Our American Story: Fixing the Sausage Grinder

By Hank Thomas

Almost nobody approves of the way our government is working. Almost everybody agrees that money in the form of political donations is a major part of the problems we witness. Corporate and special interest donations are seen as the most egregious parts of the political finance problem.

Our history books are not as complete as they arguably should have been when it comes to some of our more controversial historical events. It is difficult to imagine any reason for these omissions that does not involve malice on the part of the author. After all, when was the last time someone came to you with information they did not want you to have?

The goal of this book is to offer ideas about how we might fix the political dysfunction that dominates our daily news and conversation. The reader will, I hope, find themselves drawn into a conversation that will be comfortable and productive when it comes to their involvement. The more we talk to one another, the more likely it will be that we begin to agree on solutions to our current political problems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662446443

Book preview

Chapter 1

Continuing Areas of Disagreement

We are pretty much all in agreement that our federal government process is broken and needs to be fixed. I think we can also pretty much agree that the main thing we want from our government is an atmosphere of greater civil debate and compromise on legislation that is helpful to our citizens in their daily lives. We need work on a comprehensive reform of our health-care system to make it conform to the needs of more of our citizens, a comprehensive immigration reform, a comprehensive tax reform, a balanced budget with commitment to remain in that posture for the long term, a comprehensive reform of the Social Security program to put it on a sustainable financial footing, and all these many things need to be accomplished while staying true to the values we all believe our country should be standing for on the world stage.

I think it is obvious to us all that government is not necessary when we have agreement. I also think we understand that the purpose of the government is to establish laws and regulations to control our society for the benefit of the majority of our members. It is a process—the government defines a process by which we maintain order within our society while we sort out our differences.

We might like to think that when the government imposes a law or regulation on our society, it will become part of the fabric of our community and everyone will accept it as part of our way of life, but we are human, and our disagreements do last. Sometimes our disagreements are even reinforced and turned into deeply felt anger as a consequence of a new law or regulation and the way in which it is implemented. The following paragraphs will attempt to examine some of those lasting disagreements and find a continuous thread of events relating to them from start to the present. No one should think that I am claiming my work to be all-inclusive; rather, I am offering a continuous thread of events with the hope that you, my readers, will fill in some additional details where you think it appropriate. We might think of it as me offering a skeleton of facts and you adding some meat on those bones at your pleasure.

I am hoping that as we have this conversation, we will arrive at a mutual understanding of our disagreements. It would be nice to think that some of our disagreements would be softened in the process, but even if that is not the case, I think we will be better prepared to understand one another and find opportunities to re-engage legislatively for the purpose of turning some of our lasting disagreements in the direction of greater agreement.

We turn on the television to watch the evening news and we are assaulted by the dysfunctional content that our politicians have created. They argue about everything and agree on almost nothing. In some cases, we can trace the disagreement back to the very birth of our nation. What follows in this section of the book are chronicles of the more significant disagreements that continue to the present. I offer you a continuous thread of events from the first evidence of division up to the present incarnation of the debate. It is my consistent goal to give you the facts as they have actually evolved up to their current character. Sometimes the chronology is lengthy, and sometimes it is sparse, but as Sergeant Friday used to say, these are just the facts, and I have intentionally tried to leave out a lot of embellishment.

Christianity

Why should I have a conversation about Christianity in a part of my book that contains a discussion about continuing areas of disagreement? Good question! Allow me to explain myself.

I have yet to discover any research that would speak clearly and credibly to the religious makeup of the colonies. There is probably little disagreement that Christianity was the predominant religious denomination in the colonies, though I suspect that within the Christian community there were some numbers of differing sects. There might not have been so many differences in any particular colony, but we probably would find more differences between some of the colonies. I’m thinking about Pennsylvania and Virginia as an example. We also know that as the colonies prospered and grew, their populations became less homogenous in many of their characteristics, and religion would certainly be one of those characteristics.

There is no question in my mind that Christianity, in its many forms, remained the most widely practiced denomination, but as time went by, other denominations also arrived in the colonies. My guess would be that the non-Christian population remained just a small portion of the total, but the size of that population was probably growing and becoming more significant as the Revolutionary War approached. As the various states were busy writing their first constitutions, we find Christianity referenced in several of them and I have yet to find other religions mentioned in those texts, and that should offer some indication of the prominence of Christianity within the population at that time.

The Articles of Confederation organized the thirteen colonies into the thirteen United States of America, and their ratification certified them to be our first governing document. The articles were silent when it came to religion in the various states, thus leaving the provisions of the many state constitutions to stand within their respective jurisdictions. Remembering that the articles were written with strong recognition of states’ rights helps to explain some of the behaviors we are finding at the time. The Constitution of the United States was a different matter.

