The Streets Were Paved with Gold - Ken Auletta [190]
To those in or supported by government, taxpayers become abstractions. They were abstractions to the teachers’ union and the Board of Education, who in 1975 agreed to shorten the school week so that teachers could retain some of their free preparation periods. They were abstractions to police sergeants, who threatened a strike rather than give up one of their eighteen to twenty-eight extra chart days off; to members of the City Council and Board of Estimate, who voted themselves lavish new staff support; to Abe Beame, who increased city spending to aid his reelection effort; to Hugh Carey, who behaved likewise with state monies in 1978; to Strom Thurmond, who connived federal crop support for his constituents; and to California state officials, who invited Proposition 13 to pass when they allowed a $5 billion state surplus to accumulate while property taxes soared. The prevalent view of government as a communal trough was given voice by a deputy to former city Police Commissioner Michael Codd. Cornering Jay Goldin in early 1978, the aide berated the City Comptroller for blocking Codd’s request for a tax-free heart disability pension: “Why did you have to do that to Mike Codd? What do you care? It wasn’t your money.”
How can people who preach and believe in fiscal restraint, or those who have worked so hard and believe so deeply in saving New York from bankruptcy, behave so greedily? How can someone be a principal actor in the fiscal drama one moment and behave as a detached observer of a newsreel the next? The obvious answer is selfishness. But it’s more than that. Government becomes the giant commissary where free lunch is served. To the public, government dispenses protection but also programs, grants and subsidies the way a counterman dispenses mashed potatoes and meat loaf. Soon farmers come to expect their crop support subsidies, tenants their rent subsidies, Lockheed and Chrysler their federal loan guarantees, doctors their huge Medicaid fees and elaborate equipment, cities and counties and states their federal grants. Appetites grow.
To those in government, success is achieved only if the commissary expands fast enough to feed nearly everyone, or at least keep important customers reasonably happy. Politicians know that few care about the chef’s wisdom, judgment or diet recommendations. They know that few think about whether there will be enough food to feed many more customers ten years from now, whether there is money to pay next year’s bills. They know the press tends to focus on now, on politics not government. Liberal democracy has become a service business, and the service that counts is MORE. Besides, who’ll notice? Government budgets are so big, departments so large, rewards so plentiful, that a sense of personal responsibility breaks down. Everyone’s doing it, so how can it be wrong? What’s the big deal when the city has a $14 billion budget, 60 commissioners and 300,000-odd employees? The federal government has a $500 billion budget and over 3 million employees. What’s a few million?
The future is mortgaged for the present. Ultimately, when the food supply stops growing, there is cannibalization. Liberal democracy, as Peter Jay observed, begins devouring its own tail. Taxpayers lose, but so does the concept of public service. Like us, the people we elect to think about the future and give us their best judgment often fail Publius’ test. Public service does not become quite the sacrifice our public officials enjoy proclaiming it to be. Yes, members of the City Council, the state legislature, the Congress, moan about their salaries. But not about the outside income they’re allowed—the legal and lecture fees, the investment opportunities. Or about the perks that come with the office—the chauffeured cars, swollen staffs, free phone and mail privileges, fat pensions, future job connections, the honor, like royalty, of being addressed by their title. Yes, they receive public abuse. But most folks don’t get their pictures in newspapers, don’t enjoy the ego gratification