It’s always a treat to be lectured by politicians who
denounce government aid. From time to time, they will
drag out their old harangue about the Affordable Care Act
or, reaching further backward, the government’s automobile
industry bailout during the Bush-inspired financial
crisis of 2008-11. Chrysler and General Motors, it was
said, should have been allowed to go belly up and declare
bankruptcy. Those bailouts were “crony capitalism on a
grand scale” and that those who advocate such aid are
promoting sin.
That puts nearly all of us in bed with Lucifer.
Kansans, for example, gladly accept bailouts as a way of
life and business. For only a few examples, crop subsidies,
disaster aid, highway programs, flood insurance and even
Medicare come to this state in huge portions as earmarks,
bailouts, or whatever is the moment’s popular tag for
“relief”; federal money flows into Kansas at nearly double
the amount we pay in federal income taxes.
In the early 1970s, federal revenue “sharing” prompted
wide-ranging cuts in city and county property taxes; urban
renewal grants rebuilt blighted business districts; the
Conservation Reserve Program paid farmers to leave land
alone, allow it to regenerate; cut-rate federal loans and outright
grants have built roads, bridges, parks, hospitals, airports
and rail stations for cities and counties. Government
payrolls are life for many communities. And until Sam
Brownback played the hick about our affection for culture,
federal money had saved starving arts programs all across
Kansas.
We love bailouts. We live on them. A politician who
denounces them is disconnected, to be kind.
-JOHN MARSHALL
