Americans are finally waking up to the biggest Republican con of them all: the small government con.
Ever since the 1980s, Republicans have used a strategy former Reagan budget director David Stockman called “starving the beast.”
The thinking behind this strategy is pretty simple.
First, you cut taxes to “starve” the “the beast” (the government) of the revenue it needs to survive.
Then, when people start getting angry because the government can no longer afford to work the way it should, you propose a solution: cut spending.
Instead of feeding the beast even more, you say, we should trim it down to size, make it lose some weight.
And so the cycle continues.
Now that the government physically can’t afford to do its job because you’ve cut most of its revenue sources and because it doesn’t provide the services it used to provide because you’ve slashed away at budget after budget, the people get even angrier with the government and government employees.
The lines at the DMV and the Social Security office get longer and longer, schools disintegrate, and people blame the government workers for it, not realizing it was Republicans who cut the workforce to the point where government can barely do its job.
Eventually, they become so upset that they start thinking, like Reagan, that government is the problem, not the solution.
And so what do they do?
They demand even more budget cuts and even more tax cuts until the “beast” -- otherwise known as our government -- is finally dead.
Our commons and government functions - from Social Security to Education - can then be privatized and sold off to the highest bidder, usually whatever local billionaire has bankrolled the Republican Party in his area.
Pretty insidious strategy, right?
