Blue Collar Conservatives: Recommitting to an America That Works (9 page)

The Harrisons don’t want what the Democrats are offering—a handout. But they also don’t want to hear about prosperity “trickling down” to them—they see that as an excuse to keep the status quo. They are fed up with both approaches and don’t care to hear much from their elected leaders anymore.

What the Harrisons want are commonsense ideas that generate economic activity and opportunities that will help restore the proud town they grew up in. They aren’t moving, because they feel there is still enough community, enough connection to the past, for their town to rise again if given a chance. They are optimistic about a new industry emerging to extract the natural gas from the shale rock deep underneath their town. They hope it will create opportunity for them and their kids.

The Harrisons want leaders who understand that their misfortune wasn’t the result of laziness or bad life decisions. They were good employees, good parents, and good neighbors.
They are waiting for someone in Washington to understand, lay out a plan, and fight . . . and it can’t happen soon enough.

In the chapters that follow, I will outline what we can do for the millions of people like the Harrisons. There is hope—the American Dream is dying but not dead. We’ll explore plans not for the rich or poor but for creating something for all of America to get excited about.

CHAPTER FIVE

RENEWING THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

D
uring the presidential campaign of 2012, Susan and James Harrison were inundated with phone calls, knocks on the door, and mailings. Living in Ohio and not clearly aligned with either party, they were targeted as swing voters in a battleground state. The Harrisons could not have avoided the candidates and the issues if they had wanted to.

But after all of that, the Harrisons ended up sitting out the election. They simply saw no reason to vote. James put in a long day on the store floor because he needed the extra pay.
Neither candidate offered them the hope of new opportunities.

On the one side, they saw a president seeking reelection after four miserable years. The economy was still in the tank, but Barack Obama was always attacking businesses. Too many of the neighbors had been laid off, and the Harrisons kept hearing about despair across the country. They knew about Obama’s opposition to the Keystone pipeline, and they suspected he would fight the shale gas development that could help Ohio. They always attend church and believe in traditional marriage and in the sanctity of human life. Obama’s views on these issues seemed so extreme, and that troubled them.

Governor Romney, on the other hand, never connected with them in a way that earned their confidence. When the Harrisons heard Romney’s comment about the “47 percent,” they took offense. The people he accused of “not contributing” sounded a lot like the people who lived on Social Security, military veterans, and other hardworking people who from time to time needed help. These people weren’t moochers. They just needed an opportunity, and they didn’t deserve the put-down.

You shouldn’t think James and Susan are apathetic just because they didn’t vote in 2012. They have always taken an interest in politics and discussed issues and candidates with their neighbors—especially at a time when so many people they knew were victims of the lousy economy. They have also
been involved in civic affairs, their children’s schools, and community groups. They are engaged Americans—and they are willing to engage even more if it will help them, their kids, and their friends and neighbors. But they want to know that their engagement is worthwhile.

The Harrisons weren’t the only ones to feel left out in the 2012 election. In their home state of Ohio, for example, voter turnout in rural and traditionally blue collar counties was lower than in previous elections, including the Obama-McCain race in 2008.
¹

America’s experience in the election of 2012 confirms what the book of Proverbs says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
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Americans are desperate for leaders with vision—not number crunchers, not technocrats, not policy wonks, but men and women who can look beyond this week’s polls and next year’s election, who see clearly where we need to be headed. A lot of people thought they had found that leader in 2008, but Barack Obama’s vision of an America “transformed” has been a nightmare, especially for those struggling hardest.

If you are born into poverty or are going through hard times, wouldn’t you be better off if you were surrounded by institutions like churches, good schools, scouts, and strong families? We need stronger marriages, stronger churches, and stronger communities because they do what the government cannot do. Yet the liberal establishment that controls our government, our
schools, the media, and so many of the institutions that shape our public life and form our opinions is busy tearing down these pillars of American society, starting with the family.

Government has taken the lead in liberating men from the responsibility of providing and caring for their children and their children’s mother by providing single mothers with an alternative to building a relationship with the father of their child. Let’s face it, government welfare benefits have played a role in the demise of marriage in low-income communities and have encouraged a new cultural norm that leads to multigenerational poverty and hopelessness.
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Believe it or not, that’s exactly what President Obama and his friends on the Left have in mind. It is their radical, anti-family dogma that government is the liberator of women and a suitable replacement for unfit fathers.