The Constitution came into being because the various states were not recognizing the sovereignty of the other states in all matters pertaining to their mutual interests, and so it was necessary to form a more centralized government to deal with some of the deficiencies. Within that context we find the whole Bill of Rights issue welling up into central prominence as part of the negotiations. In the end, the Bill of Rights, containing the first ten amendments to the Constitution, was ratified by the states, and with that ratification came the certification of the mutually agreed-to civil rights to be observed in all the United States of America.

Our discussion here is about religion in these United States, and so we will concentrate on the First Amendment:

Amendment I—Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Keeping in mind that our government is a composite of all of us when it comes to such things, what are these words about religion telling us: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof? Congress in this instance is the federal legislature, so it is the legislative actions of the federal government that are being restricted. What about the state legislatures? Great question! Let’s take a look at a letter written by President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802. He was referring to the First Amendment to our United States Constitution when he wrote thus:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.

You might wonder about any opinions from the United States Supreme Court on the subject, and sure enough we can find a few. The most relevant reference I have found is an opinion written in 1947 in the case of Everson v. Board of Education. In that opinion, the court closed some remaining questions on the incorporation of religious liberty as applies to the states. The specific question was dealing with the use of public funds to reimburse parents of parochial school students’ use of public school buses.

Everson claimed such payments crossed the separation between church and state, but the court disagreed, in a close 5–4 vote:

The establishment of religion clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a wall of separation between Church and State.

To my way of thinking, this opinion clearly shows the Supreme Court’s intent that the First Amendment prohibitions apply to both federal and state governments. Where does that leave us in this conversation?

We could lay this conversation on the table, but there is one more element of it we must think about, and that is the relationship between Christianity and our national motto. All the way back in 1782, the United States Congress adopted E Pluribus Unum as our national motto. We survived quite nicely with it until the mid-1950s, when Congress decided that we needed a clear way to differentiate ourselves from the irreligious and anticlerical ideology of the Soviet Union.

The new national motto, In God We Trust, had been used on some of our coins prior to the mid-1950s, but it was not universally endorsed, nor was it used universally on all our currency prior to the passage of this new law. Just a couple of years earlier, the Congress had added under God to our Pledge of Allegiance with little resistance.

The constitutionality of the modern national motto has not gone unchallenged with respect to the separation of church and state as outlined in the First Amendment. In 1962 the United States Supreme Court decided a case coming from the state of New York that, while not related to our currency, is still relevant to the discussion about the separation of church and state. That case, Engel v. Vitale, came out of legislation approved by the state of New York that encouraged students to start their school days with the Pledge of Allegiance and a prayer with the text Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country. Amen. The Supreme Court, in a 6–1 decision, held that reciting government-written prayers in public schools was unconstitutional, violating the establishment clause of the First Amendment. But that wasn’t the end of it.

A 1970 case, Aronow v. United States, was the first case to challenge the inclusion of In God We Trust on U.S. currency. According to Wikipedia, in 1970, "Stefan Ray Aronow, having been found without standing to sue by the District Court, appealed his case to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit challenging ‘the use of expressions of trust in God by the United States Government on its coinage, currency, official documents and publications. Specifically, the action challenged the constitutionality as repugnant to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of two federal statutes.’

"The Appeals Court, following the precedent of Massachusetts v. Mellon, agreed with the District Court that the plaintiff did not have standing as ‘a taxpayer and citizen,’ but set aside the question of standing to rule on the merits of the case.

"The Court ruled:

It is quite obvious that the national motto and the slogan on coinage and currency ‘In God We Trust’ has nothing whatsoever to do with the establishment of religion. Its use is of patriotic or ceremonial character and bears no true resemblance to a governmental sponsorship of a religious exercise… It is not easy to discern any religious significance attendant the payment of a bill with coin or currency on which has been imprinted ‘In God We Trust’ or the study of a government publication or document bearing that slogan. In fact, such secular uses of the motto was viewed as sacrilegious and irreverent by President Theodore Roosevelt. Yet Congress has directed such uses. While ‘ceremonial’ and ‘patriotic’ may not be particularly apt words to describe the category of the national motto, it is excluded from First Amendment significance because the motto has no theological or ritualistic impact. As stated by the Congressional report, it has ‘spiritual and psychological value’ and ‘inspirational quality.’

With this background of jurisprudence relating to our national motto, we still hear the argument that there is a connection between church and state evidenced by its presence on our official currency. That argument is probably stronger coming from an atheist or an agnostic than it is coming from a religious believer, if for no other reason than their beliefs about religious deities by any name. Even so, I have most often heard the argument coming from Christians, who see the relationship as proof that we are a Christian nation. Their argument is weaker due to the nondenominational use of God in the motto. Their argument would be stronger if the national motto were in reference to Jesus.

When I wrote A Broken Sausage Grinder: Is Our Government Fundamentally Flawed? I coined a phrase that bears repeating here: That in the absence of preference for their religious beliefs, the government should show preference to none of them.

