Are Checks and Balances a Mistake?

Two of our founders with their true thoughts translated into modern idioms.

Did we worry too much about tyranny and too little about effective government?   Did our fear of tyranny cause us to create a government doomed to failure? 

I believe the answer is yes.  

When we learn about our Revolution in school, the figure of George III looms as a tyrant in the background.  But he was not a tyrant.  He presided over a constitutional monarchy that ruled over a people who were among the freest in Europe.  Only the Dutch were more free.  

By the second decade of the 19th century as the US population moved west, it was already clear that we needed to build networks of post roads and canals to allow commerce to flourish.  But the Democratic Republicans led by Jefferson opposed federal funding for internal improvements and in 1815 or so when the idea for a canal from New York to Ohio nearly received federal funding, the funding bill was vetoed by the president. 

New York was able to go ahead anyway and the canal was a success, making New York the preeminent US port and creating a market for grain from the west - the west being Ohio valley at the time.  

By the next decade, President John Quincy Adams wanted a national university and a host of improvements, but little came of it.  To get anything done, you need both a willing president and a compliant Congress.  And Congress has no reason to do what the president wants, even when Congress and the presidency are controlled by the same party.  (So Adams got nowhere with his American Plan). 

In 1787, our government was envisioned as one with a strong Congress, and a weak president who acted as a manager over a relatively small portfolio of federal matters - post offices, customs houses, soldiers at the frontier to fight Indians.  But as we grew and as commerce demanded support, support was limited to the states.  So canals were built using mostly private money with the state acting as the regulator - it approved rights of way and often gave tax advantages as well.  Instead of a strong national university, we slowly built a system of great universities from the small colleges originally designed to train ministers.  It took until the civil war and the voluntary removal of southern Congressmen to pass several major bills supporting the transcontinental railroad, land grant colleges and homesteading.  It was these, especially the land grant colleges, that created the system that educated the engineers and managers we needed in the 20th century.  

Industrialization changed the power dynamic between worker and owner.  In pre-industrial times a worker had bargaining power over his employer.  Perhaps not exactly equal, but power enough to have a say in the process.  But as factories replaced workshops, workers had to take it or leave it.  But it took until the 1930s and the Great Depression for laws to be passed that improved conditions for industrial workers.  And even to this day, conservative judges still write opinions that imagine a world where a unionized worker loses the personal right to bargain.  But trust me, when you apply for work at a Walmart or an Amazon warehouse, you have no bargaining power.  

With the 2007-8 collapse, it seemed we might get a national health care system and government regulation the financial industry - but while both were passed, they have been stymied by state lawsuits, and congressional chipping away at both programs.  

One of the reasons that Trump was elected is that many people are dissatisfied.  They don’t understand the value of what government does, but they also rightly wonder about the emphasis on programs for the poor that leave little to help families who earn enough so that they are not poor, but not enough to afford the myriad costs of living when college students can rack up $100,000 in college expenses even for a state school.  (in NJ tuition, room and board for a state university costs around $15,000 per year - so $60k over 4 year).  If you have two or three kids, over less than a decade you and your kids will spend the cost of an average home for college.  And at the same time you are saving for retirement, and paying more for health care.  Yes, kids can get summer jobs, but often their meager pay is only enough to fund books and clothing and maybe a trip home at Christmas.  

Folks like myself have decent jobs, but for many, perhaps less educated or mired in the collapsed economy in some of our poorer states, good jobs have been replaced with grinding shift work in low skilled retail and service. 

Oh, and yes, I know that Trump’s election was a fluke.  An event that could only occur if everything went exactly right.  But the seeds of discontent were there, and remain there.  For many who work at an average job, they see only the way health care deductibles rose under Obamacare - as they were meant to.  This by the way was a conservative idea, and adopted to ensure bipartisan cooperation.  But the cooperation never came.  The tax against so called Cadillac plans was also a conservative idea - this tax forced companies to weaken their health plans or pay an excise tax (now delayed).  

For many white families living in mostly white suburbs, they see urban America as plagued with ills that appear self inflicted.  Social scientists may have developed a complex explanation for what occurs in towns where many minorities are mired in poverty.  But for an average white person whose life is consumed with work and family, they don’t know the explanations and excuses and don’t have time to care.  Even for myself, when I drive around Paterson (where I volunteer) I see two different groups.  One are in essence refugees.  They came here from somewhere else, whether Mexico of Bangladesh; they are hard working with an intact family structure and with a solid grounding on how to succeed.  And they do succeed.  Then we have the entrenched poor who were born here.  Most are African American.  And while many African Americans have done better over the last 5 decades, many in poor urban neighborhoods  seem hopeless.  I see them on porches of dilapidated housing, shirtless men, drunks, stoned.  (In front of one historic church on Broadway, in the summer you will see men and women lying on the steps, strung out.)  

These images may not reflect the majority, but they give one pause.  So for the average white family that hears of a gunshot death in Paterson, or of failing schools, they just shrug.  Or think WTF.  When the Ferguson shooting occurred they did not know what to think.  And yes, I know that the police used the black population as a crop harvested for fines needed to balance the budget.  I get it.  But across NJ in many very pleasant white suburbs, blue lines were painted in the middle of many streets.  

Are system of benefits from Pell Grants to food aid to public housing are means tested, and the  middle class rightly sees a stacked deck.  The poor get help.  The rich get tax cuts and for the middle class, they must carry an ever larger load.  Of course they also have voted stupidly for decades.  They supported 2 terms of Ronald Reagan who gutted public housing (leading to the modern homeless crisis) and they sat passively as unions declined.  And if Democrats wished to raise taxes to pay for anything (especially at the state level) they often lost. 

I don’t have any suggestions for change.  A parliamentary system would be helpful.  Such a system would align the interests of Congress with the Head of Government (whatever his title) but this won’t happen.  

I do suggest that the left needs to create institutions dedicated to put forth ideas that support government intervention in the economy - we need these to counter the nonsense spread by right wing so called think tanks where instead of genuine thinking, we get lies crafted to support low taxes as the panacea for every social ill.  

I also suggest an alternative to the Federalist Society to both encourage law students and lawyers who support the notion that the Federal Government can act - and that Congress can use its implied powers.  But who will step in to lead the way?  

By the way, Alexander Hamilton was a Federalist.  If he came along today, he would denounce the Federalist Society as a complete misuse of his image and his good name.

One last tidbit.  The other day, I watched a few minutes of Stephen Moore on C-Span discussing his book, Trumponomics (written with Arthur Laffer).  He explained his support for the limiting of the full deductibility of state and local taxes, saying more or less, “people who choose to live in high tax state,” as if living in a high tax state is a simple choice.  It is not.  My family have lived within 40 miles of Paterson since the 1850s.  What does he recommend?  Mississippi?