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By naming Betsy DeVos as nominee for Secretary of Education, Donald Trump signaled his intention to pursue a path near and dear to conservatives- the privatization of governmental functions. DeVos, a billionaire, is an vociferous advocate of diverting public funds to private education, mainly through the use of vouchers and support for charter schools and through tax credits for investments in private education. Two decades ago, she successfully pushed the legislature in her home state of Michigan to enact a law allowing a wide array of parties to start charter schools. Since then, the publicly-funded, privately-operated schools have proliferated. However, a 2015 Federal review found that an usually high number of the charters rank among the poorest performing schools in the state. DeVos has staunchly opposed attempts to introduce more oversight into the system.

As an old saying goes, “you treat someone like a dog, it won’t be long before they start barking.” This is an analogy that describes the attitude of the Republican Party towards the federal government. Since the Reagan years, they have bleated their mantra that “government isn’t the solution- it’s the problem” so loud and so wide that it has become accepted as “post-truth” (i.e. widely-held opinion shaped less by objective facts than emotional or personal beliefs. A tip of the hat is owed to Dr. Goebbels ). To reaffirm this point, in the last three-and-a-half decades the GOP ensured that the government performed poorly whenever they had their hands on any of the levers of power: The current dysfunction- or more precisely, paralysis- of the Congress under Republican control is unprecedented in recent history; before that, the Administration of George W. Bush gave us the ineptitude of FEMA’s reaction to Katrina and the lax regulation of the financial sector which led to the 2008 collapse. Republicans incessantly warn us about the dangers of the growing national debt, yet it increased historically under Reagan. W managed to convert the budget surplus he inherited from Bill Clinton into a deficit, increasing a national debt that was on course to shrink to an insignificant percentage of GDP into another historic high. And speaking of shrinking, it is ironic that a favorite talking point of GOP politicians is reducing the size of the federal government, since their creation of the Department of Homeland Security led to a massive expansion of that very government.

No matter the euphemisms employed to describe this approach, no matter how many times we are told about the effectiveness of “market-based solutions”, or the inefficiency of “the bureaucracy”, Superman’s x-ray vision is not required to see what is happening. Privatizing services traditionally provided by government is, in the least kindly telling, the looting of public funds for private gain. The wealth of We-the-People is being transferred into the hands of a few. Witness the ceding of state prison systems, or the explosive growth of private military and security contractors. In these cases, the private entities are for-profit firms whose primary concern is bolstering their bottom line. One consequence is the creation of a perverse incentive to cut costs to the degree that services decline to less-than-adequate levels and the public's confidence in government is furlther eroded. The other is that the government ultimately pays an exorbitant price for services it could provide itself. This was brought into sharp focus during the wars in the Mid-East where regular military personnel frequently found themselves fighting alongside mercenaries (“contractors”) who were being paid many more of our tax dollars to do the same job.

Outright privatization is only one way to divert public funds into private hands. Engaging private contractors is a valid option for governments on all levels for obvious reasons. For example, activities such as highway construction require capital investment in heavy equipment. It would be financially unsound for the state and local governments to which federal highway funds are distributed to make these investments. On the other hand, contractors routinely bid on multiple construction projects across multiple jurisdictions and are able to justify such capital investments. For governments, contracting highway construction is both sound fiscal policy and economic stimulus.

Contrast this with Trump’s “massive” infrastructure proposal. His plan does not involve the government spending in the traditional sense*. Instead, the government would extend tax credits ($137 billion is the reported number) to companies that raised money from private sources to undertake construction projects. What these companies would receive in return is the revenue stream from these projects. We’re talking assets such as toll bridges and toll roads. At issue is public infrastructure that does not generate revenue: sewer systems, mass transit, the maintenance costs of existing roads, etc.- and would not be attractive to private investors. To this potential financial boondoggle we may add in the likelihood the public would see this as yet another failing of government.

That government tends to the common good is a rightful expectation of every citizen. The concept of the commonwealth is not strictly economic. Quality public education and national security, to name two, are about outcomes, not costs. Even in light of these stipulations, however, we should also rightfully expect that government use our tax dollars efficiently. What has happened over the last three-and-a-decades has been a bizarre redistribution of wealth upwards from the middle class to the wealthiest by means of government spending and tax expenditures. Privatization is simply another mechanism to ensure the rich continue to get richer.  

It is not surprising, then, that the incoming Administration appears more and more to be assuming an oligarchical cast. The Trumpocracy will feature Goldman Sachs alum Steve Mnuchin and Wall Street take-over artist Wilbur Ross.  And there are rumors that the Tweeter-in-Chief is now considering the current and past CEO’s of Exxon-Mobile as Secretary of State.

The man who campaigned on the theme of “draining the swamp” is instead pumping more sludge into that very swamp.

*Brad Plummer in Vox:  ”Traditionally, state and local governments fund roads directly, using some combination of their own revenues, federal highway aid, and public money borrowed from investors by issuing bonds that are ultimately repaid via taxes or tolls. Public agencies then oversee the design, construction, and maintenance of said roads.” On the other hand, PPP’s (private-public partnerships) are structured such that “Private firms might bid for a road project, and the winning bidder then raises money from outside investors to design, operate, build, and maintain the road for a set number of years. The firm recoups its costs through tolls or fixed state payments.”