An Open Letter to George W. Bush, 2/27/01

Dear Mr. President: Tonight, in your Address to Congress, you said, "as we debate this issue, always remember: the surplus is not the government's money; the surplus is the people's money." In your campaign, you often spoke in this way (and in all fairness, so did your Democratic opponent), painting "Government" as something that was different from "The People", and even as something that was hostile to The People. Earlier in your speech, you said we had a choice between spending the surplus on "more and bigger government", or letting "the American people spend their own money to meet their own needs." Mr. President, how can you use the words "government" and "the people" like this, as if they were almost opposite things, when they are really the same thing? Don't we have government of the people, by the people, and for the people in this country? We're not under the rule of some foreign government, are we? We are not a totalitarian state, are we? We are a democratic republic; our government is made up of representatives that we the people freely elect. There are many nations in this world where the government rules by force against the will of its own people, but this is not one of them! When "government" spends money to train, hire and equip teachers and administrators to educate our children, or soldiers to defend us against military enemies, or police officers to protect us from criminals, or scientists and engineers to safeguard the quality of our water and air, isn't this exactly "the American people spend[ing] their own money to meet their own needs"? If you allow the "government" to keep the surplus, what this means is that my U.S. congressperson and my two U.S. senators will get together along with everybody else's representatives to decide how the money might be spent to meet our needs as a nation. So it's not really a question of whether we're going to give the money to "Government" or "The People", is it? Because it's all going to go to people, one way or the other. It's really a question of which people we want it to go to, how much should go where, and for what purpose. Now, I realize that on this real question, we still disagree. You have your idea on what should be done with the surplus, and others have different ideas, and that's fine. We can debate the issue and come to a decision: that's what democracy is all about. However, we need to conduct the debate honestly first of all, and that's why I'm writing you this letter. Mr. President, the one campaign promise you made that I agreed with and that truly moved me was that you would bring honor and dignity back to the office of the presidency. I hope that you will do that in this matter and take the high road in how you talk about our government. I know it's easier to win support for your views if you paint the issues in the black-and-white terms of the good People vs. the evil Government, but this kind of tactic is misleading and, I believe, harmful to our democracy, not to mention disrespectful to the many people (elected representatives, government officials and office workers, soldiers, police officers, teachers, postal workers, and so on and so on) who actually make up our government and who carry out the government programs we decide on. You yourself opened your speech by saying that "we should leave those arguments to the last century and chart a different course." I call upon you to act in accordance with those words. Thank you for your attention.