This is important because we hear frequently that we live in a Christian state or that we have a Christian government, and both of these descriptions are incorrect. Our form of republican democracy shows no preference for any religion and, as such, should not be characterized as the basis for any governmental action.

State’s Rights

The question of state’s rights versus the powers of the central government has its origin in the Articles of Confederation, so this is a disagreement that has lasted for a long time. Under the provisions of the Articles of Confederation, the central government was given explicit powers, and only those explicit powers could be exercised by the central government. Article II of the Articles of Confederation states, Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled. Notice that pesky word expressly, because it is central to this whole states’ rights debate.

We hear it all the time—someone says the government is doing something that is unconstitutional. As an example, President Obama’s executive order on immigration was said to be unconstitutional by many of the Republican senators and representatives at that time. When we hear such proclamations, we often hear the word expressly used as it relates to powers the federal government is supposed to be limited to performing. The argument claims that the federal government is constrained to exercise only those powers expressly given to it and no more. We’ve heard this argument so often that we pretty much accept it as fact and wouldn’t challenge it because we know it is right—right?

Well, it isn’t right! And it isn’t right for a very good reason, which I will explain.

Allow me to back up to the Constitutional Convention. It was supposed to convene in Philadelphia on Monday, May 14, 1787, but a quorum of state representatives was not yet present, so there was a delay. Finally, on Friday, May 25, 1787, a quorum had arrived, and the convention could be called into order. General George Washington was elected unanimously to serve as the president of the convention.

As I wrote in my first book, General Washington was uniquely qualified to serve in this role. He had commanded the Continental Army under the provisions of the Articles of Confederation, and he certainly had personal knowledge of some of the shortcomings of that document. If you do a bit of research into that time, it will soon become clear that a major shortcoming of our new nation was funding for the war effort. The Articles of Confederation did not give the central government the authority to tax, so funding for the war was left to the states and became extremely problematic. Each of the thirteen states was supposed to contribute to the war effort according to a funding mechanism set down in the articles, but many either didn’t contribute or were delinquent in meeting their responsibilities.

The United States in Congress assembled couldn’t just come up with a funding plan of expediency, because Article II of the Articles of Confederation restrained them:

ARTICLE II. Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled.

There it is! There is that pesky word, expressly, that we hear people using when it comes to what our federal government can and cannot do. Clearly, if the states didn’t expressly delegate a certain power to the United States in Congress assembled, the power belonged to each of the sovereign states. Further, if there was any attempt to change the Articles of Confederation, it would require the unanimous support of all thirteen states. It wasn’t supposed to be easy to change the central governing document, but in reality, it was pretty much impossible because the state of Rhode Island did not send delegates to the Constitutional Convention.

The new United States Constitution, according to its preamble, was supposed to do a better job of establishing the central government to do those things necessary and appropriate for a central government. Notice how the preamble changes the underpinnings of the central governmental authority:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

If it tells us nothing else, it has to tell us that the differences between the Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution were made with a great deal of forethought. The United States Constitution, without any amendments, spends most of its content on how the new government is to be organized rather than what the new government is supposed to do. It broadly describes the responsibilities of each of the branches of the government but offers little in the way of how those responsibilities are to be met.

It is my contention that the Founding Fathers knew that there were situations in the future that would challenge the limits they might impose and they were more interested in letting the governments of the future make their own decisions using the tools established in the Constitution rather than hemming them in with limits that might be inappropriate for the future situation. In other words, I believe they knew that there were things they didn’t know, they knew that they didn’t know what they didn’t know, and they didn’t want to constrain future governments with the things they didn’t know; they wanted to make sure the future governments could govern.

As the new Constitution was coming together, there was great disagreement about inclusion of what was known as the Bill of Rights. Some of the delegates felt strongly that the Bill of Rights must be contained in the basic document, while others were equally rigid in the belief that a Bill of Rights had no place in the basic document because no rights would be infringed upon until the Constitution was ratified. The majority of the delegates took up the second stance, but a series of twelve amendments was drafted for ratification on a parallel track with the basic Constitution. Ten of the twelve were ratified initially and became known as the Bill of Rights.

The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution offers clarification of the Founding Fathers’ intent on the powers of the new federal government. The timing of the amendment should tell us that there was disagreement about the language contained in the original Constitution as it relates to the powers of the federal government. Even so, the text of the Tenth Amendment still leaves lots of room for interpretation by future governments:

Amendment X—The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

We need to remember that the Founding Fathers wanted the future governments to have the ability to govern. And it wasn’t long before one of these situations came along.

In 1790, there was a bill to incorporate the First National Bank of the United States as part of the effort to service the United States Treasury, which had tax revenue to manage. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Attorney General Edmund Randolph, and Speaker of the House James Madison had taken a constructionist view of the Constitution and argued that since there was no specific authority for the incorporation of a national bank, it would be unconstitutional for Congress to take such a step. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton argued that since incorporation of a national bank was not specifically prohibited, it would be constitutional for Congress to create one. President Washington sided with his secretary of the Treasury and signed the legislation into law.

