A Government that Solves Problems
Every year when I go to file my taxes, I spend the entire process petrified that I’m somehow unknowingly committing tax fraud. Even though I’ve worked at the same company for seven years, I’ve spent the past four living in the same state I’m working in, I have no other income, no assets, I am still waiting for the IRS to come bursting into my apartment to drag me off to tax cheat jail.
It’s possible there’s some generalized anxiety at play here that exacerbates my tax experience, but no one actually likes filing their taxes. It’s a stupidly complicated process. The government knows how much money you owe, but taxes a different amount throughout the year. You can never get the IRS on the phone when you have a question and the weirdly powerful tax preparer lobby has put a lot of time and money into keeping the process complicated so they can make money off of us every year. And while we all stress and cry and fight with weird perforated forms, the news is full of stories about the super wealthy who somehow manage not to pay any taxes at all.
In 2023, the IRS didn’t solve all of these problems, but they did manage to solve quite a few. With almost $80 billion dollars of additional funding for the IRS in the Inflation Reduction Act, the IRS was able to reopen Tax Assistance Centers in 14 states, modernize their infrastructure, and improve customer service wait times from 27 minutes in 2022 to just four minutes in 2023, according to a Treasury Department report card. Plus, they used some of this funding to develop their own tax preparer that would allow Americans to file their taxes digitally, free of charge.
Taxes are the price we pay to live in a society, not just a way to pay for roads and bridge we all use, the trash collection and water treatment that keeps us healthy - but the parks where we have birthday parties and barbecues and picnics, the schools where we learn how our world works, and a million other little things that bring us together, that make our society more than the sum of its parts. And getting better at collecting them not only makes the process easier on all of us “regular” folks, it also means we’re more efficient and effective at collecting taxes from the super wealthy who have avoided paying their fair share for far too long. The more fairly and effectively we collect taxes, the more money our government has to fund programs that actually help people.
So it’s no wonder that in the current government funding fight, repealing this increased funding for the IRS is a top Republican priority. With a fully funded IRS we can solve a myriad of problems (even things like the deficit that Republicans claim to care about), but that just isn’t something the modern Republican party is very interested in these days.
Take Republican attacks on trans people, for example. What problem are they trying to solve? Their rhetoric focuses on “saving kids,” though from what they are never able to really say. But if you talk to doctors and trans people, they’ll tell you that gender affirming care saves lives. You aren’t “saving kids” by denying them their right to exist comfortably in their lives and their bodies. Bans on gender affirming care are much worse than a solution in search of a problem - they are actively causing a life threatening problem, and solving nothing.
We see the same dynamic play out with abortion rights, too. Republicans claim that they ban abortion because they believe that they are saving babies’ lives. And yet their other policies belie that assertion. The right to own a gun is more important than the lives of school children, but the right to bodily autonomy is much less important. As soon as children are born, Republican policy loses all interest. The problem they claim abortion bans solve is actually exacerbated by their refusal to support parental leave, provide food and health care, invest in schools and libraries and child care, or ensure safety. And in fact, abortion bans create more problems - including but not limited to life threatening emergencies.
When DeSantis tricked asylum seekers and migrants onto a plane and shipped them to Martha’s Vineyard, what problem did that solve? Did it support those asylum seekers? Did it advance immigration policy? Did it provide assistance to stressed local governments and nonprofits? I don’t think so.
It’s not just that Republicans and Democrats are further and further away from compromise with each passing election. It’s that there is a fundamental breakdown in the understanding of the purpose of government. A generous understanding of the modern Republican party would suggest that they believe the purpose of government is to ensure a rigidly regimented society with strict roles that reward loyalty to the system and the status quo. But I think a more accurate understanding of the modern Republican party would be that for them the purpose of government is to enrich themselves and their friends at our expense and to do so while causing as much pain as possible to anyone who challenges the power and authority bestowed upon them by a modern divine right of kings.
I want a government that solves problems, that sees itself not merely as an enforcement authority or as an entity above or separate from the people it rules, but as a representation of us, tasked with the management of the vast resources we have at our disposal to solve problems. Hungry kids, school shootings, an influx of migrants searching for a better life, corporate greed, pollution - humans created so many of these problems, but we also have the capacity to solve them, if only we have the will.
I don’t always agree with Democrats in power, but by and large I think they are motivated by a good faith desire to solve problems. Oftentimes I am looking for more radical solutions than they are offering, but I also love and respect a lot of people who want to see those same problems solved but disagree with me on the best way to do so. To me, it is most important that we agree on that central promise of government, as a place where we can come together and pool our resources, and try our very best to create a world where we can all thrive. In the face of Republican greed and nihilism, this can somehow feel both too much to ask for and not enough. But as a guiding question when approaching policies, candidates, and elections, it feels like a pretty good place to start.
As always, your writing inspires me.