They Offer Us Nothing

What is the role of government? 

No, this isn't a first-day question for a college 101 course. Instead, it's a question that gets at the heart of what we are currently experiencing in this country.

In an ideal world, government aims to serve the people. It strives to create a system of checks and balances that ensures the nation's welfare. Government works best when different ideologies come together and create legislation that moves the needle forward on critical issues. There is robust debate but in the end, a compromise is reached. This ensures that neither side is 100% satisfied but that simply means that there exists a future opportunity to revisit the issue down the line to see if more is needed to be done. In any successful democracy, both sides are given an opportunity to publicly advocate for their cause and vote on what each side sees as the best path forward.

The question has been, to what extent does the government involve itself in everyday people's lives? Should, for example, we have a nationwide healthcare system? Should housing be a basic human right? At what funding level should we support nationwide infrastructure programs? How do we combat the rising cost of inflation? No matter the issue, there is always a debate about what should be done and how much we as a nation are willing to pay for it. The size and amount of power of our federal government has been a contentious issue ever since Jefferson and Hamilton debated it over 250 years ago. The last thing the founders wanted was for too much power to fall into the hands of a few. Holding in check the power of the Executive Branch was a key issue and one that caused much debate. Government must be responsive to the people in a responsible way. This idea was at the crux of the ideals and values our nation was founded upon.

Flash forward to today. 

What we have are two major political parties with vastly divergent ideas about what government can and should do. On the Democratic side, we see a party still invested in government as an agent for good that can improve people's everyday lives. During my lifetime, I've seen Barack Obama exert his entire political capital on rectifying the country's broken healthcare system. I've seen Joe Biden work tirelessly to mobilize resources to vaccinate 70% of the country, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, combat inflation head-on, and create critical jobs and infrastructure in the STEM field. At the local level, we've seen blue state governments invest in combatting civil rights violations, climate change, food insecurity, gun violence, and housing injustice among others. Democrats see government as a vehicle for enacting positive change, often addressing our country's systemic injustices toward marginalized communities. When given a governing trifecta, blue states have created systems that have increased peace and prosperity which is why any top-10 list of happiest states is likely to be heavily populated by those with Democratic leadership at the helm. 

On the flip side, we see today's Republican Party being heavily against the role of the federal government. The party that originally seceded against the union for its increasing anti-slavery views has not evolved in its thinking over the past 160 years. Republicans still favor a weak central government that would cede power to the states. This is in large part because Republican-controlled state legislatures can enact their extremist policies that would never fly at the federal level. Think of states like Texas, Florida, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and others that have passed extreme legislation against our most vulnerable communities. These states have become incubators for Project 2025 and the extreme Republican agenda that aims to disenfranchise and disempower all non-White males. This has been a half-century-long project and is very much the culmination of Nixon's Southern Strategy that realigned the former Confederacy in line with what have become the values of today's Republican Party. 

If you understand all this, then you can understand this past week.

Because what we are witnessing is Trump and Republicans' backlash to effective federal government. Despite everything that Trump and his team flooded the zone with last week, not a single thing was done that advanced the role of the federal government in everyone's lives. Instead, what we saw was Trump and his team removing federal policies they knew were effective. The United States' participation in the Paris Climate Agreement? Gone. A refugee parole program for those from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela? Gone. The Veterans' Administration's new hirings for the year? Paused. NIH funding that supports critical research and development? Frozen.

You can call it Trump's revenge tour if you want, but that's lazy. What we're seeing is the Republican Party's long-held belief that the federal government does not know the best way to help the people. This is very much in line with their "starve the beast" economy philosophy that if they do enough to deprive the government of revenue then they'll force it to reduce spending. Less money coming in equals fewer programs. Fewer programs equals less effective government. Less effective government ties into the Republican mantra that more power should go to the states rather than the federal government. 

Rinse. Lather. Repeat. 

But since we understand what Republicans are trying to do, we can also call them out on it. We know what Republicans are against but what do they stand for? This will be the driving question from now until the midterms. What are Republicans actually doing to benefit the American people? This needs to be the central question for the next 22 months. What are Republicans doing to lower the record-high cost of eggs? What are Republicans doing to lower the cost of gas? What are Republicans doing to combat inflation? Because what we've seen over the past week is that none of these issues are being addressed either through Congress or through the Executive Branch. Cutting existing government programs and enacting anti-transgender legislation offers nothing new to the American people.

This is where we are and where we will continue to be. The shock and awe will continue in the weeks ahead. But we need to return to this simple question: What are Republicans doing that is improving the lives of everyday Americans? What is better now than it was under the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration? Not what is taken away, but what has been added to make the average American's life better? With complete control of government, Republicans have every single opportunity to put forth legislation that can improve the quality of life of the American people. Whether they choose to do so should be the defining question of the 2026 midterm election. 

And is the question that needs to be at the forefront of every single voter's mind these next 22 months.