This is the first example of what is known as the implied powers argument of the federal government. The power is implied because it is necessary for the accomplishment of a power that is specified by the Constitution. Said differently, if you have the responsibility to do something, you must have the authority to do everything necessary to meet your responsibility, even if some of those actions are not specifically authorized.

It is also interesting to consider that in the absence of clear authority for a particular power at either the federal or state level, the people still have such a power and their power can be exercised by the people’s government, whether it is federal or state. The only clear way to finalize arguments such as these is for the judicial branch to be called upon—this is how the Founding Fathers intended for such disagreements to be settled.

Size of Government

Another familiar argument that we hear when it comes to states’ rights shows up as the big government, small government debate, and while it sounds pretty straightforward, I am not sure that I have ever really heard it explained. Say the words and I know what we are talking about, until you ask me if I can explain something and then I’ll be stuck. Let’s see what we can learn together.

If we just listened to the rhetoric, we could easily come to the conclusion that when the president takes the oath of office, the size of the federal government would start to grow or shrink according to the political beliefs of his party. Generally, Republicans would be shrinking the federal government, while the Democrats would be increasing its size—if we just listened to the rhetoric.

The number of civilian employees in the federal government is a good indication of the size of the government, since the whole business of government is primarily one of service and it takes people to deliver service. It is not a stretch to imagine that more regulations require more employees to administer the various requirements. We could also get a good sense of the cost of government even though the relationships would be less than exact.

President Reagan used to comment on the size of the federal government and not in terms of approval. He took office in 1981 and served as our president for the next eight years. We would expect to see a reduction in the size of the federal government, yet it actually increased during that period. The chart indicates that the government shrunk during the term of President Clinton, which would also be counter to our expectation. In fact, the data shows the size of our federal government changing smoothly from year to year and administration to administration—not really being influenced by politics at all.

And that is precisely my point. The size of our federal government is not being driven by the president, the senators, or the representatives we elect. No, the size of the federal government is controlled by the staff of federal employees whom we do not elect. When we study the graph, we know that it is true. The cost of our federal government is largely driven upward by staff personnel rather than being reined in or decreased by the people we elect to office.

Does anyone remember instructing the president or their representative or senator to increase the cost of the federal government?

So if the size of our federal government is controlled by the staff and not by the people we elect to represent our interests in the affairs of the government, perhaps we can increase our understanding if we dig a bit deeper.

The chart above shows us the size of our federal government on an adjusted per capita basis. The adjustment is to show the data per one thousand citizens. The shape of the curve, when compared to the earlier one, demonstrates that short-term influences such as World War II are the same for both charts. It is also nice to see that since the early 1950s, the size of our federal government has been shrinking steadily on a per capita basis, and we should be pleased with that because it demonstrates some of those improved efficiencies so many politicians promise during their campaign for election. But what does this chart really tell us?

The curve tells us that we currently have approximately nine civilian employees in our federal government for every one thousand citizens, but is that good? What should that number be for a really effective government operation? How does the number compare to state and local governments?

I live in Washington State, and I have been able to get the number for two of the three levels of government in my state. The state of Washington in 2011 employed almost sixteen persons for every one thousand citizens of the state. My city of Issaquah employed just over eight persons for every one thousand citizens of the city. The third level is my county government, and I haven’t found the data for that calculation just yet, but I feel confident that the number will probably be somewhere between the city and state figures. When we add it all up, every one thousand citizens of Issaquah, Washington, are paying for nine federal, sixteen state, about twelve county, and eight city employees, for a total of forty-five. Still, is that showing us anything important? The various levels of government have different responsibilities, both in terms of what they do and how much of it they do.

Even so, forty-five government employees for every one thousand citizens means that almost 5 percent of us work for the government in one way or another—5 percent! Put twenty people in a room and one of them is working for the government.

It seems to me that we ought to have a conversation about each level of our government. What do they do for us? Are the services they deliver the services they are required to deliver? Is that what the majority of us want them to do? Are the people we elect keeping tabs on these things, or are they just getting along to go along?

The numbers may be slightly different for each of us, but the questions should be the same. More importantly, the answers should be to our liking, and I doubt that will always be the case.

To my way of thinking, there is only one reason for a law or regulation to exist at the federal level rather than at a state level, and that is because there is clear value in having consistency among all states.

Entitlements

There seem to be two or three very different ideas of what constitutes an entitlement within the context of government spending, and I think you might be able to characterize them as right, left, and middle or independent. Let’s consider this further. My Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, eleventh edition, offers the following:

En·ti·tle·ment n. (1942) 1a: the state or condition of being entitled: right; 1b: a right to benefits specified esp. by law or contract; 2: a government program providing benefits to members of a specified group; also: funds supporting or distributed by such a program; 3: belief that one is deserving of or entitled to certain privileges.

