$14 trillion - we're going to need a bigger calculator

We have a national financial problem on our hands, and it may even be fair to call it a national financial disaster. In my prior post, a report on public credit, I identified the unavoidable embodiment of our problem: our now $14 trillion national debt. This debt is the result of many things, but in recent years unchecked entitlement spending and hand-outs have exponentially grown this obligation. Entitlements form the origins of, and perpetuate our taxation problem. We have the second highest corporate tax rates in the world; this suppresses investment and job creation. Personally, in addition, your income is taxed. Your property is taxed. You are taxed when you shop. You are taxed when you die.

Taxes are a symptom, in a manner of speaking; they are the effect in a cause and effect relationship. While it may be a new way for you to think about it, taxes are simply the tangible manifestation of a responsibility transfer. Put another way, taxes are that which is seen, and the transfer of responsibility is that which is not seen. As individuals cede control of their lives and transfer responsibility to an external unit of government (or, more destructively, when a unit of government takes away from individuals some control of their lives), that unit of government needs resources to discharge the newly-acquired responsibility. A simple illustration of this are fire departments. In much of America, volunteer fire departments still exist. These largely rural communities haven’t consciously chosen to tax themselves in order to transfer this responsibility to their municipal unit of government. Continuing to accept the responsibility themselves, they “pay” for the service of a fire department with their time, energy and “in-kind” contributions (think equipment and the like).

Our financial woes – obscene debt and job-killing taxation – are also a symptom of something else. They are also an effect, one whose cause is an abdication of responsibility; and a lack of self-government is a lack of the cardinal virtue of restraint or temperance.

If you wrestle with our problems and come to a different diagnosis, your first action must be to run your own diagnosis through the cause and effect mill. There are those still today, despite the evidence to the contrary, who insist that the problem with public education is that we need to spend more money on the kids. Similar thinking persons will insist that our financial problems are the result of something else, and probably something they opposed. Never mind that the CBO and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget report that the total cost of the Iraq War was less than the 2009 stimulus bill; people will insist against the evidence that it couldn’t be entitlement growth.

However, if my diagnosis is correct, how does one go about re-kindling this virtue? How can we re-make a society from one that is overly dependent on the nanny state to one that is self-governing? This question is not dissimilar from the old joke about how does one eat an elephant. As the obvious answer goes: one bite at a time.

The work of this organization involves re-igniting that self-government gene. We do it by focusing on these principles and by getting people active in local government. Citizens have a right fundamentally to decide how much external government they want. The best way to hold all units of government accountable is to begin by holding some units of government accountable; and the best way to begin holding some units accountable is to hold a single unit of government accountable. The journey of a thousand miles does indeed begin with a single step.

In 2011, we’re going to continue to recruit volunteers to work with local units of government. We anticipate that some of our volunteers’ efforts won’t be appreciated; we’ll take comfort that shrieks of indignation are generally a good sign we’re on to something. We expect that our volunteers, armed with information, will be able to make great strides in holding local units of government accountable: we hope to see better budgeting, cost-savings and privatization of services to deliver more for less. Those volunteers, with some successes under their belts, will find new areas to focus their attention, and we’ll help them be a success in those areas as well. It remains our belief that there are no shortcuts to this work of restoring American Constitutional government. You have start at the bottom and work like hell, and pretty soon you start to see changes. Once you start treating the problem, you see, the symptoms start to disappear.

I’ll close this first post of the year with a final acknowledgment. There are many people who recognize the symptoms of what ails America, and many of those people desperately want us to be healthy again. In charting a course of treatment, it is incumbent upon us to resist the urge to find a quick fix. There are no super pills that will correct our problems – no great leader can do this work. Not even a new Congress can, because today’s legislation only has a two-year limited guarantee. The malady has taken a long time to establish itself, and it can’t be undone overnight. But slowly, in small ways, and then eventually in grand and surprising ones, we can begin to renew American Constitutional government, and procure prosperity and freedom for ages to come.

While there are better sites for electoral analysis, we’d like to reflect on what we’re seeing on a national basis. Now, none of us associated with this organization live in Kentucky or follow closely the politics of that Commonwealth, but the people of Kentucky recently elected Rand Paul to the U.S. Senate.

Your Vote Counts. Really.

The IfBG is still young enough that we’ve not had a chance to influence any politicians or candidates; yet, listen to what Rand Paul says (from his website) about health care:

“Like other areas of the economy where the federal government wields its heavy hand, health care is over-regulated and in need of serious market reforms.”

We couldn’t agree more, especially with the word market. The federal government has injected itself into innumerable aspects of the everyday lives of Americans. By assuming responsibilities where it shouldn’t, everything it does is performed less effectively than it could be, and our extraordinary outstanding and contingent debt darkens our view of the future. Followed to a logical conclusion, we can either continue abdicating more responsibility to the federal government until little remains that resembles America as it was created, or, we can arrest the transfer of power to Washington and return control of their lives to all Americans.

