President Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel believed that a crisis was an opportunity to do things that you once thought were impossible.

We are facing a pandemic of historic proportions, and as countless lives are lost, businesses shuttered, and personal lives disrupted, we are coming to realize that individual state governments will face unprecedented fiscal pressures. The easy solution for state governments is to continue to do business as usual and ask the federal government to provide taxpayer monies to cover their shortfalls; the hard answer is to demand that state governments get their financial house in order by reforming current and past practices.

Despite decades of social programs that threw increasingly larger amounts of money at the economically disadvantaged, we find that population most susceptible to the ravages of Covid-19. In part because they are housed in large groups confined to small living spaces, many work at low-paying and unskilled labor, and many times they lag academically. Government has enslaved these communities to failure despite generations of unfulfilled promises.

Government is never held to account for their abject failure to lift these folks out of poverty and reliance on support. Then we are shocked when a pandemic breaks out and this same group of people are among the hardest hit.

Similarly, we find our nursing home patients also ravaged by the pandemic, and we discover that state budget reductions have forced nursing homes to operate on the slimmest of margins with hardworking but underpaid and understaffed workforce. The loss of life has been the most profound in this group of souls.

So here the state government stands, not only morally but financially bankrupt, and their first instinct is to ask for more federal, “taxpayer” monies to continue their failed policies.

Let’s do the impossible. This crisis is an opportunity to hold the government responsible for their failed policies and demand they reduce and reform their budgets to a level that fit their new normal tax revenue. Here is what we should demand of our elected officials.

First, feform social programs that have subjugated generations of individuals into a form of social slavery. We should let the private sector develop programs that assimilate, educate, and emancipate these groups from the oppression of government. Stronger programs in education, improved access to healthcare, and skilled jobs that will reduce dependence on government. The key to making this successful is asking that these folks be responsible and accountable for their own lives and giving them a sense of pride and accomplishment. Put the money in the hands of the private sector that will improve, and out of the hands of bureaucracy.

Second, reduce the size and scope of government by eliminating unnecessary regulations that will allow businesses to grow, thrive and reward innovation. Look no further than a comparison of the U.S. Postal Service and Fed-Ex. Same function, vastly different outcome. This pandemic has showed us that the private sector is innovative, nimble, and cost effective when allowed to operate unfettered by the shackles of government.

President Reagan stated, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”

David Scarpino
Bristol