There they are; definition 1b is the definition chosen by the middle-of-the-road folks in conversations about federal spending. Definition 2 best fits the thinking we hear from those on the left side of the political aisle, and definition 3 can be ascribed to those on the right.

The middle folks see entitlement as something that has been earned by their participation or an obligation incurred by service or payment to the United States. Government retirement, Social Security, and Medicare programs all fit in this bucket. Each of these involved the participant doing something or paying something to the government in exchange for a benefit payable in the future. In a lot of ways, we could be talking about insurance. The left-leaning folks think about programs such as Medicaid, which provides a safety net of benefits for members of society who are unable to obtain these necessities for themselves. Finally, those who lean to the right tend to see entitlements as something that the recipient expects others in society to provide even though they are capable of working to obtain it on their own. The ability to work and obtain the benefit on one’s own is the major point of disagreement.

We don’t have to look very hard to find all these definitions justifiable within the provisions of our United States Constitution. That said, the fact that something is constitutional doesn’t make it right from all points of view. In this part of the book, I will offer a chronology of the entitlements currently being paid by our federal government. I’m not taking sides here, and I don’t intend to change anyone’s mind. Rather, I hope that with a full explanation of our current situation provided, we will find ourselves able to engage in civil conversation on the subject.

When we examine the concept of retirement, we find it in the category of deferred compensation. The payments into the system are treated much the same as wages and salaries that are paid to employees as a normal course of business. There is a difference, though, when it comes to a comparison of private business and public government motivations. A private business interest is motivated by profit, so for a retirement benefit to make sense, the deferral of this compensation needs to be accounted for as an expense that reduces profitability and the taxes relating to that profitability. A public government motivation has no profit maximization or taxation minimization driving the management of a retirement program—in the government program, the motivation is best described as an incentive to bring good and capable employees into government service by offering benefits that are competitive with those of private business. And finally, we should not overlook the retirement program as an inducement for older workers to leave their employment, be it public or private, and allow the workforce to be refreshed with new and younger personnel.

The concept of government retirement has been around since the mid-1800s. In 1855, Congress passed legislation authorizing the U.S. Navy to involuntarily retire officers who could not fulfill all their duties due to incapacitation of some sort. The earliest voluntary government retirement program, having been signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on August 3, 1861, came only four months after Fort Sumter was attacked and the Civil War began, and the act authorized retirement after forty years of service for officers of all services. Then in December of 1861, Congress authorized the president to involuntarily retire naval officers who had reached forty-five years of service or the age of sixty-two, and they passed a similar legislation in July of 1862 applicable to Army and Marine Corps officers. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of explanation offered regarding the timing of these changes. We should bear in mind that President Lincoln was new to the office, having been sworn in for his first term only a few months earlier, and several of the states were proclaiming their secession from the union of the United States. That said, the language of these acts suggests at least two motivations, namely, disability and length of service (greater than forty consecutive years), but we are left to our imagination for other possibilities. There can be little doubt that the officer corps of the United States military needed to be refreshed with some younger talent.

The United States military was also in a transitional period following the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. The ranks of the military needed to be filled from a more diverse population of backgrounds across the nation. Such adjustments never happen quickly and usually do not happen voluntarily, so incentives of some sort are often required to move things in the desired direction.

The size of the federal government, like the population of the United States, and the sheer number of states were growing as we approached our one hundredth year under the Constitution. Remember, the Articles of Confederation only lasted for eleven years, so the Constitution was clearly an improvement in terms of longevity. The various jobs that must be done to keep a government going were becoming more numerous, and with those increases came the possibility of political appointments.

In politics, a spoils system is a means by which a winning politician gives government jobs to supporters, friends, and relatives as a reward for working toward victory in the election. Politics of the United States used a spoils system until the Pendleton Act was passed in 1883 due to a civil service reform movement. The term was derived from the phrase To the victor belongs the spoils, used by New York senator Marcy when referring to the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828.

The Civil Service Reform Act, aka the Pendleton Act of 1883, created the United States Civil Service Commission. The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act established that positions within the federal government should be awarded on the basis of merit rather than political affiliation. Over time it moved most federal employees onto the merit system and ended the spoils system. The reform took place during the Chester A. Arthur administration and was motivated in no small part by the assassination of President James A. Garfield by a disgruntled office seeker. It also caused the campaign funding mechanisms to shift toward business interests.

The transition from the spoils system to the civil service system of hiring and managing federal employees offers some clues as to the social trends of that time. It is no stretch of the imagination to see the spoils system as a corruption-filled system, while the civil service system would clearly avoid much of those influences.

Apparently, the officer corps of our military needed to be adjusted further following the Civil War, so Congress authorized, in July of 1870, the president to place officers with a minimum of thirty years of service on the retired list. Congress also sweetened the incentives to retire by establishing the retirement stipend at one-half of the highest pay of the officer at the time of retirement and his retaining the rank held at that time. Twelve years later, in June of 1882, Congress required officers of age sixty-four to be placed on the retired list.

