Who Deserves Help?

            Once again, we’re on the verge of a government shutdown. If Congress doesn’t pass a temporary spending bill, FEMA will run out of funds. House Republicans refuse to pass the bill unless emergency costs are offset by reducing a clean-car loan program. “We’re doing everything that we can to find every dollar that we possibly can to ensure that our fellow Americans who are suffering due to these disasters are able to have resources that are necessary,” said Representative David Dreier (R-California). Dreier, like most Republicans, wants to take $1.5 billion from the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) program and put it towards disaster relief.

            Republicans characterize the problem as a contest between deserving victims of a natural disaster and undeserving corporations. Blogging members of the Tea Party, who support this position, point to Solyndra, the California solar energy company that filed for bankruptcy after receiving a $528 million loan from the Energy Department in 2009. “Government and business don’t mix,” posted one irate commenter. “Harry Reid supports corporate welfare,” posted another.

Democrats, not surprisingly, see the issue differently. In their minds, both victims of natural disasters and auto manufacturers deserve government assistance. “These retooling loans made it possible for Ford Motor Co. to save 1,900 jobs at their Michigan Assembly Plant,” said Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan). Stabenow, like a majority of Democrats, sees a role for government in supporting new technology.

            Five years ago, one might have been surprised to hear Republicans denouncing government programs designed to improve American manufacturing plants. Before the Wall Street bailout of 2008 spawned a generation of right-wing voters fed up with “government handouts,” Republicans applauded efforts that promoted jobs and increased America’s standing in the global economy. Indeed, President George W. Bush created ATVM, the program at the center of this current squabble. In 2007, corporatist policies had broad bi-partisan support. But that was before “corporate welfare” became a dirty word. 

For a while, it looked as if children were guaranteed a place amongst those deserving of assistance, but those days are also long gone. Governor Rick Perry learned this the hard way last Thursday night when he had to defend Texas’s policy of granting in-state tuition to the children of illegal immigrants. Perry did his best to exclude children from the undeserving category but his conservative base didn’t buy it. Even Perry’s eerie pride in Texas’s execution rate didn’t save him from the wrath of conservative voters. “Rick Perry is finished,” said one anti-immigration group. As industries fail and people lose their jobs, Republicans increasingly say, “Well, that’s what you deserve.”

            This sort of damning rhetoric used to be reserved for black women on welfare. Back in the eighties, when Ronald Reagan wanted to redirect government funds from social programs to industry initiatives, a lot of airtime was given to the Myth of the Welfare Queen. By the time Clinton came into office, the public was convinced that welfare generated bad habits, the worst of which was dependency. “Cut back on social programs and the poor will reform themselves,” argued Democrats and Republicans alike.

            This same logic is now being applied to industry. “You can’t compete in this global market?” says the Republican base. “You can’t hold your own against Chinese’s green technology? Well, then you don’t deserve any government handouts.” If we cut back on industrial development, the Tea Partiers and social conservatives tell themselves, these struggling manufacturers will reform themselves.

            While it is certainly amusing to see corporations take some of the heat that used to be reserved for black women, there’s not much consolation in that fact. It’s not as if black women were let off the hook. Rather the category of undeserving has expanded to include any person or business in need. What this new generation of Republican voters seems to want is a world that doesn’t need government.

            If things keep going in this direction, the Democrats should win the next election. After all, there are more people and businesses in need than people and businesses without. But Americans have never been particularly comfortable with the fact of dependency, preferring to maintain their fierce independence even as their circumstances fall apart. Those who vote out of a sense of need will come to resent their vote. Those who vote out of a sense of invulnerability will be ready to crow at the next disaster.

Obviously, this is not a good climate for moving ahead as a country. It’s a great climate, however, for making each of us a little more anxious about what we actually deserve. As we become more anxious about our own needs, we’re less willing to argue that others deserve assistance for theirs. If that’s the case, even if they hold fewer offices, the Party Against Need will have removed a basic responsibility of government: to create the conditions where individuals can think on their own feet. Unburdened of that responsibility, the Party Against Need continues to harden its heart. Watch out, victims of natural disasters! Even you may be found undeserving the next time around.