The Donald Trump administration and Republican-majority House just passed a budget paving the way for a controversial tax plan and spending proposal that would include $4.5 trillion in tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans and $2 trillion in slashed government spending, while also decimating benefits and financial aid for low-income families. The spending bill proposes slashing meal programs, social security programs, healthcare and even student aid, which would add tremendous costs to the lives of millions of Americans.
This devastating and harmful budget proposed by Congress is a broader reflection of the ever-increasing wealth gap between the rich and poor. With insight from political thinkers like Thomas Jefferson, Quobna Cugoano and Thomas Paine, it becomes clear how this wealth gap and budget will facilitate oligarchical oppression of the people.
To understand how the government is infringing upon our welfare and rights, it’s important to define the central role of a government. The definition can be found in the core document of the United States’s existence: the Declaration of Independence. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain alienable rights,” which are, “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” while emphasizing that the government was founded to “secure these rights.” Our forefathers founded our government with the purpose of protecting citizen’s rights.
In the modern era, these rights are broadly connected to our capacity to attain good health and wellbeing, as well as an education and career — the very fundamentals to succeed in life. These aspects critical to our livelihoods are what’s at stake in the case of significant slashes in government spending.
Providing tax relief for the wealthiest citizens and most powerful corporations won’t make the economy grow — it would achieve the complete opposite. Slashing funding to Medicaid, the Department of Education and SNAP would significantly diminish the standard of living for most Americans. The decompensation of these social programs would serve the wealthy and violate the premiere role of Congress: to serve the people. Our members of Congress are elected to protect their constituents and invest in their interests.
Prominent British abolitionist Ottobah Cugoano once wrote, “All men in authority, kings in general, who are exalted to the most conspicuous offices of superiority, while they take upon themselves to be the administrators of righteousness and justice to others, they become equally responsible for admitting or suffering others under their authority to do.”
As Cuguano expressed, being appointed as a public official makes you responsible not only for protecting the wellbeing of the people, but also for the oppression and suffering people face.
Congress’s budget cuts will cause economic hardship for millions of Americans. While Congress turns its back on average citizens and favor the rich, it diminishes our voices and rights compared to those of elites. In my opinion, Congress is allowing Trump to sell the government out to billionaires, allowing for the devolvement of the U.S. from a democracy to an oligarchy, where the power is vested in the wealthy rather than the people.
Not only does this Congressional budget infringe on the rights of the American people, but it also contradicts everything the Founding Fathers stood for when they severed ties with Great Britain in 1776.
As Paine stressed in his famous anti-tyrannical pamphlet “Common Sense,” “Mankind being originally equals in the order of creation, the equality could only be destroyed by some subsequent circumstance: the distinctions of rich and poor may be in a great measure accounted for, and that without having recourse to the harsh ill-sounding names of oppression and avarice.” Paine not only wrote about the dangers of a monarchy, but also the tyranny imposed when the rich enforce divisions in society against the poor.
The Founding Fathers advocated for Enlightenment ideals, such as natural rights and popular sovereignty, supporting the idea that the power of government was vested in the people. They additionally framed the new government to embody the virtues of classical Greek democracy and Roman civic republicanism. Our Founding Fathers believed in “Res Publica,” the idea that governments should strive to find the common good for all, while supporting that civic participation in government facilitates greater freedom.
Congress is destroying the foundation laid by our Founding Fathers by giving the rich unequivocal access to the reins of government. By allowing a budget that slashes government spending to Americans who desperately need government assistance while cutting taxes for the rich, the government is no longer for the people, but rather for those with the money to buy power and influence. There can be no common good or civic participation when the government becomes subordinate to the wealthy.
What can we the people do about this? The answer is hold our politicians accountable to our needs and interests. Contact your representatives and let them know you do not approve of this new Congressional budget. Remind them that the power of the government should forever remain in the hands of the people.
Gabriel Heredia can be reached at [email protected].