It was February 14, 1885, when legislation was signed by President Chester A. Arthur extending the government retirement benefit to certain Army and Marine Corps enlisted personnel. The language of the legislation indicates its purpose as being related to service tenure, but once again we could wonder about the motivations for this action, because we can find little else in the way of explanation. We should remember that President Arthur, a Republican, was less than a month away from leaving office as he signed the act into law and the legislature was a Republican majority in the Senate and a Democratic majority in the House. The incoming president, Grover Cleveland, was a Democrat, and the Senate would remain a Republican majority, with the House remaining in Democrat hands. For these reasons, the possibility of political rivalries seems less likely.

In October of 1913, Henry Ford introduced his moving assembly line production methods to the automobile industry. We can be confident that he saw the new method as a game changer, but we can also be fairly safe in assuming that he had no idea of the far-reaching impacts to manufacturing his methods would bring about in the future. It is important here because we need to remember that in 1913 America, the people were not as mobile as we are today. We didn’t have the roads and highways and cars and personal transportation means that are so familiar in 2019, so mass transit was far more widely used and the railroad figured prominently in that part of our society.

There were many motivations for World War I when it started in Europe on July 28, 1914. What is most relevant here is that the United States did not enter the war until April 6, 1917. Prior to our entry into the conflict, we had maintained a neutral stance, though we had supported Great Britain with war materials delivered by U.S.-flagged vessels, some of which were sunk by German submarines. President Woodrow Wilson made an address to a joint session of Congress on April 2, 1917, and followed it up with a formal request for a declaration of war with Germany.

An interesting aside is that the United States has been involved in well over one hundred conflicts over our history, and many of them have not been formally declared by the Congress, as is specifically set out in Article I, Section 8, Clause (11) of the Constitution. In the case of World War I, however, President Woodrow Wilson’s request was answered on April 6, 1917, with the following declaration: Whereas the Imperial German Government has committed repeated acts of war against the Government and the people of the United States of America: Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the state of war between the United States and the Imperial German Government which has thus been thrust upon the United States is hereby formally declared; and that the President be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to carry on war against the Imperial German Government; and to bring the conflict to a successful termination all of the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States.

The war raged on until the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, when a ceasefire took effect, eventually ending all hostilities. Armies withdrew, soldiers and sailors were discharged back to their homes, and Americans started to readjust back to peacetime. We are not surprised that part of that readjustment involved celebration and the consumption of intoxicating beverages. So much so that the temperance movement was successful in influencing legislators to pass the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which, when ratified, would lead to Prohibition. With the benefit of twenty-twenty hindsight, we know that nothing creates a desire more than a prohibition, and so it was with alcoholic beverages. For a time, Americans tried to comply, but it didn’t last—bring on the Roaring Twenties!

During the spanning years following the inception of the civil service, there were a number of attempts to further reform the civil service system. Some of those efforts were successful, and some not, but on May 22, 1920, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Civil Service Retirement System Act (CSRS) into law. It can be argued that the civil service system needed reforms of this type to remain competitive with the civilian industry. It is also fair to say that the various jobs done by civil service members were evolving and becoming more specialized and complex. In any event, from this point forward, the civil service employees would have their own retirement system like that of the military officers and enlisted personnel. The Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) has provided retirement, disability, and survivor benefits for most civilian employees in the United States federal government since that time. CSRS is a defined-benefit plan akin to a pension. Notably, though, CSRS employees do not participate in Social Security (unless having worked in the private sector beforehand, and then subject to penalties).

Upon the creation of a new Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) in 1987, those newly hired after that date cannot participate in CSRS. Still, CSRS continues to provide retirement benefits to those eligible to receive them.

In August of 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, giving women the right to vote, and the Roaring Twenties roared on.

There were those who tried to sound the alarm, but their efforts were little heeded, and on October 24, 1929, Black Thursday, the stock market crash began. By the following Tuesday, October 29, Black Tuesday, the stock market had suffered three huge drops and a loss of approximately $30 billion of valuation. When our economy takes a hit of this relative magnitude, there are lots of financial interests that will suddenly be underwater in terms of their debt-to-equity situation, and that sudden change will not be quickly corrected, so collateral damage such as layoffs and defaults will happen. Add to that the broader loss of trust in financial institutions when reserves are insufficient to meet withdrawal requests and depositors are unable to gain access to their own funds and lasting turmoil becomes inevitable. The United States was thrust into the Great Depression along with much of the rest of the world. Goodbye to the Roaring Twenties!

We will be returning to the Great Depression further on in the chapter entitled Money, so please hold your thoughts for that (more detailed) discussion. We will similarly be having a very detailed conversation regarding our national debt, so please hold any personal thoughts for that later discussion as well. Here we are just taking note of the lasting differences we hold relating to these topics.

