This commentary is by John Bossange of South Burlington, a retired middle school principal.
No U.S. president in the past 75 years consistently bashed the role of government as effectively as President Reagan did during his eight years in office.
For the leader of our federal system to claim that the problems in America could more easily be solved by reducing the size of our government, our federal agencies, departments and service organizations has proven to be more destructive than ever imagined in 1980. This assertion has cast a dark and damaging shadow over what has historically been the strength of our nation’s democracy.
President Reagan told Americans that our government was a hindrance to a better way of life. Although never perfect, our strong, responsive federal government has always done its best to bail out states and cities in crisis, set standards for equal opportunity in both the public and private sectors, and level the playing field for a competitive capitalistic system.
All combined, our agencies offer hope and a pathway for individuals and families to make a good living; for neighborhoods, towns and cities to create strong, supportive communities; and for small businesses to flourish without fear of being swallowed up by unregulated corporate giants.
President Reagan challenged all of that. He asked us to lose faith in our government.
Today, his most destructive message — to keep the federal government “off your back” — remains embedded in the Republican Party. Representatives sign the Norquist Pledge to never raise taxes, to fight regulations coming from a federal agency and to commit to purposefully underfunding departments to ensure failure.
And currently, as evidenced by the recent Supreme Court decisions, the court has also begun to question the role of our federal government, pushing regulatory power back to the states, where it was centuries ago.
Our broad, expansive federal government of agencies and departments grew as the nation did, and as the world became more complicated. For decades, Congress and the Supreme Court understood that they were not experts in the environment, labor, education, justice, commerce, treasury, state, homeland security, interior, energy, transportation, defense, veteran affairs, health and human services, agriculture, and housing and urban development.
For years, Democratic and Republican administrations staffed these departments and agencies with experts who were able to understand emerging national needs and worked to make well-informed, research-based decisions in the best interest of our nation.
Without the ability of federal agencies to issue regulations of any kind, we will quickly return to the decades dominated by states’ rights, when centuries ago, there was less of a need for an expansive federal government because we were such a rural nation. But it’s not 1830 or 1930 anymore. Our population has grown dramatically. We’ve industrialized, urbanized, and been connected globally through advances in technology.
Rampant free-market economics with inadequate regulations buried America with a recession in 1873, a depression in 1930, and again with a financial collapse in 2008. It is clear that, to compete on the world’s stage, we also need a strong, responsive federal government to deal with other nations, and not be represented by a collection of states, each with its own set of regulations and policies.
The recent Supreme Court decision to eliminate the role of the federal government to protect reproductive rights may be the harbinger of more mythological thinking to come. We may soon be reading about reducing more federal environmental regulations for public health and safety, food, medicine, and thousands of consumer products, for protecting workers, and for those regulations designed to prevent financial abuse by the banks and mortgage institutions, ushering in yet another period of public grief and panic.
President Reagan was dead wrong 40 years ago, as are many Republicans and the six Supreme Court justices today who seem prepared to lead us back through the dark shadow of less government, and less regulation, ignoring our painful national history.
Given the choice between what has failed miserably in the past and what is needed for the future, the choice is clear: Work to make our imperfect federal system of government function more effectively in response to the needs of an America in the 21st century. That work needs to be ongoing. Strengthening our democratic institutions should be the pride of our nation and energize all of us.
Yet I fear that President Reagan’s destructive message still haunts America today. Too many of our citizens believe we can live as we did a century ago.
Our Supreme Court and lawmakers would be wise to remind the nation why we developed national standards and regulations, why we have federal departments and agencies, why we have moved away from empowering states, and why we have accepted the imperfect world of a broader, expansive federal government.
Failure to acknowledge our nation’s history and slowly dismantle our federal system of government will bring great pain to America and we will be a much weaker nation. Now more than ever, we need to move beyond the dark shadow of Reagan’s destructive legacy, and become a stronger America, a nation that is a true shining light on the hill, not a collection of states wallowing in a dark valley from the past.
