Why Exact;y Does Romney Want Fewer Public Service Workers

After a disastrous week in which it was disclosed that the President had been outdone by the Romney campaign’s ability to raise $16 million more during the month of May than the Obama campaign, and that the President had been practically tarred and feathered for stating that the “private sector was alright” and the United States Secretary of Commerce was arrested for driving under the influence or affliction of something mysterious, Mitt Romney thought it was Christmas and gave the Democrats a much desired gaffe of his own when he stated, “[Obama] wants to hire more government workers. He says we need more firemen, more policemen and more teachers. Did he not get the message from Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.”

Notwithstanding that he referred to fire fighters and police offers by using only the masculine gender it was easily the biggest Romney gaffe yet, bigger even than when he crowed during the circus known in more austere circles as the 2012 Republican Primary, “I love to fire people,” for Democrats and hopefully to most independents as well, it was a mark of stupidity and insensitivity. And yet, as I write these words I have the sense that for Republicans at least, it was no gaffe at all but rather an expression of how most of them feel. More than anything else however, this jittery and undisciplined response to the President says something universally positive about Mr. Obama and glaringly demonstrates the stark conservative contradictions regarding government programs.

There are several levels to this whole discussion, so let’s begin with what conservatives really believe.

While they insist that they are the party of “first responders,” “law and order” and so forth, Republican leadership really despises the concept of police and firefighters working for state and local government. Simply put, Republicans don’t really support law enforcement and other public workers being employed directly by We the People. As we have seen in privatized hell in such places as Iraq, they would prefer that these services be provided by the private sector. Actually, Republicans seemingly prefer that most if not all government services be provided and managed by private industry. Let the marketplace manage the services while allowing unaccountable corporations charge a fee to either the government or directly to the people on say, a pay-per-arrest or a pay-per-fire basis. What could go wrong? Can’t afford to have your burning house saved? Sorry buster, get a job and stop being a leech on society.

As for education, conservatives are closer than ever to privatization. School vouchers and charter schools are actively sucking money out of public education and pumping it into private services, leaving public education in a deeper hole and momentum remains in favor of more charter schools and less funding for everyone else.

For-profit education, security and rescue are gaining popularity with federal, state and local budgets strapped for cash. The danger of course is that this agenda mandates that private corporations are solely in the business for the sake of profit. If it makes financial sense to, for example, ban disabled or slower children from school because they lower aggregate test scores and drive away students from higher income families, then so be it—after all, profit is the only result worth measuring in the corporate world.

This is the Republican leadership agenda. Bleed the government to death and then hand everything over to Monsanto and Walmart. Meanwhile, Republican voters don’t even really understand what their leaders are up to. While the Tea Party distracts on charges of “socialism” most Republican voters actually approve of a reliable police force and firefighters—we all simply expect these services to be free and available, even self-identified anti-government conservatives.

The true irony is that Republicans send their kids to public schools like the rest of us. They send their kids to public colleges. They elbow their kids into public school sports programs proudly and with thunderous applause especially in such strong bastions of Republican conservatism as Texas.
They expect well-maintained and accessible public roads, national parks, clean water, tunnels that don’t cave in, bridges that don’t collapse, and most importantly, a military presence standing guard on the anti-immigration wall. Many of them however, like President George Bush, did not mind providing millions of federal government dollars to the financial sector. They generously offer government subsidies and incentives (corporate welfare) to businesses all across the country such as Exxon but oddly draw the line when it comes to making sure we can be treated for an illness or injury without going broke. The truth is that Republicans are the real socialists—they are selective socialists—such as Ron Paul who is the most conservative member of Congress in nearly a century receiving benefits under Medicare.

Consequently, I don’t imagine Romney’s remarks about the evils of government services like police, firefighters and public educators will resonate with those Republican voters who like us Democrats still applaud units like the NYPD and FDNY. Speaking of which, I assure you, if this had been a Democratic remark about pubic workers, the Republican response would have been a reel of every second of videotape from 9/11 crammed into a 60-second campaign commercial and aired nationally.

Too throw more gasoline on the fire since his anti-public workers remark, Romney has continued to cynically lie and attempt to weasel out of this proverbial hole he has managed to dig himself into. “Of course, teachers and firemen and policemen are hired at the local level and also by states. The federal government doesn’t pay for teachers, firefighters or policemen. So obviously that’s completely absurd.”

Ding-ding—WRONG! Clearly Romney is unaware of basic civics and how federal, state and local governments are interconnected. In addition to billions in annual federal spending designed to assist local police, firefighters and teachers, we know that Romney has been opposed to the president’s stimulus, which pumped billions of federal money into state and local treasuries in order to save the jobs of hundreds of thousands of teachers, firefighters and police officers: $4 billion for state and local law enforcement; #2.1 billion for Head Start, $53.6 billion to prevent cuts in local school districts and state colleges. Why? Because the so-called free market failed to do so. Who else was supposed to step up?

This is part of the role of the federal government, contrary to the ridiculous position that government should be “run like a business.” Unlike businesses, government is NOT tasked with making a profit. Instead, and especially in times of economic distress, government is in a unique position to be able to provide money to the economy when no one else will. There is no question that this sometimes increases the deficit and debt. If that worries you, just take a short walk back through history to the Reagan years and the triple digit debt and doubled deficit following a considerably less serious recession.
Mitt Romney and his Tea Party allies operate under the false assumption that government is like a business. This is what really drives his distaste for spending federal money on our most crucial public servants. He says so and he needs to be asked why. A lot.

I can hardly wait to hear Mitt Romney explain that it was OK to lay of hundreds of thousand of these valuable public servants due to sate and local cutbacks. I am almost looking forward to hearing Romney tell us that we have enough teachers and firefighters and police and that in order to counteract the pro-firefighter, pro-police and pro-teacher Obama agenda, we should perhaps fire even more. After all, they are just government workers. This is what Romney, the Republicans and their Tea Party cohorts might want, especially if businesses like Bain Capital might profit from privatizing these services, but I assure you: across the political spectrum, this will prove to be the kiss of death for Republican presidential aspirations.