When I make this point in town hall meetings, someone usually objects that a mother and her child are better off without a convicted felon, gang member, dropout, unemployable dad in the picture. Fair enough, but to that child, as broken as her father may be, he is still her daddy, and she wants his love. What child doesn’t want that? And how do you think the dad ended up like that? Almost 85 percent of young men in prison grew up without a father in their home.
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Without dads in their lives, young men are much more likely to join a gang, drop out of school, father a child out of wedlock, abandon that child and the child’s mother, and fail to hold down a decent job. Not having a father in the home hurts all children, but especially boys.

President Obama does not inflict on his own family the ruinous fantasy that a check from the government is as good as a father. I’m sure he’s a caring and loving father because he knows how much it means to his children. Let’s stop inflicting that fantasy on the poor, whose lives it devastates most.

The Left may have invented the welfare system that robs low-income children of their birthright and destroys their best chance to climb out of poverty, but with the exception of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, the Right has done little to repair it. I know, because I worked on this issue in the conservative world for the better part of twenty years, and it was a pretty lonely fight. There are a few scholars at conservative think tanks who write about this problem and a handful of congressmen who try to tackle it, but few conservatives in public life work on policies aimed at the working poor.

It’s not that conservatives don’t care. Most of them support transforming the social welfare system. But it’s a very low priority, so conservatives are complicit in allowing the destructive status quo to persist. For the good of our party and, above all, the good of our country, we must dismantle and replace the failed system we have now. What would a conservative alternative look like?

In 1776, when the American Dream was born, the average life expectancy in this country was under forty. Most people didn’t worry about their financial security through a long old
age. But as science dramatically expanded the number of years a man could expect to spend on this earth, the American Dream expanded too. Today, a long and satisfying retirement is as important in many people’s minds as a successful career.

Like most Americans, I support a role for the government in providing a social safety net for Americans in great need, particularly seniors. The question since the days of Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal has been how to construct it. Some believe that the government should be completely in charge, as it is under the current Social Security system. Others believe in a hybrid approach like the Medicare prescription drug program, which is publicly funded and governed, with the private sector delivering the benefits. Others favor government incentives, primarily through the tax code, for a privately operated system. And a few hardy libertarians prefer no government role at all.

What would the Founders think? Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution gives Congress the power to “provide for the common defense and general welfare” of the country. So clearly they envisioned some role for the federal government, but even the most enthusiastic Federalist would have imagined only a very limited one. I think a mixed approach, which employs both publicly funded and privately operated programs and incentivizes private charities, is the best and most comprehensive approach.

The two biggest federal programs are Social Security and Medicare.
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Providing income support and healthcare for
seniors and the disabled has become an accepted and assumed function of the federal government, even among conservatives. I’d ask anyone who seriously doubts this to name the last congressman or senator who ran on a platform of repealing either program.

Since Americans pay into the Social Security and Medicare systems throughout their working lives, they have a strong sense that they have
earned
the benefits that the system promises. The problem is that retirees are not drawing on the funds they socked away in a supposed “trust fund” while they worked. Their benefits are paid out of the current contributions of today’s workers. A falling birthrate and increased longevity are leaving us with fewer workers to support the retirees. Under its current structure, the system won’t be able to keep its promises for much longer. To make matters worse, Democrats treat the eighty-year-old existing system as sacrosanct, and they persecute deviation from orthodoxy with the zeal of a Torquemada.

Let’s be clear, the greatest threat to Social Security and Medicare is the bankruptcy of the federal government. That will happen when we reach a point when the cost of the debt reaches a point where the government is no longer able to borrow without the market demanding structural spending reform. Look at Greece as an example. The first item on the chopping block when austerity is imposed will be entitlements, which account for more than 60 percent of the budget. The two biggest entitlements are Social Security and Medicare, with Medicaid
(healthcare for low-income Americans, a majority of which is spent on seniors) a close third. Entitlements will put the government into insolvency, and they will be the target once that happens. No one wants that to happen, but only conservatives have been honest enough to level with the public. Unfortunately, we have no credibility with the public on these issues.

The fact is these programs are costly and inefficient in delivering help to the people most in need. Obamacare has been a spectacular reminder—if we needed one—that the government doesn’t run a very efficient operation. When Uncle Sam is in charge, there is no accountability and little incentive to succeed. While Americans are gasping at the incompetence of a government-run healthcare system, we should push not only for the repeal of Obamacare but for the transformation of all the government healthcare programs, including Medicare and Medicaid. Americans expect a health insurance system that fosters medical innovation and expertise rather than destroying them. It must also provide for the medical needs of our vulnerable citizens. I’ll discuss what we should do in chapter 7, but conservatives can take the lead on this momentous issue only if they affirm that the American Dream includes a secure retirement and that the federal government has a necessary, though not limitless, part to play.