Spending Isn’t Best Measure of Caring

My wife and I are the parents of two teenagers. Throughout their lives, we have been confronted with the demands heard by parents everywhere: “Daddy I want this.” And the ever-present “Mommy can I have that?”

Usually, we answer no. We could afford to spend more money on them, but for reasons apparent to most people, we don’t. By all accounts we have pretty good kids, and we think we have done an acceptable job of parenting them.

But if our parenting were judged by the same rules that work in politics, we would be judged to be parents who “obviously don’t care about their kids.” We might even be painted as inhumane and heartless.

You see, in the real world, spending more money is not the only way to show that you care about something. In fact, spending more money may result in spoiling the one you care about. Or it may be covering up for the fact that you are unwilling to do what really needs to be done to help that person or cause.

Politics and government don’t work that way. Over the last decade, Democrats in Sacramento have led us into a political psyche that the party that spends more cares more. If I am willing to spend more money on education, I obviously care more about education than you do. Conversely, if I believe we can spend less on social programs, then I obviously care less about the poor.

This mind-set has caused the largest deficit in California history and is why we are facing multibillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. As long as the parties race to see which can spend the most in order to show that it cares, we will never have fiscal responsibility. We will always care about something with every dollar we have, and we will never care enough.

Are there other ways than money for government to show it cares? I think so.

One can care about education by wanting to reform the system so that there is more local flexibility, more competition and more recognition of merit. We can care more about health care by eliminating employers and the government as the middlemen and reconnecting the patient with health care and its cost.

We can care more about the poor by supporting faith-based organizations with a track record of cost-effectively helping people with the selfless devotion that faith inspires.

Others will show they care by throwing more money at the existing decades-old system. But the only ones benefiting from this additional spending are the government bureaucracies. They are the ones that will raise the loudest hue and cry about not caring.

The simple fact is that established bureaucracies and the political contribution networks they have created are perpetuating the mantra that those who spend more care more. But of course, they are the beneficiaries of all this caring through higher salaries and employment.

Whether students, patients or the poor get any benefit is not of consequence to these people. It is pernicious, but it is also working. Real caring for those who use these systems involves the courage to tear them down and start rebuilding. But the bureaucrats don’t want you to know that.

The Beatles once sang that “money can’t buy me love.” The public must come to understand that more money isn’t the solution to all public needs. Our budget woes will continue until we embrace the concept that we can do more for less and that we can care about things by trying to rebuild or reform institutions.

The best parent is not the one who buys the most toys. And the most caring government or politician is not the one that spends the most money.