We’re all in that bathtub drowning the Commons

It’s been 40 years since conservatives under Ronald Reagan began their campaign to cut government services to the Commons, including health, education, social security, infrastructure. The aim was to reduce taxes on the wealthy while maintaining unlimited expenditures on defense, the Commons be damned. It was pitched as ‘starving the beast’. Tax cut fanatic Grover Norquist authored the Taxpayer Protection Pledge in 1986 in which over 1,600 state and federal lawmakers pledged to never increase taxes under any circumstances. Norquist was blunt: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

Now we’re faced with a pandemic exacerbated by a cruel administration which has made reducing health care to tens of millions a signature policy. At the end of his daily political rally masquerading as a coronavirus update, Trump was asked if the pandemic would cause him to pause his demand to abolish ‘Obamacare’. Trump punted, claiming the effort was not his but a state initiative. But he immediately reverted to his four year long campaign to abolish Obamacare without offering a lifesaving replacement.

In a pandemic in which every uninsured citizen likely to skip medical care puts us all at risk, we need to realize we’re all in that bathtub drowning the Commons along with Grover Norquist.