Earlier this week, The Associated Press reported that Republican Governor of Maine, Paul LePage, spent almost $53,000 on attorneys in an attempt to exorcise thousands of young people from Medicaid. The attempt failed. What’s even more frustrating about Gov. LePage’s actions is that Maine’s attorney general informed the governor’s office that the lawsuit would likely fail. [1]
On the same day AP broke the story about Gov. LePage, a state legislator in Georgia posted a tweet that asked people to tell him what laws the Georgia General Assembly should repeal in the upcoming legislative session. Yes, a member of a body responsible for creating laws is asking constituents which laws to repeal. Perhaps using the court system to repeal laws is just too passe.[2]
The fight over the size and scope of the government dates back to the country’s founding, but the asinine choices made by some elected officials are wasting valuable tax dollars and time. Yes, the very people who claim to be against government waste, overreaching and wasting money are reaching beyond the limits of existing statutes in a bizarre way to score political points or land an appearance on Fox News.
While I fundamentally disagree with Gov. LePage’s views on health care, there’s no reason why he couldn’t pursue his changes through the legislature and, in the process, maybe find a way to provide access to health care for struggling young people in his state. When you read stories about Gov. LePage’s actions on Medicaid, it makes you wonder what — if any — plans elected officials have to restore the middle class, create jobs in their state and ultimately grow their state’s economy.
The new Republican-controlled Congress was sworn in this week, and like Gov. LePage, repealing laws and dismantling President Obama’s policies is likely at the top of its agenda. Progress be damned, Republicans are still focused on repealing as much of the Obama presidency as possible, with little regard for the laws themselves and how they may actually positively affect the American people.[3]
Why make laws when you can simply dismantle and delete?
Sadly, our politics have grown so poisonous and contentious that many politicians rarely calculate how their actions affect those they serve. Whether an American is for larger government or smaller government, you would be hard-pressed to find someone who wants nothing to be accomplished by elected officials. Those in office were elected by the people to serve, not to dismantle, destroy and undermine the functions of government.
Certainly Tea-Party types would disagree with this notion, but it’s doubtful the majority of Americans hold the same views as the Tea Party, and the it certainly does not control a majority of elected offices throughout the country. However, enough so-called conservatives subscribe to this nihilistic view of government and American society. We can’t fund our infrastructure, find a meaningful way to make sure Americans have access to affordable health insurance or even keep the lights on with the pervasive anarchism pursued by some elected officials.
The idea of serving your community, state or country requires that you actually serve. Asking constituents what laws to repeal, or attempting to strip young people of health insurance, is not service: It’s lazily fulfilling ideological views that serve no one but the holder of those views.
If selfishness is the goal of an elected official, he or she best step aside for someone who intends to actually serve the interests of the community, even if that means reaching across the aisle or jumping off the cliff of compromising strictly-held ideology.
Republicans seek to prove they can govern in the new Congress. For the sake of our country’s future, I hope they succeed.
Joel Mendelson is a UF political campaigning graduate student. His column appears on Fridays.
[2]https://twitter.com/votebjpak/status/552106187051655168
[3]http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/05/politics/gop-agenda-for-the-new-congress/
[A version of this story ran on page 7 on 1/9/2015 under the headline “Elected officials need to actually do their jobs"]
