people of New Orleans. The market didn't provide the transportation to get people out of harm's way who couldn't afford to pay. The market didn't show up in force to drop food and water and ferry survivors to safety who couldn't afford to pay. Corporations like WalMart did provide relief supplies afterwards and of course I applaud them for that but you know, it isn't their job. It is the job of government. It's what we need government for.

The wealthy and the middle-class were able to take advantage of the means that the private sector offered to get out of town. They got on planes and left; they drove away and waited out the storm. They didn't need the government to keep them alive. The people who were left did, and they drowned in the bathtub--not in the metaphysical sense, but in the actual, physical, terminal sense. They are the embodiment of the metaphor that Grover Norquist so cleverly coined.

We don't need governments because they take care of the well-off. We don't need them because they are so much better at getting you a job, or a car, or determining the price of milk. We need them because without them the worst-off among us haven't got a chance.

Instead of drowning government, how about enabling it to do the very thing it must do? How about forgetting about tax cuts for millionaires and getting our federal agencies in order (and that means giving them the resources they need to do their job)? How about putting people in charge who actually know about and care what they're doing? How about building the levees and the bridges and the schools and the roads and all of the infrastructure that we assume will somehow be there in the absence of funding to maintain it?

I hope Mr. Norquist is somewhere safe and dry tonight. I don't blame him personally, or wish him harm. I hope he never has to go through what the people of the Gulf coast went through this week. Because if he does, heaven help him, because no one else will.