Cross-posted at Robert David Sullivan.
John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House, yesterday again refused to say that people who believe that Barack Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim are simply wrong. As Jonathan Chait writes, Boehner always makes sure to add an implicit "I can be convinced otherwise" when he says that he doesn't believe Obama is a Muslim:
On "Meet the Press," John Boehner repeats what is by now the standard Republican formulation on whether President Obama is a Muslim -- "I take him at his word," "the facts as I understand them," etc. It's a way of making it seem as if the underlying matter is in dispute but the Republicans are generously accepting Obama's claim at face value. Thus they can avoid antagonizing, and even subtly encourage, the large segments of the base that believe Obama is a Muslim (watch this frightening Republican focus group) without having to openly endorse these claims.
This is old news, and it's not going to change as long as Obama is in the White House. (I won't be surprised if Republican candidates for president in 2016 all say flat out that Obama is an American citizen and Christian.) So at first I didn't take much notice of Boehner's slipperiness. But I thought about it when I got Facebooked with an urgent appeal to lobby Congress to save funding for public radio and television. The website Don't Defund NPR makes the case:
Republicans are disingenuously claiming that they need to cut funding for public media because of budgetary constraints. But what they fail to highlight is that national public broadcasting is remarkably cost effective, providing local news and information, free of charge, for millions of viewers while only receiving about .0001% of the federal budget.
More to the point, it's nearly impossible to put a price tag on the actual value of public broadcasting.
I'm sure that I would write this appeal in much the same way, but I'm getting tired of this type of argument for government programs that are particularly popular among... well, NPR listeners.
The problem I have is that the "Don't Fund NPR" pitch implicitly accepts the neo-Hooverism that now drives the Republican Party: Public broadcasting is "cost-effective," so it should be exempt from the "budget restraints" that necessitate the slashing of almost every other government program that does not directly benefit the GOP base of old people and farmers.
Let's cut the crap. I know a lot of people that work or have worked in public broadcasting and in arts organizations that get government funding. None of them really support spending on public broadcasting and arts programs because they are more "cost-effective" than other government programs. Just about all of them believe (as I do) that robust goverment spending is generally a good thing, both in terms of the quality of life in America and in terms of boosting the economy. But they don't like to say that publicly.
Here is where the comparison to Boehner and the birthers come in. I'm sure that Boehner doesn't believe any of their bunk, but he always says it's "not his job" to correct any of their assumptions. My sense is that advocates of specific NPR-type government programs also feel that it's not up to them to correct widespread misconceptions about government spending (that government jobs somehow "kill" real jobs, that taxation of wealthy citizens is at an all-time high instead of near an all-time low, that foreign aid and earmarks are federal budget busters, that the US government is no different than a family budget that must never go into the red, etc.)
The attitude among many liberals these days seems to match Boehner's words: "the American people have the right to think what they want to think. I can’t — it’s not my job to tell them."
The analogy breaks down when one considers that Boehner has a political incentive to encourage birthers, while liberals don't benefit from anti-government feelings. (But, as Matt Yglesias points out, Koch Industries does.) But I still get annoyed by all the appeals to save specific programs that accept the assumption that "government is too big" and everything else should, of course, be cut.
I'd like to see public broadcasting programs and arts programs be saved and even expanded. But there's only one way to do that: end the demonization of "big government" and raise overall spending, which will certainly require tax increases. Otherwise, NPR is just fighting to take crumbs away from Head Start, college loans, mass transit, meat inspection, etc. Liberals just need to say it: Most Americans are wrong in what they believe about government spending.
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