I saw an interesting comment recently, from a Republican who wished for Pelosi or some other important Democrat to just say thank you. Thank you for the money, thank you for working to help these people, fund these programs, keep everything running smoothly.
It's an interesting thought. There are plenty of reasons it's not going to happen in a vacuum - if Pelosi did it tomorrow she'd be mauled by both parties. But as part of something larger? It could be incredible. William Proxmire made his career with the Golden Fleece Award, attacking stupid and wasteful spending (sometimes quite inaccurately). I don't know why there's so little effort on the left to clearly, emotionally show the good that gets done.
Imagine if every budget fight involved someone coming forward and saying "I grew up being fed on WIC. I'm a civil engineer now, and WIC helped make that possible. Out of every tax dollar you paid, I got .000002 cents. Do you really want to take that away?"
Growing up, I got free lunches in school, and in college I got the maximum Pell Grant every semester for four years straight.
I thank my lucky stars for those things and am very glad the government did it.
Of course, given the amount I pay in taxes, the government made an absolutely terrific investment. I have returned that value to it many, many times over.
All else being equal, of course I would prefer to pay lower taxes. That's what efficiency means, and the government is not very efficient.
But "Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society." (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.), and I kinda like civilized society.
It's an interesting thought. There are plenty of reasons it's not going to happen in a vacuum - if Pelosi did it tomorrow she'd be mauled by both parties. But as part of something larger? It could be incredible. William Proxmire made his career with the Golden Fleece Award, attacking stupid and wasteful spending (sometimes quite inaccurately). I don't know why there's so little effort on the left to clearly, emotionally show the good that gets done.
Imagine if every budget fight involved someone coming forward and saying "I grew up being fed on WIC. I'm a civil engineer now, and WIC helped make that possible. Out of every tax dollar you paid, I got .000002 cents. Do you really want to take that away?"
(I hope I got that math right.)