Ronald Reagan and the scariest nine words in the English language

Ronald Reagan used to say that the scariest nine words in the English language were: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” The line was delivered with his trademark hint of humour, a trait that was at once charming and disarming, making it one of the most versatile and effective items in The Great Communicator’s toolbox. But Reagan’s humour could also obscure the importance of his observations with the result that his aphorisms were – and still are – cited more often as examples of his wit rather than the expression of fundamental principles that they almost always were.

Undoubtedly, Reagan’s “scariest nine words” quip reflected a genuine personal distrust of big government, but it also touched on something more profound. As a true conservative (Reagan started out as a Democrat and became a Republican, but he was always a conservative) Reagan didn’t just understand the inherent problems associated with big, centralized government, he understood on a deeper level how even “successful” government programs that are well-intentioned and well-run can cause lasting harm.

It is with this mind that I question the wisdom of Canada’s Universal Child Care Benefit and similar programs designed to “help” families.

The Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB) was established by the Harper government in 2006 as a “conservative” alternative to the national daycare system proposed by the Liberal Party when Paul Martin was its leader. It paid parents $100 a month for every child under the age of six years, the idea being that parents should have the choice of where and what sort of care their young children receive.

Conservatives, especially pro-family social conservatives, praised the initiative as a sensible response to an emerging problem in our society, i.e. the increasing inability of families to make ends meet. The UCCB was “conservatism in action” they declared, strengthening families while respecting parental rights. Dissenting conservative voices – like mine – were either drowned out or ignored.

This summer the UCCB underwent a massive expansion. Payments for children under six years old were increased a whopping 60 percent while parents with children from six to eighteen years old began receiving $60 a month for each child.

Once again, social conservatives are praising the government for its pro-family policies. But is the UCCB really pro-family, or even conservative? To answer these questions, one must first ask why it is that families are having such difficulty making ends meet.

According to a 2014 report by the Fraser Institute, the average Canadian family spends more on taxes that anything else – more than food, clothing and shelter combined. More than 40 percent of the average Canadian family’s income is eaten up by taxes, and because most of these taxes are “hidden” in the price of goods and services, they are easy to overlook.

Then there is the cost – also built into the price of goods and services – of red-tape and regulation, some of which is actually designed for the sole purpose of keeping prices artificially high. Milk, eggs and chicken, for instance, are all more expensive than they should be in Ontario because OPEC-like cartels (A.K.A marketing boards) – under government mandate – limit supply of these essential products and block competition.

In short, families have difficulty making ends meet because their cost of living is too high, and the single greatest contributing factor to that high cost of living is government, in the form of taxes, regulation and market interference.

Thus far the preferred course of action in response to this has been to provide parents with tax breaks for dependent children. Tax breaks are only available to parents with taxable income though; they do nothing to help stay-at-home parents.

And even for parents who earn enough to take advantage of tax breaks, it’s clear that these breaks are not enough – or more accurately, it’s clear that none of the major political parties in Canada believe that they are enough, otherwise there would have been no reason for the UCCB or any other program, like government run daycare.

The problem with prescriptions like these, however, is that they all treat the symptom of the disease rather than the disease itself, thereby creating the illusion that there is no disease in the first place. Worse, because they must themselves be financed by higher taxes, they are an integral part of the very problem they were intended to address.

I could write a book detailing the inefficiencies, inconsistencies and general illogic of government social programs. Speaking as a conservative, however, what really bothers me about the UCCB and similar policies and programs is how quickly and passionately self-proclaimed conservatives - both fiscal and social - accept and embrace them.

This spring, after adding almost $200 billion to Canada’s national debt, the Harper government finally succeeded in balancing its budget. And what’s the first thing it did after achieving this important objective? Instead of rewarding hard-working Canadians with much-deserved, across-the-board tax cuts that would have boosted economic activity and relieved pressure on families, it implemented a massive expansion of an entitlement program that no-one was seeking, and that is, at its core, nothing more than a progressive scheme for wealth re-distribution.

Where is the fiscal conservatism in any of this?

As for helping families, it should be obvious by now that the number and magnitude of challenges families face in contemporary society has grown in proportion to the number and magnitude of government programs and regulations designed to address those challenges.

Is it possible that this is more than a coincidence? How can social conservatives turn a blind eye to this?

Government aid doesn’t just weaken community and family bonds - the very fabric of a free and healthy society - it destroys those bonds altogether by rendering them irrelevant.

No-one should fool themselves into thinking that government aid does not come with strings attached either. As someone once observed: The Golden Rule is that he who has the gold makes the rules. This is especially true when it comes to government. One need only consider the ever-changing experiment in social-engineering that public schools have become to appreciate how quickly government “help” mutates into government “control” by a handful of bureaucrats determined to impose their personal vision of the perfect society on everyone else.

The scariest nine words in the English language are: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” This isn’t just a joke, it’s a reminder to conservatives everywhere of one of the most important principles of conservative government, courtesy of, arguably, the most successful conservative leader of the 20th century,

Here's what else Ronald Reagan had to say on the subject:

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior... Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?

Is there really anything more to add?