In Emmer’s Vision of Social Services, Good Samaritans Pay for Tax Cuts with Personal Time
Tom Emmer’s vision for Minnesota called me up recently. It asked me for a ride down to the Twin Cities to get medical care. I was working against a 5 p.m. business deadline, so I had to decline.
Actually, it was my neighbor who called. He used to get healthcare in Duluth through Minnesota’s now-suspended general assistance medical care, or GAMC, program. Now, he must travel more than 130 miles for care.
If you like the idea of being put in positions like this by your neighbors, take heart: Under State Representative Emmer’s vision of government, you’d get plenty of chances.
Mr. Emmer and his RFL (Republican Fear and Loathing) colleagues are peddling a familiar brand of fools’ gold this summer: that by slashing government and reassigning responsibility for social services to the private sector, we can lower taxes AND get better services. It’s predicated on three classic conservative canards: 1) government can’t do anything right, 2) more choices always yield better results, and 3) people will unfailingly do the right thing if government would just get off their backs.
In Mr. Emmer’s view, government can barely get out of bed to scratch its rear each morning. Rather than providing essential social services to the most vulnerable people in society, it gets in the way of private organizations that are better-suited to provide those services to my neighbor. High taxes merely divert money away from such charitable organizations, while costly and crippling regulations (such as requiring people who work with vulnerable and/or volatile adults to have training or licenses) hobble their efforts.
If we cut government out of the equation, the fairytale goes, we enable people to make their own choices about who to help and we free those organizations built to help the needy do what they do best. Thus, we unleash a wave of charity that meets everyone’s needs more efficiently and effectively than government ever could.
For example, Mr. Emmer told MPR last month that he believes medical professionals would rush in to provide pro bono care to people like my neighbor if we simply cut or eliminated their taxes. I guess we should assume that everyone else in his support system – from pharmacies to grocery stores to taxi companies – will follow suit.
In fact, Mr. Emmer’s model is riddled with assumptions like these. It assumes that everyone will donate most of the income reclaimed from taxes to charities that provides social services. It assumes that, when provided with the opportunity to work less hours for the same paycheck, people will choose to volunteer that reclaimed time – as opposed to spending it with their families or using it to make even more money. And it assumes that everyone’s choices will miraculously correspond to and fill the myriad needs out there – even those of former murderers, rapists and pedophiles.
Far from a sure thing, it’s actually an enormous ideological gamble that will disrupt millions of lives if it fails.
That’s where neighbors like you and me come in. With government pared to the bone and family and friends already doing everything they can (presumably), who else is left to plug in the holes that private organizations either can’t or won’t fill? As neighbors, we’re no longer just supporting this care system with tax dollars and the occasional favor; we’re being recruited as full-fledged members of it – even if we’ve already made our “choices” regarding who we want to help. In some cases, we may even be the difference between whether that person can live on his or her own or not.
In short, we’re potentially trading a ton of personal responsibility for a piddling tax break.
Now, this may seem like a lot to take on as a neighbor. But think of all the choices you’ll have: whether or not to believe a neighbor’s crisis is real, imagined, feigned or exaggerated; whether or not his or her need for treatment supersedes your client’s need to have a document by 5 p.m.; whether or not he or she can walk the four blocks between a bus stop and her doctor’s office.
Does this really beat putting a small portion of our individual tax bills toward ensuring that government – even with the inefficiencies, incompetence and shenanigans it sometimes entails – can provide a robust safety net?
That’s why I hope Mr. Emmer’s bus tour comes to Duluth between now and the Aug. 10 primary. I’m sure my neighbor would love to hitch a ride to St. Paul on it.
