It was President Ronald Reagan who said, “The Democratic Party is the party of government.” Although he didn’t intend that as a compliment, many Democrats would agree.
Take the 1988 contest between presidential candidates Michael Dukakis and George H.W. Bush. In a televised debate, Dukakis said, “The purpose of government is to do something, not wait for the market to do it, which it won’t.” Bush’s memorable line was, “Read my lips. No new taxes.”
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Those exchanges reinforce the idea that the Democratic Party is the party that wants government to do things, while the Republican Party is the party that opposes government doing things. The image has never been quite correct, however.
Reagan himself was an activist president. He gave us the idea of Star Wars, which arguably caused the downfall of the Soviet Union. And he presided over the most consequential reform of the tax system in our nation’s history.
George W. Bush was also an activist president. On the domestic front, he gave us Medicare Part D (the largest change in Medicare since its creation in 1964), and No Child Left Behind (a major commitment to education reform). On the international front, Bush gave us an ill-advised war in Iraq, and an anti-AIDS program is credited with saving between 25 and 26 million lives.
But no president, Democrat or Republican, has been more activist than Donald Trump. In fact, Trump is probably the most consequential president since Franklin Roosevelt. Right now, Trump is the government. And he is making changes in virtually every aspect of our lives.
The party that wants government to do more things is opposing a president who is doing more things than Democrats ever thought was imaginable. So, if you are a Democrat, how do you respond to that?
Let’s start with a very basic question. What public policy changes that Trump is not already doing would Democrats most like to see accomplished? Unfortunately, the answers are heavily influenced by wealthy donors and powerful special interests who fund the party and whose goals in politics are very different from the views of rank-and-file Democrats.
Wealthy Democratic donors, for example, are into climate change and LGBT issues, and they are well to the left of their party. Almost everything wealthy Democratic donors want to do on climate change is economically harmful to low- and moderate-income families. As progressive blogger Matt Yglesias notes, a tax on carbon is regressive, limits on fossil fuel production are regressive, and green energy regulations are regressive. The cost of all these measures as a fraction of income rises as you go down the income ladder. And almost everything wealthy donors want to do on LGBT issues (such as men playing in women’s sports) is an anathema to most blue-collar families.
Democrats like to think of themselves as the creators and protectors of social insurance. Yet, there are two things to know about the safety net: 1) Almost all the money goes to special interests, not to poor people, and 2) although the special interests want more money, the last thing they want is reform of the programs from which they profit.
From the very beginning of the War on Poverty in the 1960s, very little welfare was ever given to poor families in cash. Instead, healthcare dollars went to hospitals, insurance companies, and the medical establishment. Housing dollars went to developers. Food stamp money went to agribusiness. Education dollars went to teachers and the education establishment.
Under these pressures, Democratic politicians tend to be trapped. All they can do is advocate for more spending and resist the reforms that would make those dollars well spent.
Almost half the people who enroll in Obamacare exchange plans are eligible for a premium of zero. Yet if they get sick, they have an out-of-pocket exposure of $9,200 for an individual and double that for a family. That’s much higher than you would find in almost any employer plan.
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When people enroll in Medicaid, their trips to the emergency room do not go down. They increase by 40%. There has been a significant drop in test scores among students over the past decade — with the biggest decline among those who were already falling behind. Most Democrats have no plan to change any of this.
What about taxing the rich? When they had the chance, Democrats made no attempt at all to change the worst loophole in the tax code: allowing trust fund babies to borrow from their trusts without paying any taxes at all. Apparently, too many of them are Democrats.
John C. Goodman is president of the Goodman Institute for Public Policy Research.
