The Value of all Those Bloated Government Programs

One day, a few months ago, I was handed an old-school, poorly photocopied portion of a sermon taken from a 1993 sermon by the respected Madison, Wisconsin UU Rev. Michael Schuler.  It got folded and stuck in my laptop bag.

Then I was listening to Marco Rubio, who seems to have recovered enough from the slights and slurs Donald Trump thru at him over the last 10 years to serve as the Secretary of State. In addition to it being painful to consider that Mark Rubio is the Secretary of State,  Rubio went on to brag about plans to cut one of our bloated overseas government divisions.  Given his chief job seems to be attempting the deconstructing of the best of our government programs, it was hardly shocking news. 

It all led me to something I never would have thought I would do, and that is miss the Republican leaders from a generation ago. In this case, the person who seemed so reasonable was George Will, who told this story that UU Rev. Schuler repeated

In a sea of hard-to-hear news, may it serve as a tiny bit of Purell for your mind and soul.

“A veteran returning from Korea went to college on the GI Bill, bought his home with an FHA load, saw his kids born in a VA hospital, started a business with a Small Business Administration Loan, got electricity from TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) and later water from an EPA project. 

His parents retired to a farm on Social Security, got electricity from REA (Rural Energy for America Program) and soil testing from USDA (United States Department of Agriculture).  When the father became ill, the family was saved from financial ruin by Medicare, and a life was saved by a drug developed through the National Institute of Health.

His kids participated in the school lunch program, learned physics from teachers trained in a National Science Foundation program and went through college with guaranteed student loans.  He drove to work on the Interstate and moored his boat in a channel dredged by the Army Corp of Engineers.  When floods hit, he took AMTRAK, (otherwise known as The National Railroad Passenger Corporation) to Washington to apply for disaster relief, and spent some time sight-seeing at the Smithsonian. 

Then one day he wrote his congressman an angry letter asking the government to get off his back, and complaining about paying taxes for all those programs created for ungrateful people.”

Since I don’t feel the need to provide a conclusion to this piece, I won’t.