Government’s New Normal

With this week’s excruciating execution of a debt-ceiling-raising, deficit-lowering deal in Washington D.C., the federal government set itself on course to cut expenditures by $1 trillion over the next ten years with an accord on another $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction due in November. Where all the spending cuts will fall has not been specified; that will be left up to a bipartisan Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. But it is a safe bet that revenues flowing to Connecticut and to Newtown from the federal government will be severely restricted. In 2010, the 50 states received about 35 percent of the $1.65 trillion spent by the federal government. With Connecticut already wrestling with massive budget shortfalls of its own, and restive property taxpayers squeezing local school and finance boards at the polls, we are well on our way to a significant retrenchment of government at all levels. Whether you agree with the “starve-the-beast” political underpinnings of this trend or not, it is happening, and we are going to have to adjust our ideas of what to expect from government.

As the state packed up the equipment of the Second Company Governor’s Horse Guard at Fairfield Hills this week, and Newtown’s popular owner-operator bus drivers braced for an adverse decision on the renewal of their contracts with the school district as an money-saving move, we began to see the early outlines of government’s new normal. It can be argued that preserving our historical legacy or our revered corps of caring and skilled bus operators is a luxury ill-suited for tough economic times. But we expect that it won’t be long before we are choosing not only among perceived luxuries, but actual essentials, including public health and product safety, environmental quality, and the integrity of our national, state, and local infrastructure. This real consequence of the decisions we make now may puncture once and for all prevailing myth that government always serves the other guy and never us.

Suzanne Mettler, a political scientist at Cornell University recently examined the disconnect between what people believed they receive in government services and what they actually receive. She interviewed people who claimed they have not used a federal government program. Of those claiming home mortgage interest deductions, 60 percent made that claim; student loans, 53.3 percent; child and dependent care tax credit, 51.7 percent; earned income tax credit, 47.1 percent; social security, (retirement and survivors), 44.1 percent; Pell grants, 43.1 percent. And more than one in three Medicare recipients thought there were receiving no federal help. If we are serious about starving the beast, we should all prepare ourselves for some unexpected hunger.

The good news about our new fiscal austerity is that on the national and state levels we are finally talking seriously about living within our means. It is a difficult but useful conversation we have every year here in Newtown. Every benefit has a cost, and every cost has a consequence for taxpayers. The bad news is that we may be tempted in our zeal to shrink government to stop investing in programs that strengthen us collectively through education, preventative health care, clean environments, better engineering and maintenance of our infrastructure, and safety in our homes, workplaces, and neighborhoods. We need to make sure that the “new normal” isn’t just another name for mediocrity — or worse.