The United States of America was born in debt. The Revolutionary War was fought and won on spending made possible by indebtedness. To fight the war, we borrowed money from other countries (primarily France) and from wealthy individuals, but make no mistake—the United States was born in debt. Under the Articles of Confederation, the several states were supposed to make payments into a fund for the purpose of retiring our debt, but not all the states made their payments, and as the time for repayment drew near, the fund was deficient. In fact, it was this lack of fiscal discipline that became a major part of the motivation for changing our form of government and adopting the Constitution. From 1791 through 1812, the national debt was reduced significantly, but the War of 1812 was again funded by debt and the national debt grew substantially from 1812 to 1815, when the Treaty of Ghent was ratified.

Once again, the Congress followed restraint and retired, by some accounts, the entire national debt by 1835, but it didn’t last. The business of government is not the same as the business of business, for a variety of reasons. In one way, there is much more uncertainty in both the revenue and expenditure streams of government finance than there is in a business. And our household budgets are even more stable by comparison to either of them. From 1835 to 1860 we recorded annual surpluses and deficits, with the end result being the national debt slowly growing to just under $65 million, but 1861 marked the start of the Civil War, which was again fought on debt, causing the national debt to balloon from $65 million to just over $2.75 billion by war’s end.

Following the Civil War, the federal government returned to policies of fiscal restraint and the national debt was slowly reduced once again, though not all the way to zero. We were able to get the debt down to approximately $1.2 billion, but then we entered World War I, which was again fought on debt. Expenditures for WWI caused the debt to grow to almost $25.4 billion. The cost of war was definitely going up.

Following WWI, we managed to pay down the national debt to roughly $16.9 billion before Black Thursday and Black Tuesday in 1929 ushered in the Great Depression, and with this underpinning we will return to the discussion of entitlements.

In the 1932 presidential election, an optimistic Franklin Delano Roosevelt (he would be known as FDR) was swept into office with the promise of what he called the New Deal. FDR hadn’t yet been sworn in when in January of 1933, the Twentieth Amendment to our Constitution was ratified, changing the date for convening the new Congress from March 4 to January 3 and the presidential inauguration from March 4 to January 20, beginning in October later that same year. Then on February 20, 1933, with support from the newly elected president, Congress passed and sent to the states for ratification the Twenty-First Amendment to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment and end Prohibition. Sometimes what seems like a good idea turns out not to be as good as we expected, and apparently that was the case with Prohibition. President Roosevelt’s first one hundred days were marked with a flurry of executive orders and the passage of legislation that would bring relief to American farmers and unemployed workers, as well as new regulations to rein in some of the excesses in the private sector. The Great Depression wore on, but we would soon learn that the recovery had begun.

The fiscal climate was very much a part of the political picture as President Herbert Hoover turned the reins of government to FDR in March of 1933. Indeed, FDR had campaigned on promises that he would balance the federal budget.

FDR got right to work, and just six days into his term, on March 10, 1933, he submitted his Economy Act of 1933 to Congress. The Economy Act was supposed to cut government spending by reducing the pay of the military and civil service workers, totally eliminating some government agencies, and slashing veterans’ benefits by 50 percent. Remember that military officers had been receiving their retirement benefits since as early as 1861; enlisted personnel had been receiving their retirement benefits since 1885 and civil service personnel could have been retired since late 1920 so these benefits were an integral part of the quality of life these veterans and members were dependent upon. It might be good to review the definitions of entitlement at the beginning of this section to help frame our thinking. At the time of these spending cuts, roughly 25 percent of the federal budget obligations went to pay veterans benefits, so the proposed cuts would have been seen as necessary even though they were deeply unpopular. Less than a year earlier, the confrontation between veterans and the U.S. Army at Anacostia Flats in Washington, DC, had engendered deep distrust and animosity toward Congress, and several of the elected had lost their seats in the last election.

As an analytical person, I feel like another reminder seems appropriate, and that is, a small part of a small thing can seem to be a big percentage. If you have two of something and you get one more, you have a 50 percent improvement. It is good to think about what a percentage figure really represents before we react to it.

Nevertheless, the Economy Act of 1933 passed in both Houses of Congress and was signed into law by the president on March 20, 1933. There was opposition, but FDR managed to quell some of it with jobs made possible by the passage of his Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) on March 31.

In May, Congress passed, and the president signed, the Federal Emergency Relief Act, which loaned money to states for the purpose of creating employment opportunities for families around the country. The Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA) is included as part of this discussion because it helps to establish the context in which a variety of government programs was being established. The FERA is not, per se, an entitlement, though it suggests a willingness to use government funds for the benefit of social programs.

