2016 March 7^th

A few days ago Cal Thomas published a column he titled “Reforming institutions in a ‘dysfunctional city’” by which he meant the Federal Government in Washington; DC equals dysfunctional city, get it? Thomas’ anti-government rant was propelled by his need to work on his income tax. Thomas is fortunate that he needs to work on his income tax because if he were earning the federal minimum wage in this country he would owe no tax at all. Many of those citizens would be happy to change places with him; if they could they would probably not use the occasion to complain about how their tax money was being wasted. He goes on to quote Ronald Reagan who virtually oozed pithy negative comments about our government’s assistance programs for the poor.

The remedy Thomas tells us is to get “beyond the notion of ‘entitlement’ and back to what our ancestors taught about personal responsibility with government as a last resort, not a first resort.” Unfortunately, for many of our citizens, government is the only resort. With a population of 320 million we will obviously have ten percent or 32 million people in the bottom rung of any ability scale. These people will have a very limited capacity to understand directions, particularly written directions, and are employable only in very routine jobs where they can be closely supervised. Then there are people whose employment is limited by physical disability. Thomas quotes Jefferson writing in 1802 warning about government’s pretense of taking care of people. Apparently Thomas believes two and a half centuries have made no difference in the expectations citizens have for their government. He is right of course, and some of them are serving in Congress.

Then Thomas quotes Speaker of the House Paul Ryan: Ryan tells us much to Thomas’ delight that,  “President Obama has signed into law spending increases of nearly 25 percent for domestic government agencies…all of this new government spending was sold as ‘investment.’” Well Mr. Thomas, where did these bills that President Obama signed into law come from? My understanding of the Constitution is that revenue bills must arise in the House of Representatives. If this is true then President Obama has signed into law just those spending bills that the Republican controlled House has sent him to sign. (Perhaps Mr. Thomas would like to comment about this. Just for fun I’ll email this column to him and I’ll let you know if I get a response.)