Is Government Doing Enough?
From William Lucy, International Secretary-Treasurer
One thing we’re not short of these days is information. We are up to our necks in it every waking moment. What is this tidal wave of data doing to us? Harvard University, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and The Washington Post set out to find some answers.
Their surveys reaffirm that Americans have come to mistrust our major institutions: churches, unions, schools, corporations, you name it. Government, too—and the politicians who are supposed to link government to the people haven’t helped. Listen to today’s presidential candidates when they start their litany of how government butts into our personal lives, regulates people to death, wants to take away our rights and liberties. They all sound like talk-show hosts.
It has been politically stylish to beat up on government for at least a generation. Many politicians do it because they assume it’s what most Americans want to hear. Hard-core conservatives certainly do—being against government is part of their credo—but the new survey makes it clear that a good many Americans actually feel very differently.
The Harvard/Kaiser/Post survey looked at “disaffected voters”—independents, Perot supporters, ex-Democrats, people who are concerned about their economic security and family values but sensitive to the needs of those less fortunate than themselves. Nearly one-third of all voters are disaffected, and of this group, two-thirds are women. By sitting out the 1994 election, the disaffected helped hard-core conservatives take over the House of Representatives.
In general, the “disaffected third” are worried about the economy, and they don’t think the government is doing enough to improve it. Look at these figures: 76% of the disaffected think government let too many jobs go overseas; 76% think government didn’t work hard enough to reduce the deficit; 75% think government didn’t do enough to create new and better jobs; 67% think government did too much for the wealthy.
The disaffected are worried about the growing gap in incomes between the rich and everyone else. They’re worried that while the economy is strong and profits are up, wages for the middle-class are stagnant and life for the poor is tougher by the day.
Although women in the disaf-fected one-third distrust government as intensely as the men—both think it is wasting their tax dollars—they are not eager to cut spending on health and pension programs that protect the poor and the old; only 27% think that government has done too much for the poor. They think that government is doing too much for the wealthy and not enough for the needy.
"Government isn’t doing enough” —that is not what Gingrich, Dole, and the rest would have us believe. Too many public workers hear nothing but complaints and criticism; the good things you do too often go unnoticed.
The public is, and should be, impatient with waste and ineffici-ency. They don’t like to stand in line; they don’t like to read about cabinet members or Senators junketing about—but, even in this age of mistrust, ordinary people want to believe that government is on their side. They want government working to make life a little more fair for people who don’t ride polo ponies for exercise.
As the new survey shows, a substantial percentage of voters believe government—and the public employees who keep it running—can and should be a powerful force for change.
A few weeks ago I addressed a group of high school students from all over the country who were visiting Washington, D.C. I was deeply impressed with these kids: bright, energetic, eager to learn. All were clearly thinking about the future and what they can do to shape it. It was no surprise, however, that they knew little about the labor movement, and this suggests to me that the AFSCME family in our councils and locals is missing an opportunity. We should be reaching out to high schoolers and telling them of the struggle to protect working people, and the role of government and labor. That’s another way we can reduce the causes of voter disaffection.
