There is no such committee, yet. Given the recent push by government, especially the federal government, to assume jurisdiction over more and more areas of economic and social activity, it seems to be the direction we are heading in. I think this is a very wrong direction.
Is the national government reaching beyond its proper role? This is a broader question than asking if it can afford to prop up bank balance sheets, save auto companies, stimulate aggregate demand, keep people in their homes, prevent obesity, regulate carbon dioxide, pay for universal health care, leave no child behind, reduce the deficit by half (again), protect the shores, deliver the mail, stop smoking, stop disease, stop hate, stop loud noises near airports, … , [fill in next government initiative]. Affordability is an important question. But asking whether the national government was ever intended to address all issues, nay, to solve all problems from the minute to the global, is also important. Is Washington acting outside its job description?
Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love) has some useful insights on this question.
- “There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love…. There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help. There will always be loneliness. There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbor is indispensable. The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person–every person–needs: namely, loving personal concern.” (28)
Elected officials believe too much in the ability of government to get it right. There is no magic social policy mix that will stop suffering. Suffering, along with love, exercizing freedom, experiencing setbacks, service to others, and striving to overcome limitations, is part of what defines the human condition. This will likely not change whether Democrats or Republicans control Congress.
Pope Benedict XVI also criticized the illusion of the Marxian notion of justice.
- “…the poor it is claimed [by Marxism], do not need charity but justice. Works of charity–almsgiving–are in effect a way for the rich to shirk their obligation to work for justice and a means of soothing their own consciences, while preserving their own status and robbing the poor of their rights.” (26)
It seems many elected officials, while not Marxists per se, have absorbed this approach in their legislative over-reach. Pope Benedict XVI asserted that the goal of socialist revolution with collectivization of the means of production was an illusion that has vanished. (27) Has it? Perhaps at the very least there is a growing belief (faith?) in the ability of government to effectively address a greater and greater array of social and economic problems.
There is a great story in Russell Robert’s wonderful novel, The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance. This novel describes basic economics through a series of conversations between a high school economics teacher and his English teacher girl friend and her friends and relatives. There is one story about paradise. It tells of a man who died and went to heaven, to the trout stream of his dreams. He discovers the perfectly balanced fly rod and the perfectly tied fly. He casts. He catches a perfect trout. He casts again. Another perfect fish. All day, every day, perfect casts and perfect trout. He is in hell of course.
Perhaps the founding fathers were on to something when they designed ground rules for limited government. I’ve read the Constitution several times and can’t find a justification for limitless government. Perhaps the problem in trying to create heaven on earth by ignoring the human condition is that it is hellishly difficult, not to mention prohibitively expensive. It is perhaps cheaper, and better, to let people be themselves and to hope, but not legislate for the best.
What a great blog! I too, am very concerned by how our current administration will impact the future of this great country and the dignity of it’s people. I contend the administration has duped the public by frenetically jamming through the Spending (Stimulus) Package and bailouts of large, but unfit corporations as the new hope for an unprecedented American economic vitality. To the contrary, I believe it will heap mountains of debt on this, and future generations, diminish the power (and relentlessness) of the markets, expand the “victim” class of those who’d rather be governed by anyone than govern themselves, and quite possibly even jeopordize the “great experiment”, by allowing a once small government to edge it’s way closer to controlling and owning the means of production (banks, car manufactures, insurance co’s, etc.) We were also promised a “new Washington” where the sins of the good ‘ol boy’s club of theives in Washington would be replaced by noble, honest people of integrity. Instead we have a Secretary of the Treasury who has trouble paying his taxes. Ditto to Obama’s nod for the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Dashcle, who would “fix” our health care “crisis”, but couldn’t quite figure out how to pay 3 years of owed taxes, including Medicare taxes on his car services amounting to thousands of dollars. Perhaps it would be beneficial for the current administration to have as required reading John XXIII’s encyclical from back in 1963, where he links private production not only with societal efficiency, but even with human dignity.
” The right to private property, even of productive goods, also derives from the nature of man. This right, as we have elsewhere declared, is an effective means for safeguarding the dignity of the human person and for the exercise of responsibility in all fields; it strengthens and gives serenity to family life, thereby increasing the peace and prosperity of the State.” -Pope John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, Part 1, Economic Rights, # 21
Thanks for the comment, Mike.
This is a great post. There is nothing so alienating than being bureaucray’s latest pet project that more often serves the political aims of the current government rather than the needs of the people.
Right! The poor and marginalized are more than pet projects. They’re human beings. Pope Benedict’s Deus Caritas Est says charity must be independent of parties and ideologies.