In the current climate of austerity, recession, and anxiety about perceived national decline, we, as a nation, face numerous large, complex, multivariate problems. An intricate mix of history, policy, political structure, and economic structure drive our problems in ways that cannot be easily understood or communicated, much less resolved. Unfortunately, the more cynical among the political punditry and politicians of a certain stripe have been sewing a simple, easy to understand policy prescription for every public problem: “We can’t afford that anymore.” No other narrative framework for discussing important policy more expertly serves the conservative agenda than this frame. While Republicans have been shoehorning this phrase into stump speeches on nearly every issue for the past few years, a recent example of this came from Governor Bob McDonnell (R-VA) while providing an interview on CNN as a Romney surrogate. Governor McDonnell said,
Because the biggest problems facing the country have to do with a $16 trillion national debt and a crushing unemployment rate that’s affecting the middle class. And so, Paul Ryan is the guy that understands the federal budget, perhaps better than anybody and along with Mitt Romney I think has got the right ideas and, Soledad, to say, listen, we can’t afford this anymore. We’ve got to make tough choices. We’ve got to reform Medicaid and Medicare if we’re going to get the country back on track.
Notice the pairing of “we can’t afford this anymore” and the need to “reform Medicaid and Medicare.” As I will get to later, and will address throughout this entry, conservative politicians repeat this phrase whenever discussing popular social programs. The tactical framing of the debate in these terms allows conservative operatives to, on the one hand, acknowledge the legitimacy of using public expenditures towards the goal of the social program in question (in the case of Medicare, guaranteed health care services for the elderly) and, on the other hand, using an arbitrary and short-term public finance circumstance to justify reductions to said social program, shield operatives from public outcry at the threat of losing a popular service. Embedded in this tactic is a set of economic and political arguments that reveal a great deal about the conservative worldview, and I will explore each in turn.
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