As hard as you might have looked, you probably could not have found a portion of our American society that was hit harder by the Depression than that dominated by our farmers. Whether we are talking about livestock or crops in the field, the situation was the same. Prices were depressed by overproduction brought on by lower demand, which was the result of the Depression. And we should take a moment to recognize that the business of agriculture is one of the most uncontrollable parts of the economy we might imagine in the first place. So much of a successful harvest is dependent on natural events that cannot be forecast and are not controllable by the individual farmers or the government. That said, there was something that an optimistic president could try—the Agricultural Adjustment Act was passed into law on May 12, 1933, as another important product of FDR’s first one hundred days in office. The act was to be paid for by taxes on the food processing industry, which would offset subsidies to farmers not to plant some of their lands and to allow the government to purchase excess livestock for slaughter. The Agricultural Adjustment Act would artificially limit supply to bring it more closely in balance with demand. Legislation such as this is well intentioned when it is passed into law, but if such laws are allowed to remain in place and become part of the fabric of our society beyond their need, they become the focus of our political conversation, and not just in a good sense.

Just a month later, FDR and the Congress enacted another law designed to artificially rebalance supply and demand within our economy. The National Industrial Recovery Act was enacted on June 16, 1933, for the purpose of raising the prices of industrial goods and, through the creation of the Public Works Administration (PWA), put some money in the hands of the people in the hopes of boosting economic activity.

The Great Depression exhausted the savings of most Americans and caused many of them to lose their homes to foreclosure as well. Debts couldn’t be paid back because there was no income, and there was no income because there was no job, and there was no job because there was no company, and there was no company because there were no customers, and there were no customers because there was no income. The cycle was vicious and did not discriminate among its victims. Personal indebtedness was the equalizer between the haves and the have-nots across the country when it came to this devastation. If you couldn’t pay your debts, you found yourself entering the cycle.

President Roosevelt recognized that there were many Americans that had contributed to our national successes but were not participants in any form of financial security program for their later years in life. Personal savings just couldn’t be relied upon if the economy faltered, and so he proposed what would come to be known as the Social Security program, which is the commonly used term for the federal old-age benefits program.

It was to be a grand program based on the underlying philosophy of an insurance policy wherein workers paid a small amount into a trust fund during their working years and the trust fund would be used to pay benefits to those workers later on, following a person’s sixty-fifth birthday.

The Social Security Act was enacted on August 14, 1935, and according to the preamble, it was to provide for the general welfare by establishing a system of Federal old-age benefits [Title II], and by enabling the several States to make more adequate provision for aged persons [Title I], blind persons [Title X], dependent and crippled children [Title IV], maternal and child welfare [Title V], public health [Title VI], and the administration of their unemployment compensation laws [Title III]. (The previous quote is edited to include title numbers.) The program was to be administered by a board of three members appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate to six-year terms of office (Title VII). The terms of the three board members were to be staggered so that two of the three would always have the benefit of at least two years’ tenure and experience to ensure continuity in both policy and practice.

Not all the efforts to revitalize the economy were successful, however, and we would be wrong to think that our legislature was unanimous in their many attempts to help. Using our 2019 lens, it is not difficult to look at the expanse of these programs and see both sides of the political aisle (conservative and progressive) with something to use during the next political campaign. That said, in 1935, the Social Security Act passed in both the House and the Senate by a wide bipartisan margin, and the votes within each political party were also heavily in favor of passage. Democrats controlled the majority in both bodies, but all the political caucuses heavily favored the legislation. You might not know it today, but both Republicans and Democrats were heavily in favor of the provisions of the Social Security program at the time of its enactment. It is true that the various program expenditures under the broad umbrella of Social Security were offset by relatively small tax authorizations and any excess revenue was to be maintained in the Social Security Trust Fund, but the slippery slope proponents would have only seen peril on the horizon.

The original legislation contained language regarding the management of any excess monies that might be on deposit in the trust fund from time to time, as follows:

It shall be the duty of the Managing Trustee to invest such portion of the Trust Fund as is not, in his judgment, required to meet current withdrawals. Such investments may be made only in interest-bearing obligations of the United States or in obligations guaranteed as to both principal and interest by the United States.

Refer to title 2, section 201(a), for greater detail. You can be assured that this provision of the Social Security Act will be under the microscope when our conversation turns to the national debt later on.

Later in the year, the Twenty-First Amendment was the first and only amendment to our United States Constitution to be ratified by a convention of the states. This method provided for a speedy ratification, and on December 5, 1933, the amendment was officially ratified. Ten days later, on December 15, 1933, it was again legal to openly consume alcoholic beverages.

On occasion, the United States Supreme Court was called upon to render an opinion on the constitutionality of our laws. Looking back to the Agricultural Adjustment Act, we find the act to have been unpopular with the food processors primarily, and for obvious reasons. The matter worked its way through our court system until, on December 9 and 10, 1935, it was argued before the Supreme Court. Then on January 6, 1936, the justices rendered their opinion, finding that, in the words of Justice Owen J. Roberts, "the act invades the reserved rights of the states. It is a statutory plan to regulate