Now that the election is behind us, we ought to recognize that our work is just beginning. The national Congress will do what it does. States still must respect their obligations and conduct themselves with circumspection. Citizens must continue their work to control government – and not the other way around. As we re-commit ourselves to building honest government in our communities, let us recollect the words of General Washington, who remarked:

A government is like fire, a handy servant, but a dangerous master.

It’s a beautiful state, rich in history and resources, and, it appears, full of many dissatisfied citizens.

Beautiful, but with an undercurrent of anger

It has been said that this is an anti-incumbent election we’re approaching, and if that is so, it is a result of a couple of simple things.

First, the most important take-aways from the poll: an astounding 65% are angry at the policies of the federal government, and 60% think most members of Congress don’t care about what their constituents think.

Why?  To answer the 65% response, I think it is because people have had control taken away from them from too many matters that properly belong to them.  In other words, Washington has rendered most Americans spectators in the things that matter to them and their everyday lives, and this is embittering more and more people.  This is a result of imbalanced government.

That 60% believe their representatives don’t care what they think goes hand-in-hand with this.  If domestic matters which should be made locally are now being made by distant over-reaching government, one could expect that the percentage in an environment of political parity would be 50% or so.  That the actual figure is 60% says something about the mood of the people and their tolerance for distant external government.

It’s against this backdrop that we’re looking for your help and involvement.  Until we insist that the matters that relate to the ordinary course of our lives (things other than national defense, borders, foreign treaties and objects which properly belong to the government in Washington D.C.) are under our local influence, we’ll continue to see disaffection, lack of trust, and anger.  Once we begin demanding proper balance between the units of government, we’ll get representatives who govern by those principles, and begin the renewal so sorely needed of American government.

A great question came from the audience which highlights the difference between the candidates in this race, but also is a larger example of the problem that we have in America.  At the end of the debate, a woman stood up expressing concern that Rutherford would consider cutting functions in the Treasurer’s office.  What he actually said was that he would do a performance audit of all programs to make that decision, but was adamantly against growing services.

But back to the woman’s question/statement.  She expressed concern that cutting programs like financial education would be harmful for young people, who need to learn about credit, debt, and savings.

Financial education is... well, education.

Learning about money – credit, debt, savings, investments, budgeting, really anything one needs to learn to be a responsible and functioning member of society – is truly important.  But it is not the job of the State of Illinois to teach that.  It is the job of the most intimate unit of government: the family.

While this doesn’t exactly qualify as a faithful reductio ad absurdum example, we can wonder if government is indeed responsible for educating young people on money matters, where does government’s responsibility end?  Shall government be responsible for educating young people on matters of diet?  How about on matters of God?  Perhaps matters of personal relationships – should they be friends with the people they are friends with?  Or more immediately, should you get up out of that chair or not?  Shall we have a state Department of Everything, wherein you can get answers for anything at all you choose not to figure out for yourself?

Rutherford made a good point in his answer to this question.  We can think up a hundred great-sounding programs and legislate them all into perpetual existence.  But Illinois is $13 billion in the hole.  As a parent, we teach our children to tie their shoes, brush their teeth, and bathe themselves at some point.  We don’t expect that we’ll be helping them with this when they are 16 or 17 years old.  As it relates to our national responsibility problem, we need to stop expecting someone else to do the things we are supposed to do.  In time, this will reorder responsibilities among units of government and create a lasting and more free society.

The Land of Lincoln

One thing that there isn’t a lot of pride in is the number of units of government Illinois has.  We’re tops in the country.  As of the 2002 census, Illinois had 6,904 units of government, beating Pennsylvania who had 5,032 units of government.  Please, Pennsylvania. If you want to continue to come in second place, keep up that level of effort.

We’ve had some problems, as you can imagine, with all these units of government. The DuPage Water Commission is one such unit of government, which has an up, and now decidedly down, history.

An audit of that unit of government has uncovered negligence and a lack of oversight.  And, sadly sounding familiar, a case of missing money.  Now, there is talk of the county government absorbing this unit of government and making it a department in the county.

While I’m an advocate of pushing government responsibility closer to the people, this move by the General Assembly and the county doesn’t bother me.  Given the responsibilities of the Water Commission, the county is the right home for the responsibilities of the Commission.

I’ve been talking a lot about what I’m calling the “Principle of Proximity” recently.  This Principle states that the government that is closer to the people is more accountable and more participatory.  For this reason, I have advocated and will continue to advocate for a proper re-allocation of responsibilities in the smaller (closer to the individual) spheres of government. Consolidation of authority, responsibility, and power hasn’t worked well in the general sense.

One of the key questions we have to ask ourselves in analyzing units of government is this: whose responsibility should it be? If the duties of a Water Commission are indeed necessary, it should be acknowledged that there are exceptions to every rule, and in this case, consolidating this responsibility in the next larger sphere of government actually makes sense.